You were such a wild and curious kid. And while, normally, Joel loved that about you, he specifically despised the days where you wanted to touch and pick up and lick everything. He typically let you wander ahead of him as long as he could still count the hairs on your head, but today he felt the need to keep you close to his side. You were just too rambunctious.

He watches you closely as you approach a vine of green leaves running across a dilapidated old car. He was cutting through an old town on the way to a bigger city of refugees, hoping a place of small population would heed to less infected later on. So far, he’d been correct. But what’s a zombie compared to the sight of your kid reaching right out for a strand of poison ivy?

“Uh-uh,” he says, quickly striding over to you. “No, baby.”

He hooks his arm around your stomach, lifting you up and carrying you at his side like a shopping bag. “That’s poison ivy. We don’t touch it.”