Men are from Mars.… Zombies are from Hell.

About fifteen miles past Sea-Tac airport the highway slowly… and rather eerily cleared up. It was as if this was as far as anyone had managed to make it and now we were pioneers on the next leg of our journey.

As we stopped having to weave within traffic, I glanced at Dave. His mouth was a thin line that expressed his worry as well as my own thoughts did.

“We’re close to Tacoma,” he murmured.

I nodded. “There should still be tons of traffic.”

Honestly, the roads around here were pretty much bad until you got past Olympia and entered into full-blown rolling hills of bucolic farm country.

He reached out and turned on the old car’s radio. I should also mention it had an eight track. Yes, that’s how awesome our car was. But the radio was currently on FM stations and Dave turned the dial back and forth, looking for any kind of signal. Nothingness greeted us.

My heart was pounding. This was the first time our attempts at finding a station had failed. Did that mean they were all gone?

“Try AM,” I whispered, my voice shaking.

Without a word, he pressed the button that switched the feed and started rolling through AM stations.

Empty air and static were all we found. He wound the dial all the way to the bottom, then back to the top.

“Wait,” I cried, “Was that a voice?”

He turned back just a little and sure enough, faint and clouded by static, was the voice of a young woman.

“The government might try to shut us up, but they can’t shut us down,” she said, her voice shaky and exhausted. “We will talk about the spread of the infection. We will tell you what we’re seeing whether they like it or not.”

I stiffened. “Did she just say the government was trying to shut her up?”

I guess I was still pretty innocent at that point. I figured that the government, our government, would be trying to figure out a way to share information, to save people who were left, not hush this disaster up.

“I’d guess it’s a way to quell panic,” Dave offered as he jacked the volume up so we could hear better over the bad reception.

“Here in…”

Her voice cut out so I couldn’t hear where she was broadcasting from. It couldn’t be far, though, the signal wasn’t strong enough.

“… there are far more infected now than survivors. We have seen government tanks rolling through the streets. They’ve knocked down buildings without even checking for survivors inside. They have bombed city blocks and shot people who tried to flag them down for help.”

My hand came up to cover my mouth, so it was good we were on open road now.

“Christ,” I breathed.

“They’re shutting down the power in…”

Again her voice crackled and I was frustrated in my attempts to figure out where she was.

“… and we’re now running on a generator until it runs out of power… or they find us. The zombies or the soldiers. Please, spread the word. Don’t listen to the reports that the outbreak is over and being contained. It isn’t. And if you’re hearing this from outside Portland… please find a way to tell others. Before it’s too late.”

The voice died and Dave began to roll the dial frantically as he tried to find her again, but she was gone.

“Portland,” I breathed. “Portland? She had to be in Oregon.”

He nodded as he snapped the radio off with a sigh of frustration. “She has to be. It’s the only Portland close enough to have a signal. With a big enough transistor and enough power, she could reach us. Especially with all the other station chatter gone.”

He rested his head back on the seat and his fists clenched at his sides. Tears stung my eyes and I had to focus to stay on the road. For the first time since all this began, I was really ready to lose it.

Longview was just at the Washington/Oregon border. About an hour north of Portland.

I sucked in a breath. “But if it’s in Portland… if it’s so bad in Portland that they’re fire bombing the city, that means it’s spread past Longview.”

He nodded.

“It wouldn’t skip a town, David,” I sobbed. “Lisa was right. There isn’t a Longview left.”

“Pull over,” he said softly.

“I can’t, I have to —”

He touched my arm, his fingers gentle and soothing. “Pull over.”

Slowly, I made it to the side of the road, putting the passenger wheels right on the shoulder, not that there was anyone else out there to hit me. Apparently the world that we knew of was officially gone.

I rested my head on the steering wheel and sobbed. Dave slid across the seat and put his arm around me. We sat like that for probably twenty minutes as I tried to pull it together without much success. But finally I guess I ran out of tears.

I sat up, wiping my nose on the bottom of my formerly clean t-shirt. “Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, pushing some hair off my face. “If anyone deserves a breakdown it’s us.”

“But we didn’t break down,” I hiccupped. “I did.”

“Well, I owe you one, then,” he said as he slid back into place. We sat in silence for a while longer as I hiccupped out the last of my sobs and he was lost in thought.

Finally, he said, “Look, maybe we shouldn’t go to Longview after all.”

I jerked in my seat to face him. “What?”

He shrugged. “We know this infection or outbreak or whatever you want to call it has gone south, at least to Portland, maybe beyond. But we don’t know for sure about east. Maybe even north toward Canada.”

“So you think they stopped it at the border?” I asked incredulously.

He looked at me. “They won’t even let us bring fireworks across. They’re tough.”

I stared at him for a long moment and then I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of the border patrol asking a zombie what his purpose was in going to Canada today.

Before I could answer, though, a handful of zombies started out of the wooded area on the side of the highway. I looked at them, lurching and sprewing. They had ruined our lives, they had killed our friends.

And in that moment, I didn’t feel sorry for them anymore. I hated them.

I gunned the car as I threw it in gear and roared toward them.

“Fuck you, fuckers!” I screamed as I slammed into the first one.

He cartwheeled pretty comically over the car’s wide hood, his jaws snapping at us even as he flipped upside down. The car thumped as I hit the second one, pulling her under my wheels with a thud and then a second thud when my back tires ran over her.

“What are you doing?” Dave asked as he scrambled for his seatbelt and held on to the door for dear life.

“Remember Dr. Kelly’s scream therapy?” I asked.

“Yelling out our anger and purging it? You thought that was bullshit!” Dave protested.

“It was!” I agreed. “But Kill Therapy isn’t. Tell those zombies what you think!”

He stared at me and then his gaze shifted to the male zombie in the jeans and t-shirt who was hurtling toward us up the side of the highway.

“Go to hell, you jackoff!” he said.

“No, yell it!” I said as we slammed into him. He landed up on our hood, his face smooshed against the glass like a kid on a shop window.

“Fuck YOU!” Dave bellowed before he reached over to my side and turned on the windshield wipers. They smacked the zombie’s face and he growled before I spun the wheel and sent him flying off the hood to land on his head in the ditch.

With all the zombies taken care of, I stopped the car again and faced Dave. “We aren’t going east and we aren’t going north. We’re going to Longview to find your sister. I may hate that bitch, but if she isn’t a zombie then she belongs with us. No man… er, woman left behind, you got that, soldier?”

Dave stared at me. “Okay. Okay! So let’s go to Longview.”

“Let’s go to mother-fucking Longview.”