“ARE YOU SURE THIS is the right way?”

“The radio told the humans to meet at the hospital.”

I nodded, my fur upsettingly damp and dirty from our night under a trashcan. Another first for me. I napped in the sun of my window seat and slept the night away next to Connor, warm and comfortable. I never knew how good I had it. How did outdoor mammals stand this?

“My pet was a healer. I know how to get to the hospital, I followed him to work twice a week,” said Ginger, who somehow still looked clean enough to audition for a Meow Mix commercial.

We were in yet another alleyway, picking our way through the garbage and dead animals, and I was doing my best to ignore the smells of death.

Hundreds of dead rodents littered the alley, their mouths red with the blood that had poisoned them. Had they died after biting a zombie? Or were they eating other animals and were soon to turn into zombies themselves?

Three large rats crouched over something that had once been alive and wore sneakers, arguing about the spoils, but when I called out to warn them of the dangers of eating these defiled bodies, they scattered to their secretive holes in the walls. No rats had ever dared enter our home, so I had never met one, let alone killed one. Wally would talk about his grand adventure with a rat that got trapped in a wall one summer when he was a kitten, but even then, there was no confrontation between cat and rat. The rat found his way out of the wall and never returned.

“Don’t bother,” Ginger said, leaping from the large garbage bin up and onto a metal staircase.

“Will they die, or turn into zombies themselves?” I asked, mimicking Ginger’s ascent up the stairs, not liking the way the cold metal felt under my paws, or the clicking sound our claws made and seemed to resonate around the alley.

I watched his orange shoulders shrug before he spoke. “There’s so little meat on a rodent that I don’t expect it’s ever come up. They’d just be a few mouthfuls for a human. But the only zombies I’ve seen were human. I don’t think animals turn into zombies.”

I thought this over as we negotiated our way up two more floors of staircases. “And what about Vance?”

“Don’t know,” Ginger replied. “Don’t especially care.”

I didn’t understand that. How could you not care? I barely knew Vance and I cared. Heck, I even cared about the missing hamster, Emmy.

We had reached the flat pebbled roof by now, where Ginger pointed triumphantly to a huge building in the distance.

“There. That big building with the cross,” he said.

“That’s the hospital?” I said, trying not to betray my nervousness. It was so far away and there were so many buildings between us. This entire journey “outside” was basically a trip from one human-made box to this other human-made box. How did humans make so many huge stone boxes? And why?

“That’s where my pet works,” he answered.

“Then that’s where we’ll find Connor,” I said, focusing on my purpose. This adventure was almost over. Thank the Saber.

“I CAN KEEP GOING,” I said, my tail twitching as I spoke, my eyes fixed on our goal.

“Well, I can’t,” Ginger answered. “I’m starving and I’m tired and I need a bath.” He grumpily batted at a foul-smelling cigarette butt. I’d never understand the humans who put them in their mouths, inhaling their nasty smoke. Ginger said it was like catnip for humans, but catnip smells marvelous. Not like these dead weeds.

My stomach growled in response, but I ignored it, walking to the edge of the staircase to look out at the street.

We had made our way leaping across rooftops if they were close enough, and making the more arduous descent and ascent of the metal staircases if the roofs were not close enough. We couldn’t get through doors because of the handles, something cat paws were not made to manipulate. I could sometimes open doors at home that had the long handles, if I leaned on them with both paws, but the round handles were impossible. If Connor was on the other side of that kind of handle, I’d have to meow at the door until one of Wally’s pets let me in. All of this up and down travel was a tiring business, but I was determined to make it to our goal. Walking through the streets directly was more dangerous, as bands of roaming zombies could (and did) appear at any turn.

Looking back over how far we had come, I marveled at it. The human world was a maze of streets and lanes, lined with buildings, some tall with hundreds of windows, some squat and ugly, something that I’d never given much thought to in my past life as an indoor cat. How many humans were there in this city? And how many were still alive?

“There, I see an open window two floors down,” Ginger said, immediately vaulting in that direction. I followed, my eyes scanning for movement inside the apartments. Ginger stuck his face under the open window, taking a big sniff.

“Feline?” I asked, hopefully.

“Feline,” he confirmed before shimmying under the window. “Hopefully we’ll find some allies.”

But a search of the small apartment yielded no one, human or feline. The food in the dish was a few days old, but neither of us cared. We finished it in minutes and then I collapsed under a couch with a sigh, feeling safe for the first time since we left Wally and my lovely house.