Page 86 of Kiss Slay Replay

He’s up before me. I trail him to my room. Slam the door. Lock it. He’s got the bed against the window. It’s just a twin; it’s not big enough to cover it. The burlap curtain folds back, and I catch a glimpse outside.

It’s not Evan. Or Wyatt or Vicky or the cater waiter. I see Cass. I see Jace. I see Steph in her lavender gown. I see Danny. They’re all bloody faced, yellow-eyed, frothing at the mouth.

“It spread. It’s everyone.”

Ravi shoves me into the bathroom, closes and locks the door. He sits with his back against it, which I’m not sure matters, since it’s a flimsy fucking pocket door. He presses his finger to my lips. Shh.

There’s a crash in the other room. They’re in. They’re inside the cabin.

I sit on the floor next to Ravi, back against the door because I guess it can’t hurt. We’re touching; the space is too small for us not to be.

“The police are on their way,” he whispers. He’s shifted back into emergency mode. He’s composed. He knows we’re about to die, but he won’t admit it. Maybe he thinks I need him to be strong. To be brave. I’d rather he just be honest. Or crack a joke, like Danny would. “We keep quiet. We hang on.”

I nod.

“Help is coming. It’s only a matter of time,” he says. Tick, tock.

It isn’t. There’s no waiting this out. We’re going to die, and either that’s it, or I wake up tomorrow and do this all over again, get to face the new day knowing it’s going to be even more brutal than the last without any clue of how to put an end to it, to make it stop. Without any clue of how to escape the loop.

Glass shattering.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.

They’re coming in through the windows. They’re in the bedroom. I can smell them. The stench of their rotting bodies. Dead but not dead. Gone but not gone.

“Ravi,” I whisper. “I think we’re about to die, and maybe this isn’t the right time but I’m not sure there ever will be. I want you to know that I am sorry. That I wish things had been different. I look back on who we were at the beginning, what we had, and I wish we could have made it last. I’m sorry I couldn’t be who you wanted me to be, that I couldn’t give you the life you wanted. Maybe in some other timeline, in some alternate universe…I’m just…I’m so sorry I ended it the way I did. I’m sorry—”

THUD.

The door jolts.

“We’re not going to die, Willa. Don’t think like that.”

“Did you hear me? I’m sorry.”

He turns to me, silent tears streaming down his face. “There—”

THUD.

“There are no other timelines. No alternate universes. There’s only this.”

The force behind us is too much. I scream, pushing as hard as I can back against it.

“Hold on,” Ravi says. “The shower.”

“What?”

“I don’t think they like water. Remember? The deer went into the lake and then freaked out. Let’s go.”

He takes me by the arm and hauls me into the shower, closes the glass door behind us, turns the water on. It’s freezing.

We’re squeezed inside like fucking sardines. It’s too small. The two of us barely fit.

The bathroom door busts down, and three of them stagger in. Two of them I don’t recognize. The other is Tanya.

I see her before Ravi does.

“Don’t look,” I whisper.