"Well, that's encouraging," Aaron van Zandt muttered to himself as he surveyed the walls from what he hoped was a safe distance. Squinting in the early afternoon sunlight, ducked behind a gutted car in the parking lot of the Tacoma Dome (one of the stops on their tour, he remembered), he studied the spray-painted signs reading "NO ENTRY" as if hoping they would morph and change to something more welcoming if he stared at them hard enough.<br/><br/>His trip into Tacoma had passed more or less without incident. A few moans from the shadows had forced him to pedal faster a handful of times, but that was about it. In the Sacramento Safe Haven, months ago, he had heard Tacoma had the only other official Safe Haven on the West Coast. San Diego, Bakersfield, and Portland had fallen in the previous two years, Stockton was run by gangs now (little change from before the Red Fog, Aaron thought acidly), Eugene had been dissolved by internal vote when supplies ran low. There were other groups of survivors, sure, scattered all over. But Aaron knew that as risky as the Safe Havens were, they represented the best chance of finding the rest of the Severance Package.<br/><br/>Now he just had to figure out how to get inside Tacoma.<br/><br/>Cautiously, he opened the rear door of the Buick LeSabre that had been his blind, now missing tires, gas, and engine. He grunted as he hoisted the Schwinn bicycle inside, covered it with a rotting old tarp someone had left folded up inside the car. Aaron had learned his lesson in Sacramento. Reliable transport was hard to come by these days and had to be hidden when not in use.<br/><br/>He bent over double as the wave of exhaustion hit him. He was so weak, he realized. Months of biking north, exposure, poor nutrition. Especially that? What was the last time he had a proper meal? Or a balanced one, for that matter. Aaron wouldn't really be shocked to discover he had scurvy or rickets or something like that, given his diet of whatever he could find.<br/><br/>Quit whining. Take a moment, catch your breath, then head north to the Safe Haven. Your bandmates are out there somewhere.<br/><br/>After a moment, the dizziness and breathlessness left him, and Aaron slowly stood upright. He tightened the strap on his hardshell guitar case, making sure it was snug to his back. Following the 705, he walked north the half-mile or so to the wall, his hand resting on the Pachmayr grip of his holstered revolver the entire way.<br/><br/>Finally, he reached 21st Street, the southern boundary of the Safe Haven. The wall was formidable, running the length of the entire street, butting up against the buildings. There were more than a few bodies here, neatly drilled through the head with single rifle rounds or brightly colored arrows. The fresher corpses seemed to have been dispatched less neatly, large stones or bricks stained black and resting not too far from crushed skulls. Aaron wondered how much ammunition was left inside.<br/><br/>Also, how to get over this wall. Either the Army Corps of Engineers or the Navy Seabees had put this thing together early in the crisis, maybe the Air Force's Red Horse. Whichever group it was, they hadn't half-assed it. Aaron studied for a moment, slowly pacing alongside it. He stopped to listen every once in a while. No shrieks, no shouted warnings over megaphones, no safeties being clicked off. Aaron knew he had been lucky so far. A city this size was bound to have hundreds if not thousands of walking corpses in it, so far he had only seen them from a distance. But the longer he was exposed, the more likely he was to run into some. Luck was a finite resource, and had to be conserved like any resource in this crappy new world.<br/><br/>After a few minutes of study, his eyes lit on a billboard, a metal pole with a torn, drooping sign forlornly advertising the opening of a new Burger King on a date three years in the past. The sign didn't interest him quite so much as the ladder leading up the side, painted an unappealing brown. Of course, the forty foot drop over the side would kill him instantly if he tried to jump clear into the Safe Haven. But if he timed it just right, he could land atop the wall itself, as wide as a two-lane road. A ten-foot drop, maybe, from the catwalk underneath the sign to the top of the wall. Dangerous, but doable. But a one-way trip. He wouldn't be getting back over the wall that way. Then he could walk atop the wall until he came to a tree or rooftop within jumping distance inside the wall. He nodded. It could work. It could definitely work.<br/><br/>Another few minutes passed, and Aaron was limping happily along the sunbaked top of the wall. He had banged his knee and scuffed his guitar case, as well as accumulated some serious scrapes on his hands and elbows.<br/><br/>But whatever.<br/><br/>He was atop the wall. And by the look of the narrow gap between the wall and that boarded-up apartment building about a hundred feet ahead, he would soon be inside.