“ARE YOU SURE?” I asked for the last time.

Wally nodded solemnly from his position at the window. “I won’t leave this post undefended.”

My stomach roiled at the thought of leaving my partner behind, of venturing out into the world outside my home without Wally leading the way, but the radio said the humans were to meet at the local hospital. My heart told me that Connor needed me, and he was my number one responsibility. I needed to know he was safe. Besides, the inside of the house was proving almost as unpredictable as the outside.

Sensing my hesitation, Wally smiled through his teeth. “It is right that you seek out your pet, Pickles. He is young and vulnerable. I will wait here until you return.”

“He’s only two,” I said, miserable at being forced into this choice. “He’s entirely dependent on his parents.”

“And you,” Wally put in.

I nodded, trying to act more sure of myself than I was. “With these dead humans roving freely, I have to make sure he’s all right. We’ll go to the hospital and come right back.”

“So … are we going or not?” Ginger called from the floor, where he was unceremoniously stretched out. “I’m getting bored again.”

“I still don’t like the idea of you traveling with such an unscrupulous furball …”

“Hey, I can hear you, you know!”

“… but it seems to be our only choice,” Wally finished, scenting my left side as he spoke. “This is a scouting mission, Private; find out what you can and return quickly.”

I nodded, trying not to throw up. I followed Ginger as he gave a saucy wink to Wally and then squeezed out through the window opening. He stepped out onto our roof and then leapt across to Cinnamon’s, where he looked back at me impatiently. This was the moment. I looked at the space between my house and the next roof and it seemed to warp and grow too big to leap across. I felt the wind ruffle my fur, an entirely different feeling from the warmth of the furnace, and the light out here was so much brighter than through a window. Could I do this? I had to do this. I had to know Connor was safe.

I took one last look at Wally through the glass and then took a deep breath before I leapt to Ginger’s side.

It was the last time I’d see Wally for a very long time.

“Cinnamon’s been missing for days,” Ginger explained. “I’ve looked in every window, and seen no sign of her.”

Cinnamon was a thin Tonkinese cat I had only really interacted with through glass. As neither of us were outdoor cats, we’d never spoken, but her tail often transmitted scathing messages about the borders between her house and ours that sent Wally into a tizzy. If a squirrel scampered from a tree in our backyard into hers, she blamed us. If a bird dared poop on her flowers and not ours, she blamed us. I really hoped she didn’t fly into a tail-twitching frenzy at my brief use of her rooftop.

Ginger was leaping as he talked, barely stopping between houses. I’d never done this before, so I had trouble keeping up. The rooftops were made of an odd material I’d never felt under my paws before. And they were hot. Like my window seat under direct sunlight, but harder and scratchier in texture.

We leapt from rooftop to rooftop until the end of the block, Ginger punctuating each landing with a description of the inhabitants. I wasn’t sure if he was showing off his worldliness or filling the quiet so as to cover his nervousness. Even an outdoor cat like Ginger had a limit to his comfortable range. As an indoor cat, this was both terrifying and exhilarating. There was so much to see, so much I didn’t know. Every step away from the house brought new questions to mind. What kinds of birds were those? Were there really that many kinds of leaves? What was that smell? What was THAT smell?

“I still don’t know why you’re coming with me,” I said as I tried not to stare at a family of chipmunks wrestling a huge shoe into their home in a tree.

Ginger shrugged nonchalantly before answering, always trying to seem cooler than he was. “Could be an adventure, could be a bust. Whatever. Gotta have something to talk about to the neighborhood mammals, right?”

I shook my head behind his back. This cat was all about the attention.

“A hamster named Emmy and two dogs named Ralph and Vance live here,” he said, pressing up against the window to peer inside. I took a moment to clean my paw of leaf bits. Outdoor living is messier, that’s for sure.

“See anyone?” I asked.

Other than the incessant birds chirping at the sky as if it were a normal spring day, not the fall of an empire, we had seen no other animals.

“Nah, but the hamster is restricted to its pet’s bedroom, so I don’t expect ….”

Ginger was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a large dog’s head rising to look at us from the window we had been peering through.

Ginger leapt backwards instinctively.

“What do you want, male feline?” demanded the mastiff.

“You’re alive,” Ginger said, not moving from the safety of his position.

“Barely,” the mastiff answered with a growl. “What are you doing on my roof?”

“What do you mean ‘barely’?” I asked instead, coming forward despite Ginger’s twitching whiskers and their clear message to keep my distance. I’d seen this dog walking his pets around the neighborhood, but this was the closest we’d ever been. He really was gigantic.

The dog looked over his huge shoulder and then back our way. “The pets have gone mad, female feline. They’ve been trying to get in this room for a week. I’ve not slept in days.”

“Where’s Vance?” Ginger asked from behind me.

“I’m Vance, you dumb alley cat,” he growled with a shake of his head. “Ralph is gone. Went down fighting. Saved Emmy. She survived, but she fled and I haven’t heard a peep from her since.” He howled his sadness at the room. I flinched at the sound. I’d never seen a hamster before in my life, but I could feel this dog’s sadness at her loss all the way through the glass.

By now I was close enough to the window to see into the sunroom, and I could see the door had been barricaded with some chairs tipped on their sides.

“That keeps the humans out?” I asked, running my eyes over the large dog, stopping on the large bitemark on his back.

“They’ve gone mad,” Vance repeated, licking his lips again. “They have forgotten the simplest of activities. Even how to open doors. Or to recognize loyal friends.”

“You’ve been bitten,” I remarked, unable to keep the tremor out of my voice, but feeling Ginger take another step back on the roof.

“Ay, female feline,” Vance replied. “By my own pet. Just one bite. Though it seems to be enough.”

I tilted my head in question.

“It’s like a venom in my blood,” he explained, turning in a circle before sitting down, a slight whine entering his voice. “I can’t eat, I’m shivering with cold, and I’m weak as a newborn pup.”

“We should go,” Ginger said from behind me. I turned around to see what had got his back up; two shuffling zombies were making their way down the street towards us. They hadn’t seen us yet, but their unnatural sounds made it hard to concentrate.

Vance put two giant paws against the window and I leapt back. “Go! Before they catch you. Don’t let them bite you, and for the Great Wolf’s Hide, female feline, don’t bite them.”

I nodded, I really wanted to ask what would happen if I bit one, but Ginger was leaving, his nervousness stoking mine. I followed Ginger as he scampered off the roof and into the branches of the nearest tree. I forced myself not to look back.