"Wait it out," Wes said.

Gordy groaned. "In the house?"

"Just for the night. We'll head out in the morning..."

"No," I said.

"No?" Wes replied.

"You're forgetting the Land of the Dead." I avoided eye contact with any of them.

"The Land of the Dead?" Gordy said. "You've got to be kidding? Who gives a flip about the Land of the Dead?"

"We were led here..." I started but Wes cut me off.

"The little piss-ant's got a point. We should stick to the Tullahoma plan. Let's get back there and find them comic books. I thought you said the answers was there?"

"They are... well, I'm pretty sure they are, but that doesn't mean we can forget about everything else. They want us to go to the Land of the Dead. We have to go."

"Who is they?" Wes asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know exactly, but they've been trying to get my attention for a long time." I thought back to my time in the "facility" when they watched me sleep.

"Can we vote on this?" Gordy asked.

"No," I said moving away from Wes and positioning myself closer to Lou. The pain in my gut eased. I stepped away from her and it got worse. I stepped back toward her, and the pain was gone. I quickly walked to Gordy. The pain intensified. I stood next to Wes. The same thing.

"What the hell you doing, boy?" Wes asked.

"It's us," I said.

"What's us?"

"The knot... the thing that's got us all on edge. It's not this room or this house. It's us." I couldn't explain why I didn't get the feeling from Lou, but I definitely got it from the others. I suspected she would put the knot in my stomach soon enough.

Tyrone chimed in for the first time and his tone was so unnaturally calm it was unsettling. "He's already inside us."

I swallowed and whispered, "We have nine days."

"What happens after nine days?" April asked.

Wes answered by repeating part of Jeremiah 19:9, "And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege."

The burst of silence was back.

"He can't make us... I mean we wouldn't... I wouldn't..." Lou couldn't say it no matter how hard she tried.

Tyrone stared blankly. "That's what the knot is, hunger."

Gordy nervously cleared his throat and spoke in a squeaky voice. "If y'all want me to stop freaking out, you gotta stop telling me this stuff."

"Relax," I said.

"Relax?" Gordy roared. "Wes is already looking at me like a Twinkie."

"Boy, I'm going to punch your teeth down your throat!" Wes said stepping toward him.

I got in the middle of them and shouted, "Enough!"

Everyone in the room worked to calm themselves.

"We have to separate," I said.

"Separate?" Gordy said. "We have to leave."

I shook my head. "Leaving won't do any good. This thing will go with us."

"You don't know that," Gordy laughed a little too loudly. "You don't know anything."

I fought to keep my emotions in check. "I know that the dead brought us here. We have to... I have to go to the Land of the Dead. Don't ask me why because I don't have an answer for you."

Lou looked at me concerned. "I don't think we should separate. What if something happens?"

"Something is going to happen if we stay together," I said.

Wes breathed in deeply through his nostrils and stood tall. "Oz is right. We need to split up. We got enough two-ways to go around. We'll keep in touch for as long as we can." He looked at the Throwaways. "They don't seem to be affected."

I turned to them. They clearly weren't at each other's throats. "Then we won't be alone at least. There are six of us and six of them. We'll each take one."

"Won't we... eat them?" Gordy asked. He was even shocked by the words that had come out of his mouth.

"No," I said. "I think they're safe because they're not... human."

"Are we really saying this," Lou asked. "You think he can make us eat..." She didn't finish.

"I do," I said as coldly and flatly as I could. I wanted her to understand that I wasn't willing to consider any other possibilities. We needed to take action now, and it wasn't open for debate.

She got the hint asking, "What about April?"

I grumbled because I had forgotten about April, and I was angry with Lou for reminding me. "You stay with her until she can take care of herself."

Gordy laughed. "That'll be never."

"It'll be by tomorrow," I said. "Has to be." To Lou, "I want you to put some distance between you and her in the morning. We've got no idea how this thing is going to go down. Explain it to her when she wakes up. Don't let her talk you into staying. Mimic or June or whatever her name is should stay with April."

Wes had retrieved all the walkie-talkies and handed them out.

"But she hates Mimic," Lou said.

I nodded. "True, but Mimic seems pretty devoted to her. She'll look after her." I took the radio from Wes and turned it on to test it.

Gordy tapped me on the shoulder. "You're forgetting something." He pointed at Ajax and Ariabod. "Are they going to eat us?"

Ajax furrowed his brow and shook his massive head.

"There's your answer," I said.

"One of them goes with me," Gordy said.

"Hold your water," Wes said. "They go with the girls."

"I can take care of myself," Lou snarled.

"Ariabod goes with April," I said.

"And Ajax?" Lou asked.

I hesitated because I knew she wouldn't like my answer. "He goes with you."

"I said I can take care of myself!" She said.

"I know you can, but you're the only who can do the sign language thing. Might as well take advantage of that." I smiled proudly. It was a plausible excuse, and that was a small part of the reason I wanted Ajax to go with her. The bigger part was I couldn't stand the thought of her getting hurt or... killed. Ajax would look out for her just as I'd asked him to do at the convenience store.

I grabbed my pack and was headed toward the Throwaways to tell them the plan when I heard a woof. Kimball tilted his head and studied me. I managed a smile. "You're with me."

He barked.

DAY 1.

NINE.

I wanted to get as far away from the basement as possible, so I went up to the fourth floor. Tall Boy was my Throwaway companion. I didn't pick him. He picked me. All the Throwaways made their own choice as to who they would pair up with. I didn't mind Tall Boy's company. I just wished he would talk more. It was a little unsettling to be with someone who only spoke when spoken to. I guess I was too used to Gordy spouting off about this and that nonstop.

We investigated the entire floor before settling on the Observatory as our base of operations. It was a two story room with a spiral staircase that led to a rooftop access. For some reason, I felt safe knowing that the room had an exit, even though that exit brought me face to face with gargoyle statues and the like. They were preferable to meeting up with the Flish.

I sat on a large chair and mulled over our current predicament. Away from the others, I felt like I could breathe again. The knot in my stomach was a distant memory. I was convinced that we made the right decision by splitting up. That's not to say I was happy being apart from the others. I had had my fill of being without them. All that time spent in the facility made me realize that they were more than just a group of people I had survived the end of the world with. They were my new family. Having lost my first family, I wasn't wild about the prospect of having to ditch Lou and the others.

Lou.

Her name bouncing around in my head was enough to make me insane with worry. I worried about the others, too, but not like I worried about Lou. I got a pain in my chest every time I imagined something terrible happening to her and, in this world, it was impossible not to think something horrible would happen to her.

I sighed and tried to push all thoughts of the others out of my head.

I heard Tall Boy sigh. I shook my head. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" he asked.

"That thing Mimic did with April."

"What did she do?"

I rolled my eyes. "The mimic thing. She basically became April."

"She did not," Tall Boy answered. "She became June."

I conceded his point. "Well, don't do that then."

He looked at me puzzled. "Of course not, June is already here."

I snickered. "Well, she's really just June-like, isn't she?"

He thought about my question. "I don't understand."

"June... she's real or she was real. Mimic just made herself look and sound like her."

He still looked confused. "I don't understand this *real'"

I struggled to find a good definition for him. "It means... actual. Something that really exists."

"Exists?"

"Something you can touch and feel."

He shrugged. "I can feel June."

I groaned out of frustration. "Yeah, but she wasn't meant to... be here."

"She's not here."

I shook my head and unintentionally raised my voice. "No, I don't mean here." I illustrated my point by waving my arms in a circle. "I mean here, in this world."

"What world does she belong in?"

I considered his question carefully. In trying to explain to him what *real' meant, I was becoming more and more confused about the meaning myself. The fact was this was the perfect world for June. "I'm not explaining this right because we're in a world that's not real right now."

He smiled faintly. "I think real is not so complicated. If a thing is, it is real."