"Mom, can I have something to drink? I'm thirsty."

You think you're thirsty now? Wait until the water's shut off and we're living on what falls from the sky,she wanted to shout at him, but John's face appeared, telling her to stay calm.

They're just kids,he would have said. You're the adult. Act like it.

As long as the water's working let them drink all they need.

"Go ahead. In fact, let's all go get one."

~

I'm a monster.

John couldn't deny it any longer. He stood in the Henderson's living room, which resembled a charnel house more than the relaxed, classically-decorated space it had been before he'd arrived. The last thing he remembered was opening the gate, the one that stuck all the time.

When his awareness returned he'd been standing over Tom Henderson's corpse, his mouth full of blood and tissue and loops of intestines around his hands, their other end still attached to Tom's body.

Puddles of blood soaked into the Persian rug; more splattered across the walls and furniture.

And the taste----oh Lord, the exquisite, wonderful flavor!

A gaping hole in Tom's abdomen revealed where the delicious bounty had originated. Chunks of brownish-red liver lay strewn around the floor.

From where he stood John could see into the kitchen. Enid Henderson lay on the linoleum, her gray-haired skull shattered and empty. A brick lay beside her, which he must have used to crack open her head like a walnut.

All to satisfy his unholy lust, his craving for human flesh.

"Jesus Christ." It came out as garbled moan.

The past three days had been spent alternating between cloudy awareness and bestial savagery. Walking the Turnpike. Scavenging among the corpses in their cars.

But now his head was clear.

He remembered why he was here.

Bobby. Stacie.

Sheila.

He had to get them somewhere safe, away from the monsters.

Monsters like him.

John closed his eyes, tried to block out the explosion of gore surrounding him. There had to be a way to be around his family without losing control.

A shadow moved past one of the front windows.

He walked to the front door, peered outside. Three men staggered down the center of the street, heading towards the far end of the cul-de-sac.

Towards his house.

Quietly, slowly, he eased the door open. From the small front porch he could see to the end of the road. There was movement in one of the windows of his house, a twitch as a curtain fell back in place.

Sheila and the kids. They're still alive. And those things----things like me----are heading towards them.

But how can I save them? I can't even trust myself around them. What if I get hungry again?Images of his wife and children torn apart to feed his unnatural appetite filled his head.

No!

He turned away and was immediately confronted with the abattoir he'd created. Even now, with his stomach filled to bursting, the sight and scent of the bloody organs sparked a hunger in him.

Wait. That's it!

He knelt down by Tom Henderson's corpse and started stuffing pieces of intestine and other organs into the pockets of his gore-crusted pants. From a closet he took one of Tom's jackets and put it on, filled those pockets as well.

The only way to keep from becoming a dangerous, crazed monster like those things outside was to keep his stomach filled. And if that's what it took to save his family, by God he'd do it.

He chewed and swallowed two big pieces of Enid's liver and then ran out the back door. This time he didn't bother with the gate. Instead, he crashed through the hedges separating the Henderson's property from the Thompson's. From one backyard to the next, dodging lawn furniture and swimming pools, he made his way towards his family.

I'll show them I'm not a monster.

~

Sheila watched the three zombies shambling down the street and knew her family was in trouble. They hadn't looked at any of the other houses; in fact, from the moment they'd appeared they'd been staring in their blank, malevolent way at only one home.

Hers.

Damn John. Why couldn't he have owned a gun?

Why couldn't he be here now to protect them?

"Bobby. Go get your sister's baseball bat."

The fact that he didn't ask any questions, just took off at a run for his room, let her know the seriousness of the situation must have finally sunk in.

"Mom?" Stacie stood by the other window. "There's more coming."

Sheila looked past the three approaching in their lumbering but steady fashion and saw that her daughter was right. More of the creatures were visible at the end of the road, their heads and shoulders cresting the top of the hill where Turtle Dove and Culver split. Six of them, maybe more.

Bobby returned with the bat.

"Go down to the basement and hide," she told them in her best no-nonsense voice, the one she only used when they were in the worst of trouble.

"What about----?"

"Just go! I'll be fine."

She grabbed each of them and gave them a hard kiss, then pushed them towards the kitchen. As she turned back to the window, a flash of movement behind the Pasternack's house caught her eye, but when she looked nothing was there.

Too fast to be one of them. Must have been a cat or something.

The first three zombies----the word came so much easier now that she'd accepted her fate----were only two houses away. Close enough to see their green-brown rotting skin and the way their sunken eyes and open mouths gave them a death's head appearance. One of them wore the remains of a white lab coat with Pascack Valley Hospital stitched on the breast pocket; the other two were naked, with giant 'Y'-shaped autopsy incisions on their chests.

The squeal of tires from of the Pasternack's driveway startled her so badly she dropped the aluminum bat and felt a sharp pain in her chest as her heart gave an extra kick. The lime-green Cadillac roared down the driveway and into the three reanimated corpses, sending them into the air like human bowling pins. The car skidded to a stop and then backed up, crushing the skull of one naked zombie and sending grayish matter flying across the blacktop.

The driver leaned out the window and time seemed to freeze for Sheila.

John!

Then he ducked back into the car, turned it around, and gunned the engine, aiming the heavy vehicle right at the large group of walking dead further up the street.

He's alive!

Then, on the heels of that thought, the image of his face came back to her. The pale flesh, the dark hollows under his eyes.

No. It's impossible. He can't be one of them.

She watched the car drive over the dozen or so zombies at the beginning of the circle. John piloted the car back and forth, a neon-green shark feasting on trapped seals. None of the zombies attempted to avoid being struck, further evidence in Sheila's mind that none of them had enough brainpower to start a car, let alone drive one.

That meant John had to be alive. Hurt, maybe. Tired, exhausted, even sick.

But alive.

With the final zombie dealt with, the car turned and came back down the road at a more sedate pace. Without warning it swerved and struck a mailbox, coming to rest halfway across a front lawn. The driver's door opened and John staggered out, his movements uncoordinated and slow. Even from three houses away she could see blood covering his clothes.

Oh, God, he's hurt.She grabbed the binoculars and hurriedly focused on her husband.

Just in time to see him pull something that looked like a giant pink sponge from his pocket and shove it into his mouth. Gobs of the strange material fell onto his shirt as he chewed and gulped like a starving man who'd just found a steak.