The airport was light blue.

Everything.

Trashcans, carpet, windows, people.

Then Frank was on the plane, sitting next to Jane. It had always been Jane. She was hungrily snacking on a plate of brains.

She turned to him, as if noticing him for the first time. "Would you like a bite?"

That's when Frank got mad.

Did everything have to be a movie reference?

Jane was Hannibal Lector now.

For the love of god!

"No, I don't want a fucking bite!" he shouted, attracting the attention of several other passengers. "No, I don't want any fucking brains, no fucking Chianti and no goddamn fava beans!" The kid sitting in front of Frank peaked over the seat. "What are you looking at fuckface? Sit back down!" The kid sat.

Frank stood up.

"Has the whole world gone crazy?" He had his arms out in a pleading fashion and noticed at the end of one of them was a little black box with a flashing red button—in the other he had tattered copy of the Koran. He could hear his voice shouting at the stunned passengers—blaming them for Kanye West and reality television but his mind was busy taking stock of his person.

Aside from the detonator he noticed he was wearing a dynamite vest complete with a Felix the Cat clock... happily ticking away.

Why would I need a detonator AND a clock?

Do time bombs have detonators? Or do they just blow up at the set time?

In the hand that had the religious tome was now a box cutter.

That's not better, he thought.

The song 911 is a Joke, by Public Enemy was playing from somewhere and Frank blushed at the song's new meaning. Those silly rappers were just trying to slander the New York City police department, they couldn't have known how many of them would have died when the towers came down.

"You know," he was still shouting at the passengers, "if you fold a twenty-dollar bill in the right way you can see the World Trade Center blowing up. This was predestined. This has always happened. Just like in that movie Demolition Man, with Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. They predicted in that movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be the Governor of California! They did! Well, it wasn't California, it was New-Cali-Hope-Land, or some shit. But the point is, he has always been the Governor—the World Trade Center has always been blown up—the dead have always risen..."

Jane, still sitting next to him, tugged on his shirt. Frank looked down to see a little greasy, grey glob on the end of her fork.

She was holding it up to him.

"Last bite," she said in sing-song voice.

Frank fumed. He looked at the detonator and pushed the red button. Nothing happened. The passengers all looked at him, embarrassed, like they were watching a child botch a talent show performance.

"Did they really predict Arnold would be Governor?" a disembodied voice asked. A male voice Frank didn't recognize. He looked around the cabin as the scene began to spiral in on itself.

Frank opened his eyes to find himself laying in a squeaky, thin bed. He was in a claptrap vintage travel trailer lit with battery powered lanterns. The strange voice originated from a burly looking guy with a big scraggly beard, who was apparently the type of man to zip up and re-fasten his belt after leaving the bathroom—which is what he was doing as he looked at Frank from the open accordion door.

There was no way this guy had washed his hands.

"Did you flush?" Frank asked.

The guy turned his broad shoulders in the confined space to look back in the bathroom. He started tucking in his flannel shirt. "Yeah," he said.

"Well, it's a start."

"So, did they really say that 'bout Arnold?"

"What?"

"'Bout him being Governor?"

"Yeah... yeah, they did," Frank said.

"If that don't beat all."

Frank wasn't sure if he'd heard correctly but didn't want to ask. Do people really say that? The man scratched his unkempt beard and snort/laughed once to himself and busied himself with something on the tiny kitchen counter.

Frank started putting things together.

He remembered the smiling face in the doorway—though it wasn't this guy's face—and the butt of a shotgun smashing his, Frank's, face. The pounding began just above the eyes.

He looked at the bed he was in.

The sheets were threadbare and light blue—soft like tissue paper—there were several spots of dried blood near the top seam.

"This isn't a dream anymore is it?" Frank asked the non-hand-washer guy who was picking up a rifle by the door, about to leave.

"I don't think so," he answered and then exited, the squeaky hinged door slammed hard behind him.

Outside Frank could hear the sounds of people talking animatedly. There was a fire crackling and some music playing on tinny speakers. Country music. Ugh.

Despite the pain in his head, he got up on his knees on the bed and looked out one of the tiny fogged up windows. He tried wiping the condensation away with his hand but realized the obstruction was on the outside—years of filth and sun damage had rendered the window practically useless—like trying to look through wax paper.

He could see it was night and identify vaguely human shapes and see where the fire was, but it was all just a blurry mess. However, it wasn't necessary to have clear vision to know that these people were alive.

Really alive.

The burly guy from the bathroom had been alive.

Frank felt an odd rush of disappointment as he realized he wasn't the only one. These were the first living humans he'd seen for a long time. He knew he should be happy about this—elated even—but he wasn't.

He was overtaken by the need to run—leave this place and these living people—take Jane and get back on the road. Pretend it didn't happen.

Jane!

He launched himself out of the squeaking bed toward the door which he immediately regretted once he realized his left ankle had been chained to an eyelet ring bolted into the wall. Unfortunately, he hadn't realized this before and found himself face down on a horrible smelling throw rug—a new pain singing from the torn skin around his Achilles tendon.

The door to the trailer opened again and a hefty man in his mid-forties and a much younger, ultra-skinny girl walked in. The man shook his head when he saw Frank struggling against his restraint.

"Go help him up," he said to the girl.

Suddenly, thin girl hands were cupped in his armpits and assisting him back to the bed. She couldn't have been any older than 17 or 18, but her eyes suggested she'd seen plenty.

"You okay?" she asked with a lilting voice—delicate and thin as paper—which at once, Frank recognized as an act. She was obediently playing her part. Frank wasn't the only prisoner in this camp.

"Yeah. I'm good." Frank assessed the damage to his ankle. "No, actually, I'm not good. You wanna..."

"Just hold on there, champ," the man said. "You wanna know what's happening, who hit you in the face, where your girlfriend's at... well, if you just stay calm, I'll fill you in."

"Jane. Her name's Jane and she's not my girlfr..."

"It's none of my business. I know it gets lonely out on the road."

"Just what, exactly, are you implying?"

"Look, just keep still and I'll tell you everything you need to know." The man pulled a folding chair from somewhere and set it up in front of the bed.

The girl stood behind him, waiting for her next order.

"First off, I'm Jed and this is my daughter, Emily."

"A pleasure," Frank said through tight lips.

"Now, I want to apologize about the bump on your head there. Roy gets a little smack-happy whenever there's any commotion around here. Let's just be happy he didn't blow your head off. Guess he heard you talking to that girl of yours and figured you folks were still alive. Nevertheless, he took it upon himself to make sure you wasn't up to no good so he..." Jed gestured like he was poking at something with a stick. "I can't blame him. Better safe than sorry, I suppose."

He looked at Frank waiting for some form of agreement.

There was none.

Jed cleared his meaty throat. "You want some water or something?"

"You got anything stronger?"

"Maker's Mark okay for you?"

"Great," Frank said, sounding a bit too eager.

Jed nodded his head at Emily, and she ran off, bounding out the door. "Jane you said, right?"

"Yeah, Jane."

"Don't worry about her. She's fine." Jed looked up at the ceiling, considering. "Safe, at least."

"Where?"

"She's outside, with the others."

"How many of you are there?" Frank asked.

"Altogether, we got about fifteen souls."

Emily ran back in with a bottle. She grabbed two glasses from a cabinet by the bathroom and handed them to Jed.

He poured.

"We been here since the beginning. I own the Fill and Feed. Most of the other folks were neighbors. Huntin' buddies and the like. There's a couple though who just drove through and decided to stay—but we haven't seen any real people for a few months until you showed up. Where'd you come from anyway?"

"Up north," Frank said behind a mouthful of whiskey. He swallowed. "Near Spokane."

"That in Washington?"

"Yeah. Where are we now?"

"Idaho."

The information meant nothing to Frank. It didn't really matter where they were. Boarders had become irrelevant. He shrugged.

"Yeah, like I was saying, it's been pretty quiet around here for quite some time. We haven't even seen many zombies for a couple weeks. And nowadays, as I'm sure you know, they aren't much of a threat anymore. Guess they're dying on their own. Run outta living folks to eat."

"It's the same up north." Frank held out his empty glass. Emily went to take it, but Frank wasn't letting go.

Jed filled it again.

He downed half in one gulp.

"So, what's with the chain?" Frank asked shaking his stinging ankle. "Another safety precaution?"

"You could say that. Like I said—we haven't seen many zombies in a few weeks and if we do, they're just a step or two from the grave, so it was a little strange to see that girl you're with. She's still up and moving around—like when it first started."

"She was frozen."

"Yeah. That's what she said. But what if it's a new strain of the disease? What if they're gonna start getting stronger?"
"No, no. It's just Jane. She was in a car accident..."

"Yeah, like I said, she told us the story but when we checked her out, we didn't see any signs like she'd been in a wreck. She looked fine. Not a mark on her."

Frank puzzled over that for a second. He sat up a little straighter. "What are you saying here, Jed? Where is she?"

"Like I said, she's outside with the others. We got 'em corralled into this little fenced off area just behind the store. We got about five or six of 'em but Jane... she's by far the freshest of the bunch."

"She's locked up... with other zombies?"

"Yeah. Well, we couldn't just let her roam free. And that got us wondering about you. How come she didn't try to eat you? Maybe you got some kind of deal worked out with her."

"Deal? No." Was Jane's plan really that transparent? "What are you going to do with her?" Frank was starting to get a little anxious. He noticed Jed's balding scalp beading up—getting glossy in the rising heat of the tiny trailer. Emily seemed oblivious, fanning herself with her hand and playing with dirty strands of her lank hair—her eyes darted around the room like she was following a fly.

"Now, don't get agitated. We just want to know what's going on." Jed said as he reached around to the small of his back and casually pulled out a sliver Beretta and rested it on his knee. "I don't know what you two been up to, but it seems pretty goddamn strange to me to see the two of you traveling together—her in such great shape and all. So, what do you do champ? You guys find what living folks is left—convince 'em you're both okay then turn on 'em? You kill 'em and feed 'em to that... that thing out there. Is that why she still looks the way she does?"

Emily's eyes were back on Frank—hard and tight.

Jed finished his drink and stood up. "You make me sick," he spat, dropping the easy conversational tone.

"Jed, you got the wrong idea here," Frank began. "We don't... I haven't... we haven't even seen anyone since we met. I thought I was the only living person left. We're just driving south because... well... we just were. No real reason. We figured it'd be warmer. There was nothing else to do. I was just happy to have her around for the conversation."

"What about all those empty bags of blood you got in your truck out there?"

"She got those from the clinic where she was frozen. She..."

"What about the blood all over the front grill and the busted window? You run 'em down? Is that it? You find people and run 'em down?"

"The... what? No, we hit a couple of zombies out on the..."

"She suck the blood outta them like some goddamn vampire or something?" Jed's grip was getting tighter on the gun. Frank could see veins popping out along the back of his hand.

"Look... Jed. They were zombies that we hit with the car."

"Uh, huh," Jed said, clearly not convinced. To Jed, Frank was worse than a zombie—he was a zombie conspirator.

"Seriously..." Frank pleaded.

Jed shook his head. "Alright. You just need to shut your goddamn mouth before I fill it with bullets. I still gotta figure out what to do with you. Just be happy you aren't dead yet."

Emily reached over and yanked the glass out of Frank's hand. She looked smug and blew a little puff of air out her nose as she followed her daddy outside where Frank heard the chatting around the fire stop.

Well, now what?

Frank had no idea.