As if nothing had just happened for hours and hours and hours on end, it had become morning. As I got my bearings, the only thing standing in my way was my own drowsiness. I was deep enough in an alleyway that I couldn’t even hear zombies. Even if I did, I crawled onto the balcony to which my bed was tied. No other visible, tangible entity, especially any entities that may or may not have been stalking me last night, were present as far as I could see. I cut the rope and let the bed fall. I’m not even going to bother explaining what clever knot I made that let my makeshift hammock function, by the way.

  I had a few figs as a morning snack. Then stretched. Yawned. Rubbed eyes. Broke into the closest apartment to wash up. Navigating to the rendezvous point, the sun was directly, specifically in my eyes. Not in anyone else’s eyes, as I saw no one else around. Even if I did, the sun was specifically in my eyes. And it made me sneeze. Then, it was hard to breathe for a minute or two from being congested. Regardless of the endless list of my plights, finding Sandytop Row was easy.

  It was so easy, in fact, that I was first. I’ve never even been here. I don’t even know what I’m doing. As I took in my surroundings, I saw Rebecca a little ways away. She stood out, where the majority of the scenery in the City has been washed out beiges, yellows, and only as a treat for blinded eyes: orange. Once I could properly see her, it appeared like her resting expression was a smug grin.

  “You’re late,” was my first shot once she stepped upon the platform that I lay claim to.

  “No, you’re late,” she said with more emphasis.

  “Wrong, actually, you’re late,” was how I held my ground.

  “Well, I’m just not late, and maybe you should be less late,” was her very serious argument.

  This went on, not for so long that it became stale but long enough that neither of us had exhausted anything original.

  “So, did you sleep?” I asked.

  “No.” She giggled.

  “You’re lying,” I responded.

  “Wow, I can’t believe you’d accuse me of lying. By the way, yes, I slept very well last night, thank you for asking. How did you sleep, King?” She circled me for a moment.

  I lied and pretended I slept fine. As I talked, she looked at herself in the reflection, fixing up her hair and checking for anything in her teeth. It was a brief moment as if she were afraid to look at herself for too long.

  Silence pervaded the next few moments. Within them, I dug through millions of different thoughts to try and think of what to say next. There was no possible way I could know what she was thinking of, with what warm grin she had on her face. Worse- I don’t know what she wanted from me, what I should say next if I should even say anything. Then, as if I spat out blood, I spat out the most basic question one could ask next.

  “So, today we’re meeting actual survivors? Like, organized and-” I stuttered through asking.

  Her eyes widened for a moment, I think to suggest confusion. “I think the closest group is ‘T’. I’m totally right on this and am not guesstimating things I can’t be sure of early in the morning. They probably still have thirty members, and…yeah! There’s a place a few blocks away that we’ll probably catch them. Even if we don’t, I’ve got a plan.” She gave a big smile and a shrug after her conclusive ‘yeah.’

  What’d I want with this information? Why did I even want to know or confirm what we had already discussed? It’s not like me, and the effects are clear- I struggled just to ask, and the other party didn’t give me much to work on going forward. Now that the domino has fallen, I guess I must ask what makes sense as the next question.

  “Your plan?” I ask. She didn’t hear me properly though, or tortured out a better question from me. Her torture device: smiling and staring at me until I was comprehendible.

  “Did you just make up the idea that you know what to do as a backup plan?” I asked.

  She burst into laughter and nearly collapsed from it. “Yes. Oh, oh, I got something though, I got something though. The Metro is basically right there. In fact, the place we’re going to had an entrance dug into it a few weeks ago.”

  “Are we just going to walk into a cave? Or, like, a work-in-progress tunnel?” Despite having a slow start, I felt I began to find energy again.

  “Worse. It’s a basement. Imagine, it’s just a house! I heard about it recently; ‘T’ group made the connection after trying not to die. They were in a mansion where they could hear the Metro pass by, and it saved their lives. Now, it’s a new stop survivors use.” She explained while making hand gestures to signify the importance of such an innovative accomplishment.

  Innovative or not, I’m surprised anything could be described as a mansion in a place like this. I didn’t expect I’d ever see one. My thoughts skipped forward a few times. Does she use the Metro often enough to navigate it? What does it even look like- is it guarded? An idea formed- is she unsure if she’s going to be alright if that survivor group isn’t present? As I thought, I had to rephrase the question in my mind a few times before something sounded right.

  “Would it matter if, um, ‘T’ group is there or not?” I ask in more of a hushed tone while getting closer to her.

  “Hmm…I’ll probably need to give you guidelines for the Metro if they’ve left already. We won’t have issues with entry, though; there’s no hard barriers for anything.” She explained.

  I didn’t actually look at her when she answered. As much as I tried, magnetizing to her was still difficult- possibly from drowsiness or something I couldn’t explain. Perspectives, views, and feelings kept pushing back and forth. Guidelines? I think I’d rather just rely on her. She knows this City- am I supposed to help her or something? Worse yet- is she going to let me go on my own at some point?

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  Disjointed and seemingly from an endless sludge churning through my mind, I ask: “Hey. Can you tell me what you know about the City?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. I couldn’t tell if I’d just attacked her too many times with disorienting questions or if she was sorting through what to say.

  She turned and walked backward. “Well, what do you know?”

  Did she just ask, ‘What did I want to know?’ No. What? Well, what haven’t we covered that I might know? Why does she want to know? Is she asking to trade, as if what she knows isn’t free? I know I can’t keep piling on questions back and forth, but I don’t get this.

  “I did see some sort of underground area, I think. That was where Phoebe’s base was,” I trailed off, explaining what locations I’d seen.

  In return, the inviting atmosphere she exuded before returned. She then explained the locations she’s seen, some in-depth, more or less than others, overall giving me more of a crystal clear lay of the land. I’m curious now. She was looking for a right and a wrong answer. Although I believe I answered correctly, what was the wrong response? I couldn’t help myself now; I began to pry.

  Now, with the irresistible urge to attack her psyche, I mentioned what I knew about the technology. Then, she let me know what I didn’t know, which surprisingly wasn’t much more. My next move was to aim for the culture & food. She almost retreaded ground again about baking, seemingly excited to talk about it.

  I had a different idea. “You’ve been here for a while. Do you know anything about why this zombie problem is occurring?” was the question that became infectious in my mind.

  She went quiet for a few minutes as we walked. I didn’t really get anything from finding out what exactly she didn’t want to talk about. It felt satisfying for a moment, but uncertainty began to overpower me with every step.

  “They began to appear a few months ago. They didn’t change all at once. Over time, though, they stopped resembling us. I felt like I was in danger whenever I was around them. Something was very wrong at a certain point,” She didn’t look at me while explaining.

  A perspective in me wanted to scream out how vague she was. Was she going to go into actual depth? Am I missing context that I should’ve already known? Or maybe…

  “How early did you notice it happening, compared to other people, in your opinion? What was the first zombie you saw?” I asked.

  “Let’s not go into it,” She answered immediately.

  Shut down. She left herself exposed, however. Like a cat noticing a laser pointer, what I believe are my instincts propelled me to dig into her to figure out what she was hiding. It could be life or death for me. I’m at her pinch point, though, and I know I can’t press any further by force. It’s not like what she’s hiding is in a box- it’s in a place that isn’t tangible. There has to be a key to get her to open up. She started my suspicion, after all.

  In a tone that I later realized was too aggressive, I responded: “I just think if I knew more about what was going on, I could last longer in this environment-”

  “Are you alright, King?” She tweeted.

  I held my mouth open a little. I think I blundered. She thinks there’s something wrong with me. For what it’s worth, she’s probably right. I don’t know what to do, how to move forward, or how to recover from here. Maybe I’ve messed this up, too. But just to confirm whether or not it’s over for me, I had a potential defense.

  “I guess I am a little tired. I hope you can forgive me-” I wasn’t where to go aside from what tears nearly welled in my eyes.

  “That’s totally fine, I get it. Let’s start over, then.” She answered.

  The rest of the walk was small talk. I was like a campfire that was just snuffed out. Although I was consuming what was around me before, I had to find the spark again to properly cook a good interaction, this time in a controlled manner. She directed the interaction more, which helped a lot. Zombies began appearing now that we entered a main road during daylight hours.

  On the note of zombies, they had a knack for targeting Rebecca. I counted at least a dozen times when she and I maneuvered carefully or extremely aggressively to push past them unharmed. I don’t know what it was that made her stand out, standing out and almost obfuscating my presence. Thankfully, the meetup point was up ahead.

  That really was a mansion. It was broad more so than tall. It looked like a cross between a sand castle and a spooky manor in the middle of the woods. The roof was flat as far as I could see. Some of the windows were boarded up and smashed in. The door looked impossible to move, being at least twice as tall as I was. It was made of a colorful, orangish wood and had a ton of geometric etchings all over the center. Snug between a few larger apartment buildings around it, the mansion looked like it was reclining on a throne the way the beige bricks slanted upwards a little.

  I wanted to ask if our point of contact would meet us outside, but I felt as if Rebecca would mention whether or not the situation was weird, normal, or whatever. So naturally, I followed her lead as we went inside.

  Concrete-adjacent floor. It almost felt like rubber if you froze and hardened it. Pillars of sandstone made an implicit circle around the foyer. An extremely wide staircase took up our view as we walked in, without much view of other entrances, hallways, or exits. As I took in the scenery, I did notice a fair share of doors: nearly behind the staircase, diagonal to it, and to the sides. If I had to guess, the ceiling was about three stories up. I knew this since Rebecca aimed for the stairs first. I guess if you want to make a defensive position in a fort, you go up.

  Rebecca reached the landing first, an atmospheric spot she appeared to be well acquainted with. Behind her was a large mural featuring a white, somewhat pale horse. A person holding a bow rode that horse, but their legs seemed somewhat obscured for some reason. It was hard to tell if the rider and the horse were actually one entity or not. She turned and smiled with her hands behind her back, possibly assuming I was looking more at her instead of digesting the vast array of visual concepts I was seeing executed.

  I joined her on the landing and turned around to see what her point of view was. Above the entrance was another mural. Although it was another rider on a black horse, something looked off about the horse. It was stockier and had horns. In some sense, it didn’t look like a horse. The person held some sort of balancing beam or scale. It looked like it was running straight ahead, towards us. It was as if the stockier horse was the white horse’s shadow.

  For some self-sabotaging reason, the visions I saw popped into my focus again. It really looked like her. And in the dream, I was informed in some sort of way that it was her without any doubt. Were either of them real? Were they premonitions? Were they descriptive of her true character, despite all evidence against being destructive? Were they a prescriptive recommendation for how I should connect with her? Instead, are they reflective of how I connect with her? What do they mean, if they mean anything at all? Could it all be nonsense, hallucinations from the most attentive aspects of my day? What would explain the first vision, then? All of these questions dug myself into my consciousness instead of keeping me mindful of her time and company with me.

  Deductively, there were only two things I could do. I could ignore the somewhat nonsensical warning signs plaguing my mind. I could test her instead to figure out whether or not I should be worried. Asking her any blunt questions is out of the question, and it wouldn’t make any sense for me, Ishmael, to do something so stupid. Asking whether or not I could trust her would be an easy out, though.

  I’m not even sure what to make of what I saw. Do people die when they touch her? Is that what I’m supposed to get from it? Rather, is it only a particular kind of creature like my host who has such a strange reaction? Is it symbolic? Was it even Rebecca? Who is she, anyway? She’s been so different from anyone else I’ve met; it’s weird.

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