"Trying to make it so it is," he answered softly, holding back on his longer stride so she could catch up. She'd end up walking behind him, but that didn't mean he needed to get real far ahead of her.

"It's a walled city. Small. Walls were put up before." Before the dead started walking, not just before they got there. "Gets a lot of rain, tho, and most of the paper's long since rotted. So far no one's been able to find any clue of what city it used to be. We ain't in America, though. Stars ain't right. Well, they're right. For Earth. But not for where we was."

If that seemed like an odd way to put things, he did have a reason for it.