Dead In Bed

                                               Chapter 1: Fifty Shades Of Gangrene

I woke up in a motel room I’d never seen. No matter how hard I’ve thought about it since, I have no memory of how I got there or what happened the night before.

There were beer bottles all over the side table. Not to mention a completely empty eighth of Jack Daniels. What looked like some kind of fancy foreign wine bottle, also drained, was filled with cigarette butts. The TV, one of those old boxy sets, had fallen back against the wall, and in the corner an armchair was lying on its side. Feathers were everywhere; one of the pillows had been torn open.

I was pretty sure I was alone.

No one was in bed with me. When I leaned over to check the floor I saw only more feathers and more beer bottles scattered across the carpet—along with my clothes. All of them. My jeans were in a pile against the wall with my underwear still bunched inside. My bra hung over the one armchair that was still standing.

I realized, only now, that I was totally naked.

And I’d definitely had sex.

I was sore, and not just a little. I hadn’t felt like this since Shawn and I were going at it like rabbits during my senior year of high school.

But we hadn’t had sex in months, as far as could remember, anyway.

I tried not to think about the fact that there was no good reason I would have needed to check into a motel if I’d been with my husband that night. I’m pretty young, but I live in a really small town where just about everyone gets married before they’re twenty, like I did. It’s just what people do around here. I looked at the mess around me; I’d been with Shawn plenty long enough to know that he definitely didn’t drink wine. Not even whiskey, really.

And yet despite my fear about whatever it was I’d done the night before, and despite my apparent blackout, and the pervasive smell of stale cigarettes—and some other smell too, I noticed now, something faintly rancid—I felt, well . . . great.

It was as if I’d been sleeping for days and had woken up completely refreshed. I didn’t have the slightest headache. I didn’t feel a hint of nausea. When I stood up, I practically leapt out of bed. I pulled on my pants and felt like I had the energy to race up the face of a cliff

But I still couldn’t remember anything.

Other than the bottles everywhere, there was no evidence of whoever else had been with me in the room. The only clothes I’d found on the floor had been mine, and the bathroom was empty. The only thing in the mini-bar fridge, weirdly, was an empty gallon milk container.

I looked under the bed and checked my pockets, but I couldn’t find my phone. So I couldn’t even look at my recent calls. Had I lost it, or had someone stolen it? I had no idea.

Outside, it was a beautiful day. But when I stepped into what I recognized now as the parking lot of the Starlight Motel, I realized that it wasn’t morning. The sun was already starting to set. Apparently I’d slept all afternoon.

Now that I was out in the fresh air, things started to come back to me about the day before, if not the night.

Suddenly I remembered what I’d found at the high school with my brother-in-law. I remembered how I’d helped carry it even. I remembered the stench, and how afterward I couldn’t quite wash off the smell. I wondered if maybe it was the scent I’d been smelling inside the motel room.

I also remembered why my car was nowhere to be seen. I live in Muldoon, Colorado, and if you haven’t heard of it, you’re basically like everybody else in the world who isn’t from Muldoon. We don’t even have a stoplight. It’s that small. The only thing that ever happens is the fair, once a year. The kids sell their livestock, there’s a carnival and a rodeo, and everyone pretty much has an excuse to get drunk all weekend.

I do the books at this trucking company whose office is right across from the fairgrounds. I usually park in the lot there, and when I got off work early yesterday there was this huge bus blocking my car. It was emblazoned with a massive Bryce Tripp logo. He was supposed to be this up-and-coming country star, but, honestly, I hadn’t heard of him before a few days ago. (How big could he really be if he was giving a concert at the Muldoon fair?) The people in charge of his bus must have been waiting to get into the rodeo grounds where his concert was going to be, but I couldn’t find the driver anywhere. I couldn’t even reach my husband because the cell phones were already jammed from everyone arriving from out of town.

So I’d asked my boss for a ride home. I remembered now. I’d figured I’d worry about my car later. I hadn’t really needed it anyway then because Ian, my brother in law, was supposed to give me and Shawn a ride to the fair that night so we could drink, then he was going to bring us home later.

That had been the plan anyway.

Now I was at the Starlight Motel, alone, without a car or a phone, and still no memory at all of how I got there.

I tried to go back and piece together everything that had happened the previous day as best as I could.

First, I remembered that when my boss dropped me at home, Shawn was already there, watching TV, as usual. His station at the couch was pretty much the only place he spent time lately when he wasn’t at work. He has a shift at the mill, which I know can be exhausting, but it’d been months since he’d been out. And lately he’d started saying he didn’t want me to go out with any of my friends alone. One of the reasons I’d been looking forward to the fair for weeks was that Shawn wouldn’t have any choice but to get off his ass and go somewhere. I’d been hoping that maybe we could have a little fun again, for once.

“I’m getting in the shower,” I called out, competing with the blare of Sports Center. “Ian’s gonna be here in an hour, remember?”

After a moment, Shawn yelled back.

“Tonight? We’ll go tomorrow,” he said. “No one really shows up until Saturday anyway.”

I should have seen this coming. If my husband never wanted to go out at all anymore, why would he ever go out for two nights in a row without complaining about it? I’d thought things would be different during fair, but I guess I’d been wrong.

I tried not to sound too irritated. “Everyone always goes tonight.” I leaned into the living room and found myself talking to the back of my husband’s head. He was only twenty-six, but his hair was already beginning to thin. “All your friends are going. And mine. Morgan’s already there waiting for me. And Ian’s coming all the way back in the middle of Tyler’s football game just to give us a ride. It would be weird if you didn’t go.”

Before Shawn could respond, I stepped into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I hoped that by putting myself out of earshot he would give up and agree to just go without a fight.

While I undressed, I forced myself to look at the mirror. I’d definitely put on a little weight since high school, but not as much as Shawn had, especially after his accident. But I looked okay, I decided. Nothing like Morgan, who’d somehow stayed as skinny as she was at sixteen. But at least I looked okay.

While the water warmed up, without really meaning to, I started considering what my night out would be like if Shawn did just stay at home. I thought about having the chance to ride into town with Ian alone. I thought about doing shots with Morgan, just the two of us. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the worst thing after all if Shawn didn’t come. In the middle of washing my hair, I actually started seriously considered persuading him to stay home.

But by the time I got out of the shower I could hear him changing from his work clothes, and I decided not to say anything. I couldn’t. Not after I’d already talked him into going. I’d feel too guilty if I did something like that, anyway. Besides, it would probably be good for us to get drunk together.

Ian pulled up to the house just as I was finishing with my makeup. I wore this new low-cut top I’d bought just for the fair and my tightest pair of jeans. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what they were wearing in Denver these days, but not bad for the Muldoon fair.

I could tell my brother-in-law was in a hurry to get back before the end of the high school football game, but he was too polite to say so. As we came out of the house Ian kept his truck idling, sauntered over to Shawn, and slapped his shoulder.

“Hey, buddy, you all ready for tonight?”

“Yup,” Shawn said. As always, Shawn was a little quiet and intimidated by Ian. “Ready to go.”

“Hiya, sis!” Ian gave me a quick hug, then just as quickly he let me go and hopped back into his pickup.

Ian was in a good mood. On the way over he told us that Tyler got a touchdown, and besides being happy that his son had played well, he was looking forward to being out at the fair tonight too. I could tell.

“You sure you’re okay not drinking?” I asked him. “I’m glad I’m not the one stuck driving.”

I was glad Ian had offered to give us a ride, but the truth is I also liked how Ian got after a couple drinks. He’d been a medic in Iraq, and now he worked as an EMT at our tiny local hospital. When he got back from the war I used to worry he’d break down or something if he drank, but he never did. Mostly he just got less serious and his sense of humor would come out. I’d laugh at his wry jokes, and he always laughed along with me in this kind and warmly boyish way he had. He’s actually really attractive—way more attractive than Shawn—but sometimes I think my sister doesn’t even realize this.

“Who says I can’t have a beer?” Ian winked at me. “It’s fair time. I’ll nurse one for a little while.” He nudged Shawn’s arm. “Just don’t tell Danielle.”

I was pretty sure Ian really wouldn’t have any more than one drink. I don’t think I know anyone who’s more responsible. Besides, if he did, my sister would find out one way or another and kill him.

I was about to ask whether he was taking Haley, his youngest, to the carnival tonight, but that’s when Ian’s phone rang.

The gruff, semi-garbled voice on the speakerphone must have been a hospital dispatcher, but I couldn’t make out who it was. “Ian, you there at the school?” the voice asked.

“Just left,” Ian said.

“I guess someone had a fall in the girl’s locker room, or something. Probably nothing, but could you check it out? Ambulance is still stuck here at the hospital.”

Ian switched off the speaker and brought the phone to his ear. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

He hung up.

“You don’t mind if we make a little detour, do you? It’s probably nothing, but I gotta check it out.”

“That’s alright,” I said.

But in truth I was feeling selfish and a little disappointed that Ian couldn’t just drop us at the fairgrounds. What kind of town only had one ambulance? I guess Ian’s SUV was the sole backup.

Ian pulled right up to the door of the girl’s locker room. The second half of the football game had already started. I could hear the hum of the crowd over at the field, but the gym was deserted. Shawn stepped from the pickup, but in an old high-school habit he was hesitant about going into the girls’ locker room, which I thought was kind of sadly funny, as if he were still just a kid.

Ian was in a hurry. “Come on in, if you want,” he told us. “We’re a little understaffed.” He laughed. “Maybe you could give me a hand, if I need it.”

I hadn’t stepped into the locker room for years. Bernice Whipple, my old P.E. teacher, was even there. It was like she lived there.

“Hey, Mrs. Whipple.” I gave her my best version of a friendly wave. But she didn’t even register my presence.

She was distraught, expressionless. She went right for Ian. She grabbed his jacket, then she led him toward the showers.

“Here,” she said, whispering. “Here. It’s here.”

I followed behind, trying to stay out of the way.

When I first saw what was on the tile floor—the same place I’d stood showering a hundred times in high school—I thought maybe some kid was playing a joke, trying to scare the cheerleaders or something.

There were shards of broken glass all over the shower, and, right above, one of the big frosted windows had been broken out.

There wasn’t any blood. Just a person, naked, face down. It wasn’t a high-schooler at all, but a grown man, his bare ass in the air, his skin unnaturally pale from head to foot.

He was very obviously not alive.

I’d never seen a dead body before, not ever. But I was sure that no living person could lie that perfectly still.

This definitely wasn’t what Ian had expected when he’d invited us in. He rushed to the body and knelt beside it. In what seemed like one motion, he opened his medical bag and snapped on a blue latex glove. He pinched one of the body’s wrists, gently, checking for a pulse, I guess. But he must not have got what he needed because he put on the other glove, grabbed one of the shoulders, and turned the whole body over.

It jostled onto its back and lay face up.

I didn’t think I recognized whoever it was, but the face was so sunken and gray I wasn’t sure. To me, it looked like someone that had been dead for a long time, weeks maybe. But I guess I don’t know anything about how bodies decay—the cheerleaders must have used the locker room only a couple of hours earlier, and the body couldn’t have been in the shower then.

Ian touched the body’s throat, again checking for a pulse which I knew wouldn’t be there.

I’d been so distracted by the deteriorated face, it was only now that I noticed what Ian was staring at.

He and everyone else. Mrs. Whipple was letting out this long-winded weeping sound and starting to cry.

Ian glanced at me, obviously regretting that he’d let me and Shawn come here with him. But now there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He returned his attention to the body, maybe not entirely sure what to do next.

It was missing its penis. Where it should have been was just this short fleshy stump. The wound was raggedly scabbed over and looked infected.

I was so stunned that I didn’t even feel sick, not even when I saw what was below the missing penis: two baseball-sized spheres of tightly swollen flesh. They were the testicles, puffed up unnaturally and darkened to a deep, blackish purple, like a pair of giant toxic mushrooms.

I could hear Shawn breathing heavily behind me. I worried he was about to pass out and I wouldn’t know what to do.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered.

In the middle of all of this, Ian’s phone rang. He fumbled to answer it.

He listened. “Yeah, it’s here,” he said. I could tell it was the hospital dispatcher again. “Now you tell me,” Ian said, exasperated, then he paused. “Right now?” Another pause. “That’s not how we do things. I don’t care who—” He stopped and listened again. After a minute, reluctantly he said, “Well, I guess. I guess if that’s what they say. I don’t know. I’ll do what I can. Jesus.”

Ian stood and turned away from us. For a moment he just held his wrist to his head, apparently trying to figure out what to do. Outside, in the distance, the football game’s final buzzer sounded over the loudspeakers.

“Shit.”

Finally Ian turned toward us.

“We have to get this out of here right now.” He gave my husband a hard look. “Shawn, buddy. I hate to ask you to do this. But I need a hand. I can’t get it into my rig on my own. I got pretty strict orders to clear this out before the crowd comes through after the game.” He nodded in the general direction of the football field. “And everyone’s on their way now.”

Shawn was silent. He took one step backwards.

Then he threw up all over a changing bench.

Instinctively, I put a hand on my husband’s back while he retched. I didn’t know what else to do. I glanced at Ian. He looked completely at a loss.

“I’ll help,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

I stepped toward the body before I could lose my nerve. Ian looked extremely uncomfortable, but I could tell he knew he didn’t have any other choice but to accept my help.

“Shit, Ashley,” he began, “you don’t…”

“I can do it.” I said.

I pulled two gloves from the cardboard box in Ian’s medical bag and put them on.

“Shit,” he said, again.

“Just tell me what to do. What do I do?”

Ian took a deep breath. “Alright. Shit. You take the ankles. It’s not far. Let’s just hurry and get this over with. God damn it, Ash. I owe you.”

I tried not to think about what I was doing. I tried to tell myself that this was no different than a dead animal, or a dummy.

But as I clutched the body’s ankles, the tendons and bones beneath the skin felt so human and lifelike that I started to feel dizzy. I tried to breathe, but I hadn’t expected the smell to be so strong. It was definitely the smell of rotten flesh. I wondered if maybe the rancid smell was coming from the swollen testicles; they did look like they were rotting or maybe turning gangrenous.

I had to do something to distract myself so I wouldn’t throw up. I was desperate not to let Ian down. I knew that my sister wouldn’t be able to do this, and somewhere deep inside I’d always understood that Danielle couldn’t ever really let herself imagine what Ian must have gone through in the war. I wondered if by helping him now, in this unlikely way, maybe I could somehow acknowledge what my sister couldn’t.

“What do you think happened to him?” I asked Ian.

I didn’t actually care what had happened, not at that moment. But I couldn’t think of any other way to get my mind off the smell and the body’s sagging, loose weight in my hands as we shuffled through the locker room.

“I have no idea,” Ian whispered. “He must have been trying to peep through the window. And then I guess he fell through the glass.”

“But what about his…?” I started, but I couldn’t finish. “Why is it missing?”

If I could barely bring myself to ask about the missing penis, I couldn’t even begin to mention the bloated testicles. They appeared at the point of bursting as the body swayed between us.

Ian gave me a look of total perplexity and shook his head. “I have no idea.”

“It’s one of those carnies!” Mrs. Whipple was still crying, but she was in control enough to make this last proclamation as she held the locker room door open for us, shuddering. “They’re all on drugs!”

The hardest part was lifting the body into the back of Ian’s SUV.

Ian laid the shoulders on the tailgate while I kept ahold of the ankles. I’d managed to control my nausea, but now my arms were burning. I didn’t even want to think about letting the body drop, or the sound of it hitting the pavement. Ian climbed into the back and pulled the shoulders from the inside, and finally I could let go. I looked around the dark lot outside the gym. I didn’t think anyone saw us, but I could hear the crowd from the game moving in our direction.

“You okay?” Ian asked.

I nodded.

“I’m real sorry, Ash,” he whispered. “Really.”

“It’s okay.” I tried to smile. “I need a drink,” I laughed, “but I’m okay.”

Now Ian laughed too, obviously relieved that I’d been able to handle it. Maybe he was even a little impressed.

After laughing, though, he added earnestly, “Technically you weren’t supposed to see any of this. Right?”

“Right,” I nodded. “Of course. Okay.”

I helped Shawn wash the splattered vomit off his shoes while Mrs. Whipple hurried to sweep up the broken glass.

I bought Shawn a Sprite from the vending machine, which he said helped his stomach, but I had to hurry him out of the locker room before the cheerleaders arrived.

By now everyone who had been watching the football game was passing through the parking lot on their way to the fair. No one seemed to have a clue about what had just happened. My sister was there with Haley, waiting for Tyler to finish showering.

“They won! Tyler scored!” Danielle waved to us. She had no idea what had just happened. “What are you guys doing here? I thought Ian was taking you straight to the beer garden.”

“He got called to the hospital on the way, so he dropped us here.”

Technically I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t sure what Ian did or didn’t want me to say, even to my sister.

Haley skipped over to me, obviously totally hopped up on excitement for the fair. I remembered feeling the same way when I was a kid.

“Aunt Ashley!” She slammed into me and gave me a hug. I hugged her back tentatively. I’d washed my hands and arms three times in the locker room, but I was still hesitant to touch my niece after what I’d just done. “Are you going with me to the carnival tonight?” she pleaded.

“Tomorrow!” I said.

It was so hard to say no to Haley. Over the last couple of years my niece had turned into this blonde-haired, wide-eyed kid, kind of small for her age, just like I’d been at nine. I got to play the role of the fun, slightly reckless aunt when I was with her. Last year at the fair we’d spent hours playing the same pin-ball horse racing carnival game I used to be addicted to as a kid, and I’d taught her how to cheat by tipping the machine.

But there was no way I was going to do anything tonight other than have a drink as soon as possible—an even stiffer one than I’d planned on earlier.

“But I want to play the horses!” Haley whined.

Danielle cut in, saving me. “Aunt Ashley and Uncle Shawn are having an adults’ night tonight,” she announced. “Grandma and Grandpa will take you to the horses.”

Haley looked up at me, pouting, which was annoying but still I felt guilty for letting her down.

“Tomorrow we’ll play the horses,” I promised. “Just you and me.”

“You guys want a ride over?” Danielle asked. “Tyler’s still gonna be a while.”

“I feel like a walk,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you over there.”

It felt weird just traipsing off to the fair after everything that had happened. Someone had just died, and I’d just helped carry his body in my hands. It all felt completely unreal. I guess the right thing to do would have been to just go home, have a sober, contemplative evening, and try to make sense of what had happened. But I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being stuck alone with Shawn way out there in our quiet little house. I needed to be around people, a lot of them. I needed to get rid of the image of the mutilated body. I could still feel its weight in my arms. I was also really hoping to catch up with Ian later and find out if he’d learned anything about who the guy was, or what had happened to him before falling into the locker room, or why we’d had to rush the body away so fast.

Shawn and I joined the crowd making its way to the fairgrounds. I kept expecting him to object to continuing on to the fair, but he just walked along beside me silently, still pretty pale in the face.

“How are you?” I asked, folding my arms against the September evening air.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

He didn’t really look at me.

I knew he was embarrassed that I’d had to be the one to help Ian. This is why he wasn’t saying anything. He would have been too ashamed to insist on running home now if I wasn’t going to suggest it first. Or maybe he also just really wanted a drink.

When we reached the beer garden, Morgan wasn’t even there yet. She was always late. I should have known.

I texted her, and she replied right back.

“b ther soon wait 4 me.”

So there was nothing to do now but wait around with Shawn’s friends, who of course had been at the beer garden for at least an hour by then.

Jason Gibbs was already mostly drunk. Right away he bought me and Shawn a beer.

Jason was a few years younger than us. I even used to babysit him. In high school, he was the basketball star, but of course no one from Muldoon ever gets a scholarship anywhere so he’d worked at the mill for a while with Shawn. Now he was a highway patrol cop; I had no idea how he’d gotten the night off. He was always a little jerk as a kid. He used to try to take Polaroids of me peeing from outside their bathroom window. For a while, though, I’d hoped that maybe he’d influence Shawn to go to the patrol academy too, and I guess I still did, so mostly I tolerated him as one of my husband’s friends.

Shawn drank his beer down as fast as I’d ever seen him drink. I bought the next round, getting a vodka tonic for myself this time.

“Whoa, Ashley!” Jason pressed his plastic beer cup into my drink. “Somebody’s partying tonight!”

“It’s been a long day,” I confessed.

Jason tapped Shawn’s arm. “You better watch your wife, bro. It’s fair time. She keeps going like that, might end up with somebody else’s dick in her ass. Not saying whose, I’m just saying.”

Shawn finished the last of his second beer. “You might end up with somebody’s dick down your throat, dude,” he said. Some of his color had come back. “And I’m saying whose. Mine.”

“Charming, as ever,” I said to both of them. But I didn’t mind that Shawn had actually sort of stuck up for me, even if it was by threatening his friend with forced fellatio in the middle of ordering more beer.

I tried to express as much of my annoyance with Jason as possible, but I was distracted by the way his long, horsey face was capped by whatever spiked thing he was trying to do with his hair. A couple of strands actually kept bobbing up a down idiotically whenever he laughed, which I don’t think he was aware of.

“I don’t know, bro,” Jason said, now without taking his eyes off me. “We have a history, me and Ashley. She told you didn’t she? She used to beg my parents to go out of town. She said I had the biggest cock of all the kids she babysat for. When they got home, she used to be, like, ‘No Mr. And Mrs. Gibbs, you don’t owe me anything. Little Jason took care of all my needs.’ Your wife’s a nympho, bro! Seriously!”

Apparently my husband thought the high-pitched voice Jason used to impersonate me was the funniest thing in the world. Shawn was laughing, and now Jason started laughing at his own joke, and this only made Shawn laugh harder. Apparently this was how much easier it was for Shawn to put the locker room out of his mind than it was for me.

“No, dude!” Shawn said. “You don’t even know! I mean, she kind of is a nympho!” My husband laughed hilariously at this revelation.

All I’d wanted was to have a drink and to try to calm down a little. And now I had to deal with this.

The worst part was that I didn’t even know what to say. I thought about bringing up how I knew Jason used to whack off to Tina Frame’s picture in the yearbook, but I didn’t have it in me. I was too mentally fried, and I didn’t care. I just sat there shaking my head like some prudish idiot.

“Ashleeeey!” Morgan’s arms suddenly wrapped around me from behind. She almost knocked me off my barstool.

I stood and hugged her back, spilling my drink. “Where the hell have you been?”

Morgan was already completely tanked. She gave me a big, whiskey-tainted kiss on the cheek. It was weird how happy I was to see her. For a moment I almost started to cry.

“You and me,” Morgan said, shaking her hips with each word in a little drunken dance, “are going to …”—she held up the back of her wrist, stamped with a green T—“the Bryce Tripp concert!”

Jason scoffed. “Bryce Drip’s a fucking faggot.”

“And we’re leaving these two losers”—Morgan traced a circle in the air, then pointed at Jason’s and Shawn’s faces—“right here in the fucking lame ass beer garden.”

Morgan displayed her stamped wrist again, then tilted her head coyly, held out her tongue, and, like an inebriated pole dancer, gave her stamped wrist a long, sexy lick.

Jason glanced at Shawn.

Now Morgan grabbed my wrist and pressed it against hers, transferring the green T concert stamp to my wrist, just like we used to do years ago to sneak one of us into the movie theater.

Before I could finish the last of my drink, Morgan was pulling me away by the hand. I didn’t even so much as wave to Shawn before leaving him there.

On the way through the carnival, Morgan hung on my shoulder and whispered, “I’ve been sleeping with Jason.” She made a gagging sound. “Gross, huh! I know, I know.”

I was surprised. “Morgan!” She had this great body, but I’d always been the one with the more-or-less cute face. She was always trying to prove that she was attractive by sleeping with one guy or another. But I hadn’t expected she’d sleep with Jason. “Why him?”

“It’s okay, Ash,” she said. “Because I’m already cheating on him!” Morgan snorted a laugh. “Don’t tell him! It’s way more fun cheating on him than it is sleeping with him!”

I couldn’t help but laugh with her.

“You’re fucking crazy,” I said. I was actually feeling a little better.

As we passed the Tilt-A-Whirl, I whispered, “So who are you cheating on him with, then?”

She held a finger to her lips. “Shhhhh. Not saying.”

“Who? Tell me.”

“Not saying!”

Morgan bounded ahead. I had no idea who her mystery guy was, but I worried it might be someone married if she wouldn’t tell me. Knowing Morgan, though, I’d find out one way or another before too long. She never kept a secret.

She was already through the concert gates, waving at me to follow her in.

Suddenly I flashed on the body in the locker room, again. I’d actually managed to forget about it for a little while, but now the image of its mouth hanging open came back to me. I’d kept glimpsing its teeth while I’d helped Ian carry it.

For some reason this made me nervous about sneaking into the concert. We weren’t kids any more, and I’d be mortified if I got caught now, as an adult, especially tonight. I even knew the woman collecting tickets and checking stamps. Her husband was one of the truckers at the company I worked for.

Morgan gave me a shrug from the other side of the gate. Then she impatiently waved me in again.

“Hurry up!” she yelled.

I stepped forward, trying to keep as far from the counter as possible, holding up my wrist with its faint green T. I’d never been as good as Morgan was at playing things cool.

Of course the woman collecting tickets recognized me.

“Ashley! Hi! I thought you weren’t going to the concert?”

“Hey Helen,” I smiled, scared. She already suspected me, I could tell. “Well, my friend bought me a ticket,” I said awkwardly. “We came in earlier? I just went out for a sec to say hi to my niece.”

I had no idea where these lies were coming from, or how believable they were.

“Well let’s see that stamp of yours.”

My heart was pounding. This was so stupid. Someone had just died and I was about to get caught sneaking into a concert by some musician I’d never even heard of and whose bus had even blocked my car in.

“I’m gonna be late!” I joked nervously.

Helen took my hand and examined the stamp. This was it. I glanced around. What would she do? Were there security guards she would call? I saw one guy, arms folded, standing at the entrance to the grandstands. I was pretty sure he was already looking over at me.

“That’s what I thought!” Helen declared, inspecting my stamp. “Ashley!” She frowned and clucked her tongue. “You’ve almost worn your stamp off already! I can barely see it. Here.” She plunked her rubber stamp into the inkpad and gave me a fresh T. “Enjoy!”

As soon as I was through the gate, Morgan grabbed my arm and hurried me toward to the grandstands.

“You totally thought fucking Helen Sandburg was going to arrest you or something, didn’t you!” She laughed at me. “I saw the look on your face! You did! Always such a good kid.” She squeezed my neck. “Ah, that’s why I love you.”

I hated that Morgan thought about me that way. But it was true. I let that ass-hole Jason treat me like shit. I let Shawn belittle me after I’d just wiped vomit off his shoes. And now I was afraid that sweet wouldn’t-accuse-a-fly-of-buzzing Helen Sandburg would turn me into the cops. It was a good thing Morgan loved me, however innocent she thought I was.

I was suddenly determined to get completely wasted.

The concert was packed. It was disorienting to see the rodeo grounds transformed into a country music venue and filled with so many people from out of town. I led Morgan all the way to the standing-only area in front of the stage. We must have missed all the opening acts because Bryce Tripp himself was already playing. He was sitting on a stool wearing boots and a sleeveless shirt, looking like an underwear model with a guitar and a cowboy hat. I thought maybe he was even wearing makeup.

He was singing some ballad that nobody seemed to know except for a small group of middle-aged women I didn’t recognize, each holding up a cigarette lighter and swaying idiotically.

Pretty much everybody else was at least as drunk as they were, but more restless. A couple of guys I recognized from Biggs, the next town over, started yelling at the stage.

“Hey dick lick! Pick it up, pretty boy! Too fucking slow!”

Bryce Tripp seemed to get the hint. Next song he called out his backup band, slung on an electric guitar, and started playing a much faster song whose only lyrics I could catch were “beer” and “bullets.”

Half the crowd was down in front of the stage dancing drunkenly. Morgan bought beers and managed to pour a shot’s-worth each of whiskey from her purse flask. “Boilermakers!” She yelled over the speakers.

I could tell already that the concert wasn’t going to end well. There was just this feeling in the air. Too many guys who basically wanted to drink, and drink more, and then break whatever rule they could find to break. Halfway into his set, Bryce Tripp slowed it down again, this time playing a crooning love song. A guy nearby took the opportunity to slow-dance with this girl I vaguely recognized from the beer garden. He had his hands all over her, then he started really grabbing her ass. I was pretty sure she’d been with somebody else at the beer garden. It was actually kind of weird how the guy wasn’t just grabbing her ass but totally reaching around and down between her legs, and she was just letting him go at it.

That’s when I got knocked over.

Some guy had trampled into me, fists swinging. As I fell, his elbow caught me behind the ear. I spilled what was left of my second boilermaker and scraped my palm.

“Ass hole!” Morgan screamed and tried to help me up.

This was just as the guy who’d knocked me down—it was the same guy I’d seen with the girl in the beer garden—punched the guy she was dancing with squarely in the face. But then yet another guy I’d never seen before pushed them both right back into us, and we got knocked over again.

An all-out brawl broke lose.

Morgan and I crawled to the edge of the stage, and Bryce Tripp finally stopped playing. A security guard took over the microphone while a handful of rent-a-cops tried to stop the melee. I checked my palm, which was only barely bleeding, and my head, which felt fine, but this may have had a lot to do with how drunk I was at that point.

When I looked up, Morgan was talking to Bryce Tripp. I couldn’t believe it.

“Why’d you stop playing?” she yelled out while the scuffle continued on, barely abated, behind her.

I was sure Bryce Tripp would just ignore her, but he actually smiled and said something. Neither of us could make it out over the bullhorn.

“What?” Morgan screamed. I hadn’t seen her this drunk in a long time.

Bryce Tripp smiled again and shook his head. I couldn’t believe it, but he actually approached us at the foot of the stage and kneeled down to talk to us.

“They won’t let me keep playing,” he said. “It’s actually in my contract.”

He had these crazy icy-blue eyes. I honestly don’t think I’d ever seen anyone better looking from this close, in person.

“You know,” he added, and shrugged. “The ‘safety of the performer at risk’ and all that.”

Morgan was in full flirting mode. “So you always do what they tell you to do?”

She had this weird ability to flirt without making a total ass of herself, no matter how drunk she was.

Bryce Tripp laughed. He was even cuter with a full grin. I actually felt this wave of attraction pass over me when he spoke.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I usually do pretty much what they tell me.”

Morgan put on a pout and pretended like she’d lost interest. “Well, that’s a shame.”

“No, not really,” Bryce Tripp shot back, still grinning. “I get paid all the same. This is my third brawl in two months. Just means I get the night off. Which is fine by me.”

He stood, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a stack of what looked like business cards.

“Couple of backstage passes,” he said, handing one to Morgan and one to me. “Looks like I’m free for the evening. Why don’t you come on over and say hello.”

Then he just gave us this friendly wave and left.

As soon as he’d left the stage, Morgan clutched her pass and screamed.

“Oh my fucking God! How do we get back there?”

There was a little security gate beside the stage which seemed to be the only way in.

By then the brawl had shifted toward the grandstands and we were able to make our move. We had to avoid an inebriated trucker pinned to the ground by a couple of security cops, but we managed to race to the side of the stage without getting knocked over again.

I couldn’t stop laughing. I hadn’t forgotten the body, but I was so drunk by now, I actually didn’t care that someone had just died.

This little panicking security guard was the only person manning the backstage gate. He was so focused on the brawl, standing on his toes and yelling into his cell phone, that he just waved us in without even really looking at our passes. He was probably used to letting local girls with passes backstage.

The area behind the stage was strangely empty. There were these couches set up outside, and a cold-cut buffet, and coolers of what I assumed to be beer, but no one was around. Bryce Tripp’s trailer—the same one that had blocked my car—was now pulled up alongside this sitting area.

But Bryce Tripp himself was nowhere to be seen. I don’t know what I expected, but not this.

Morgan grabbed a beer from a cooler and sat on the couch.

Just then someone came out of the trailer. A guy. He was dressed in tapered jeans and a fitted shirt and looked ready for an L.A. nightclub.

He lowered his sunglasses, and it was only now that I realized fully that this was Bryce Tripp, the same guy who’d just been singing twangy country songs in a Stetson.

“How do you like my disguise?” he asked.

“I can’t say it’s an improvement,” Morgan said.

He folded his glasses and stashed them in his vest pocket.

“So where we going?” he asked. “If I’m going to buy you drinks, you two have to lead the way. I’ve never been here before. Where are we, anyway? Muldoon? Is that what it’s called?”

“Muldoon,” I confirmed, stupidly.

Morgan laughed. “Which means there’s only one place to go! Come on.”

The Buckshot Bar is the single establishment where you can buy beer on tap year-round in Muldoon. During fair time it never closes, and it’s basically standing-room-only, twenty-four hours a day, all weekend.

I don’t think anyone recognized Bryce Tripp when we came in. He turned the head of just about every girl he passed when we all made our way inside, and at least a dozen half-sozzled guys sized him up. But he looked so different out of his western clothes that no one realized he was the same guy on all the concert posters. Everyone figured he was just someone’s out-of-towner friend, some pretty boy from the city.

“Well, ladies,” he said, wedging himself into a place at the bar between me and Morgan on one said and Tuck Schroep, my second-grade teacher’s husband, on the other. “What’ll it be?”

I was already barely able to keep my balance, but I let him order me a whiskey.

It was while I was doing the shot that I saw Shawn at the back of the bar. He was nodding drunkenly at one of his friends from the mill.

For just a moment I worried he’d see me shoulder-to-shoulder with this extremely attractive stranger, the only guy in the bar in skinny jeans, and get upset.

But in exactly the next moment, I hoped he’d see me. I thought again about his complete inability to help Ian with the body in the locker room, and the way he’d laughed at me with Jason. Fuck him.

“Nate!” I yelled at the bar tender, pounding my hand and drawing as much attention to myself as possible. “Three more Maker’s!”

I had no idea if this worked because I lost sight of Shawn while a surge of a dozen people spilled in from the cancelled concert. I’m sure the bar was well past its legal capacity. I could hardly breathe.

By the time our next round arrived, Tuck Schroep was talking at Bryce and Morgan from beneath his hairy white mustache.

“. . . Clean off!” he was saying, making a chopping motion with his hand. “That’s right. I’m telling you. Somebody’d cut his thingy clean off!”

I realized he was talking about the body.

I knew the news of a mutilated corpse in the girls’ locker room was going to spread like prairie fire, but not this fast. Mrs. Whipple must have told anyone within earshot after the football game.

And now everyone was on edge. I could tell. People weren’t just drinking because it was fair time. People were nervous, afraid. Things like this didn’t ever happen in Muldoon. I’d never even seen Tuck Schroep drunk before, not ever, come to think of it.

“What’s he talking about!” Bryce laughed. He couldn’t seem to figure out if Tuck was crazy or not.

“I don’t know,” I lied. I was desperate to come up with a way to change the subject. Before I could think of how, though, Tuck broke in again.

“Fella was trying to rape one of the girls, I guess!” he declared. “One of the cheerleaders. I don’t know which one of them cut it off, but one of ’em did. Well, good for them, I say.”

Someone put a hand on my shoulder. At first I thought it was someone trying to pay Nate, but whoever it was kept his hand there and pulled a little, gently turning me around.

“How you holding up?”

It was Ian.

I practically knocked Morgan over hugging him. “You’re already here! I didn’t think I’d see you.”

He looked at me a little warily. He’d changed clothes; he’d probably showered. He was wearing his Army hoodie. He glanced at Bryce, then back at me.

“How you holding up?” he asked again.

“Fine!” I yelled over the bar’s noise. “Fine! Totally fine. Drunk off my ass, but fine!”

Bryce Tripp held out his hand. “Hey I’m Bryce,” he said, charmingly.

Ian shook his hand. He was polite, but wary. “Ian.”

I was actually pretty drunk at that point, but I could see right away that Ian was the only person in the bar who recognized Bryce Tripp from the posters.

“Buy you a drink?” Bryce asked him.

“Nate!” Morgan yelled to the bartender before Ian could respond. “Four more!”

Ian grinned at me for the first time since he’d said hello.

“I did say I might have just one.”

Bryce raised his shot glass. “Well, then, to—where’d you say we are? Muldoon! Prettiest little place I’ve ever avoided getting my ass kicked. So far.”

Morgan laughed, we all clinked Bryce’s glass with ours, and I drank down yet another whiskey—who knows how many by that point.

After that point, things start to get hazy.

I remember Morgan talking to Ian about bear hunting with her dad, and Ian just nodding and listening to her drunken blather because he was too nice to tell her just to shut the fuck up. I remember actually grabbing Bryce Tripp’s arm and peeling him away from Tuck Schroep—something I never would have done if I hadn’t been so totally wasted—and staggering with him in tow onto the insanely crowded dance floor. I think I remember Shawn watching us dancing, but I can’t say for certain.

Next, I remember—just barely—asking Bryce if he smoked, and then I remember him buying cigarettes from the vending machine. I think I remember having one more shot at the bar and going outside to smoke, and I’m pretty sure I remember that Morgan actually talked Ian into having another shot with us. There was another moment outside—this one very hazy—when Bryce bummed someone’s last match, and he laughed when I told him he’d have to monkeyfuck me, which meant, I explained, lighting my cigarette from his. But I can barely remember this at all, and I can’t really say if it was before or after that round of shots with Morgan and Ian.

And that’s it, really.

The rest is totally gone. Anything else that happened that night is completely blacked out from my memory.

The next thing I remember is waking up alone in the Starlight Motel, without a phone, or a car, and, now, with night coming on.

I had no choice but to walk the half-mile from the motel to the fairgrounds, where I hoped my car would still be parked.

All the way there I still felt weirdly great.

I kept expecting a massive hangover to hit me, but it never came. I didn’t even have to pee, and I wasn’t really thirsty at all. I honestly don’t think I’d ever felt more rejuvenated in my life.

It was only when I reached the highway that I realized something was wrong.

It had to be the Saturday evening of fair weekend, but there wasn’t a single car on the road.

The traffic should have been bumper to bumper, even worse than it had been last night. Any other time of year, an empty highway would have been perfectly normal. But not tonight.

I walked faster. My footsteps through the gravel at the road’s shoulder was the only sound I could hear. It occurred to me, hurrying along while the sun sank into the mountains way off in the west, that I hadn’t seen a single person since I’d woken up. Not one.

The lights at the rodeo arena were on. And most of the street lights too.

But as I approached the fairgrounds, all of the carnival rides were totally dark. The Ferris wheel’s motionless silhouette rose up over the feedlot’s corrugated tin roof. There was no blaring carnival music, no roar of souped-up engines at the Saturday-night destruction derby, no cheers from the grandstands.

I hopped the fence into the parking lot.

There were only a few cars left. I was so relieved when I spotted my little gray sedan, parked all alone in the dimming evening light, that I practically ran to it.

I’d lost my set of keys along with my phone, but thank God Shawn had insisted that I keep a spare hidden under the battery. I popped the hood and found the extra key right where it should have been.

But the car door wasn’t locked. Which was odd, because if there was ever I time I’d be sure to lock my car door, it was during fair, especially if I’d parked in the public lot.

I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could and go home, or maybe to my parents’, or to Ian and Danielle’s, and to figure out what the fuck was going on.

I tried not to think about the unlocked door for now and I jammed the key into the ignition. Just as I put the car into drive I noticed something on the passenger seat.

It was a hoodie. A man’s. I kept my foot on the brake and held up the fabric.

It was Ian’s black Army hoodie. The one I’d seen him wearing at the bar.

So Ian had been in my car last night.

I tried again to think as hard as I could about what had happened after we were all at the bar. But it was no use. I had no memory whatsoever of anything after that.

In the dimming light I almost didn’t even see that there was something else on the seat. But when I moved the hoodie aside, there it was.

A gun. Ian’s gun. I recognized it right away.

It wasn’t like Ian was one of those guys who packed everywhere he went, but he must have been carrying it last night in the bar. And he must have had a reason.

But why would he have left his gun in my car? With the door unlocked?

It didn’t make sense.

Something was wrong. Something was really wrong. I had to get to Ian right away. I had to talk to him and find out what the hell was going on.

I hit the gas and drove my little car as fast as I could to toward the fairground’s nearest exit.

The exit was in the back, near the stockyard. On the way there I saw that everything at the carnival was totally shut down. All the food stalls were closed, and as far as I could tell, even the animals had been taken out of their pens. My headlights flooded the road and all of the motionless rides, but I didn’t see a single soul.

When I reached the gate, it was blocked.

A pair of wooden police barriers spanned the entire road. What the fuck was going on?

Someone knocked hard on my window. I almost screamed.

“Ma’am?” It was a male voice, but it was too dark now to see who it was. Another couple of pounding knocks. “Can’t leave here, Ma’am.”

It was a cop. He was knocking with his flashlight. I don’t know if I was more relieved that it was a cop and not someone trying to kill me or that it was simply another human being, the very first I’d seen that day.

I rolled down the window.

My eyes adjusted to the glare of the flashlight, and now I could see that the cop was Jason. Fucking great.

“I’m not authorized to let you through here, Ma’am.”

“Ma’am? Who’s Ma’am? What the fuck, Jason?”

“Ashley. Whatever. You can’t pass through here.” He was obviously still hung over, but this wasn’t stopping him from acting like an ass-hole cop now that he was on duty. “Vehicles can’t come or go until the search is over. Why are you even here? Why aren’t you at home?”

“I’m trying to go home,” I said. “Just let me out.”

“Can’t. Can’t let anyone in or out. We still haven’t caught those guys yet.”

“What guys?”

“Are you kidding me?” Jason leaned casually against my car and folded his arms. This enraged me even further. “The guys who attacked that girl. Where have you been?”

Immediately my thoughts leapt to Haley. “What girl?”

“I don’t know.” Jason shrugged. “Some girl. Some kid. It was two guys who did it. We’re still looking for them. We’re combing the fairgrounds. It’ll take a little time. The whole place is locked down. Here and the high school both. How do you not know about all this? Everyone was supposed to be out by two-thirty last night. They were announcing it for hours.” Now he grinned that stupid smug grin of his. “Where were you?” He laughed. “You were fucking hammered last night! Having a little too much fun?” With this he gave a few rabbit-like thrusts of his pelvis.

I was too worried about Haley to care.

“Who was the girl, Jason? Just tell me who the girl was.”

“I told you I don’t know, Ashley. Maybe if you weren’t so shitfaced drunk last night you could have found out for yourself.”

In the briefest of moments I thought about the gun under Ian’s hoodie. But I wasn’t stupid.

I had to focus on getting home as soon as possible, then calling Danielle on the landline. All I cared about right now was making sure that Haley was okay. I tried to remind myself that there were probably hundreds of little girls at the fair last night. But if something had happened to Haley after she’d begged me to take her to the carnival, and I wasn’t there, I’d have to kill myself.

I had to stay calm. I had to. I couldn’t afford anything else.

“Look,” I said to Jason, trying to control my voice. “You know me. I’m obviously not a suspect. All you have to do is move that roadblock and let me through.”

Jason didn’t stop leaning against my car.

He grinned. Again.

“What’s the rush?” he said. “I mean, I can’t let you out. I told you that. And, hell, I sure could use some company.” Now he leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Here I am, stuck out here all alone on a chilly evening. What’s the hurry?” He winked. “It’d be just like old times.”

“Let me the fuck out.” It was everything I could do not to scream. “Right now. Jason. Let me the fuck out. There’s no way this is even legal. Let me the fuck out right now.”

Jason put his head through the open window and brought it close to mine. He sniffed.

“You been drinking? Ashley? Are you still drunk, maybe?” Now he put his finger under my chin and turned my face around toward his. He sniffed again. “I wonder if maybe you’re getting just a little belligerent. I wouldn’t want to have to detain you. But if I have to, I have to. It’d be for your own good.”

I couldn’t even think. I hadn’t ever been so enraged in my life. I just acted without planning. Suddenly I found that I’d slammed my foot into the gas pedal.

My car heaved forward. Jason spun around, and the next thing I saw of him was just his hand flopping out through the window. I’m not sure, but I may have broken his arm.

I didn’t have much time to wonder about it, though, because my bumper hit the two wooden police barricades. I lurched forward with the impact, and I worried for a moment that I might not make it through. But I just kept my foot on the gas, and my little car surged, knocked the barriers aside, and sent them tumbling onto the road.

I looked into the rear-view mirror.

My taillights were just bright enough to illuminate Jason limping forward. He raised his gun with one hand. I ducked and kept speeding forward as fast as my car would go. But I was already too far away; he lowered his gun without firing, and I turned the corner onto the completely empty highway.

I drove faster and faster, trying to catch my breath, maxing out at a little over ninety miles an hour. The road was completely empty. The night was completely dark.

And then I felt it: someone’s hand on my shoulder.

For a moment I tried to reason that this was impossible, that maybe my seat belt had tightened when I’d crashed through the barricades. But I wasn’t wearing my seat belt.

Someone really was in the back of my car—had been in the back of my car this whole time—and now they were touching my shoulder!

I felt an index finger slowly rise up the skin on my neck. Very lightly, it touched my ear.

I was driving way too fast to take my eyes off the road. My car was shuddering from the speed. Without really thinking about it, I held on tight to the wheel and reached for the gun. I felt its metallic grip at the tips of my fingers.

But I didn’t grab it.

And this is what’s really weird. This is what I still can’t figure out. Because more than anything else right then I was truly afraid that Haley had been hurt, or worse. I was also consumed by worry that I may have cheated on Shawn. And now I was truly, utterly terrified at the fact that someone was in the back of my car, running their finger along the softest part of my neck. And yet, despite all of this, that weirdly euphoric sensation of invincibility that had overcome me after waking up still hadn’t gone away. If anything, it was suddenly becoming more intense.

Whoever was behind me drew their hand down over my shoulder, slowly across my ribs and abdomen, then plunged it, very softly, into my underwear.

I still had no idea who it was, or how I could be so weirdly aroused at a moment like this. I flashed on dancing with Bryce Tripp last night, and lighting my cigarette from his, and his icy blue eyes, and I wondered if only someone as confident as he was could do anything so audacious as this.

And then I remembered something else while still trying to slow my car down without wrecking it. It hadn’t been Morgan who’d talked Ian into having one more shot with us, like I’d thought earlier. It had been me. Morgan had been goading him, but it wasn’t until I’d spoken up that Ian finally glanced in my direction, and, for just a moment, he gave me this accidental look that seemed to say I’d do anything you ask me to do, anything at all. Then he drank down his second shot.

I took my hand from the gun.

Instead, I clutched the fabric of Ian’s hoodie in the seat beside me.

Whoever it was in the back seat of my car right now, reaching even deeper into my underwear while I tried to keep the car on the road, it was probably more likely that it was anyone in the world other than Ian.

And yet no matter how well I knew it couldn’t possibly be him, for a moment I hoped somehow that it was.

                                       Chapter 2: Stiff

I really wasn’t the kind of person who would ever act like this—or even think like this.

First of all, I wouldn’t ever seriously consider sleeping around on my husband, even if maybe our marriage had fallen into a pretty deep rut. And I’m definitely not the kind of person who would ever actually get, well, just a little bit, um, wet, at the touch of a stranger’s hand on my shoulder. It was true that I liked sex, just like everybody else does. And for a while I really liked it, especially with Shawn when we were younger and things had been going well between us and we were like best friends. But I wouldn’t ever let anyone put their hand deep into my underwear while I was careening down a highway in the dark, probably not even Shawn in high school. And what I absolutely wouldn’t ever do while a stranger’s fingertip was beginning to press slightly inside me would be to actually hope that it was my sister’s husband who was doing it.

Or at least I thought I wasn’t that kind of person. Not until now. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

A voice whispered behind me.

It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t Ian’s voice, that’s for sure. And it definitely wasn’t any guy I knew.

“You’re wet,” it said.

Then there was laughter. Shocked laughter. It was Morgan.

“Oh my God!” she said, no longer whispering and now laughing out loud. She jerked her hand out of my pants. “You actually got a little into that, I think!”

Finally I was able to slow the car to a reasonable speed and I quickly turned my head, just enough to glimpse the outline of Morgan’s face.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I snapped my head back around to keep my eyes on the road, then glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Morgan! What are you doing in my car?”

I was still so startled that I could barely process the fact that the person who had just had their hand down my pants had been my best friend. And it really weirded me out. So maybe one time at a lame-ass football party in high school some of the guys had pressured us into kissing each other, and we’d gone along just to prove we weren’t prudes. But otherwise Morgan had never done anything like this.

She couldn’t stop laughing. “Who did you think I was!”

“You scared the shit of me!” I said, trying to sound more annoyed than flustered and pretending I hadn’t been turned on. “Morgan? What the hell? I almost wrecked the car! Your hands are like ice! What the fuck are you doing in here?”

“That was the funniest thing ever!” She kept laughing. “I thought you were so scared, at first. But obviously you weren’t just scared!”

Still giggling, she climbed over the seat. I pulled Ian’s hoodie out of the way, careful to keep the gun wrapped inside, before she sat down.

“But, wow, actually,” she said, “I mean where did your tummy go? There’s like nothing there.” She reached over and felt my abdomen. “I didn’t know you were trying to lose weight, Ash. Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.”

I was still flustered, and I couldn’t understand why Morgan would decide to hide in my car and then try to reach into my pants out of the blue. It was bizarre. Nothing was making any sense.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Jason,” I mumbled.

But even Jason’s influence couldn’t quite explain how Morgan was acting. I was still basically clueless about whatever weird shit had been happening since last night, but obviously things had gone very wrong in Muldoon, and I had a feeling they were going to get worse. Yet Morgan was still laughing as if everything was perfectly normal and we’d just been out drinking together.

“Can’t be because of Jason,” she said, now catching her breath from laughing and settling into the passenger seat. “I broke it off with him last night. He definitely wasn’t happy about it. I’ve been avoiding him. Sorry I didn’t back you up just now. Really, Ash. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want him to see me in the car after everything.” She slapped my arm with the back of her hand. “But that was crazy awesome what you just did! He’s such an ass hole! I bet he shit his pants when you broke through that roadblock. I mean, he should totally have to pay if you have to fix anything on your car. I bet you could even get him fired, after all that pervy shit he said to you.”

Morgan put her head in her hands. I could see by the dashboard lights that her hair was unbrushed, and that she was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn last night.

We were quite the pair. She looked like she’d just woken up too.

“I’m still so fucking hung over,” she groaned, then she forced herself to straighten up. “So are you gonna tell me, or what?” she asked suddenly. “What happened to you last night? I was worried.”

I’d been hoping that it would be Morgan who could help me answer this question.

I had no idea how much she knew, but I wasn’t quite ready to tell her that I’d completely blacked out and woke up in a room at the Starlight.

“You first,” I said. At least having Morgan in the car would help take my mind off worrying about Haley while I drove home. Now that I was recovering from her weird prank, I was actually feeling incredibly glad to see her. “How’d it go with you and Bryce Fancy-Ass Tripp?” I asked.

“Me?” Morgan sounded genuinely surprised. “I couldn’t even get him to notice me,” she said. “Not after we got to the bar, anyway. You were the one he couldn’t take his eyes off.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “So I guess you didn’t get to see the inside of his bus?”

“Seriously? You were the one who disappeared with him. You should have seen how worried Ian got before he went out looking for you.” Morgan let out a little laugh. “But after how you were dancing with him, I gotta say. I’ve been telling you all this time to think about leaving Shawn, but I kinda thought maybe you were finally going for it. And, I mean, Bryce Tripp’s not a bad a way to do it.”

She glanced over at me.

“Well, you know me.” I shrugged. “I’m the good kid. You said it last night. I couldn’t do something like that to Shawn.”

I kept my eyes on the road. I could feel Morgan staring at me.

“Okay,” she said. “So, then, what did you do after we split up? I was looking for you. I was worried, Ash.”

“Worried? Why? I just ended up back at the beer garden for a little while.”

I didn’t like lying to Morgan, but I was too confused about what had actually happened to just tell her the truth. I’d explain later, after I’d got my bearings. She’d forgive me. I hoped.

“Then after that,” I said, “I was at the campground with some people I met from Boulder, or somewhere. I can hardly remember, actually. It’s your fault you got me so drunk. Then Ian found me and took me home.”

“Really,” Morgan said, sounding suspicious. “Ian drove you home?”

I wasn’t sure if she knew I was lying or if now she was trying to suggest that I had something going on with Ian.

“But what about you?” I tugged at her unbuttoned jacket sleeve and laughed. “What did you get up to?”

“Just stayed at the bar, pretty much. They actually ran out of beer on tap around one. So everyone just had more whiskey.” She rubbed her eyes, then let out a long yawn. “When the police started making everyone leave, I couldn’t find you, and the phones were all jammed, so I just went to your car. I was gonna wait for you, then I guess I fell asleep. I tried to get out of the fairgrounds in the morning, but they wouldn’t let me. I was so hung over I just went back to your car and tried to sleep it off. I figured you’d show up eventually.”

“So do you have any idea what happened last night?” I asked. “I mean, have you heard anything new?”

“Not a fucking clue. Some carney died at the high school, and later some kid got attacked at the fair.” She shrugged. “That’s all anyone’s saying. I was kinda wondering if Ian filled you in on any of the details today. He must know more.” Morgan had that same tone in her voice again when she mentioned Ian, but now I couldn’t tell if she was suspicious or feeling guilty about something she wasn’t saying. “He didn’t say anything to you?”

I thought about Ian’s Army hoodie and his gun in my car, and Morgan sleeping there. Had she been with him?

Of course she hadn’t. I didn’t know why my thoughts even went there.

“I haven’t talked to Ian,” I said, and I realized I had no idea if this was true or not.

In a small town like Muldoon, word about anything gets out fast. Everyone at the bar last night already knew about the body at the high school. So it was hard to believe that no one seemed to know anything at all about the girl who’d been attacked, or who’d done it. I couldn’t figure out why the police would keep information like this secret. I also couldn’t figure out why they would be blocking people from going in and out of the fairgrounds. It didn’t make sense.

My headlights reached a car parked on the side of the road up ahead. It was the first car I’d seen anywhere near the highway. Its taillights’ red glow dimly illuminated a hay field that stretched out into the darkness from the road.

As I drew closer, I could see that both of the car’s front doors were wide open. I couldn’t make out what kind of car it was. As far as I could tell, no one was sitting inside, and I couldn’t see anyone standing around.

Normally I would have slowed down in case someone was in trouble or hurt. But after everything that had been happening, the empty car was unnerving. I sped up just a little and passed it.

Morgan watched the car out the window as we drove by, and now she turned around in her seat to look behind us.

“What was that?” For some reason she was whispering. “Did you see that? Out in the field?”

“What?”

“Wait. Go back, go back. What was that? Something was out in the field.”

I really, really just wanted to go home. I wasn’t looking forward to confronting Shawn—I still had no idea what I was going to tell him about where I’d been last night. At least when I reached my house, though, I could call my sister and make sure Haley was safe. But I was born and raised in a small rural town, and in small rural towns you don’t just pass a car on the side of the road without making sure everything’s okay. What if someone needed help? If I was hurt on the side of the road and someone just drove by, I’d feel awful.

I slowed down. I started to loop the car around to make a U-turn.

“Hurry,” Morgan whispered. She tapped the window, pointing into the darkness beyond the abandoned car. “Out there. Shine the lights out there.”

When I was about fifty yards from the parked car, I turned the wheel so the headlights would shine in the general direction Morgan had been pointing.

It was a hay field. Pretty much just like any of the other thousands of hay fields in northern Colorado. The stubble was short. It had been cut recently. Big round bales of rolled hay were scattered as far as my headlights reached.

“There! There!” Morgan yelled through her whispering voice. “Just turn back a little.”

I maneuvered my car so the headlights pointed toward the part of the field they’d just passed over.

I searched the field again. But still I couldn’t see anything. There was just the abandoned car with its doors open and its lights on, and, out beyond, hundreds of hay bales.

“Oh my God,” Morgan whispered. “Who is that?”

I still couldn’t see anything. The tone of Morgan’s voice was scaring me.

“Where?”

“There!”

Morgan nodded stiffly toward the field as if she were trying to avoid making any fast movements.

Finally I saw what she was looking at.

I’d been scanning the field itself, searching for someone standing or maybe lying in the stubble. I hadn’t looked on top of the bales themselves. They were almost six feet tall, and I knew from experience as a kid that they weren’t easy to climb up onto.

But someone had. Two people, in fact.

On top of one of the bales, about three rows from the road, I could just make out a man’s back. It was bare. And there were a pair of equally bare women’s legs wrapped around him. From this distance I could just tell that they were swaying back and forth together.

It had to have been a couple of high school kids having sex. They must have been enjoying themselves, because I was shining my headlights right toward them now, and they weren’t letting up.

Morgan put her hand over her mouth and giggled. “Who is that?”

“Just some kids,” I said, not quite sharing Morgan’s interest. “Fair’s cancelled. What else are they going to do around here? Let’s go. Obviously our help isn’t exactly needed.”

“No, wait!” Morgan said, still giggling. “It isn’t kids! Look! Just pull up a little closer.”

I tried to look closer, but I couldn’t make out anything I hadn’t seen before. “I need to get home. I’m tired.”

“Just a little closer! Ash, seriously, it’s not kids.” Morgan cupped her hands around her eyes and peered out the window. “Who is that?”

I pulled up a little farther. I felt kind of guilty invading these people’s privacy like this, but now I was curious about what Morgan thought she saw.

I pulled within about thirty yards from the car.

She was right. It definitely wasn’t kids. I could see the man’s back more clearly now. He was older. He was rhythmically thrusting away, then for a moment he threw his head back and I could see that his hair was gray. And so was the woman’s.

“Oh my God,” Morgan squealed quietly. “They’re not even stopping! It’s like they don’t even see us. Can you tell who it is?” Morgan asked through a fit of suppressed giggling.

The man threw his head back once again, the woman’s legs clutched tightly around his ass, and now he arched his back. They whole hay bale shuddered.

“Oh god,” I said, disgusted.

“Can you tell who it is?”

I had no idea. It was too far away to tell.

The man rolled over onto his side, then his back, managing to keep his balance atop the hay bale. I couldn’t believe it, but now the woman threw her fleshy leg up and straddled him. She was plump, and her big ass shined white in the headlights.

“Oh my God!” Morgan squealed. “They’re going again!”

The woman just continued on swaying, completely oblivious to our presence, or, somehow, they just didn’t care that we were there.

What was going on? Something was off. I didn’t know any middle aged people who would ever act like this, especially not after everyone knew that someone had just died at the high school and half the town was under lockdown. And it wasn’t even a full moon.

“What’s happening around here?” I said out loud.

I was suddenly aware of the night’s darkness surrounding the car. I also remembered the weirdly charged rush of erotic energy I felt when Morgan reached between my legs.

I was scared. Something wasn’t right. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but I was scared. I needed to drop Morgan off, collect myself, and get things straightened out. In fact, what I really wanted to do was talk to Ian as soon as possible. Whatever was happening, he would know what to do better than anyone.

I put my car in reverse, turned around, and started back down the highway.

“Ashley!” Morgan pleaded. “I wanted to see who that was! I couldn’t even see the car.”

I kept driving.

“Well, whatever.” Morgan settled back into her seat. She was too hung over to put up much of a fight.

For a moment she looked at me as I drove, and I could tell she was as perplexed as I was at everything that had been happening.

She shook her head slowly. “What is going on?”

Morgan lived in a tiny rental house on the Hershel ranch, the property that had abutted my family’s ranch for generations.

When we were younger, sometimes Morgan and I used to sneak into the little clapboard house to drink. Mr. Hershel was one of those old classic grizzled cowboys, but he was really softhearted. He used to tear up whenever he had to slaughter cattle. He knew we used his house, and I’m sure he smelled the scent of cigarette smoke we left behind, but he never said anything to my parents about it. He even had the place fixed up a little before he started renting it to Morgan, and he charged her practically nothing.

When I pulled up to drop Morgan off, I eyed the little house’s dark porch apprehensively.

“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked her. “You can stay with me and Shawn, if you want. Maybe until everything settles down?”

Morgan slapped my knee. “You’re a sweetheart,” she said. “But I just want to get into my own bed and sleep. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Ash. Of course.”

She opened the door and stepped out.

“Well,” I said. “Call the house number if you need anything. I lost my phone.”

“Oh, shit,” Morgan said. “Really?” Then she laughed. “What a night. I’ll be fine. Call me tomorrow.”

She closed the car door. I kept my headlights shining on her porch until she was inside and had the lights turned on.

The house I rent with Shawn isn’t far past my parents’ ranch. I was there in a couple of minutes.

None of the lights were on. My house was as dark as Morgan’s.

Shawn’s pickup must have been inside the garage, because the driveway was empty. I hurried to the house.

The door was locked.

We almost never locked our front door. I knocked.

I waited. I knocked again, louder, and this time I called Shawn’s name.

Nothing. My husband wasn’t home.

Shawn was always at home if he wasn’t working.

I tried not to panic. I’d been so apprehensive about confronting him that I’d just assumed he’d be there.

I got back into my car and drove straight to Ian and Danielle’s house, which was only a couple of miles past ours.

But there were no lights on at their place either. Their door was locked too, and when I knocked I was met only with a deep, disquieting silence.

I suddenly regretted not making Morgan come home with me. I don’t think I’d ever felt more alone. The sky was perfectly clear and moonless, and all of the stars shined down on me icily as I walked back to my little car.

My parents’ house was my last bet. I tried not to think about the possibility of finding their place abandoned and silent too.

I drove all the way back up the highway, still not passing a single car.

I turned of the road and drove under the big Travis Ranch sign spanning the dirt road. I’d always thought the sign was so tacky and worn out, but now I found it mildly comforting in the dark of night.

The old farmhouse I grew up in sits just over a low rise. When followed the road up the hillside, the house’s upstairs windows became visible first. None of them were lit. I braced myself.

But as I reached the top of the rise, I could see vehicles crowding my parents’ driveway. The front porch light was on. Shawn’s truck was there, and so was Ian’s SUV.

I’d never been so happy to be home. I sped down the driveway and pulled up behind my dad’s hay truck.

Then I remembered Haley, and what had happened last night.

What if everyone had gathered here at my mom and dad’s because it really had been Haley who’d been attacked at the fair? What if she’d been hurt, or worse? And what if while all this had gone on while I’d been out partying, sleeping around with who knew who, and out of reach all day?

I knew I was probably overreacting, but I ran up the steps and threw open the front door. I burst through the entryway.

The first thing I saw was Haley, lying at the bottom of the staircase.

Her head was resting against the lowest stairs. She was in her pajamas.

In each of her hands was a small bronze horse. These were the prizes at the horse racing pinball game at the fair. Every time you won, you traded up for a bigger horse. My parents must have taken her to the carnival last night, then brought her home, as planned, safe a sound, long before the attack.

“Aunt Ashley!”

My niece sprang to her feet and ran towards me, a toy horse in each hand.

“She’s here!” Haley shouted. “Aunt Ashley’s here!”

I knelt down and right away, before even hugging me, Haley sat on my knee.

“Look,” she said, carefully displaying her pair of bronze horses as if they were small birds perched in her hands. “I got one, and grandpa got one.” She whispered, “But he gave his to me.”

My dad rushed into the entryway.

I’d never seen him look this way. He had this expression of utter relief when he saw me. I’d had no idea what I’d been putting them all through.

He was in the same kind of striped farmer’s shirt and faded jeans he always wore, his boots off in the house, and his eyes were misty as he strode toward me and put his arms around me. I could smell the hay dust on him, just like I always could whenever he used to hug me.

“Oh, thank God,” he said. “You’re here. You’re here.”

Now my mom appeared, and right behind her came Danielle and Ian. Even Tyler slouched over for my big return.

Everyone had been waiting for me. I hadn’t even considered that anyone besides Shawn would know I’d been gone.

My dad let go of me, and now my mom stepped forward, her arms folded. I could tell she was waging an inner battle between feeling relieved and being totally pissed at me, and it looked like the being-totally-pissed-at-me side was winning.

“I sure hope you have a good explanation for all this,” she said. My mom was small, but tough, especially during moments when she had to be emotionally strong. She gave me a quick hug, then she held on to both of my shoulders. “Do you know how worried Shawn’s been?” she whispered, glancing upstairs. “I’ve never seen him so sick with worry.”

Just then my husband appeared at the top of the stairs.

He looked almost as if he’d been crying, and he was as pale as he’d been in the locker room the night before. His expression actually reminded me of the days after his accident, and the endless months he’d spent in the hospital with pins holding his spinal column together.

He didn’t say anything. For a moment he just stared down at me, folding his arms around his now-pudgy frame, and I just stared back up at him, not knowing what to say, and everyone else just watched silently. I realized I’d been holding out hope that somehow, for some reason, it would turn out that it had been Shawn who I’d been with in the motel last night. I’d hoped that we’d both gotten so drunk that maybe on whim we’d just run off to the Starlight to make up for all the lost intimacy we’d been missing.

But now even that remote possibility was gone. If Shawn had been worrying about me all day, that meant he didn’t know I was at the motel. I’d cheated on him. I still had no idea who I’d slept with last night, but now I was sure that it wasn’t my husband.

I didn’t know what else to do other than to just start talking. I couldn’t stand everyone just staring at us. There was no way I could tell my family the truth, so I started making things up which I hoped were half-way believable.

“I got stuck inside the fairgrounds,” I explained. “I’m so sorry. I realized I’d left my phone at the bar when they started evacuating everyone.” My whole family just kept staring at me, listening, so I just kept talking. “I ran back to look for my phone, but the police wouldn’t even let me back into the Buckshot. By the time I made it all the way back to my car, they were already closing up the gates at the fairground. They wouldn’t let me out. I had to sleep in my car. It was only this evening when I finally talked Jason Gibbs into letting me leave.” I glanced up at Shawn, who had now sat down at the top of the staircase. “I have no idea what’s going on around here.” I felt myself starting to cry, but I got control of myself. I swallowed and took a deep breath. “I haven’t even really talked to anyone all day. I don’t understand. What’s been happening?”

My mom was feeling a little more generous now. She gave me her signature sideways hug and started rubbing my shoulder. Ian cleared his throat.

“Tyler,” Ian said. “Take your sister upstairs please.”

“Why?” Haley asked.

Ian didn’t say anything. He just raised his eyebrows sternly and Haley immediately dashed upstairs. Tyler followed. Ian took me by the shoulder.

“Let’s go outside,” he said.

I let him lead me out the door. We sat on the porch swing.

“We don’t know much more than you do about what’s going on, Ash. To be honest. There’s a lot we don’t know. It’s not good though. I can tell you that much. It’s not just the fairgrounds and the high school. There are roadblocks on all the highways coming in and out of town. I haven’t been able to get any answers.” He turned around and looked into the house. He was obviously worried about his kids. “There’s not a damn thing on the news,” he whispered. “None of the stations have picked anything up yet.”

“They won’t let any of us leave town? At all?” I knew things were going badly, but I never dreamed it could be as big as this. “How is that even legal?”

“It’s not,” Ian said. “But they’re doing it.”

“Why, though?” I asked. “I don’t understand. Just to find this guy who attacked a little girl? I mean, obviously they have to catch him, but none of this makes sense.”

Ian leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. I could feel the weight of his body in the sway of the porch swing. He glanced inside the house again and lowered his voice even further.

“It’s not just that, Ash. They’ve got that little girl at the hospital. The one who was attacked. When I went back there last night there were armed guards all around her room. These guys were from way out of town. Maybe out of state. Not cops, military. Some kind of Special Ops or something.” Ian lowered his voice even further. “And they got him. They got the guy. They killed him. They already killed the guy who attacked the girl.”

Ian stared at me for a second, unsure what to say, maybe unsure if he’d told me too much already. I knew he hadn’t shared any of this with Danielle. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure why he was telling me.

“So, what’s this mean?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “What’s going on then?”

“All I can say is that I’m sure there’s a lot more going on than we know at this point.”

I started to cry. I couldn’t hold it back any more. Ian didn’t try to comfort me, which I was thankful for. He just sat there as the tears spilled down my cheeks and I tried to process everything he was telling me. I still didn’t understand what all of this meant, but for some reason it made me feel even more guilty about cheating on Shawn. It felt like such a small and stupid thing to have done, especially now. And I was worried that Ian knew more than he was telling me.

“I blacked out last night,” I confessed at last. “There are a lot of hours I don’t remember at all. The truth is I don’t remember much of anything after the bar.” I turned to look at him. “But I found your stuff in my car.”

Ian searched my eyes. There was something in his look that told me he definitely did know more than he was saying, but he also looked almost relieved when I told him I’d blacked out.

“You don’t remember anything at all?” he asked.

“I’m so stupid.” I tried to dry my eyes. “I haven’t drunk that much since high school. Everything’s pretty much a complete blank.”

“I went out looking for you after you disappeared at the bar,” Ian said. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. To be honest, I think I was even more worried than Shawn’s been.”

He wouldn’t look at me. Ian just kept folding and unfolding his hands and staring at them. He cleared his throat.

“After they starting evacuating everyone,” he whispered, “I was worried about you. Really worried. You know? I didn’t have time to go to the motel, so I looked for your car in the lot.” He shrugged. “I figured eventually you’d make it back to your car. I didn’t want you to be cold. And I wanted to make sure you’d be safe. You still have the gun, right?”

I nodded.

“Good.”

Ian’s phone rang while he nodded back distractedly.

I was used to Ian always getting calls, but this time when the ringer chimed it really startled me.

I saw the name for the incoming call flash on the screen before he picked up.

It was Morgan.

She was screaming. She was screaming so loud I could hear her the sound of her voice as soon as Ian answered. She was screaming for help.

We jumped into my little car. It was blocking all the other cars in; we had no choice but to use mine.

I got into the passenger’s seat to let Ian drive, which was a good thing, because he flew around the dirt-road corners way faster than I’d ever be able go without losing control and rolling.

I had to hold tight to the handle grip around every turn all the way there. Still, I managed to pull Ian’s gun from where I’d stashed it between the seats. I had no idea if the safety was on or off, but I held on to the gun as tightly as I held onto the car.

Somehow, in the middle of all of this, I flashed on what he’d just said to me on the porch swing.

He’d said he stashed the gun in my car because he didn’t have time to go to the motel.

“How did you know I was at the motel?” I asked as he skidded onto the long driveway leading to Morgan’s house.

“What?”

“You said you didn’t have time to go to the motel before leaving the gun in my car,” I yelled over the sound of the gravel hitting the wheel wells.

“Ashley, I didn’t know where you were. I said I couldn’t find you.”

“You said something about a motel!”

He was racing toward Morgan’s house, and we were almost there, but he took his eyes off the road just long enough to give me a hard look.

“Listen to me,” he said decisively. “I don’t care what I may have said. I don’t know anything about any motel.”

We skidded right up to Morgan’s gate. We both leapt out of the car and raced up the front steps. The house lights were on. I didn’t loosen my grip on the gun for a second.

Morgan was still screaming. But her cries were more ragged now, more tired and defeated.

As we passed through the living room I made sure the safety was off. I knew that I would have to shoot whoever was making my best friend wail with such an awful, suffering sound. I couldn’t even let myself think what Morgan must have been going through, or what exactly was happening to her. I just knew I was prepared to kill whoever was causing her to make that sound.

She was in the bedroom. We could hear her crying out from behind the door, but it was locked.

Ian slammed his shoulder into the door, and the wood splintered, but it stayed shut. He backed up and slammed into it again, even harder this time, and now the handle broke out of the frame.

The door whipped open.

Only twenty-four hours earlier I’d helped Ian carry a dead body whose penis had been gruesomely mutilated. But what I saw in Morgan’s room was more horrifying than anything I’d ever seen. It was horrifying on so many levels that at first my brain just kind of shut down and I didn’t understand what I was seeing.

Morgan was on her back, lying atop her tiny writing desk, and bent backwards in what looked like an excruciatingly painful position.

She was completely naked. And she was bleeding. Her nose was covered in blood; her eyebrow was split. Patches of smeared blood ran from her face, down over her breasts, and all the way to her pubic hair.

And standing over her was Mr. Hershel.

I could barely comprehend that this was the same man who my mom always called the “gentle cowboy,” who had been my closest neighbor throughout my childhood, who had even once taught me how to ride his old graying mare.

And he too was completely naked. Or almost completely naked. As he spun around to see who had just crashed through the door, he was wearing just an old leather holster. The belt was fastened around his otherwise bare hips, and inside the holster pouch, which was dangling down against his thigh, was no six-shooter but a very modern-looking handgun.

Morgan’s blood soaked his tanned, weathered face and his bare white chest. And his penis was erect. It was standing upright so that its pointy head hovered just in front of his belt buckle.

I gagged. But I didn’t drop the gun.

Morgan was still crying out in agony, which I hoped was a good sign only because she hadn’t yet been beaten unconscious. But there was absolutely no question that Mr. Hershel had been raping her.

Now he planted a leathery hand between her breasts, holding her down, and Morgan screamed again. Mr. Hershel was fast, but his movements were feverishly stilted. It was almost as though someone were controlling him with strings. He kept fiercely twitching his head to one side and stamping his heel as though his entire body were itching.

But with his free hand, he drew his gun and pointed it right my face.

Ian dove at him.

Before Ian’s shoulder reached Mr. Hershel’s chest, Mr. Hershel fired his gun.

For a moment I was sure he’d hit Ian in the top of his head, but he must have missed, because as Mr. Hershel toppled backward under the weight of Ian’s body blow, Ian immediately tried to wrestle the gun from his blood-soaked hand.

Mr. Hershel didn’t utter a word. He just kept breathing at the pace of a dog’s panting, without stopping. His whole body was heaving with every breath.

Before Ian was able to pry the gun from his fingers, Mr. Hershel pulled away and brought the butt of his gun down hard right behind Ian’s ear.

Ian tumbled backwards, dazed, and fell at my feet.

I knew this was it. I knew this was the moment I had to pull the trigger. I was already aiming right between Mr. Hershel’s eyes.

But I couldn’t do it. Whatever strength I’d summoned to help Ian carry the mutilated body from the locker room without vomiting was all the strength I possessed. This was different. This was too much.

Mr. Hershel grabbed onto Morgan’s ankle and pulled her off the table. She cried out again as she fell awkwardly on her shoulder. She made a muted, coughing cry as she hit the floor. Mr. Hershel held tightly to her foot, twisting her leg up away from her body like he was dragging a club.

And still I couldn’t pull the trigger.

I was so ashamed. As certain as I’d been a moment earlier that I was going to kill whoever I found hurting Morgan, now I was just as certain that I couldn’t bring myself to end the life of the man I’d grown up next door to, no matter what he was doing.

I felt myself letting out a sob.

I heard the heavy blast of Mr. Hershel’s gun.

I was sure, in the next moment, that I was dead. Everything was black. I was lying on the floor.

But not because I’d been shot. Mr. Hershel hadn’t even fired his gun. This fact dawned on me slowly as I opened my eyes.

What had happened was that Ian had grabbed the gun from my hand, knocking me over in the process, and had shot Mr. Hershel.

A massive wound had opened up on his shoulder.

But as if nothing had happened to him at all, Mr. Hershel lunged at Ian, toppling him over. Now he held Ian down, pinning him on his back. Mr. Hershel raised his gun once more, this time with a new urgency and rage.

He brought the barrel level with Ian’s eyes. But at the same instant Ian stabbed his own gun up under Mr. Hershel’s chin and fired.

There was an abrupt, compacted explosion. A piece of Mr. Hershel’s skull leapt up into the air and landed wetly on Morgan’s bed.

Mr. Hershel slumped. Ian pushed the now limp body away, and it fell in a semi-sitting position against the desk.

Ian got on his feet and slid to Morgan’s side.

“You’re okay,” he said. “You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay now. Everything’s all over.”

Morgan stared blankly around the room, never quite meeting Ian’s eyes and looking too utterly confused and in too much pain to cry, or even to begin to try to speak.

Ian pulled the comforter from her bed and wrapped it around her bloodied body. One of her eyes was almost swollen shut, and she was starting to shiver. He picked her up and carried her toward my car while I followed close behind.

He turned to me as he eased Morgan out the front door, careful not to let her head bump the doorframe.

“Can you get her some clothes?” he asked me. It was hard to comprehend such a practical request right now. “We’ll take her back to the house, but she’ll need some clothes.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I can”

I hurried back through the house and stepped once again into Morgan’s room.

Mr. Hershel’s body lay partly propped up with its back against the writing desk. I tried not to look at it.

But I couldn’t help it. I especially couldn’t help but notice Mr. Hershel’s penis.

It was still strangely erect. It hadn’t subsided at all. Not throughout the entire fight with Ian, and not even after he’d been shot in the head.

And his testicles, I noticed only now, were swollen and blackened, just like the corpse in the locker room.

His head was pitched forward over one shoulder. I tried not to look at the gaping wound. I didn’t think I could handle actually seeing the brain matter.

But it wasn’t exactly brain matter that I glimpsed inside his shattered skull. Just when I was about to force myself to look away, I saw . . . movement. There was something happening—some kind of slow churning—inside Mr. Hershel’s head.

I took half a step closer.

Inside the skull cavity was a mass of larvae.

Hundreds, thousands, maybe more, were spinning and twisting around in a thick bunch. Each larva was pale white, almost translucent, and about the width of a fingernail. A few had started to spill out of the gunshot wound, plinking down onto the blood-soaked carpet and writhing there.

“Ian!” I called. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t breathe. “Ian!”

I realized I wasn’t calling out at all, but whispering. I couldn’t speak. Another pair of larvae fell from Mr. Hershel’s head and landed softly on the carpet.

I turned away from the body. I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe. I just had to get Morgan’s clothes, and then I could leave.

I jerked open all of her drawers. I grabbed a few pairs of underwear, socks, and the first tops I could find. All she needed was something to cover up with; it didn’t matter what. As soon as I found a couple pairs of jeans, I wrapped everything up in an oversized t-shirt.

Morgan’s phone was on the dresser, so I grabbed that too and left the room as quickly as possible.

Just as I stepped out onto the porch, the phone rang in my hand.

Ashley flashed on the screen. Someone was calling from my phone.

“Who is this?” I snapped, in an irrational mixture of overflowing confusion and fear.

“Whoa!” said a male voice. “Everything okay? Is this Morgan?”

“Who is this?” I repeated. “This is Ashley. You have my phone.”

“It’s Bryce. Ashley, it’s Bryce. I ended up grabbing your phone after last night. I’m so sorry, it’s the same model as mine. I wanted to get it back to you.”

I was approaching my car now, but I stopped short at the front gate.

Even after everything I’d just witnessed, what I saw now was even more surprising.

I had no idea what to think. I dropped the phone.

In my car’s front seat, dimly lit by the overhead light, Ian was holding Morgan tightly in the comforter.

But she had placed both of her hands, gently, at either side of his face.

And she was kissing him.

                                  Chapter 3: Going Down Six feet Under

I held my hand up in front of my face. I moved my fingers.I couldn’t see anything at all. Nothing. I couldn’t detect the slightest hint of movement. The darkness surrounding me was perfectly complete.

I tried to keep my breathing under control. The faster I breathed, the more oxygen I used up, and the less time I would have to live.

That’s what I’d heard about being buried alive, anyway. I didn’t see why it wouldn’t be true.

Not that it really mattered whether I’d have just a few minutes to live or an hour. One way or another, this was it. I tried hard to accept the fact that I was going to die soon, that my life was going to end, that I was already beginning to suffocate. But it just didn’t seem like it could be real, no matter how hard it was getting to breathe the air.

I reached out and touched the rough wood only a few inches in front of my face. I could feel its raw, grainy texture. The scent of freshly-cut pine was overwhelming.

This was real.

When I was a kid I used to think that the most horrifying way to die would be to be buried alive. Worse than drowning, worse than getting killed in a car accident, worse even than being burned to death. The pain of burning would be unimaginably excruciating, I knew. But the horror wouldn’t quite compare to suffocating inside a narrow, hot box beneath six feet of heavy dirt.

I even used to promise myself that I’d never get close to a coffin as long as I lived. Inviting even the remote possibility of ending up trapped inside one seemed like a stupid risk to take.

And yet somehow here I was. I’d let it happen.

I felt around for my cell phone and clicked it on. The screen’s dim light glared.

The battery was now almost completely dead. I’d lost count of how many times I’d tried checking my phone for a signal. Nothing had changed; there was no service this far under ground, and there wasn’t ever going to be.

I clicked off the screen.

Once again I was lost in darkness.

It all started two days earlier when Morgan fell into a coma.

I don’t know if it was because her mind just shut down from the trauma of being attacked by Mr. Hershel, or if it was because of some other reason which I didn’t fully understand. But right after I saw her curled up in Ian’s lap in my car, his arms holding her tightly and their lips somehow pressed together, Morgan convulsed briefly, then she collapsed.

Ian tried to wake her.

“Morgan?” He shook her, and when she didn’t wake he lightly slapped her face. “Morgan? Sweetheart, you need to stay with me! Morgan!”

But she wouldn’t wake up.

I threw the spare clothes I’d grabbed into the back and squeezed beside Morgan, who was now lying slumped and unmoving in the passenger seat.

Ian raced us back to my parents’ house. All the way there I did my best to keep talking to Morgan and calling her name into her ear, like Ian told me to do. But every time I gave her another series of brisk slaps, my best friend’s head only rolled back down against her shoulder.

In the middle of all this, Ian tried to explain what I’d just seen going on between them.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I don’t understand. I was trying to comfort her and suddenly her hands were all over me. And then she was kissing me. After everything she just went through.” He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t know why she would do something like that.”

Everything about Ian’s tone should have told me that he was telling the truth that Morgan had just started pressing her body against his and kissing him, out of the blue. But now, honestly, I couldn’t be totally sure. The Ian I knew was an extremely honest person, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of lying to me. I wasn’t naïve. After Morgan had told me at the fair that she was cheating on Jason with someone she couldn’t name, and after I’d found Ian’s hoodie and gun in my car where Morgan had slept, and after I’d just watched the way she’d been kissing him, I couldn’t shake the idea that Morgan and Ian had been secretly sleeping together before all of this had started.

For now, I tried not think about it. Somehow I’d find out the truth later, but not now. More than anything else I was terrified that Morgan might die. She still wasn’t waking up.

When we reached my parents’ house, Ian carried Morgan upstairs to my old bedroom. I pulled back the covers and helped Ian lay her limp body in my childhood bed.

Most of the blood that had spread from her face to her pubic hair was now dry and hardened. I ran downstairs to get a mixing bowl to use as a washbasin.

“What on earth is going on?” my mom called out.

“It’s Morgan,” I said as I hurried by the living room. “She’s hurt. Ian’s taking care of her.”

I grabbed a washcloth and filled the mixing bowl with soap and warm water. I could tell my mom was totally confused about everything that was happening. She didn’t ask any more questions.

While Ian kept watch of Morgan’s pulse and the rate of her breathing, I did my best to clean the blood from her body. I washed her face, her breasts, her tummy, then I began gingerly cleaning her pubic hair and around her vagina, part of which had actually been torn a little and had been a source of some of the bleeding.

“Oh Morgan,” I whispered, but I had no hope that she was able to hear me.

Almost as soon as I’d begun cleaning the blood off her tangled pubic hair, Morgan began to whimper. But she was obviously still deeply unconscious. It was almost like she was dreaming. The sound that came from her throat, though, was definitely not one of pain or fear.

Somehow, it was one of pleasure.

Still totally unconscious, she began grinding her pelvis, pressing against the washcloth and my hand as I did my best to clean the blood from between the folds of her vagina without hurting her. The whimpering started to grow into rhythmic moans.

“Morgan, sweetie,” I whispered. “What are you doing? Stay still, sweetie. Please wake up. Wake up.”

Ian touched my arm. Morgan was as cleaned up as she was going to be without putting her in a bath. I pulled the warm washcloth away from between her legs. Right away her moaning subsided.

“What the hell is this?” Ian took Morgan’s pulse once again. “Her heart’s racing,” he said. “She’s also burning up.” He gave me a confused, desperate stare. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Together we dressed her in sweatpants and a t-shirt, then covered her with the sheet.

“We have to take her to the hospital.” I looked at Ian. He was standing over Morgan, folding his arms, staring at her, not meeting my eye. “Right?” I said. “We have to take her to the hospital.”

Morgan lay almost totally still now. Other than her swollen eyebrow, she appeared to be sleeping more or less restfully. Ian placed his hand on her hot forehead, yet again. It was like he was trying to solve a puzzle, but missing some essential piece.

“The hospital isn’t a good idea,” he said. It was almost as though he was talking to himself. “Not now. I don’t know how safe it is there.”

I remembered what Ian had said about the armed guards surrounding the room of the girl who had been attacked at the fair. He’d told me they wouldn’t even let the parents in to see their daughter. Now that Morgan had been attacked too, would they do the same to her at the hospital? Would they take her away and lock her in some medical facility to run who knew what kind of tests? Or worse?

“Okay,” I said. “I understand.” Or I thought I understood. I tried to trust Ian’s instincts. “We’ll keep her here.”

“No one can know where she is.” Ian gave me a look that told me just how important this was. He was dead serious. “No one,” he repeated. “This is the safest place for her. But you have to tell your family not to tell a soul she’s here. You don’t have to say why. They trust you. Tell them that someone had burgled Morgan’s house, beat her up, then killed Mr. Hershel when he came to try to protect her. That’s the story.”

I nodded again.

Ian rubbed his eyes. He looked totally exhausted. And scared.

“Stay here with Morgan,” he said. “Give me a call from the land line if she wakes up or if anything changes. I have to go take care of Mr. Hershel.”

Only a minute or two after I heard Ian’s SUV pull out of the driveway, someone knocked on the bedroom door.

It was Shawn.

Before I could stand up from the bed, my husband had already opened the door and stepped inside the room. He’d been sleeping on the couch, and he was in the sweats and t-shirt he used as pajamas.

“What is going on?” He was furious. “You have to tell me what’s going on!” He stepped directly in front of me as if trying to block me from running away. “Tell me now.”

I put my hands on his chest as calmly as possible and gently pushed him a step back.

“Just...” I began, trying to figure out what to say and how to keep him in a reasonable state of mind.

This is when Shawn finally glanced at Morgan. Her right eye was now completely swollen shut. Her breathing was regular, but now her breaths were coming a little more quickly than normal.

“Oh God,” he mumbled, turning away. “Ashley, what the fuck is going on?” He was no less upset, but now at least he was whispering and speaking a little more pleadingly.

“She was raped,” I whispered tentatively. “And beaten.” I lowered my voice even further. “She won’t wake up.”

I hoped this information would give my husband a sense of perspective. I hoped it would make him feel a little compassion for Morgan. But it only had the opposite effect. Years ago Shawn never would have acted like this. But ever since his mill accident something had changed. I don’t know what exactly, but he was more fearful. And after everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours, his fearfulness was coming out in ways that were starting to frighten me.

“Didn’t I tell you it wasn’t a good idea to keep hanging out with fucking Morgan?” he snapped. “What if this was you? On this bed?” Indignantly, he added, “And why did you bring her here?”

“Because Ian thinks it’s safest here,” I said, gathering myself. “There’s a lot of shit going on, Shawn, that nobody understands.” I told him the story that Ian had given me about a burglar who had broken into Morgan’s house and killed Mr. Hershel. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows.”

“Mr. Hershel?” Shawn looked at me like I was crazy. “Mr. Hershel’s dead? Ashley, what are you talking about? Mr. Hershel? He isn’t dead.”

But as my husband spoke I could tell it was starting to sink in that I was telling the truth about Mr. Hershel. He was starting to see that things were going bizarrely wrong. His eyes were beginning to tear up. I could tell he was struggling not to cry.

“I don’t give a fuck about Mr. Hershel!” he burst out. I didn’t expect this. “All I care about is what’s been going on with you! and where you’ve been! And who the fuck you’ve been with. You were gone all night. You’ve been gone for hours all fucking day. I’ve been worrying my fucking ass off! Tell me what the fuck is going on!”

I sat down on the bed beside Morgan. For some reason I felt safer being close to her. Shawn had never hurt me, but for the first time I was afraid that he might try.

“I’ll tell you everything in the morning,” I whispered. “It’s not what you think.”

I said this, but I had no idea of this was true or not. Maybe what had happened was more or less exactly what Shawn thought had happened. The problem was that I still didn’t even know exactly what had happened. I tried to keep focused on Morgan.

“Right now, Morgan needs help,” I said. “A lot of help. She’s in trouble. She’s hurt bad. She’s not even fucking conscious, Shawn. Do you understand? She may be in a coma for all I know. And I think she’s getting worse.” My voice started to crack. I took a breath and forced myself not to break down as long as Shawn was in the room. “And there’s nothing you can do to help! Is there?” I snapped. “Right now, you’re only in the fucking way.”

I could tell this stung. But I wanted it to sting. Shawn gave me a hurt look I’d never seen before. His face darkened.

He clenched both of his fists, and stepped toward me, putting his face right next to mine. He was breathing hard. He was furious.

He lifted his right fist.

I didn’t take my eyes from his. I forced myself not to look away. If he was going to hit me, he was going to hit me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Instinctively I grasped for Morgan’s limp arm and held it tightly.

Shawn sobbed.

He didn’t hit me; he stepped away, and a huge tear slipped down his cheek. He just shook his head back and forth, still furious.

He knew I’d betrayed him. And it was true. However badly he’d been acting lately, I had betrayed him. I thought about the old Shawn, and how we used to be together when we were younger, and I felt sick. Then I thought about the old me, and how somehow I’d changed. Whatever I’d done last night, I’d done it. And right now, I couldn’t afford to let myself feel sick about anything, even if I deserved to. All that mattered right now was keeping Morgan alive.

Shawn turned and stepped out of the room. He gave me one last indignant look over his shoulder, then he closed the door, surprisingly gently, and went back downstairs to sleep on my parents’ couch.

I must have slept, because sometime before dawn I woke sitting up on my old desk chair.

Ian had returned sometime during the night. He was sleeping on the floor, pillowless, his folded hands beneath his cheek.

I’d awoken because I could hear someone pulling into the driveway. What sounded like a large vehicle moved over the gravel, then it came to a stop outside the window.

Ian woke, leapt up, and looked between the closed blinds.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Stay here.”

He left, hurrying downstairs.

Someone had started knocking loudly on the front door.

“Ian Craig? Shawn Young?” The gruff, official voice that called out paused long enough knock loudly three more times. “Are Ian Craig and Shawn Young on these premises?”

I peered between the blinds. Some kind of large, black military SUV was idling in the driveway. Three men in uniform stood beside it. I couldn’t tell what kind of uniforms they were, but they definitely weren’t local or even state police. The men looked more like soldiers at war. They were dressed in full combat gear. Each held an automatic weapon pointed at the ground. They must have been some kind of military police. They waited without expression while the fourth man, the one in charge and who I couldn’t see, called out to Ian and Shawn at the front door.

When I’d heard Ian’s name, I wasn’t totally surprised, even if I had no idea who these people were or what they wanted from him. But when they called out for my husband, too, I wasn’t ready to hear his name in the same breath. What could they want with Shawn? I didn’t understand how anybody could possibly know that Shawn and Ian were at my parents’ house. Neither my husband nor my brother-in-law had addresses registered here.

I heard Ian open the door, then his startled voice.

“What is this?”

It was hard to make out what the man who’d been knocking said in response, but there was something about “emergency conscription orders.”

I heard Ian say, “No one’s leaving this house.”

“Sir, you have one option and one option only. One way or another you’re coming with us. Time is extremely sensitive. You’ll be debriefed at the center. Here are your orders.”

Shawn must have arrived at the door while the man in charge was handing over whatever conscription documentation he had.

“Shawn Young?” he asked.

“I’m Shawn Young. What’s—”

“These are your conscription orders, son.”

After a pause, Ian said, “We’re not even wearing shoes. What is this?”

“You have exactly thirty seconds to get what you need. Otherwise, appropriate footwear will be provided at the center. I will not repeat again that time is extremely sensitive.”

At this, the three armed men who’d been standing back actually raised their guns. Practically in unison, they took a few steps forward.

“You’ve got to me fucking kidding me,” Ian said.

“I assure you I am not.”

There was some shuffling in the entryway while Ian and Shawn must have been putting on their shoes and jackets. The uniformed men who had drawn their weapons didn’t move. They kept their guns trained directly at the front door.

“Our wives are inside,” Ian said. “My kids. We need to tell them we’re leaving. At least.”

The armed men stepped forward, marching up the front steps and onto the porch. They moved out of my line of sight. All I could see now was the idling SUV with its faint trail of exhaust visible in the coolness of the morning air.

“Sir, even the very fact of your leaving these premises has to be kept under the utmost secrecy. Do I make myself clear?”

Suddenly I saw Ian stumbling down the porch. Two of the armed guards were holding his shoulders. Right behind them came Shawn. He was being escorted toward the SUV in the same way, a guard at each arm. It looked like they were being arrested. Ian was in the faded blue jeans he’d been sleeping in, and Shawn was still in his sweats. His tennis shoes were untied.

The guards threw Ian and Shawn into the large SUV and climbed in behind them without lowering their guns.

I gave Morgan a quick glance. It was the first time I’d looked at her that morning. She was breathing faster than she’d been the night before. I put my hand on her forehead. She was still burning up. But she was still alive.

“Be right back, sweetie,” I whispered, knowing full well she couldn’t hear me.

I raced down the stairs. Haley had been using her coloring books at the base of the stairway, and I had to be careful not to slip on the crayons she’d left scattered everywhere. I opened the front door and ran out onto the porch.

The black SUV was already speeding away.

I stumbled onto the driveway in my socks. For a moment I considered following after it in my car, but that was obviously a stupid idea. There was nothing I could do. I looked back at my parents’ old farmhouse. Already I was worried about leaving Morgan alone.

I went back inside. In the entryway, I noticed that there was something stuffed into the pocket of the jacket I’d left hanging on the rack.

It was an envelope, partly crumpled. An unopened credit card offer. I turned the envelope over.

On the back was Ian’s handwriting in purple crayon. He must have taken the envelope from the mail piled in the entryway while putting on his shoes. He’d managed to use one of Haley’s scattered crayons to scribble out a message:

DO NOT LET ANYONE

TAKE MORGAN AWAY

I found my sister’s jacket and rifled through its pockets. Another note, this one written over a post office pink slip, said only:

AM SAFE

DON’T WORRY

LOVE IAN

How could he possibly know that he would be safe? After what I’d overheard that morning, there didn’t seem to be any reason to believe I’d see Ian or Shawn any time soon. Or maybe ever.

This fact swept over me slowly as I dialed Shawn’s number on my parent’s old rotary phone in the entryway.

No answer. His phone was off.

I tried Ian.

No answer on Ian’s phone either.

Their phones had probably been confiscated.

The house was silent. My parents’ bedroom and Danielle’s bedroom, where she was sleeping with both her kids, were both in the back of the house. They’d slept through everything.

I didn’t wake them. Before anything else I had to figure out what to do with Morgan. I’d barely glanced at her before racing out of the bedroom, but it was clear enough that she hadn’t gotten any better during the night.

And I was pretty sure, now, that Morgan wasn’t safe here at the house anymore. If someone was trying to find her—and Ian seemed to think that someone probably was—it wouldn’t be long before they came looking for her here.

And I had to keep her safe.

Touching Morgan’s forehead was like touching a hot water bottle freshly filled with boiling water. Her breathing was so fast now that it seemed almost like a dog’s panting. She was taking in short little breaths and releasing them maybe two times a second. She was sweating. Beads of perspiration had collected on her upper lip and across her cheeks. I was too afraid to take her temperature and find out how high it actually was.

I had to figure out where to move her, and how. But before anything else I had to get her some water. Considering how much she’d been sweating, I figured she was probably nearly dehydrated. There was a glass at the bedside table, which I took into the bathroom to fill.

On my way back through the hallway, I could hear my mom stirring downstairs. She was in the kitchen, cooking. Bacon and eggs, it smelled like. She was probably trying to create some small, homey comfort to lift everyone’s spirits after everything that had been going on.

But she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know that Ian and Shawn had been taken away, not yet. I was pretty sure she had no idea that Mr. Hershel was dead. I didn’t think she even realized that Morgan was still in the house, not at the hospital, and maybe dying in my childhood bed.

Briefly I envied my mom. I didn’t think that I’d ever be able to just get up one morning and do something as simple and pleasant as cooking eggs, not ever again.

I slipped back into my room, eased the door shut, and tipped the water into Morgan’s mouth. She was breathing so quickly that most of the water just spilled down her cheeks. I didn’t know if she’d even swallowed any at all. I tried tipping a few drops at a time between her lips while I figured out how to hide her in a safer place.

Suddenly, for the second time this morning, I heard someone knocking at the front door.

I hadn’t even heard anyone drive up this time. I was too focused on Morgan.

Through the blinds I saw a black sedan parked in the driveway. Its windows were heavily tinted. There was no way I could see if there was anyone else inside.

Another knock came at the front door.

This time it was my dad who answered. There was another male voice which I couldn’t make out. But I heard my dad say, “Oh, yes. Yes. She’s upstairs. She’s awake. I just heard her up. It’s the first room on the left.” He called out, “Ashley, someone’s here to see you! He’s coming up!”

I’d never been so frustrated with my father’s unquestioning trustfulness and his idiotic country hospitality.

Why hadn’t I tried to hide Morgan faster?

I’d wasted too much time not deciding quickly enough what to do, and now someone was already here. Ian had a hunch that someone would come for Morgan, but I didn’t think even he knew how fast they would arrive. Now it was too late. If someone was here looking for me, then it must have been Morgan who they were really trying to find.

Footsteps came up the stairs.

I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed. The space was mostly filled with plastic bins filled with my old clothes and school papers. It was too shallow anyway. I could never fit Morgan under there.

I threw open my closet door. It was filled with hanging clothes and shoes, but there was probably just enough room for Morgan on the floor if I bent her legs and closed the door.

It would have to do. I had no other choice.

I pulled back the sheets, slipped my arms beneath her body, and lifted her from the bed. She felt incredibly fragile, but she was heavier than I thought she’d be.

One of her legs slipped from my grasp. I had to set her on the floor before I made it all the way to the closet. Her head bumped hard against the carpet.

Fuck.

She started breathing even faster. She was still sweating, and she’d grown pale. She started to make little rasping coughs. A thin foam had appeared at the corners of her mouth. I was terrified that she was on the verge of death.

There was a knock on the bedroom door.

I grabbed the chair and wedged it under the doorknob as quietly as possible.

I lifted Morgan’s ankles. I had no choice but to drag her the last few feet to the closet.

There was another knock at the door. Now whoever it was quietly said my name.

“Ashley?” Another soft knock. “It’s me. Are you there?”

I recognized the smooth voice of a professional singer. I knew right away who it was. Bryce Tripp was in my parents’ house.

I practically collapsed in relief.

“I have your phone,” he said through the door. “I hope I’m not bothering you. Sorry for showing up so early.” He was playing it cool, but I could tell he was shaken by everything that was going on in town. He must have been stuck in Muldoon since the roadblocks went up. “I hope it’s okay,” he said. “Your dad said I should just come up.”

I set Morgan’s legs back onto the floor, moved the chair from the door, and opened it.

Right away Bryce saw Morgan on the floor. “What the hell?” He knelt beside her. “What happened? Is she okay?” He gave her swollen eye a closer look. “Oh my God. She’s not okay.”

“I can’t explain,” I said. “Not now. But I need help. Will you help me? Please.”

“Yes,” he said. “Sure. What? Anything.”

“Just don’t ask any questions. I’ll try to explain later. I have to get her someplace safe. She’s not safe here. I can’t carry her on my own.”

“Whatever you say.”

Bryce gathered Morgan’s limp body into his arms and lifted her. He was taller even than Ian, and he picked her up like she weighed no more than a pillow. He was wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, and when he stood cradling Morgan, the muscles in his arms tightened. He probably had to keep in such good shape for his stage presence and his album covers, but now all of his working out was paying off in a much more practical way.

When he looked at me with his icy blue eyes, casually waiting to do whatever I told him to do, the same wave of physical attraction I’d felt when I first spoke to him at the concert passed over me again.

I felt so guilty. Morgan was on the verge of death, and yet I was undeniably, if very strangely, turned on.

“Follow me,” I said. “We have to get her out of the house.”

I made sure no one was coming up the stairs or standing on the landing.

“Hurry,” I said.

I led Bryce quickly down the stairs and outside.

Like just about every other farmhouse in Colorado, my parents’ house is on a lot surrounded by pole barns, grain silos, and farming equipment.

I looked quickly at these options and settled on the old wooden building my dad just called “the shop.” It was where he worked on his swathers and bailers whenever they broke down, and it had a lofted storage area whose key he kept hidden under an old tin drum.

“This way,” I said to Bryce.

We trotted the fifty yards or so to the shop. I opened the large double doors, found the key to the storage area, and opened the lock.

The bottom level had only a dirt floor. Old engine parts, an abandoned deep freezer, and retired, dried-out saddles cluttered the space. Everything was covered in dust. Long shafts of light shined in through the cracks between the wallboards. A couple of pigeons flew out through a hole in the corrugated tin roof. Otherwise, everything was totally silent except for the sound of Morgan’s quick, labored breathing.

I grabbed an old saddle blanket and shook it out.

“This way,” I said. Bryce followed me.

A very narrow, very steep, very worn-out wooden stairway led up to the hayloft. As Bryce followed me, carrying Morgan’s weight, the wooden planks creaked. One even cracked a little, but the stairway held.

The hayloft hadn’t been used for years, but there was still loose hay scattered all over the floor. If I had to, I could cover Morgan with hay and hide her that way. It was the best idea I could think of.

I kicked some of the loose hay aside and laid out the saddle blanket in the loft’s farthest corner. Bryce lay Morgan on it. He felt her forehead.

“She’s really burning up.”

She was panting even faster. And now there was a new rasping sound coming from deep inside her lungs. It sounded like she was struggling just to pull in air. Her hair was so wet with perspiration and slicked against her scalp it looked she’d just been doused with water.

Bryce gave me an uneasy glance.

Maybe it didn’t even matter where we hid Morgan. It was hard to imagine that she could stay alive much longer in this state.

I didn’t want to think about her dying. But I was terrified that she would.

I tried to prepare myself.

Bryce stayed with me at Morgan’s side all morning. He pulled his car behind the barn where it wasn’t visible from the house or the driveway, and he sat with me in the loose hay.

I didn’t want him to leave. I was scared of taking care of Morgan all alone. I was also scared of being stuck with nothing else to do but worry about Ian and Shawn. But I didn’t want to push my luck and hope for too much from Bryce. He hardly knew me.

“My family’s going to start worrying about me,” I said. “I’d better go check in with them. They don’t really know what’s going on.”

Bryce nodded. “I’ll stay here and keep an eye on her while you’re gone. I don’t mind.”

“You sure you don’t mind? You don’t even know her. You don’t need to stay. Really. I’m sure you want to get out of here. You’ve done so much already.”

He shrugged and smiled shyly. “What else am I going to do while I’m stuck in Muldoon?”

I thanked him again and told him I’d be back in fifteen minutes.

At the house everything had changed.

Bacon lay cold and half-cooked on the stove. My Mom sat with Danielle and the kids at the kitchen table. They’d given up on breakfast. They’d obviously learned that Ian and Shawn were missing. Danielle was holding her crayon-scrawled note from Ian. My dad was on the phone. Ian must have told him the night before that Mr. Hershel had died, because he was busying himself by planning a funeral.

“Tomorrow morning,” he was saying somberly into the phone. “Yes. At their place. Make it if you can, Connie. We all understand.”

Everyone glared at me like I was some kind of traitor when I stepped into the kitchen. Once again, I’d returned from an inexplicable absence.

“Ashley, what is going on?” My mom demanded, standing as soon as she saw me. “Where have you been? Please, please tell me you know where Ian and Shawn are.”

I told them everything I’d seen and heard that morning. I described the dark SUV and the military police who took Ian and Shawn away.

My dad put down the phone. Danielle began crying hysterically. Tyler tried to comfort her, while Haley just stayed curled up in a little ball on a kitchen chair.

“Where have you been?” my mom asked again.

“I’ve been out looking for Shawn,” I lied. “With a friend of his,” I added, remembering that my dad had seen Bryce that morning. I decided that the best way to keep my family from telling anyone about Morgan was not to tell them that she was even still here on the property. “I’m going back to the house to lock up. I just have to have something to eat first.”

“Are you sure about that, Ashley?” My dad was concerned. “You be damn careful.”

I nodded. “I will.”

“There’s a service for Mr. Hershel tomorrow morning. I’d like you to be there.”

“Sure.” I nodded again. “Okay, I will.”

I hadn’t eaten anything for a day and a half. I was starving. Despite Morgan, and despite Ian and Shawn’s disappearance, I had a strange, intense craving for a hamburger and a milkshake. I couldn’t get these things off my mind, and yet it was hard to imagine ever having a chance to eat a hamburger again. It already seemed like some exotic, foreign meal. Instead, I had to make do with a roast beef sandwich and a glass of milk. I piled the meat high and skipped the mustard. I made a second sandwich and packed it into a plastic bag for Bryce.

On my way out I parked my car next to Bryce’s behind the barn where it was hidden from view. I made sure no one was watching when I opened the shop doors. I closed them behind me and climbed back up into the hayloft.

“How is she?” I asked Bryce.

“Maybe a little better,” he said. “I think. Just a little.”

Morgan’s breathing was still coming in quick rasps, and she was still running an extremely high fever. But it did seem like maybe her breathing had regulated a little. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but maybe some of her color had even come back.

It’s hard to explain how happy this made me.

“Brought you a sandwich.” I handed the plastic bag to Bryce.

He was sitting cross-legged, keeping a close eye on Morgan even while he began to eat.

I said, “So I have to confess something.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t remember anything about what happened Friday night. Nothing. I drank way too much. Everything after the bar is totally blacked out.”

Bryce smiled sheepishly. “I remember. You really don’t remember any of it?”

I shook my head.

“That’s a shame.” He smiled again, but more wryly this time. “So are you asking me to tell you?”

I felt myself blush a little. I turned away. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Well I guess I could give you a recap.”

“I was with you?” I asked, lamely.

He laughed. “Yeah. You were with me. You really don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “I was with you the whole night?”

“Most of it.” Bryce shrugged and smiled once again. He really was incredibly attractive, especially when he smiled.

I glanced at Morgan. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation right now. But I had to know what had happened.

“Okay, so tell me,” I said. “After the bar. What happened?”

Bryce cleared his throat. “Well. After the bar. Let’s see. You and I went out for a smoke. And we kinda decided not to go back in. . . We thought maybe the motel would be a better idea.”

“I know this is a stupid question,” I said. “But we—well… we . . . slept together?”

Before he answered, Bryce gave me this long, cute shrug.

“Well. All I can say is that it’s a shame you don’t remember.” He nodded, obviously remembering back to the night I couldn’t recall. I was jealous that he could remember it and I couldn’t. “It wasn’t bad,” he said. Then he whispered, “Honestly you were kind of amazing.”

I felt dizzy. I felt like I’d turned into butter. It was all I could do not to throw myself at him right there on the loft, even while Morgan struggled to breathe. I’d felt the warmth of Bryce’s breath on my ear when he’d leaned over and whispered that he thought it was amazing sleeping with me. However guilty I felt for cheating on Shawn, I felt robbed that I couldn’t remember my night with Bryce. I forced myself to suppress this new surge of attraction. I couldn’t believe how strong it was. What was wrong with me?

I turned away and forced myself to focus solely on Morgan. I checked her pulse. I was starting to worry that her breathing hadn’t actually slowed.

“And then what?” I asked Bryce pragmatically. “I woke up alone. Without my cell phone!” I slapped his arm. “Where’d you go?”

“Yeah, sorry about the phone,” he said. “I got out of there when your husband showed up.”

“My husband?”

What was he talking about?

“I’ve learned the hard way that if a guy from the military shows up when you’re in bed with his wife, it’s better not to stick around.”

“Wait,” I said. “What do you mean the military?”

“Well, it said Army on his sweatshirt and he had a big fucking gun. I kind of put two and two together and crawled out the back window.” He added sheepishly, “That part I’m glad you don’t remember.”

“Shit!” I whispered. “Ian was there?”

So all this time Ian knew I’d cheated on Shawn. He’d just been too gracious to say anything. I couldn’t believe it.

“That wasn’t my husband,” I explained. “He’s my brother-in-law. Didn’t I say so when I introduced him at the bar?”

“Nope.” Bryce shook his head. “I guess all you said was that your husband was in the bar somewhere. I just assumed it was him. That guy really wasn’t your husband? He sure was looking at you like he was.” Bryce laughed, amused. “And he sure did come after you like he was, too. But I admit I didn’t exactly stick around long enough to confirm one way or the other.”

It had been a mistake to hope that Morgan was improving. By noon she was breathing much harder than ever before. Her whole body was starting to convulse.

Not only this, but now we couldn’t keep her hand from making its way down into her sweatpants. Bryce tried to hold both of her arms to her sides, but as soon as he let up a little, she just pulled away and started . . . touching herself and doing something that would have looked a lot like masturbation if she weren’t unconscious. It was bizarre, and terrifying. It was horrible. I didn’t know how to react to seeing my best friend this way. It was like Morgan had been replaced by somebody else.

I’d gotten so used to the sound of her quick, raspy breathing that when it stopped it was like the whole world died with her.

There wasn’t even the sound of pigeons tip-toeing on the tin roof. Everything was suddenly silent and still. Bryce just sat there staring at Morgan’s motionless body.

I remembered playing with Morgan on this very hayloft when we were kids.

We used to hollow out nests in the loose hay and call them our “houses” and pretend we were visiting each other and that we were grown up. We used to plan out who we’d marry.

Now, just like that, she was dead.

Without my best friend, I felt numb. Not just numb to Morgan’s lying dead in the hay at my feet, but numb to everything. Numb to my family, numb to Bryce. Numb to myself. Suddenly I didn’t care if anyone lived or died.

Then something happened which, at the time, I had no explanation for.

Morgan’s body was lying on its back, her head thrown back at an awkward angle. When she’d died, she’d frozen in that stiff position, her slender white neck exposed and her mouth tipped open. She’d been lying like that for ten or fifteen minutes while I’d just been sitting there, shocked, trying to comprehend what had happened.

But then, very, very gently, she moved.

As if she’d been simply sleeping peacefully, she stretched her shoulders. Then she slowly turned onto her side and rested her head on her hands.

“What the—” Bryce turned to me, stunned, then he stared back at Morgan.

I placed a finger on her neck and took her pulse.

“She’s alive.”

Her pulse was strong and fluttering away normally. Her awful panting hadn’t returned. Now she took slow, even breaths and released them without any rasping sound at all. Even some of her color had come back.

I collapsed on top of her and sobbed.

“Morgan,” I whispered. “I thought you left me. Don’t you ever fucking leave me again.”

I still couldn’t rouse Morgan to consciousness, but I was almost sure now that she was going to be okay. She suddenly looked extraordinarily healthy, almost angelic.

“Jesus Christ,” Bryce whispered. “I’ve never, ever seen anything like that.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m no doctor, but maybe the fever just had to break? I thought she was gone.”

“So did I,” I whispered, holding Morgan’s hand.

“I guess you just never know about things like this.” Bryce laughed softly, still amazed at what we’d witnessed. “A little while ago I was held up in the hospital overnight. They thought it was dysentery or something. I guess I had a bad chicken taco in El Paso. I was in bad shape. But I woke up feeling totally fine. They wanted to keep me there at the hospital, but I didn’t want to have to cancel my concert here in Muldoon. So I just walked out and left.”

I laughed. “Remind me not to eat the tacos in El Paso.”

I was feeling elated. I hadn’t thought that I’d ever laugh again. A moment earlier I honestly wouldn’t have cared if I died, but now that Morgan was not only alive but getting better, I had a new hope that maybe things might turn out okay after all.

Bryce was here with me too, and he didn’t seem to want to leave. I would have been happy just to sit here talking with him all day about anything other than whatever crazy shit was happening in Muldoon.

After a moment I let go of Morgan’s hand and sat back in the hay.

“So you never miss a concert, or what?” I asked Bryce, suddenly happy enough to make conversation while Morgan rested.

He shrugged and smiled. “Not if I can help it.”

“How’d it all happen for you? You just loved country music so much you couldn’t stop playing it, and suddenly you were on tour?”

He laughed. “Not exactly. Tell you the truth, I don’t really care for country.”

“Seriously?”

“My mom used to make me play it. She had me playing professionally by the time I was a teenager. Honestly, I’m kinda tired of it. I actually really like some of the indie stuff they’re doing lately.” He laughed. “Don’t tell anyone this, but who I really, really like is Lady Gaga. I can’t stop listening to her.”

I couldn’t stop laughing. “Are you kidding?”

“And you know what else? You know what my real name is?”

“It’s not Bryce Tripp?”

“Nope. It’s Reggie Wislowski.”

I laughed even harder at this.

“Reggie?”

He laughed too and tried to put his hand over my mouth while I swatted it back.

“Don’t laugh!” he said. “I’ve gone by Bryce since I was a kid.” He sat back in the hay. “Don’t tell anyone my secret.”

“I won’t.”

Bryce glanced at Morgan again. She was sleeping peacefully, and still breathing strongly. Even the swelling around her eye had gone down.

“I guess you must really regret coming to do this concert here, after all, now,” I said. “Don’t you.”

For a moment there was a distant look in Bryce’s blue eyes. But then he looked right at me and gave my shoulder a soft, playful push. “Not so far, I don’t.”

I didn’t know what to say. For a moment I’d forgotten all about Mr. Hershel and Ian and Shawn. It really was a shame that I’d actually slept with this staggeringly attractive country singer who had a secret passion for Lady Gaga, but couldn’t remember a thing about it.

“Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thank you so much for everything.”

“It’s nothing,” Bryce said. “Look. You need to get back to your folks tonight. Why don’t I stay here and look after Morgan?”

I didn’t want to accept, but I didn’t want him to leave either. I wanted to get a good night’s sleep for once and wake up to find Bryce still waiting for me, watching over Morgan as she healed in the hayloft. And he was right. I did need to get back to my family.

“You really don’t mind?” I asked him. “Really?”

He shrugged and smiled. “What else am I going to do with myself?”

The next morning I woke up at dawn to the sound of a text message on my phone.

It was from Bryce.

“come quick!!!”

I slipped out of my old bedroom, tiptoed down the stairs, and ran to the shop.

All the way there I thought about how at one point when I’d thought that Morgan was getting better, she’d only ended up getting worse. What if this time too she’d slipped back into that awful, feverish state of labored breathing? What if this time she really had died?

I ran up the rickety stairs that lead to the hayloft. I was moving so fast that one of the steps cracked. My foot broke through, and I stumbled.

But I caught myself on the next step, which held, and I peered into the loft.

Morgan was awake, sitting up, talking with Bryce. She was smiling.

I rushed to her and hugged her.

“I see you’ve been getting yourself into trouble while I wasn’t around to watch out for you,” Morgan said. She smiled at me then raised her eyebrows in Bryce’s direction. “Don’t even try to tell me you two behaved yourselves while I was out cold.”

“Shut up!” I laughed.

I hugged Morgan again. Less than a day earlier, I’d thought that Morgan was dead. Now she was glowing. I tried not to start crying, but I did.

“I’ll give you two a moment,” Bryce said. He climbed the stairs and left us alone, sitting in the loose hay.

“How do you feel?” I asked. “Honestly, you look great.”

Even the swelling around Morgan’s eyebrow had almost completely gone away.

“I feel great,” she whispered, confused. “I shouldn’t feel great, I know. Not after everything that happened. But I do. I don’t understand it.”

“You remember what happened? Everything?”

Morgan nodded. “I think so,” she whispered. “I remember everything up to Ian shooting Robert. Shooting Mr. Hershel, I mean. I remember that.”

“What happened after I dropped you at your house? Did he break in?”

Morgan looked away. “Not exactly.”

“What happened then?”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. So,” she said. “You remember how I told you I was sleeping with someone else besides Jason?”

I nodded.

“It was him. I was sleeping with Robert Hershel. I had been for a couple weeks.”

I couldn’t believe it. It was true that Mr. Hershel had always been one of those classically handsome cowboy types, or at least he was before his death, but he was at least in his sixties. He had a wife and grown kids. I couldn’t think of him as anything other than a sweet old man—before he cracked up and went totally insane, that is.

“You were having an affair with Mr. Hershel?”

“You have no idea how much we never knew about Robert,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t believe the secrets I learned he’d been keeping. Did you know he used to have an account on this web site for married people who want to cheat on their spouses? I know that sounds creepy. It is, I guess. But at the same time, he was actually, like, the sweetest guy I’d ever met.” Now Morgan started to cry. She wiped her eyes. “I think I was a little bit in love with him. I know it sounds so stupid, but I was.” She heaved a sigh. “But, then, I don’t know what happened. He started getting more and more distant. Then he started getting really rough with me. And then, that night, I got home, and he was waiting for me there in nothing but that stupid holster he liked to wear when we were fooling around. But this time he was completely out of his mind.” She shrugged and looked into the distance. “And now he’s gone. So that’s the end of that.”

I wondered if Morgan would say anything about Ian, or about kissing him. But either she didn’t remember or she didn’t want to say anything. I let it go.

“Morgan,” I said. Mostly I couldn’t stop thinking about how much pain she’d been in when Ian and I got to her house. “I’m so, so, sorry what he did to you.”

She shrugged. “I lived.”

I put a hand on her knee.

“Look. A lot’s happened while you were unconscious,” I said. “Someone—the police or the military or someone, I don’t know exactly—they took Shawn and Ian from the house. We can’t even reach them. Their phones are off, and they’re not calling.”

Morgan shook her head. “What the fuck is going on around here?”

“That’s not all,” I said. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think you’re safe, Morgan. Before Ian got taken away, he was really worried about you. He thought someone would come after you. I don’t know why, or who. But that’s why we’re here.” I gestured at the hayloft. “Bryce has been helping me keep you hidden.”

“But . . . what? I don’t get it,” she said. “What would anyone want with me?”

“I don’t know, not exactly. But I think it has something to do with how you got so sick. I know you’re feeling better now, but Ian didn’t want to take you to the hospital because he was worried about what they’d do to you there.”

I looked at my phone. I was going to be late for the funeral.

“I have to go to Mr. Hershel’s service,” I said. “There’s no way I can get out of it. I don’t really know if you’d even want to go or not, but you don’t really have the option. We can’t let anyone know where you are right now. You’ll have to stay here with Bryce. I promise I’ll be back in a couple hours. We’ll figure out what to do then. Okay?”

Morgan nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t go anywhere. Look, I trust you. Just hurry back. Seriously. Hurry back.”

Mr. Hershel’s service was at the farmhouse where he’d been born, grew up, and had spent his entire life.

Because the roads were blocked off surrounding Muldoon and nothing could be shipped in or out, my Dad had volunteered to build a coffin from scratch. Mr. Hershel had been well over six feet tall, and the large, rough-hewn box dominated one end of the living room. Its lid was closed.

Hardly anyone came. Mrs. Hershel sat silently throughout the service in the front row of the plastic chairs that someone had set up, but otherwise there were only a few close neighbors. Anyone who’d been able to leave Muldoon before the road blocks went up couldn’t get back into town now, and most people who were trapped here were too afraid to venture out of their homes.

Not only were Ian and Shawn not there, there wasn’t a single male who wasn’t elderly or a child. I wondered if all the able-bodied men were being whisked away, just like my husband and brother-in-law.

I tried not to think about everything that was happening. I just needed to get through the funeral so I could get back to Morgan and Bryce and figure out what to do next.

But the pastor was going on and on. Just as he was finally completing his closing prayer, I heard someone rush into the room behind me.

I turned, terrified that I’d see another military police officer sweeping into the room.

But it wasn’t the military police. It was Bryce.

He kneeled to whisper into my ear. I was embarrassed. I could feel the eyes of everyone at the memorial service. Just about every one of them had seen me drunk and dancing with Bryce at the bar, and now here he was disrupting the pastor’s prayer by talking to me.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded as quietly as I could. “Did you leave Morgan? Is she alone?”

“We have to get out of here.” Bryce was scared. He was trying to pull me from my seat. “Someone came to your house,” he said. “Men, armed. I heard them calling out for Morgan. But not just her, Ashley. They were looking for you too.”

The sound of boot steps suddenly came up the porch. “Now,” Bryce said. “We have to go now.”

He pulled me into the adjoining kitchen just before a troop of armed military police filed into the living room.

“What is this?” the pastor complained.

“There has been a warrant issued for the immediate detention of Morgan Hall, Ashley Young, and Reginald Wislowski. If any of these individuals is present on these premises, make yourself known.”

I turned to Bryce. “They’re after you now, too?”

He whispered, frightened, “What do they think I have to do with any of this?”

Thankfully, my dad had the wherewithal to lie to them. “I’ve never heard of any Reginald whoever,” he said in the other room. “But Ashley Young’s my daughter, and she’s not here. You know where she is? She’s out looking for her husband. Her husband who you people detained without any God damn good reason.”

“Sir,” the military police officer said. “You’ll need to cooperate. If arrests are necessary, we won’t hesitate to make them.” He shouted, “Everybody out! One line in the driveway! Single file. Any personal identification you can provide at this time, have it ready.”

We kept as quiet as we could in the kitchen while the living room emptied.

But now another squad of military police appeared at the back door. One peered in through the kitchen window. We had nowhere to flee other than back into the living room.

It had been mostly emptied to make space for the rows of plastic chairs. Otherwise, the coffin was the only object in the room.

We had barely a few seconds to figure out what to do before the military police finished searching the kitchen and pantry and then came into the living room.

Suddenly I flashed on something Ian had said before he’d been taken away. He’d said that he’d had to “take care” of Mr. Hershel’s body.

I still didn’t really understand what that meant, but on a desperate hunch I lifted the coffin’s lid.

It was empty.

My hunch had been right. Ian must have hidden the body for some reason. But who was he trying to keep it from? And why? For now, I couldn’t waste time wondering.

“In here,” I said to Bryce, holding the coffin’s lid open.

This was our only choice. We were surrounded. The only other option was to give ourselves up.

“No fucking way!” Bryce stepped away from the strangely empty coffin.

At any moment the military police would be in the living room.

“It’s your choice,” I said.

Without any better plan, I hopped up into the coffin.

In the kitchen, one of the military police shouted, “Clear!” Footsteps approached down the hall.

“Fuck it.” Bryce scrambled into the coffin beside me. He landed facing the opposite direction, with his feet at my head. I lowered the lid.

From the darkness inside, we could hear the sound of scrambling boots and the shuffling of the plastic chairs that had been set out for the service.

Now there came a tapping on the coffin. It was the tip of an assault rifle.

“We checking in here too?” said a voice.

Another set of footsteps approached.

“I’ve seen way too much lately to open up another fucking coffin,” said a second voice.

There was a pause. Neither of the men outside moved.

Finally, the first voice very quietly said, “Me too.”

Their boots scraped away as the men left the room.

“Are they gone?” Bryce whispered. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I listened. Another set of footsteps, softer than the last, was approaching.

“Someone else is coming.”

Now the softer footsteps approached the coffin. They stopped right beside us.

We heard someone set something on top of the coffin’s lid.

There was the sound of someone going through a bag.

Then, next, there was the loud, grinding whir of an electric drill.

Someone was screwing the coffin’s lid shut.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Bryce started hyperventilating. He couldn’t speak any louder than a terrified whisper. He pounded three times on the coffin’s lid.

Then he stopped. His body went limp.

He’d passed out.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!”

I started pounding on the lid. It was time to give myself up. I was ready to get out of this already over-heated, cramped space. The game was up. Whatever was going to happen to us after they arrested us couldn’t be any worse than getting locked inside a coffin.

But the drilling didn’t stop.

I heard a second screw biting into the wood and felt the lid tighten. The meager light that had been making its way beneath the lid dimmed.

I pounded again. “Hey! I’m in here. I’m in here!”

“Shit,” someone said. It was a male voice, young. Maybe a teenager. “This is a loud one.”

“Don’t listen to it,” said another voice. It was another teenager. “You keep forgetting what they said in training.”

“I didn’t forget. It’s just loud this time.”

“Well, don’t even fucking say anything about it. When you say something it just makes it worse. Just pretend like you don’t hear anything. Let’s just get this over with.”

I pounded twice as hard on the lid. “Let me the fuck out! Someone’s in here!”

The drilling paused.

“It’s an illusion, remember?” the second voice said. “They’re dead. They’re not really conscious. It just seems like they are. They’re like puppets, remember? The bodies will die later. If we don’t do this, the disease is going to keep spreading. Give me the fucking drill.”

Another screw. Then another. The lid tightened again. The dim light vanished.

For a while I went into a state of disconnected shock.

I just couldn’t really believe that this was actually happening. I had this irrational sense that I was like some character in a video game who’d lost, but who would now just get to re-start from the beginning and try again. There had to be some way out. This wasn’t how I was going to die.

But when I felt them move the coffin into a vehicle, I started pounding on the lid again and screaming. I didn’t stop, not even when I heard an engine start and felt myself being driven away.

I paused only long enough to try to catch my breath and pull my cell phone out of my pocket.

In small towns in the middle of nowhere, coverage is spotty. As soon as you get outside the city limits, you’re lucky if you get a signal. We were already out of range.

Who would I have called, anyway? Ian and Shawn were unreachable. My Dad? What could he have done, even if I’d been able to reach him? The coffin was being escorted under armed, military protection.

I kept pounding and screaming, even though I was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone in the back of whatever truck or transport vehicle they’d put us in.

Bryce’s legs began to stir at my shoulders. My head was wedged against his shoe. He was waking up. My arm was burning from pounding the lid, and I was going hoarse, but I didn’t stop pounding and screaming. When Bryce remembered where he was, he started pounding too. He was crying.

I felt the vehicle make a sharp turn, then we started jostling over a rough road. We came to a stop.

There was the sound of a sliding door opening. Then, in the distance, I could hear a large diesel engine and a slow beeping.

It was a backhoe. I was certain of it. It sounded just like the one my dad had. The only reason anyone used a backhoe was to dig large, deep holes.

Bryce started sobbing harder and pounding the lid ferociously. For a moment I had a glimmer of hope when the wood splintered slightly under his fist. But realistically I knew there’d be no way he’d be able to break through. My dad was a good carpenter. The coffin was too strong.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” Bryce was sobbing. His legs were flailing around, knocking into my shoulders. “Fuck you!” he screamed, again and again.

We felt the coffin being lifted by the backhoe. Someone must have put a rope or a strap around it, because we started swaying.

Then we felt ourselves being lowered. We dropped farther, then farther down.

Finally, the coffin came to a rest.

Neither of us stopped pounding and screaming. “Please!” I heard myself shouting. “Pleeeeease!” I said it over and over again.

Then there came a deafening whuuuf as the backhoe dumped a load of hundreds of pounds of dirt over the lid. The coffin jolted. The wood creaked. There was another whuuf of falling dirt, this one muted and barely audible.

And then there was only silence.

For a while neither of us spoke.

I could hear Bryce crying to himself quietly.

A moment later, I felt him slip a hand under my knees. He drew a deep, shaky breath in the darkness. He wrapped both of his arms around my legs, hugging them. He was kind of like a little boy hugging a teddy bear in the middle of a dark night.

It’s hard to explain what I felt then. Mostly I didn’t want to think about the reality of what was happening. So maybe I was in denial. I don’t know. But there’s just something about the presence of the last human being you’ll ever be with in the world. You share something with that person that no one else could ever understand.

I put my hand on Bryce’s knee, then I hugged my arms around his legs too.

For a moment claustrophobia seized me intensely. But I closed my eyes so the darkness wouldn’t be as consuming, and I forced myself to pretend that I was just lying in bed beneath thick sheets.

What I’m going to say next will sound absolutely crazy, and probably perverse. But when you’re desperate to escape a horrific experience in any way possible, you find a way.

I felt for Bryce’s belt buckle in the darkness.

I unclasped it, then I unbuttoned his jeans.

He froze. His entire body went rigid.

I’m small, and the coffin was made for a large person, so I was able to bend my knees a little and maneuver myself lower in the narrow space.

I reached into Bryce’s underwear and brushed my fingers through the coils of his pubic hair. Then, very gently, I slipped my fingers around his penis. It was warm. I could feel his heart beating.

His breathing deepened. He squeezed my legs tighter.

I was terrified of dying, but part of me felt more alive than I’d ever felt. A wave of obliterating attraction passed from my lips to my knees, then another. I didn’t want to think about anything but Bryce’s warm body.

He shifted his weight, and there was a moment of scooting his body around so that he could move his head inside my knees. Then he put his hand between my legs. I rotated my pelvis and pushed back against his touch.

I pulled his pants and underwear down around his thighs as fast as I could. I put his penis in my mouth. For a moment, all I could think about was making him come. If I could focus on just this and the pressure of his fingertips between my legs, then it didn’t matter where I was.

He was breathing harder now, and he was moving his hips, but very, very gently.

I felt him unbutton my pants, suddenly, and in one motion he straightened my legs, pulled my pants and underwear together down to my ankles, and spread my legs.

His breath was suddenly on my naked vagina. Very softly, I felt his tongue begin to trace my labia. In the next moment it twisted around my clitoris.

I couldn’t help but let out a gasp. His hands spread around my waist and down over my butt. I squeezed his penis, slid my lips over it again, and matched the rhythm of his tongue.

I came before he did.

For a moment I wasn’t trapped inside a narrow box. For a moment my world hadn’t gone to pieces. For a moment I was just a girl again. Unafraid. Alive.

He came right after. He must have been waiting for me. I felt his semen flow across my tongue. I squeezed my grip around his penis as tightly as I could. I hoped I’d made him feel as happy for a moment as he’d made me feel. I hoped I’d let him escape.

I held his semen in my mouth and tried to catch my breath. In a moment of strange, irrational self-preservation I thought about Mr. Hershel and the horrific infestation of larvae that had filled his skull cavity. I thought about the illness that had almost killed Morgan soon after she’d been attacked. I thought about the body I’d help Ian carry from the locker room, and I thought about what the boy who’d locked us into the coffin had said about keeping the “disease” from spreading, and I quietly spit out Bryce’s semen.

I knew I was about to die anyway. I knew that I’d already had sex with Bryce, maybe even without a condom, and if he was carrying whatever terrifying disease that was causing people to act so bizarrely, he may have already passed it to me. Or maybe I’d even passed it to him. But there was something that just wouldn’t let me let go of keeping every chance for life open, no matter how small it was.

Bryce hugged my legs again and rested his head on my inner thigh.

“I don’t want to die,” he whispered. He was no longer crying. It was just a simple, quiet statement.

I pulled one of his knees up and lay my head on it. I rested my hand on his leg and very softly rubbed my thumb back and forth, just to let him know I was still there, and awake.

He reached for my hand in the darkness and held on to it.

I clicked on my phone. Squinting in the sudden glare of the screen. I kept it on just long enough to see that there was only two percent of the battery left, and no reception to speak of.

I turned off the screen, lay my head back down on Bryce’s knee, and tried to prepare myself to die.

It occurred to me that if I kept turning on my phone, one time soon it wouldn’t turn back on, and after that I wouldn’t ever see any kind of light again.

                                  Chapter 4: Milk and Honey

My phone’s battery charge ticked down from two percent to one percent.

I shifted my weight and changed the angle of my head on Bryce’s knee. I managed to find a slightly less cramped position.

We’re just in bed, I kept trying to tell myself. We’re just in bed, under the covers, in a dark room. Soon, I’ll just fall to sleep.

I was scrolling through photos of my family. Any second now my phone’s screen would switch off, and I wanted to see everyone one last time.

I was looking at Tyler and Haley in the photo I took of them before Tyler’s first football game. He was lifting Haley off her feet, and they were both smiling ecstatically. I flipped to the next image. There was Shawn and me right after our wedding. He was thinner and looking happier than I’d seen him in a long time. Flip. There was my mom, knitting on the sofa. Flip. And there was my dad. He was fishing. He was sitting in the old lawn chair he always took to the river, gazing at the camera with the gentle look that was unique to my Dad.

I felt my chin start to quiver. Tears started to well in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. Of all the people I’d never see again, I thought I’d miss my dad more than anyone else. I tried to cry quietly so Bryce wouldn’t hear me.

I wiped my eyes with my shirt collar. When I opened them a text had appeared on the phone’s screen.

Could this be possible?

I looked at the cell reception meter. One tiny bar had appeared, then it quickly vanished. For a moment my phone must have gotten just enough reception for an old text to come through.

It was from Shawn:

i know where u r

why out there?

r u with bryce t?

My eyes flashed over the text, then I read it over a second time. What did it mean? How could Shawn know where I was? Had he somehow traced my phone? Did he know I’d been buried alive? If so, what did he mean by “out there?”

My phone’s screen went black. The battery was dead.

It started as a low rumbling sound. I was breathing so fast now I could barely hear it, but it was there. I was taking in deep gulps of air, and I still felt like I needed even deeper and deeper breaths. I’d never experienced any feeling like this except maybe in high school after I’d sprinted around the track. I knew I was about to pass out any minute now.

The coffin started to creak, and as the rumbling noise grew louder the earth started to shake a little. Bryce, breathing as frantically as I was, started banging on the lid. Little bits of dirt fell on our faces.

When I felt the coffin lurch, for a moment I thought it had caved in. But then I realized we were being pulled out of the ground. Before I could even process the fact that we’d been saved, someone had pried open the lid by a couple of inches. There was a flood of cool air and bright light. I swallowed gasps of the fresh oxygen as if I’d just been deep under water.

Bryce kicked the lid fully open.

The sky was overcast, but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the sudden daylight. Someone was kneeling over the coffin with a crow bar. A man. He was wearing a combat helmet. As his face faded into view, I found myself staring at the last person in the world I thought I’d see.

It was Jason Gibbs.

I hadn’t thought about Jason since I’d broken through the police barricade at the fair.

“Fucking hell,” he said. He turned and called out over his shoulder, “Just in fucking time!”

Then I saw who he was calling to. It was Shawn. He was climbing down from a backhoe.

Jason held out his hand and helped me out of the coffin. I was still dizzy.

“Jesus Christ, Ashley,” he said. “You better be so fucking glad we got issued these GPS phone trackers. How the fuck did you two get in there?”

I ignored him and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. We were in an open field whose soil had been heavily turned over. In addition to Shawn and Jason, three other men where standing around an idling backhoe. All of them were wearing the same kind of combat gear as the men who had come to the house: helmets, flak jackets, boots, and they were all carrying semi-automatic rifles.

Shawn kept his gun casually pointed at Bryce while another of the men put him in handcuffs. He hadn’t even stepped out of the coffin yet.

“What is this?” Bryce was still catching his breath. “You can’t do this. Why are you doing this?” Bryce looked at his bound wrists, bewildered. “You can’t . . . Are you the police or what?”

“Home Guard rangers.” My husband was speaking in an official tone I’d never heard him use before.

Jason shoved Bryce with his rifle. “Just finished crash training yesterday, bitch!” He grabbed Bryce’s arm and dragged him toward a huge military vehicle parked behind us. “And your ass is under arrest!”

Shawn held a pair of handcuffs toward me. For a moment I had an irrational flash of pride that he was finally applying himself. But instead of joining the highway patrol he’d become some kind of paramilitary Nazi.

“Give me your hands,” he said. He wouldn’t even look at me. “Give me your hands, ma’am.”

I gingerly held out my hands. “Shawn, why are you doing this?” I searched the faces of the other so-called rangers. I didn’t recognize any of them. “Where’s Ian?”

Shawn wouldn’t answer.

“I’m your wife,” I pleaded. “What is this?”

My husband just cinched the handcuffs tightly around my wrists. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. There were two other backhoes parked on the loose soil, the military vehicle, and otherwise just a low, gray sky. We were someplace far outside of town.

“What is this place?” I tried to look Shawn in the eye.

No response. Shawn and one of the other men grabbed my shoulders and put me in back of the military vehicle, next to Bryce.

“Tell me what’s going on!”

“That’s classified information for my rank,” Shawn said. “You’ll have to ask the sergeant.” He nodded toward Jason, who was climbing into the driver’s seat.

“The sergeant?”

“Mass grave!” Jason shouted out into the rear-view mirror. “You two were lucky as fuck!”

Outside of Muldoon is a truck stop with a U-Haul center and a massive, warehouse-sized engine shop.

This was the first recognizable landmark I saw when Jason approached the highway. I expected him to pass it by, but he turned into the truck stop and pulled right into the warehouse.

Inside were countless U-Haul trucks, row after row of them. They’d all been stripped of their engines and were in various states of disassembly. Jason came to a stop beside one van without wheels, its axles resting on the concrete floor. Two of the men pulled Bryce from his seat, shoved him into the back of the U-Haul, slammed its door down, and locked it shut.

“Shawn.” I tried to sound calm and reasonable, but I had no idea why we were here or what was happening. “Please tell me what’s going on.” I steadied my breath. “Just tell me what you’re doing.”

Shawn kept quiet. No one else said a word.

Now Jason maneuvered the military vehicle around scattered hydraulic jacks and made his way toward the opposite end of the warehouse. He stopped beside another U-Haul truck, this one with its entire front end missing.

Jason himself jerked me from my seat. He shoved me into the back of the U-Haul.

“Shawn!” I screamed out. “What’s going on? Tell me!”

I could see my husband’s profile in the military vehicle’s passenger seat. He didn’t even turn to look at me.

Jason reached up and grabbed the cord dangling from the U-Haul’s sliding door.

“You just hang tight,” he said with a terrifying grin. “We’ll let you know, Ma’am!”

Then he slammed the door shut. I heard him lock it.

Once again I was in a dark space, this time completely alone.

I can’t say for sure how long I was locked inside the back of the van, but it must have been for around five days.

At what felt like twenty-four hour intervals, two men in combat gear, kids really, opened the U-Haul’s door. One always kept his rifle aimed at my chest. The other would set vacuum-packed military rations and a gallon of water on the cargo space’s floor. Then they slammed the door back down and locked it. They must have been given orders not to speak to me, because I couldn’t ever get either of them to say a word.

Sitting there in the dark, mostly I thought about Morgan. I’d promised her that I’d come right back to the hayloft, but I’d never returned. I wondered if she was still waiting there. I wondered if someone had found her. I tried not to think about what Jason had said about a “mass grave” and what the workers who had locked us into the coffin had said about burying other people who’d cried out from inside. A couple of times I tried calling out to Bryce as loud as I could, but I never heard any response.

I started fantasizing that the next time someone opened the cargo door, it would be Ian. But of course it never was.

The fifth time the door rolled up, not only was it not Ian, and not only was there no food, it was Jason.

“We’re official!” He ducked into the cargo space and flashed me a bright grin. He was in the same combat gear as before. “We got warrants now! And they sure do want to talk to you.”

He grabbed me by the handcuffs and painfully threw me into the military vehicle he’d been driving before. Bryce was in the back seat. He was relieved to see me; he tried to give me an embrace, but his handcuffs got in the way. He eyed the armed squad warily—the same men as before—and settled for putting his hand on my knee and squeezing it.

Shawn sat stone-still in the front seat. He didn’t even turn around to look at me.

Downtown Muldoon was completely deserted.

When Jason drove through on the highway, there were cars parked everywhere, but all of them had been abandoned. I didn’t see a soul. Another military vehicle passed going in the opposite direction, but that was it. The carnival rides, still standing at the fairgrounds, were darkly motionless. The diner was closed; the supermarket was closed; the post office had a notice posted on its door, but I couldn’t see what it said. Some of the shops still had their “open” signs up, but they were obviously totally empty. Only the pharmacy’s lights were on, and some kind of electronic steel door had been put up at its entrance.

One of the men raised his rifle as we approached the Burger Shack.

“Sergeant, we got something.”

“I see it.” Jason slowed. “Good fucking eyes, Corporal!”

Shawn gestured at me and Bryce. “Let’s just get these two to the center,” he said to Jason. “We don’t have enough room. Let’s skip this one.”

Jason shook his head. “We won’t need room.”

He pulled into the Burger Shack drive-through lane. An empty car was parked at the order kiosk.

Even after being locked inside a coffin and then a U-Haul, I was feeling constricted in the handcuffs. I worried if something happened I wouldn’t be able to move or defend myself. I glanced at Bryce, but he shook his head and shrugged helplessly.

One of the men pointed his gun through the window at the parked car. “Right there.”

I couldn’t tell what they were looking at. Then I noticed that the car was moving, very slightly.

It was rocking back and forth.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” another of rangers whispered, disgusted. “They’re in there all right.”

Two of the men stayed to guard me and Bryce while the rest got out of the vehicle. Jason, Shawn, and another ranger, the corporal, approached the car. I wasn’t sure what I was about to see, but something told me I’d regret watching it.

The corporal positioned himself at one side of the car, and Jason the other.

Jason gave a silent count. Then they whipped open one door each.

Someone screamed.

Jason dragged a girl from the car by her ankle, and the corporal dragged out another person, a guy, by the collar.

“Wait! Wait!” the guy shouted, covering his head with his arms. “We were just sleeping!”

I recognized him. I’d gone to high school with him. He was a couple of years ahead of me. His name was Patrick something. He’d been in the band, he played something like the trombone, and now he stocked shelves at the supermarket. He was wearing a green t-shirt and his pants were unbuttoned.

“Like hell you were sleeping,” Jason said.

Jason struggled with the girl. She was pulling her skirt down from around her waist and trying to stand up. He put his knee on her chest, pinning her to the pavement. She slapped at his knee, flinging her bleached hair, but otherwise she was silent.

“Get off her!” Patrick yelled, his voice cracking. He struggled as the corporal pinned him against the car’s trunk.

Then the corporal took something that looked like a home pregnancy test from his flak jacket and jabbed it into Patrick’s lower abdomen.

Patrick screamed out in what looked like intense pain, and collapsed onto the ground.

Jason held back the girl’s hands and jabbed a similar white plastic applicator into her stomach, just above her pubic bone. She writhed in agony, but still without making a sound.

“What’s yours?” Jason stood, shaking his applicator. “Stage one? Bet it’s stage one.”

I had no idea what just happened or what Jason was talking about. The whole time Shawn kept quiet. He just pointed his gun back and forth between Patrick and the girl.

The corporal looked closely at his applicator. “Stage one!” He smiled. “Bingo! What’s yours? Stage two, I bet. Look at her. Gotta be stage two.”

“Hold on, it’s coming.” Jason shook his applicator and looked at it again. “Stage two!” He yelled. “Corporal, we got ourselves a couple of officially confirmed sickos!”

Jason held up his white plastic applicator and tapped it against the corporal’s like they were clinking glasses for a toast.

“We’re already almost out of these.” The corporal tossed his applicator into the bushes beside the Burger Shack.

“Next shipment’s supposed to be in soon.” Jason shrugged. “Not like we really need these things anyway. Waste of time, if you ask me. I mean, big fucking surprise these two are sick, right?”

He drew a handgun.

“Are you ready?”

Patrick was trying to stand, clutching his abdomen. They girl was still writhing on the ground.

The corporal drew his own handgun. “Ready.” He took a deep breath.

Jason nodded. He placed his gun against the girl’s head. The corporal placed his against Patrick’s.

They both immediately fired, almost exactly at the same time.

Patrick collapsed. The girl shuddered, then went still.

“What the fuck!” I yelled out, mindlessly banging my cuffed hands against the seat in front of me. “What the fuck are you doing?” I was suddenly sobbing. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen.

I’d never thought that even Jason could do anything like this. Patrick and the girl lay dead in gathering pools of blood at the rangers’ feet.

“Your turn, this time,” Jason said to the corporal. “Bag ’em and bury ’em.”

The corporal stayed behind with a pair of body bags. Jason drove out of town, following the highway to the west and toward the mountains.

I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like I was going to break in half. I’d been through more than I could handle. Bryce was silent, riding with his head pressed against the window. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It looked like he’d kind of shut down. Shawn sat beside Jason with his gaze fixed forward. If it weren’t for his combat helmet it would have looked like he was just working some desk job.

“Holy Fuck.” Jason was driving us past a dairy farm in the middle of a broad hay field, and now he craned his neck to look out the window.

I kept wondering where Ian was. I knew he wouldn’t put up with any of this new Home Guard ranger cowboy shit, and I was worried about what they’d done with him.

There were only four men now that the corporal had stayed behind. I decided that if I got another chance, I’d run.

Jason pulled to the side of the road.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I do believe we have a clusterfuck.”

“Clusterfuck? Where?” One of the rangers, the youngest of them, peered out the window. “I haven’t seen one yet. Where is it?”

“Out past that tree, Private. Right there.” Jason brought the vehicle to a stop. “See it?”

There was a low mass of . . . something in the field just beyond the dairy barn, partially obscured by an idle swather.

Jason pulled the military vehicle into the farm. As we drove through the field, moving closer, I could see that the mass was actually thirty or forty people. They had gathered in a tight circle. Most of them were sitting or lying in the dirt, almost as if they were having a group picnic.

“Holy fuck.” Shawn opened the door as Jason brought the vehicle to a stop.

But it was no picnic. The people in the field—all thirty or forty of them—were having sex. It was some kind of orgy. Many of them were completely naked; some of the men’s pants were around their ankles; some of the women had two guys between their legs. When Jason cut the engine, I could hear a chorus of quivering moans. Everyone was filthy, covered in dust and dry alfalfa. I’d never, ever seen anything like it.

“Watch this,” Jason said.

He gave the horn a long honk. It was deafening. He flicked the siren on and off, which was even louder.

No one in the field stopped having sex. Not one of them even paused or looked up. If anything, the moaning grew more intense. It was like they were all lost in a trance of carnal insatiability.

“Why do they do that?” asked the younger private. “Why don’t they run?”

“Because they’re fuckin’ sickos,” Jason said. “Just look at them. Shameless.”

“But we only have like three test kits left.”

Jason laughed. He banged on the horn again. None of the people in the field responded.

“There’s your test. Every fuckin’ one of them is stage three. I guarantee it.” Jason looked into the rear view mirror. “Anyone disagree with that assessment?”

Shawn said, “Fuck protocol.” He shouldered his rifle.

All the rangers got out of the vehicle and approached the massive orgy, guns raised, making their way around the idle swather.

“Hold up,” Jason said. “Don’t waste your ammo.”

He climbed into the swather.

“Keys are here!” He called out, jangling a set of ignition keys out the door.

“Oh shit.” The private grinned.

A swather is basically a giant lawn mower that cuts a twenty-foot-wide swath of hay and spits it out the back into a neat row. They’re hard to maneuver, and Jason wasn’t nearly as good a driver as my dad was. He started the engine and struggled to steer the swather toward the orgy that was playing out in the field. The other Home Guard rangers chuckled and clapped, including Shawn, goading Jason on.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t let it happen. I stumbled out of the military vehicle and ran awkwardly in my handcuffs toward the swather.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Jason! Stop!”

The men laughed at me. There was nothing I could do. I was a small woman in handcuffs, and Jason was driving a giant hydraulic machine with churning blades.

“Get the fuck back, Ashley!” Shawn yelled.

I collapsed in the field.

Jason maneuvered around me, then steered directly toward the mass of people still obliviously fucking on the ground. Finally a few of the people, one guy and two women, got up and ran.

But the rangers shot them. They twisted to the ground like hunted geese, then the rangers shot them each again in the head.

Jason drove directly into the cluster of bodies who still hadn’t run. There was a nightmarish sound of chopped flesh and the sudden scent of exposed bowels as the swather churned into the cluster of human beings. Most of the people didn’t even stop having sex until the moment before they died. The swather deposited a trail of chopped limbs and viscera in its wake.

Shawn was smiling and nodding while the two other privates cheered triumphantly and slapped hands. Then the younger private suddenly threw up. The others laughed at him, including Shawn.

This was too much.

I’m sure I must have known at least some of these people before they’d contracted whatever hellishly bizarre plague was spreading through Muldoon.

I vomited. I stood and ran.

I sprinted as fast as I could through the stubble wearing handcuffs, then I tripped over a tangle of dried alfalfa, pitched forward, and fell. I got up and ran again. I was heading for the dairy barn, but it was at least a hundred yards away. I waited for a bullet to tear into my back. Any second now I would feel lead ripping through my flesh, I was sure of it.

Instead someone pulled me down by the hair.

It was one of the privates. He started dragging me back to the military vehicle, still clutching my hair. I thought he would rip it out by the roots in a clump. I grasped for his wrists to hold up my weight as he dragged me.

“Don’t shoot her!” Shawn yelled. “I wish like hell we could, but they’re wanted for questioning!”

“I know, I know,” said the private, still dragging me.

Jason jogged over, waving his hand at the private. “Hey man, hold up. Hold up.”

The private let go of my hair and Jason helped me stand. The private obediently walked ahead.

Jason put his arm around me.

“I’m watching out for you, Ash,” he whispered. “Don’t forget that. I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you. We’ll just get you all checked out, make sure you’re clean. I know you been through a hell of a lot. But I’m here for you. I can help you take the edge off.” As he guided me toward the military vehicle, he pressed a couple of round pills into my palm. “These’ll make you feel better. Remember, Ash, I’m here to help you take the edge off, in any way you want.” He squeezed my shoulders.

He didn’t release his firm grip as he lead me all the way back to the vehicle.

I didn’t think I could be any more sickened by Jason after what he’d just done with the swather, but I was. I was so distraught and angry, I thought I’d collapse again. I didn’t really understand exactly what he meant by take the edge off, but I got the gist. I knew he’d do anything he wanted to me, given the chance. I held on to the pills he gave me only to avoid pissing him off. I would have rather died than be held captive by Jason Gibbs, but that was exactly what was happening.

Gunshots rang out. A burst of rapid fire.

The rangers lifted their weapons, startled. I ducked down.

I thought someone was shooting at us, but when I glanced up I saw a man approaching us from a dark military SUV. He was dressed in a black version of the combat uniforms the rangers were wearing, shooting not at us but into the air.

“Stop,” he called out, firing his rifle again.

The rangers lowered their weapons.

“What is it?” Jason yelled back.

“What is it, sir,” the man barked as he approached.

“What is it, sir,” Jason mumbled.

“I’m taking these two off your hands.”

It was only now that I realized the man approaching was Ian.

I didn’t know whether to cry out in relief at seeing him or to be terrified that he was one of them.

Ian held out a wad of documents in his free hand. “I’ve got clearance papers,” he said. “They’ve been cleared.”

Jason shook his head in frustrated disbelief. “But we’re taking them in! They’re wanted for questioning!”

“Not any more they’re not.”

Ian gently put his hand on my shoulder and nodded at Bryce.

“Get in the car. Right now.”

Bryce and I both hurried toward the SUV.

Behind me, I heard Ian yell out at Shawn. “How dare you!”

“Fuck you, Ian,” Shawn called back.

By then Bryce and I had climbed into Ian’s SUV. Ian jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. He handed me a set of handcuff keys and started the ignition.

“What’s going on?” I was sobbing. “Tell me what’s going on. I need somebody to tell me what’s going on.”

Ian sped through the field toward the highway. “They think you’ve been harboring infected fugitives,” he said.

I looked back. Jason, Shawn, and the other rangers were still milling around the mass of tangled limbs. They weren’t following us.

We reached the highway. I was still too terrified to fully let my guard down, but finally I let out a huge sob of relief.

Ian put his hand on my shoulder. I pressed my cheek against it.

“I know what happened to you guys,” Ian said quietly, glancing also at Bryce in the back seat. “I’m so sorry, Ash.” He squeezed my shoulder, very softly. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”

Bryce said, “Thank you.” It sounded like he was trying not to cry too. “Jesus, buddy,” he said to Ian. “Thank you.”

I could barely unlock the handcuffs because my fingers were trembling so bad. I passed the keys back to Bryce.

I realized I was still clutching the pills Jason had given me. I stared at them dumbly.

Ian grabbed them from my palm, rolled down the window, and threw them outside.

“Jason gave those to you?”

I nodded.

“Jesus Christ.” Ian shook his head, disgusted. “He’s a little piece of shit.”

“What were they?”

“Sedatives, tranquilizers. Who knows? He’s got access to the pharmacy and he already thinks he’s some kind of drug kingpin.”

So Jason had been planning to drug me and force himself on me. I can’t even imagine what someone like him would have done to me if he’d had me locked up in some jail cell.

“Thank you, Ian,” I said. “Fucking thank you so much.”

“You’re okay,” he said. “You’re safe. For now. I was able to pull some strings and get your arrest warrants cleared. But we’re going to have to be careful.”

I tried to calm down. I still couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight. All I could think about was wanting Ian to just pull over and hold me in his arms while I cried. I knew I shouldn’t want that, it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. I took a deep breath and tried to get myself under control. We were passing back into town. Ian slowed to avoid the empty, abandoned cars that were strewn all over the roadside.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “They took you away, Ian. And now you’re . . . What are you? What’s going on?”

Ian drew a deep breath, gave me a look of what I tried not to interpret as despair, then stared at the road. “Everything’s falling to pieces,” he said. “That’s what’s happening.” He shook his head. “We’re inside what’s now an officially designated quarantine zone. All of Muldoon and the surrounding areas. About forty miles across. They’ve got the National Guard patrolling the borders. I swear to God the perimeter looks like Iraq. Hesco barriers, concertina wire, the whole thing. And I guess we’re not the only zone. There’s supposed to be four more throughout the west, all in remote, rural areas, like us.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe how fast they set this thing up since the pathogen broke out. I guess no one really understands how to cure it, or how it works, except that it’s a kind of venereal disease and somehow it drives people mad with carnal desire. It’s basically an STD that acts as an aphrodisiac.”

Ian glanced at me. I couldn’t believe it, but he blushed a little. He cleared his throat.

“Officially,” he said, “the federal government’s supposed to lift the quarantines when everyone living inside tests negative for a full twelve months. The pathogen’s supposed to be contained inside the zones. But, unofficially, word is they’re dumping infected people in from the outside. And I’ve sure seen a lot of infected people around who I don’t know. Can’t all be outsiders stuck here from the fair.”

I couldn’t really believe that everything had changed so fast just because an aggressive disease was spreading. I was finding it hard to comprehend that I wasn’t still living in the same old Muldoon, and that everything about our lives had changed, probably forever.

“What happened when they took you away?” I looked at Ian’s black combat uniform warily. He still hadn’t told me everything. “What are you now, exactly . . . ?”

“Home Guard.” He scoffed. “Either you join, or you get thrown into detention. Indefinitely. That’s the deal. It’s basically a paramilitary force that’s been granted the rule of martial law over the entire quarantine zone. They recruit a lot people from the inside, because, well, how many volunteers are you going to get from the outside to go into a quarantine zone? They take you to this center they have set up west of town, give you some bullshit day-long crash training course, assign you a rank, and off you go. Because of my experience they cooked up a medical lieutenant rank for me. Everybody else keeps busy doing the rounds patrolling residences and taking daily urine tests, then separating out the infected from the uninfected. We were supposed to bring anyone who tested positive to the center, where they were going to keep them all in that Wal-Mart warehouse over there. But now it looks like all the squads are pretty much just ‘expiring’ positives on the spot.” Ian looked at me with a mixture of awe and fear at what he was about to tell me. “They’re getting away with killing people because there’s a legal loophole. Anyone who tests positive, technically, is already dead.”

I didn’t understand. “What do you mean? How is that possible? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Do you remember Chris Trevino? That new doctor kid?”

I vaguely remembered a young doctor who’d started at the hospital just about the time Shawn was finishing up his physical therapy. But I didn’t know what he had to do with anything.

“Yeah, I remember him. I guess so. Why?”

Ian had been driving toward my parents’ house, but now he turned off the unpaved road that lead around to the back side of their property.

“Well, you’ll meet him soon,” Ian said. “Chris’ll be able to explain everything better than I ever could. He’s a good guy. Young, a little high-strung, but a good enough guy. We’ve been helping each other out. He sort of defected from the hospital when the Home Guard took it over. After Bob Hershel died, he asked me if I knew where he could do an autopsy without anyone finding out about it. I found him a place.”

I thought about Ian shooting Mr. Hershel that night. It already seemed like so long ago when Morgan had fallen into her coma. The last I’d seen of her, she’d been hidden away in my dad’s hayloft.

“And Morgan?” I asked. I was terrified that she wouldn’t have known what to do when neither Bryce nor me had come back to the loft. What if she’d been caught by the Home Guard?

“Morgan’s . . . safe,” Ian said.

But he didn’t say anything further, and I could tell he was holding something back that he didn’t want to tell me.

Ian pulled up toward the ramshackle barn that had stood precariously by the river for as long I could remember. It was on the Hershel property, across the river from my parents’ ranch. I got out to open the barn doors, and Ian parked the SUV inside, hiding it from view.

“We’ll leave it here in case anyone tries to track it,” Ian explained. He locked the doors.

Bryce and I followed Ian toward the low concrete dam that spanned the river from bank to bank. As kids, my sister and I used to take our shoes off and cross by walking through the ankle-deep water that spilled over the dam’s edge, but now Bryce and I just followed Ian’s lead and sloshed through in our shoes, too tired and shaken to care about not getting our feet wet. I had no idea where Ian was taking us. We were more than a quarter mile from my parents’ house.

My dad used to raise grain before I was born, and there was still an old corrugated tin granary left over on the flats along the river, more or less hidden behind the bluff. I hadn’t even seen it for years. My dad used to make me and Danielle swear we wouldn’t play inside the tall, barn-like structure that housed the old grain elevator. It was connected to a row of six squat silos, long since empty. Every surface of the granary was corrugated tin, and by now all of the tin had rusted to a dull orange. Ian walked through the weeds toward the granary’s door.

“I’ll take you to the house in just sec,” he said. “I just need to check in on Chris real quick.”

I looked around at the old rusting structure. An arrow-shaped weather vane creaked at the rooftop.

“Does my dad know you’re using this place?”

It made me a little nervous that Ian was hiding bodies from the Home Guard on my parents’ property.

“I told him I needed to use it,” he answered. “I also told him I couldn’t tell him why. He agreed. He swore he wouldn’t tell a soul about anything going on down here. I know he won’t.”

Ian was right. I knew that if my dad swore not to say anything to anyone, he wouldn’t. He could keep a secret, even from my mom. Once he’d taken me on a cross-country horseback trip into the mountains way beyond town, and passing through a gully we stumbled into an abandoned village of ancient native American cliff dwellings. We spent the afternoon walking up and down the stone steps and exploring the network of rooms carved into the rock. We even found petrified corncobs in one. He told me he didn’t think anyone knew that the native American group who had built them had ever migrated so far north, and he didn’t want backpackers ruining the place. He made me swear to keep it a secret, and he never, ever said a word about it later, not even to me.

“What about my mom?” I asked Ian. I knew she wouldn’t be happy about him using the granary. “Does she know you’re using it?”

Ian shook his head. “No, just your dad.” He opened the granary door. It creaked in its wire hinges. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. You’ve seen a hell of lot today. I wouldn’t blame you.”

I was feeling so numb I just followed Ian inside. Bryce came in too, I think mostly so he wouldn’t have to stay outside alone.

The interior was dark, shot through by points of light coming in through tiny holes rusted into the tin walls. Everything was covered by decades-old grain dust.

“Hey, Chris!” Ian called out. “It’s me. I have company.” His voice echoed strangely through the massive tin building.

As my eyes adjusted once again to a dark space, this one far more cavernous than the last, I recognized the doctor who was sitting at a makeshift desk in the far corner. The desk was surrounded by medical supplies from boxes of antibiotics to a battery-powered defibrillator to empty I.V. bags hanging on nails. There was even an old heart monitor, though, as it appeared, it was without a power supply. Ian had obviously been busy bringing Doctor Trevino more than just cadavers to study.

The doctor stood as we walked in. He was even younger than I’d remembered, not much older than I was, small and thin, and he was waving smoke from the air.

He was holding a joint, not entirely guiltily.

“Hey,” he said.

“This is Doctor Trevino.” Ian eyed the joint warily. “Chris,” he said disapprovingly. “What is this? Really?”

“Hey man, when you come to a bum-fuck town in the middle of nowhere for a one-year residency and end up stuck in a quarantine zone, probably for life, you want to allow yourself a joint every now and then. That’s my medical advice.” He shook my hand, then Bryce’s. “Hi, how are you.”

Ian waved away the smoke. “Ashley wanted to know why the Home Guard can shoot the sick at will,” Ian said. “I told her you could explain it better than me.”

“Because they’re not sick.” He shrugged. “They’re dead.”

“Go easy,” Ian whispered. “They’ve been through a lot. Remember? I told you what happened?”

“Oh shit! I’m so sorry!” Chris covered his mouth. “You guys where in the . . . buried . . . thing. Right. Shit. I’m so sorry.” He touched each of our shoulders apologetically and stepped back. “Well, you’re alive. So congratulations for that. That’s better than the TGV-positives can say, because, like I said, they’re not. They’re dead.”

“Okay,” Bryce said. He’d been in a state of shock for the last hour or so, and now he was losing his patience. “You’ll have to explain this. I’m not a doctor, but what the fuck do you mean dead? Like fucking zombies or something? Bullshit.”

“No, not like zombies.” Chris sat down at his makeshift desk. “They’re totally conscious. They don’t feel any different, not at first anyway.”

He leaned back and dragged from his joint, then he released the smoke, eyeing us.

“Okay, so,” he said. “Here’s the deal. Have you ever heard of Toxoplasmosis? The disease that’s caused by Toxoplasma Gondii? It’s a parasite that reproduces inside cat intestines and causes infected mice to be sexually attracted to cats, making it easier for cats to eat them. It’s real. I’m serious. Look it up. It even causes higher rates of risk-taking behavior and suicide when it gets inside humans. Well, as far as we know, the plague pathogen is a mutation of Toxoplasma Gondii, one that’s evolved to use humans as hosts instead of mice and cats. They think a strain got into a bunch of chickens in one of those giant factory farms—probably from cat shit in the chicken feed. That’s where it mutated, and then somebody somewhere must have eaten some undercooked chicken, and then it mutated again and really took off in the human population. Toxoplasma Gondii Five. TGV. This strain’s entirely sexually transmitted. In fact, in women and men both, the parasite is only released through orgasm. After sleeping with someone who’s infected, people get flu-like symptoms and slip into a coma. Anywhere from a few hours to a few days later, they die.”

Chris took one last drag from his joint then stubbed it out in an ashtray made from the bottom of soda can.

“This is where it gets weird,” he said. “Death triggers the parasite to take control of the amygdalae—they’re in the limbic system, where all the most basic, primitive functions are located. The infected person wakes up, feeling healthy, and with all of the brain’s original personality and memory centers intact. They’re basically normal, but with two exceptions. Number one, they’re dead. Number two, just like in mice where they first evolved, the host’s libido is stimulated. That’s because the parasite has begun to lay its microscopic eggs in the tissues of the host’s reproductive organs. We don’t really understand how, but it makes infected humans do virtually anything to do the wild thing. To get it on. The humpty dumpty. Know what I’m saying, people? There’s evidence that a pheromone gets released along with the eggs, which attracts even uninfected people to the host. This is stage one, and lasts no more than about five days. In stage two, things go downhill, while the sex drive gets even stronger. People start to lose verbal skills and go numb at the fingers and toes. This is because the parasite’s larvae feeds on the outer brain matter. It slowly begins to eat everything but the amygdalae. Meanwhile, the colony lays millions more eggs in the host’s reproductive organs.”

Chris stood and lead us over to the opposite side of the dusty grain elevator engine.

“Have a look at this.”

A pair of bodies, each covered in a thick sheet, lay side by side on an old door supported by a pair of sawhorses.

Ian said, “You don’t have to see this if you don’t want to.”

But by now, I didn’t care what I saw. I was feeling not just emotionally drained, but emotionally blank. I knew right now I could see anything without being affected by it. And I was also curious. Learning about the disease was helping me focus my thoughts, and, surprisingly, even calming me down a little.

“I’m okay,” I said.

But Bryce had had enough.

“Sorry, I think I need to catch my breath,” he said, and he stepped outside.

Chris pushed back the sheet to partially expose one of the bodies.

I’d thought I could handle this, but I gagged when I saw what was lying on the table.

Chris had only revealed the body’s torso and pelvic area. The face was still covered, but I could tell right away that it was Mr. Hershel. He had been cut into and opened up from his neck all the way down to his pelvis. I hadn’t ever seen human organs on display like that. The scent of wet offal rose from the cavity like heat. But that wasn’t the worst part. The penis was still erect, as stiff as the rest of the body. The testicles had blackened and swollen even further.

“Oh my God.” I took a step back.

Chris uncapped a scalpel from his breast pocket.

“Stage three is bad,” he said. “The host body starts to decay, movement becomes awkward, personality and memory fades, and people start to get, well, kinda rapey. Men generally maintain a perpetual erection. It’s the last chance for the parasite to pass its eggs to a new host, so the reproduction impulse goes into overdrive. At this point, in the case of male hosts,” Chris nodded at Mr. Hershel’s testicles, “the parasite has replaced all of the semen with its own eggs, suspended in a kind of honey—a little like bees’ honey—which the new larvae will feed on after hatching in the new host.”

Chris carefully positioned the scalpel over one of Mr. Hershel’s bloated testicles. He carefully punctured the skin. Immediately, a viscous, yellow substance oozed from the puncture.

He held a droplet on the tip of the scalpel blade, displaying it as well as possible in the granary’s dim light.

“If you were to taste it, it would taste a lot like honey,” he said, then he laughed. “Not that I recommend tasting it.”

Right away I thought about Bryce coming in my mouth, and how I’d spit out his semen as an afterthought. But was I still at risk? What if Bryce was infected? What if I’d felt so attracted to him because he’d been releasing the pheromones Chris mentioned? After all, who, in a normal state of mind, would do anything so strange as to go down on someone inside a buried coffin?

“How contagious is it?” I asked. “I mean, if you did taste it, say, would you get infected?”

“Probably not.” Chris shrugged casually. “Not as far as we know, anyway. The infection can only be passed through the genitalia. Only through vaginal sex. So, kids, always use protection!”

He gave me and Ian an ironic thumbs up.

“Otherwise, you’ll end up like poor Mr. Hershel here.” Chris nodded at Mr. Hershel’s motionless body as he pulled the sheet back over it. “Or, even worse,” he added, “like this guy who you two found at the high school.” He slapped a hand down on what must have been the knee of the other covered body. “Poor guy cut off his own twizzler when he couldn’t stop thinking about forcing himself on cheerleaders.” He winced. “Didn’t help him any though. He finally expired and fell through that window above the showers. When the parasite’s life cycle completes, the colony dies, and the host expires too. But the only way to stop the process before a host’s natural expiration is to destroy the amygdalae. That’s why the Home Guard doesn’t have any qualms about shooting TGV positives in the head. They could keep them isolated until they expire naturally, but that’s too costly, and, according to them, too risky. An ice pick in the ear would be neater, but the rangers like their guns. That’s why they get away with it, though. Because TGV positives are technically already dead.”

Setting aside Chris’s callousness, I was trying my best to understand.

“But how are they dead?” I asked. “I mean, I get that they’ve technically died, and that the parasite takes over the brain. But if a person is awake, and has the same personality, and memories, and thoughts, how is that any different than being alive? Especially in the first stages.”

Chris shrugged. “It’s not any different. Not really. That’s why I defected from the hospital when the Home Guard took it over. That’s why I’m stuck hiding out in this fucking granary. I don’t see how it’s okay to go around whacking innocent people SS-style. Even if they are dead.”

Now that Chris had finished his explanation, Ian touched my arm solemnly.

“Ash, I have to show you something,” he whispered. “I didn’t think you’d be ready for this, not after everything you’ve been through today, but now I’m thinking maybe you are.”

I braced myself. I wasn’t actually so sure that I was ready for anything else today.

Ian reached into his pocket and took out a white plastic applicator, just like the ones the Home Guard used to test for infection.

“I know what that is,” I said. “I watched Jason using one.”

“Unfortunately, this was our only one,” Ian explained. “They’re hard to come by. They work by taking a urine sample.”

He pressed a button, and a three-inch needle extended from the applicator with a click.

“They’re Insta-Reads,” he said. “Which means they’re designed to take a quick sample from the bladder by piercing the abdomen, in cases when someone refuses to give urine. But they work just as well by peeing on the needle. You don’t actually have to stab anyone.”

He clicked the button again, and the needle withdrew.

“This one is Morgan’s.”

Ian handed me the applicator. He and Chris both waited silently for me to read it.

Just like a pregnancy test, there were simple instructions. One blue line meant “Stage 1 TGV.” Two blues lines meant “Stage 2 TGV.” Three blue lines meant “Stage 3 TGV.”

Morgan’s test had two blue lines. Stage 2 TGV.

I had to have known, on some level, listening to Chris’s explanation about how the pathogen worked, that Morgan was infected. She’d been sleeping with Mr. Hershel for weeks even before he’d raped her. She’d gotten sick, and I’d watched her stop breathing and lie still without a heartbeat for at least fifteen minutes before waking back up. But I hadn’t really let myself accept it until now, seeing the brute fact of two blue lines on the applicator. And I hadn’t expected her to have reached the second stage so soon.

“Sometimes it progresses pretty quickly,” Chris said, condoling me.

I looked back and the granary door. “She’s here, isn’t she? Somewhere?”

“I’ll take you to her now,” Ian said.

I followed Ian and Chris outside.

Bryce was sitting beside the granary, his back against the corrugated tin wall. He stood. I handed him the applicator.

“It’s Morgan’s.”

He read it. He nodded slowly.

Chris lit a cigarette, a Camel Light, as he led us all toward the second of the six round silos. He offered the cigarette to me, and after a moment I accepted it, taking a long, trembling drag before handing it back over.

Ian took a few cautious steps toward the long row of silos, and somberly motioned for us to follow him.

He whispered, “Before we go in, you should know that Chris has been trying to help Morgan. He’s been giving her a cocktail of antibiotics.”

“It’s still early,” Chris broke in. “So we really don’t know how well it works. But, for now, it seems to have some effect on slowing the progression of the disease.”

This was good news. I needed good news. I had a little hope for Morgan. Maybe if there was a way to slow the disease, there was a way to cure it completely.

“But the cocktail’s a combination of some pretty powerful antibiotics,” Ian said. “It has some side effects. Morgan’s gotten pretty weak. Chris says it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. She’s also not sleeping because of the hallucinatory nightmares the antibiotics have been causing. She’s exhausted. And the kicker is we’re already running low on the antibiotics Chris needs to make the cocktail. Problem is, even as a medical officer I don’t have clearance at the pharmacy. They keep it pretty closely guarded. Jason is one of the only rangers in the Home Guard with an access card because the pharmacy falls in his squad’s residential patrol zone. And he’s not exactly going to do me any favors, not after today. I can’t even order him to give it over because I don’t outrank him in that way. And if I ever tried to just take it from him, his squad would back him up.” Ian gave me a stern look. “Look, Ash. I’m telling you all this so you know why Morgan’s in the state she’s in. But I don’t want you to get your hopes up. We’re doing all we can, there’s just not much more we can do for her. Our hands are pretty tied.”

I nodded.

“I understand,” I said. “Just let me see her.”

Ian took a key from his pocket and stepped toward the silo door. I hadn’t realized it was locked.

“You locked her in?”

“It wasn’t our idea,” Ian said. “She made us promise to lock her in. She was terrified of what she’d do as the disease progressed. She was worried she would leave.”

Ian pushed the door open.

There she was.

Morgan was sitting on the concrete floor beside a little kerosene lantern, unlit.

She smiled at me sadly. She raised her hand to motion for me to sit beside her, but she was obviously weak. She struggled to hold her arms out to me.

I sat beside her and hugged her for a long time.

“What the hell, kid?” I said, holding back my tears. “We’re going to get you better.”

Morgan shrugged and nodded without much hope. She wasn’t saying anything.

She couldn’t speak.

I knew that she was going to be in a bad state, but I hadn’t fully prepared myself for her to have completely lost the ability to talk to me.

She grabbed my shoulder, pointed toward the ground, and gave me a sad, terrified look. Then she hugged me again.

“I told her what happened to you the other day,” Ian said. “In the coffin.”

I understood. I hugged Morgan back. “Thanks, kid.” I said. “I’m okay now.”

Morgan tried to tell me something else. She pointed at me and Bryce. When she couldn’t express herself by pointing, she tried to speak, but only hollow gibberish came out of her mouth. It was like her lips were numb, and her jaw seemed stiff. She couldn’t form words or sounds at all. She started to cry in frustration.

“We’ll get you something to write with,” I said.

Morgan gave me yet another look of despair.

Ian said, “Writing’s not so easy for her either. We tried that. Her fingers are getting pretty numb.”

Morgan turned away and slammed her hand against the tin wall. The loud bang resonated in the silo’s confined space.

She started to cry miserably, still without making any sound. I moved closer to her and held her while she cried. She started to rock herself back and forth, and I let myself rock with her.

Then, slowly, Morgan started to breathe more deeply.

She turned her head so her lips were against my ear, and I could feel the warmth of her suddenly tense inhalations. She moved her leg just a little over mine. Then she pressed her pubic bone into my hip, rotating her pelvis. She let out a soft little moan of something close to pleasure. It was the first fully-formed sound I’d heard her make. Then she started grinding even harder into my hip. She gently bit my ear lobe, breathing even more deeply and moaning again.

She was trying to get off on me.

“Morgan,” I said. I pushed her away as gently as I could.

Ian stepped over and helped me up, pushing Morgan back as he separated us.

As if waking from a trance, Morgan suddenly realized what she’d been doing. She looked mortified. Suddenly she slammed the tin wall again, curled up into a little ball with her head between her knees, and started sobbing.

Ian pulled me farther away from her.

“She can’t help it,” he reminded me.

Morgan looked up. She waved us away, tears spilling from her eyes, then made a locking motion at Ian, reminding him to make sure to lock her inside.

We all stepped out.

There was nothing else I could do.

It was getting late. The sun was setting over the mountains. I felt completely hopeless. For a moment, I didn’t see the point of going on living. What were we all going to do?

Ian quietly closed the door and locked the padlock.

“That’s the thing about this disease,” he said. “It takes any outpouring of emotion, even sorrow, and turns it into sexual attraction. Not just love and affection, like normal, but anger, gratitude, humor—everything. It all comes out as lust.”

Bryce and Chris walked on ahead. I wasn’t sure, but I think Chris may have been hooking Bryce up with some weed in the middle of all this.

“We better get going,” Ian said. “I registered your official residence at your parents’ house, so you’ll be able to stay there. It falls in the residential patrol zone that Jason’s squad has, though. I couldn’t do anything about that. They usually arrive at the house around noon. Your mom’s even been making them lunch. But, really, they could come at any time. If you’re not there, they’ll put your warrant back out, and I won’t be able to stop them. Morgan, obviously, has to stay here.”

I nodded. “We better get going then,” I said. “But first tell me something.”

Ian folded his arms against the evening chill, waiting for me to speak. Way off in the distance, the Rockies were growing darker. The first stars were appearing in the sky.

“I’ve just had this feeling,” I said. “I’m sorry to ask. I shouldn’t. I know. But did anything ever happen between you and Morgan? Ever?”

Ian sighed. For a moment he looked away.

“That night at the bar,” he began, “after you and Bryce left, we went off looking for you together. I’ll be honest and tell you that Morgan came on to me. She tried to kiss me, but that was it. She was pretty drunk. I stopped it. Nothing else happened.” He shrugged. “I swear, that was it.”

I nodded, relieved. I knew he was telling the truth. And I felt awful for Morgan. It was true she slept around, but I knew under normal circumstances she wouldn’t ever have come on to my brother-in-law.

I thought about my best friend alone in that silo, and how she was selflessly insisting to be locked in, just to protect other people. I would have done anything to help her.

Then I thought of a way that maybe I could do something.

I turned back to Ian.

“You said Jason and Shawn and those guys have lunch at the house, right?”

“Yeah.” Ian shook his head, annoyed that my mom was being so hospitable. “Your mom’s keeping them well fed while they’re on patrol.”

“And Jason’s the only one you know of who has a pharmacy access card?”

“Well, yeah.” Ian looked at me warily. “Why?”

“Because I think I could get it from him.”

He was surprised at my suggestion. “Ashley, I couldn’t even get it from him. He has his whole squad to back him up.”

“But what if he didn’t? What if I got him alone? He’s been coming on to me non-stop since the fair. And I’m pretty sure I could get him drunk, or high on those pills of his. If I could talk to him alone for even just a minute at the house, I could set something up with him to meet somewhere. I’m sure I could get him to agree if he thought I wanted to sleep with him. It’s worth a try, right?”

“No way.” Ian shook his head emphatically. “That’s way to dangerous. You alone with that psycho? Come on. Ashley, no way.”

“What other way is there?” I asked. “You said yourself you can’t get the pharmacy access card from him, right?”

Ian didn’t respond, but he gave me a look of frustrated helplessness.

“Well then?” I said, trying to keep my voice low so Bryce and Chris wouldn’t hear me. “What’s the other option? You don’t have enough antibiotics to keep Morgan stable. What’s your plan? Just do nothing and let her progress to stage three?”

“Ashley, come on.”

“Give me a better plan.” I stepped in front him, forcing Ian to stop walking back to the granary and listen to me. “Give me a better plan, and I won’t do this,” I said. “Otherwise I’m getting Jason alone tomorrow and making him think I want to fuck him. I can get his access card. I know I can. I can do this.”

Ian didn’t say anything. He waved goodbye to Chris and walked me and Bryce back to my parent’s house along the river. He didn’t agree one way or another to my plan. But as we made our way through the growing darkness, I could tell he knew I was right.

There wasn’t any other way.

                                Chapter 5: Don't Catch the Plague

My mom wouldn’t stop knitting.

When I came in through the door, she said, “So you’ve decided to grace us with your presence.”

She refused to look up from the scarf she was making for Haley. It had grown by an arm’s length in the days I’d been gone.

All I’d wanted was to come home to my parents’ house, spend a semi-normal evening with my family, maybe have one of my mom’s home-cooked meals, then actually sleep in a bed. I really needed some sanity after everything I’d been through. And considering that I was going to try to seduce and drug Jason Gibbs tomorrow, I was hoping to get some rest so I could prepare.

But apparently Shawn and the rest of Jason’s squad had told my family that I was wanted for hiding infected refugees. They all thought that I’d been gone because I’d been with Morgan somewhere, concealing her from the Home Guard. I thought about telling them what had actually happened, but how could I? I didn’t think anyone would really believe that I’d been buried alive then locked in a stripped-down U-Haul for the better part of a week.

“I don’t see why you don’t just tell them where Morgan is,” my mom scolded.

I hadn’t realized that she was in such deep denial about everything that was happening.

“They know what’s best for her,” she went on, fiercely knitting at the kitchen counter while she lectured me. “They’re keeping us all safe. I don’t know why you have to go and disrupt all of that. They’re all such nice boys. And Shawn! You should be so proud of him! This has been so good for him. You need to be more grateful. We’re all just so lucky that the good guys are on our side, watching out for us.”

We’d missed dinner. Ian was having a beer with Bryce on the porch, and I’d told them that I’d make up some sandwiches. My dad was washing the dishes. As I opened the fridge, he dried his hands and put an arm around me.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, softly, so my mom wouldn’t hear him. “I was worried. I’m glad you’re home.”

At the dining table, Danielle was playing cards with Tyler and Haley. My sister hadn’t said a word to me since I’d arrived at the house. When I went to grab the bread knife from the table, she scowled. She stood up, placing herself between me and her children, then she whispered fiercely into my ear.

“I know you know where that little bitch is,” she hissed. “She’s probably the one who brought that disease in from outside. You need to tell Ian where she is. No more fucking around, Ashley.”

I hadn’t realized how much Ian wasn’t telling Danielle.

She didn’t have a clue about what was going on. He obviously didn’t trust her to keep the granary a secret. And judging by how my sister was acting now, he was absolutely right not to trust her. She wasn’t ever the most easy-going of the two of us, but I’d never seen her behave this way. The stress was really getting to her, I could tell. Suddenly, it seemed, she hated me.

“Play with us, Aunt Ashley!” Haley peeked around her mother and looked at me expectantly.

Even after all I’d been through, I felt really bad having to say no to my niece yet again.

“Next time,” I told her, mussing her hair. “I’ve got some important things to take care of. And we have a guest,” I said, nodding in the direction of the porch.

Tyler couldn’t have heard what his mother whispered into my ear, but he looked at both of us apprehensively. He was still in that awkward stage; he was probably going to be good looking when he got out of adolescence, but his nose had suddenly gotten too big for his face, and his forehead was ringed with acne from wearing his football helmet. Poor kid. He just wanted life to be normal, to play football, and to meet girls his age. He’d been helping Haley fan out the cards in her hand, and I could tell right away that he was terrified at everything that was happening, even though he was putting on a good face and trying to help his little sister through it. I think he just wanted everyone to stick together and make it out alive.

“Let’s just leave Aunt Ashley alone for a little while,” he said graciously, avoiding Danielle’s gaze. “She’s probably starving.”

He was right. I was famished. Other than the military rations that the Home Guard had delivered to the house, my parents seemed only to have an endless supply of freezer-burnt roast beef and white bread. While I made a sandwich each for Ian, Bryce, and myself, I ate at least another sandwich’s worth of the meat with my fingers. I still had a strange, insatiable craving for a hamburger and a milkshake, but instead I poured a big glass of milk and gulped it down. I hadn’t craved milk like this since I was a kid, but I couldn’t get enough of it. I poured a second glass.

I brought Ian and Bryce their sandwiches. They thanked me effusively. Both of them looked guilty that they hadn’t helped me while they’d sat on the porch with beers.

But completing these little tasks kept my mind occupied. It prevented me from collapsing in a heap and totally breaking down, which I was afraid I might do now that I was relatively safe at the house.

Because Shawn was only a private, he had to bunk at the Home Guard Center, and the couch was free. I put sheets on the cushions for Bryce and laid out a blanket. I made myself another sandwich and took it upstairs to my old bedroom.

The internet had been shut down. When I tried to log on, the only accessible site was homeguard.gov, which automatically appeared after I opened the browser. The site had maps of each residential district, a ration distribution schedule, and an emergency hotline for “reporting individuals suspected of being infected with the TGV pathogen.” In big, red letters running across the top of the screen, it warned, “IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.”

The same thing happened when I tried to use the internet on my phone. The Home Guard website immediately appeared, and I couldn’t access any other page.

I showered. I put on a pair of threadbare sweats that I’d long ago discarded.

I couldn’t believe how much weight I’d lost. I studied myself in the mirror for the first time in days. My cheeks had hollowed out, and I could actually see the contours of my abdominal muscles. I hadn’t looked like this since I was fourteen.

Good, I thought. I was looking hot, actually. All the better for tempting Jason.

I brushed my teeth and got into bed without saying goodnight to anyone. I fell asleep going over all the things I could say to Jason to make him believe I actually wanted to sleep with him.

Sometime late at night, Bryce came into my room.

He closed the door softly, then he sat at the edge of my bed.

“Ashley,” he whispered.

I’d been in a deep sleep, and I tried not to be too annoyed that he’d woken me.

I said, “If you’re looking for a late-night Lady Gaga dance party, sorry, but I’m little worn out.”

He laughed quietly. “I guess I’ll go ask your mom if she’s down then.”

I smiled at the thought. “You’d probably have better luck with my dad.”

I hadn’t moved since Bryce had sat on my bed. I closed my eyes. I could feel his weight on my mattress. For a while he just sat there in the dark.

Finally I asked, “What’s up?”

The night was completely quiet. There was no wind. There were no crickets. Just a deep, dark silence.

“I just can’t stop thinking about it,” Bryce whispered. “When they locked us up in those U-Hauls, I kept dreaming we were back in the coffin. And when I woke up, it was so dark I thought maybe I really was in the coffin again. I kept spreading out my arms, trying to convince myself I was only in the back of a van.” He drew in a deep breath. I think he’d started to cry a little, but he was holding it back. “God, I really thought I was going to die in that fucking thing.”

When he stopped talking, the night’s silence rushed back in. It was almost like we were alone together in the coffin again.

“I thought I was going to die in there too,” I whispered. What else could I say?

I sensed Bryce turning to look at me. I could just make out his profile. It seemed like he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the right words.

I felt myself start to nod off again. I was exhausted.

“I’m really tired.” I reached out and touched his knee for a moment, then I pulled my hand back under my covers. “I have a big day tomorrow.”

“Right,” Bryce said. “Sorry.”

He stood and stepped softly from the room. I heard him making his way quietly back down the stairs.

But now that he’d left, I couldn’t sleep. I started regretting making him leave. I did want to talk about what we’d gone through together, at some point. I knew that no one else in the world would ever be able to understand what it was like to be trapped beneath the earth. No one else would ever be able to understand what we’d shared down there. No one.

I tried to go back to sleep.

I tried not to think about Bryce, or how alone I’d started to feel.

Instead, I thought about Morgan. But that only made things worse. I missed talking to her so much. I just wanted to call her on the phone like I’d normally do if I was feeling shitty, but I couldn’t. It was hard to bear the idea that maybe I’d never be able to talk to her again.

I felt even more alone than before. It was like I was a tiny speck of dust floating out in the frozen, starry universe.

For a moment I thought about waking Ian and talking to him, but I couldn’t. It would be weird. Right now he was fast asleep in bed with Danielle, quietly keeping all of his secrets from her.

I lay awake for an hour, maybe two. I couldn’t go back to sleep.

Just before dawn, I crept downstairs.

I could tell right away that Bryce wasn’t asleep.

I lay down on the couch beside him and pulled the sheet over us both.

Bryce wrapped his arms around me.

I started to cry.

I couldn’t help it. I just sobbed for a few minutes while he held on to me.

“It’s okay,” he whispered.

And, then, we were kissing. I wasn’t sure if I’d kissed him, or if he’d kissed me. We were just kissing.

Soon, somehow, I was on top of him. I took his shirt off and stripped my own shirt off as quickly as I could. I couldn’t think of anything but being as close to him as physically possible. I felt his bare chest against my breasts, and I put my arms around his neck. I pressed my body into his with all my weight.

Very suddenly, but quietly, he flipped us both over so that I was on my back.

He lay between my legs. He was still wearing jeans, but I could feel through my threadbare sweats how hard he was when he pressed into me.

I unbuckled his belt. As soon as I started doing this, he tore off my sweats and underwear all at once. I couldn’t believe how wet I was. I unzipped his pants, reached into his underwear, and—I couldn’t help it—I pulled him straight inside me.

I thought maybe I was really falling in love with him. Ever since we’d been trapped alone together inside the coffin, Bryce and I had been linked together. Neither of us would ever see our lives in the same way afterwards, and only the two of us could really understand what that meant. My marriage with Shawn was obviously over. A future inside the Muldoon quarantine zone, living amid a devastating plague, wasn’t much of a future, but it was the only future any of us had. Maybe Bryce and I could share it together.

As soon as I pulled him inside me, he pressed even deeper in.

The sex I had with him that early morning was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I knew there was some chance that he could be infected, and that I was responding to the pathogen’s pheromones. But what I felt for him felt so real, and so human. Bryce was staggeringly tender with me, and yet so irresistibly firm at the same time. He whispered how he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about me while we were locked away from one another, then he grabbed my pelvis and pushed so deep inside me I thought I was going to explode with pleasure.

I started to come, and it was all I could do to keep from yelling out and waking everybody up. Bryce put his hand over my mouth and I bit into his finger, which only made him drive deeper inside me.

But just before he came, that self-preserving part of me rose back up in my consciousness, and I pulled away from him. I grabbed his penis in both of my hands as he cried out, arching his back, and I felt his warm semen leap onto my belly and breasts.

Bryce heaved a huge sigh, collapsed beside me, cradled my head in his arms, and kissed my forehead.

He whispered something. “You and me,” he said. “We’re going to stick together.”

I kissed him softly.

It was so hard not to just fall asleep in his arms. I hadn’t felt such warm, satisfied peace since long before the plague.

But the morning sky was growing brighter. The sun was already about to rise. My family would be up soon. I had to get back to my bedroom.

I grabbed a tissue from the box on the side table.

It was just at that most vulnerable of moments, as I was wiping Bryce’s semen from my belly, that I saw someone standing in the living room window.

It was a woman. And at her hip was a young boy, maybe two years old.

She was about my age. The first rays of morning sunlight were coming over the plains, illuminating one side of her face and her freshly-straightened hair. She was beautiful, like she belonged on a TV show. And she was staring right at me.

I was completely naked. Bryce, asleep, had collapsed on one of my legs. His head rested on my breast. Morning sunlight was falling on his bare ass.

The woman screamed.

“You have got to be kidding me!” she yelled through the window. “Are you kidding me?”

She stomped across the porch and threw open the front door, oblivious that anyone was asleep in the house. Or she just didn’t care.

Bryce looked at her, groaned, then let his face fall onto the sofa pillow.

The woman stormed toward us.

“Seriously?!” she screamed, even louder than before.

The boy in her arms looked like he was on the verge of crying, but his face was frozen.

I scrambled to wrap the sheet around my shoulders, which left Bryce uncovered.

He tugged on his pants, taking his time to zip them. He left his belt unfastened.

“Lindsay,” was all he said.

The woman was wearing a wedding band and a huge engagement ring.

Now it was my turn to yell at Bryce. “Are you kidding me?” I screamed.

Everyone in the house had to be up by now anyway.

Bryce looked at me, defeated. He shrugged.

“Yeah,” the woman yelled at me. “I’m his wife. He’s fucking married. With—” she gestured silently at the boy in her arms, obviously Bryce’s son. She smiled acerbically. “Surprised? I fucking bet.”

“Lindsay,” Bryce repeated.

It was like he was capable only of repeating his wife’s name. He just sat back in the couch, shirtless, with a surprisingly unapologetic expression.

“I came all the way out here looking for you,” Lindsay screamed, nodding indignantly. “And then they tell me I can’t leave town? I spend a week in a shitty motel, finally track you down, thinking these fucking Nazi Robocop’s are after you, and here you are with—” she shook her head, finally whispering as she pointed at me, “her?”

“The phones were down.” Bryce stared at his wife with a strange confidence. “I tried to call. I couldn’t.”

Lindsay just stared at him, speechless, shocked at this response. Finally his son started to cry.

Bryce looked slowly from Lindsay to me. Again, he just shrugged.

I slapped him. I slapped him really hard. I cuffed him across the jaw with the full weight of my arm. I couldn’t believe how he was acting. I didn’t even recognize him as the Bryce I’d known.

For a brief moment he looked at me with an expression of shame and contrition.

“I just—” he began, but he couldn’t complete his sentence.

Suddenly, I understood.

I backed away from him instinctively, horrified, gathering the sheet around my body.

When Bryce had tried to speak, but couldn’t, he’d made this quivering jerk of the jaw that was just like what Morgan did when she’d tried to speak in the silo.

Bryce was infected.

I had no doubt. He’d been so charmingly talkative before we’d gotten trapped in the coffin. But ever since then, he’d hardly said anything. I’d thought that it was because of the trauma he’d gone through, but I’d been wrong. Bryce had been speaking in shorter and shorter sentences, until finally this morning he’d gone into this strange, sexually-charged state of speaking only in very terse phrases. He wasn’t just infected. He was moving into stage two.

Even as I grew more angry, and more heartbroken, I felt a sudden, intense urge to fuck him again. What was I thinking?

I was still holding the tissue I’d used to wipe his semen. I held it to my nose.

It smelled like honey.

“That night?” I asked him. “In the hay loft?” I was crying now. “You slept with Morgan that night?”

He stared straight into my eyes. “Couldn’t help it.”

Somehow everything he said when he spoke this way sounded so reasonable and forgivable, even when it obviously wasn’t.

It had to be the effect the pheromones were having on me. And his beautiful blue eyes.

I actually felt a little tingling between my legs again. My pulse picked up.

What was happening? It was like a spell. I was dizzy. . .

I forced my thoughts away from thinking about sex with Bryce. It was surprising how difficult it was, until finally I remembered what he’d done to me, and I snapped out of it.

“You slept with Morgan,” I said. “And you didn’t tell me about it, and then you slept with me?”

“Couldn’t help it,” he repeated, again as if this was the most reasonable response in the world.

I felt another wave of pheromone-induced dizziness in which I wanted to kiss him and slap him all at once.

Bryce just sat there on the couch staring unapologetically at his wife, his baby son, and at me.

The sad thing was that when he said he couldn’t help it, he’d been telling the truth, in a way. The pathogen was affecting his consciousness. It was making him want to have sex with as many partners as possible in the shortest amount of time, no matter the cost.

And yet my feelings for him had felt so real. I’d even thought a few hours ago that maybe I was falling in love with him. Was that just the effect of the pheromones too? How could I know for sure?

I backed away from Bryce, trying to distance myself from whatever strange effect his physical presence was having on my body.

As soon as I was more than a few feet away, my feelings changed. Suddenly, it seemed absolutely crazy that I’d had sex with him on the living room couch. My family must have heard us. What had I been thinking? I tried to remember the moment when Bryce came. Thank God I’d pulled away. But had I pulled away in time? Had some of his semen ended up inside me? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t be sure.

It was only now that I realized my entire family—all of them—was watching from the kitchen.

Even Tyler and Haley had appeared, but Danielle was busy trying to pull them away from the scene we were causing in the living room. My mom was speechlessly shaking her head, both at me and at the strange woman who had barged into her house with a toddler. My dad was averting his eyes. Ian was pacing around the kitchen, trying to decide whether or not to intervene.

I pulled the sheet more closely around my shoulders. Underneath, I was wearing nothing. I had no choice but to gather up my clothes and hurry away to the bathroom, horrified at what had I’d done.

After I washed up and dressed, I sat on the front porch steps.

I couldn’t face anyone.

Not yet anyway. I’d never felt so mortified.

I’d lost control of myself with Bryce, my entire family knew I was cheating on my husband, and now I couldn’t even be sure whether I was infected because I had no way of testing myself—Chris and Ian had used their last test applicator on Morgan.

Someone opened the front door behind me. The screen door banged shut.

I still wasn’t ready to see anyone. I was slightly hoping the person approaching would turn out to be Ian, but I wasn’t sure if I felt like speaking even to him. I was so embarrassed.

“Your mom wanted me to give you this.”

It wasn’t Ian. It was the last person I expected it to be. It was Bryce’s wife.

Lindsay sat beside me and handed me a cup of coffee. I took it tentatively.

“Look,” she said. “I’m sorry I barged in on all you guys.”

She was really strikingly attractive. Dark blue eyes, dark hair, sharp features, a perfect body. Perfect everything. Why would Bryce have shown any interest in me, with a wife like this?

“You’re apologizing to me?” I asked.

I was ready for the woman to tear me to pieces, now that she had me alone, but she didn’t even seem angry. She actually sounded like she felt sorry for me.

“Well, yeah,” she said. She didn’t have her son with her. My mom must have had him inside. “I just came into a house full of total strangers, screaming and yelling like that. I’m lucky I didn’t get shot.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I imagined what Lindsay must have seen through the window: her husband sprawled out naked with a strange girl. “I’m so, so sorry. Bryce didn’t say anything about being married.”

“He never does.”

Lindsay blew on her steaming coffee, wrapping her hands around the mug. It was a cold morning.

“This isn’t exactly the first time,” she said. “I can only blame myself for staying with him as long as I have. After I got pregnant, his last girlfriend tried to warn me about him. I didn’t listen, but she was right. He’s just an egotistical asshole. He always will be.”

The thing was, though, Bryce didn’t seem like an asshole. It was true that he didn’t tell me about his wife and son, which, I had to admit, was an extremely asshole-ish thing to do. But he seemed so kind. He hadn’t ever come off as egocentric. He was charming, but in a really sweet way. Was it because of the pathogen that he’d behaved so irresistibly charmingly? If so, that meant he’d been infected even before sleeping with Morgan. Had he been in stage one when I’d first met him . . . ?

Someone else came out onto the porch. The screen door slammed shut.

It was Bryce.

He sat on the porch swing behind us. He was still wearing nothing but jeans. He clasped his hands behind his head. He had a really amazing body. Even the way he planted his bare feet against the porch boards was cute.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I wasn’t sure whether he was apologizing to me or to Lindsay. It looked like he wanted to say something more, but his jaw only made the same quivering jerk as before, and he gave up trying to speak.

“What are you sorry for, Bryce?” Lindsay was already seething again. “Are you sorry for sleeping around? Again?”

I realized she had no idea that Bryce was infected. I wondered if that’s what he’d been trying to tell her when he hadn’t been able to speak.

“Don’t be sorry for sleeping around,” she said. “Okay? Sleep around all you fucking want. Because it’s over between us. Got it? Over. You want to be sorry about something? Be sorry that your wife—your ex-wife—came to look for you, with your son, after you disappeared. And then I got stuck in this shit-hole town for who knows how long. Forever, for all I know. Be sorry for that. Don’t be sorry for sleeping with Ashley, or whoever else you fucking want.”

“What the hell is going on here?”

My attention had been focused so intensely on Lindsay and Bryce that I hadn’t noticed that someone was coming up the driveway behind me.

It was Shawn.

He wasn’t wearing his Home Guard combat gear. He was in his old street clothes. At his hip, though, was a very large handgun.

And he’d just heard everything Lindsay had said about Bryce sleeping with me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Shawn in a panic.

“Breakfast!” Shawn said, glancing from person to person on the porch. “Your mom’s making me breakfast. It’s my morning off. She didn’t tell you?”

My husband looked hurt and confused as he tried to make sense of Bryce Tripp sitting shirtless on the porch swing. I could tell he was struggling to process everything he’d just overheard Lindsay say.

Bryce stood and held up his hands defensively. “We’re all just le-le—” he stuttered. But he couldn’t finish his sentence.

“What the hell is going on here?” Shawn repeated, now shooting me a mystified look.

He stormed up the porch.

He slipped his gun from the holster, then stared at Bryce as he tried to say something. But once again Bryce failed to get the words out, his jaw quivering.

“This is bullshit!” Shawn screamed like a distraught child. “You’re all obviously at risk!” He turned to me, disgusted. “Especially you! You fucking slut!”

Ian rushed out to the porch.

“Shawn,” he said. “Let’s just calm down a bit. You’re upset. I understand that. But let’s just calm down.”

“Calm down? What the fuck, Ian? I’m doing my job. This overrides any clearance you got! They’re no doubt a ‘contagion threat’ now!” Shawn wagged his gun between me and Bryce. “That means it’s up to our discretion to expire them or arrest them. Period! And this fucktard is well on his way to stage two!” He raised his gun and pointed it straight at Bryce. “What were you thinking, Ian? Keeping them at the house? I should have done this a long fucking time ago.”

I leaped onto my feet and put a hand gingerly on Shawn’s shoulder.

“Shawn,” I said.

He whipped around, facing me. Tears were starting to well in his eyes.

“Fuck you, Ashley,” he whispered.

“Shawn.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Finally he gave me a heartbreaking expression of hurt.

Then he spun back around, and with a terrifying, primitive scream, he fired his gun at Bryce.

Ian lunged forward, drawing his own gun now.

But he was too late.

Bryce collapsed backward onto the porch swing, sending the chains bouncing and jangling as he rolled to the ground. He clutched at his stomach, writhing in pain. Blood spilled between his fingers. For a moment he tried to pull himself up with his arms, smearing the porch boards with blood, but then he collapsed backward again.

I couldn’t believe how much blood had already gathered around Bryce. It had collected in a wide pool and was dripping off the porch.

Ian held his gun firmly trained at Shawn’s head.

“You haven’t tested anyone, Shawn,” he said. “You’re not following protocol. Put your gun down. Stop right now.”

Shawn didn’t put his gun down.

Instead, he pointed it directly at my face.

“New rules.” Shawn’s gun was inches from my forehead. “Where have you been, Ian? We’re out of Insta-Reads. Until the next shipment comes in, it’s up to our discretion to expire or arrest.” He repeated this phrase like he was reading it from a manual, never taking the gun from my face.

A deafening boom.

Someone had fired their gun.

It couldn’t have been Shawn, because when I opened my eyes I was still standing.

My husband was clutching his right hand. He was no longer holding his gun. Ian had shot it from his hand, puncturing his palm in the process.

Shawn screamed out in surprise and pain, staring hatefully at Ian.

“Do not point a gun at Ashley,” Ian said flatly, keeping his own gun pointed at Shawn.

I heard my mom screaming from inside the living room as she banged open the screen door and hurried toward Shawn, shrieking.

“He wasn’t going to shoot her, Ian!” She completely ignored Bryce and tried to wrap a dishcloth around Shawn’s bleeding hand. “He was just doing his job. Somebody has to do their job around here!”

My mom seemed to be losing her mind. Shawn just let her wrap his hand.

“You want a warrant?” Shawn yelled at Ian, staggering in pain toward his truck. “You stay right fucking here. You all stay right fucking on these premises!” he yelled. “There’s no doubt I’ll get a warrant for him and Ashley both after what I’ve seen here.” Shawn jerked his head toward Bryce, who was gasping and clutching at his stomach. “He’ll live,” he said. “That stomach wound won’t do anything. When I come back with the squad, we’re taking both of them in.” He looked at Lindsay, bent over Bryce, her knees soaking with his blood. “And you too!” he screamed. “Nobody cleared you to leave the motel!” Now he turned to Ian. “And you most of all! Shooting a Home Guard soldier? Are you crazy? You can kiss your cushy rank goodbye, son. Say hello to a fucking court marshal. Just wait. Just fucking wait! Nobody leave these premises!”

Shawn jerked away from my mom, who was still trying to tie the dishcloth, and he hobbled into his truck.

He sped away in a storm of dust.

Ian said, “We have to go. Now. All of us.”

Between Ian, myself, and Lindsay, we were able to lift Bryce into my dad’s wheelbarrow.

Bryce looked hopelessly uncomfortable splayed out inside. His legs dangled over the edge and his neck was bent to one side like a dead pig. But there was no other way to move him.

“We have to leave, right now,” Ian said. “Jason’s squad could be here any minute. Shawn’s probably already called them. None of us are safe here anymore.”

We scrambled down to the river and started making our way along the bank toward the granary. Ian pushed the wheelbarrow as carefully as he could, but Bryce’s head kept bouncing around inside. He was still conscious, but he’d lost so much blood he’d grown gruesomely pale. Lindsay had grabbed her son, and she struggled to carry the toddler as she hurried to keep up with us. She was covered in Bryce’s blood. The kid wouldn’t stop wailing.

I was terrified that the crying was going to give up where we were. If Jason’s squad showed up right now, they’d hear the kid and come straight to us.

I grabbed him from Lindsay’s arms. She must have been in a state of shock, because she just let me take him. I put my hand over his mouth, careful not to cover his nostrils. And I just kept running.

All I could think about was getting inside the granary where we couldn’t be seen.

We left the bank and rounded the row of silos. But instead of an empty, weed-strewn grain yard like I’d expected to see, there was a group of people.

Maybe seven or eight of them. They looked like they were waiting for something.

We all stopped, breathless. I realized the kid had stopped crying and I let go of his mouth. Ian put the wheelbarrow handles down and tried to catch his breath while he took in the scene.

I recognized the Botteroffs, who lived on the other side of the Hershel’s. And my third grade teacher, Nancy Thomas, was sitting against the rusted tin wall. I didn’t recognize anyone else; they all must have been from out of town.

What were they doing here, at the granary? I didn’t understand.

“Is this the Underground?” one man asked Ian. He was dressed in a mechanic’s jump suit, covered in grease.

“The what?” Ian lifted the wheelbarrow and started making his way warily through the small crowd toward the granary door.

“The Underground,” an elderly woman said. “You do shelter positives, don’t you? From the Home Guard?”

“Fuck,” Ian said under his breath. “Well, I guess we fucking do now. . .”

Ian tapped on the granary’s wall. “Chris! What’s going on out here, man! Who are these people?”

Chris appeared at the door.

He looked around at the desperate faces. “Shit. There’s more?”

“What have you been telling people?” Ian demanded, rolling Bryce into the granary’s dark interior.

“I haven’t said anything!” Chris said. “You think I can treat any of them? Any of them? They just keep showing up!”

“We’ll just have to hide them all in one of the silos for now,” Ian said, flustered. “Tell them not to make a sound. Home Guard will probably be crawling all over the place soon.”

Chris looked more closely at Bryce. “What happened to him . . . ? He’s positive, isn’t he?”

“He got shot, that’s what happened,” Ian said. “And, yes. He’s positive.”

“I knew it,” Chris said. “I thought something was up with that guy.”

“Just get those people out of sight before someone shows up!” Ian said, hoisting Bryce from the wheelbarrow and laying him onto the granary’s dusty floor.

Chris hurried outside to deal with the crowd while Ian took Bryce’s pulse.

Bryce raised his head slowly, watching Ian as he pinched his wrist. He’d stopped bleeding. The small bullet hole in his stomach had started to scab over. His skin was a sickly gray color. I’d never seen anyone so pale.

Bryce dropped his head back onto the floor.

“Hungry,” he groaned.

Ian was still holding on to Bryce’s wrist.

“No pulse.” Ian shook his head, confused.

Chris hurried back into the granary and fell to his knees beside Bryce.

“I can’t find a pulse,” Ian said.

“No shit you can’t find a pulse! He doesn’t have any fucking blood left! What do you think?” Chris shined a light into Bryce’s eyes. “Can you stand up?” he asked him.

Bryce shook his head. “No legs.”

“The bullet must have hit his spine,” Chris said. “He can’t move his legs at all.”

“Hungry,” Bryce whimpered again.

“How is he conscious?” Ian dropped Bryce’s wrist and sat back on his heels. “I don’t fucking understand!”

Chris grabbed a disposable syringe from a box on his desk. He kneeled beside Bryce while unwrapping the packaging, then he tossed aside the clear plastic. He jabbed Bryce’s forearm. He pulled the plunger backward, drawing fluid into the syringe.

What came out of Bryce’s vein wasn’t blood. It was a deep amber color, translucent, and thick like bacon grease left over in a skillet.

“Honey,” Chris said.

“What the fuck?” Ian looked closer at the syringe. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t really get it either,” Chris admitted. “Somehow the pathogen has replaced his blood with its own honey. His heart’s stopped beating, but the honey is oozing through his veins somehow. It’s keeping him conscious.” Chris shook his head in amazement. “The larvae must need tons of protein and sugars to produce so much honey. That must be why he’s so hungry. The pathogen needs him to eat. It needs the food energy.”

Bryce flopped his head from one side to the other. His face was ashen. His hair was slicked with sweat.

“Just—want to fuck,” he stammered. He started to cry. “Want to fuck so bad,” he whimpered. “Can’t. Can’t.”

Bryce weakly pounded his hip with his fist. His legs lay limp, bent in the same awkward angle they’d landed in when Ian had lowered him from the wheelbarrow. It was obvious Bryce couldn’t feel or move anything from the waist down.

“Want to fuck so bad,” he stammered, sobbing now. A thick, greasy tear spilled from his eye. “Why? Why?”

I couldn’t watch any longer. I knew the pathogen was going into overdrive making Bryce crave sex, and now there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Everything below his upper torso was useless and numb. It was driving him mad.

I had to focus on something else. If I stayed here doing nothing but stare at Bryce in his misery I’d start to go mad too.

I stepped away and tried not to listen to Bryce’s whimpering. Instead, I started rummaging through the bin of military rations Chris had been living on. I’d wanted to bring Morgan something to eat from the house, but when we all had to rush away, I didn’t even have enough time to grab a jacket, let alone extra food.

I found a pouch of vacuum-packed oatmeal and a sleeve of strawberry jelly at the bottom of the bin. It would have to do. I felt awful feeding Morgan like this. It was like she was some captured beast and I was bringing her a treat. But I refused to think of her as anything but human. I grabbed one of the kerosene burners and made my way as quietly as I could toward Morgan’s silo.

When I unlocked the door, she was asleep. She was curled up in a little ball against the tin wall.

She actually looked peaceful.

It appeared as though she’d been surviving mostly on candy bars. There were wrappers scattered all around her unlit lantern. But she was breathing evenly. She was deeply at rest.

I remembered that Ian had said that she hadn’t been sleeping well. Now that she was, I didn’t want to wake her.

But I didn’t want to leave, either. I felt comforted with Morgan nearby.

So, for a long time I just sat in the silo’s quiet semi-darkness, listening to Morgan breathe, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do now.

I knew I had to go back to the house. I still had to get Jason’s pharmacy access card. Now that I was a wanted fugitive again, I had no idea how I was going to get it, but I had to. Somehow, I had to make him think I wanted to sleep with him. It was the only way. I refused to let Morgan progress to stage three. She’d be totally lost to me.

And it wasn’t just for Morgan now. It was for all the refugees who needed help.

And it was for myself, too. If it turned out Bryce had infected me, there was no way I was letting myself progress past stage one. There was no way I was letting what was happening to Morgan happen to me.

A gunshot rang out.

I leapt up, expecting to see Home Guard troops raiding the granary. But when I peered from the silo door, the granary yard was empty. And silent.

The gunshot had come from inside the granary itself.

I raced across the yard, trying not to trip in the weeds. I flung the wire-hinged door open and hurried into the dim interior.

My eyes adjusted to the light.

Bryce was still lying on the granary floor. Chris and Ian were standing over him. Ian was holding his head in his heads. Chris stood with his arms folded, staring down at Bryce, holding a pair of tweezers. Nobody was speaking.

Bryce was motionless. He was holding a small pistol in his hand. He clutched it loosely at his throat.

I stepped closer.

Now I could see that the back of Bryce’s head was missing.

A chunk of his skull had been blown off by the pistol. A mass of tiny larvae was streaming from the wound. Almost immediately each one of them writhed and died, as if contact with the open air killed them.

Chris picked up one larva with the tweezers and dropped it into a vial.

“What did you do!” I screamed. “You didn’t have to kill him!”

“Ashley.” Ian rubbed his forehead. He looked exhausted. “We have to keep quiet.”

Chris slipped the pistol out of Bryce’s hand and tucked it into a holster concealed under his shirt.

“We didn’t kill him,” Chris said. “He asked me for a gun. I gave one to him.”

Ian looked at Chris warily, but he looked too defeated to make any objection.

“What should I have done?” Chris asked.

“Not give him your fucking gun!” I struggled to keep my voice as low as possible.

“And then what?” Chris answered, angrily. “You think I could have treated him? Even if I had any more antibiotics, which I don’t—I gave the last dose to Morgan two days ago—I couldn’t do a fucking thing about his severed spinal cord. Could I? He was miserable. He asked for a gun, and I gave him one. Am I really going to tell him no? And just watch him progress to stage three, in that state? Just let him live in a nightmare for four or five months until he expires? Fuck you, I’m not doing that.”

“Where’s Lindsay?” I looked around the granary. “Where’s his son?”

“They’re in the silo with the others,” Ian said.

He stepped behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, trying to calm me down.

“Ashley,” he whispered, “Lindsay agreed with Chris about giving him the gun. We put her and the kid in the silo before he did it. Mrs. Thomas is taking care of her. Lindsay seems pretty tough. She’s handling it. The kid’s too young to know what happened.”

I turned from Bryce’s corpse and pulled away from Ian.

“Just sit down for a minute,” Ian said, pulling back the chair at Chris’s desk.

I sat. But I was afraid that Ian wasn’t acting with enough urgency. It was only a matter of time before the Home Guard discovered the granary, especially if other people already knew about it. They’d even had a name for the meager resistance movement. They’d called it the as if everyone already knew exactly what that meant. Somehow word was getting out that we were sheltering positives here.

“We can’t stay here,” I said. “They’ll find us here. They’re going to search the whole ranch.”

“No, we can’t stay here. You’re right.” Ian looked totally at a loss. “But where else? I didn’t count on having this many people. I was going to drive around looking for an empty house. Maybe someplace the Home Guard has registered as unoccupied. But finding something like that could take days.” He glanced at me, chagrinned. “I know we don’t have days, Ash. I’m trying to figure something out. I just need a little time to fucking think about the right place to hide. because just yet, I’m sorry, but I’m not coming up with anything.”

An idea that had been floating around my consciousness since last evening suddenly surfaced.

I knew of a place where we could hide—maybe.

The place I had in mind would take the Home Guard months to find, if they ever found it at all. And it was a place where we could take all of the refugees who were in the silo. Maybe even more.

The problem was, I didn’t know where it was. Not exactly.

I would have to ask my dad.

But most importantly, wherever we went, we would need a supply of antibiotics. Even the most secure refugee hideout in the world would be mostly useless if we didn’t have a way to keep positives from progressing to the disease’s later stages.

I stood up and faced Ian squarely.

“I need to borrow your gun.”

“Wait, what?” He was confused. “Why?”

“I’m going back to the house,” I said firmly. “I’m going to get the pharmacy access card from Jason.”

“You can’t be serious.” Ian looked more frustrated now than I’d ever seen him. He was so upset it looked like he thought I’d betrayed him. “You’re out of your fucking mind! That plan’s over now, Ashley! Forget it! They’ll have warrants for our arrest. Shawn wasn’t bluffing about that. They’ll arrest you on the spot. They might even shoot you on the spot. There’s no way you or I can go back to the house now. You’re just being reckless! We have to be realistic.”

“Ian, listen to me.” I did my best to keep my cool and speak as reasonably and forcefully as possible. “You want me to be realistic? Here’s realistic. There’s no other way. If we need more antibiotics, we need that access card. And I’m the only one who has a chance of getting it from Jason.”

Ian looked at me pleadingly. “I’m not letting you do this. Ashley, honestly, listen to me.” He whispered, “I don’t know what I would do if I lost you. Do you understand? I can’t lose you.”

Ian put his arms around my shoulders and drew me close, pressing my head against his chest. I felt like I might cry, but I forced myself not to.

I slipped my hands around his waist.

Then I grabbed his gun from his belt and pulled away from him.

“You’re not going to lose me,” I said. “Ian, that’s why I have to do this.”

I ran out the door before he could stop me, then I sprinted up the riverbank, clutching Ian’s gun, careful to keep under the cover of the trees.

The Home Guard was already at the house when I got there. From the riverbank, I could see Jason’s military vehicle parked in the driveway.

I sneaked toward the back of the house. On the way up the river, I’d hastily constructed a plan for getting Jason alone. I couldn’t go inside without anyone else seeing me. My only chance was to wait outside the bathroom window and hope I could catch him using it. It was risky, I knew. But there wasn’t any other way.

An old, overgrown lilac bush stood just outside the house’s downstairs bathroom window. Luckily, it still had most of its leaves. I crawled between it and the house, crouching just below the window sill. I was pretty sure no one would see me hiding there.

My mom had cooked lunch again for the Home Guard. I could tell because I could smell her beef stew.

The rangers’ voices droned on while they ate in the kitchen. Occasionally, I heard my mom’s voice pipe up, and I could hear Jason’s voice too, along with Shawn’s, but I couldn’t make out anything that anyone was saying.

So far, my plan was on track because Jason’s squad had actually stopped for lunch, just like I’d hoped they would. They had to know we were missing by now, but luckily they weren’t rushing off to find us, like I’d worried they might do. The squad was taking its time eating. But for everything to work like I’d planned, a lot more still had to go my way. First of all, Jason had to use the bathroom before he left. And I had no idea how likely it was that he actually would.

I don’t know how long I waited until someone finally came to use the bathroom. Whoever it was opened the window right away. The sash slid up right above my head. I held my breath. I didn’t move.

I heard someone peeing. A guy.

I couldn’t show myself unless I knew for sure it was Jason. But that was the problem. To look through the window I would have to expose myself for a moment, showing my face before ducking back down. If it was Shawn who was peeing right now, or anyone but Jason, and he saw me through the window, I’d be arrested. Maybe shot.

I took a deep, quiet breath. I didn’t have much time. I would have to look quickly, before whoever it was finished peeing and still had his back to me.

I started counting down from three, poised to raise my head and duck as quickly as possible.

Three . . . Two . . .

Suddenly, whoever was in the bathroom coughed and spit through the window. A mass of saliva and phlegm shot into the lilac bush, attached itself to a branch, and dripped down the bark.

Just from the sound of the cough alone, I knew it was Shawn, not Jason. I’d lived with him for a long time. I was sure it was him. If I’d raised my head a moment earlier, he would have seen me.

I held my breath.

I heard him grumbling and gasping as he struggled to wash his hands while one of them was shot through and bandaged.

Then he left.

Another fifteen minutes passed, and I heard the rangers saying goodbye to my mom.

Shit.

Jason hadn’t gone to the bathroom. Fuck him and his fucking big-ass bladder.

But just when I started to crawl from beneath the window, someone hurried into the bathroom. Instantly I heard a heavy stream of piss churning into the toilet bowl.

I didn’t waste any time. I peeked quickly through the window and ducked back down.

It was Jason. I could only see the back of his head, but I was sure it was him.

I stood quietly, raised the gun, and pointed it through the window directly at Jason.

As soon as he was done peeing, just as he was zipping up, I whispered, “Those pills you gave me were fucking incredible.”

His head snapped around. His eyes met mine, startled.

I said, “You draw your gun you know I’ll shoot you.”

Now he smiled coolly. “Well, well, well. There you are. Ashley, if you shoot me, my whole squad’ll be on you in seconds flat. But I won’t draw. Not just yet. I like you.” He turned and approached the window, stepping confidently toward my gun’s barrel. He planted his hands on the sill. “You liked those pills? Fucking good, aren’t they. And now you want more.”

“You got any?”

“Not on me right now.” He laughed softly. “Jesus. What makes you think I’d give any more to you, anyway? You’re a wanted fugitive. I have the go-ahead to shoot you on sight. Did you know that? Your husband’s ready to skin your hide. He wouldn’t fuck you with a rubber on a ten-foot pole.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “How do you feel about this whole situation? You haven’t shot me yet.”

“No,” he said, smiling. “No I haven’t. Have I?” He spoke softly, bringing his face closer to mine. “I don’t like to be rash. After all, there’s such a thing as protection. Besides, you came to say hello to me. Didn’t you? That was a very friendly thing to do. You must like me after all.”

“Well,” I said, forcing myself to smile coyly while keeping my gun raised. “You’re the sergeant,” I leaned forward and whispered into his ear. “Out of all these privates, I hear you have the biggest gun. And you like to party. What’s not to like?”

“I knew you liked to party!” Jason slapped his hand on the sill like he’d just won the lottery, “I knew it. I saw you that night at the fair, and I knew you liked to get fucked up. Why you been holding out on me, Ashley?”

I pouted. “Well, my marriage isn’t exactly working out, is it?” I tried not to ham it up too much. I was pretty sure I had him, and I didn’t want to ruin it now. “It’s just getting kind of boring out here on the run,” I said carefully. “And I’m getting lonely. How soon can you get some more of those pills? I thought maybe we could hook up later on tonight. They give you time off, don’t they?”

“Ashley. I’m the sergeant.” Jason’s tone was brimming with smug confidence. “I can take time off whenever the fuck I want.”

“And you can get more of those pills whenever the fuck you want too?”

“I can get them. You fucking bet I can get them. I’ll get you some that are even better than those last ones.” He smiled. “As long as you share.”

I smiled back at him. “If you can get them,” I whispered, “oh, I’ll share all right. I’ll be at your house at eleven tonight then? You’ll be there? You better be there.”

“Whoa, whoa, Ash,” Jason said. “No. Not there. If you want me to keep all this on the down low and not arrest or shoot your tight little ass, you can’t be anywhere near my house. If anyone found out about this, I’d be fucked. Got that? If I’m doing you a favor by not turning you in and hooking you up, then we gotta do this how I say.”

“Where then?” I braced myself. I thought I’d had him, but now I wasn’t so sure.

What was I getting myself into?

“That bend in the highway,” he said, gesturing out beyond the barn. “Just past this place. Do you know where I mean? Where that little gully is? You just hang tight there tonight, and I’ll pick you up. Got it?”

I knew the place he meant. I also knew that getting into any kind of vehicle with Jason was a bad idea. I’d imagined dropping in on his shitty little house and finding him already halfway wasted by the time I got there. I’d even planned on asking Ian to hide outside in the dark in case anything went wrong. Driving around alone with Jason was completely different. He could take me anywhere he wanted, and nobody would be there to back me up.

But what else could I do? It was this or nothing.

I grabbed his collar and whispered, “I’ll be there at eleven. Don’t be late.”

As soon as Jason’s military vehicle drove away, and I was sure all the rangers in his squad were gone, I slipped out to the feed shed.

I couldn’t risk going inside the house. I had no idea what my mom or Danielle would do if they saw me. After this morning, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they turned me in. And I didn’t even know if Shawn was still there or not, nursing his wound.

But I knew my dad always fed his cattle before sundown. He did the same thing without fail every day of his life. If I waited for him at the feed shed long enough, I was sure he’d show up eventually.

I also knew that I’d bought us all some time at the granary. As long as Jason was planning on partying with me, he wasn’t going to look very hard for anybody on my parents’ property. No matter how hard Shawn pushed him to find us, Jason was the boss. And I knew he’d much rather sleep with Shawn’s wife than have to shoot me, given the options.

I laid down in the hay scattered all over the feed shed. The cattle were already milling around, waiting for my dad to feed them.

It was quiet here, and peaceful. It reminded me of when I was a kid and I used to help my dad feed his cattle. The scent of the fresh hay was sweet and rich, and it filled my lungs as I breathed in the air. It almost felt like nothing had changed. No pathogen, no quarantine. Just my dad’s feed shed filled with hay, just like it had always been.

I must have fallen to sleep, because when I woke up the sun was setting.

My dad was tossing loose hay into the troughs, and the cattle were chewing lazily. He hadn’t even seen me asleep in the dark corner of the shed.

“Dad,” I whispered.

He turned around, startled.

“It’s me,” I said. “It’s okay.”

I stepped from the shadows. When my dad set eyes on me, he looked incredibly relieved.

He gave me a long, tight hug. He even lifted me from the ground a little, like he used to do when I was little.

“My Ashley,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re okay. You have no idea how worried I’ve been about you.” He hugged me again. “The world’s all gone to hell, hasn’t it?” he said softly. “What the hell are we all going to do?”

“Well, I’m not going to stand around doing nothing,” I said. “That’s for sure.”

My dad looked at me warily. I could tell he was worried that I’d get hurt, or worse.

“I need your help,” I said.

“My help? How?”

“I just need you to tell me something.” I was sure no one else was around, but I lowered my voice. “You remember when I was a kid and we took that cross-country horseback trip? Way out in the mountains? And we found those ruins? That village carved in the rock? And you told me not to ever tell anyone about it?”

My dad looked around the feed shed. He craned his head to look out the window.

“I don’t remember anything like that,” he said. “What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous, this far north. The Anasazi never set foot past southern Colorado.”

“Dad.” I couldn’t help but laugh a little. He was this serious about keeping a secret. “No one can hear us. We’re alone. We can talk about it. It’s okay. But I need you to tell me where those cliff dwellings are. It’s important. People’s lives are at stake. I can’t tell you why, but they are. You told me once that the Anasazi built those dwellings way out there to hide from a brutal enemy. Now I need to hide, just like they did. Do you understand? And I have no idea how to get there.”

My dad sighed. He glanced out the feed-shed window one last time.

“Does Ian know about this?” he asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Not yet. But he needs a place to hide as bad as I do.”

My dad nodded. “And if you went out there, he’d go with you?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said.

He turned to leave the feed shed. It was almost dark.

“Stay here,” he said.

In fifteen minutes he came back with a Ziploc bag. Inside was a black garbage bag folded neatly into sections.

He removed it from the Ziploc bag and unwrapped it.

Inside was a topographical map.

My dad unfolded the map’s sections, then pointed to a tiny, penciled-in X. He tapped it with his finger. Then he wrapped the map back up in the bags and handed it to me.

Suddenly, there was a scream at the house.

My dad looked at me for a moment, confused, then we both ran toward the lighted back porch.

I did my best to stuff the map into the back of my pants as we ran. I didn’t have anywhere else to put it. When we neared the porch, there was another scream.

“Get her off!”

It was Tyler’s voice, I realized now.

Through the dim screen window that lead to the washroom, I could see a commotion, but I couldn’t make out anything but shadows.

“Get her off!” Tyler shouted again in a terrified panic.

It was only now, hearing Tyler’s terrified scream, that I remembered the moment I’d left Morgan asleep in the silo. I’d heard Bryce’s gunshot, and I had rushed straight to the granary.

And I’d left without locking the door.

I had no choice but to rush to the house. I had to risk being seen by my mom or Danielle. I had to risk even Shawn seeing me, if he was there.

When I reached the washroom, I saw exactly what I’d feared. But it was even worse than I’d imagined.

Tyler’s pants were around his ankles. Morgan was completely naked. Her legs were locked around Tyler’s waist. Her arms were locked around his neck. He’d fallen onto his back against a pile of muddy boots, and Morgan’s pelvis was grinding away furiously as she perched on top of him. She was starting to moan.

They’d obviously been having sex. They still were.

“I’m so sorry,” Tyler cried, pushing at Morgan without budging her. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry! I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it! Now she won’t stop!”

I understood exactly what must have happened. Without another dose of antibiotics, Morgan’s infection had progressed. Maybe even as far as stage three. Without being locked inside the silo, she’d wondered to the house in a sex-crazed stupor. Tyler must have been the first person she’d seen. She’d stripped her clothes. She must have been saturated with pheromones. Even now I could feel a strange, lustful dizziness. Tyler hadn’t had a chance. He was just a fourteen-year old kid who was full of his own adolescent hormones anyway. He’d probably been tempted into letting Morgan seduce him, then he’d screamed out when he’d realized that he couldn’t get her off of him.

I rushed to the floor and tried to pull Morgan away. But I couldn’t believe her strength. Her legs and arms were locked so tightly around Tyler that I couldn’t even budge them. The rigidity of her muscles must have been some strange effect of the pathogen.

“Get her off!” Tyler screamed.

“I’m trying, sweetie,” I said. “I’m trying!”

Morgan’s moaning grew louder. I pulled at her arms with all my might, and still I couldn’t budge her.

“Morgan!” I yelled. “You have to stop. Snap out of it! Morgan!”

But she just clung more tightly to Tyler’s body. She grinded her pelvis even harder.

“I’m so sorry, Aunt Ashley,” Tyler wailed.

I tried again to pull Morgan off, but this only made her cling even tighter. She bit Tyler’s ear. Tyler screamed, but she wouldn’t let go. She just latched her teeth onto his flesh, started breathing heavily through her nose, and refused to release her bite.

Morgan’s moaning intensified.

If I didn’t do anything to stop her, she was going to climax. I remembered what Chris had told me. If she reached that point, Tyler would definitely get infected.

“Get her off!” Tyler screamed.

I stood and searched the washroom for anything I could use to pry Morgan off.

The first thing I saw was the scarf my mom was making for Haley. I pulled one of the knitting needles from the loops of yarn.

Morgan was whimpering now. She was grinding on top of Tyler with a horrifying speed. She’d locked her fingernails into the back of his neck, and she still hadn’t let go of his ear with her teeth.

For a moment I thought about the night when I’d watched Mr. Hershel raping Morgan. I remembered how I hadn’t been able to bring myself to shoot him, and how Ian had needed to take the gun from me and do it himself.

But Ian wasn’t here now.

It was up to me to act.

Morgan squealed. She arched her back. Any second now, she was going to come. There was only one thing I could do to stop her.

I didn’t let myself think about what I was doing.

I put the tip of the knitting needle into her ear. Then I jammed it inside as hard as I could. There was a faint crunching sound.

Instantly, Morgan collapsed.

Tyler slid away, backing himself into the corner of the washroom. He was sobbing.

Then, there was a loud knocking on the front door.

“Home Guard!” someone shouted “Open now!” I heard my mom shriek with relief and rush to let them in. She must have called the Home Guard herself when she’d seen Morgan prowling around the house.

But I couldn’t move. All I could do was kneel there, frozen, while Tyler cowered in the corner and Morgan’s body lay slumped against my knee.

I’d just killed my best friend.

I tried to understand this fact, but I just felt numb. I knew I needed to stand up and run, but I couldn’t.

The Home Guard’s booted footsteps pounded through the kitchen toward me.

But all I could do was look mutely at my right hand. It was like it belonged to somebody else. My fingers were still tightly clasped around the knitting needle, and covered in Morgan’s blood.

                                     Chapter 6: Whetted Appetites

From my hiding place beside the highway I heard someone approaching along the road.

The footsteps were slow and even, coming from way off in the distance. I sat up and stretched my back, making sure to keep low enough so that I would still be concealed behind the gully’s rocks and brush.

It was dawn.

I was still cold, but not as miserably cold as I’d been all night. The sun was about to rise over the plains. I could see now that the leaves of the cottonwoods I’d been sleeping under were beginning to turn from green to an autumn yellow. But as I peered through the branches and searched the highway, I still couldn’t see who was coming. The person was still on the far side of the bend in the road and concealed by the hillside.

But they were definitely getting closer. Now I could hear what sounded like something being dragged. With every other footstep came the sound of a chain clinking across the road’s dry asphalt.

Finally a tiny figure emerged from around the bend. I looked around at my hiding spot in the gully, making sure that I was still concealed from the highway now that it was daylight. I was sitting within a few steps from the road, but I was pretty sure whoever was coming wouldn’t be able to see me behind the cover of sage and low cottonwood branches.

It was a girl.

This came as a surprise, because the dragging chain sounded heavy. She was walking with a slow, even pace. She didn’t appear to be struggling at all. She just took one step accompanied by the dragging sound, then another quiet step, followed again by another step with the dragging sound.

As she drew closer, I could tell that she was only about eleven or twelve years old.

I didn’t recognize her. She must have been someone from out of town. She had long brown hair, pulled back behind her ears, and she was wearing a dress. The dress looked like something she could have worn to a wedding, or maybe to church, except that it was filthy. What had once been white fabric was now a soiled, dull gray, closely matching the color of her equally filthy skin.

This uniform filth was probably why I didn’t notice immediately that her dress was torn. The entire front section had been ripped away, revealing everything bellow her belly button. And she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

My heart started to race.

As the girl came closer, I could see that her eyes were a beautiful green, but they were deeply sunken. And she was incredibly thin. Her hipbones jutted sharply from her waist. And yet her expression was perfectly calm. She was just staring straight ahead, keeping an even pace as she made her way down the empty road. She behaved as if she was perfectly clean and healthy, as if her dress was perfectly in tact, and as if everything below her waist wasn’t exposed for all the world to see.

And, also, as if nothing was attached to her foot.

I could see now that a steel animal trap was clamped around her ankle. Her foot was badly broken and twisted unnaturally. The trap’s serrated jaws had dug through her skin, revealing her bone. Her toes were blackened and heavily swollen. Six feet of chain trailed behind her heel, and yet she was barely limping at all.

“Hey!” I shouted. I stepped out from the behind the brush. “Are you okay? You need help!”

The girl didn’t respond. I clambered down the gully and onto the road.

“Stop!” I was close enough to her now to hear her steady breathing. “You need help. Sweetie, where are your parents? Stop!”

She didn’t slow her pace. I actually had to step out of the way so she wouldn’t bump into me. She just kept her gaze pointed at the far end of the road where it turned around the next bend.

I could smell her. Her foot was gangrenous. She smelled rotten.

She kept walking, and I didn’t follow after her. She just kept marching casually onward, mostly naked, dragging the trap with her broken foot. The sound of the chain’s jangling grew fainter as she moved on.

What more could I do?

I was in no position to help her. I had no idea how I was going to keep even myself alive today.

The girl was obviously TGV-positive, and far advanced into stage three. She didn’t even register my presence. She must have been dumped into the quarantine zone from the outside, then left to fend for herself. It was possible that she’d stumbled onto the animal trap in the woods, but I suspected that someone had set traps around their property, afraid of wandering positives. She must have been caught in it, then pulled the chain free from wherever the trap had been staked into the ground.

And now where was she going, this little girl? With such a blind purpose?

I watched as she disappeared around the bend.

I couldn’t be sure, but my only guess was that she was moving toward what the Home Guard had called a “cluster.” The pathogen must have given her an ability to sense where other positives were gathering, just like I’d seen other positives gathering in a cluster days ago, before Jason had swathed them down.

My God. She was so young.

I’d been standing exposed in the middle of the road for too long. I made my way back up the gully to my hiding place in the cottonwoods. I couldn’t let anyone see me.

I sat on the ground. It was morning now, and I had no food, no plan, and, honestly, no hope at all. I had no idea what I was going to do.

But as I tried to pull myself together, I was suddenly certain of one thing.

I no longer regretted what I’d done to Morgan.

If Morgan had known that her fate was to become like that desperately blank little girl of a human body I’d just seen walking along the highway, she would have wanted someone to end her existence.

Or at least I hoped she would have wanted it.

If she would have chosen that over death, I’d wish I were dead myself.

But as I thought about how Morgan had been locked away in that silo during the last days of her existence, surrounded by her books and her collected trash, I suddenly knew exactly what I had to do.

I’d been trying not to think about what had happened all night. Now, I let myself remember the moment I shoved the knitting needle into her ear: the moment I ended her life—or expired her, or whatever they called it.

I remembered how I knew I needed to stand up and run, fast, but that I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but stare at the bloodied knitting needle in my hand. I remembered the boot steps of the Home Guard pounding through the house toward me. I remembered the ranger racing into the wash room, leaping past me, then kneeling beside Tyler, clutching my nephew in one arm while discreetly helping him pull his jeans back up with the other.

I remembered realizing, slowly, that it hadn’t been the Home Guards’ boot steps that had been pounding through the house.

They had been Ian’s.

Ian had discovered that Morgan was missing and had run straight from the granary to the house. When he’d heard Tyler crying out, he’d shouted “Home Guard!” to try to scare Morgan, probably not realizing how far progressed she’d gotten and that she had no capacity left to fear anything.

I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to move at that point. Morgan’s slumped, naked body lay awkwardly at my knees. Her elbow rested limply on my thigh.

I watched Ian taking in the scene of Morgan lying dead, Tyler still sobbing, mortified, and me dumbly holding a blood-soaked knitting needle.

“I stopped her in time,” I mumbled. “She didn’t c...” I began. “She didn’t finish. Tyler should be okay, I think.”

Before Ian could say anything, Danielle arrived in the laundry room, practically tripping over me as she came in. She saw Morgan, then she saw Tyler buttoning up his jeans. For a moment she looked like she might pass out, then she just bent over and put her hands between her knees. She started sobbing without making a sound. It seemed as though maybe this was all more than she could take and she was about to completely break down.

“What have you done!” she suddenly shrieked at me. “Why didn’t you let them take her away? Now . . . this! She did this to my son! Your own nephew!” She gestured toward Tyler indignantly and held me in a hateful glare. “What have you done?”

Ian grabbed Danielle as she started to pitch forward, crying so intensely now that her words became unintelligible.

“Listen, Danielle.” Ian spoke firmly, wrapping his arms around her. “It wasn’t Ashley. It was me. Do you understand? I’ve been sheltering Morgan. This is all my fault. Not Ashley’s. I think Ashley may have in fact just saved Tyler. She stopped Morgan just in time, before it was too late. Tyler’s probably safe.”

My sister jerked away from Ian’s arms. “Safe? How can you possibly know that for sure?” Then she slumped forward again, sobbing. “I’m just so scared,” she said. “So scared. Things are only getting worse.”

Now that Tyler had his pants on, he hurried off to his room, shaken and embarrassed. He refused to look anywhere near Morgan’s body as he rushed away.

Ian walked my sister into the kitchen. I still hadn’t moved from the floor. From the dark washroom, I watched my brother-in-law embracing Danielle, stroking her hair, whispering into her ear as he comforted her.

For a moment I would have given anything to trade places with my sister.

I knew I couldn’t stay at the house long.

Luckily it turned out that Shawn wasn’t there. He was still required to bunk at the Center, even with his wounded hand. Still, it wasn’t safe for me to be at the house. Ian had taken Danielle to talk with Tyler in my sister’s old bedroom, and I decided I should give them a few minutes together, as a family. Then I would ask Ian what to do with Morgan’s body and leave as quickly as possible.

I had to think calmly and practically, or I knew I’d go crazy. For now, I tried not to let myself think about Morgan as a person or as my best friend at all. If I let myself feel anything, it was the vague desire to have Ian to myself for a few minutes, and for him to put his arms around me, for just a moment, and to let him give me a little comfort after what I’d just done. I’d lost my best friend. If anyone would understand what that meant, it would be Ian.

After fifteen minutes or so I lightly knocked on my sister’s door.

Soon after my knock, Ian stepped out into the hallway. He closed the door softly behind him and sighed with a look of utter defeat.

I said, “I have to get going. Right away.”

“Look, Ash,” he started, then he sighed again. He had something to tell me that he didn’t know how to say. “Danielle knows everything. About the granary. The others. Everything. I had to tell her.”

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “But why? I left Morgan’s door unlocked. It was my fault, not yours. You didn’t place your family in danger. You know Danielle will report the granary to the Home Guard,” I whispered. “You know she will!”

“She will.” Ian nodded. “You’re right. She will. And I should have let her do it a long time ago.”

I realized that I could actually hear my sister through the door, faintly, speaking on the phone right now.

I was so confused and taken by surprise at what Ian had done, I didn’t know what to say.

“Look, Ash,” he whispered. “I’ve put my family in danger. I don’t know what I was thinking. Hiding refugees on your parents’ property? While my kids are staying at the house? If we tried to keep this up, more and more refugees would arrive. There’s nowhere to put them, not realistically, not right now anyway. Who knows what would happen next? I hope to God Tyler’s okay, but what about the next time someone wandered up here? What then? What about Haley?”

Ian gave me a stern, hardened look. I hadn’t realized until now how angry he was at me.

“And what were you thinking, sleeping with Bryce like that last night? What were you thinking? Am I going to have to protect my family from you next?”

I didn’t think it was possible to feel any lower, but my heart sank. I didn’t know what I would do if Ian wasn’t on my side. But he was right. I’d let him down. How could he trust me now?

I tried to blink back my welling tears.

“You said this morning you didn’t want to lose me,” I whispered. “You said you couldn’t lose me.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Ashley. But I think maybe I already have.” He stared straight into my eyes. “Look, we’ve always had a connection.” He whispered, “Honestly, there are things I can tell you that I couldn’t ever tell my wife. That’s a fact. But your sister’s my wife. My kids are my kids. And I’m their father. I’m the only one they’ve got to protect them. And they come before anyone else. Get it? And, now, here you are sleeping with Bryce fucking Tripp again last night?” He stammered, his voice cracking. “That puts all of us in danger. Don’t you see? Are you going to end up like Morgan now? Can I let you around my kids? How could you do this to me, Ashley?”

I felt tears drop down my cheeks. I turned away and covered my face. I couldn’t bear to look at Ian. I was so ashamed, and at the same time I couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t even acknowledge that I’d just lost Morgan, that I’d had to be the one to snuff her out, with my own hands.

I could hear my mom on the phone in the living room. Whether or not Danielle had called the Home Guard directly to the house, my mom was doing it now. I could hear her reporting that there was an infected body to pick up.

“I have to go,” I whispered.

Not only had I lost Morgan, and Bryce too, but now it looked like I was even losing Ian, effectively.

“What about you?” I asked him, struggling to speak through my tears. “What will you do?”

“I have to stay here,” he said quietly. “At the house. I can’t leave my family vulnerable again. I just can’t. I’ll stay in the attic. For now. It’s what I have to do. The Home Guard won’t find me up there, even if they come with a search warrant. There’s a panel in the wall I can hide behind if anyone comes up there. I can take care of myself.”

“And Morgan?” I asked. “Her body?”

“The Home Guard will take it,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”

Danielle called out softly to Ian from inside the bedroom.

Ian touched my shoulder in a heartbreakingly cold way.

“You’re on your own Ashley,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. If there was any other way—”

But he cut himself off. For a moment he looked like he was going to hug me, but he stopped and said nothing more.

I had to leave.

As I stepped away, Ian said, “Ashley, wait,” but I ignored him.

I hurried down the stairs.

Before going back out into the night, there was one thing I had to do.

My dad was at the dining table, sitting alone. His face was buried in his hands.

I sat beside him and put my hand on his back.

“Dad?”

He startled a little, as if waking from a dream. He patted my hand, then he looked away.

“I need to ask you to do something for me,” I whispered. “I told you if I went to the ruins, Ian would go with me. But that’s not going to happen. Not anymore. He doesn’t know about them yet. And now he can’t know about them. Not ever. Don’t say anything about the ruins at all. Not to anyone. Not even to Ian. Okay?”

My dad nodded. He was in a daze after everything that had happened in his house that day, but I knew he wouldn’t tell a soul.

“You be careful,” He whispered. He turned and hugged me. “Love you, kid.”

It was all I could do not to break down crying in his arms.

“I love you too, Dad.”

I pulled away from my father’s embrace and hurried out the back door into a dark, moonless night.

I ran as fast as I could toward the granary.

Before anything else, I had to warn Chris that the Home Guard was on its way.

I could barely see where I was going, but I found the riverbank in the darkness. I didn’t stop running until I reached the empty grain yard and felt for the granary’s rickety door.

I found the loose knob, and I pushed.

Inside, it was completely dark.

“Chris?” I called out softly.

There was no answer. The granary was totally silent.

I felt my way toward Chris’s desk. My hand bumped into his soda-can ashtray. I faintly smelled the scent of stale, burnt weed. Next to the ashtray, I felt a cigarette lighter.

I flicked its igniter.

A weak flame leapt up and went out. The lighter was almost out of fluid. I shook it, and tried to light it again. A tiny flame appeared, and wavered. But this time it stayed lit. I cupped my hand around this meager light source.

Everything in the granary was gone.

Except for the ash tray and a few empty antibiotics boxes strewn across the dusty desk, all of Chris’s supplies had disappeared. Even his worn-out swivel chair was gone.

The lighter went out.

I lit it again as I stepped around the elevator engines toward the back of the granary, doing my best to protect the flame as I moved.

Two bodies, both covered in the same grease-stained sheet, lay atop Chris’s makeshift examination table. I knew the first was Mr. Hershel’s, and the other must have been Bryce’s.

Again, I called out for Chris.

Only silence.

I hurried outside and checked each of the silos. All of them were empty. The refugees were gone.

I had no idea how Chris got word that the resistance was in danger of being discovered, but someone had obviously tipped him off.

Everyone had fled, but to where I had no idea. I didn’t even have Chris’s cell phone number, so there was no way of finding out.

I was totally on my own.

And I couldn’t stay here. After my sister’s call, the Home Guard would raid the place as fast as they could get a squad ready.

After what had happened with Morgan, I’d almost completely forgotten about the date I’d set up with Jason Gibbs that night. My one and only option seemed to be to wait at the bend in the highway where we’d agreed to meet, and hope he’d show up. What else was I going to do? Morgan was gone, but there were other refugee positives who still needed Chris’s antibiotic cocktail. If I could manage to steal Jason’s pharmacy access card, maybe somehow I could track down Chris and give it to him, now that Ian was out of the picture. I just hoped the raid on the granary wouldn’t make it impossible for Jason to meet me tonight.

Just as I was turning to hurry away, I caught a glimpse of something on the granary door. Something white standing out against the darkness. When I’d rushed through the first time, I’d missed seeing it hanging there.

As I approached the door, I could just make out that what was hanging on it was a piece of notebook paper. It was tacked up with a nail.

I tore down the paper and lit the lighter. It was a note:

Morgan’s trash

That’s all it said. Just two words.

What the fuck?

Such a weird phrase. What did that mean?

At first, it seemed like this was some strange, mean-spirited comment about Morgan. I almost started to cry again. Why would someone write something like that? The Home Guard hadn’t been there yet, so the note had to have been written by someone in the Underground.

But after I cleared the cobwebs of grief from my rational thought processing, I saw that the note couldn’t have been just some random disparaging comment about Morgan. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but I could tell it wasn’t Ian’s. I wondered if maybe Chris had written the note as some kind of code, warning Ian that Morgan had progressed to stage three.

But even that didn’t make sense. As far as I knew, Ian had been with Chris at the granary all day. Why would Chris have needed to leave Ian a note?

Was the note for me?

I turned the paper over. Nothing was on the back. I read the two words on the front again.

Morgan’s trash.

I had no clue what the message meant. It had to mean something, but I couldn’t afford to hang around at the granary trying to figure it out.

I folded the paper, stuffed it into my pocket, and started making my way through my dad’s alfalfa fields toward the bend in the highway and my date with Jason.

When I reached the road, I had no idea what time it was.

I’d been keeping my cell phone off, knowing that the Home Guard could track my GPS position, and I didn’t want to risk turning it on even just to check the time.

I climbed up the gully to look for a hiding spot behind the cottonwood grove. This was next to impossible in the dark, but eventually I managed to feel out a flattish place between some boulders. I was well hidden, but if Jason decided to ambush me here with his squad, I’d be shit out of luck. The gully above was steep, and there was no place to run.

I waited.

Not a single car drove by. The night grew colder. I was still only wearing a t-shirt with mid-length sleeves, and I started to shiver. Soon, I was chilled to the bone. I curled up in a tiny ball between the rocks, trying to capture as much of my body heat as possible. But I couldn’t stop shivering.

A sliver of a moon rose between the branches of the cottonwoods, offering practically no extra light.

By now, I had to accept that eleven o’clock must have come and gone. It was probably well past midnight, maybe two or three in the morning.

Jason wasn’t coming.

Maybe he’d figured out I was setting him up. Or maybe the Home Guard was tracking the fugitives from the granary, and he couldn’t get away. But one way or another, it was clear now that he wasn’t going to meet me tonight.

I tried to sleep. But I was miserable. Until now, I’d focused all of my concentration on the prospect of stealing Jason’s access card. But now that he hadn’t shown up, my thoughts had nowhere to go and nothing to do but fall into a downward spiral of loneliness and regret. I don’t think I’d ever felt more hopeless than I did that night, shivering in the brush, or more alone.

When dawn finally arose and I saw the girl approaching on the highway, I felt a moment of manic elation just at the chance to be in contact with another human being.

But when I stepped onto the road and couldn’t break her from her innocently vacant stare, it was all I could do not to throw a rock at her back and scream, Talk to me!

Even after the girl was out of sight, I couldn’t stop thinking about her empty green eyes and her gruesomely broken foot, trailing that chain.

And it was only then that I let myself really think about Morgan. I mean, that’s when I let myself really think about the fact that she’d been sick, just like this girl. It’s when I let myself acknowledge that she was really gone, and what I’d done to her. Right after, I’d slipped the knitting needle covered in her blood into my back pocket. I took it out and looked at it now. I don’t know why I couldn’t get rid of it, but for some reason I didn’t want to let go of this reminder of what I’d done. I thought about the last calm moment I’d shared with her in the silo. I wished that I could have had just a few more minutes with her then, even if it was just to sit there beside her while she slept among her filth and discarded wrappers.

And that’s when I remembered Chris’s weird note.

I tried to pull myself together. I dried my tears with my sleeve. I took out the note, unfolded it, and read it again: Morgan’s trash.

Was Chris trying to leave a message which he hoped I would understand, but which would be meaningless to any Home Guard ranger who found it? None of the rangers knew, after all, which silo Morgan had been staying in. Maybe there was something there. Maybe Chris had left something else he wanted me to find. It was a long-shot, but it was possible.

I had to get back to the granary.

Now that it was daylight, I took the long way around my parents’ property. I couldn’t just walk straight through the fields again. Instead, I followed the irrigation channels whose tall weeds would keep me hidden from view. Once I made it to the river, I kept close to the bank. For all I knew, the Home Guard was searching the entire area by now.

But I didn’t see anyone.

The granary was completely empty.

The Home Guard, though, had obviously been there. Boot prints were everywhere, and all of the weeds in the grain yard had been flattened by heavy vehicles. Mr. Hershel’s and Bryce’s bodies were gone.

But Morgan’s silo had been mostly untouched. Someone had obviously searched it. The food wrappers on the floor, however, were undisturbed. Who would ever pay attention to a bunch of trash in the middle of a night raid for fleeing refugees? Even if one of the rangers had seen the note on the granary door and had gotten suspicious, no one would have known which refugee had been staying where. Trash had been left all over the place, in all of the silos.

I started to search through every empty meal-ration packet and discarded candy bar wrapper that Morgan had left on the silo floor.

And finally I found what I was looking for.

Inside a Hershey’s wrapper, stained with streaks of leftover chocolate crumbs, was a much longer note from Chris:

Ashley,

If you’ve found this, you figured out what the fuck I meant by the note I left on the door, and you fucking kick ass.

Sorry to get so cryptic, but it was the only way I could think of to get a message to you while keeping it from the H.G.’s eyes.

But you’ll probably never find this message anyway, which means I’m writing to nobody, and none of this matters…

But, fuck it. Just in case you do actually find this, listen up. I have a confession to make.

I haven’t always been the most “ethical” of doctors. Before this whole quarantine thing happened, I used to sell prescription drugs illegally on the side. And it just so happens that Jason Gibbs used to be one of my frequent-flier clients. He used to buy all kinds of pills from me. You name the drug, he’d buy it. The more powerful the better.

Before Ian tipped me off that the H.G. was going to raid the granary, he told me about your plan to steal Jason’s pharmacy access card. I just want to say that I think you’re brave as shit for wanting to do that. You’re a superstar. I hope you’re still planning on doing it, too, because the Underground really, really needs antibiotics. Some of the refugees are in bad shape, and progressing fast.

At the bottom of the same candy wrapper you found this note in are two capsule pills. One is tied up in the finger of a BLUE latex glove. That one’s a powerful sedative. Anyone who takes it will fall unconscious in about twenty minutes. The other pill is tied up in the finger of a WHITE latex glove. That one’s just a sugar pill. It won’t have any effect at all.

I figured that if you could slip Jason the sedative while you take the sugar pill, in twenty minutes he’d be out like a light, and you could take whatever you needed from his wallet. Tell him the pills are “grasshoppers.” It’s the street name of his favorite drug. Jason fucking loves them. I’ve used the same kind of capsules I used whenever I sold him grasshoppers. He won’t know the difference.

Just remember, if you do this: give Jason the pill tied in the finger of the BLUE latex glove. You take the sugar pill tied in the finger of the WHITE latex glove. Don’t mix them up! The pills look identical!

My cell number is 555-436-7260. But don’t call me from your cell! The H.G. will trace your position. Call me from a pay phone. Got it?

Good luck! If you can get that access card, you’ll be doing a lot of good for a lot of people who really need help.

I’m out,

Chris

I shook the Hershey’s wrapper. Two knotted pieces of latex, like little un-inflated balloons, fell into my palm. One was blue, the other white. I could feel a pill tied inside each of them.

I looked around the silo. Morgan’s flannel shirt was lying against the wall near the place where she used to sleep. I remembered pulling it from her dresser that night Ian shot Mr. Hershel and we’d taken Morgan to my parents’ house. It seemed like months ago. I put the shirt on and buttoned it up. If I had to sleep outside again, it would be useful. It felt good to wear a piece of Morgan’s clothing, too. It made me feel close to her. It gave me confidence. And maybe even a little hope.

The shirt had a tiny breast pocket. I slipped the pills inside and snapped the button.

I thought again about the ghostly stage-three girl who’d passed me on the road that morning. I thought about the new refugees, who I hoped had escaped the Home Guard last night. I thought about everyone else who had contracted the pathogen, and everyone who would contract it in the future.

Tracking down Jason might be impossible. And making him want to sleep with me, now that he’d stood me up, might be impossible. Trying to drug him and steal his access card would definitely be the most hopelessly dangerous thing I’d ever done. But I had nothing else to live for. And if I died trying, maybe at least it would make up for some of the ways I’d let my family down.

I had to find Jason.

A couple of miles from my parents’ property was a gas station with a mini-mart. It was just on the outskirts of town.

Avoiding roads and walking under cover of the trees along the river, I was able to make it there by midday.

I approached the gas station cautiously from the riverbank, but as I got closer to the road, it was obvious that the place was totally abandoned.

On my side of the road, a sign marked the border of Muldoon township. Muldoon, POP 647, it read. I’d passed it a million times. That’s probably why I didn’t notice at first that something was hanging from it.

It was a body.

It was the body of a Home Guard ranger. Still in uniform. Hanging by a rope from one of the sign’s wooden posts.

There was a bullet hole in his head. I didn’t recognize the face. Around his neck hung a cardboard sign that read: Sicko Fucker.

The Home Guard must have started executing its own members who were caught having sex with positives. This was obviously a warning from the higher command that if any of the rangers were tempted to sleep with anyone suspected of being infected, the punishment would be swift and harsh.

No wonder Jason didn’t show up last night. He was a sergeant, but he still had to answer to a higher chain of command. There was obviously a crackdown on wayward rangers, and he’d been afraid of getting caught and ending up hanging by the road.

It was going to be even harder than I’d thought to get him to meet me for sex.

Still, I wasn’t about to give up.

I actually found Jason’s home number listed in the phone book. The only problem was that I didn’t have my wallet, and I didn’t have any change to place a call.

The cash register inside the mini-mart was locked. I looked around behind the counter for the key, but I couldn’t find one.

I took another look around the gas station to make sure I was alone, then I slid the register off the counter. It slammed down onto the floor. I could hear change inside jingling around, but the drawer didn’t budge.

I lifted the register, then I heaved it up above my head. I did my best to slam it hard against the floor. It crashed down, spun over, and rolled against a bank of glass-windowed refrigerators.

Some of the register’s keys had broken off and scattered across the floor, and the receipt ribbon had spooled down the isle, but still the drawer stayed locked.

It was only then that I noticed a cardboard donation board for Huntington’s disease patients on the counter. It was the kind with little quarter-sized slots for people to leave their change in. Most of the slots were empty, but people had stuffed a total of eight quarters into the cardboard pockets.

With only passing guilt, I plucked each of the quarters from the donation board. I promised myself that if I ever made it out of this alive, I’d donate at least a couple of dollars to Huntington’s research.

I went straight into the men’s bathroom. I found exactly what I was looking for: a wall-mounted vending machine selling condoms. The boys in my middle school class used to come here to buy them, though the closest that most of them ever got to using them was to laugh at the names like French Tickler. Luckily, there was also a box of garden-variety Trojans. I bought a pack for $1.50, tossed out the box, and stuffed the three foil-wrapped condoms into my pocket.

I did my best to freshen up at the sink. I hadn’t showered for more than a day, and I’d spent all night outside. I washed my face and armpits with hand soap, brushed my teeth with a travel toiletry kit that I’d stolen from the mini-mart shelves, and ran water through my hair. But that was as good as it was going to get.

It occurred to me that I was truly homeless. I’d slept in a gully, stolen spare change from Huntington’s donations, and now here I was bathing in a dingy gas station bathroom.

I was also starving.

My weird craving for a cheeseburger and a milkshake had morphed, strangely, into a craving for anything with lots of calories, preferably sweet. This was strange, because normally I’d never had much of a sweet tooth.

I grabbed a plastic bag from behind the counter and stuffed it with whatever I could find on the shelves: teriyaki jerky, Pop Tarts, Snickers bars. Not exactly a square meal, but my options were limited.

I had two quarters left. That meant I would be able to make two phone calls.

I had no choice but to use one quarter to call Jason now and save the last one to call Chris later, hopefully after I’d stolen Jason’s access card.

I put one quarter into the pay phone, slipped the last one into my breast pocket along with the pills, and dialed the number listed next to Jason’s name in the phone book.

I hoped to God it was the number for his cell, and that he’d actually pick up.

The ringback tone whirred once.

Jason picked up right away. I could tell by the sound quality that I’d reached his cell.

“Who’s this?” he demanded.

“Are you on duty?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m on duty. Who is this?”

“You stood me up.”

“Ashley?” Right away Jason’s voice hushed. “Shit. Give me a second.”

There was a series of shuffling noises, then the sound of a car door closing.

“Ashley, yeah. Look. Sorry about that. But it just wasn’t going to work out. They’re kind of cracking down on unregulated intimate relations around here. It’s just way too risky.”

“Unregulated intimate relations?” I parroted.

“Well, yeah,” he said sheepishly. “That’s what they call it. Having sex with a positive is amazing. It’s like fucking on ecstasy. And a lot of guys haven’t been careful enough. Now, if you get caught fooling around without a license, it’s not pretty. I shouldn’t even really be talking to you.”

I pretended to be hurt. “Have fun jerking off for the rest of your life, then,” I said. “I should have known all that shit about you being down to party was bullshit. I was even saving my last two grasshoppers.” I tried to sound as disappointed as possible over not partying with him. But it was hard. I kept remembering Jason climbing behind the wheel of the swather. “Look,” I said. “Whatever.”

“You have grasshoppers?” Jason sounded genuinely envious.

“I was going to surprise you. But, whatever.”

“Shit,” he said wistfully. “I haven’t had grasshoppers since before the plague. Where’d you get grasshoppers?”

“I knew this guy at the trucking company who used to come in from Denver,” I lied. “How does it matter now? I’m so fucking bored, Jason. Seriously. My whole family’s cut me off. And now Morgan’s gone, so I don’t even have her. You heard about Morgan, right?”

“Yeah, I heard.”

He said this with utter disinterest. He was so gross.

“Well,” I said. “I’ll just have to find somebody else to party with. Now that you’re out, ass hole.” I knew I had to try to start flirting with him. “The thing is,” I said, “I’m so fucking lonely, right now. I can’t believe you stood me up. You owe me. You know? You owe me at least just one night. Honestly, I’ve been wanting you to fuck me ever since that night at the fairgrounds. Can you really not get away? I thought you were the sergeant. I thought you didn’t answer to anybody. Was that really all bullshit? I should have known you’d pussy out.”

“I am the sergeant,” Jason insisted idiotically. He actually sounded hurt. He was also starting to sound a little tempted. “It’s just dangerous, that’s all,” he whispered. “I mean, we’d have to be really, really careful. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about you. You have no idea how bad I want to fuck you, Ashley!” He laughed. “I really regretted not being able to make it last night.”

I couldn’t believe he was already taking the bait. All I had to do was question his masculinity, and I could get him to do anything. This actually had the effect of making me hate him even more.

“Well, where’s a safe place?” I asked cautiously.

“I don’t know. Like, a field. Someplace way out in the middle of nowhere. Someplace where I could be sure no one else was around to report me.”

“I know a place,” I said. “But look, if you don’t show up again I’m finding somebody else. You have no idea how many of these rangers from outside have been coming on to me. I’ll be behind the fairgrounds tonight just after sunset. There’s a cottonwood tree in the middle of the first field behind the rodeo grandstands. I’ll be there. Come find me. You know where I mean?”

“Yeah, I know where you mean,” he said tentatively. “Look, Ash. If we do this we have to be really careful. We’re totally out of Insta-Reads, so I can’t test you. We have to use protection. Okay?”

I laughed. “Whatever you say, Sergeant. I’ll bring a pocket full of rubbers with your name on all of them. Don’t worry about it.”

“And you still have the grasshoppers?”

“You fucking bet I do,” I said. “Don’t be late. I swear to God this is your last fucking chance, Jason. Don’t pussy out on me again.”

Jason wasn’t late.

I’d spent the rest of the day walking all the way to the fairgrounds. I’d reached the field behind the grandstands just before sunset. I’d sat against the cottonwood tree and waited in the last of the light.

And as soon as it was dark, Jason drove up alone in a small military SUV. As soon as he turned into the field, he cut off his lights and slowly drove toward the cottonwood tree in the dark. He was being extra careful.

“Get in,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Just get in.”

I climbed in. Without ever turning the headlights on, Jason slowly drove along an irrigation channel until we were four fields away from the fairgrounds. I could barely see the lights of town.

He cut the engine.

For a moment he just sat there in the dark, not moving or saying anything. He wasn’t comfortable with this. He was nervous.

I reached into my pocket and took out one of the condoms. I slipped it into his hand.

“Well, Mister Safety First,” I said. “What are you waiting for?”

He took the condom. He shined a tiny flashlight into my face, then he turned it off again.

“This is crazy doing this without testing you,” he said. “But you look pretty good. You don’t look infected. I guess we’ll be okay with just the rubber. I guess.”

I leaned close to him and whispered softly into his ear. “Since when were you the worrying type, Sergeant.”

I gently bit his earlobe.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. He took a deep breath and sighed.

He reached into the back and grabbed what I could just make out in the dark to be a pint of vodka. He opened it, took a drink, and handed it over to me.

Before taking the bottle, I reached into my left pants pocket and took out the pill Chris had given me with the sedatives. I’d taken both pills out of the latex, making sure to keep the sedative in my left pocket and the sugar pill in my right pocket. I slipped the sedative into Jason’s hand and took the vodka.

“I can’t believe you have grasshoppers,” he said. He finally seemed to be relaxing a little.

“Well, they’re the last of my stash. So you better fucking enjoy it, Mister.” I took the sugar pill from my pocket.

Jason flashed his flashlight at me again.

Before I could stop him, he took the sugar pill from my hand.

“You sure these are grasshoppers?”

Shit.

I kept my eye on the sugar pill. The capsule was identical to the sedative, and now the two pills lay side by side in his hand. I couldn’t mix them up.

“Of course they’re fucking grasshoppers.”

I reached to take the sugar pill back, but Jason pulled away.

“Hold this.” He handed me the flashlight. “Keep it down. Don’t shine it out the window.”

I cupped the flashlight and kept it pointed at his hands.

“Just in case you’re trying to poison me or something,” he said, uncapping both pills. “Can’t be too careful.”

He dumped the powder from both pills into his palm, mixed all of it together, then scooped half into one capsule, half into the other, and capped them both.

Now, the capsules had half of a sedative dose each.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Here.” Jason handed me one of the pills. “You first.”

I was totally fucked. I was much smaller than Jason, and if I took even half a dose of the powerful sedative, I’d almost certainly pass out first. But what could I do? I had no choice. I’d have to take the pill and somehow try to get the card from him as fast as I could.

I tossed the pill into my mouth and swallowed it down with a swig of vodka.

What had I gotten myself into?

“I knew you liked to party!” Jason enthusiastically popped his own pill, sipped the vodka, and swallowed.

Suddenly he was all over me. He shoved his hand into my bra and started kissing me hard. His teeth knocked against mine.

I did my best to kill as much time as possible. I tried to get into the back of the SUV, saying we’d have more room, and then I tried to stall after stepping outside. The only chance I had was to wait for the sedatives to kick in, then force myself to stay alert long enough to get into Jason’s wallet. After that, I had no idea what I was going to do.

But instead of following me into the back seat, Jason stepped around the SUV and grabbed me. He pulled me up onto its hood.

He tore my shirt open, ripping off all the buttons, and instead of waiting for me to take the shirt all the way off, he jerked at the back of Morgan’s threadbare flannel and tore it in half from the tail to the collar. He flung away the two pieces and started frantically licking my breasts, pulling my bra down over my shoulders.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, already feeling a little woozy from the sedative. “Slow down.”

“What do you mean slow down?” Jason said, breathing hard and unbuckling his belt.

Before I knew it, he had my pants off, and he’d slapped on the condom, and he was inside me.

The worst part was that he was actually really big. It hurt. I fucking hated him.

“Jason! Hold on! Slow down!” I was terrified.

But he didn’t stop. He started pounding into me. I tried to act like I liked it, but it was really hard to be convincing with my back against the hood. He was really hurting me. I hadn’t ever planned on actually having sex with him. I’d hoped to bide my time until the sedatives kicked in. But he’d moved so fast, and now I had no choice if I ever wanted to get the access card. He started squeezing my breasts with all of his weight on top of me, grunting. It was like he’d gone into this blank place where he didn’t see me as a human being at all, but as just some object for him to squeeze to the point of suffocation and ram his cock into.

I tried to remind myself that I was the one who had power over him, that his dumb, violent urge to fuck me hard was his weakness, and that if I just waited him out and kept myself alert long enough, I’d get the better of him.

Still, it’s hard to describe how much I hated him while he had me pinned down like that, grunting into my ear, slamming himself inside me like a crazed bull. He had complete control over me. I’d never felt so tiny and helpless.

“Stop!” I screamed, finally. “Jason! Stop!”

I thought I was going to die out of sheer panic and terror.

All the sudden, Jason’s frantic thrusts slowed. But not because I’d told him to stop. He slumped a little, dazed.

He groaned. “Fucking, Ashley,” he slurred into my ear. “This grasshopper. Is some gyood shyit. Best I everrrrrr had. . .”

The sedative was finally kicking in.

I pushed him off me, and he woozily let me roll him over onto his back. His legs dangled against the SUV’s bumper. His head lolled back against the windshield.

He gave me this idiotic grin which I could just make out in the dark.

“Wowww,” he said.

It was all I could do not to tip over and fall off the hood myself. I was finding it almost impossible to keep my balance. The sedative had started affecting me too, and it was coming on strong now. I felt my weight pitch forward, but I caught myself against Jason’s chest and found my balance.

I took a deep breath.

For a moment all I could do was stare at Jason’s grin, blinking my eyes. I stepped away.

“Fucking cunt,” he slurred, almost as if talking in his sleep. “Put me back insyide you.”

Why would anyone ever say something like that? Even while drugged? Jason had been a spoiled, horrible kid when I’d babysat him, and now he’d grown up into a spoiled, horrible asshole of a human being. He wasn’t even infected, and he still acted this way. It was just how he was. Another wave of hatred passed over me.

But, strangely, I felt suddenly alert. My heart raced, and I was overcome with the same weird feeling of limitless confidence I’d had after waking up in the motel room more a than week earlier. My anger and hatred for Jason seemed to have triggered the feeling.

I could barely see in the dark, but I found my pants where Jason had tossed them. Instead of putting them on, though, with my ears ringing with rage, I searched the pockets.

Right away I found what I was looking for. It was still there. Right alongside my Dad’s topo map, I felt a long, smooth cylinder about the size of a pencil. I grabbed it and jerked it free of my pocket.

It was the knitting needle I’d killed Morgan with.

In the dim starlight, I could see that it was still slicked with her blood.

Jason grunted and lifted his arm toward me, but he dropped it back down against the hood and rolled over, face down, with a dull thump.

“Byiiitch,” he droned woozily.

My heart thudded with yet another surge of hateful energy. Jason’s bare, pale ass lay exposed after he’d rolled over on the hood.

Without fully thinking through what I was doing, I stepped forward. I thought about how Jason had executed that poor girl in the car, about his smug grin while driving the swather, and about how heartlessly he’d just stuffed himself inside me and groped me to the point where I couldn’t breathe. I would have killed him if I could have. But even more than I wanted Jason dead, I wanted him to suffer horribly, like Bryce and Morgan had. I wanted to make him sick. Then I wanted his superiors in the Home Guard to recognize his symptoms, execute him on the spot, and put his body on display.

With a quick thrust, I shoved the bloody knitting needle up Jason’s ass.

I jammed it in as deep as I could. I twisted it, then jammed it in even further. I felt his intestines tearing.

Jason writhed around in furious pain. He let out a low howl that sounded like a rutting buck. He took an unsteady swing at me, but I leapt back and he missed connecting with my jaw. Instead, he lost his balance, fell off the SUV’s hood, and landed with a dull thud on the ground. I heard the knitting needle break.

He groaned. His head rolled around, but he didn’t even try to get up. The sedatives had almost knocked him out completely. He was only half conscious.

I stepped farther away and tried to catch my breath.

I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. It was like waking up from a dream. I’d just wasted so much time, lost in my spite for Jason. And no matter how strangely aware I’d felt a moment ago, I was bound to pass out from the pill soon.

And now that I’d caught my breath, the sedatives were hitting me hard. The one thing I could absolutely not let myself do was to collapse in this empty field and wake up in the morning beside Jason, just as he himself would be rousing.

I had to move fast.

I knelt and fished Jason’s wallet from his back pocket. I clutched it tightly in my hand, willing myself not to drop it.

I tried to stand, but I fell backwards, scraping my bare behind.

I picked up my pants, but no matter how hard I tried, I was too woozy now to put my foot inside them. The burst of energy and the clarity I’d gotten before was totally gone. I was about to pass out. I had no choice but to leave my clothes behind.

I had to get as far away from Jason as I could before I lost consciousness. The night was quickly closing in on me. The world was spinning. I grabbed half of Morgan’s torn shirt and my dad’s map in one hand, and Jason’s wallet in the other. I squeezed them both tightly in my fists. I willed myself to stand. Finally I found my feet, wobbling unsteadily.

And I ran. I ran as fast as I could.

                                      Chapter:7 Sick

I woke up to the sound of clucking chickens.

It was morning. My head was still so foggy from the sedatives I could hardly lift it to get a good look around.

I was in the chicken stall at the fairgrounds. The rows of cages were still filled with birds that had been entered into the now-abandoned fair. They were starving, and molting. Some were dead. I was covered in loose hay and feathers.

Somehow, I was still holding on to half of Morgan’s flannel shirt, my dad’s map, and Jason’s wallet. I forced myself to sit up.

I had no memory of making it as far as the fairgrounds before passing out. I was still naked. My bare feet were cut and covered in dried blood.

I opened Jason’s wallet.

I threw out a debit card and some kind of Home Guard mess hall card. And then there it was. A simple white card with a magnetic strip, the words “Pharmaceutical Access,” and a warning that finding it and not returning it to the Home Guard was a crime punishable by indefinite detention.

I kept the card and tossed Jason’s wallet into one of the chicken cages.

I felt inside the breast pocket of what was left of Morgan’s flannel. The single quarter I’d saved was still inside.

I crept from the chicken stall out into the sun. The morning was surprisingly warm after a cold night. The fairgrounds were totally abandoned, and for a moment I just let the sunlight fall onto my naked body. I was still feeling pretty woozy, but I could feel some of my energy starting to return.

I looked out toward the fields stretching away from the chicken stall. As far as I could see, Jason’s SUV was gone.

The fairgrounds, luckily, were filled with pay phones. The nearest was just across the roadway beside the horse stables.

I’d torn up Chris’s letter after memorizing his number, but I was able to clear the cobwebs from my head just enough to remember the digits as I deposited the quarter.

Chris picked up right away.

“Please tell me this is Ashley,” he said. He must not have recognized the incoming number and hoped it was a pay phone.

“I got it,” I said. I told him where I was and asked him to pick me up. “Bring me some clothes, will you?” I added. “Don’t ask. It’s a long story.”

While I waited for Chris, I found a relatively concealed place in the sun behind a wooden barrel that had been converted into a flowerpot. I listened to the horses in their stalls, whinnying loudly. Poor things. They probably hadn’t a heard a human voice for days, and they were probably starving.

A car approached.

I ducked down behind the flowerpot and peered over its arrangement of dead pansies.

A hearse, covered in dust, pulled up in front of the stables. It came to a stop by the pay phone. Its engine cut.

Chris stepped out. He was in a white Home Guard uniform and a lab coat with two armbands, one with a black HG logo and the other with a red cross.

Why was he driving a hearse?

“Don’t ask about the car and I won’t ask about the clothes,” Chris said, tossing a small duffel bag behind the flowerpot. It landed by my bloodied foot. I unzipped it.

“Scrubs?”

“What else?” Chris looked away while I put on the faded blue hospital clothing he’d brought me.

I looked like a mental patient.

Now that I was clothed, Chris walked straight over and gave me a big hug. “You are fucking amazing, Ashley,” he said. “Fucking amazing!” he yelled out. “Let me see it.”

I gave him the access card.

“Fucking incredible.” He was elated. “I didn’t even think you’d get my note. How did you do it? Did you give him the sedative?”

“Sort of.” I shrugged. “Seriously, don’t ask.”

“Do you think he knows you took the card?”

“I think he knows his whole wallet’s missing.”

“Shit,” Chris said. “We don’t have much time then. Let’s go.”

“Just a minute.”

I hurried into the stables. Thirty or forty horses, all in their own stalls, pranced and snorted when I came in. They weren’t in as bad shape as the chickens, but they’d eaten through all of their feed, not to mention all of the hay on the stable floor. The water in their shared trough was down to a muddy puddle.

I turned on the trough faucet and started emptying sacks of oats into the feeding bins.

“Seriously?” Chris called out when he saw what I was doing. “We seriously don’t have time for this. We have to go!”

“You’ll thank me later,” I said. “I promise.”

When all of the horses had been fed and the trough was full, I turned off the water and got into the hearse with Chris. I was glad to see it wasn’t carrying a coffin. The engine was already running. As soon as I closed the door, Chris put the clutch in gear and sped forward.

“Can I really not ask about the hearse?” I asked.

Chris shrugged. “Well, it’s the best way not to get stopped and searched at a check point,” he explained. “Most of the rangers on guard duty are the young ones, and they’re all freaked out by coffins with people inside screaming to be let out. Understandably. They’d rather just pretend this kind of thing isn’t happening. So most of the guards just wave hearses through.”

I tried not to think about how many people must have been buried alive right then.

Chris pulled out onto the highway and headed straight toward the center of town. One Home Guard squad was standing around a fire in the supermarket parking lot, warming ration packets on the flames, but they didn’t pay us any attention.

“I just really hope this uniform passes at the pharmacy.” Chris patted the HG logo on his armband. “I’m on the wanted list, but I’m hoping they won’t pay much attention to me if I’m wearing my old stuff.” He took a deep breath. I didn’t realize until now how scared he was. “We’ll see” he said, exhaling. “Fingers crossed.”

I hadn’t expected that actually getting in would be a problem once we had the access card. Somehow, stupidly, I’d imagined that Chris would be able to just swipe the card, waltz right in, and take whatever he needed.

“Is the pharmacy pretty well guarded?” I asked.

Chris laughed hollowly. “Even with that steel door they put in, they’ve started stationing an entire squad there. All kinds of meds are in short supply, from ibuprofen to chemo agents to TGV test applicators. And the Home Guard really doesn’t want people getting their hands on any antibiotics.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Isn’t the whole purpose of the Home Guard’s existence to eradicate the pathogen in the quarantine zone? Shouldn’t they want people to have access to antibiotics if it fights the disease?”

“Not when the cocktail doesn’t actually weaken the parasite.” Chris glanced at me sardonically. “Guess we didn’t tell you that little detail, did we? When I was testing the cocktail months ago on earlier strains, before we really knew what this thing was, we found out that it actually strengthens the parasite. It ends up selecting for stronger, longer-living larvae as the species adapts and becomes resistant to the antibiotics. It becomes a superbug. The longer the parasite lives, the longer the host stays viable, and the slower the disease’s stages progress. With the right antibiotics, you could keep people in stage one for months, maybe even longer, someday. But that would mean giving the host a longer period of time to spread the pathogen on to someone else. The Home Guard just wants to wipe the whole thing out.”

“That’s why they’re only really interested in shooting people? Or burying them alive?” Suddenly I understood. “They don’t care about curing anyone.”

“There is no cure,” Chris said somberly. “You can slow the disease, but only by strengthening it. You can’t cure it, ever.”

He reached into the back of the hearse and handed me a shotgun.

“It’s all I have,” he said. “I hope you won’t need it, but keep the safety off.”

I noticed Chris was wearing his pistol under his lab coat. I held the shotgun low and kept it pointed at the floor.

Chris hadn’t been kidding about the guards at the pharmacy.

An entire squad of six rangers, complete with a large armored vehicle, was stationed at the entrance. It was hard to imagine this was the same place my mom used to buy me cough syrup when I was a kid.

Before we even began to slow down, the squad’s sergeant, a stout, brawny guy I’d never seen before, waved at us to stop.

So much for Chris’s hearse strategy.

He pulled over on the opposite side of the road and parked beside the Bronze Dragon, Muldoon’s single Chinese food restaurant. Both the restaurant and the apartment above were now abandoned.

“Papers?” the sergeant called out.

None of the rangers seemed too concerned about us. Most of them were leaning against the armored vehicle, looking bored, their guns slung over their shoulders. They stirred only to push forward a very young private, obviously new to the squad, to examine our papers.

“This one’s all yours.” One of the rangers nudged the private forward with his boot on his backside. “A girl and a fairy. You can handle it.”

“Get her number,” another ranger said mockingly. “Hers, not his.”

All of the rangers laughed. The young private nervously crossed the road to approach us and examine our papers.

The problem was, of course, not only did neither of us have travel clearance, both of us were wanted. We had a pharmacy access card, but what good was that going to do if we didn’t have any clearance papers? Obviously, Chris hadn’t anticipated this.

“Fuck,” he whispered, eyeing the approaching private. He had no idea what to do. He leaned back and put his hand on his head, helpless.

I had to do something.

I reached into his lab coat and grabbed his pistol.

“What are you—?” Chris began, startled. “Ashley!”

I tucked the pistol into the back of the scrubs I was wearing and got out of the hearse. I walked directly toward the private.

I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. I wasn’t even wearing shoes. But suddenly I was overcome by another weird rush of what felt like limitless confidence. The fog from my sedative hangover cleared away. I had no idea where these spikes of nerve were coming from, but when they hit me I was strangely, recklessly, without any fear at all.

The private was very young. I met him in the middle of the road. We stopped on opposite sides of the road’s yellow line. He couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. He was gawky, with a plump, pink zit on his cheek. He was obviously nervous.

“Your papers, ma’am?” he asked politely, avoiding my gaze.

I thought about Morgan. I thought about the young girl with the vacant green eyes who had passed me on the highway.

“What would you do to me, Private,” I asked quietly, “if I was positive?”

“Just your travel papers ma’am,” he mumbled. “Then you can be on your way.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “What would you do?”

The private’s face was flushing deeply now. I was staring right at him, practically breathing on him, and he still refused to meet my eyes.

“My sergeant’s orders are to shoot any known or suspected positives on sight,” he recited.

“Shit, Gomer! I think she’s kind of into you!” one of the rangers called out. “Work your Gomer magic! Maybe you’ll get a hand job out of it!”

The squad laughed.

“I didn’t ask you what your orders are,” I said softly. “This is a test, Gomer. Your answer’s important. What would you do if I was positive?”

“Yes, ma’am. I would shoot you,” he said briskly, as if speaking to a superior officer.

“You sure about that?” I asked. “Is that your final answer?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammered.

“Do you know what I’m going to do?” I whispered.

“Show me your travel papers? Ma’am?”

“No. I’m going to shoot you. Right in the chest.” I gently tapped his chest. “Not because I have any orders. But because it’s just the right thing to do.”

The private stared at me dumbly.

I pulled Chris’s pistol from my scrubs, jammed it into the private’s chest, and pulled the trigger.

The sound of the gunshot exploded across the quiet street. The private stumbled backwards, gasping, tugging at his bulletproof vest. As quickly as I could, I pulled the semi-automatic rifle from his shoulder and started firing at the squad.

None of the rangers expected this. Their faces fell as they scrambled to shoulder their guns and take a position behind the armored vehicle.

I didn’t expect the private’s rifle to be so powerful. Every time I pulled the trigger, the stock leapt up and bit painfully into my shoulder. All of my shots sailed way too high as a result, but it was enough to scare the squad and buy a little time.

I raced back to the hearse.

Chris was baffled and terrified. “What the fuck, Ashley!” he kept saying. “What the fuck!”

I pulled him behind the hearse. Luckily, Chris had the presence of mind to grab the shotgun. As soon as we hit the ground, a barrage of bullets slammed into the hearse’s body and shattered its windows.

When the first volley let up, I fired back. I couldn’t even begin to hope to hit any of the rangers with the unwieldy weapon. I just wanted to give us enough cover to fall back into the Bronze Dragon. I pulled Chris with me, fired one shot into the restaurant’s glass front door, and we both ran through the frame and took cover behind the register stand.

Another volley of bullets shattered the front windows.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Chris was incensed.

“Making it up as I go!” I shouted back. “What the fuck are you doing? Let me fucking know if you have any better ideas.”

I slipped back into the restaurant kitchen, dragging Chris after me.

“This way.”

A stairway lead to the second-story apartment. I scrambled up and found the living room, which looked over the street.

I could see the rangers trying to position themselves. They were still in confusion after the unexpected attack. I’d caught them totally off guard. I doubt they’d ever been attacked before. The young private I’d shot in the chest was still squirming in the road. I’d fired the pistol so close to his vest, I’d probably broken most of his ribs.

I grabbed Chris’s shotgun.

“Give me this.”

I stepped back from the window and took aim directly at the squad’s brawny sergeant. He was still standing across the road, exposed in front of the armored vehicle, waving at his men to take positions.

I fired.

The living room window exploded into thousands of tiny shards. The sergeant fell backwards.

I knew the shot wouldn’t kill the brawny sergeant. But I’d been duck hunting with my Dad enough to know that the spread of the shell’s pellets at this distance would be wide enough to pepper him from head to foot. The sergeant tried to pull himself to his feet. Already I could see that he was bleeding from his arms and his face.

I fired again. This time I hit one of the rangers side-on. A concentration of pellets ripped into his elbow. He cried out and clutched at his arm. Blood fell and splashed onto the pavement like spilled coffee.

I could see the wounded sergeant calling out to his men to fall back into the armored vehicles. A couple of rangers ran out into the road and dragged the fallen private, who looked like he’d lost consciousness. I didn’t fire. The squad knew they’d been outmaneuvered. They couldn’t stay in the street while I was in an upstairs window with plenty of ammunition. They all scrambled into the vehicle. Then they sped away.

But I knew that many, many reinforcements were bound to arrive in minutes.

For now, though, the pharmacy was totally unguarded.

“Let’s go,” I said to Chris. “We have to hurry.”

We raced downstairs and across the street. The electronic metal door that the Home Guard had installed at the pharmacy had a simple card scanner, just like an ATM machine. Chris slid in Jason’s access card and jerked it out. The door instantly opened.

We rushed inside.

I drew my pistol.

I don’t know what I expected to find, but the pharmacy looked basically like it had always looked before the quarantine. Tim Huckabee was even behind the counter, the only pharmacist I ever remembered working there. He had to be at least in his seventies. The only difference now was that he was wearing a white Home Guard medical uniform a lot like Chris’s.

He didn’t even recognize me. But I doubt I would have recognized myself. I probably looked absolutely insane climbing up on top of the counter in scrubs and with bare, scratched feet, waving a pistol in his face.

I had no idea what I was doing. All I could think about was every bank robbery I’d ever seen in a movie. The robbers almost always jumped up on top of the counter and started screaming aggressive orders.

What else was I supposed to do?

“Antibiotics and TGV tests!” I screamed. “Where the fuck are they?”

Tim Huckabee went pale. He held his hands up and backed into a case of vitamin bottles, toppling half of them on to the floor. He looking like he thought I was going to shoot him any second.

“Ashley!” Chris said. “They’re here! I know where the antibiotics are kept!” He was already in the back of the pharmacy, stuffing plastic shopping bags with boxes of antibiotics and other medications.

I jammed the pistol into Tim Huckabee’s face. He whimpered.

“Test applicators!” I yelled. “Where are the test applicators?”

He gingerly pointed a gnarled, arthritic finger at a safe beneath the register.

“Open it!” I screamed, pressing the pistol’s barrel against his cheek.

He sobbed. Then he bent over and threw up. I felt splashes of vomit reach my bare feet.

Then he fell forward and passed out cold.

Shit. I’d overdone it.

“You have to chill out, Ashley,” Chris called from behind my shoulder.

I nudged Tim Huckabee’s limp body with my foot.

There was no way he was going to revive in time to open the safe.

I looked at Chris. “Now what?”

“Well, I have a fucking lifetime supply of contraband antibiotics.” He was holding at least ten plastic bags, each stuffed to bursting. “So not bad. And I found one TGV Insta-Read test.” He tossed me the test, still wrapped in plastic. “That’ll have to be good enough for now. Let’s not press our luck.”

I nodded.

I took half of the plastic bags from Chris as we hurried from the pharmacy and back out onto the street.

Sirens were blaring in the distance. The Home Guard was on its way.

The hearse was riddled with bullet holes. Both of the front tires were flat. Gas was leaking away onto the pavement.

“What the fuck are we going to do?” Chris was panicking.

The sirens were growing louder.

“It’s better we’re not in the hearse anyway,” I said, which was actually probably true. “We’d just stand out. Follow me.”

I hurried into the back alleyway behind the Bronze Dragon. My bare feet, already lacerated, were practically completely raw, but I tried to ignore the pain as I stepped around trash and broken bottles.

“Where are you hiding the refugees?” I asked Chris, trying to figure out what to do next.

“With the Underground,” he said. “Which means they’re all over the place. They’re with people who are secretly sympathetic, and willing to resist the Home Guard. They’re in basements and attics all over the quarantine zone. But it won’t last long. No one’s willing to shelter anyone for more than a few days. Everyone’s afraid of the Home Guard cracking down. They’re starting to search properties. A few of the refugees are with your boss, actually. Your old boss.”

“Bill’s sheltering refugees?”

This actually didn’t surprise me. My boss at the trucking company, Bill Hernandez, lived outside of town on an acre of land at the foothills of the mountains. He definitely wasn’t the type to sympathize with the Home Guard’s tactics. His place was maybe four or five miles away.

“Bill actually kind of started the whole thing,” Chris said.

“His place is good enough for me.” I picked up my pace while we made our way from the alleyway to the back of the high school.

“If that’s where we’re going, we’re going the wrong way,” Chris stopped. “You know that right?”

But I didn’t stop trotting through the empty lot behind the high school baseball field. The sirens had grown even louder. The Home Guard had probably reached the pharmacy by now. I didn’t think anyone was following us, but we had to move fast. Chris jogged to catch up. I could see the abandoned carnival rides rising up just beyond the high school.

“Just follow me,” I said.

By the time we reached the fairgrounds, I couldn’t hear the sirens anymore.

When I opened the door to the stables, the horses started whinnying and prancing. Now that they’d been watered and fed, they were full of energy and wanted to get out of the stalls they’d been stuck standing in for almost two weeks.

I found Kaypay, my sister’s horse, near the end of one of the stable rows. I rubbed my hand along her nose.

“Ready to go for a ride?” I whispered.

The horse stamped her hooves.

“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” Chris said.

“You don’t have to know how. You just have to hang on.”

I lead Kaypay and seven other horses out of their stalls and tethered them all together with a long rope. I could only find five dusty saddles in the tack room, but I brushed them off and put them on the five lead horses. I secured the bags of antibiotics to one, and helped Chris climb atop another.

I climbed onto Kaypay in the front of the line and tapped her sides with my bare heels.

“Don’t fall off,” I called back to Chris.

Kaypay wanted to trot, but I kept her from going too fast. With all of the horses tethered together, we’d have to take it slow.

I lead the procession through the fairgrounds and toward the fields in the back. There was a dirt road that lead all the way through the fields to the foothills of the Rockies. By following it, I was pretty sure I’d be able to find Bill Hernandez’s house while still avoiding all the main roads where the Home Guard would be patrolling.

We reached Bill’s place in just over an hour.

Bill’s property was filled with big rigs. They all must have been out of operation since the quarantine began. There was also a big warehouse-style motor shop at the head of the driveway, and behind it was the house.

Bill was really happy to see me. He came out in the felt cowboy hat he always wore, smiling, holding his arms open. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about Bill much since everything had happened, but he had always been a good boss, and we’d always gotten along. He gave me a big hug when I slid off the horse.

“Ashley!” He looked me over. “My oh my! I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again. Chris told me you were missing, and it just about broke my heart. Thank God you’re okay.”

“We brought goodies.” Chris started untying the plastic bags filled with antibiotics from the saddle.

“You’re kidding me!” Bill smiled, smoothing his mustache. “Is that what I think it is? So much! How the hell’d you get all that?”

“Illegally,” Chris laughed. “Very illegally.”

“My oh my.”

“You have Ashley to thank for all this. All of it.”

Bill smiled at me. “Well, somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

I was actually feeling a little bit good for the first time in a very long time.

While Bill helped us hide the horses in the motor shop, Chris told me that it was actually Bill who first started calling the resistance the Underground.

“After that,” Chris explained, “people who needed help started showing up. Bill was the one who started feeling other people out who might be willing to shelter positives from the Home Guard. He’s been able to find—what? Five or six households now?”

Bill nodded. “They’re good people. But they sure are scared. The Home Guard’s getting more and more nosey.”

“Bill won’t say who’s doing the sheltering,” Chris explained. “He won’t even tell me. But it’s probably not a bad idea to keep it all as secret as possible.”

After securing the horses, we shut the motor shop’s large double doors and Bill led us to the house.

“Come and have some lunch,” he said. “You two must be starving.”

Nothing could have been truer. I was famished.

I couldn’t believe it, but Bill actually made us steaks. Nothing had ever tasted better in my life.

While we ate, I told Bill about the cliff dwellings that my dad and I had discovered years ago. It was the first time I’d ever spoken about them with anybody but my Dad.

“I can’t imagine a safer place to shelter refugees,” I said. “It won’t be easy getting provisions out there, and the weather’s going to get cold, but if we can make it work, it would be almost impossible for the Home Guard to find a hideout like that for a long time.”

“Well, sounds like it’s better than anything else we got now.” Bill offered me a second steak. “You sure you can find it?”

I nodded. “I’m sure. It might take two or three days on horseback, but I can find it. My dad marked it on a topo map for me. And I’m going. I’ve decided. Any of the refugees who are willing to make the journey can come.”

After lunch, Bill virtually emptied his pantry, filling duffel bags and suitcases with rice and beans and canned food. He gave me four sleeping bags and rolled up another eight or nine blankets from his closet. He even insisted we take every box of shotgun shells he owned. We secured all of these provisions and tied them under tarps onto three of the horse’s backs.

“This won’t last long,” Bill said. “We’ll work on getting more provisions soon.”

Then he shut himself away in a cluttered spare room to call all of the members of the Underground who were sheltering positives, asking them to pass word to the refugees to gather at his house if they wanted to go with me to hide in a remote location.

“Tell them that if they want to come, it’s going to be rough out there,” I said, before Bill closed the door. “No electricity, running water. None of that. We’ll have shelter and plenty of antibiotics, at least. But they’ll have to be blindfolded on the way out. Tell them that.”

Bill nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. I understand the blindfolds. I’ll tell them. And it’ll be their choice whether to go.”

He shut the door and started making the calls.

Chris had emptied all of the boxes of antibiotics onto Bill’s kitchen table. He had taken many of the pills from the foil trays, sorted them in piles, and now he was using a mortar and pestle to grind and mix them.

“Next step is measuring out the doses and filling the capsules with the powder,” he explained. He brushed off his hands. “But first let me have a look at those feet.”

I sat at the table beside Chris. “Bill said he’d ask one of the Undergrounders to bring me a pair of boots,” I said. “I guess one of them has feet close to my size.”

“You really tore them up, didn’t you? How did you lose your shoes?”

I didn’t answer.

“Right,” he said. “Don’t ask. Fine.”

He pulled my feet onto his lap. They were filthy. Most of the dried blood had worn off, but now all of the cuts were filled with dirt and grime. Chris started washing the cuts out with a disinfectant pad. I winced whenever he cleaned out a particularly deep cut.

“So what about you? Are you coming to the cliff dwellings?” I asked.

Chris shrugged. “Where else am I going to go? After that crazy shit we pulled at the pharmacy today, you and me are probably at the top of the Home Guard’s most-wanted list. I can’t stick around here. I guess you’ll have to give me horseback lessons.”

I was relieved to hear this. I didn’t want to have the responsibility of bringing a whole group of infected refugees way out to the middle of nowhere alone.

“Normally this wouldn’t be any of my business,” Chris said quietly. “But is it true that you, uh, slept with Bryce Tripp . . . ?”

I didn’t blame Chris for worrying that I might be infected. If he was going to be holed up with me way out there in the ruins for who knew how long, he had the right to know what he was getting into. He also needed to know if he’d need to start me on the antibiotic cocktail.

“Yes,” I said simply. “I slept with him. But I didn’t let him… You know. I don’t think I let anything get inside me.”

Chris nodded. He didn’t look up from my feet. He opened a plastic bandage and pressed it over one of the larger cuts.

“I know I can’t know for sure,” I added. I was trying to sound brave, or at least detached and clinical about the possibility of my being sick. “But I guess I’ll just have to wait. It’s been two days since then.”

Chris nodded again. “How do you feel?”

“Well, I’m not dead yet.” I tried to laugh. “I feel pretty good. Great actually.”

It was true. Ever since the firefight with the Home Guard, I wasn’t even feeling foggy from the sedative hangover.

“That’s good.” Chris patted my foot. He’d finished cleaning out the cuts. He set my feet back down onto the floor. “Most people die within twenty-four hours of becoming infected. Some have lasted as many as three days, but it’s rare. Never longer than that, though.”

I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Good to know.”

I’d been hoping he was going to tell me I was out of the clear after two days, but I’d just have to wait another twenty-four hours before I could know for sure that I wasn’t infected.

Chris asked, “Do you still have that Insta-Read test I gave you at the pharmacy?”

It was still in the pocket of the scrubs I was wearing.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Why don’t you maybe go test yourself?”

“I don’t want to waste it,” I said. “I’ll know I’m negative if I last another day anyway, won’t I? We might need it later. It’s our only one. And, honestly, I don’t even feel sick at all.”

“You’d be better off knowing for sure, though. Right? Just in case?”

I thought about this, but I shook my head. “No. Really,” I said. “By this point it’s unlikely I’m sick. And if I am, there’s nothing I can do about it. Besides, we might need the Insta-Read later if we need to find out if one of the refugees has progressed to the next stage.”

“It’s up to you,” Chris said.

He went back to filling the pill capsules, and he didn’t press me any further. I was pretty sure now I wasn’t sick, but if Chris was concerned, I couldn’t help worrying a little.

A total of nine refugees showed up at Bill’s house, some on foot, others in trunks of cars that sped straight away after dropping them off. This number included a young couple with an infant, the three of whom Bill had been hiding in his hunting shack.

My third grade teacher, who had come to the granary, was nowhere to be seen. But the Botteroffs were there, quietly hanging on to one another, waiting for instruction. The rest were kids, two girls and two guys, I guessed ranging in age from sixteen to twenty. I didn’t recognize any of them. They looked like maybe they’d been dumped into the quarantine zone from some Denver suburb.

Right away Chris distributed sandwich bags filled with antibiotics.

“Three times a day,” he told everyone. “Don’t forget. You’re going to feel fatigued. There’s no way around that. And many of you will experience unusually vivid dreams. But for now, this is the only way we know how to slow the progression of the disease.”

Everyone eyed the pills warily, but I didn’t see anyone who chose not to take one. None of the refugees looked like they were any later than stage two, and they were obviously terrified of moving on to stage three.

My plan was to ride through the night. Judging by my dad’s map, I thought we’d be able to reach the ruins by sunset the next day, if we left right away. We couldn’t afford to wait around. Bill said the Home Guard always arrived at his place in the evening on residential patrol, and it was already late afternoon.

I kept the horses tethered together, put people two to a horse, and told them basically to hold on tight. Nobody was happy when I passed around the blindfolds, but Bill gave a little speech and insisted that it was necessary to protect the secrecy of the hideout.

He handed me a pair of hiking boots, only one size too big, and hugged me.

“Good luck, Ashley. Thank you. You’re a saint.”

“Let’s hope this works out,” I said.

Chris and I shared Kaypay. I helped him up onto the saddle.

“We’re going to try to come back in a week or so,” Chris told Bill. “Get the word out that we’re sheltering positives. Anyone willing to wear a blindfold on the trip out is welcome.”

“I will,” Bill said. “I’ll have a fresh stock of provisions. You can count on it.”

I nudged Kaypay with my heels. Chris held on tight behind me. The entire progression of horses, connected by a single rope and loaded with provisions, gear, and mounted refugees, followed Kaypay’s lead. I waved goodbye to Bill, and we headed toward the mountains.

The beginning of the journey was relatively easy. The trails weren’t very steep yet and no one had gotten saddle sore. Everyone had accepted the necessity of the blindfolds, and people fell into their own thoughts as they swayed atop the horses. Few of the refugees said much of anything. Even the baby was quiet.

When the sun set, it was much harder to navigate in the dark than I’d thought. We reached what was marked as Pines Bluff on my dad’s map after two in the morning. From there, we’d need to climb up a steep, winding incline. Chris and I decided to stop and let everyone sleep until dawn. No one complained. Everyone was sore and exhausted, but there had also been a release of tension as we moved farther into the mountains. The refugees had been living in constant fear of being discovered by the Home Guard, and now at least people were starting to feel safe.

I woke everyone up at first light. After rolling up my blanket, I made my way into a ravine to pee.

As I squatted behind a rock, I felt the Insta-Read test in my front pocket.

It had been bothering me that Chris had wanted me to test myself. I was now basically certain that I hadn’t contracted the pathogen, but Chris’s suggestion had planted a doubt that had been nagging me all night.

I succumbed to the temptation and opened the Insta-Read package. If I tested myself now, at least I’d know for sure that I wasn’t sick, I could stop being pre-occupied by the nagging worry, and I could concentrate on finding the cliff dwellings. Besides, all of the refugees already knew they were positive, and Chris already knew he wasn’t. I was the only one who wasn’t sure.

The applicator was exactly the same as the one Morgan had used. The same simple instructions for interpreting the results were printed on the plastic.

I clicked the button, and the applicator needle shot out. I started to pee. I reached between my legs and held the tip into my stream of urine.

I set the Insta-Read on a rock to wait for the result while a pulled up my scrubs and tied the strings at the waist.

The result appeared almost immediately.

Three blue lines: “Stage 3 TGV”

Something was wrong. It had to be a faulty applicator. Even if I was infected, there was no way I could be at stage three.

Still, was I infected? I’d hoped to set my mind at ease by seeing once and for all that I wasn’t. But the circle labeled “TGV negative” definitely had not turned blue. Now I was even more uncertain than I was before.

I put the Insta-Read back in its wrapper and slipped it into my pocket.

Chris had already gotten all of the refugees onto their horses and made them put their blindfolds on. Everyone was already waiting for me.

I pulled myself onto the saddle behind Chris. My heart was pounding.

When we started moving up the trail, I reached around Chris and handed him the applicator.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “It’s broken, right?”

Chris took the Insta-Read. He read it.

For a moment he said nothing. Then he shook his head and sighed.

“I was afraid of something like this,” he whispered. “I didn’t expect stage three, but I was afraid of this. Oh my God, Ashley. I’m so sorry.”

“What do you mean?” I whispered back. “Something’s wrong with it. Something has to be wrong with it. Even if I was infected, there’s no way I could be stage three. It’s broken. It has to be. Right?”

“These don’t break,” Chris said. He was being so uncharacteristically patient with me, it was frightening. “It doesn’t work like that,” he explained. “These applicators test for a protein that’s unique to the TGV bacteria. It’s physically impossible for the blue lines to appear without the presence of that protein.”

“You’re wrong,” I insisted. I couldn’t believe how certain Chris seemed when I was so obviously not anywhere near the state of a stage-three positive. “Chris,” I said. “I never died! Don’t you think I’d fucking remember something like that? Dying? I never even got sick! How could I be stage three if I’m still alive?”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Am I sure about not having died? Yes, I’m pretty fucking sure about that.”

“Seriously, Ashley. Are you sure?”

Chris turned around in the saddle to face me, then he put his hand on my forehead.

“What are you doing?”

“I was suspicious that something might be up when I disinfected your feet. You were warm, Ashley. Positives run a slightly high temperature. About a hundred and one degrees. I felt it in your feet. And, yes, I can feel your temperature now. It’s high.” He pulled his hand from my forehead and turned back around. “So are you sure you didn’t die?” he whispered. “Are you absolutely sure you never woke up filled with energy and in an unusual state of elevated confidence? Are you sure that never happened? I bet you’ve even been craving milk protein and high-caloric foods, haven’t you . . . ?”

“Oh my God.”

I’d suddenly remembered the motel room.

I’d woken up after a night of extremely heavy drinking, but feeling great. I remembered feeling like I could race up a cliff.

“Oh my God,” I said again.

Had I died that night? Was it possible? Had I been too drunk to notice?

“That night,” I whispered.

“What night?”

“It wasn’t the first time I’d slept with Bryce two days ago,” I confessed. “The first time I slept with him was the first night of the fair. The night everything happened. but I don’t remember anything. I have no idea if we even used a condom. And when I woke up late the next day, I felt, well . . . really amazing.” I let my head fall against Chris’s back. “Oh my God. Chris? Am I dead?”

He turned around to look at me.

“I think you must have . . . died, that night.” He shook his head in amazement. “That must have been when it happened. You must have contracted the pathogen from Bryce, then passed out from alcohol. You didn’t even know it happened. You must have fallen into a coma, died there in the motel bed, then woke up thinking you’d just had a heavy night of drinking.”

“But how is that possible?” I was still totally confused. I didn’t want to believe any of this. “I’m not walking around like some kind of fucking zombie!” It was getting hard to keep my voice low enough that the refugees wouldn’t hear me. “I’m here! I’m me! If anything, I should be only stage one? Right?”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Chris said. “If you drew three blue lines, your blood has to be more than half honey at this point. I thought something was up with you yesterday, the way you confronted that ranger kid and shot him like that. The pathogen is affecting your behavior, obviously. It’s turning on your genes for confidence, and even pleasure. I can tell. It’s doing everything it can to make you more sexually attractive and sexually active both. And, honestly, now I understand why I’ve been so fucking turned on by you ever since picking you up at the fairgrounds. It’s been killing me. Seriously. I haven’t even been able to think straight. And now I get it. Now I know why.”

“You didn’t assume it was just my natural sexual charm?” I couldn’t believe I was joking.

Chris let himself laugh. “Well yeah,” he said. “Your natural sexual charm, and the fact that your pores are oozing with pheromones.”

Even knowing I was dead, I felt strangely indifferent about it. Ever since robbing the pharmacy, I was feeling oddly invincible. It was true. The pathogen must have been giving me some weird natural high. But the disease seemed to be affecting me differently than other people. Maybe I was dead, but I wasn’t deteriorating.

“So maybe I have little more confidence,” I said. “Fine. But how come I’m not like Morgan was, at the end? I don’t understand.”

“Honestly,” Chris said, “I don’t understand either. Maybe you have some kind of different pathogen strain. I’d love to give you a blood test, but it’s not like that’s going to fucking happen any time soon, way out here. So I have no idea why. But, Ashley, you’re definitely infected. I have no doubt about it.”

I thought about this. It was strange that I wasn’t more concerned. Truthfully, I was glad I wasn’t more concerned.

“Do you think this could last?” I whispered. “Is it possible I could just go on like this? Like maybe the disease is somehow different for me?”

Chris sighed.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I sure hope so. But I have no way of knowing.”

We reached the ravine just before sunset.

The cliff dwellings were even more extensive than I’d remembered, and they looked beautiful as we approached them in the evening light. The low sun brought out the stone’s natural orange hue, and the rock walls glowed.

I told all of the refugees they could take off their blindfolds.

It was a perfect place to hide away. The ravine was narrow, but formed on the north side by a large overhanging cliff. The dwellings, ancient buildings, most of them still intact, were formed by a series of sturdy sandstone walls. Some of the structures were three stories high, reaching all the way to the ceiling of the hanging cliff. Ever since exploring this place with my dad as a kid, I remembered walking through the complex’s interconnected passageways and looking out the stone windows. There must have been thirty or forty rooms in all, plenty of space for everyone. There was even a freshwater spring at the base of the ravine.

I remembered that my dad told me the people who had built the dwellings, the Anasazi Native Americans, had been hiding out from an aggressively warlike rival group. We couldn’t have hoped for a better hiding place. Because of the cliff, the structures weren’t even visible from the air. And because my dad had kept the place a secret, it still hadn’t ever appeared on any maps. We were the only ones who knew about it. As long as word didn’t get out, the Home Guard would need to search for months, years even, before tracking us here.

“Well, here’s our Hole in the Wall,” Chris said, slipping off the saddle.

The refugees began exploring the dwellings. People were actually laughing with one another as they walked from room to room, sounding hopeful for once.

I took Kaypay and the rest of the horses to the spring and watered them in the last of the evening light.

There was a round dugout at the center of the dwelling complex that must have been for storing food once, but we used it as a place to light a fire and heat up our ration packs. Chris made the rounds passing out another dose of antibiotics.

But I didn’t take any.

I’d decided to wait and see how my condition progressed. I tried not to think too much about it, but I couldn’t help it.

I excused myself early from the fire and took my blanket to the small stone room I’d claimed for myself. I needed to be alone for a little while.

I was terrified at what it meant to be infected, and what it meant to be dead. And yet I felt alive. I even felt a little good about how things were going. I’d managed, with Chris’s help, to get a group of refugees a supply of antibiotics and a safe place to stay, for now anyway. Of course, we still had a lot to do. More refugees would come, we had to figure out a way to get a steady supply of provisions, and winter was on its way.

But I’d accomplished something. And if the pathogen that was nesting in my brain was busy turning on genes that were giving me the confidence to help all of these people, then what did it matter if I was dead or alive? What was the difference which of my genes were turned off or on, if they all belonged to me anyway? Maybe the pathogen was part of me now too.

The stars gleamed outside the stone window.

I couldn’t help it. I started to think about Ian.

I couldn’t help but hope that I’d see him again, somehow, somewhere, however naïve and unrealistic it was that he’d ever forgive me. I’d been trying so hard not to think about him all this time, and now not thinking about him was just too much to bear. It was impossible not to wish that he was with me as I lay there alone in the darkness. It wasn’t right to wish for that. It wasn’t fair to my sister, or even to Ian. I know it wasn’t. But it’s what I felt, and I couldn’t change it.

However the pathogen may have been affecting my thoughts, they were still my thoughts. All of my yearning and regrets and actions were still me.

I may even have been dead, but I was still me.

And whatever I was about to think, or feel, or do next in my life, I was okay with that. I had to be.