Connor's P.O.V.

Everything had been perfect. We had the best safe house, a large amount of supplies, and more than enough weapons and ammo. My family was mostly intact and had grown with the addition of my brother-in-law and my nephew. But all of that was gone now. I still don't know what happened, the zombies had never broken through our barriers before, but I guess since the number of people in our apartment complex kept growing the more the desire to break through grew. We used to have around hundred or more people with us, now we had dwindled down to twenty five including my family.

I may have lost my house, my collection of books and videogames, all the food and weapons but at least my family was still okay.

There are four in my family now. My older sister Lena, with her silvery blonde hair and willowy figure had married Brandon years earlier. They had finally had a child, and my nephew Steven was now almost two. Brandon was our leader, so when chaos descended upon us it was him that got as many of us out of it that he could. Then, he put the survivors in a school bus and put the family in his jeep and drove us out of the city.

I didn't agree with Brandon about this but he was taking us all the way to Toronto. When we finally asked him why Toronto of all places, he told us that he had friends there that would help us. It was also the first time I heard her name.

Evelyn.

I knew all about Steve, the man my brother-in-law named Steven after. The greatest zombie hunter alive. What I didn't know was that Steve didn't like Brandon, or anyone for that matter. But Steve liked Evelyn, so while Brandon didn't seem happy about the idea of going to Evelyn for help, if he wanted safety, supplies, weapons, protection and Steve he'd have to get to Evelyn.

But something was bugging me about this. Well it had been bugging me since we met Brandon. For one, Brandon just appeared in Montreal one day, he walked through a crowd of zombies, not a single one touching him, and saved my sister and I. He didn't talk about his life before Montreal, he didn't talk about the family he must have lost, or the friends he could possibly still have. He got bi-monthly deliveries from a source I didn't know that gave him some spray that he said was never enough. I found it weird that while others talked about what they lost to help grieve Brandon refused to say anything. But he had taught me all he knew about zombies and tracking, and then he married my sister so I couldn't fully distrust him. Only just a little bit.

We had been making good time, we were almost to Ottawa when the bus broke down. Brandon was looking at it while Lena fed Steven and I was sulking by our Jeep.

"Seriously Lena," I hissed. "Has he ever told you about Evelyn before this? I mean he's full of stories about Steve, but he fails to mention that Steve apparently only listens to Evelyn? Or that Steve and Evelyn are inseparable?"

Lena didn't even try to hide it as she rolled her eyes at me. "Stop trying to stir up trouble," she ordered.

"Well did he tell you about her?" I shot back. Lena pinned me with a withering glare but she stayed silent. Well that was a solid no. "You're his wife, Lena, how could you not know that he had this mysterious other woman?"

Okay, so maybe I was a little bit of a shit disturber.

Lena sighed. "Connor, she is hardly a mysterious woman. It's not like he's been running off to Toronto on the weekends to see her. He just never bothered to mention her, so she mustn't be that important," she told me.

I could tell that she was nervous about this. But she wasn't going to say it to me of course. At the bus, Brandon swore and slammed the hood down. He stalked over to where we were waiting and took Steven out of Lena's arms. Already the child was gurgling and sticking his little fingers into Brandon's curly locks.

"I can't fix this bus, not without the parts. And I can't afford to bring that large of a group into the city to get the replacement parts, if I can even find them. We'll have to camp here and hope I can get there and back in time," Brandon told us.

"Isn't there another option?" I asked. I could see the people on the bus staring out the window at us so I smiled to make it seem like Brandon was telling us good news.

Brandon nodded sharply. "Evelyn could bring me the parts, it wouldn't take her long to travel up here but I haven't heard from either her or Coop so she might not be aware of the situation. She might not even be coming," he said.

"She might not be coming? You said she'd come!" Lena cried.

"I don't know, Evelyn's never been predictable," Brandon said.

I wanted to argue with him, wanted to tell him that this was ridiculous. To have all this faith in one person, an unpredictable one at that, how could he do that? I was cut off by the sudden roaring of too many engines filling the air. Seconds later the Drifters came into view, their hunting jeeps and bikes circling our little band. The muscle bound men with too many tattoos and too little brain matter were hooting and hollering at us, jeering and shooting their weapons up into the air.

The people on the bus shut the doors and hunkered down behind the seats, Brandon ushered us into his jeep, ensuring that we locked the doors as if that would help us if they wanted in. Lena tried to soothe the now crying Steven and both of us just sat there watching out the windows. I didn't want to leave Brandon alone to face this, but I knew from experience that he would be perfectly fine.

The vehicles all came to a halt and one man stepped down. Max was a brute, trying to make up for his stupidity with a lot of violence and a lot of cologne. He was tiny, even smaller than me and I was only 5'10, Brandon being 6'2 had always towered over him, even if he was as skinny as a stick. Max was common in every aspect, brown hair, brown eyes, beige skin, there was literally nothing remarkable about him.

"Brandon!" he cried, opening his arms wide as if he meant to pull Brandon into an embrace. "You're leaving Quebec without saying good-bye?"

It was a sarcastic comment, Brandon and Max had never seen eye to eye. He probably hated that Brandon was taking all these victims away from him, not when he could have them working for him or sold to other collectors who could use them for their nefarious purposes.

"Didn't think you'd care if I was gone. Who knew you were such a romantic?" Brandon shot back, making Max frown. That was Brandon for you, he always had a snappy come-back.

Max chuckled lowly. "You're on my road now Brandon," he reminded him. "And I can make sure that you, your family and your friends don't get off of it alive."

Brandon put a hand into his vest, it was one of those ugly Kevlar like jackets. Lena hated it but Brandon never took it off, said it had sentimental value, that with it he was basically invincible. He pulled out a simple white business card and handed it to Max.

"Yes, yes we are," he said. "Call Orion, tell him I'm trading in."

Max looked at the card as if it were a gift from God and then back to Brandon like he was a complete idiot, but he moved back to his jeep and began to radio someone. The conversation took ten minutes and Brandon just stood there waiting, the silence weighing heavy on all of us, except Brandon by the looks of it. He just stood there with a smug smile on his face.

When Max return he smiled smugly back at Brandon. "Orion says you can go," and I literally sighed all the tension out of my body, knowing I'd ask Brandon about that magical card and how exactly he got it. "But the bus stays here."

Brandon was silent a moment and then pushed past Max and sat down in Max's car and began talking into the radio. That conversation took more than twenty minutes and then Brandon got out of the drifter car with an angry scowl on his face and stalked back to the truck. He said nothing to us as he got in, and remained silent as he started the jeep and drove off.

I could hear the screams of our friends, the people we had saved in the bus, begging us to come back as the Drifters surrounded them but as we got farther away they faded out. I was numb to this, in complete shock that Brandon could just up and abandon all of those people. Not after fighting so hard to save their lives not a few days before.

"Wait... so... are we going back?" I asked breaking the tense silence.

"No," Brandon snapped.

"But... they were our friends... we saved them... why couldn't you save them again?" I cried.

"They outnumbered us, we have no weapons, I couldn't get the bus started again. They were slowing us down. Orion was only going to approve us leaving, I couldn't talk him into the bus too. There was nothing I could have done," he snapped back.

Now you've got to understand, Brandon was kind of like a peaceful giant, he never really got angry he was always very laid back and relaxed but I was starting to notice that he was too tense, and getting really angry. I wondered if this had something to do with Evelyn.

"But..."

"Connor!" Brandon suddenly thundered. "You're going to have to grow up and understand that sometimes you just can't save everyone."

We all sat in silence as I thought about this, except for Steven who had been startled awake and was now wailing. As if I didn't know that not everyone could be saved. It wasn't like I was constantly bringing people back or looking for survivors that was always Brandon. So what was his problem now?

"Could Evelyn have saved them?"

"Yes, she probably could have," Brandon told me. He caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and sort of smirked at me. Like he could tell that I thought Evelyn was better than him now and that he knew where that particular train of thought could lead me. "The question is, would she have?"

I could tell by the way he asked me that the answer was probably no. At the beginning of all this when Coop, some man in Toronto, some old friend, had been contacted because Evelyn's frequency had changed; the very first thing Coop had said when Brandon had asked him for help was: "God, you know she hates people."

I didn't want to meet Evelyn. I didn't even want to meet Steve. I wanted to go home and rebuild. Maybe Brandon was right, I needed to grow up.