Author's Note: Well, that wraps up another one! Thanks to everyone who read this far, and everyone who commented, and everyone who supported me in the process of writing Plague Zone. Special thanks as usual to Alex, who made it all happen, and who inspired me to write another zombie story.

I will be back with another serial in 2008. In the meantime, have a great Halloween!

The bastard was across the street, no more than twenty yards away. He was wearing that stupid plaid shirt. All of his hair had fallen out and black drool had coated his chest and groin. He looked painfully thin, as if he hadn’t eaten enough, and his eyes were dead empty pools.

“There,” Tim said. This at least made sense. Droolers didn’t wander. They were opportunists—Helena had told him as much. They stayed close to the scene of the crime. It made sense on another level, too. Wherever Tim had journeyed, wherever his feet had taken him, this little intersection was all that remained of his world. Everybody that counted was right here. Karen, Jake, Nero.

“What, him? That’s the guy?” Sasha asked. She didn’t fit into the nice little tableau, not really. It had been her role to get him this far, but now she was extraneous. “You want me to grab him?” she asked.

“No. He’s mine. I came this far—”

He stopped in mid-sentence and looked straight up.

He was not surprised to hear the rotors of a helicopter again.

“Not now,” he said.

Not now! This was it, his primal scene. He was supposed to be left alone in it long enough to do what was necessary. But of course he had screwed up too badly for that. He had made a mess of things. Nero was so close, though, he could still finish the jerk off and—

And then what? Jake needed medical help. He knew it. Jake would die if he didn’t get him to a hospital. How long could a child live on just cookies?

A light came on in the sky. It was bright enough to blind Tim for a second. It descended in a dusty cone from right overhead and it lit up the intersection perfectly, freezing everything in place with its illumination. It sent long sinister shadows streaming away from him. He felt like an actor on a stage in a nasty, brutal play with a bad ending.

Across the street Nero slipped into the shadows, lumbering away. Had he been scared off? Doubtful. Yet maybe he knew, on some level, how close he had come.

Sasha moved first, stepping backward, away from the center of the light, toward the motorcycle. A bullet whined through the air and sent dust puffing up from the ground near her feet. She jumped back, her hands going wide.

“Stay right where you are,” an amplified voice insisted. “We have ground units closing on your location. Do not attempt to flee.”

The light stayed centered right on Tim. If he tried to move while inside that cone of light he would be shot down and his journey would be over and complete.

If he didn’t move, he would be picked up by the boy soldiers and put in jail, probably for a very long time. He looked not at the helicopter above but at Sasha.

She frowned a question at him. While Tim stood perfectly still, his arms raised, she slowly reached down to her belt. Tim tensed his legs while she carefully drew one of her revolvers, then the other. They were hidden inside the voluminous folds of her fur coat, for the moment.

She was willing to distract the helicopter pilot for him. She understood her part, finally, in this grim scenario. Almost certainly she would be killed, torn apart by machine guns, if she lifted her weapons. Yet it would give Tim one tiny fraction of a second to run. To chase after Nero, to take him down. To end what he had started.

“I’ll do it,” she said, looking him right in the eyes.

She would do it for him. Who knew why? It didn’t matter. She would do it.

And with that tragic offering, that act of offered sacrifice, she broke the spell.

He owed her. He owed her his life, and he could not take hers.

Nothing had ever been as simple as he thought. Everything had always mattered, even the things he’d shouldered free from, the irrelevancies and the obstacles. He had hurt so many people on his road, or let them be hurt.

“No,” he said. “No.”

He had a duty to her. And much more important, he had a duty to Jake. If Jake was still alive—then Nero didn’t matter. What he’d done to Karen was unforgivable, yes. But if Jake was alive then Tim’s purpose wasn’t revenge any more. It was to protect his son. To save his son.

Phil Nero was gone, swallowed up by the night. Tim doubted he would ever see the man again.

He threw his weapon in the gutter, and gestured for Sasha to do the same. They would go to the stockade. They probably deserved to go to the stockade, after what they’d done.

Maybe they would let Jake visit him, though. And eventually he would be released. Then they could go home.

“Hey,” he shouted, and started waving his arms in the air. “Hey! Come get us! Come rescue us! We’re clean! We’re clean!”

Slowly, picking its way carefully down through the air, the helicopter came in for a landing.