It was a man. The first thing that I noticed about him was his beard, as well as his piercing, wolfish eyes similar to Cleo’s. The moment he saw Brie limp in Neil’s arms, he lowered his shotgun.

He stepped back and in a gruff voice he said, “Come in.”

He helped drag Brie in through the doors. The house seemed empty enough. Candle flames flickered throughout the large open space we were in, light dancing off the floors and walls.

“Put her on the couch,” he ordered.

Neill gently laid her down on the couch, he himself fell to the ground. After an eternity of silence, the man spoke up. “Now what the hell…” he trailed off.

I tried my best to explain ourselves. Where we came from, where we were going, how we managed to find ourselves out here. Cleo tried helping to feel in the gaps, but our story still seemed to be incomprehensible. He stared at us in disbelief, nodding along the best he could.

“Okay…” was the only thing he could say when our extremely disorganized story came to an end. He looked down, thinking to himself.

“Looks like you all are way too injured to walk any further. For tonight only, the four of you can stay here. And if what you say is true about your car being wrecked, then I can see about driving you to where you need to go. Not all the way, no way I can do that - but maybe up to Lincoln.”

“You can?” I asked a little too enthusiastically. I coughed a little.“I don’t know what to say…”

“Just get some rest, alright?” he said.

We nodded, agreeing instantly.

“There’s a spare room we can bring the kid,” he nodded over to Brie.

Neill, with the help of the guy, lifted her up. But before they went down the hall, Neil turned to me.

“Oh, by the way,” he said while taking something off his back, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to save much from the wreck. But, I managed to find this.”

He lifted a bag up to me. Bobbie’s bag. I took it from him, smiling and saying, “Thank you.”

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I held the bag in my hand, turning back around to the couch. “Guess I’ll be sleeping here again,” I thought to myself. Only Cleo sat down on it. “Or on the floor…”

She sat in silence, only looking down. The best thing my mind could think of was sit down next to her.

“Are you alright?” I asked. The moment I said those words I realized how dumb of a question that was. Obviously, it was going to be no.

“I… I don’t know,” she replied.

I nodded. “I understand,” was all that I could say.

“I lost it. My final memory of Vick,” she whispered.

“Hm?” I slowly replied.

She held up her hand, revealing the ring now missing. “It must have slipped off or something. Somewhere on the road, or in the car.”

“Is he... “ the question I was about to ask died off, as I began to realize that was probally another dumb question.

“Dead? Yeah. He is.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

She sighed deeply. “This. All this. It all came and it went, ya know? Hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent people died in just one night, and the next day - those animals that killed them disappeared without a trace. Vick… He was like the others. Just another body in the already giant pile of other corpses. When they first came, he told me to run. To find a place to hide and get there quickly. He sacrificed his life to keep those monsters back. He was injured, see? His knee was out of commision, nearly ripped to shreds by a ghoul. God, I wish I had just stayed, or better yet dragged him along with me. But I wasn’t thinking. I just ran and ran and ran, not looking back.”

“My God,” I stammered.

“Yeah…” she replied, shaking her head. “That monster back there. At the car. When I looked into its eyes, I swear I saw his eyes too, looking right back at me.”

We fell to silence yet again.

“Three months ago,” I stated, trying to break the silence, “before any of this was even a thought in my mind, I was with my brother and his own family. Everything seemed normal, ya know? But then, it happened…”

I told her the whole story from start to finish, including every single detail. “...and in the end, I knew I had failed to save them. The next morning, I wanted to believe this was all just some insane nightmare. The piles of corpses said otherwise. That lanter I had, it was the last thing I actually had to remind me of them. And now it’s gone forever.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About everything.”

“Don’t be. There’s nothing I can do about it now. If I could, everyone would still be alive.”

To my surprise, Cleo wiped some hair from her face. Then, she rested her head on my shoulder, closing her eyes.