The year is 2018 and a genetically-modified version of the rabies virus, nicknamed Roanoke has been weaponized and is air-born.  Zip is a sixteen year old foster kid,  which is hard enough without the apocalypse.  She has long been haunted by the vision quest she took years before, that foretold sorrow and a path trod alone.  She had believed these things to have already taken place with the passing of her grandmother and her placement into the system, but now as she travels up the mountain pass she isn't so sure.   She just wants to make it home to the Lakota reservation , but in between her and her goal are the Colorado Rockies and the longest winter of her life.   

    Every summer since Rubens' mother and his step father got married had been spent in a bunker in the Rockies, practicing survival skills for "doomsday".  For the first time in his nineteen years, he feels lucky that his stepfather was nuts.  Thanks to his parents' unique hobbies and questionable sanity  he and his younger sister Ellie  have had good luck up to this point, but winter is fast approaching and with it will come new friends and new foes.

    Zip woke suddenly as thunder roared in the distance, sending echoes reverberating through the mountain pass. She knew it was but a harbinger to the storm to come. All she wanted to do was cocoon herself in her sleeping bag and shut herself away from reality for a few more minutes; however, she knew that a few minutes could all too easily turn into a few hours, which in turn could cause her to lose half a day if not more. 

    As she rolled up her sleeping bag and shoved it into her meager pack, she took a look at her surroundings. She had been sleeping under a browning evergreen. The fungus had claimed the entire north facing side of the trunk and the exposed roots. She could hear the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker drilling above her. She hoped for its sake that the bird wasn't picking this particular tree as its new nesting place. The tree was huge, and had at one time been full of life but like the fall, its time was coming to an end.

    She shivered and attempted to shake off the morning dew. It was getting colder. It was only October, but the days were already getting much shorter. The color of the trees were starting to mimic the colors of the dying day, marking the start of what Zip was sure would be a long winter. She had intended to be on the other side of the state by now, but thanks to a bad fall and various backtracking, she was behind schedule.

    The mountains of Colorado were not exactly an ideal place to spend the winter. She was running low on her food supply, which hadn't been all that plentiful to begin with.  

    Zip didn't really know what she'd been expecting. Sure she had been camping as a child. And growing up on the Lakota Reservation she had spent more time communing with nature than with people. This trek, however, was in a league of its own.

    Her ancestors had done it. This kind of thing was in her blood. Or at least that's what she kept telling herself. Zip had read somewhere that animals could lose their wild instinct if they were bred in captivity long enough. She wondered absentmindedly if this was true for humans too. It wasn't a comforting thought. Simply surviving was nothing new to her. Zip had spent her fair share of time on the streets in between foster homes. However, there was a vast ocean of differences between surviving on the streets and surviving on a mountain side.

    There had been a "zombie" scare several years' back. She had laughed. Some idiot high on a homemade bath salt concoction had gone crazy and bitten someone, apparently foaming at the mouth and everything.

    Zip had never bought into any of the constant barrages of "end of the world" scares. When she was younger there had been the swine flu, then the bird flu. With her luck, she had contracted both, but like the vast majority of people who contracted these dangerous illnesses pulled through unscathed. So when people started getting sick this time around, she thought is was more of the same end of the world hysteria that came around every other year.

    At first people were just that, sick and nothing more, nothing less. Then came the reports of mass hysteria. Not the religious or political crap that was found on TV. People were or at least seemed to be legitimately losing their minds. Everything that had followed was a bit of a blur. It had all gone south so very fast.

    She recalled the words domestic terrorism being thrown around. Followed closely by phrases like stay indoors, which turned into quarantine. Which she could only assume didn't end well. She was lucky, she got out before the hammer fell; a single phone call saved her and her foster family. Her older brother uttering the words she had waited and wanted to hear for so long; "You need to get home."

    Zip's brother Joseph was eight years her senior. He, as luck would have it, was doing an internship with the CDC (Center for Disease Control), and because of that was privy to certain vital information. She remembered the phone call like it had occurred hours instead of weeks prior.

    "This thing that's going around, it's' nothing the world has seen before Zip."

    "What do you mean? You guys are going to find a cure, right?"

    "That's the thing. We had one or thought we did, but it keeps changing. There's more than one strand of this thing going around. But it all acts the same, so without blood testing there is no way of knowing what strand someone has, and by the time the testing gets back, the patient is usually neurological and there is nothing more that can be done."

    "Does this thing, this virus, have a name?"

    "Not officially, but we've been calling it Roanoke."

    "Like the colony, the one that disappeared? I can't decide if that's more clever or terrifying."

    "Yeah well, rightly so. When someone comes down with it, it looks a lot like a cold, at least during stage one. Lots of coughing and low-grade fevers. The rate at which a person accelerates from stage one to stage two depends on the individual, though.

    Stage two is when the paranoia sets in. The coughing stops, which is both good and bad. This is good because the patient is at least temporarily not contagious, but at the same time it's bad because the patient will believe that he has recovered and overextend himself.

    It's like when granddad would talk about the calm before the storm. How everything gets quiet before the twister hits, but yet the hair on the back of your neck still stands up because in your gut you know that something is off? That's stage two. The body floods itself with endorphins, so at this point people feel great. During stage two you get really strong.

    I mean you'd think these infected people were being pumped full of steroids. This is extremely bad because remember how I mentioned that stage two is when the paranoia sets in? So you've got a bunch of people acting like they're hyped up on drugs that are super paranoid. What could possibly go wrong? I saw a middle-aged woman attempt to strangle a pit bull with her bare hands. And the scrawny-ass woman won the fight."

    "I…I saw something like that today. I mean, sort of like that, not…not exactly. This little girl, about eight or nine maybe - all done up with a friggin pink bow piled on top of a mountain of curls. A real little Shirley Temple wannabe. Anyway, she picks up this hairy mutt that's easily half her size by the tail and swings it around her head like she's some kind of cowgirl with a lariat. Then she tosses the dog into an oncoming cars' windshield. She was screaming about some kind of demon, while yelling at the dog, telling it to save her from the dragon.

    "That sounds like stage three. At that point, there isn't much that can be done to help someone. Stage three is when the hallucinations start. Wait, how close were you to this girl?"

    "Down the sidewalk a ways."

    "How far down the sidewalk? An arms length, a yard, three, four yards?"

    "More like ten yards, and don't worry, I didn't stick around after. I turned my butt around and went home."

    "Good, anyways stage three is when people really start going crazy. This is when Roanoke starts going neurological. At this point, I don't know how to describe it really. Do you remember the wolf that wandered into the middle of town on the rez? You were what, ten or eleven?"

    "I was ten."

    "Oh yeah, that's right. You had just gotten done with your Vision Quest. You thought the wolf was there for you. I guess some of the drugs were still in your system eh?"

    "Whatever. So what's your point?"

    "Do you remember how it was acting? It was running after everything that moved and attacking some things that weren't. It was stumbling around, running from shadows."

    "I remember! So what is the point of this trip down memory lane? I thought the wolf had been hit in the head with something."

    "Zip, it hadn't been hit in the head. It was rabid."

    "Oh. How do you know? I mean how are you so sure?"

    "We sent its' head off to a lab."

    "You killed it? Granddad said you all just herded it out of town."

    "Kid, we figured you had seen enough death recently, and you were still sorting through your vision."

    "I'm still sorting through my vision."

    "You know that stuff's not real, right? It was all the drugs' doing, not the spirits."

    "Whatever, so stage three the symptoms mimic rabies, what happens after that?"

    "Stage three doesn't mimic rabies. It is rabies. Or at least sort of. It's rabies on an Olympic level of steroids. What I mean is, is that Roanoke started off as a mutated form of the old virus. You see this kind of mutation in flu season. Every year there is a new strand but the old strands stick around too."

    "So what? Just avoid getting bitten and I'll be good, right?"

    "I wish. If it were spreading like that, we wouldn't be having this kind of problem. This isn't some nineties' zombie flick. Crap doesn't hit the fan that fast."

    "But it's' hitting the fan now isn't it?"

    "Don't be a smart-ass Zip, this is serious. It's in the water supply, or at least in three different brands of bottled water."

    "What? How?"

    "We don't know for sure. There is a member of an environmental extremist group that has come forward, but we don't even know how they got hold of something this potent or how they got enough of it to cause this big of a problem. It's all very mind-boggling. They had to have had help, in a big way. The guy that came forward, he keeps crying and shouting about how they didn't know what they were getting into. I don't really buy the story we are being fed Zip. I'm going to try and get hold of the experimental vaccines and start home."

    "Ok."

    "Just get yourself home kiddo, I'll be waiting for you there. I put some money in your savings account. Do you still have the card?"

    "Yeah."

    "Good. Get some canisters and get as much gas and water as you can. Try and get hold of a phone. I doubt it will do much good, but call me when you can. You need be gone by tonight if possible. I don't know for sure when quarantines will start, but I know that they're coming. The word is being thrown around, something about necessary evil."

    "How am I going to get a car, Jo?"

    "I don't know, steal one. You've been arrested for joy riding, haven't you? Don't pretend you don't know how to hot-wire one. Your delinquent status is finally coming in handy."

    "I don't think being fifteen and wanting to go home makes me a delinquent."

    "Well you're getting to now aren't you? Ever heard the phrase be careful what you wish for?"

    "Bug off jackass."

    "Hey, I'm only kidding. But seriously, do whatever you have to do to get home. And do me a favor? I know you have a fondness for strays, but don't pick up any on the road home, okay?"

    "Fine."

    "And stay off the main roads as much as possible. Cut through the mountain passes, they will be less crowded. But make sure you're out before winter hits, or you'll freeze to death up there."

    "Well, I'll do my best not to die. I guess I need to find a good map. Any idea on where to get one of those?"

    "Try a gas station. Look I've got to go, they've just brought some more blood in for testing. Listen, I don't know what all is going to happen with this, but just get home and I'll meet you there ok? But be quick about it."

    "Ok, see you soon."

    In the end, she hadn't been able to get hold of a cell phone. The foster family she was staying with had given her the older of the two four-door Jeeps that they owned to get home.

    They had wanted her to go with them, but she had denied and gone her own way. Those people had been kind to her in spite of her record and all her emotional baggage. She wasn't the praying type, but she hoped whatever higher power was looking down on them saw fit to keep that family safe.  She had ditched the car when she ran out of gas. She intended to make the rest of the journey on foot. But in between her and her destination were the Colorado Rockies.

       As she slung her pack over her shoulder, Zip almost jumped at the sound of the thunder that seemed to be inching closer. Zip could still hear the birds singing so she surmised that the rain was still a ways off. It would probably be pouring before the days end, though. Which meant she had to make a decision and fast.

    The smart thing to do would be to stay where she was and attempt to make some sort of shelter. Zip knew that would be the sensible decision, but she didn't think that she could really afford to lose another day. Her second option was to get moving and either outrun the storm, which was highly unlikely, or hope she found some kind of natural shelter. A cave perhaps; they dotted the landscape of the mountainside, surely she would be able to find one before the rain hit.

    Option two, she decided. When the birds stopped singing, she would stop and try and find shelter. One of the things her father had taught her when she was young was that if the mountain was ever quite a storm was coming. Silence on the trail was a dangerous thing, a warning, not to be taken lightly.

    The trail she was following up the mountain was not much more than an old game trail. The kind that bare feet might have trod upon centuries before under many different circumstances. Following the trail had its pros and cons. The first outweighed the latter. Following the trail meant she wasn't going to get lost, but also meant she might come face to face with the predators that still used the trail for its original purpose.

    The predators being mostly wolves and the occasional bear and mountain lion, none of the three were forced to be trifled with. She knew from experience, though, that they were usually more afraid of her than she was of them. Unless she walked into their territory or they were hungry, then all bets were off.

    Every now and then the back of her neck would tingle, and her blood would run cold. She felt as though something was watching her. She caught only glimpses of shadows out of the corners of her vision. Whatever it was that was following her, if there really was anything, she assumed it was only doing so out of curiosity instead of need. If this animal meant her any harm, it would have taken action her by now, she thought. The animal had had more than plenty of opportunities to do so and hadn't made a move.

    Zip shook the thought of being stalked from her mind as she trudged up the trail. Such thoughts didn't do her any good and she needed to focus on moving forward and not on what might or might not be following behind her.

    For the first few days after she ditched the car, she had jumped at the slightest movement on the trail. The constant rustling of leaves in the wind had unnerved her. Now it took a bit more than that to shake her.

    In some ways she feared she had become too comfortable in her surroundings. The mountains were dangerous as it was without throwing caution to the wind. She was taking more and more risks as of late. Some, mind you, were necessary, but some were foolhardy and stupid. She was still feeling regret for the latest one. To her credit, Zip had honestly believed she could keep her balance on the log that had been acting as a bridge between the opposite sides of the river.

    She had fallen hard into the rapids below. She was lucky that all she had lost was half the contents of her pack, instead of losing life or limb. All she had gained besides a healthy helping of humility was a few bruised ribs and a swollen ankle.

    The ankle was doing fine and the swelling had gone down days prior, but her ribs still ached and her side was an ugly shade of purple. The ankle had slowed her down, but not to the extent that the ribs were. Zip learned very quickly that when it was hard to breath it was also hard to do much of anything. It was a problem she would have to work through.

    Her stomach growled, almost in harmony with the thunder that was causing the sky above her to shake with anticipation.  She knew she didn't have time to stop and pick berries or look for nuts at the moment. She had about ten remaining protein bars, but she wanted to save those for emergencies.

    The smell of rain woke her from her thoughts of food. She stopped walking and listened. The birds had stopped singing and the silence of the woods that surrounded her filled her gut with dread. She should have stayed put and built a shelter. She had overestimated the distance between her and the storm.

    Zip needed to find shelter soon before the cold damp got the chance to seep into her bones. As a child, she had fallen victim to many fears. She was scared of everything that moved under the night's blanket. She feared the snakes that darted across the path and the mouse that had found its way into the cabinet. She had never feared the rain, though. When it came, her grandmother would sing of the raindrop soldiers coming to take all their worries away.

    She started moving faster, scanning the area as she went. There was a gap in the tree line, and unsure of what she was hoping to find, she began moving toward it. As she moved toward the opening in the tree line, it began to look less like a mere gap in the forest and more like an old dirt road.

    Odd, she mused. Who would put a road up here, she wondered briefly before quickening her pace further. Where there were roads there were sometimes people, and where there were people there would be shelter. That's what she was hoping. As she drew closer she realized that there was indeed a small road.

    She reached it just as the rain began to fall, drenching her within moments.

    "Well, shit," She muttered under her breath, as she wrapped her arms around herself in a failed attempt to keep in body heat. She looked up at the sky and shook her head. She should have known better. All that was left to do was keep moving. As she wandered along the makeshift road she noticed vaguely that it was getting narrower. There was something blocking the road up a ways. She couldn't quite make out what it was because of all of the rain.

    She was done hurrying, either what was blocking the road was a shelter or it wasn't. As she grew closer to whatever was blocking the road, it began to take shape. It looked like a bus. No, not a bus, she thought, an RV. For the first time in weeks she actually smiled, and that smile reached from ear to ear. She stumbled up to the broken down RV and started fumbling with the handle. It was unlocked. She was surprised to say the least but didn't dwell on it as she opened the door and staggered inside.

    The inside of the RV was much bigger than she imagined. Cabinets lined the left wall and below them was a modest counter with a sink in the middle. The other side had a small table that protruded from the wall, along with a small sofa. On the opposite end of the RV was a door that was just ajar enough to reveal what she hoped was a bed.

    She should have been excited when she pulled back the door and saw the blankets and pillows, but she was far too exhausted for any emotion besides relief. She wasted no time in stripping off her wet clothing and discarding them on the floor. She pulled back the covers and crawled in without any hesitance. For the first time in weeks, she was warm. Her stomach was still growling, but her exhaustion won out, she would worry about finding food in the morning.

    She could hear the rain falling outside in waves; it was music that she hadn't enjoyed in a long time. She couldn't help but wonder if it hadn't started to rain if she would have found the RV. What she thought was going to damn her ended up helping her. Maybe she was lucky after all. As she began to close her eyes the memory of her grandmothers' song lulled her into sleep.

        Within the haze of her dream, green forests shifted to barren dessert, with the drastically different landscapes flashing back and forth. Consistently through both landscapes two animals moved. A snow white owl was circling and stalking a lone she-wolf that was moving forward, either running toward water that it could never reach or away from the rain that stayed on its heels. The owl would dip down, at times almost grazing the nape of the she-wolf’s neck before darting away and disappearing in a cloud of smoke only to reappear behind she wolf’s tail.  
    Near the end the owl did not reappear, instead it disappeared into a cloud of red smoke.  The smoke twisted and turned as it expanded, turning from crimson to a deep purple before becoming black. What a took shape from this darkness was a woman in white buckskin.  
    Her hair was as dark as the smoke she was born from, and the war paint that framed her eyes was red.  Not like blood, instead like the tail end of a comet that fades to yellow but is gone before anyone can decide on a description. When she sat down, the rest of the landscape disappeared. Suddenly there was no water, no rain.  There was only the woman, the wolf, and the void. The wolf stopped running and simply approached her casually, like they were old friends separated by time and space, finally reunited again. They looked into each other’s eyes, and in that moment eternities could have moved past without them.  Slowly the wolf nodded and climbed into the women’s’ waiting arms. 
The dream shifted to a memory and she saw the elders sitting around the fire. Her grandmother was carrying a sullen look that seemed to sink into her soul.  

    “Had you been born a Navajo; taken this journey among them, they would smile.  In their legends and in their lives the owl is a foretelling of joy to come. But for the Lakota it is an omen of sorrow. The owls’ wings are silent, and his vision pristine, you will not see this sorrow coming oh child of mine. The wolf will be your guide. Listen to the lessons it teaches. The wolf is guided by loyalty and seeks family. Heed these words of wisdom that I speak. A lone wolf can and will survive, but it will never live.” 
    The resounding clang of a screen door woke Zip from her slumber. Her breath was ragged and a cold sweat covered her. She could hear the creaking of the floor that lay beyond the door. For a moment she thought she was back home, but her confusion didn’t last. Reality came crashing down as an unknown stranger came barreling through the RVs’ bedroom door.  
    She froze, her head still hazing from a night of unfruitful sleep. It took her a moment to form thoughts.  There was a person in the doorway. His eyes were wide, so wide it wouldn’t have surprised her if they’d suddenly decided to jump out of their sockets. 
What was wrong with him hadn’t he ever seen a girl before? He was blushing and not to subtly. He brought a hand up to cover his eyes suddenly, causing her to wonder what he had to be embarrassed about. Then she looked down and remembered with great horror, that she had stripped before bed. This stranger, whoever he was, was getting an eyeful. 
    “GET OUT! GET OUT!” She screamed as she threw everything within her arms reach at the strangers face.  
    “Stop. Shit, okay, okay. I’m leaving. Jesus stop throwing… hey, I was looking for that book.” He said as he backed out of the door hastily, stumbling over his feet as he went.
    “Sorry!” 
    She sat in the bed for a moment, content to listen to the sounds what she assumed was the boy, man, homo-sapien-ish looking person rummaging around the small RV. Zip took a deep breath in an attempt to calm the drumming sound in her ears. For all she knew this guy could be an ax-wielding serial killer. Highly unlikely she knew, but with her luck he probably was. She slid out of bed and threw her clothes on none to gracefully. This is going to be fun, she thought as she opened the door.  
    He was bent over, digging through the cabinet below the sink. He must have heard her enter the room because his head shot up. He bumped it, hard on the top of the cabinet and swore. 
    He was tall, that was the first thing she noticed.  He had to have at least a good foot on her. He sported a dark head of hair. She couldn’t decide if it was black or just an extremely dark brown. However, there was no question in the color of his eyes. They were so very blue if they weren’t as bright as they were they probably wouldn’t have been distinguishable from behind the mop of unruly hair that sat atop them. 

    She had always prided herself on being able to read peoples’ faces. So it wasn’t hard for her to see past the façade of embarrassment that he was putting on, to find the amusement that he was trying desperately to hide. She doubted seriously if she was the first half naked girl he’d seen. 
    “Who the Hell are you?” 
    “Seeing as you're in my RV shouldn’t I be the one asking questions?” 
    “I didn’t break in if that’s what you are insinuating. The door was open.”
 For the second time that day the boy through his hands up in defense. “No need to get so defensive, it was just a question. Anyway, my name is Ruben. And you?”  
    “Aren’t the introductions supposed to come before you see the girl naked? Or is that just in the movies?”
    “Sorry about that, I didn’t know anyone was here.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Your name?”
    “Oh…um, Zip.” 
He raised an eyebrow as if he was going to call bullshit.
    "Its short for Zippora."
“Like Moses’s wife, the Midianite? Religious parental units?”
“Something like that.”  Her family wasn’t exactly religious. Extremely spiritual, but not religious. They were more story oriented than anything else. She didn’t learn the bible from sitting in a pink frilly dress in Sunday school. She learned by sitting and listening around a campfire.  
    “Where are you headed?”
    “What makes you think I’m headed anywhere.”

    “Generally speaking people don’t just wind up in the middle of a mountain trail because they felt like taking a walk during the freaking apocalypse, zombie outbreak, whatever you want to call it. So either you’re headed somewhere or you’re extremely bad with directions.”

    She frowned, this guy  liked to talk. She thought to herself. He was probably the kind who was in love with his own voice. Definitely a rabid sports fan she decided.

    “I’ve been stuck with the same five people for the past two months. I’ve heard all their sob stories, adventures and one night stand glory days five times over.  It would be a relief to hear a new one for a change.  I’m not trying to be rude, this is curiosity.”

    “You fit five people in here?  That must get cozy.”
    “No, not here,” He replied hastily, stifling a laugh.  
    “Where?” 
    “Now who’s asking invasive questions?”    
    “South Dakota.”
    The air of playfulness left the room at her words. His left eyebrow twitched and his head turned slightly as if he was testing out his next words silently.  She thought he was about to tell her she was crazy.
    “Family?”
    She nodded, “A brother.”  She almost answered a tribe, but she didn’t want to explain.  Apparently her stomach had more to say though because it began to grumble loudly. 
    “When’s the last time you ate an actual meal?” She shrugged. She had eaten a protein bar yesterday, no, the day before that. But as for an actual meal? She had no idea and didn’t want to come off as some starving child.  She had her pride after all. 
    Ruben looked as though he was about to say something, but he was cut off as the door creaked open.  The girl that was in the process of entering the R.V. couldn’t have been more than eight.  She looked like a marshmallow. Her small head was barely poking out over the layers of coats and hats that were piled on top of her.  Long blond hair was tied behind her in a loose braid.  
    “I thought you were going to wait outside?” asked Ruben as he turned to face the girl.
     “You’re not the boss of me!” She retorted with a small giggle. Zip smirked as Ruben shook his head in defeat.   
    “Who is she?” The little girl asked while pointing a curious finger her way. 
    “This is Zip.” At his words, the little girl started walking over toward her.
    “Hi.”  Zip stated sheepishly. 
    “Hi Zip, I’m Ellie!” There was a fearlessness in the girls’ eyes that she envied. 
“You’re really pretty!” 
    Zip blushed profusely, but couldn’t help but smile as she crouched down.  “How old are you Ellie?” 
    “I turned seven today!  We are gonna have cake and a party tonight!”   
    “Oh really?” This kid had to be exaggerating. Cake? Not Likely. She could hear Ruben laughing in the background. 
    “You should come! There’s only one other girl and she’s mean.” 
    “Um…” 
    “Ellie, could you check on the horses for me?  You know they tend to get lonely.” 
She stood up as Ellie scurried out the door after giving an overly enthusiastic okay. 
    “She sounds like a happy kid.”  
    “Yeah," Ruben replied with a small smile," I hope she stays that way.”  His tone was suddenly serious as he ran his right hand through his hair until it rested on the back of his neck.
    “Sister?” It was more of a statement than a question, but he answered anyway.  
    “Yeah.” 
    “A handful?”
    “Like you wouldn’t believe.” 
    “I bet.” 
    “So?”
    “So what?”
    “What do you say?”
    “To what exactly?” 
    “To a hot meal before you continue your mission impossible?” 
    “Oh, um…” A hot meal sounded amazing.  She was having to fight to keep her mouth from watering just from thinking about it.  But this guy could still be some kind of trap. But she could use the food, and a good nights’ sleep would be worth more than the price of gold at this point.  
    “We can probably restock some of your supplies too, maybe keep you from freezing to death. You don't look like you're dressed for this kind of weather”.  
    With that last bit of the offer, she was sold.  Supplies could mean the difference between life and death.  The chance of restocking was worth the risk of him and the offer going south.  So she nodded.  His offer was both too good to be true, and too good to pass up.  
  There had to be some kind of catch, though.  People were not this nice.  She had met nice people of corse, but from her experience nice people didn't survive.