As the sun rose, Will climbed down from the billboard and we followed the tire tracks again. After walking for some ways, I noticed there were more buildings and more empty vehicles on the road. It seemed we were moving into the ruins of a city. Eventually it became impossible for Will to detect the tire tracks, since the roads were not as overgrown here. The men who had attacked Will's friends must've come from somewhere in this city, but now we couldn't be sure where. We sat on the bumper of an old car and Will thought about what to do.

    "This is about as far as I've ever been," he said as he looked around. "I know Milton tried to clear the city even farther, but no one besides him has been out here, since there are still a lot of you people around. And he hasn't been over this way lately. I know there's a big river if you keep going east, so let's head that way. Maybe we'll see something."

    We made our way through the city. It was terribly eerie being among so many empty buildings, with almost no sounds and absolutely no one around. There must've been so many people here before, and now they were all gone. I suppose most of them were dead, while a very few were in Will's community, some of them were in the prisons where Milton had led them, and some were just standing around, as I had been doing before Milton found me. So now all of these buildings and things just sat here-dead, decaying, disappearing.

    I wondered at all the things that must be inside the buildings-the remnants of people's lives, dying slightly slower deaths than their owners, lingering longer and even more pitifully. It was much worse than when Will had led us through the town near our home and I had seen some of the collapsed buildings there. In this city there were thousands of them, and even more vehicles lying around, broken and useless. There was a slight whistling sound as the wind cut through the streets and around the buildings, almost like breathing, though this was irregular, labored, and spasmodic.

    The only really tall buildings were in a cluster off to our left; we were moving through a neighborhood of smaller buildings. Will extended his arm to make us stop walking, and he crouched behind the cab of a cement mixer. Lucy and I followed him. "There's one of those flags up ahead," he whispered. "In front of a building."

    I peeked around the side of the cement mixer. The flag was identical to the one on the men's truck-two wavy blue lines, a red handprint, and a red sun. This time it was on a flagpole. The wrecked vehicles in the street prevented me from seeing what else there was around there.

    I looked to Will and saw that he was obviously considering what to do next. He looked up at the truck we were hiding behind, then climbed up on the running board to look inside. He opened the door and I watched him as he rummaged around inside the truck. He climbed down and was holding two hard hats, the kind construction workers wear. "It's not much, but maybe it'll give you some protection," he said as he put one on my head, one on Lucy's. "I shouldn't have brought you along, but I didn't want to detour back to your place. I wanted to catch up with these guys so badly after what they did. I'm sorry to put you all in danger."

    I looked over at Lucy. We both appeared ridiculous, of course, wearing the battered, old hard hats. Her look was more sinister, however, her chin still stained and streaked with pink. Even if the hat precariously bobbed above her small, delicate face, there was still the hint of savagery and violence about her. It always frightened me. But her eye was as serene as ever, and I took heart. We both nodded at Will.

    "All right," he said. "I don't know exactly what's going to happen. I'm going to get closer to the building. There are plenty of vehicles in the street for me to hide behind. You two stay here. If I don't come back, then please, just go back along this street. Follow it out of the city. Don't go near anyone or they'll probably try to kill you. And try not to get hit in the head, okay? I'd feel so bad if you two got hurt."

    As usual, I thought he was being so nice to us. We really owed all our freedom to him, so why would we blame him for anything? We could've been killed many times before he even found us, and at least he'd given us a chance to learn who we were, and also a chance to make ourselves useful and help people. It would be absurdly ungrateful for us to feel ill-used or mistreated by him at this point.

    I watched Will make his way quickly between the vehicles till he was out of sight. Then I just stood by the cement mixer with Lucy and waited. Although I wasn't mad at Will for what had happened, or what was happening now, I did find myself longing for the safety of my little cubicle with Lucy, to hear her violin and read my books and just rest beside her. I was thinking how at least we seemed safe for the moment, when, without warning, a man came around the side of the cement mixer. He must have been treading quietly, or perhaps my hearing was not well-attuned, or maybe I had been too distracted with my apprehensive thoughts, because I never heard his steps until he was right on top of us.

    The man was dressed much like Will was, his jacket and pants made of a patchwork of fabric and reinforced with bits of metal. He carried a rifle. Actually, I don't know anything about guns-it might have been a shotgun. What I mean is that it wasn't a handgun, but a gun with a long barrel that you carry with both hands.

    He looked as shocked as I felt when he first saw us. He immediately raised the barrel of the gun towards Lucy's face. I was between them, and much as I had the day before, I didn't think, I just reacted. I grabbed the barrel and pushed it away. He fired, and the bullet hit the pavement beside Lucy.

    Still holding the gun with my right hand, I clawed at his face with my left. He gave a cry of pain and staggered back, letting go of the gun. He tripped over some debris and fell backwards. I found myself holding this ugly, unfamiliar thing in my right hand. I flipped the gun around, so I was holding it by the stock instead of the barrel. The wooden stock felt somewhat better, more natural than the smooth, metal barrel, but to me it still felt like some venomous, malignant thing.

    Lucy had taken a step forward. I thought she meant to attack the man as she had done in the woods, for I saw she had snatched up a metal bar from the ground. This time, I was afraid and didn't want her to; I didn't think it was right in this case-we had no idea, really, if this man had done anything wrong, even though Will clearly thought these people in the city were allied with the men who had attacked the women the day before. So I extended my right arm, still holding the gun, to block Lucy's progress. She looked over at me and growled, but stayed where she was. Her mouth always looked so hideous and inhuman at these moments; it was only her eye that gave me any confidence or hope.

    The man on the ground was moving away from us, backwards, on his back, like a crab. He looked astonished at how Lucy and I were behaving. I suppose he expected us to fall on him, tearing and biting, the way people so often expect us to do, but we just stood there for a moment.

    I heard several shots off in the direction Will had gone. This seemed to make the man on the ground decide on more violence, so he reached for a pistol that was in a holster on his belt. Lucy and I were not quick enough to dodge or run for cover, so again I didn't think, I just reacted. I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

    I had no idea if I was aiming it the right way, but I was very close to the man, so I thought I might hit something. The sound of the gun was terribly loud. Of all the things that had happened to me, that deafening blast pushing back on my face was the only thing that I remember distinctly as pain-and as guilt, sharp and penetrating as the retort or the bullet.

    Above the elbow, the man's arm exploded into bloody flesh and fabric, and he let out a howl. He clutched at the wound with his other hand, which was instantly covered with blood that oozed between his fingers. He fell back on the pavement.

    He had already gotten the gun out of the holster with his right hand, but he couldn't seem to raise it with his wounded arm. I walked over to him. Lucy was at my side, and I again barred her with my right arm, holding the gun. I think the sight of the blood stirred up her unholy appetites, and I didn't want to see that again. She turned slightly away from me and growled, but she seemed to master herself, or at least tolerate my restraint. I took another step and pressed my foot onto the man's wounded arm. He writhed and howled again, and finally dropped the pistol. I kicked the handgun under the cement mixer. Then I stepped back with Lucy.

    I didn't know what had happened to Will, and I didn't know if we should leave as he had instructed, or try to help him somehow. I feared the worst, but unlike when it happened in the heat of battle, making such tactical decisions was beyond me, once there was the possibility for consideration; I became totally paralyzed.

    The wounded man watched us. You could see how scared he was, but even through his obvious pain, the main thing I detected was shock and wonder at how Lucy and I were acting. He was breathing hard, and seemed to be in disbelief at how we just stood there.

    Fortunately, after a few moments of this standoff, Will came running back. He also looked surprised at what he saw, looking from the wounded man, to the gun, to me, to Lucy, and back to the man. Unlike me, he paused only for a minute. His gun was already out and aimed at the other man. I grabbed Will's arm. He looked at me and I shook my head.

    He looked back to the man. "All right, let's go." He pushed Lucy and me down the street, back in the direction we had come.

    Will kept looking over his shoulder, and we deliberately cut over one street, rather than continue on the street we had been on. In a few minutes, we were entering the less densely built-up part of the city, and there was still no sign of pursuit or attack. Will pulled us under a tattered awning, into a doorway, and let us rest for a minute.

    "What happened, Truman?" he asked. He immediately realized the futility of asking this way. "That guy must've been a guard on patrol. He found you, somehow you got his gun, and you shot him. Is that what happened?"

    I nodded, realizing I still carried the gun in my right hand. I was still revolted by it but now also fascinated. I held it by the stock, pointing down, and offered it to Will. He took it from me slowly, carefully.

    "It's all right, Truman. You were only defending yourself. You did the right thing. I found their little headquarters or base or whatever it was. They had another truck out in front of it. This one was a Humvee, more military-looking and well-kept. I punctured the tires on the one side, but then the guards there heard your shots, and they spotted me too. We both started shooting. I think I hit two of them. But they probably think they're being attacked by more than just the three of us, and they're not coming out. That's good. We should be able to get back to the fence and warn everyone that those guys who attacked Fran and the kids came from some base out here and we need to get ready for more attacks and fighting."

    I nodded. I was just glad to be away from that dead and frightening city.

    "But what am I going to do with you two?" Will wondered out loud. "I don't want to take you back to the storage place, even if I had time to make that detour. If there are other people out here, especially if we're at war with them, then I don't know what they'd do if they found a bunch of zombies just fenced in and defenseless. They'd probably burn the whole place down and kill you all. You'll have to come with me and I'll explain it as best I can. Zoey can tell them how you helped save her. They've got to understand."

    We kept moving along the street into an area where the buildings and vehicles were much more sparse. Soon we'd be back where at least Will was relatively safe, and I hoped Lucy and I would be too.

    Then I heard a loud roar ahead of us. It went on uninterrupted for several seconds. Unlike the previous day, I knew immediately that it was gunfire. And this time there were many more than just three shots.

    Will quickened his pace, and I wondered if these strange, powerful people ever stopped shooting at each other, ever stopped bleeding and cursing and dying.