He walked another five or six hundred yards down the subway tunnel, relying on the flashlight to see where he was going. Fortunately the beam was still bright and strong; it didn't appear to be in danger of running down anytime soon.

  Without his Night Vision, the tunnel was much more frightening -- a gloomy underworld echoing with strange sounds. He heard bangs, rattles, groans, and other noises, and at one point he was sure he heard a scream. Were there more people down here, more human survivors?

  He grit his teeth and continued on. He hated this whole situation. He wished he was back home, relaxing on his sofa, watching TV and snacking on Doritos or something. How long had it been since Virge and Wayman had kidnapped him and brought him to this other world? Two hours? Three, four? Phil was going to wonder why he had left the shop unlocked and unattended; eventually his parents were going to start to wonder what had happened to him. Eventually, everyone was going to think he was dead.

  He had to find a way to return to his own world.

  He soon arrived at another intersection, where the tunnel split off in two directions. Once again, he decided to take the leftward path, and after several more minutes of listening to his stumbling footsteps echoing through the dank of the tunnel, his flashlight beam suddenly fell on something new: a train.

  He shouldn't have been surprised to find a train down here -- this was a subway tunnel, after all -- but it startled him, and scared him a little too, because it looked like a good place for zombies to lie in ambush for him. His last encounter with a zombie had left him on edge, and he was hyper-vigilant now, keeping his ears and eyes open for any sudden sights or sounds.

  He would have preferred not to enter the train at all, but it took up most of the tunnel and squeezing past it would be difficult, so he reluctantly climbed the steps up to the lead car and shined his flashlight inside. He saw a couple of bodies on the floor, and there was a man in a cap slumped over the controls, but they were obviously long dead, practically skeletons in fact, and he saw no movement. Encouraged by this, he pried open the door to the car and went inside.

  Avoiding the bodies, which were splayed out all over, he pried open the door to the next car and started making his way through the train. He felt like he was in a horror movie. The darkness, the desiccated bodies, the broken windows -- he felt like something might jump out at him at any moment.

  He kept his courage, however, forcing himself to proceed through one car, and then another and another, all the while looking for supplies. Unfortunately, like the soldiers' encampment, the train seemed to have already been looted. There was nothing useful in the luggage he found, and certainly nothing resembling a weapon. He was going to have to continue to rely on the knife.

  He pulled open a door to another car and aimed his flashlight into it. This one appeared to be empty; there were no bodies here. Shining his light around, he saw a row of ads near the ceiling, one of which featured Berly -- it was another ad for that show, Hardcore. He stopped for a moment, studying it.

  "Hands up," a voice suddenly called out.

  He spun around. A boy, maybe ten or twelve years old, had just appeared, as if from nowhere -- Stu had no idea where he might have been hiding -- and was now aiming a strange-looking rifle at him.

  "Where did you come from?" Stu asked.

  "Hands up!" the boy hissed.

  Stu put his hands up.

  "Who are you?" the boy asked.

  "My name's Stu." And then he added, a little lamely, "I'm not a zombie."

  "I can see that. You infected?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "You got any weapons on you?"

  "I've got a knife," he said. "And a gun, but I'm out of ammo."

  "Let me see it."

  Stu showed him the gun. The kid took a step forward to examine it, his weird, high-tech rifle still pointed at Stu's face. "Midnighter. Hand it over."

  Stu gave it to him.

  "Now let's see the knife."

  "What are you doing down here?" Stu asked.

  "The knife," the kid repeated.

  Stu showed him the knife. When he saw the rusty blade, however, the kid merely sighed and said, "Keep it."

  "Thanks," Stu said. "I think."

  "Keep those hands up. Who are you? One of the Wild Pack?"

  "What's the Wild Pack?"

  "Don't play dumb. You're not from the Harbor, you're not dressed like a Pale Rider, and you're definitely not a Banshee. That just leaves the Wild Pack."

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "I don't know what the Wild Pack is," he insisted. "I don't know what a Pale Rider is, either, or a Banshee. I don't know anything about this place. I don't even know how I got here."

  The boy eyed him skeptically. "You've never heard of the Pale Riders?"

  "No."

  He scoffed. "You don't really expect me to believe that, do you?"

  "It's the truth. Could you put down the gun? I don't mean you any harm, really."

  The kid lowered the weapon slightly, but he also took several steps back, putting some distance between himself and Stu. "You sure you haven't been bitten?" he asked. "You're covered in blood."

  "I know," Stu admitted. "I ran into a couple zombies earlier, but I managed to kill them before they could bite me."

  "What kind were they?"

  Stu blinked. "What kind of zombies?"

  "Yeah. Were they irregulars? Ragers, speedies, jumbos, glowies?"

  "There's different kinds of zombies?"

  "Are you an idiot or something? Of course there's different kinds of zombies!"

  "I didn't know. I saw this monster-thing earlier, but I didn't--"

  "Monster-thing?" The kid jumped up, alert. "You mean a mutate? There's a mutate down here?"

  "It's dead," Stu assured him.

  "Who killed it? You?"

  "No. There was another guy with me. He's dead, too, now."

  He breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good."

  Stu studied the boy. He was a scrappy-looking kid with wild hair and a dirty face, wearing a headband and a heavy-looking jacket which was two sizes too big for him. The front of the jacket was lined with pockets, and he had a kind of bandolier -- it looked something like Batman's utility belt -- thrown over one shoulder as well. "What are you doing down here?" Stu asked. "What's your name?"

  "I'm Lucky," he said. "I'm from the Harbor."

  "What's the Harbor?"

  "You really don't know anything, do you? Where are you from?"

  Stu wasn't sure the kid would believe him if he told him he had come from another world -- he had no idea if that was a normal thing around here or not -- so he just said, "Far away."

  "Pretoria? Meriweather? The Sunny Mountains?"

  "No, none of those." He stopped suddenly. "Hey, have you ever heard of Lon Halos?"

  "Of course," he said. "It's a city out in Talife. They used to make movies out there, before everything went to shit."

  "How far away is it?"

  "It's on the other side of the country. Seven, eight hundred miles. I don't know. I've only seen it on old maps."

  Stu deflated. "Oh." Virge had told him to go to Lon Halos and find Dr. Snowe, but if the whole country was in as bad a shape as this city -- crawling with zombies and monsters -- the odds of him actually making it out there in one piece seemed pretty slim.

  "You're not going to tell me you're from Lon Halos," Lucky said. "There's no way you could have crossed that much territory without running into the Pale Riders, or without knowing that there are different kinds of zombies."

  "No," Stu said. "I'm not from there, but I'd like to go there."

  The kid snorted. "Good luck."

  "Do you have to point that gun at me?" Stu complained.

  "I don't know you," Lucky said suspiciously. "I can't trust you."

  "I just want to be on my way."

  He frowned. "You won't make it far, with just a knife."

  "You never told me what you were doing down here," Stu said.

  It took him a moment to answer. "I'm looking for a jumbo," he said at last.

  "That's a kind of zombie?"

  "Yeah. Jumbos are huge. They start growing after they're infected. They can get up to twelve feet tall, but most of them are so fat by that point that they can't even move. The one I'm hunting is about nine feet tall, built like a tank. They call it the Brute."

  "And you're...hunting this thing? Why?"

  His eyes narrowed. "It killed Jacen."

  "Jacen?"

  "My friend. It smashed through the Red Gate two days ago and killed three people in Harbor before Penelope and the others drove it off. I grabbed some supplies and my rifle and followed it down here, because everyone else was too chicken, but I lost track of it, and..." He trailed off.

  "You got lost?" Stu guessed.

  "I'm not lost," he said firmly. "But I'm not leaving here, anyway, until I've killed the Brute."

  Something very strange happened then. As soon as Lucky finished speaking, a menu screen suddenly popped open right in front of Stu's face. It read "Quest Available: Justice for Jacen."

  "Quest available?" he said out loud.

  The kid looked at him, puzzled. "What?"

  "Nothing," he said quickly. "Forget it." Lucky obviously couldn't see the "Quest Available" message, and until he knew more about this strange video game-like interface, he thought it best to keep quiet about it.

  But the message was still hanging in front of his face. He touched it, and the message changed to "Accept Quest?" More because he was curious than because he really wanted to go on a "quest", he touched the "Yes" button. And as soon as he did, the message screens disappeared, giving him no further information. What was he supposed to do now?

  "What are you doing?" Lucky asked, in regards to his tapping the invisible-to-him message screens.

  "Nothing. So what's your next move?"

  "I'm going to kill this jumbo," he said confidently, tapping his rifle. It really was an unusual weapon; it was a big, boxy thing, and it appeared to have a small LCD screen built into it. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

  "I could help you," Stu volunteered.

  The kid's expression turned suspicious again. "Why would you want to help me?"

  "You may not be lost," Stu said, "but I am. I don't know anything about this city. I don't know anything about zombies. I've never heard of the Harbor or these Pale Riders or anything else. I need a guide. I need someone to explain this stuff to me."

  Lucky squinted at him. "You really are clueless, aren't you?"

  "Yes. Yes, I admit, I'm clueless."

  "And you want me to explain to you about zombies and stuff."

  "Yes. And in exchange, I'll help you find and kill the Brute."

  "How do I know I can trust you?"

  Stu sighed. "I guess you don't. But you're the one with the gun."

  "No kidding." He thought it over, then said, "Well, you seem harmless enough. All right. You help me find the Brute, and I'll tell you all about jumbos and ragers and whatever else you want to know about. But if you try anything funny, or if I start getting the feeling you're up to something, I won't think twice about blowing you away." He raised the gun threateningly. "Got it?"

  "Got it," Stu said, nodding quickly. "So where do we start?"

  The boy hesitated. "I...don't know."

  "Well, we're not going to find this monster here," Stu said. "We should get moving." He paused. "You wouldn't happen to have any water, would you?"

  There was a backpack sitting on the floor next to him; he reached down, unzipped it, and removed a tin bottle, which he tossed to Stu. Stu caught it, uncorked it, and started drinking it down greedily. It tasted a little funny, but in the zombie apocalypse, he reflected, fresh water was probably something of a luxury.

  "Don't drink it all," Lucky snapped. "That's got to last us."

  He took a few more swallows and handed it back to the kid. "What about my gun? Can I have it back?"

  He laughed. "No chance."