“Evie?” I yell. “Wyatt!”
Two figures, both backlit from beyond the hangar door, are arguing with a third.
“Let them through!” Gage calls beside me.
“Yes, sir!” the soldier barks.
Wyatt head fakes at him. “You got lucky, my man. Bigtime lucky.” Then he jogs toward me, his face becoming visible the closer he gets. Then it goes murky again as my eyes water. “Georgia!” He meets me, an arm going around me and squeezing tight.
“It’s really you?”
“In the flesh.” He chuckles.
Then we’re both almost bowled over by Evie.
“You’re here!” she cries, wrapping both of us in a hug. “I can’t believe it.”
“Evie!” I cry, hanging onto both of them as we all cry. I never thought I’d see them again. Already mourned them, buried them in my heart. But they’re here. Gage was telling the truth.
“Are you okay? Is everyone—where’s Gretchen?”
“She … she didn’t—” Evie’s voice catches on a sob.
I caught the moment Gage failed to mention her, and I was too scared to ask. Afraid that the whole charade would fall apart and I’d be left without hope yet again. But when he didn’t say her name… I knew. Gretchen is such a big personality. No one could ever overlook her.
“It’s okay,” I say, even though it isn’t.
We hold each other for a long time, until the sniffles overtake the sobs, and we step back. That’s when I notice Wyatt’s arm.
He catches my stare and waves the bandaged stump of his right arm at me. “Turns out it’s a good thing I’m left-handed.”
“Tell me.” I take his hand then grab Evie’s. “Tell me everything.”
“They camefor us right after dark, and that’s when we knew we were fucked.” Wyatt chews his food, the three of us huddled in a huge mess hall. It’s between meals, so what I assume is a packed, bustling cafeteria is eerily quiet. Cavernous with concrete walls and pillars, neat rows of tables and chairs, all of them spotless.
“The vampires attacked. We were huddled down in the back of one of the 18-wheelers. There was an insane firefight. Like, it sounded like the Fourth of July, but terrifying.” Evie puts her fork down, no longer interested in her MRE.
“It went on and on for what seemed like an impossible time.” Wyatt picks at his mushy peas. “When it finally stopped, a soldier came a-knocking. I opened up. There were about 20 ofthem left, bloody and some of them really messed up. But they got all three of us out and herded us along the road to the front vehicle, the big armored one. I carried Gretchen.” He lays his fork down. “I had her, you know? She was safe. As safe as I could make her.”
“When we got to that front truck thing, it was covered in blood. Like a slaughterhouse.” Evie shudders.
I wrap my arm around her waist.
“But they said it was the best spot for us, the only part of the convoy that could keep rolling. We piled in. I put Gretchen in the front. Did her seatbelt, you know? I made sure she was all right. Pretty sure she cracked a joke. You know how she was.” His voice trembles, and he pauses for a while. “So anyway, she was in front and me and Evie in the back.” Wyatt sighs heavily, his eyes downcast.
“We thought we had a chance since we still had soldiers and the truck, but the vampires were just waiting us out. We got rolling, and that brought them right to us.” Evie leans against me.
“Yeah,” Wyatt agrees. “They ran at us from the dark, tearing through the soldiers who were left. They died shooting, a few died trying to run. I didn’t even blame them.”
“The soldier in charge got the armored car running and took off, but not before one of them reached through the busted windshield where Gretchen was and …” Evie clenches her eyes shut.
“You don’t have to.” I wrap my other arm around her. “It’s okay. Don’t—you don’t have to.”
“It was fast. So fast.” Wyatt rubs his eyes, one after the other, with the heel of his hand. “Even if we’d been in a hospital, I don’t think we could’ve done anything. I-I don’t know. There was so much blood so fast. She was gone before we had a chance to react.”
“Another slammed its fist through the bulletproof glass. Wrecked Wyatt’s arm.”
“They pulled the driver out through the window, and then we crashed into something.”
