Mercury forced the car into a hard, screeching turn. Tires bit into the cracked tarmac, kicking up a storm of dust and gravel that swirled around us like a dirty halo.

A few infected had already reached the vehicle, one of them clung desperately to the side mirror with rotting fingers, its decayed face pressed against the glass, mouth working hungrily as if it could bite through the metal.

The rest of the horde poured after us, thousands of bodies moving with terrifying coordination, a living wave of rot and hunger surging across the plain.

The turn completed. Mercury slammed her foot down.

"Yeees," she hissed, one hand briefly lifting off the wheel in fierce satisfaction.

In the side mirror, I watched the infected lose ground. The swarm slowed, drifting back toward whatever dark instinct had drawn them. But the one on the mirror held on, its blank, milky eyes locked on us with single-minded commitment, fingers digging deeper into the metal.

"That was crazy," Mercury exhaled, shoulders dropping slightly.

"Yes it was," Richard said.

Mercury hit the brakes.

The car skidded to a stop in the middle of the empty road.

"Say another word," she said, voice dangerously low. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"What did I—"

She turned and punched him square in the forehead. The sound was a sharp, meaty thwack that echoed inside the car. Everyone, including Mercury, looked momentarily shocked.

"What the fuck," Richard said, genuinely shocked. "You didn’t have to do that. Bi—"

"Don’t call me a bitch."

"I didn’t call you anything yet."

"Mercury," I said. "Calm down."

"This idiot led us directly into—"

"That was the safe route," Richard said. "Things must have changed. The infected move around. You can’t blame me for that."

"Mercury." I needed her present, not here. "Breathe."

She breathed. Twice. Slowly. The anger didn’t leave but it found somewhere to sit.

"Richard, go to the back," she said. "Bram, front seat."

I was holding Jenn’s hand. She looked at me and nodded. I held it one more minute before letting go.

"I’m not getting out," Richard announced. "There’s an infected on that mirror. I’m not stupid."

"You were telling me about the thousand infected you killed," Mercury said, almost laughing despite herself. "That one zombie is stopping you."

"Those were different circumstances entirely."

Mercury looked at the infected on the driver’s side mirror. Then she climbed across Richard’s lap, opened his door from the inside, and got out. Richard pulled the door shut behind her immediately.

The infected caught her scent immediately. It leapt from the mirror onto the bonnet in one fluid, horrifying motion, scrambling toward her.

Mercury punched it in the face with her bare hands.

It went down and came straight back up. She kept punching. The rage in it was not really about the infected and I could see that from inside the car.

I opened my door and got out.

By the time I reached her side she was kicking it, the infected absorbing each impact and pushing back, not dying, her knuckles already red. I put my hand on it and discharged. It dried and dropped.

Mercury kept kicking.

"Everything is a lie," she was saying, quiet, to herself, not to me, not to the infected. "Everything is a lie."

I put my arms around her from behind. She fought it initially, pulling away, still in the motion of the rage, but I held and eventually she stopped moving against me and leaned back and then turned and pressed her face into my chest. She was crying.

Behind us, I heard the front door open quietly. Then close. Then the back door open. Then close.

Richard, moving himself from the front seat to the back while Mercury and I were occupied, with the practiced silence of someone who had survived the apocalypse by knowing exactly when to be somewhere else.

That, I thought, is how you make it thirty years outside the walls without being a soldier.

I didn’t say anything. I held her.

I knew this wasn’t Richard. I knew it wasn’t even the infected or the wrong route or Sinn leaving us in the Forsaken City. I knew what it was. I had known since she said forty minutes and I connected with him more than anyone in years. I just hadn’t said it because some things need time before they can be spoken.

"Relax," I said against her hair. "Relax."

She breathed. The exhales coming slower.

"People were left behind the walls to die," she said. "Real people. People who gave everything they had and got closed out. And they sent us out here to die doing their work. And Sinn left us in that building." She lifted her head and looked at me. "We are living in a world where nobody cares about anyone."

"We’re not dying out here," I said. "I’m getting you back."

"That’s not what I mean." She held my eyes. "Promise me that when we get back inside the walls you don’t just go quiet. Promise me you don’t just go back to whatever they tell you to do and forget what you’ve seen out here."

I looked at her. She meant it. More than the promise of survival. She wanted something from me that was bigger than getting home.

"I promise," I said. And I meant it even though I didn’t yet know the full shape of what I was promising.

She exhaled once more and we went back to the car. I took the front seat. She started the engine without a word.

We reached the crossroads again. She slowed. I looked back at Richard. He pointed left without speaking, which was the most tactful he had been since we met him.

Mercury turned and we were on a different road than before.

She drove in silence for a while, the anger settling the way anger settles when it has said what it needed to say.

Then, without looking at me, she loosened her left hand from the steering wheel, reached across, took my right arm, and placed it across her left thigh. Then she put both hands back on the wheel and kept driving.

I left my arm where she had put it.

The plain moved past us. The road ran ahead. Richard was quiet in the back for the first time since we’d found him.

Good, I thought. We’re all learning.