The next morning found them in Rainer, the small town at the foot of the Sunny Mountains. It was a ghost town, of course, with windswept streets and broken signage, but at least there didn't seem to be any zombies around. After prowling around the downtown area for a while they eventually came across a partially-collapsed clothing store which still had a few choice items hanging from the racks: Stu found a heavy winter coat and boots, and Lucky and the others found hats and gloves. Mille pried a new jacket off of a mannequin -- a big, puffy green jacket with a hood. She put it on, flipping the hood over her head immediately. She was always finding ways to hide her face, Stu noticed; she was obviously self-conscious about her uncanny red eye.

  They searched the rest of the town as well. There were no gun shops or sporting goods stores in town, which was disappointing; Stu was still on the lookout for more ammunition for his Midnighter and their other firearms. They did, however, find a corner grocery store that was almost completely intact, with plenty of goods still on the shelves. The food, of course, was now over ten years past its expiration date, but Stu thought some of the canned food might still be edible. The cans themselves appeared to be in good shape, although after ten years he doubted the contents would taste very good. For the hell of it, he threw a couple of cans of soup in his satchel, along with six cans of some kind of meat product, called "PrestoMeat," that looked like it might have been this world's equivalent of SPAM. The listed ingredients were pork shoulder, salt, and water.

  Lucky, meanwhile, was delighted to find some sugary candies, called "Nandies." He stuffed as many bags of these things in his own backpack as he could fit.

  "That's a waste of space," Luna complained. "And those things aren't good for you, anyway."

  "I don't care," he said, carelessly, popping another one in his mouth. "You know how hard it is to find these in Meku?" He offered one to Stu. "You want to try?"

  "What does it taste like?"

  "Banana."

  Shrugging, Stu tried one. It tasted fine, but the flavor certainly wasn't banana. "Doesn't taste like banana to me," he commented. "It's more like...vanilla, or something."

  "What the hell is vanilla?"

  "You don't have vanilla in this world?"

  Lucky glanced at Luna, who shook her head, apparently equally ignorant. "It's a flavoring," Stu explained. "They make it out of vanilla beans. You don't have vanilla ice cream here?" He walked over to the grocery store's freezer section, which still held some containers of long-expired ice cream. There was strawberry, and chocolate, and mint, and a bunch of other flavors, but no vanilla. He frowned. "Well, that's weird," he muttered. The little differences between his own world and this alternative zombie-world never ceased to puzzle him.

  Having acquired these warmer, winter clothes, and additional supplies, they piled back into the glider (Luna put the top up on the convertible; the closer they got to the mountains, the chillier it became) and took off. A mile outside of Rainer, they left Route 90 and turned left, onto Route 101, which according to the map would take them through the mountains. They made pretty good time at first -- they reached the mountains just a little after noon -- but the road, as Luna had expected, was in poor condition, which slowed them down considerably. She was constantly having to maneuver around fallen trees, rockslides, and other impediments.

  And then the weather began to turn. The previous few days had been sunny, but today was dark, gray, and overcast, and in the early afternoon it began to snow. Snowy, icy roads weren't a problem for the glider, which simply hovered over the ground, but the deeper they drove into the mountains, the harder it began to snow, and Luna was soon having trouble seeing where she was going. "Nothing to it," she said confidently. "Just a little snow."

  Stu, however, was uneasy. He had seen his share of winter storms before, and this had all the makings of one. There wasn't much risk of getting the glider stuck, but if they were to wander off the barely-visible road, or find themselves unable to proceed for some reason...well, they had winter clothes now, but their only source of heat was the glider's dynamo engine, and they had no other shelter, except for the cheap pup tents they had picked up back in Meku City. Could they ride out a three-day snowstorm, up in these mountains? He wasn't sure, but he didn't want to have to find out.

  They were descending into a sort of valley, within the mountains, and still following Route 101, when the wind suddenly picked up. The blowing snow made it even more difficult to see where they were going, and Luna was having trouble maneuvering the glider as well; because it merely floated over the road, it was more susceptible to strong winds than an ordinary vehicle. They were just making it to the bottom of a long, winding section of the road, when an incredibly strong gust of wind suddenly lifted the rear of the glider into the air and slammed it down, hard, into the ground. Lucky and Millie, in the backseat, hit the ceiling, and Luna swore, as she struggled to get a grip on the controls.

  "That hurt!" Lucky shouted.

  "Did we hit something?" Millie wondered.

  Luna, still swearing, pulled over and got out of the glider. Stu got out with her, mostly to stretch his legs, but he almost immediately regretted it -- it was very cold; the wind was raw and biting and the snow was deep. It was halfway up to his knees.

  "C-cold," he commented, unnecessarily.

  "Yeah," Luna agreed. She paid no attention to the weather, however, as she carefully inspected the glider for any signs of damage. "Turbines look okay," she said. "Could have been knocked out of alignment, though. I won't know for sure till we're back on the road."

  Something smelled funny. "Do you smell that?" he asked Luna.

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  She looked up at him, her dark eyelashes frosted with snow. "No."

  "It's a chemical smell." Using his new Sniffer ability, he followed his nose to the storage compartment in the back, where they kept their supplies. He popped it open. Nothing appeared to be amiss, at first, but after digging around for a bit, he found the source of the smell: the seal had cracked on one of their canisters of dynamo fluid, and it was leaking.

  "Shit," Luna swore. Working together, they quickly cleaned up the mess. Fortunately, according to Luna, dynamo fluid wasn't particularly dangerous -- it was toxic, of course, but only mildly so -- and it hadn't leaked into their food supplies.

  "Just our luck," Luna muttered.

  "There's still some left in the canister," Stu said hopefully.

  "Not much."

  Of the four canisters Millie had given them, one was almost empty, and one had broken, leaving them with just two. "Can we get to Lon Halos on just two canisters?" Stu asked.

  "I think so. But we won't have enough for the return trip, and if we get stuck out here and have to run the heat all night in the cab..." She said something more, but the wind carried her words away. Stu figured she was probably cursing again.

  Stu was anxious to get out of the weather. Luna wanted to keep checking for dings and dents in the chassis, but Stu finally convinced her to worry about the cosmetic stuff later, and they returned to the glider. They told Lucky and Millie the bad news.

  "I should have grabbed a few more canisters," Millie said regretfully.

  "It didn't get into my Nandies, did it?" Lucky asked.

  Luna didn't even bother to reply to that. "Let's go," she grumbled.

  They proceeded deeper into the valley. The storm was still battering them, but Luna had engaged something called a "Tybalt lock" to keep the wind from sweeping beneath the glider and lifting it as it had before. The glider could only travel half as fast when this lock was engaged, however, which made their progress even slower. It was late afternoon by the time they reached the town of Silent.

  According to the sign they passed on the outskirts of town, Silent had once had a population of a hundred and fifty. It wasn't much to look at -- just a few shanty-style, snow-covered buildings arranged haphazardly at the bottom of the valley. They passed an old gas station, the burned-out remains of a bank, and a ruined cafe called "Ma's Diner." The diner's windows were broken and snow had drifted into the place; the sign above the door, hanging by a thread, was swinging wildly in the wind.

  The most intact building was a place called "Sam's Big Value"; it appeared to be some kind of general store. Luna parked the glider outside the store.

  "We won't make it out of the mountains tonight, if I have to keep the Tybalt lock on," she said grimly. "And this snowstorm doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon. We should camp here tonight."

  Lucky wiped the moisture off his window and looked out at the town. "You sure?"

  "I don't think we have much choice," Luna said. "Stu?"

  "I agree," he put in. "We can barely see where we're going. We have to find a place to ride out the storm."

  "There could be zombies here," Millie pointed out. "Or mutates."

  "Mutates?" Lucky squeaked.

  But Stu's Zombie Radar was quiet. "Let's look around," he ventured.

  So the four of them climbed out of the glider and, shivering, entered Sam's Big Value, which did indeed appear to be some kind of old-fashioned general store. There was a long counter to their left, upon which sat an old-timey cash register, and there was a long horizontal mirror hanging on the wall behind it.

  The building was peculiarly warm, which they all noticed immediately and which put them all on alert. "Looks like this place is inhabited after all," Stu warily. Sniffing the air, he concluded that the heat was coming from a wood-burning stove of some kind, although the stove itself was not in sight. He could smell people, too, faintly, but--

  A man suddenly jumped up from behind the counter, aiming a long gun at them. He was a vicious-looking fellow, with a rough, scabby complexion, manic eyes, and a black mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. He pulled the trigger.

  Stu was surprised by the mustached man's sudden appearance, but the Speed Freak skill had boosted his reaction time to superhuman levels, and he reacted to the ambush instantly, first dodging the bullet and then seizing the barrel of the rifle and turning it aside before he could get off another shot. With the rifle barrel still in his hand, he jumped up on the counter and kicked the man in the face. He stumbled into the mirror behind him, which shattered, raining broken glass on the floor.

  Stu had kicked the man as lightly as he dared, but it was more than enough to put him down. He lay there, dazed.

  But it wasn't over -- two more men, one carrying a length of pipe and another carrying a two-by-four, had just burst out of a door on the far side of the room, and two women, one young and one old, had also appeared, as if from nowhere; evidently they had been hiding behind some overturned tables. The women converged on Lucky, Luna, and Millie, while the men attacked Stu, swinging their homemade weapons.

  Stu dropped the rifle he had taken from the mustached man -- it was a single-shot, bolt-action rifle, and so not particularly useful under the circumstances -- and prepared to meet the men head-on. Although he had his Midnighter on his belt, he was pretty confident he could take these guys out with his bare fists, and he didn't feel like bringing any more gunplay into this scrum unless he had to. Better to save his ammo for the zombies, he figured.

  The man with the two-by-four got to him first, swinging it right for Stu's head. Stu, trusting to his high defense stat, blocked it with his forearm, and it bounced off. The man -- actually he was probably a teenager -- was so startled by this that for a second he didn't seem to know what to do. He finally tried again, but this time Stu caught the two-by-four, yanked it away, and used it to bat aside the pipe that the other man was now attempting to swing at him. He hit it so hard that it flew from the man's hand.

  Having disarmed them, Stu grabbed them both by their collars, hoisted them into the air, and clanged their heads together -- not hard, but enough to stun them. Then he threw them down to the wooden floor.

  While he had been dealing with the men, Luna, Lucky, and Millie had been dealing with the women. The scuffle was over by the time he turned around -- the young woman was lying on the floor, dazed, and Luna had the older woman in a headlock. But Lucky had been hurt -- the young woman, who had been armed with a claw hammer, had struck him in the knee, and he was clutching it and howling in pain.

  "Let me go!" the older woman was saying to Luna, through gritted teeth.

  "Why should I? You just tried to kill us!"

  "Had...had to," the woman managed.

  The teenager -- the one who had attacked Stu with the two-by-four -- got to his feet, shakily. "Let go of my mother," he growled at Luna.

  "Tell her to calm down, then. We don't want to fight. We were just looking for a place to spend the night."

  The teenager hesitated. His gaze moved from the mustached man behind the counter, to the dazed young woman on the floor, and finally to Stu, who had just picked him up and manhandled him like he was a child. "I think they've got us beat, Mom," he said.

  The older woman stopped struggling, and Luna reluctantly released her. She stumbled away, coughing, but did not attempt to resume the attack. She glared at them all, however, and if looks could kill...

  "Who are you?" Stu asked. "And why did you attack us?"

  "Had to," the older woman muttered. There was fear in her face. "The Cannibal's back. And he's hungry."