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Inside the SUV, Angie was screaming. Perhaps she’d been screaming all along. Alice hadn’t really noticed.

Three undead shambled toward them. Alice wanted to shoot them in the head, but she was only able to get herself to pull out her weapon. She couldn’t make herself aim it at the undead.

Instead, she aimed it at Jisun.

For her part, Jisun didn’t hesitate. She shot Alice in the shoulder. This time, there was pain, albeit briefly, as she felt the sizzling heat of the bullet rip through her shoulder, flesh and muscle being torn apart by the projectile.

Before Alice could retaliate, a fourth undead she hadn’t noticed leapt onto Jisun’s back.

Angie’s screams got louder.

Jisun flipped the undead over her shoulder and shot it in the head with her Glock, but by then the damage was done—the creature had bitten into her shoulder.

Somehow, Alice’s programming recognized that, and she turned, holstering her weapon and opening the door to the SUV.

“Alice, don’t make me shoot you again,” Jisun said.

But when Alice turned back around, Jisun was too busy fighting off the other three undead to make good on her threat.

Again, Alice tried to force herself to help rather than hurt her friend.

Again, she failed.

Instead, she got into the car, ignored the shards of broken glass on the seat, and started the SUV up.

“Alice, what’s going on?” Angie asked, her screams having subsided.

She put the SUV into gear and drove out onto Third Street, working her way through various local streets until she found herself at the entrance for I-65.

For hours, she drove, first on 65 north to Gary, then east on I-94, not stopping until the gas tank was almost empty. When that happened, just outside Albion on 94, she pulled into an abandoned Enco gas station. In fact, the entire town of Albion appeared to be abandoned. It didn’t take long for Alice to gimmick the pump to give her fuel, and then she got right back into the SUV.

She felt no pain in her shoulder. The bullet had gone clean through and had now completely healed. Only some leftover bloodstains and matching holes in her shirt gave any indication that she’d ever been shot.

Angie could have run when they stopped, but she was a smart kid. Where would she go? They were in a small town in Michigan, heading who knew where, and she was just a kid with no visible means of support. She was immune to the undead, it was true—they simply ignored her the way they generally ignored Alice—but she also knew that she was better off in an SUV with Alice than in the middle of Michigan by herself, even if Alice was acting strange.

Eventually, they made their way to Detroit. Amazingly, given its reputation, it was one of the few big cities that hadn’t been overrun by rioting and looting and roving packs of undead.

However, there was a checkpoint at Exit 210, with police cars and large black SUVs blocking all but one lane, and several cops and Umbrella Corporation security officers blocking that lane.

Unsurprisingly, the Umbrella people were better armed and armored than the Detroit city cops.

Alice fully expected her hijacked body to plow right through the cordon, but her right foot moved to the SUV’s brake.

A city cop and an Umbrella thug, whose nameplates respectively read PLEXICO and FURNARI—stood outside the driver’s-side window. Alice obligingly lowered the window with the push of a button.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Plexico started, “but this—”

Furnari interrupted. “Let her through.” Alice finally placed the name; Furnari was one of the people she’d trained back in the old days when she was in Security Division. She recalled Furnari as being something of an ass kisser.

Plexico whirled around. “Say what? Look, we’re lettin’ you assholes help out as a courtesy, but I am not lettin’ some bitch into town on your fucking say-so.”

Furnari seemed unimpressed. “She’s with Security Division, and the girl in the back is an important test subject. Her presence at our facility is vital to our attempts to find a cure for the T-virus.”

“You gotta