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with you.”
    I don’t know this guy from Adam, but I know he’s not lying. My throat tightens. Didn’t find a girl with me. Didn’t find her with me and what does that mean.
    “You didn’t find a girl?”
    “No.”
    It means she’s probably dead, Rhys.
    One way or another.
    I press my hand over my eyes and dig my fingertips into the bruised and swollen one just to feel something other than—
she can’t be dead.
She can’t be.
    “You sure—” I fight that pull backward, that feeling of everything I should have done differently. “You sure there wasn’t a girl somewhere?”
    “Not that I saw.”
    A tear slides down the side of my face and I wipe it away, but there’s another quick to follow, and another after that, because all I can see is Sloane, the girl in the school, the girl in the school who trusted me. A door closes inside me.
    She can’t be dead. That part can’t be over.
    I try to breathe through it but I can’t. I curl on my side, gasping, because there’s nothing else my body knows how to do and the man says, “Easy,” and then “
easy,
dammit.” His hands are at my shoulders. He keeps them there until my lungs are working right.
    “River tore you up.” His voice skirts the edges of my loss. “Scrambled your egg, cut you up some, and bruised you even more than that. That said, could’ve been a lot worse, that current, this time of year. Where’d you come from?”
    “Fairfield,” I say. It’s harder for me to skirt those same edges. I squeeze my eye shut and I see her and I open it again. I swallow. “Fairfield …”
    “Fairfield’s overrun. That whole area is crawling with ’em.”
    “I know. That’s how I ended up in the river.”
    “Well, you’re a lucky son of a bitch then. You’re pretty far from where you started.”
    “You really didn’t find a girl?”
    “Only found you.”
    “And what’s—what’s going to happen to me?”
    “I don’t know,” he says. “We’re heading out tomorrow. Didn’t feel right leaving you alive and defenseless, though. These woods are safer than Fairfield, but that’s not saying much.”
    “But—”
    A crackling sound interrupts us, something moving in the woods. The man brings his finger to his mouth and then draws his gun, his eyes on the trees.
    I stare at the stars, no moon in sight. My mother, my father, Grace, Harrison, Trace, Cary. Sloane. But not me. Not me. And what am I.
Lucky son of a bitch.
I hurt, every single cut and bruise singing its song on my skin. I try not to start crying again, don’t want to be weak, even though there’s no one I care about left alive to see it if I am.
    The man finally decides it’s safe enough.
    He says, “Just a minute,” and goes into the tent and when he comes back out he’s got a package in his hand. “Get yourself sittin’. I got an MRE here. I’ll get it going for you.”
    It takes a lot to get myself upright. I could use help, but I’m too proud to ask for it. I get it in the end, though, when I almost pitch forward and eat the flames of the campfire.
    The man props me up against a tree. I stare at the fire until he hands me a plastic pouch and spoon. It’s so warm. I dip the spoon in the open top and watch something white and creamy ooze off.
    “Pork sausage and gravy,” he says.
    “Thank you.”
    My hand shakes when I bring it to my mouth. It tastes—good. Warm and rich and maybe better than it actually is because in the school we didn’t have this kind of luxury. Only had stale, packaged food that wasn’t aspiring to be … something. The man stays standing while I eat, watching the dark. The sausage bites are meaty, satisfying, and it reminds me of things that are good. I want Sloane here. I want her to be reminded of it too.
    “Don’t get yourself too worked up to finish that,” he says because it must be all over my face. “Where were you headed?”
    “Rayford.”
    “Why would you want to go there?”
    “Voice on the radio said to.”
    “What makes