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The next few days, for lack of a batter term, sucked ass. Although the summer was waning into autumn, the roof was exposed, and the small rocks and black tar paper underneath soaked up heat, making it miserably hot during the day. After two days the small propane-powered cook stove we intended to save only for emergencies (funny how quick one of those happened) ran out of gas, and by the third day we were rationing water.

Everything we packed was based around us constantly moving; wood for fires, streams and lakes for water, so we neglected the idea that we might have to hole up somewhere and have a cache of supplies for a few days. We had plenty of food, but ironically most of it was dehydrated, and we dare not use our precious drinking water, because we'd die of thirst before hunger.

So to put things lightly, tensions were high by the time the sun started to set, and our guests below had not abated. We had been more cautious when peeking over the side, lest they see one of us, encouraging them to stay, but they seemed to know we were there whether they saw us or not. Rachel had suggested drawing them into the fire escape and using her bow to take them down one by one, but that posed more than a few challenges.

Firstly, how accurate was she, and how many bolts could she safely keep climbing down and recovering before she got bitten? Secondly, as the bodies piled up, King pointed out, we would lose our killzone and have to venture back into the building, and things had not worked so well in our first attempt at that. So Rachel and I sat against the back of the large air conditioning unit, which at least blocked part of the sun, making the heat a bit more tolerable, while King did something 'constructive', as he put it.

More accurately it was destructive, and more specifically it was the wooden sign atop the roof reading 'McCall's Auto Repair' that he was systematically destroying with a hatchet. 'We'll at least have some firewood' he had said when I asked him what he was doing, what we were actually going to do with said wood was anyone's guess. And Rachel and I were too tired to argue anything at this point.

I hadn't told King about what Rachel had said to me, but I was making a genuine attempt to be kinder towards King, albeit only in the small ways I was able to at the moment. Rachel at first acted as though the conversation never happened, but she showed her kindness, empathy, whatever you could call it in small ways, like now. Before she would have skulked in her own corner of the roof, now she sat leaning against me in the glaring late-day sun, as we listened to the constant thwock! thwock! thwock! of the hatchet against the weathered wood.

The sound was undoubtedly drawing more walkers towards us or at least keeping the ones already here from leaving, and it was also giving me a cluster headache. Rachel, however seemed at peace. I wondered if she thought we were going to die here, but I dare not ask her, not after what she told me the other morning.

"There!" King said triumphantly with one last swing of the hatchet. In a few hours he had dismantled the sign and cut the wood into nice little bundles. He began collecting them, and placing them at the corner of the roof closest to the street below us, making trip after trip until he had a large pile built up. Concerned the exertion and lack of food and water might be making him a bit...unstable, I got up with a groan to check on him.

"So King, you know, great job and all, but what exactly are we going to do with a huge pile of wood? We have no food to cook, and unless the weather changes overnight we don't exactly need a fire for warmth or anything, so what good does this do us?" I asked.

He chuckled, ruffled the fur on the top of my head annoyingly, and strode away from me. As I flattened my fur back down, I began to question him a little more angrily, until he spoke up first.

"This," he said, patting the side of a rusty old tank at the far end of the roof, "is lube. And not the kind you're used to Cash," he said beaming. I thought he had definitely gone crazy now, and I looked over at Rachel, who had stood up from her spot by the air conditioner to walk over next to me.

"In the National Guard, we had to use mechanic's lube, grease to put it simply, for all kinds of heavy machinery and parts. You don't grease parts, they create friction, they break. So you spend a lot of time lubing all kinds of parts on vehicles," he said, still leaving out the part where this was going to help us.

"Experience with lube, what a surprise coming from you," piped in Rachel. If my throat wasn't like sandpaper from sitting in the heat all day I would have laughed, he set her up for an easy one.

King however, continued on like he hadn't heard a word. "Now usually these tanks are on the ground floor for convenience, why it's on the roof I don't know. What I do know is that it is flammable, extremely flammable. See this sticker?" he said, pointing to a red triangle with a fire symbol and a large '4' on it, "this is a rating the government gives to all chemicals in commercial use. This grease has a flammability rating of four, which is as high as the scale goes. Essentially it takes nothing to set this stuff on fire."

"I still don't see how burning the building down helps us King, why don't you take a break and have some water, you've been at it for hours?" I pleaded.

"Ahhh," he said smiling even wider, "you got the idea, but not the execution. We_are_ going to burn down a building, but not this one."

"You said the roamers are attracted to just about anything, right?" he looked at Rachel for approval, "Noise, obviously, but movement, smell, light?"

The coyote gave a small nod in reply.

"So I'm thinking we take the top off this tank when it gets cooler tonight, because the heat from the sun alone could light the whole thing up when we open it, dip that wood over there in the grease, and burn down that building across the street to draw the walkers away."

He waited for a reply from us both, he had obviously thought this out, but when he received only silence as a reply, he soldiered on undeterred.

"We light that building up, it at least distracts enough of them for us to take a chance at escaping." Still receiving no answer, his tone became a bit more desperate, "Listen this is all I've got, so unless you have a better idea we can go back to sitting around and waiting to die of exposure." With that he crossed his arms sternly, glaring at us both, but mostly at me I think, because he expected me to at least entertain his plan.

I had zero confidence this was going to accomplish anything so I began carefully, trying to figure out how to let him down softly, "King it's not that it's not a good idea..."

"It's brilliant," said the coyote next to me, earning a shocked glance from both the lion and myself. I thought she would be the harshest critic, but instead she looked excited, even her tail wagged a bit.

"We light that place up, draw the walkers to the fire, and run as fast we can in the other direction. I think it's genius," she said, and as if to take the shock to another level, she walked up to the lion and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, continuing past him to inspect the tank for herself.

So we spent the next few hours waiting for the temperature to cool, then set to work dipping the cut wood into the grease, then tying them into bundles. We made as many as we could, because I wasn't sure if we could actually set a building on fire this way. If that failed we could at least toss the lit bundles as distractions as we ran for it, we were short on time and options.

As soon as it got dark we had everything packed and ready to make a break. Rachel cleared the fire escape of the remaining walkers, which created a nice barricade of corpses, preventing the ones still in the building from coming out onto the the landing below us. As she climbed back up the ladder, bloody bolts retrieved, she reported no roamers in the hallway at least.

As soon as the coyote got to the roof we got our packs set by the fire escape ladder, and King picked up the first bundle of grease-soaked wood, "Now?" he asked, getting only apprehensive stares in response. And with a shrug of the shoulders, he snapped the lighter, and lit the end of the bundle.

King was quite correct about the flammability of the grease; although the flame started low and slow, it quickly built in intensity, and his first throw was rushed and harried, missing the building altogether. Leaning over the side however, we saw a very encouraging sign. The walkers immediately turned their attention towards the flame, and began massing towards it, a couple even catching fire as they packed around the bundles of burning wood.

"Excellent," said Rachel with a toothy smile, picking up the next bundle. She readied her throw before lighting hers, and although she missed the building as well, she got much closer to the antique shop we were attempting to immolate.

King waved me over, putting the lighter in my paw. "Light me up when I pull back, this one is making it, I can feel it," he said with confidence. As he reared his arm back I struck the wheel of the lighter and lit the bundle, and watched in slow motion as the hunk of wood sailed across the crowd of frenzied walkers and right through the open window of the shop.

King and I leaned over the edge of the building, waiting to see flames flicker to life, but Rachel snapped us back to the task at hand. "Even if that does start the place on fire we need it to go up hard and fast to keep them occupied," she said, jerking her thumb towards the hoard below.

So we tossed bundle after bundle at the building, some making in through the front door, some through broken windows, some missing altogether. I managed to toss one on the awning overhanging the old wooden porch, and as we reached our last few bundles, the unmistakable orange glow, the sharp crackle of flame, and the harsh smell of smoke could be seen inside the shop. The candle had been lit.

Deciding to keep the remaining handful of bundles as distractions for the roamers that would undoubtedly follow us out from the building, we waited for the building to go up, and we did not have to wait long. Filled with old wood, hell the building made of old wood, the building started to burn hard and fast, and I could already feel the heat from the flames as they licked my face from across the block.

Luckily the roamers took to it like moths. They slowly turned and lurched and began massing towards the light the flames created, the dancing shadows of a hundred walking corpses reflected here and there off the street. And without a word Rachel slung on her pack and stepped to the ladder.

"It's now or never," she said, apprehension evident in her voice, "light and toss the leftover ones to distract the stragglers, try to outrun them and stay quiet as best you can. We need to get on the highway and out of here though, so the second we get start to get bogged down, shoot and run," she advised, racking a shell into her shotgun as if to drive home the point.

So one by one we quietly made our way down to the landing, pausing as we saw walkers still ambling in the alleyway behind the shop. Rachel lit one of her bundles and tossed it in the opposite direction we wanted to go, waiting until they began to shuffle towards the flaming light, then slid down the ladder and onto the street.

I only paused for a second, with no time for words I just kissed King, maybe for the last time, before I too clambered down the ladder onto the pavement below. Seconds later the lion dropped next to us with a quiet thud, and we stopped to take stock of the surroundings. We hid behind a dumspter to observe the horde as they marched right into the burning building, pushing and squeezing ever closer to the flames. Observing this for just a few seconds, Rachel seemed satisfied, because she cinched the straps tight on her pack, and motioned for us to get ready.

"Let's go," she said simply, and like convicts finally freed from prison we began our breakneck sprint towards either salvation or destruction.

Rounding the corner of the shop a few roamers spotted us right away and broke from the pack to chase us down, but we put distance between them quickly. In a dead sprint down the street we passed the sign for the highway on ramp, just a quarter mile away. I thought we might make it until I saw what was waiting in front of us.

Behind the jammed cars there must have been another fifty walkers; they probably heard the noises days ago but couldn't get past the maze of smashed cars, so there they stood as a singular, throbbing wall. We were trapped again, this time with nowhere to go.

I fought the urge to freeze, I thought of King, my reason to keep fighting, of all the things the old Cash wouldn't have done, and I just acted on instinct for once.

"Light all the bundles you have and toss them as far from the ramp as you can," I said, "we stay close, nobody gets left behind, and we shoot our way through the rest. There's a gap in the cars on the right, we can make it through if we keep moving fast, just dont't stop running," I pleaded, "don't stop running."

And like old soldiers Rachel and King followed orders, lighting their bundles as quickly as they could, hurling them towards the grove of maple trees adjacent to on ramp. Not many, but enough of the group began to shift towards the burning wood that our gap stayed open. Guns drawn, we made our sprint towards the opening.

When we reached the first set of cars Rachel broke the relative silence with a deafening blast from her shotgun, completely obliterating the head of a walker that jumped out at her. Impaled on a jagged hunk of a rusty car bumper it couldn't move, and things sped up from there.

More roamers broke from the group as they heard the noise. I took three shots to drop another that crept from behind the drivers side door of faded blue sedan, proud that I actually hit it in the head this time. Worry set in when I heard King start to rapidly fire his assault rifle behind me.

"Less shooting, more running!" he shouted at us, and we clambered over the hood of an old pickup, finally reaching the ramp itself. Moving up it was more difficult, as we had to zig and zag to find gaps between vehicles, and take out walkers in our way as they appeared haphazardly here and there. I heard King continue to fire behind us, heard an empty magazine clatter to the pavement as he slapped a fresh one in. The fact that he didn't take the time to pick it up worried me, we needed those clips to reload later, and the roamers must be close if he didn't retrieve it. I began to look back to see behind us, but the lion must have felt my hesitation, because he just shoved me hard in the shoulder.

"Don't look back, just get to the highway!" he screamed. So at breakneck speed I kept climbing over cars as things devolved into chaos. Shotgun shells went off in front of me, rifle fire behind me, I shot my own pistol until it was empty then shouldered my rifle. It was bolt action and not of any use in this run and gun escape, but that one shot might be enough.

We finally hit the top of the ramp, and Rachel wheeled around to cover us as we climbed over the final car. The two rounds she fired from her pistol must have been on target, because I heard a heavy weight fall behind me, a sharp thud as flesh and bone hit against metal and asphalt. But only a few feet behind me. Over the car I dared to take my first glance back, and got all the incentive I needed to run as far as I had to run that night.

Hundreds of walkers streamed through the gaps in the cars and up the ramp, knocking one another over, spilling over and between cars, a landslide of death incarnate. The closest not ten feet from the car we had just passed. With breakneck pace we began to sprint down the highway, dodging between cars, trying to stay close as best we could. We ran for what seemed like an hour straight until Rachel caught her pack on the bumper of a large box truck and couldn't get free.

She sat grunting and tugging at the strap until King helped her slide it strap from between the rusty metal bumper of a box truck, I peered back behind us. Under the moonlight the undead horde was still following diligently, but they now had a good half mile to go to reach us, but we dare not stop.

We ran all night, the sweat drenching our fur until we were cold and clammy and wet. Rachel finally paused next to a large roadsign, quickly climbing up the rotting wood, leaning against the peeling painted metal to gaze behind us.

"I can see them," she said, putting a new bolt of fear through me, "but they have to be a couple miles behind now, all I can make out is a big mass a long ways away, and these have a range of a couple miles," she said, tapping the binoculars she was holding up to her eyes.

"We keep moving," said King definitively, "until we can't move anymore. If we can cross back and forth over the median it'll slow them down as they follow our scent, maybe move through the woods a little to slow them down even more, but stay close to the road."

He got nods of agreement from Rachel and I, so that's what we did for the next few hours. We moved as the sun came up, as it rose straight above us at high noon, and then began to sink again as late afternoon set in. It wasn't until we heard the sounds of the first crickets that we realized we had been going for almost 24 hours straight, and that we were trudging along much like the walkers we were hoping to outrun.

"We need to rest or we're going to drop dead in the road," Rachel finally admitted. "There's a semi up ahead, big one with a sleeper cab, we can at least eat and get some sleep."

So we walked the last bit of our great escape towards a gleaming red semi-truck, chrome sparkling and gleaming in the dying sun, a talisman out of place on this road of rust and decay. I thanked whatever God that was watching over us that we had made it this far in one piece. No one was bitten, we seemed to have outrun the horde, at least for now, and above all, we found a safe place to sleep.

Climbing into the cab we were surprised to find no dead or undead inside, just a strong cigarette odor that overwhelmed me at first, but I was too tired to care. After some half-hearted argument Rachel finally took the bed in the back, and King and I sat in the captain's chairs in the front.

I now felt every blister, cut, bruise, ache and pain that the past few days had given me as the adrenaline finally ebbed away for good, but part of my was alive, giddy with happiness that we had made it out alive. It had actually worked, despite all my doubts, all my skepticism, it had all fucking worked.

"You did really good King," I said to the lion sitting next to me in the driver's seat, "hell we all did really good." But the only response I got was the soft snoring of a coyote behind me, and the much louder snoring of the lion next to me. So, taking my cue, I made sure to lock the doors of the cab, before I too, leaned back into the chair and let a deep sleep envelope me.