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Chapter 37


I’ve always been something of a loner. I guess that sounds weird, coming from someone who was married, who was surrounded by people at work every day, and who was liked by most of them. But it’s true. I had friends, of course. I got along well with my colleagues. And I loved my husband. But at heart, I was always the shy girl, the private one, who kept to herself and enjoyed just being alone.

At school, I taught my students about teamwork and cooperation and encouraged them to work in groups. I think I’m a team player when I need to be, but the truth is, I always hated working in groups, relying on other people. I was the kind of person who would rather just do things by myself, for myself. I believed in myself. I was raised to be independent, and I was. I am.

But there are just some times when it doesn’t make sense to be alone, and ever since the day the undead rose, I’ve been glad I wasn’t. I’m glad that I’m not. I don’t think anyone could endure this life on their own. We need each other to survive. If we don’t work together, we won’t make it. Teamwork and cooperation are essential.

The best decision I made that day was stopping to rescue a stranger. I could just as easily have kept on driving, at less risk to myself, but I know now that, aside from being selfish, even cruel, that would have been a huge mistake. If I hadn’t picked him up, I don’t think I’d be alive right now. I owe my life to him, but I don’t consider it a debt: I’m glad to owe him my life.

I’m glad he’s in my life.

I’m glad I’m not alone.



Sunday, April 15, 2012
8:00 a.m.


Never in her life had Gretchen picked up a hitchhiker, and if she’d seen the man currently riding in her passenger seat standing by the side of the road, rather than trapped in a car surrounded by zombies, she almost certainly would have sped on by, perhaps even mistaken him for one of them. It would have been an easy mistake to make, judging by the state he was in.

It was only once the sun had come up that she’d gotten a clear view of the man she’d rescued. His navy blue windbreaker and plaid pajama bottoms were spattered with blood, and there was some on his face too. His eyes seemed sunken in dark circles, and the rest of his face was pale white. In the last few hours, this man had been through hell. She didn’t know details and wasn’t sure she wanted to. The blood spoke for itself.

His name was Brian Littrell, and he’d come from Marietta. That was all she knew about him and all she needed to, for now. It was not enough to make her trust him, but she had no choice but to do so, and no reason not to. In the two hours they’d been driving down I-75, they’d seen no other living people, only scattered clusters of the undead on the outskirts of towns. Though he’d been mostly quiet since she’d picked him up, Gretchen was grateful to have someone with her, particularly a man.

She didn’t like to think of herself as the weak, damsel-in-distress type of woman, but she had to admit, Brian’s presence reassured her. He wasn’t a big man – in fact, she was willing to bet she had a couple of pounds on him, herself – but there was a certain strength that seemed to radiate from him. Maybe it was the blood and sweat that stained his clothes and skin, but those were evidence enough: this man could fight. He had fought, and she had no doubt that he would protect her, if it became necessary.

If. There were as many “ifs” as there were “whys” and “what nows.” She didn’t have a clue where they were going or what they were going to do. She just kept driving, hoping for a sign, a plan, anything to set their course. They couldn’t just drive forever, but she was afraid to stop, remembering the zombies’ tendency to swarm around parked cars with live people inside.

Up ahead was an overpass, on which two large, green road signs were mounted. The interstate split, one way veering east, the other continuing south. She cleared her throat and said, “Looks like the road forks. Which way should we go… Savannah or Valdosta?”

Brian had been so quiet until now, she didn’t expect him to have a preference. Anticipating a shrug or a grunt in response, she prepared to stay left and head east, toward Savannah. It was the bigger city of the two and located on the coast, which seemed like it would give them more options and more chances to find other survivors than continuing south, through rural Georgia.

But Brian cleared his throat and said, “If you don’t mind, I think we should keep heading south.” When she glanced over at him, he added, “I’ve got a cousin in the Air Force. He’s down in Tampa, at the MacDill base. He called me… Friday, I guess it was. Said the sickness had hit the base, but he was alright. Said they were wearing gas masks. He wasn’t sick. He sounded fine.”

“So you think there may be survivors there?”

Now he did shrug. “No way of knowing for sure, but it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”

“Sure. It’s as good a plan as any,” said Gretchen, and she stayed in the right-hand lane. “You said your cousin called you… I don’t suppose you have a phone with a signal left now, do you?”

Brian shook his head slowly. “No signal since Saturday morning,” he mumbled. “And before then, no one answered anyway…” Still, he pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his windbreaker and checked. “Nothing,” he sighed a second later and stowed it away.

Gretchen sighed too, the spark of hope quickly dying. “Figures. I’ve been trying to get a hold of my husband. He used to be in the military himself, but now he works for the CDC in Atlanta. He got called up to USAMRIID at Fort Detrick in Maryland when this virus first hit. The last I heard from him was early yesterday morning… He said he might come back, if they didn’t get any closer to finding a treatment. I was supposed to wait for him at home. But then I woke up this morning, and there were…”

She trailed off. It still felt insane to say the word “zombies” aloud, as if she were in the middle of some B movie shown late at night on the Sci-fi Channel. Brian knew what she meant, though, and nodded, making it okay to leave off there. She thought he might open up a little about his own experience, but he did not. It felt strange to be the one doing most of the talking; usually, Gretchen was known as the “quiet one.” But Brian, she sensed, was not just shy.

He was haunted.

Anxious to change the subject and spare him from whatever he must be going through inside his mind, she asked, “So… what do you do? For a living, I mean.”

“Oh…” Brian paused, as if taken aback by the question. “I teach music,” he answered finally.

“Really?” she replied with interest. “I’m a teacher, too. Third grade. What grades do you teach?”

“Uh, junior high. Seventh- and eighth-graders.”

“Oh wow… good for you. It takes a special kind to teach junior high; I could never do it. I’m happy with the fifth-grade-and-under crowd.” Gretchen smiled. “It must be great to teach music. Are you choral or band or both?”

“Choral.”

“So you sing?” She looked over at him with interest. She felt relieved to know that, beneath the blood and shadows, he had to be a regular person, a good person, to do something as innocent as teach music to middle-schoolers. “I like to sing, but not in front of anyone. I’m not very good, and I’m way too self-conscious about it,” she babbled on, with a nervous laugh, eager to fill the silence now that they’d started to talk. “I do love music though…”

Brian’s only reply was a dull, “Me too.”

Sensing he wasn’t up for a conversation, Gretchen stopped talking after that. She turned up the volume on her car stereo a little and handed him her mp3 player. “Feel free to browse,” she offered.

“Whatever you’ve got is fine,” mumbled Brian and returned the player to her cup holder.

Gretchen nodded. With music to fill the silence between them, she drove on.

It was outside of Macon, Georgia that they hit their first major roadblock – literally. Gretchen took her foot off the accelerator and slowed down as she pulled up to the scene of a traffic jam that clogged all four lanes of freeway, including the exit ramp, where she could see cars stalled bumper to bumper all the way down.

“What now? Should I turn around?” she asked uncertainly.

“We’d be backtracking. You’ve got a small car; I bet we can squeeze through… try the grass, between the highway and the off-ramp,” suggested Brian, pointing.

“Okay…” Gretchen eased forward, guiding her car carefully off the road and over the patch of grass that separated the lanes. It quickly became apparent that this was a mistake, though, when she found herself blocked by a truck that had tried to exit late and was stalled between the freeway and the ramp. There was no way she could get around it; her Cobalt was walled in on both sides by other cars. The only way out was in reverse.

“Then again, maybe not,” said Brian. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Gretchen shifted gears and raised her eyes automatically to the rearview mirror as she started to back up. Suddenly, she screamed and slammed on the brake again.

“What??” Brian twisted around in his seat to look. Gretchen heard him draw in a sharp breath as he caught sight of what had made her scream.

Zombies. A small flock of them had converged behind the car. She could see them lumbering around in her rearview mirror, hear the taps of their hands thumping against the trunk. Horrified, she met Brian’s eyes. “What are we gonna do?”

“Put the car back into park. Maybe… maybe if we just stay put, hold still and keep quiet, they’ll go away.”

Gretchen remembered how the zombies had surrounded her car in the driveway of her house, how she’d feared they would break the windows with their relentless beating. “I think you’re thinking of T-rexes,” she said shakily. “Somehow, I don’t think these guys work the same way. I had to run some down to get out of my driveway this morning.”

Brian shrugged. “So… let’s do that.”

“Okay…”

Shuddering, Gretchen released the brake and floored the gas. The car rocketed backwards, and she let out a little gasp as it struck several zombies with a sickening thump. She and Brian were thrown against their seatbelts as the car bumped over the fallen bodies. And then, suddenly, the Cobalt lurched to an abrupt stop.

“What happened?” Brian demanded, turning around to look again. “Keep going – you’re doing fine!”

Gretchen pressed the pedal as far as it would go and heard the motor rev loudly, but the car barely moved. “I’m trying!” she cried. “I think we’re stuck! We’re stuck on their bodies!” She pictured the car wedged on a heap of half-crushed bodies, its tires spinning futilely, and felt sick.

“Can you go forward?”

She switched gears and tried, but only succeeded in revving the engine more. “Oh God… oh God, what do we do?” she panicked. The remaining zombies had surrounded the car now. Their gray, festering faces and hands pressed against the windows as they tried to find a way in. Just as before, she feared it wouldn’t take them long; with enough strength, they could break the glass.

Brian looked around. His jaw was set, his eyes narrow and determined. He looked more alive than he had the entire time he’d been riding in the car with her, and she could tell his mind was hard at work. “We’ve gotta bail,” he decided after a few seconds.

“Bail? How are we supposed to get out of the car? They’re everywhere! The minute we open the door, they’ll be on us!” Gretchen protested.

“You’re right; we can’t get out through the doors. We’ll go out through the top.” He looked up. “The moon roof.”

Gretchen followed his gaze upward to her moon roof, which had been a selling point when she’d bought the Cobalt four years ago. She’d never so much as stuck her head out of it, let alone tried to climb through it. But she thought through the idea. “And what then? The car’s not that tall; they’ll still be able to reach our legs. And we can’t jump down with them surrounding the car… I dunno about you, but I’d never make it over their heads; they’d be all over me in an instant…”

“No, you’re right; we’d need to get away first, put some distance between them and us. We’ll stay on the roofs.” He gestured at the long string of cars ahead, and Gretchen suddenly understood where his plan was headed. She pictured them vaulting from car to car.

“I don’t know…”

“I don’t think we have a choice. The other option is to stay in the car and wait for them to break in. We’ve got to try and run for it. Once we get over a few cars, they’ll have a hard time trying to get through this mess. We’ll get to the first car that’s in a clear position to get out of the jam, and we’ll take that one,” said Brian. Suddenly, he seemed rational and assured. She had no choice but to trust him.

“Okay,” she agreed with a shudder.

While the zombies pounded on the exterior of the car, she and Brian unbuckled their seatbelts and stowed their few belongings in her backpack. “You got any weapons in the car?” Brian asked. “A tire iron, anything like that?”

Gretchen shook her head slowly. “Sorry, I don’t have a clue how to change a tire. All I’ve got is an umbrella and an ice scraper, in the backseat.”

Brian grimaced. “Not sure the umbrella’s gonna do much good, but we should take the scraper… just in case.”

The thought of killing a zombie with an ice scraper was laughable, but Gretchen reached back and found it on the floor of the backseat. It did make her feel a little better, to be holding something hard in her hand. And then she remembered the gun.

“Wait! I do have a weapon! Shawn’s gun… in my bag.” She carefully drew the gun from her pack and showed it to Brian. “It’s an antique… I’ve never used it, hardly even held it before… but it’s something, right?”

“Better than an ice scraper!” Brian agreed, one corner of his mouth twitching in a faint glimmer of a smile. “You wanna take it, or you want me to?”

“You can,” Gretchen said and gladly handed it over. “Have you ever fired a gun before?”

A humorless chuckle escaped his lips. “No. But I guess there’s a first time for everything.” He rose from his seat and slipped the gun into the front pocket of his jacket, while she struggled to put on her backpack in the confines of the car. “Open your moon roof,” he directed her. “I’ll go through first, and then I’ll pull you up, okay? You ready?”

She took a deep breath and released it shakily. “I guess it’s now or never.” She reached up to the button that controlled the moon roof and pushed it, holding it in while the glass began to move, slowly sliding open.

Brian climbed up onto the passenger seat and put his head through. He was able to boost himself up and onto the roof of the car using mostly his arms, a feat Gretchen didn’t think she would have been able to accomplish on her own. When he was through, he crouched on the edge and reached his hand down. “Okay, come on.”

Gretchen shook as she followed his lead, standing up on her seat and taking his hand. He helped pull her up as she climbed through the opening. She was okay until she found herself crouched on a narrow strip of metal on the roof of the car, looking down at a cluster of zombies who were looking stupidly back up at her, arms outstretched, moaning hungrily. Then panic and vertigo set in, and she began to wobble.

“Come on, Gretchen,” said Brian, grabbing her upper arm and squeezing tightly. “Stand up… careful, but quick.” He rose from his crouch, pulling her with him. Holding onto him for stability, she felt more confident, until she felt a cold, stiff hand latch onto her ankle.

She screamed, as the hand pulled, dragging her foot clear out from under her. She went down hard, falling into Brian and nearly knocking him off the top of the car. Luckily, he was agile and sunk back to a crouch, helping to cushion her fall. Her right side hit the rim of the moon roof, and she cried out as shockwaves of pain rippled through her ribcage. But her attention was quickly drawn away from the pain by the sensation of being pulled by the ankle. She could feel her body sliding off the roof and screamed again in desperation. “It’s got me! Brian!! Don’t let it pull me off!”

“I’ve gotcha!” he promised, holding onto her arms. “Kick! Kick it away, and I’ll pull you back up!”

She kicked blindly and managed to connect with some part of the zombie’s body. It was enough to break its hold on her, and in the split second before another zombie latched on, Brian pulled, and she scrambled back onto the roof.

“Let’s go!” shouted Brian, and, grabbing her hand, he jumped down onto the hood of her car. She followed him as he leaped from there onto the trunk of the nearest car in the congested highway lane, then climbed up and over the roof.

They continued on this way, scrambling over one vehicle and onto the next. It wasn’t as fast as running, but it put them out of the reach of the undead. Zombies, Gretchen realized, chancing a look over her shoulder, appeared to lack the coordination needed to climb onto a car, and they were quickly barricaded behind the same traffic jam that had stranded Gretchen and Brian in their midst in the first place.

The congested lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic lasted longer than Gretchen had anticipated, but from her new vantage point, she didn’t regret leaving the Cobalt behind. It never would have made it through this mess. Their only alternative would have been to backtrack to the nearest exit and find an alternate route back onto the interstate.

Now they looked ahead for a new vehicle that was in a position to be driven away. Toward the front of the line, there was a moving truck jack-knifed across two lanes, blocking everything behind it. Ahead of it was a pick-up that appeared to have careened off the side of the road, uprooting a speed limit sign in its path. Its front was smashed into the guardrail on the narrow shoulder of the road. The only option appeared to be a white SUV that was stalled in the left-hand lane, with nothing blocking its path. Gretchen guessed the driver had stopped it there to die, probably causing the pick-up truck to swerve out of its way, the moving truck to jack-knife, and the other cars to pile up behind them.

“The SUV,” she told Brian, pointing it out.

He agreed, and they made their way to it. The landscape seemed clear of zombies now, and they were almost onto an overpass, making the likelihood of any zombies wandering onto the road from the sides very slim. It seemed they were almost out of danger, as long as they could take the SUV and drive away before the zombies found a way through the traffic jam.

But when they approached the white SUV, Gretchen gasped and jumped back. “There’s one of them inside!”

A lone zombie woman struggled behind the wheel, writhing convulsively in the driver’s seat, with apparently no mental capacity to work out how to escape her own vehicle.

“It’s just one,” said Brian slowly, almost calmly. “We can let it out and then kill it.” He drew Shawn’s gun from his coat pocket. “Go around to the front… you open the door and stay behind it, out of the way. When it comes out, I’ll shoot it in the head, and we’ll jump in. Sound easy enough?”

Gretchen swallowed hard. “I guess?” She didn’t want to go anywhere near the SUV, but it seemed their best option, and as long she stayed out of reach, as long as Brian could aim, the plan would work.

The zombie’s thrashing movements intensified as she crept up to the door. Her hand shook as she reached for the handle.

“That’s it,” Brian coached her. “I’m right behind you… I’m ready for her when you are…” He was already pointing the gun, ready for his shot.

“Okay… here goes.” Shuddering, Gretchen pulled the handle and leaped back, yanking the car door with her. She stayed behind it, using it like a shield, as the zombie spilled out.

Brian waited until the zombie straightened up. Then he aimed at her head and pulled the trigger.

The gun emitted a hollow click. It did not fire.

Brian jumped back in surprise, turning the gun over in his hand. “Is this thing loaded?!” he roared, raising panicked eyes to meet Gretchen’s.

Too late, she realized her mistake. “Oh my God… I don’t know! I don’t know; it was dark, and I just grabbed it; I wasn’t thinking!” she cried, horrified at this deadly oversight.

“You don’t have any ammo??”

“No… I don’t think so, no!”

With a strangled cry, Brian threw the gun at the zombie. It ricocheted off her head, but of course did no damage. The zombie barely reacted, other than its head tilting backwards with the force. It staggered toward Brian, arms reaching, mouth open wide.

“Quick – I need a weapon!” he shouted as he scrambled backwards.

Gretchen looked around and suddenly spotted the speed-limit sign that had been knocked over by the pick-up truck. It was lying on its side, its post uprooted from the ground. “The sign!” she cried and ran towards it, picking it up. It was heavier than she’d imagined, but she managed to drag it over to Brian, who was dodging the zombie’s clumsy swipes.

Brian lifted the signpost with surprising strength, given his wiry frame. With a shout that sounded almost like a battle cry, he charged the zombie and, using the signpost like a jousting lance, he rammed it through her torso, impaling the zombie in a spray of guts that showered both him and Gretchen. When the creature fell, he jammed the post down further, effectively pinning it to the ground.

Gretchen watched in horror as the zombie continued to writhe and moan around the post through its middle. There was no blood loss and no sign that the zombie would stop struggling and die.

“You have to kill the brain,” said Brian in a low, detached voice, “to kill one of them.” With this almost off-handed remark, he walked quite casually to the open driver’s side door and climbed in. “Keys are here,” he told Gretchen. “Get in.”

Trembling all over, Gretchen went around to the passenger side and climbed up into the SUV. She was relieved Brian was driving now; she was shaking so badly, she didn’t think she’d have been able to. She slumped down in her seat, exhausted, panting, her head spinning. As Brian turned the key in the ignition, she looked down at herself and felt her stomach roll.

“It’s all over me!” she cried out in horror, seeing the bits of zombie insides that had spattered not only her pajamas, but her bare arms and legs as well. “Oh God…” Her gag reflex kicked in, and she began to retch, not actually bringing anything up, but unable to stop gagging.

“I know… I know,” Brian murmured. “I just wanna get away from here… then we can stop and find somewhere to clean up, alright?”

“Oh please… thank you,” Gretchen gasped. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so nauseated – morning sickness paled in comparison.

“Hang on,” Brian reassured her. He sped away from the traffic jam, leaving it a mere glimmer in the rearview mirror.

“Look… there’s hotels over there,” said Gretchen a few minutes later, pointing out the window as they drove past the outskirts of Macon. “Maybe we-”

“Sorry; I don’t think we should stop at a hotel,” Brian replied. “If there were people staying there when they died, that means there’ll be zombies there now. No, I think we’re better off getting away from the populated areas and finding a house, somewhere in the country. There’ll be less zombies where there were less people around to die.”

As much as she hated sitting in the car covered in zombie guts, Gretchen couldn’t argue with his logic. She closed her eyes while he drove and tried to imagine she were somewhere else. Only when she felt the car turn did she open her eyes. Brian had taken an exit and was navigating down the off-ramp.

“This looks better,” he commented, once they found themselves on a two-lane road. “This route looks like it heads into the country, maybe a small, rural town. We’ll find somewhere to stop this way.”

“Whatever you think,” Gretchen murmured, too woozy to disagree. In addition to the shock and queasiness she felt, her side hurt where she’d fallen on the roof of the car, and she wondered vaguely if she had cracked a rib.

At last, the car slowed, and she gazed out the windshield at a small farmhouse with wooden gray shingles.

“There’s no garage and no cars parked out front,” Brian observed. “That means there was probably no one home… which hopefully means none of them around.”

“Good,” sighed Gretchen, closing her eyes again in relief. “I can’t wait to jump in a shower and wash all this off me…”

“I know the feeling.”

As they climbed out of the SUV, Gretchen eyed him, noting the old bloodstains on his clothes and skin again. “Point taken. Maybe you should go first,” she said, as they trudged up to the front door.

“Maybe there’ll be two showers,” he replied. “If not… ladies first.”

She managed to smile. “A true Southern gentleman. Thank you.”

The front door was locked, but Brian used a rock to smash the window next to it and let them in. They explored the house together, armed with fireplace tools they’d found in the front room, but Brian’s logic had proven correct, and the house was blessedly empty. As it turned out, there were two bathrooms, but only the upstairs one had a shower; the downstairs, only an old, clawfoot tub.

“Dunno about you, but I’m not too keen on floating in the filth I’m trying to wash off me,” said Brian upstairs. “You take a shower first, and I’ll wait.”

“Okay… I’ll try to be quick. Thank you,” she repeated with gratitude.

It was hard to be quick, though, once she was under the hot water. She washed at once, scrubbing away every trace of zombie remains from her skin, but even once it looked clean, she felt the compulsion to keep scrubbing, keep scouring. It was only the darkness – they’d found a few candles to light the bathroom, but without windows, it was still quite dim – and the knowledge that Brian was waiting to get clean as well that made her finally rinse and turn off the tap.

She stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a clean towel she’d found in the linen closet. Wet hair dripping on her shoulders, she exited the bathroom and motioned Brian in. “All yours.”

“Thanks,” he replied with a grim smile, as they traded places.

When the bathroom door shut, she finished toweling off and changed quickly into the spare clothes she’d thrown into her backpack. It was a huge relief to be clean, she thought, as she perched on the bed in the master bedroom and finger-combed her hair. She felt much better already, the nausea and faintness a distant memory, one she was determined to keep at bay by not thinking about what she and Brian had just been through. But her ribs continued to bother her, a nagging reminder of the ordeal. Her side panged as she got up from the bed and walked over to the dresser mirror. She pulled up her shirt to inspect it and saw the beginnings of bruises already starting to form. There were no odd lumps, though, nothing that seemed out of place, and so she contented herself with the thought that she was only banged up, not broken. She would live.

She was back on the bed, massaging her tender ribs, when the bathroom door clicked open again, and Brian came out. Seeing him cleaned-up for the first time, she couldn’t help but do a double take. She hadn’t realized before how attractive he was, with high cheekbones, a chiseled jaw covered in two-day stubble, and shockingly blue eyes. His wavy hair was plastered to his scalp, and he was still quite wet, a towel around his waist, his upper half bare. She saw that he was quite skinny, but toned, with muscular arms and a well-defined torso. Running down the middle of his chest, she noticed, was a long scar, faintly red and raised.

Catching her looking, he said, “Open heart surgery, last May.”

“Oh.” She felt herself blush, embarrassed to have been caught staring. “I’m sorry…”

He waved her off. “Don’t be. It was to repair a defect I was born with, a hole in my heart. A couple of holes, as it turned out,” he explained. “But I’m fine now… I’m not gonna keel over and die on you, I promise.” He offered a thin smile. “It was the scariest thing I’d ever been through… until today.”

He stopped there, and again, she wondered about what he’d been through before she’d encountered him that morning. But he didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press. Instead, she lay down on the bed. Her ribs twinged with the movement, but once she was settled, it felt good to be lying flat.

“I’m exhausted,” she murmured. “I wish we could just stay here a few hours and take a nap.”

Brian shrugged. “We don’t have to leave right away. Dunno about you, but I’ve been one the move since about midnight. It would be good to rest… maybe scrounge up some breakfast?”

Gretchen made a face. “I don’t think I could eat, after what we just saw. Not sure I can really sleep either, but right now, I’d rather lie here than get back in the car,” she admitted.

“I’m not hungry either,” said Brian. “But you go ahead and rest. We deserve a break.”

Gretchen closed her eyes, but of course, sleep did not come right away. Instead, she saw the freeway, lined with cars and zombies. She opened her eyes again. “I’m sorry about the gun,” she blurted suddenly. “I’m sure you think I’m the stupidest person in the world, not thinking to bring ammo or see if there was any inside. I should have known Shawn wouldn’t keep it loaded, but I don’t know the first thing about guns, and I wasn’t thinking…”

Brian actually chuckled. “It’s alright; it doesn’t matter now. And I don’t think you’re stupid. You saved my life, remember?”

Gretchen smiled in relief. “Well, you saved mine too,” she pointed out. “I think we’re even.”

***