He didn’t understand why she hadn’t killed him yet, especially since she was a self-proclaimed serial killer. In fact, it seemed to him as though she was protecting him, with her providing him with food — packages of strange meat that gave Kevin anxiety to eat but ate anyway as he would starve without them — and on the rare occasions they traveled through wide open spaces in the town, she would shield him from passersby. In those instances, despite how much he feared her, when he saw other inhabitants of the town he was grateful to have Mary by his side. The people of Galen all had the same dead look in their eyes and Kevin was certain they wouldn’t hesitate to lunge at him had he been alone. He knew he couldn’t make it without Mary.

The day after they had met in the alley Mary had taken him to the gas station where he said his mother was. When they got there however, to his shock, his mother was gone. Kevin was heartbroken and Mary allowed him to weep for a few minutes before she forced him to get up off his knees so they could hide back in the security of the alleys.

After this Kevin became even more unresponsive and depressed. In his heart he just wanted to give up but he knew that he couldn’t. Whenever he started to feel himself descend into despair again he reminded himself that his stepdad might still be alive and looking for him and this would give him the extra push he needed to keep going.

Even though he vowed mentally to not give up, physically he was on the brink. His body ached terribly from all the walking they did, and he had a constant headache due to the nauseating almond smell that permeated throughout the town.

On the seventh day of traveling Kevin and Mary were passing through a particularly crowded intersection — everyone walked on the sidewalks as well as the roads since there were never any cars passing through town — when a fight broke out among a group of people a few feet away from them. As their shouts got louder Mary grabbed Kevin’s arm and they sprinted into a nearby abandoned store with broken windows.

They had just hid behind a counter when bullets started flying outside. The sounds of shots being fired and screams scared Kevin so much that he started to laugh.

Mary looked at Kevin with a gleam in her eyes and smirked, amused. “Are ya goin’ inta hysterics?”

Her question just made him laugh harder. Am I going into hysterics? You’re the one who’s crazy! he thought. Eventually his laughter died down and he was just sitting there silently, tears quietly streaming down his face.

Soon enough it was quiet again outside and after a few more minutes Kevin and Mary left the store. There were now countless corpses littering the ground, dispersed across the street and sidewalk.

Kevin and Mary said nothing; Mary stepped over the bodies indifferently while Kevin trailed slightly behind her. He looked at one corpse and hesitated for a couple moments. He stared at the lifeless body of a woman with choppy blond hair and cold, green eyes before quietly stepping around her.

Kevin was aware that he was getting used to seeing dead bodies, that the sight was starting not to scare him anymore; he had seen so many corpses in the alleyways after all. Still though, his indifference alarmed him.

“The people who come here from outside the town never leave,” Mary suddenly said.

Kevin stared at her uncertainly. “Because they get killed?” he asked hesitantly, his heart pounding.

Mary paused. “Well that’s one thing that happens,” she finally said.