“THE WATER IS COMING from a hose?” I asked, looking at the overflowing bucket near me.

“It was directing rain water away from the roof; I simply redirected it in here,” Hannah replied, checking my webbing. “Your belly wound has scabbed over. How are you feeling?”

“Alive,” I answered gratefully, sitting up to scoop water into my mouth, “thanks to you.”

She gave me a sad smile. “I’m the reason you’re wounded at all.”

“What do you mean? I’m the one who didn’t move fast enough when you told me to hide,” I answered, taking a tentative bite of the food she had brought. It was a very old piece of hamburger, and it tasted like an old shoe, but I forced myself to swallow it, nonetheless. I had to regain my strength. I’d lost days to those fanatical felines, and I needed to get back on the road to Connor.

Hannah batted a piece of hay before answering. “Bast called me a curse,” she explained in a quiet voice, “and she was right to. Everyone around me has died, from my mother and siblings to my first pet to those terrible cats who attacked you.”

 I stayed silent, allowing her to continue, sensing she needed to get this out.

“There were six of them before, you know,” Hannah said. “Bast, Liona, Jaguar, el Gato, Solomon, and Tiger.”

I would have laughed out loud at the ridiculous renaming strategy of these cats, but, looking at Hannah’s down-turned mouth, I restrained myself. She had been abused and rejected and I didn’t need to add to that pain. Quite the opposite. “What happened to the last three?” I asked instead.

“I was the last to join, and I did so willingly,” Hannah answered. “I was tired of staying awake to dodge the zombies, and though I didn’t buy the idea of a dream land, I had no direction in mind. I was basically just surviving. So, west seemed like as good a direction as any. The very first night, I took watch with Solomon,” Hannah said, “and while we were comparing our first notice of the zombies, we were attacked by a pack of dogs.”

I was horrified, but unsurprised. When the natural order is upended, you could rely on animals, even domesticated ones, to return to their base instincts.

“They didn’t actually intend to eat us I don’t think,” Hannah said. “I tried to talk to them, to make them see reason, but Bast had a better plan. She offered me, promising no fight, no struggle, if the rest of the cats could leave unmolested.”

I wished that fat white cat was sitting in front of me with her smug smile so that I could smack it right off her face. With a horseshoe. Instead, I rubbed my face against Hannah’s, trying to console her.

“At first, the dogs seemed to agree, and Bast actually tried to convince me to go along with it!” Hannah said, regaining some of the fire I had seen the first day we met as she described the scene. “She said it was all part of her grand dream, that songs would be sung of my sacrifice when they reached the promised land.”

“She really was cat-nipped crazy,” I said with a low growl.

Hannah nodded, losing some of her smile. “But when I refused to just fall into their paws, one of the dogs, a whippet I think, he … moved so fast. One minute, I was standing next to Tiger, the next she was gone, dragged into the bushes, crying for help.”

I shook my head in disgust.

“It was a blur after that,” Hannah said with a gulp of water. “Every cat for themselves. I don’t know how I got away, but I could hear Bast screaming at me at the top of her voice for a very long time. Calling me a curse.”

Helios leaned down and nuzzled the top of Hannah’s head. His nostril was the size of my torso, but I managed not to flinch away.

“You have shown us nothing but loyalty and aid, Hannah of the Felines,” he said in his deep voice. “You must forget the words of that ignoble beast.”

The rest of the horses in the train car nodded their agreement, and I looked to Hannah, hoping she would take heart from their support, but she had eyes only for me. I bowed my head in agreement. “Hannah, I would be honored to journey with you. You called yourself a curse, but you saved me. I would have died at the paws of those cats if you hadn’t leapt in. Or afterwards, if you hadn’t surrounded me with these huge animals and covered me in spider bandages. You’re the opposite of a curse. You’re a gift.”

She laughed at that, a sound that was a better balm than any food or treatment administered to me since I was wounded.