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fool’s errand.”
    “What happens if you don’t get blood?”
    Coburn shrugged. “I start to dry up like a dead bug. Though what happens now that I have her up in my noggin remains to be seen.”
    Remember what you did in New York , Kayla said.
    An image flashed in his head—an image he did not put there. Him. On the roof. Scenting for blood. How did she know that?
    I have your whole head to wander around. It’s all up here. Stuff you remember. Stuff you... don’t.
    That last part chilled him a little, and he wasn’t sure why.
    Still. She had it right.
    “The roof,” he said. “I’ve got to go to the roof.”
     
     
    H E UNDERSTOOD NOW. Why zombies were up here. People came here to wait out the horror. This house, like many others, was set-up to offer a roof-top patio: chairs, tables, outlets, little BBQ grills. One zombie hadn’t realized that all his buddies had bailed on him and was still milling around, a sharp-angled pinstripe suit hanging loose on his desiccated, sun-dried body.
    Gil knocked him off the roof. Crashing into the throng of massing zombies below. They accepted him as one of their own.
    They were only two stories up, but Coburn could see the rooftops and, in the distance, the city on the hill. The tall buildings, the spired churches, the city of soft-colors and sea-bleached houses. The bay was a grim blue line. Behind them the skeleton of the Golden Gate rose, a crossing of bloody metal bones.
    Blood .
    Coburn sniffed the air. The perfume of decay rose from below, again mingling with the smell of the sea—salt and fish and sand. Decay, then, from all sides, too, just like in New York. Rotters this way and that way and all ways, because that’s how the world was, now: home to the decomposing dregs of ex-humanity.
    But no life.
    No one alive nearby but them.
    Weakness sucked the energy from his muscles, the life from his bones.
    “Nothing,” he said to Gil. “Not a goddamn thing. Maybe we press on. Try to find the ferry. If there are living people there, I can...” What? came Kayla’s voice. Make nice with them by making one of them a quick snack? I’m sure they won’t think that’s the least bit rude.
    She was right.
    Gil said something in response, but Coburn couldn’t hear the old man—Kayla spoke again. More truth from the ghost girl.
    You’re sniffing for the wrong thing. Try again. Something’s out there.
    No. Nothing. He still couldn’t—
    Wait. There.
    Not blood. But sweat. Body odor. The human musk—a sign of life.
    He didn’t understand how she’d smelled it and he hadn’t.
    You did smell it, you just didn’t realize it yet. I’m you and you’re me, dude.
    “I smell someone,” Coburn said, interrupting whatever Gil was saying.
    Gil stared at him like he didn’t believe it.
    “I’ve got to hunt. I’ve got to hunt now.” Before the scent was lost on the bay-born wind.
    “How you plan to do that with all those rotters out there?”
    “I go roof to roof. Only five feet between them.”
    Gil shook his head. “It’s all short blocks. You’ll hit a street before long.”
    “Then I hit a street. By then I’ll be ahead of the throng. They’re slow. Stupid. I’ll be fine.” He didn’t necessarily believe it, but this wasn’t the time to tell Gil that.
    “What about me?”
    “Hunker down. The zombies’ll come after me; my blood makes them a little crazy.” Coburn cringed as he pushed his guts back in his body, then closed his jacket over the wound and zipped it up snug. “When they’re gone? Bug the fuck out of here. Find the lab. And I’ll find you.”
    “I can’t do this—”
    Coburn didn’t let the old man finish.
    No time to waste. He bolted forward in a clumsy gallop and leaped from this roof to the next—soon as he hit, the vampire tucked his legs and rolled, barely managing to come back up on his feet.
    But he did. Because hunger afforded him little choice.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    The Rat Man
     
    H E HAD HIM, now.
    Coburn knew he was on the