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something hard, sharp, and then I’m pushed beyond it and the water is in my nose, it’s in my mouth, my lungs, everywhere, and my father—is praying. I can hear him praying for me.
    Ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte …

 
    I shift against the cold, wet ground.
    All the pieces I’ve broken into scream.
    Something moves above me and around me, light shifting behind my eyelids and I have no fight left, but I jerk my arms out and manage to get my hands over my face. I hope it doesn’t hurt worse than this, being ripped apart, but I know it will. I don’t want to die in someone else’s mouth, but who did. And then there are hands on me, a man’s voice in my ear, firm and rough.
    The infected don’t speak.
    “Easy.”
    I moan.
    “Easy, son.”
    It’s been so long since I was anyone’s son.
    ***
    Vomiting my guts out. Hands hold me up, calloused fingers on my skin.
    I can’t open my left eye and when I try to crack my right eye open, light assaults my head and the agony goes straight to my stomach. I gag, but this time, nothing comes up.
    I want the pain to stop.
    ***
    A canteen pressed to my lips, water, but I’m through with water.
    I turn my head, don’t have the energy to speak.
    “You gotta drink that. You’ll be a lot worse off if you don’t.”
    ***
    “You know your name? Sloane?”
    ***
    Hours slip.
    My body aches. My head feels like it’s split open. If I try, I can hold myself separate from these things enough to make sure I’m not cold. That’s the most important. I’m not cold, so I’m not bitten. Then the rest of it hits me.
    Fairfield. The suit.
    Sloane and the river.
    A man.
    I’m on the ground. There’s a … I’m encased. In a bag. Not really a sleeping bag. It crinkles when I move. Nothing soft beneath it. I smell—I smell a fire, burning wood. I feel the warmth of it, close. I open my eyes. Eye. The left refuses to open and it should scare me but it doesn’t, not more than not knowing where I am and who I’m with.
    The sky above me is dark and I see flames flickering from the corner of my good eye. I move a little, slowly, legs and hands. I touch my face and my left eye. It’s swollen to shit. I turn my head and there it is, the fire. The light sears itself into me, hurts the longer I stare at it. Beyond it, I make out a tent. I swallow. My throat is sore, it feels like I’ve been eating gravel. I try to raise my head but the world spins like last summer after that fucking racist prick asshole Joe Arthur couldn’t believe I never had tequila in my life and got the guys to hold me down while he poured half a bottle of it down my throat. I flop back onto the ground—bad idea, my body lets me know it—and I close my eyes, trying desperately to find some kind of anchor amid the pain.
    “Sloane.” My voice is too weak. I try again. “
Sloane—
”
    “
Shut up.
”
    I start coughing. It sends the pain in my skull up to ten. My vision blurs. When I can see again, a man is standing over me. He’s got a gun pointed at my face.
    “I won’t hurt you unless you give me a reason to.”
    “I won’t,” I rasp.
    He lowers the gun. “You awake now? For real?”
    “Think so.”
    “Good.”
    He’s a white guy. Thick all around. Not exactly big, but beefy in the kind of way I’d be no match for on a good day, let alone this one. He has brown hair, not short and not long, and a wiry brown beard, mottled with gray. His face is full of lines.
    “I’m not sure what you remember. I pulled you out of the river this morning. You’ve been in and out but I don’t think most of it stuck. You don’t look so messed up now, though.”
    “Where am I?”
    “My campsite,” he says. I try to sit up and everything starts spinning again. The man puts a hand on my shoulder and forces me back. “Don’t think you’re ready for that.”
    “Where’s Sloane?”
    “You’ve been saying that name. Not yours?”
    “No. She’s—she’s a girl. She’s with me.”
    “Didn’t find a girl