We walk together in a cone shape, all of us  silent. Occasionally, Justin will clear his throat as he tosses another cigarette to the ground. Within seconds, though, he has another one lit, the cherry red spot like a beacon in the darkness. I smell the matches as he stomps them out on the asphalt.

The smell reminds me of Dad, who used to sit out on the back porch and smoke a pack at a time. The thought is still heavy on my mind that he might have been feeding Mom the virus, but how he got ahold of it is beyond me. He's always been a secretive man, but this secretive? I can't be sure.

Stephen taps me on the shoulder about thirty minutes later, pulling me out of my own inner ramblings. He points to the right, down a hill where a subdivision is spread out before us. Glancing up, I read the street sign. Standefer Circle.

"This is the place?" I whisper, walking ahead.

"Yeah," Stephen answers, grabbing the gun on my back. The strap acts like a seatbelt, jerking me back towards him. "Stay with the group."

I scrunch my nose up at him, keeping our pace. As we go down the hill, the houses come into view, casting even more shadows across us. I can hear things inside the houses, banging on the walls and rattling around. None of the houses have windows left, and some of them have holes in the roof. My hands begin to shake; I have never actually come in contact with a late stage infected, spare my own mom.

Stephen pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, showing it to me.

"House numbers," he says, squinting around, "These are all the ones we have already raided for supplies."

There are about twenty numbers on the list, and half of them are already crossed off. He hands me the list, taking off again. 

The house numbers are hard to see from the street. Most places have them nailed to the wall beside the front door, but without street lights or flashlights, it is near impossible to see them from the street. I have to trust that Stephen knows where he is going.

After six or seven houses, we stop. Stephen is grinning.

"We ain't been in this one," he says, taking the list back from me. With a pen he digs from his pocket, he crosses the house number off, 214. "You're up, kid."

Clare pats me on the back, giving me a thumbs up. I swing the gun around, holding it tight against my chest.

Every step towards the house echoes on the sidewalk. I play with the safety on the gun, toggling it on and off. The house itself is quiet, and the door is hanging open, broken half way off it's hinges.  I step up onto the porch carefully, pushing down with each foot first to make sure it won't fall through on me.

Inside the first room, the darkness only continues. Moonlight falls in through the windows of the porch, but it lights very little space. The curtains blow in from the gentle wind. I'm shivering, despite the fact I'm wearing a jacket. The room is dead quiet, which gives me goosebumps.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," I whisper as low as I can, making myself chuckle. Once I'm sure there's nothing in the living room, I continue on, checking the kitchen, two bedrooms, and the bathroom. I even open the shower curtain. Roaches scatter as it moves.

Poking my  head back out the front door, I wave to the others, and Stephen leads the way in.

"All clear?" he asks me, hands up on the door frame. I just nod, moving to stand in the kitchen, out of the way.

Stephen stands guard with me as Justin and Clare rake boxes of food into their bags. Sometimes, Justin will motion to Clare, waving his hands for a second before tossing whatever he had in his hand over his shoulder. I get lost for a minute, watching them communicate. His words are a mixture of hands and fingers, sometimes his entire body. She replies in the same way, and I have never seen anything like it.

"Somethin' else, ain't it?" Stephen asks, catching me staring.

"What is it?"

"Sign language. Clare's deaf."

Well, that explains why it seems like she can never hear me.

Something hits the floor, but I assume it's Justin throwing more expired food. Isaac is motionless by the back door, his ear plugs dangling around his neck from a string. He's staring at another door, which shakes occasionally when Justin throws something.

"Be still for a minute, Justin," Isaac says, waving his hand at the man. Justin does as he's told, holding a can of food.

"Did you check everywhere, kid?" Stephen asks me, following Isaac's gaze to the door.

The sounds coming from it continue. It can't be Justin. I'm not sure that I did check behind that door. I can't remember.

"Yeah, I think so," I whisper, taking a step away from the door, hands shaking around the gun.

"You gotta be sure."

"Well, I'm not one hundred percent."

Stephen groans, waving at Justin and Clare. They must know what he means,  because they go back to digging.

"You're goin' downstairs to check it out," Stephen says, "Because if there's somethin' down there and you let us in without being sure, that's on you. Take care of it."

He opens the door in one swift motion, shoving me towards the steps beyond it. There is a downstairs. Now, I'm positive I didn't check this place thoroughly.

On my right is a wall, and my left is an empty room. Eyes still adjusting, I finish walking down the steps. I can see my breath in the cold air and feel the chill of the wood against my hand as I hold the wall. The beating has stopped; now, it is a rustling like a rat might make.

I couldn't be lucky enough for it to be a rat.

At the bottom of the stairs, there's a  door to the right, cracked open just a little. Once the door above me is shut, I can hear it again. Past the crack, something is breathing heavily, wheezing almost, and groaning.

Infected. It's not clear.

"Guys, get out of here!" I yell, heading back towards the stairs.

My foot hasn't even made it to the second step when the door behind me is thrown open, the body of a man filling the frame. He's gaunt in the face, bones protruding from his withered body. What I can see over my shoulder isn't much, but it is more than enough to make me want to run.

The man is fast, though, faster than my brain can think. Before I decide which leg to move first, he has a hand around my left ankle, pulling hard. My forehead hits the wooden step, and for a second, I feel like I might black out again. He's pulling me back to the room, slowly now that he has his victim in tow.

"Isaac, help," I try to call out, finding my words caught in my throat, head spinning from the impact, "Stephen."

Ollie's words flash through my mind like a marquee.

Mandy's immunity is a strength. She doesn't have to fear the infected.

But I feel like I might be sick; my heart is pounding in my ears. My hands are sweaty, and I can't hold the gun properly. I have nothing to fear. I have nothing to fear. I have nothing to fear.

Repeating it does not give me any extra strength, though. I can see the door above me open as I'm pulled the rest of the way into the room, the stench of it filling my nostrils. The smell alone is enough to inspire me to start fighting back, kicking out and grappling for something to hold on to. The thing lets me go, and I roll over on my back, swinging the gun around and arming myself.

He's right in front of me. His eyes are almost completely red from the veins covering them. His skin is both gray and yellow at the same time, monstrous veins protruding from its surface. There's patches of hair on his head, but it is matted and greasy. I can see his chest rising and falling as he stares at me, drool rolling out of his mouth.

I could shoot him right now, before he had a chance to go upstairs. It would be easy; he is only five feet away from me.

I can't get the thought out of my head, though, that he might have been someone's father, son, or husband. He's just another victim of the virus, which may have came from my father.

He blurs in my vision, and I am surprised by the fact that I'm crying.

"Jay, shoot him!"

I hear  Isaac in the doorway, bracing himself on the frame.

"Come on, Jay. Please," Isaac says, all but screaming at me. There is a tone of desperation in his voice that I have never heard before in anyone. The gun in my hand is still raised, but it weighs too much. I shake my head, beginning to cry harder.

The man in front of me leans down, digging his nails across my leg. The pain that spreads up my calf shocks me awake, sending me crab walking backwards.. Now, he's on his hands and knees crawling after me.

I am watching him, pressed up against the wall beside the door when the gunshot clears the air.

It is a clean shot, right through his head. The man slumps to the ground, his grip releasing my leg. I can smell the gun over head, hear Isaac panting.

Breathless, I look up at him. He is frozen on the spot, tiny gun still in his hand, his chest rising and falling at a pace that is shocking. He lets the gun drop, the sound echoing through the now empty room, and he falls down on his knees beside me. At his side, his hands tremble, his entire body following suit. In a matter of seconds, he is shaking so hard I think he might hurt himself.

"Isaac," I whisper, throwing my arms around him, squeezing hard. It doesn't stop the shaking, and now, we are both trembling, "It's okay. You did it. It's okay."

I'm about to lift him up when I see something move behind him.

I didn't check the rest of the room. I didn't do my job again.

Before either one of us can move, there's another infected in full view. This time it is a female, and she is  younger than the man before.

"Where is everyone else?" I whisper to Isaac, still hugging him so he won't see it.

"Outside. I sent them outside," is his shaky response. I grind my teeth.

The female is breathing down his neck, and the fact that Isaac is holding his breath tell me he knows she is there. My gun is on the floor behind me; his is somewhere out of reach. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't ask Isaac to do that again for me.

She grabs Isaac by the collar, jerking him away from me. The choking sound he makes sends chills up my spine.

Her immunity is her strength.

Grabbing my gun, I lunge at the woman, tackling her around the middle. Her grip on Isaac is lost, but she's at my throat, nails digging into the bare skin on my arms. Any normal person would already be infected, growing weaker by the second as the virus finds their bloodstream. I am dizzy but otherwise unbothered. Repositioning myself so that my knees are on her arms, I muster every bit of strength that I can to push her back down onto the concrete floor.

I can hear Isaac's panicked yelling behind me, but I don't hear what he's saying. All I hear is the little girl's crying and Duncan's fearful whimpering. I can hear the sounds of the compound, the clicking of guns, a menagerie of everything I'm afraid of. 

Yet, I can also hear the bleating of sheep. I can hear Howard's nasal laugh, the sound of him opening a soda. I hear Isaac's whooping as we ride away from Compound 4; my father telling me he loves me. I can see the constellations, smoke from my father's cigarette like spiderwebs between them.

My immunity is my strength.

"Not today," I say, pressing the gun against her temple and squeezing my eyes shut as I pull the trigger.

When I feel her go limp under me, I scramble off, not opening my eyes yet. I can't open them until I turn around, and when I do, Isaac is right there in front of me, tears mixing with dirt on his cheeks. He isn't shaking anymore, but he has his earplugs back in, the bright orange a beacon in the darkness.

When he reaches out for me, I fall into him, burying my face into his shoulder.

"It's okay," he mutters, one hand on the back of my head, "We did it." He takes a deep breath, repeating in a whisper, "We did it."

He picks me up, covering my face as he carries me up the stairs and out of the house.