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“There!” I yell, throwing it on the dirty ground. “See? You’re not so—”
But I don’t get to let all my words out before these real, real loud motorcycles drive up super-fast from all around me. The people driving them are dressed like skeletons, and some of their helmets have spikes on them.
I wonder for a minute if they’re friends with the demon horse riders. I hug my shoebox tighter, hoping they won’t be mad about me ripping down their friends’ banner, but then they do something even worse than ripping the banners down. They start lighting them on fire!
I cheer and put my fist in the air like people do in the movies.
They hate the horsemen too! Maybe they’ll help me. Maybe they know where everybody went. Maybe they can take me to my mama.
A few of the skeleton people see me and start driving their motorcycles in a circle around the car I’m on.
I smile. “See, Badtz,” I whisper to my shoebox. “It’s gonna be okay. We found some new friends.”
There’s a guy on the back of one of the motorcycles, and he’s pouring something all over the car out of a big red jug. Some of it even splashes up onto my shoes.
“Hey!” I shout, taking a step back.
I wonder if maybe the guy driving will tell his friend that he’s spilling his water, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls to a stop right in front of me, flips open a fancy lighter—the silver kind that Daddy uses to light his cigarettes—and tosses it onto the hood of the car.
I wake up with a gasp, my eyes darting left and right, looking for signs of danger faster than my foggy brain can process what they’re seeing.
I’m sitting on the ground inside the mall. My back is against Wes’s chest. His arms are around my shoulders. In front of me, I can see the broken-out windows of the main entrance. It must have rained while we were asleep. There’s a puddle creeping toward us from the door.
And one of my hiking boots is already soaked.
We’re tucked inside of the same store entrance we hid in last night. The metal gate is down and locked, but I know without even peeking through the slats which shop it used to be. I can practically smell the Hello Kitty bath bombs and body sprays clustered around the checkout stand.
Wes tightens his grip around my body and grinds his teeth in his sleep. I want to let him hold me a little longer, but I can tell that whatever he’s dreaming about is about as fun as being set on fire by Bonys.
“Wes.” I tap his thigh, which is about all I can do with the death grip he has on me. “Wake up, babe. It’s morning.”
Wes swallows and yawns and rubs my upper arms with his hands as he comes to. “Hmm?”
“It’s morning. We made it.”
Wes shifts his weight and sits up straighter behind me. Then, he lets his forehead drop to my shoulder with a groan. “You woke me up for that?”
I laugh. “I thought you were having a nightmare. Did you see the horsemen?”
He grumbles something into my hoodie that sounds like a no.
“Really? Me either! I saw the banners, but the horsemen never came.” I frown, thinking about how the Bonys were about to light me on fire, but at least it was something new. After spending a year dreaming about the four horsemen of the apocalypse killing everyone on April 23, getting burned alive by a deranged motorcycle gang feels like an improvement.
“Yeah, I saw the banners too.” Wes yawns and lifts his head. “But then everybody turned into zombies and tried to eat us. I got to hack your boyfriend up with a machete though, so it wasn’t all bad.”
“Wes!” I turn sideways in his lap, ready to snap at him for using the B-word again, but the sight of him hits me like a ton of bricks.
His soft green eyes are rimmed with red. His jaw is peppered with stubble. His face is covered in dirt and ash, and the collar of his blue Hawaiian shirt has Quint’s blood on it. The reality of what we’ve been through comes crashing down around me as I gaze into Wes’s beautiful, battle-worn face.
It happened. All of it. The eighteen-wheeler explosion. The overdose. The house fire. The shoot-out at Fuckabee Foods. My parents …
Wes gets blurry as my eyes fill with tears. I squeeze them shut, trying to block out the images of my daddy in his armchair and my mama in her bed. Their faces … oh my God.
They’re really gone, and the apocalypse never came to make it all go away.
I cover my mouth with the sleeves of my hoodie and look up at Wes. “What are we gonna do now?” My voice breaks along with the dam holding back my tears.
Wes pulls me against his chest and wraps his arms around me as an ocean of grief drags me under. “Don’t you remember what I told you?” he asks, rocking my jerking, trembling body from side to side.
