Then I got one of the things on me. I couldn’t even feel it or anything, and so I was lucky the Rangers had this kind of rhythm about switching off so that every so often a different rider would take the last position. Except for the one up front. That was our captain, Anamore Fent. A woman.

But the rider behind me swooped up and pulled the thing right off the outside of my thigh. That’s when I leaned away and I really did throw up. Blood kept streaming down my leg in the rain. I guess those things had some kind of anti-clotting shit in their bites, because they could pretty much suck you inside out before climbing into your dickhole and turning you into a bug. Screw anyone who tries telling me how beautiful nature is. Come to Marbury, Nature Boys.

So I wiped my face off and said, “Thanks, brother,” to the dude who saved me from turning into one of those Hunters, because the Rangers, the guys, had this way of calling ourselves brother all the time, and that’s when I saw he was Brian Fields, from our cross-country team in Glenbrook.

I was almost stupid enough to say something, like, “Dude. Brian. What the fuck are you doing here?” But I caught myself. I knew Brian wasn’t popping in and out of Marbury with us, and I’d been back and forth enough times to know that’s what happens—sometimes, you’ll run into people you know.

Sometimes, they’ll be monsters.

Sometimes, they’ll even be dead.

Fucking Marbury. What can I say?

But the fifth guy in our team was an old man who kept his gun slung on his back and played a little accordion while we rode. I would say it was weird, but words like weird don’t make any sense in a place like this. His music was constant and almost hypnotic. I didn’t mind it at all, because it sounded real, like home, like where I wanted to be if I could just find my way back—and find you, and Griffin and Ben, too. He played to let everyone and everything know we were coming, and like I said, us showing up meant if you were alive you only had three possible uses as far as the Rangers were concerned.

Except for the Odds.

Rangers don’t screw Odds—well, the decent ones don’t—and we definitely don’t eat them, and usually there wasn’t any reason for killing them.

But anything else, if it moved, well … it was a simple multiple-choice problem and all the answers were correct.

Everyone called him Preacher, but that wasn’t his name. I honestly don’t think I knew his name until he said that one certain thing that kind of rang in my head—All things have been accomplished—and then it all began to click about the guy with the accordion and who he was, because I definitely knew his face, so it wasn’t until I paid close enough attention to the name that was stenciled on his shirt that I began to put it together about him. He was the same guy, the preacher, Seth killed in Pope Valley maybe a hundred and fifty years ago.

Fucking Marbury.

So we followed Fent through what was left of Glenbrook. I knew we were going to the old train station. We passed the drive-in theatre that used to sit beside the 101. The white covering had all been peeled away from the giant screen, so it looked like a big patchwork of girders and crossbars. The Hunters had come through the night before and caught some of the Odds. I think there were about fifteen boys’ bodies up on those beams. Most of them were tied there, stripped, upside down. None of them had a head. Most of them were missing arms or legs, had been gutted and castrated.

Hunters liked to eat those parts: livers, kidneys, balls.

I couldn’t believe there were any Odds left at all. And the framing of the big screen vibrated and buzzed with feeding insects—harvesters so thick you’d think their combined weight could bring the entire structure down in pieces.

Jay Pittman was the first on our team to start taking trophies. He considered it psychological warfare, but he was just a sick asshole. Hunters didn’t have any soul you could fuck with. Pittman tried arguing that it was magic, too. Who could say for sure? We never lost a single member of our team, even during the really bad times. Fent didn’t like what he did, but Jay’s collection of dried penises he cut from the Hunters unlucky enough to run into him wasn’t one of the things she’d choose to fight over. So he kept them on a cord that hung from his saddle horn. Thirty-five of them, he bragged, counting the two he’d added that morning.

Charlie Teague liked the horns. They were harder than shit to break off, but he had enough of them on his string that, times it wasn’t raining, they’d make a musical sound like wind chimes when we rode.

The army had broken up, at least, as far as we could tell. All that was left of it were these independent fireteams of Rangers, competing, sometimes cooperating, just so we’d stay the most important humans still standing.

That’s how it was in Marbury. We had the guns.

But we were losing anyway. Every day there were fewer and fewer people, and the Odds were as good as invisible. It was a rare day when any of us would even see one of them. They didn’t trust us, besides, and the ones who were still alive were pretty good at hiding and scrounging for their survival. Except for that one crazy redhead kid who kept to himself in the firehouse. I believe there were Rangers who were afraid of that kid. I didn’t fuck with him, but I know that Fent made deals with him from time to time.

There were only five teams of Rangers left in this entire area, and we organized and made agreements or trades between the teams every day or so when we’d gather in the train station.

Politics.

Also, after the weather started changing, with the rains and the suckers, the main hall of the station stayed dry, elevated as it was, and it was big enough for all the fireteams to have sleeping space, and room for the other stuff we did.

Four of the fireteams were organized around women, girls really, because not one of us was past twenty years old, except for Preacher. The fifth team, their captain was taken a week earlier by the Hunters. Unlucky guys in that crew. No sex. Well, not with any girl, at least. So now there were four females left, maybe in the entire world. It didn’t matter anyway. Whenever one of the captains got pregnant, she’d just bleed out.

Nothing took hold in Marbury, except for the Hunters and the bugs.

And the captains, Preacher was mostly responsible, were fooling themselves if they thought we’d be able to last much longer. Every day, more and more of us were taken, eaten, or got sick from the bugs.

That’s why all the Rangers were getting ready to leave, give up this region and drop back to somewhere we’d only heard rumors of. But they were nice stories, I guess.

I’ll get to that.

*   *   *

Anamore Fent didn’t say anything to me until we reached the steps at the front of the station. There was another team coming in at the same time. With the rain how it was, the place looked almost like pictures of Venice, the way the water came right up to the landing.

Maybe Venice during the plague.

I think she noticed how I watched her while we were getting dressed. I didn’t care. I wasn’t embarrassed, and here was this half-naked young girl standing just inches away from me. But when she did have all her clothes on, she looked almost like a boy because her hair was cut so short.

Except I remembered she was pregnant, and her belly did show that.

Nobody expected that to go much longer.

A lot of the females died that way. The rest got taken by Hunters.

She told me to get one of the privates from the other team—that was the one that was only men—to take our horses around to the platform. She told me to get this little kid named Strange to do it, and I thought that was the same name Ben and Griffin had on the shirts they wore when I first met them in Marbury, so I was hoping it was one of the guys. But it turned out he wasn’t. I didn’t know the kid. He had a twin brother, though, and they looked like they were maybe fourteen years old, a bit young, even for Rangers.