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“Stranded?” Rain swats his giant hands away. “You could walk back to Franklin Springs from here! It’s twenty miles, max!”
“You know it’s not safe to be on the roads! Especially with all the supplies we’d be carrying.”
“You wanna talk to me about not being safe? You have no idea what I went through while you were gone!”
Aaaaand this is the part where she uses me to make him jealous …
“I almost died! Wes, how many times did I almost die?” She keeps her back to me as Carter’s head swivels in my direction.
Even though my throat is so tight that I can hardly breathe and I have to put my hands in my pockets to keep him from seeing that they’re balled into fists, I manage to keep my voice unaffected when I say, “I dunno. Ten? Twelve? I lost count.”
“Who the hell is he?” Carter thrusts a massive hand in my direction, and Rain looks at me over her shoulder.
I lock eyes with her, my feelings safely hidden behind a well-worn costume of confident apathy, and silently ask the same question.
Yeah, Rain. Who am I? Your substitute boyfriend? Your April 23 distraction? Your meal ticket? Chauffeur? Gravedigger and personal bodyguard? Just say it so that I can get the fuck out of here and go find something to break.
Rain takes a deep breath and smiles at me in a way that almost makes me think she means it. Her porcelain face lights up, illuminating the dust-thickened air around her, and her shiny blue doll eyes look wild and alive. I know that look. That’s the look she gets before she does something stupid and impulsive.
“He’s my fiancé.” She beams.
Motherfucker.
My shoulders slump, and any doubt I had about her motives leaves me in a bitter, sharp sigh.
“Fiancé?” Carter jerks his head back as if he’s been punched, but Rain isn’t even facing him anymore.
She’s walking toward me with a sway to her hips and a smirk on her beautiful fucking face.
“I just left a month ago! And besides, why the fuck would you get engaged if you thought we were gonna die yesterday?”
“I knew we weren’t gonna die,” Rain says, standing beside me and wrapping a delicate hand around my bicep. “Wes is a survivalist.”
Carter throws his free hand in the air in exasperation as I look down at my girl. His girl.
Fine. I can play this game—the one where she pretends to care, and I pretend to believe her. I’ve been playing it my whole life. At least now, I know where I stand.
I thought April 24 was going to be a new beginning.
Turns out, it’s just the same old shit but with no Wi-Fi.
“Hey, guys? We got trouble!” Lamar’s voice coming from the mall entrance breaks up our happy little reunion.
We turn and run toward him as the sound of motorcycles revving and guns firing and people shouting builds outside.
“Shit,” Carter hisses. “Bonys.”
“What are Bonys?” Rain asks, but as Carter pushes the door open with one long arm, we’re able to see for ourselves.
Dozens of motorcycle riders have blazed over the downed section of fence around the mall and are doing doughnuts and firing semiautomatic weapons into the air in the parking lot. Bullets leave their guns in orange bursts as they howl at the moon, matching the Day-Glo orange stripes painted on their clothes to look like skeleton bones.
“Oh my God! Is that Quint?” Carter slides his rifle around so that it’s hanging down his back and leans over to get a better look at the guy we left outside.
In this light, I can see that Carter is no Franklin Springs redneck. The guy has brown skin and a mop of curly, dark hair, and he’s wearing a fucking Twenty One Pilots T-shirt.
I think about the oversize Twenty One Pilots hoodie Rain was wearing when I first met her, and I have to resist the urge to kick his teeth in.
“We can’t fit the hood through the door, so we’re gonna have to lift him.” Rain is in doctor mode, which is pretty much the only time she takes the lead on anything. “Wes, help me hold Quint’s head and neck still, so the glass doesn’t move. Lamar and Carter, you guys each take a leg. Come on! Now!”
