I locked all the doors and settled into the driver’s seat, wanting and not wanting to sleep, exhausted but unable to close my eyes. Here we were, on the edge of an inferno that might have swallowed up the last hope of the human race, and my body wanted me to sleep. Sleep then, I finally agreed, and maybe in the morning things will be alright.

I woke to the sound of the girls screaming.

We were walking on an empty two-lane road, hills to either side covered by trees just catching with blossoms and tiny green leaves, tentative new grass sprouting by the waysides, those tiny violet flowers with three petals popping up here and there.

“Everything just goes on like nothing’s changed. It’s like nothing even cares,” said Genevieve, “nothing really cares about us after all.”

I held her hand, I could feel her pulse quicken as every heartbeat pounded through her palm and in to mine.

You watch for vectors, they’re everywhere. The rats were a vector. The corpses on Main Street were a vector. The cans of rancid black meat I had stolen from a grocery store were a vector.

Stolen. As if there was anyone I stole them from. Anyone but the rats.

Too many rats. I had to get out of the library, find somewhere else to hide, somewhere with less people, less vectors, so I headed out of town. Down the road with the least crashed cars, the road with the least decaying bodies, the least animals scavenging on those bodies.

“Where did you get napalm?”

“It’s mostly gasoline and styrofoam. Now shut up, I’m driving.” Edwin bent over the wheel. We all held on to our seats.

The van bounced just before we hit the wall of flame, jumping up on the lump of pounded earth Connie and I had put under the end of the bridge. I held my breath, wonder if it was really just a sheet of flame from Edwin’s napalm, or if we would come through the fires to find all of Galatia consumed in a blaze.