A wave of coolness washed over me as I leapt inside and slammed the door. Although military Humvees do not normally have air conditioning, ours had been modified for the comfort of BWT’s clients. It was a welcome respite from the suffocating heat.

Several anxious minutes ticked by as we waited for word from Blake and Tyrel. I focused on the mirrors on both sides, looking back and forth between them every few seconds, searching for approaching headlights. The wind howled outside my windows, jostling and tugging at the Humvee, wearing my nerves thinner and thinner. Just as I was about to grab a respirator and go look for Blake and Tyrel, the radio on the dash crackled.

“The way is clear,” said Blake, voice rough and strained. “Drive to the bridge; it’ll be faster if you come pick us up. Over.”

“Roger,” Dad said. “On our way. Lauren, can you put Sophia on the radio? Over.”

There was a moment of silence, then Sophia’s nervous voice came on. “Yeah?”

“Sophia, honey, I need you to drive your dad’s truck. Do you think you can do that for me? Over.”

“Yeah, I think so.” A pause, then, “Um … over.”

“Have you ever driven it before? Over.”

“No. He won’t let me.”

Dad waited for an ‘over’ that wasn’t coming, then said, “It’s an automatic, so it’s just like driving a car. Be careful with the brakes, though. They’ll have a little more travel than what you’re used to. Over.”

“Okay.”

“Lauren, can you hear me? Over.”

A pause. “Yes, over.”

“Give Sophia one of the radios in the back seat and show her how it works. Also, make sure you wear goggles and cover your mouth before you head for the Jeep. Move as fast as you can and don’t stop for anything, you hear? Over.”

“I’ll do that. Out.”

A few seconds later, Lauren stepped down from Mike’s truck and sprinted for the Jeep. I could tell by her body language she was having the same shocked reaction I had to the stifling heat and nigh-unbreathable air. In seconds, she was in the safety of the cab.

“All stations sound off if you’re ready to move. Over.”

Mike answered first, then Sophia, Lauren, and finally me. “Ready to go,” I said. “Over.”

Static. “Let’s move out.”

We followed Mike at a stately twenty miles an hour until the slope of the overpass loomed into view. Up to that point, thick forest had lined both sides of the road, brittle and dry from a lack of rain that year. But as we emerged onto the bridge, the trees fell away to reveal a storm of swirling cinders and dust borne along by great heaving gusts. The sky above was nearly black, only a thin, bloody crease on the horizon as evidence the sun still existed. Our headlights burned a short distance ahead, barely penetrating the gloom. As we crossed the bridge, I noticed a sickly ochre lambency struggling upward only to be swallowed by the stygian maelstrom above. The blare of thousands of horns reached my ears, followed by a thunderous cacophony of screams. For one terrifying moment, I wondered if I had died and was driving a Humvee through the gates of Hell. Then I realized what I was hearing was not the fiery gates of damnation, but the sounds of chaos on the highway below.

Brake lights cut the darkness ahead of me, forcing me to stop. A few seconds later, I saw Tyrel running toward my vehicle. “Fuckin’ shit,” he said, coughing as he climbed in and shut the door. “It’s Dante’s goddamn Inferno out there.”

“I noticed.”

He craned his neck to the side, trying to get a better look out the front windshield. “The hell is Joe doing?”

I leaned over but couldn’t see anything. “Dunno.”

“He say anything over the radio? I don’t have a handheld.”

“No.”

Tyrel rooted around in the back and dug out a respirator and a couple of filters. BWT had always kept a ready supply of the masks on hand because of some OSHA regulation or another. Dad figured it would be wise to bring them along, considering we had a forest fire half the size of Vermont bearing down on us.

“Wait here,” Tyrel said, his voice muffled by the respirator over his face. “I’ll be right back.” He jumped out and sprinted for the front of the convoy.

Like hell I will.

I let him get about ten steps away, then donned a respirator of my own, grabbed my rifle, and followed. Before I had gone five feet, a thought occurred to me and I stepped back into the Humvee long enough to locate a little black case I had grabbed from a shelf in BWT’s armory. Inside was a night-vision rifle scope—just the thing to overcome the poor visibility caused by the firestorm. After affixing it to my rifle, I sprinted to the front of the column. Dad, Mike, Blake, and Tyrel were all standing on the narrow strip of concrete shoulder lining the side of the overpass. Mike stared down at the road below through a pair of NVGs, then handed them to my father. As I drew near, Tyrel saw me coming and gave me a hard stare. I stared back.

“I’m not a kid anymore, Ty.”

He glared a moment longer, then went back to looking at the highway. Just as I was about to raise my rifle and peer through the NV scope, Dad reached over and laid a hand on the rail.

“Son, before you do that …”

“What?”

“It’s bad down there, son. Real bad. And I’ve seen some things.”

My father’s expression gave me pause. I did not know much about his past, but I had done a lot of reading about the Green Berets and Delta Force growing up, and if what he had faced was anything like what I read about, then him saying he had ‘seen some things’ was one hell of an understatement. I looked down at the pavement for a moment, watching swirls of grayish powder wind around my feet like a sea of ghosts, and made a decision.

“Whatever’s happening down there,” I said, “it’s happening everywhere. Remember that rule you’re always telling me to remember, the one from The Art of War?”

Dad nodded, a sad smile in his eyes. “Know your enemy.”

I spoke softly. “Whatever is down there, Dad, that’s our enemy. And if I’m going to survive this, if any of us are going to survive, we need to know what we’re up against.”

Dad’s gaze stayed down, but he took his hand off my rifle. “Okay, son. Just remember what I told you—it’s bad.”

Slowly, reluctantly, I brought up the scope. At first, the magnification was set too high and I couldn’t see much of anything. So I adjusted it down to 2x and looked again.

And it was a scene straight out of Hell.

Before the news feeds gave way to snowy screens and emergency advisory notices, reports came in on every network that the undead were following the highways and attacking anyone they could get their hands on. Drivers were being advised to use side roads to flee major cities, and if trapped on the highway, to abandon their vehicles and seek safety on foot. All during that time, I thought I understood the horror those people trapped on the interstates must have felt. The horns, the flaring tempers, the shouted obscenities, the fights, the helicopters overhead blaring warnings on loudspeakers, the crack and pop of gunfire, the growing crescendo of terrified cries as a hungry tsunami of the dead arrived, the fires in the distance, the acrid burn of gasoline smoke, the gut churning imminence of lethal danger they didn’t understand or know how to combat. And worse, there was the knowledge that every person the undead killed did not stay dead, but rose to take their place among the exponentially multiplying army of ghouls.

I thought I knew what to expect.

I had seen it on television, after all. But there is a problem inherent with viewing violence through a pixelated screen—it is at arm’s length. You watch it all from a good safe distance, affected emotionally but not viscerally. Television had everyone—including me—so used to the unreality of sit-coms and superhero shows and singing competitions and the careful editing endemic of scripted pseudo-reality TV that the sense of disconnect applied even when we knew what we were seeing was real. And in my boyish overconfidence, I thought I had looked upon the horror in all its terrible majesty and prepared myself to face it in person. I thought I could handle it.