They'd driven on through the night keeping the conversation relatively sparse. After Jane mentioned how beautiful the stars looked through the hole in the roof a third time, Frank grumpily decided to pack it in. He pulled over and climbed into the back seat, curling up under an old Mexican blanket they'd picked up a few stops back. He was hamming up the sulking routine which may have been a bit exaggerated but produced the desired effect. Jane clearly found it endearing.

While Frank slept Jane decided to relax before getting back behind the wheel. Not that she needed to actually relax but because it was something she used to do when she was alive. Just take a moment to decompress. She read a few more of Frank's magazines and even tried smoking one of his cigarettes. It tasted like nothing, so she flicked it into the darkness, watching the glowing orange cherry draw evaporating circles in the night air. Ultimately, she just sat serenely and watched the dawn break over the billowy trees.

As morning painted the world in bright primary colors, Jane contemplated eating Frank. She was down to a half-bag of blood which would probably only last her through the next day. She wondered what would happen after—if she had to go days without sustenance. Will I start to rot? Is my mind going to go? Will I be able to control myself around him? She wondered how Frank would feel about just letting her eat a little piece of him. Like... just a bite.

She shook the thought.

As hungry as she knew she was going to get, she also knew she wasn't going to try to eat Frank. She liked him. Even with the drinking and smoking, the OCD and the extremely dark sense of humor, she liked him. He was rugged and charmless, scruffy and irritable but absolutely compelling. There was no way she could eat him. Him eating her on the other hand...

Frank farted noisily from the back seat, waking himself up. He rubbed his eyes, scrunched up his nose and looked out the window, spying Jane sitting on the shoulder.

He knocked on the glass to get her attention. She turned, looking radiant in the morning light. He gaped at her a moment then half-shouted, "We going?"

Jane got up, collected the magazines and brushed off her ass before getting back in the passenger seat.

"I'm driving again?" Frank asked stretching.

"Yeah, if you don't mind." She neatly placed the magazines on the floor between her feet and squinted as the early sun poured through the shattered front window.

"It's fine. Just let me piss." Frank hopped out, marveling at how creaky his bones felt. The lingering throb of a headache pushed at his temples, but it was manageable. He pinched the bridge of his nose as his mind briefly and unwittingly revisited the traumatic incident at the urgent care facility. He looked down at his penis and said, "Don't worry. It's all gonna be fine." Languid steam rose from the puddle of urine he left in the middle of the road.

He got back in the 4 Runner and started it up, grabbing the cigarettes off the dash, then peeled back onto the road, still heading into the nebulous south. Frank was rubbing sleep out of his eyes and yawning between drags. He rolled his shoulders back and forth trying to get the blood flowing.

"You think I can still have an orgasm?" Jane asked after a few miles.

Frank coughed on an inhale, sputtering, his eyes watering up. "Jesus. Good morning."

"Morning," Jane said brightly, flashing her teeth. "But for reals, you think I could still cum?"

"Alright," he slapped the wheel, "stop begging. Yes, I'll have sex with you."

She smiled and shook her head. "That's not what I'm saying, but glad to know you're a sure thing. I was just seriously wondering what kind of living stuff I could still do. I don't pee, I can't smell or taste anything. I don't think I've farted since I died."

"Girls don't fart," Frank stated firmly.

"Well, dead ones don't I guess," she said.

"Not freshly dead. The old ones are nothing but farts."

"But seriously, I wonder..." she trailed off raising her eyebrows at Frank. She looked devious and sultry at the same time. With exaggerated slow movements she slipped her porcelain hand under the waist of her scrubs.

Frank saw the motion and reflexively looked back at the road. "Holy shit, is this happening? We're not on a plane but this has got to be a dream," he blurted.

She pulled her hand out and slapped his arm. "Relax. I'm not going to do it. I just wanted to see how you'd react. And you looked away. That was nice." She nodded to herself. "You passed."

"That's great but you should know, I was a millisecond from rolling this vehicle. I looked back at the road so we wouldn't careen headlong into the ditch."

"Still, I think there's a little bit of respectability in you. If you were really as gross as you act, I think we would be in that ditch right now." She looked satisfied. "And at least you're awake now."

"True. Fuck coffee. Just have a hot zombie start finger-blasting herself first thing in the morning. You'll wake right the fuck up."

"I didn't get that far. And jeez, you make it sound so crass. It's a wonderful, natural thing. It's a pretty flower."

"What? Your meat flaps?"

She slapped him again. "Je-zus!"

"The old bologna wallet," Frank grinned.

"Stop it Frank. It's a beautiful, delicate flower. You're disgusting."

"Well as long as it doesn't wilt..." he immediately wished he could take back the words. Felt them hover there against the broken windshield, mocking him for having a carless internal censor.

Jane stared at him with her mouth agape—the levity left her face. "It's not going to... wilt. I'm not like those other chunky fuckers out there. I'm not going to rot. My... lady parts are gonna be just fine."

"I was just telling my penis that."

"What?"

"Nothing. I know. Sorry." Frank cast her a sideways glance and saw her crinkled brow, her arms coming to rest crossed under her breasts. She was increasingly sensitive about the whole being dead thing. Which was understandable. It had to be a lot to digest.

"Is it going to wilt?" she asked, concerned.

"No. We'll just get you some more blood somehow and you'll be fine. It'll be flourishing. Blooming. Attracting bees and such."

"Is that what you think though?" She nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "That I'm like them?"

"No! You are completely different."

"For now... but what about in a few weeks? What if we can't find blood?"

"We'll find blood."

"But what if we don't?" She turned and looked at him, her face creased with worry. "You're eventually going to have to put a bullet in my head and position me just so on the side of the road. And I'll end up just being a blip in your OCD diary."

"Hold on now."

"I've spent my whole life working out, trying to eat right and staying fit, and now what... my vagina is going to wilt?" she bristled, slapping her thighs.

"Your vagina is going to be fine." Frank tried to sound soothing but felt like a doctor placating a terminal cancer patient. How soothing could you actually be when you were just painting over the truth?

"And I look so frumpy in these goddamn scrubs. Ugh. Fuck. I'm a wreck."

Frank didn't know what to say other than continue graciously contradicting everything that came out of her mouth. She was such a girl. He decided to be blunt.

"Look, you're fucking gorgeous and you know it. Your 'delicate flower' will be fine and besides, there's no one left on the planet to impress except me, and I'm already impressed, so stop being all I'm-the-ugliest-girl-in-the-world, and just jam a few fingers up in there and get to work."

After cruising along wordlessly for a while, wind whistling through the hole in the roof, Jane finally spoke.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"So... not going to masturbate then?"

"No," she pulled on her staple, stretching her lip a little. "But I feel better."

"Good." Frank leaned forward, resting his elbows on the wheel as they drove. He glanced over at her. "You sure you don't want to give it a go? Tiny circles?"

"You gotta stop."

"Like... stop the car?"

"No, like stop being such a letch."

Frank scowled. "Fine." He knew it wasn't likely, but it felt good to entertain the idea. He pictured pulling over and watching her disrobe, watching her get heavy lidded as she slid into the warm seas of extasy, her fingers a blur between her legs. It wasn't going to happen. He knew it. So, he decided to pout.

"So, what do you think?" she asked ignoring his overdone sad face.

"Think about what? You cumming?"

"No! About stopping at the next town for some clothes. Jesus, you're relentless," she said chuckling.

Frank thought for a moment. He really had no reason to be mad—it's not as though he actually expected her to start jerking it right there in the car—but for the fun of it, he decided to be difficult anyway. "If it's convenient," he grumped.

Jane leaned back in her seat. "You know your phone is broken," she said.

"What?"

"Your phone."

Sure enough, his phone was crushed. The screen shattered and the body bent. He hadn't even noticed there wasn't any music. Deranged fantasies and theatrical pouting had a music all its own. "Well... how the hell did that happen," though he was pretty sure he knew.

"I think when you were banging around with the shotgun last night, you might've..."

"Yeah."

Road noise filled the 4 Runner for a drawn-out moment.

"But now we have a sunroof," she said.

"Stop."

"Okay, sorry." She folded her hands in her lap. "Do you want me to sing?" she asked, playfully.

"What?"

"Or growl or whatever." She raised her hands up to her mouth like she was cradling a microphone and found the deepest, darkest place in her soul, filtered it in the back of her throat and let loose with a choppy barrage of guttural nonsense. It came out sounding like Animal from the Muppets.

Frank smiled despite himself.

"How was that?" she asked.

"Not bad. However, if the choice is between whatever hellish noise you just made and silence—I might have to go with silence."

"What? That was better than 90 percent of the crap on there," she said pointing at the dead phone.

"Now hold on a minute there, sweets."

"What, are you going to tell me there's some kind of magical nuance—some skill involved in yelling at the top of your lungs?"

"Yes, actually."

"You've got to be kidding."

"Not at all. They—those guys—spend years training their voices. Julliard, voice lessons and the like. Have you ever tried to scream for two hours straight? Not easy. Years, they practice—honing their vocal cords. Strengthening their..." Frank gestured abstractly at his neck.

"You are kidding," Jane narrowed her eyes.

"Yes."

Frank flicked his current cigarette out the window, grabbed another and lit it, smiling. Jane was laughing and occasionally growling something like, "Eat babies," or "God bless the devil."

As they drove on, he thought about Cheney and how boring it had become. It didn't really matter that Jane had kidnapped him before he got a chance to finish cleaning. What would I have done once the place was in order anyway? Gone up on a hill, surveyed my work and nod approvingly. Maybe set fire to the pit and jump in. What purpose did it serve—all the straightening?

Now that he wasn't there it felt like a distant memory. As long as things in his immediate proximity were in order then he was at ease. The thought initiated his free hand to begin tidying up the dash and center console.

As far as he was concerned, Cheney didn't exist anymore. He figured he should have left a long time ago. But then he wouldn't have met Jane.

A long time passed with pointless small talk and easy silence. Puffy clouds dotted the broad blue sky, strikingly bright, as if lit from within. The trees had opened up, showcasing expansive green farmland. Frank watched the distant, rolling hills slowly get closer. They'd successfully achieved road trip serenity.

After a prolonged lull in conversation, Jane asked, "What happened?" She propped her heels on the edge of the seat and hugged her knees. "How did all this happen? How did the world... die?"

"Who knows. Probably started with some idiot in a jungle eating a bat. Then it got on planes and spread all over the world. The news never said anything definitive about how it originated." He inhaled and blew out smoke noisily.

"How come you didn't die?"

"Because the world couldn't stand to lose something this awesome," Frank said, demurely running the back of his hand across his bearded cheek.

"Oh, right. Of course," Jane scoffed.

"To be honest, I don't know. Everyone around me was affected but it never got to me for some reason. Maybe I'm immune. Maybe I pre-embalmed myself with all the whiskey. Like the germ got alcohol poisoning and died before it could take over."

Jane chewed on her lip-staple, thinking. "Before the car accident I saw a bunch of stuff on TV about people dying and coming back and all that but to be honest, at first, I thought it was some kind of joke or elaborate promotional thing for a movie. People weren't really coming back from the dead and eating brains. That's not real. Everything I saw on TV just showed normal looking people. They certainly didn't show anything on the news like those disgusting monsters in Cheney or that bloated guy who fell in the fire the other night."

"I know. That's what I thought at first too—that it was some kind of joke. I think everyone thought it was an elaborate hoax. It was just too unbelievable."

"When I got in my accident... when I went into the freezer the world was still... working. When did it all change?"

"Only took a couple of weeks before everything went to shit. There was all this speculation on what was happening and then, there were no reports at all. It was just the emergency broadcast network after that. I mean we still had local channels for a while, but they clearly weren't getting any real information. Just repeating stay-at-home-orders over and over." Frank shrugged. 

"There were still a few radio stations, but it was mostly shortwave stuff—people coming to their own conclusions—nut jobs and conspiracy theorists. And then there was this big religious movement. Everyone thinking it was the rapture. The second coming and all that. There were massive group suicides at all these churches—like Jonestown style—which was kinda ridiculous since after they were dead, they would all just get up again, becoming the demons they were trying to exorcise. It took them a while to figure out they had to destroy their brains if they didn't want to come back. The old, laced Kool-Aid trick wasn't going to cut it. So, churches burned all over the place—with their entire congregation locked inside. Everything got... ugly. It was chaos. And apparently, with chaos comes random fires flaring up all over the place—not just the churches. I remember driving up in the hills at night and seeing little orange glowing dots. All over. Little fires everywhere. Finally, everything died down once everyone... well, died. Then it was just the zombies walking around, looking confused and getting slower. 

"As far as I knew, I was the only living person left so I took it upon myself to clean up the mess. That's when I started killing them—re-killing them I guess—and dumping them down at the pit—the compost place. Eventually, I just kept doing it out of habit. I needed a reliable routine to keep from going completely crazy."

"Gotta satisfy that OCD," Jane nodded.

"OCD seems a bit strong..."

"It isn't. I'd say it's more than appropriate." Jane reached up to the dash and exaggeratedly straightened and restraighten-ed Frank's pack of cigarettes. "Is this the precise location where this pack of Chesterfields will meet the window at an exact 53-degree angle?" she pursed her lips and rocked her head back and forth, examining the smokes, tapping a finger against her chin.

The buzz of the tires filled the car.

"Jesus was a zombie, you know," Frank said.

"Excuse me?"

"Jesus. Zombie."

"Because he came back from the dead?"

"Yeah. It's kinda funny to think that a religion was hinged around the worship of a god and his zombie son. The guy died, then three days later, came back. So, Easter is really a celebration of—zombie-ism. Don't know about the whole bunny and eggs thing though."

"Or the whole eating brains thing?" Jane added.

"Yeah. They probably had to leave that part out of the bible. Political reasons, you know. They had to clean it up for popular consumption—keep the 'PG-13' rating."

"I don't know, the bible can be pretty gross in parts," Jane offered.

"Yeah. That's true. Maybe they wanted to stick with an 'R.' And if they kept the flesh-eating Jesus in, they might've had to go with an 'X' and that just closes off a huge portion of the customer base. At least with 'R' kids can sneak in and shit—or rent it but with 'X...' When was the last time you saw a rated 'X' movie at the theaters? A single 'X.' There were plenty of places to go to see triple 'X,' that's not a problem. But a single "X"—heavy petting, full frontal male genitalia, naked simulations with no penetration shots."

"We're still talking about the bible, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm."

Jane had been listening intently, still with her knees tucked up under her chin, joining in the casual jokes—downplaying the seriousness, but eventually, her grin faded. "What happened in Cheney, specifically?"

"With the religious folks?"

"No. Just in general."

"Short version—everyone died."

"Yeah but... I don't know. I guess it's just hard to wrap your brain around something so ridiculous. How do you make sense of it all?"

"Pass me the Jack," Frank said.

She sat up, laughing and reached under the seat for the bottle. "Seriously? While you're driving?"

"I don't think there's much chance of me getting pulled over."

"Uh, oh."

"What?"

Jane brought her hand up and it was dripping. "I think it broke."

"Shit. I left the other one in the back when we stopped to sleep."

"You stopped to sleep," Jane corrected.

Frank jammed on the brakes right in the middle of the highway, stumbled out of the car, shielding his eyes in the midday sun, his mind working faster than his appendages—and hefted open the rear hatch. The fifth of Jack teetered for an instant on the edge of the tailgate before sloshing over, aimed for the unforgiving asphalt. Frank, panicked, let go of the hatch to dive for the bottle and was quickly knocked unconscious as the gate slammed down on the back of his head.

Just before the blackness enveloped him completely, he heard glass breaking.

He knew, convenient or not, they would be stopping at the next town.