The morning sunshine rises to greet them and the sound of gulls chirping fills the air. Jack looks down at the remnants of their fire and kicks at the ashes to see that no embers remain. Wolf is standing nearby, observing a lone mountain that’s tall and slender, like a column. There’s a limestone gazebo atop it, but it’s engulfed in flames, making the mountain look like a torch or a crude lighthouse.

  Jack follows his gaze and walks over to stand next to him. “What’s that about?” Jack asks.

  Wolf shrugs. “Beats me. You think it’s supposed to burn like that?”

  “We’ll just have to check with Sarah on that one. It doesn’t look natural, though.”

  The two turn back to see Sarah sitting cross-legged with her weapon lying across her lap. There’s a large portal open ahead of her and a pair of grenades sitting by her side. She’s looking at the portal as if it were a big screen television, watching a top-down view of the Persians meeting the Spartans. She climbs to her feet and resets her scabbard while continuing to observe.

  “Hey, Sarah,” Jack calls.

  Sarah turns a glare at him like he’s a rude person who just spoke during the movie. He immediately raises his hands in surrender and says nothing else. She shakes her head in response. “I’m waiting for something,” she says, focused.

  All but one of the Spartans huddle together in a dome of shields. The loner raises his spear and points to an individual across from him. Sarah reaches up, touches her handgrip and opens a portal. She bends back down and grabs the grenades, pulling each pin out while holding the safety levers down with her thumbs. She looks back through the portal and waits.

  ‘May you live forever,’ she hears from beyond the portal. Sarah looks at one of the green orbs in her hand, then shakes it like a magic eight-ball. She raises both thumbs, releasing the safety levers, and reads the eight-ball’s wisdom. “Outlook not so good,” she says, then looks down at the hunchback figure beyond the portal, opening her hands and allowing the green orbs to roll away from her grasp and pass through.

  Sarah turns to walk away as a brief commotion commences. She reaches up to her weapon as the grenades detonate and closes the portal. “What’s up?” she asks, looking at the two leery stares.

  Jack thumbs over his shoulder, and Sarah follows the gesture towards the mountain top inferno. “Know anything about that?” Jack asks.

  “Yeah,” she replies, nodding. “While you two were finishing up your beauty sleep, I was passing out notices of termination.”

  Jack raises an eyebrow.

  “Oh, it’s fine. They were all traitors, and I was just delivering their severance package. But that’s done now, so we can go.” Sarah turns, opens another portal, and walks through.

  Jack looks over to Wolf, who just shrugs with upturned palms. He follows through the portal, stepping out onto a road that gently winds through the countryside. Shallow hills surround them, and Jack studies their surroundings. “Haven’t we been here before?” he asks, looking ahead to Sarah.

  Sarah is standing in the road and looking towards the horizon as several plumes of smoke rise above it. The sounds of gunfire can be heard in the distance, but Jack continues to look around for the inevitable zombie portals. He and Wolf move up to stand on each side of her and look towards the horizon. “Are we going to check it out?” Jack asks.

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  Sarah’s jaw clenches and she nods.

  “You never know. This could be unrelated.”

  Sarah opens a portal. “I wish I shared your optimism,” she says, shaking her head.

  They pass through a few portals and emerge on the roof of an old courthouse to observe the makings of a zombie apocalypse. The building is square and two stories of brick with a clock tower extending out of the roof’s center. It’s set away from the surrounding downtown area, and Sarah walks around the roof to assess the damage.

  “Sarah,” Jack begins, “if we stay, we’re just going to bring more of them here.”

  Sarah nods. She removes the scabbard, opens a portal with a light-blue blade and sets the weapon within. Squirrel’s eyes brighten as Sarah leans into her lab. “Hold that thought,” Sarah says, raising a finger towards her friend.

  Jack and Wolf follow her as she walks over to a corner of the roof. Vehicles are driven into storefronts, onto sidewalks, into poles, into each other, and several other places not designated for parking. Several buildings are on fire along the streets that stretch away from the courthouse. Some of the undead are hunched over, feasting on the newly dead, while others meander along the streets and abandoned properties.

  “This is pointless,” Sarah says, shaking her head. “Why do this? Is it intended to upset me?”

  Jack studies Sarah as she continues to talk to herself.

  Wolf makes his way around the building, looking down streets as the sound of gunfire continues. Soldiers are moving up some streets but are still several blocks away from. A Bradley Fighting Vehicle is moving with them, and its machine gun comes alive occasionally to cover the soldiers as they clear buildings.

  “Does she have a reason to attack this place?” Jack asks.

  Sarah comes out of her muttering and looks over at him. “This is my hometown. I grew up here... but why attack it? I’m never here, so it accomplishes nothing. If she’s trying to rattle me and get me to make mistakes, it’s a really shitty attempt.”

  “Where we came back into this world, I recognized that place. We’ve been there before. If you’re going back to the same places repeatedly, maybe she’s discovered the pattern and using it to limit where you return. Where were the other places we came out at?”

  Sarah crosses her arms. “They were still around here, just in different directions. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to figure out that I kept returning to our hometown. But we’re not coming back at set times, so there’s no way for her to know when and where we’ll come out.”

  Jack’s expression hardens as he looks back out towards the city. “And you’re certain that she wouldn’t attack this place just to get to you?”

  “Yeah, all she wants is my sword, with my dead or alive status being irrelevant.” Sarah gestures to their surroundings with an upturned palm. “This doesn’t help her accomplish that. It’s just pointless destruction.”

  “Then *we* did this,” Jack replies.

  “What?”

  Jack nods. “Every time we’ve returned, we’ve come out of portals around this town. We always escaped but left some of the undead to wander afterwards. We surrounded the town with them, then they made their way here.”

  “*No*,” Sarah says, pointing at Jack’s face. “Don’t you put that shit on me. We only ever left a handful of them alive.” She gestures out towards their surroundings. “These people have been watching zombie movies and talking about zombie apocalypses longer than I’ve been alive. If those few zombies did all of this, then those fuckers deserved to die. I’m not resp---” Sarah pauses, pressing her lips into a line and forcefully exhaling through her nose.

  “I wasn’t inferring we were responsible, just that we allowed it.”

  A whopping sound intensifies as a military helicopter travels along the adjacent street. It sprays bullets along the roadway, then fires a pair of incendiary rockets. They strike the center of an intersection, erupting and sending strands of fire across a larger group of undead.

  A loudspeaker plays a set of instructions for survivors. ‘Please approach soldiers with your hands in the air so that you may be identified and escorted to safety.’ It requests calm among the flame ridden chaos.

  Sarah looks back out over the city, shakes her head, then turns to head back towards the portal. “We’ll leave this to the military. I’m sure they can handle it, so let’s just get out of here.”