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MORGIE WAS LOST IN DARKNESS.
He was not entirely unconscious, though. He could feel his body. Feel the wrongness of it. The pain in his head and back. The heaviness of his limbs. The sickness in his skin and in his stomach. It was as if getting bashed against the tree had done something strange to him. Disconnected his mind from his body in almost every useful way, leaving only the ability to feel pain.
And to hear.
As he lay there, he listened to voices. Men and women. A few scattered gunshots. The swish of wind through the leaves. He was on his back, staring up at the blue sky above the road. The tall trees seemed to bend forward to look down at him.
Then he heard more voices.
“Oh God, is he… ?”
Was that Nix? No. Riot? Yes, he thought.
“No, he’s alive,” said a stranger’s voice. “There’s a pulse.”
“Who are you?” Morgie asked, or thought he did. Morgie’s consciousness went away before the question was answered and came back to a different part of the conversation.
“What’s that all over his skin?” demanded someone. A woman, Morgie thought. Talking to a man. Both strangers. “Oh no, don’t touch him. Look. Oh my God…”
“She has it too,” said the man, and there was something in his voice. Urgency, surprise. And fear.
Morgie tried to speak, tried to explain that the rash on his skin was nothing. An allergy, maybe. Or something they ate. He tried to make his mouth move to say the words, but the connection did not stretch that far. All he could do was feel and hear.
He went away again. And again.
He heard the woman say, “August, they have it. They both have it.”
“Have what?” cried Riot weakly from somewhere off to Morgie’s left. He reached for her, for her hand. Found it. Her fingers were so cold, but they curled around his with desperate force.
“Who… who are you?” Morgie managed to get out.
“Sergeant August Porter,” said the man. “Third Rangers, second platoon, long-range patrol out of Asheville.”
“Ashe… Asheville?” Morgie tried to smile but couldn’t. Tried not to cry, and failed. “We… made it… ?”
“If you kids were trying to get to Asheville, then you made it.” A face came into view above him. A soldier. Sergeant Porter. August. “Help is on the way. Can you tell me who you are? Where you come from?”
“Reclamation…,” whispered Morgie. “We… we were looking for Captain… Ledger…”
The other soldier’s face now appeared. A black woman in her twenties. “Joe Ledger?” she asked. “You came all the way from California?”
“Y… yes…” His voice was ghostly thin. “How… how’s—Riot?”
“Is that your friend’s name?” asked August. “Riot?”
Morgie told them who they were, what they’d seen, and why they had come. He told them about New Alamo, about the swarms of zoms. He told them as much as he could. A fit of coughing interrupted him, and he tasted blood on his lips. He heard the other soldier speaking rapidly on a walkie-talkie. He heard her mention New Alamo, and Benny, and Captain Ledger. The rest seemed to fade out as his brain kept trying to fall into darkness.
Riot’s fingers were still wrapped around his, but her grip was noticeably weaker, and she hadn’t said a word for a while. Morgie used his free hand to fumble for August’s hand.
“What… what’s wrong… with us?” he asked.
There was a pause, and it lasted so long that Morgie thought he’d floated away again. But it wasn’t that. It was merely that August was steeling himself to answer his question. When the young soldier spoke, there was deep horror and sadness in his voice.
“Those burns,” said August, “the sickness you’ve both been feeling… it’s not plague or anything like that.”
“What… what is it?” Morgie managed to say.
Then August said the terrible words.
