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everything…manageable. Why, the air was almost sweet, here. In fact—it was sweet. She could smell the scent that had been all over Blake, fresh and clean and sharp. And when he clapped her on the back and did this little exhausted sounding laugh, it got stronger.
    It made her ease up, just a little. He was starting to really drop behind her and that was apparently another thing that kicked her instincts up—though this was of a different sort entirely. This was the one she’d had for Kelsey, the one that had said, if she drops behind you, find out what’s wrong immediately. Be prepared to fight with her if she can’t run anymore .
    Of course, there had been people she could have left. That psycho from the trailer park who thought he was Rambo. The old couple who’d left their neighbors out to die. A whole assortment of assholes and jerks and outright murderous bastards.
    But she would have died before she left Kelsey. Only the bullet had stopped her from going back. And she knew with a sudden jerk that only a bullet would stop her from going back for Blake and Jamie. Only zombie hands on her, zombie hands holding her back, clawing and dragging her down, down into the maze of their hungry mouths…
    She stopped dead and turned, just so she could see him and know he was still there. Though rationally she knew he had to be. He wasn’t the type to play hide and seek—hell, Jamie was the type, but even he wouldn’t have done it to her—and he couldn’t have fallen or been eaten or any of that awful shit. So she knew she was being silly.
    Which only made it worse when he just. Wasn’t. There.
    All the hairs on her arms went up the moment she saw the empty forest. It was a familiar feeling—an old friend, in fact—but it seemed more intense in that moment. Everything around her looked still and gray and strange. Suddenly the trees seemed closer together, and when she scanned between them there was an ominous quality to the emptiness.
    As though it was just waiting to be filled up. And not by Blake.
    She resisted saying his name for a long while—probably longer than she should have. But then if she said his name it meant only one thing. She’d been fooled. Or even worse than that, she’d accepted that something was wrong.
    He was missing from view even when he should have been right there, right in front of her. Maybe with his hands on his knees and a rush of harsh breath coming out of him. He could have said something like you’re fast or maybe wagged his finger at her for pushing so hard, but instead there was just this crawling silence.
    And the hairs prickling all the way up her arms and around to the back of her neck.
    Her first and most desperate need was to scrub at those irritated places until the sensation went away but she knew better than that. The drill came back to her as though it had never left— find Blake, then fastest route to safety, nearest weapon, nearest threat, settle your breathing so you can hear them approaching.
    And the answers came real easy, just as they always had in the past. The fastest route was a little to the right of the route she’d just taken, the nearest weapon was a short but pointed fallen tree branch, not three steps from her, there were no current near threats and as for her breathing, well.
    She shut it down fast, fast. Then mentally counted back to when she’d lost him. Five seconds meant he’d been ten steps from her, ten seconds meant twenty steps, and so on. He’d been on exactly the same path as her so she didn’t have a wide radius to cover.
    It should have been simple, really.
    Only it wasn’t.
    He wasn’t twenty steps along the path. There were other things along the path—strange things, that definitely hadn’t been there before. A dark shape in the lowlight that looked just like one of them, until she got close and realized with an odd sense of acceptance that it was the mailbox Kelsey had tucked herself behind, while that writhing crowd of zombies