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She shakes her head and resists sitting. “We need to find Noemi. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re bleeding. Everywhere.” He remembers what he’d heard. “Someone was shooting at you.”

Her face twists in a wan smile. “My nightmare. They brought the guy back—the one who failed the first time. Gave him another shot.” She looks down at herself. “A lot of shots, apparently, because one would be too quick.”

It takes him a moment to realize what she means. He figured the wounds were from near misses. But they brought back her shooter, the guy even he remembers from the news, back in the times when shootings like that were a big deal. That guy had been a sharpshooter. Which means he hadn’t missed four, five, six times.

The bartender promised them a slow death.

When Henry swallows, Ellie squeezes his forearm and says, “I’m fine. But that guy is still out there, I presume, and if I can see your zombies, he’s real for you too. So we need to be careful. If he comes for me—”

“No.”

Her brows rise.

He continues, “You’re going to say that if he comes for you, you’ll lead him off. No. If he comes for you, we take him down.”

“I’m not sure that matters.” She waves at the zombies. “I’d love to believe we ended your threat, but I think it’s temporary.”

“Temporary is good enough for us both to get away. Now come on. Let’s find Noemi.”

THIRTY-SIXELLIE

We’ve found Noemi. I’m crouched beside her body, tears running down my cheeks, while Henry stands with his hand on my shoulder. He doesn’t tell me we need to move, that it’s not safe to pause here. He just grips my shoulder, fingers squeezing in comfort.

Noemi is dead. A few feet away lies the thing that Caleb had become. His face still protrudes from its side, but his eyes are empty. He’s gone.

At first, I thought he—no, not him, but the monster that consumed him—had killed Noemi. I’d vomited in the grass, thinking of Caleb trapped inside a creature as it murdered his girlfriend. That would be a horror beyond imagining, for both of them. But then Henry had wordlessly pointed out the wound that killed her. Not a bite but a stab, something sliding between her ribs.

Raymond.

He’d found her and killed her, and he had a weapon, because that bastard of a bartender was not going to make this a fair fight. He separated us. He dropped us into the forest with our nightmares. And he gave Raymond a weapon.

“It was quick,” I say. “I know that doesn’t matter—”

“It does.”

“But I’m not giving that bastard a drop of credit for showing mercy.”

Henry snorts. “It wasn’t mercy. It was self-interest.”

“And we’re going to kill him?”

Henry hesitates, and I straighten, meeting his gaze.

“I’ll kill him,” I say. “You don’t have to. I know you took an oath.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “That’s for doctors.”

“Still, if you can help me catch and subdue him, I’ll kill him. For her.”

He nods. “For her. I won’t make you do it. I can—”

“Don’t go taking this from me, Henry.”

That lip quirk again, and he nods. Oh, I don’t need to be the one who kills Raymond. I don’t care, as long as he dies. But I’m not letting Henry do it. Before all this started, I’d have thought I could never kill anyone, maybe not even to save my life. I was wrong.

I can and will kill to save my life, and I definitely will to save Henry, just as I would have to save Noemi. I can kill if it’s a son of a bitch who volunteered to murder all three of us to save himself.