Every place they stopped was empty, quiet, like an old western movie just before the big gunfight. It didn't help matters that Max thought there would be gun fire at the end of every one of those silent scenes. The zombies seemed to be attracted to the living in the usual ways people were attracted to each other; noise and sight, a light in the darkness was a very bad thing now. In addition they seemed to smell their prey and it was almost as if they could somehow sense them through walls too, no where seemed to be safe. Max had been getting good at recognizing where the zombies were, over the last two days the group had all grown to respect his ability to know when they were being watched, sometimes he even seemed to be able to home in on where the packs of zombies were at. Stewart called it his 'gut' instinct for survival and said she had known cops like that, who seemed to have a natural talent for knowing when trouble was coming or for finding people who might not want to be found.

Stewart and Tom drove the point car, Stewart's police cruiser, and stayed about fifty car lengths ahead of Max in the minivan, which also carried Amelia and the kids in it. Amelia switched off with Nick from time to time and kept all the kids in line. All of the group had seen enough horrors over the last two days of travel to remove any doubt that this was a full blown catastrophe. They were tentatively traveling to North Platte, where Tom's parents lived on a farm outside of town. After that Max wanted to move on to Iowa, where he had a friend with a large house and some land. They had not received any news from anyone so far. Their cell phones had stopped working two days ago, and they could get nothing but static on any televisions they tried or on the car radios.

Tom was proving to be a handy resource in an odd variety of ways. For instance he had come up with a pump and hose that operated off of the electric power of the vehicles, because electricity was spotty now.