The inner door of the tunnel closed behind the transport before the outer door opened, preventing any accidental entry of the undead into the city should they be nearby. None were in the area, and the transport drove up the ramp into the ruined world beyond the barrier.

"Councilman Kirby has been nothing but supportive through this entire incident," Anna reminded. "Why would he turn against us now?"

"He didn't really," Wayne denied. "He's looking out for the best interests of his city, protecting it from the disease that nearly wiped the world clean of humanity."

"Kirby asked if we were coming out," Anna countered.

"When was the last time a bureaucrat said what they actually meant?" Wayne asked. "Of course he asked if we were coming out. He wanted to know if we were willing to stay inside by our own choice or if he'd have to impose quarantine. We're still carriers of the disease, and as long as that is the case, he can't take the chance of it spreading to his people."

"I suppose not," Anna agreed, leaning back against the headrest with a sigh. "Since we've escaped, what will he do now?"

"If I were him, I'd be assembling a strike team to hunt us down," Wayne suggested.

"Hunt us down?" Anna repeated. She stared at Wayne. "How are you so calm about this?"

"I'm not, but I've been thinking about it and planning for it a lot longer than you have," Wayne admitted. He kept his focus on the broken roadway of the abandoned city, trying to avoid any obstructions capable of halting their escape in a spectacular crash. He steered around pieces of broken buildings littering their path as well as burned out vehicles, relics of the outbreak and the chaos following afterwards.

"I take it you didn't warn me before now because you didn't want Kirby to overhear any of it and try to stop the escape," Anna assumed.

"Right," Wayne confirmed. "After we first tested the regeneration solution, I started thinking about what I would do if I were in Kirby's position. He has to protect the city, no matter how he feels about the two of us. Consider the possibilities of our situation from his perspective. If we're telling the truth about being revived, the future of the world and its people is assured and everyone can live healthy and safe. However if we're smart zombies trying to spread a plague and dispose of the last of humanity, what would happen if we made all the undead in the world smart?"

"The city would fall," Anna concluded. "Can you imagine zombies with guns?"

"What about shovels?" Wayne suggested. "They could simply tunnel under the barrier."

"Yeah," Anna sighed. "He has to try and kill us before we create a threat capable of consuming his city and everyone in it. The question is, how do we survive what he's going to throw at us without having to fight our own people? I don't want to harm them."

"I've been thinking about it since before I started piecing this rig back together," Wayne told her. He turned the wheel and started down a different street. While driving deeper into the lifeless city, Wayne pressed on the horn, the noise attracting the attention of the undead.

"Why are you calling them?" Anna asked as she noticed in the side mirrors the host of zombies starting to trail behind the transport.

"We need them," Wayne clarified. "If a large enough concentration of undead is around us, our pursuers won't have enough bullets to get through and won't wish to sacrifice themselves to get us. They'll have no choice but to leave."

"You're assuming the strike team doesn't suspect us of being smart zombies and is willing to give their lives to prevent us from bringing about the true end of the world," Anna pointed out.

"Even if they try, unless they have a bomb with a sufficient blast radius, they won't get through," Wayne stated. "The undead will turn them, and we'll revive them in due time. Besides, I don't think the Council will tell them fully about us as the idea of smart zombies would start a mass panic. They'll most likely make up some story about us being exposed to something dangerous in our experiments, and having gone crazy, we're a threat to ourselves and others and should be brought back for our own protection. If retrieval is impossible, they should kill us rather than let us suffer the horror of being eaten alive by the undead."

"They'd think they were doing us a kindness," Anna said with a humorless smile.

"Hey," Wayne said as he noticed a building in the distance and pointed it out. "That's what we need."

Veering out of the way of an overturned semi-truck and trailer in the middle of the intersection, Wayne drove down a ramp into an underground parking garage. He honked the horn a few more times, and the echoing noise drew in the staggering hordes of the undead. They stumbled down the ramp and began spilling out into all available space.

"I hope the undead aren't attracted to us now that we're revived," Wayne mentioned.

"You're telling me this now?" Anna almost shouted.

"Since we didn't have much of a choice in our departure, I didn't want to worry you," Wayne defended. "This will have to be the test."

"Great," Anna fumed.

"Here, take this," Wayne instructed while handing Anna a pair of large bags he pulled out from the back seat. He took a pair of bags for himself as well. "These will be needed for the next part of the plan."

"Which is what?" Anna questioned.

"If I survive this, you'll see," he promised. "If I don't, it doesn't really matter."

Wayne stepped out first and walked directly up to one of the leading zombies, and despite the staggering corpse looking him over intently, it made no move of a violent nature. Wayne sighed in relief and returned to Anna.

"It's alright," he promised. "We'll need to make some noise as we've got to maintain our number of guards."

Anna got out of the transport and headed with Wayne toward the stairs, occasionally kicking the walls or shouting to cause an echo and keep the undead following as the zombies weren't attracted to them for any other reason.

The two living humans used their flashlights to climb the darkened stairwell to the second floor, propping open the door on the first floor to allow in the zombies filing in to the building through the lobby. When Wayne and Anna reached the second floor, they stopped and looked out the window to see an armored personnel carrier rolling down the street toward them.