A fence walled off the southern expanse of Olympia, a ten foot chain-link fence with posts sunk in rugged pools of concrete. Strong enough to stop a charging car. Tim had seen fences like that before in his travels. He knew how to handle them. There was no barbed wire on top of this one. The infected didn’t have the coordination to climb, much less pull themselves over the top. Tim had done it plenty of times as a kid.

The direct approach to the city was out of the question. He’d expected to find soldiers in Olympia. Fort Lewis lay just outside of town, a sprawling military preserve that buffered Olympia from the Tacoma PZ. There’d been more soldiers on that base than there were citizens of Olympia, before the outbreak. Earlier he’d lay prone on the surface of Interstate Five where it wound around the town and studied the streets with a pair of cheap binoculars he kept in his pack. He’d seen military vehicles in the major intersections, seen troops marching downtown. The main gate in the fence stood at the bottom of an off ramp and it was flanked by search towers and machine gun nests. Spotlights roamed back and forth across the main roads leading in. The quiet little hippie town had turned into an annex of the Fort, it looked like. He had considered walking up to that gate and asking politely to be let in. He’d considered it for all of about five seconds.

The Army didn’t like people moving around, walking from town to town. It was one way the Flu spread. If they didn’t shoot him on sight—just in case—they would have turned him back. He couldn’t let that happen, not after walking all the way from San Francisco. Even if he’d been willing to give up his quest, where would he go? The thought of walking inland, of walking all the way around Olympia and Tacoma, brought up a sharp psychosomatic ache in his feet and his shinbones.

The option he came up with was to sneak in. Hence, the fence.

Weeks of walking had left his shoes soft and malleable. They dug easily into the gaps in the chain-link. His fingers burned as he pulled himself upward. His arms creaked and groaned and demanded he rest. Halfway up, though, five feet up in the air, he felt so badly exposed even in the darkness that he scrambled the rest of the way up and over without a pause. On the far side he clambered down as far as he dared and then dropped to the soft grass of somebody’s backyard.

No sirens sounded. No dogs barked at his presence.

Good enough.

Tim gathered himself up, checked his pack. He hurried under the shelter of a pine tree and peered out through the thick branches. Ahead of him lay a quiet street, empty of traffic. He didn’t know how many civilians were left in the town—probably not many. This whole region of Washington had been evacuated early on, back when there’d been plenty of helicopters and trucks to carry refugees and plenty of places to take them, too. Most likely Olympia was empty except for soldiers, which meant he had his work cut out for him. He’d had time to come up with a kind of half-assed plan—he would get down to the waterfront and steal a boat, presumably one with a good outboard motor and plenty of fuel. Then he would high-tail it up the Sound to Seattle. The problem, of course, was that he had to do all that without being seen, crossing an entire town he only vaguely remembered visiting, while the entire Army was watching.

The darkness would help, some.

Keeping to the shadows behind a row of houses he moved as quietly as he could in a generally northward direction. From time to time he would peep out from the corner of a house and check to make sure the street was still empty. It always was.

Only about one in five of the houses had any lights on. He kept listening for familiar sounds—the whining hum of a television, the clink of plates being knocked together in a kitchen sink. The constant rising and falling wave sound of cars driving back and forth. Olympia was nearly silent, though. It looked okay, like everyone had just stepped away for a minute and would be right back. The houses were still freshly painted and though the lawns needed a good mowing they hadn’t become overgrown with weeds and saplings yet. It was eerie, though, how quiet it had become.

Ahead of him the row of houses ended and a cross-street ran perpendicular to his path. Tim crouched down behind a hydrangea bush and studied the road. It looked clear. It looked abandoned. Maybe the soldiers didn’t use this part of town. Maybe they’d cleared it out of the infected and of evacuees and left it for dead. Maybe they weren’t even watching it anymore.

There was only one way to find out.

Holding his breath, clutching his pack so it wouldn’t rattle, he ducked down and ran right into the street. On the far side he could see more houses and the broad concrete wall of what looked like a school. He would only be exposed for a few seconds, no more than half a minute until he could make the shelter of trees on the far side. He was going to make it. He was almost there—

“Shit! Drooler!” someone shouted, and light burst all around him.