“I heard yelling. What happened?” Blue slowed down when he came into the light of the entrance, carrying his own garbage bag full of stuff, and clicked off his flashlight.

“I saved Remy’s life,” Lazlo beamed, and I rolled my eyes and started walking out. “Oh, come on. I totally did.”

“He was gonna die. I just had to run a little bit longer,” I reasoned and carefully stepped through the shattered front doors into the sun, which seemed obscene after the darkness of the casino. “Ripley! Kitty, kitty!”

“You could just say ‘thank you.’” Lazlo stood next to me, but I refused to look at him.

“I could,” I admitted but said nothing more. “Ripley! Come on, girl! Kitty, kitty!”

“Maybe she’s not coming,” Harlow said. She walked over to the SUV and opened the door. “She is a wild animal.”

Blue opened the back of the SUV, setting his trash bag in with our stuff, and he left it open before he got in the driver’s seat. Even Lazlo got in the SUV, but I waited outside, calling Ripley.

I was just about to give up when I heard her roar, and the clanking of her chain. She flew right past me, jumping into the back, and I had to suppress a smile. I shut the door behind her and went around to get inside.

“I don’t know why it’s so hard for you to admit that I saved your life,” Lazlo said almost the instant I got into the passenger seat. “It’s not shameful. I’m sure you’ve saved people’s lives before, and they’ve saved yours. It’s part of life.”

“It’s not hard for me to admit anything,” I said.

I still had the bag of stuff from the casino, and I dug through it. All that running had left me in need of sustenance. I pulled out a jar of cherries and opened it.

“What do you have there?” Lazlo asked.

“Cherries.” I popped one in my mouth, and then held out the jar for anyone to take one. Harlow reached in and grabbed one, and so did Lazlo, but Blue passed because he was driving. “What did you get?”

“Mostly just bottled water, and a couple bottles of vodka,” Blue said. “How about you?”

“Cherries, olives, water,” I shrugged. “It wasn’t that great, but we can always use the water.”

“Check it out.” Lazlo leaned forward between the seats. He plucked a perfectly tied cherry stem from his mouth and held it out for me. “I tied that with my tongue. You know what that means?” He waggled his eyebrows at me, I’m assuming in an attempt to be seductive.

“That you’re an idiot?”

“Whatever. I’m awesome,” Lazlo leaned back in his seat, looking mildly defeated.

“What does it mean?” Harlow asked, giving him a perplexed look.

“How about some more driving music?” Blue suggested.

Before anyone could disagree, he turned up the stereo, causing “You Give Love a Bad name” to come blasting out of the speakers. I settled back into the seat, preferring Bon Jovi to conversation.

We sped past what little remained of a booming human society. It was still a strange thing to get accustomed to. Knowing that most of the human race was dead or infected. I lost my appetite and handed Harlow the rest of the jar of cherries.

I tried to get some sleep as the city scenery gave way to more vacant desert, and the sun moved across the car. Even with the safety of being in a moving vehicle, I couldn’t sleep.

We stopped at a gas station just before the sun set. Getting gas was a hit or a miss. As quickly as the pandemic hit, some stations had instantly run out of gas, never to be refilled, while others had lost all their customers before they had a chance to run out.

We were lucky this time, and Lazlo went inside to steal beef jerky while Blue filled the SUV up.

Blue got in the passenger seat, and I took a turn driving while he rested. Eventually, everyone managed to fall asleep, which seemed pretty amazing to me considering how loud Ripley snored. Harlow twitched a lot in her sleep, jerking and occasionally moaning. I thought about waking her, but I decided she needed the rest more than she needed to escape her nightmares.

I’d been driving for quite a while when I saw something that made me think I was hallucinating, so I slowed to a stop. I sat there, blinking at it.

“What’s going on?” Blue asked groggily and sat up straighter. The car stopping had woken him. “What happened?”

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the road in front of us.

“It… it looks like a tiger.” Blue sounded just as confused and uncertain as I was. “What the hell is going on? We’re in Nevada, not the Sahara. Where are all these animals coming from?”

“I don’t know,” I shook my head.

I drove around the tiger, giving it a wide berth. A little ways down the road, at the mouth of a long gravel driveway, another tiger stood. Half a mile down the driveway, I saw some kind of ranch.

And almost as shocking as the tigers, all the windows were lit up. With glowing yellow light. Like they had electricity and inhabitants.

“What do you think?” I looked over at Blue.

“It wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” Blue shrugged.

Like every other bad decision in my life, I went against my gut feeling, and turned onto the driveway.

– 7 –

Vehicles were parked around the ranch, mostly large trucks, including a semi with a short trailer. The main house was long and dark brown with a porch in the front. It would’ve looked normal, with its rocking chairs and a shot gun propped up next to the door, if it wasn’t for the massive white tiger sprawled out on the porch.

Shadows moved behind the window, peering around the curtain to investigate our approaching headlights. A bright spotlight lit up on the porch when I stopped the SUV next to the house.

Ripley rumbled with a low growl. Two tigers had gathered closer to us. They circled the SUV slowly and deliberately.

“What’s going on?” Harlow asked, instantly alert and afraid. She and Lazlo woke up at the sound of Ripley’s growl. “Where are we?”

“Should we let this cat out?” Lazlo leaned forward in his seat, so he was closer to me and further away from the lion. “She looks like she’s about to bite someone’s head off.”

“No. I don’t know.” I didn’t know what the hell was going on here, and I had no idea how dangerous the tigers might be, either to us or Ripley. “Maybe we should go.” I turned to Blue