“The stadiums?” I ask.

“No, Tokyo.”

I frown. “Where is Tokyo?”

“He’s joking,” Ali tells me quietly. “Yes, the stadiums.”

“You don’t know where Tokyo is?” Trent asks me.

My cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Shut up! I was eight years old, okay? I didn’t make it through a lot of school.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“Wonderful. I can’t wait.”

“Can anyone you brought us be of any use?” Alvarez asks Trent.

Trent points to Vin. “He’s your man. I don’t have anything to do with them.”

“They belong to The Hive?”

“No,” Vin says firmly. “They belong to me.”

“They belong to themselves,” I mutter.

“You’re splitting hairs. They follow me.”

Alvarez nods. “Then I’ll need you to calm them down. They’re creating chaos in my camp. We’ll find them all shelter. Maybe in a building nearby. We’ll protect them, but those who can fight will need to join us tonight.”

“Agreed.”

“Good. Now if you two,” Alvarez says, pointing to me and Trent, “don’t have anything else to do, I’m putting you to work. I assume you know Crenshaw?”

I nod. “Yeah, of course.”

“Good. You’ll be working with him and his assistant. We need all the hands over there that we can get.”

Alissa takes us back to Crenshaw’s hut where we last saw him hunched over a table full of random. Vin goes with Alvarez, looking oddly at ease striding into the crowd next to the obvious head of the Vashons. It’s probably because of his ego, or maybe it’s because he was simply born to lead, but I’ve never seen Vin look so… right. This is bigger than The Hive. It’s bigger than the stables and being someone else’s servant, and as I watch him go I wonder if this isn’t where Vin was always meant to be.

He could be a great leader if he could stop stabbing everyone in the back.

“Bray!” Trent calls out happily, startling me.

A face I vaguely recognize looks up then smiles. “Trent!”

The guy runs to Trent but stops short. I think he was going to hug him before he remembered who he was dealing with. In the end, they awkwardly bump knuckles.

“Where’s Ryan?”

Where’s my sign?

“Taking care of some things,” Trent lies easily. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you guys! You and Ryan straight up disappeared. No one knew where you were and no one was looking.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“I know,” Bray says, not sounding the least bit sorry. “But I wandered in here, just to see. This park was where I found Ryan last time so I gave it a shot. I ended up hanging by my ankle from a tree.”

I grin. “Crenshaw’s traps?”

“Yeah,” he chuckles, looking embarrassed. “He caught me. I don’t know what he was going to do with me but I told him I was sorry for trespassing on his turf and that I was looking for Ryan. He said he knew where he was but that I couldn’t go there. Not right now. I asked him if I could wait here and he said no, but I could learn. So this is where I’ve been for the last few days.”

“What’s he teaching you?” Trent asks.

Bray’s eyes light up with excitement. “Everything.”

What he’s been teaching him is explosives, which to a bored fifteen-year-old boy probably feels like everything.

“How does Crenshaw know how to do this stuff?” I whisper to Ali.

We’re standing at a table of our own where I’m helping her roll bandages. She’s set up shop beside Crenshaw for two reasons. One, she loves him; and two, with all kinds of bubbling, boiling concoctions, open flames, and sharp utensils in newbie hands, there are a lot of injuries at the explosives table.

“He’s not a real wizard, don’t ever tell him I said that, but he is kind of a magician. He’s into all things nature and if you mix the right combination, nature knows how to go ‘boom.’ Big time.”

“He must have taught Ryan,” I muse, thinking of the fight he had with Vin about the size of the clay.

“He taught Jordan too.”

“Your husband?”

Ali nods.

“Is that how he lost his hand?”

She freezes. In fact, everyone in earshot does too, and when I stop to think about why we’re all ice sculptures, it dawns on me that that was stupid. It was thoughtless, tactless, and rude. But here’s the problem with me—I never know that until the damage is already done.

“I’m sorry, I shou—”

“He lost his hand to a zombie bite,” Ali answers, cutting off my apology. “He was bitten while fighting one and he didn’t even think about it. He wanted to live more than anything so he cut his hand off to stop the spread of the virus.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. So we took him to a town, one that had put up fences and locked out the zombies. They let us in but they almost killed him because he’d been bitten. A nurse helped me save him, but a doctor tried to kill him.”

“Westbrook?”

Ali nods, flexing her jaw once quickly as though relieving tension. “Westbrook. Jordan survived but that guy wouldn’t let it go. When I got pregnant he couldn’t take it anymore. He called my baby a half-demon. Then he started sending people in to kill anyone who didn’t agree with him, so we ran. That was the last we heard from him and his Colonies for years, but the threat was always there. We always wondered if he’d run out of room and come after us again. And what do you know? He did.”

“I’m sorry,” I say grudgingly, unable to look at her. “We screwed up. Because of us they think you were making a deal with Marlow to come at them. We didn’t know.”

She surprises me when she smiles at me faintly. She shocks me when she reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear in a gesture so motherly it makes me cringe. “You gave us a reason to finish this, once and for all. To put an end to the wondering and worrying of when he’ll come after us again. It’s a relief,” she laughs. “Thank you for that.”

I look away, pulling my hair out of her reach. “I don’t think anyone should be thanking me for anything.”

“Too late.”

I open my mouth to reply, but I never get the chance. The sun is fading, evening is coming, and suddenly in the peaceful green glen where Crenshaw has made his home, a cry rings out.

“Incoming!”

I look around anxiously, trying to find the source of the shout.

“What’s happening?”

Ali’s face is tight, her hands clamping down on the rolled gauze in her hand so hard it dissolves into a mad mess of lazy loops through her fingers.

“Zombies,” she tells me tensely, her eyes on the makeshift road. Men and women are running down it. They’re heading for the entrance to the park. “Probably people too. They made the same announcement when Trent and the herd showed up.”

Something in me aches. It clenches hard and holds that way. It hurts and I hate it, but it’s good. I know what it is.

It’s hope.

I move to fall in line with the people running down the road. Ali grabs my arm hard.

“No. We don’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Medics and explosives experts—we’re too valuable to risk losing. It’s why we’re hidden away in the middle of the woods.”

“Not me.” I pull my arm away, shaking my head. “I’m a fighter. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

I run for the road. If Ali calls after me, I don’t hear it. All I hear is the pound of feet on packed dirt. It’s a steady rhythm that loosens the tightness in my chest. It’s a song I know in my veins. One beating in my blood louder and louder with every step. I’m running toward something I don’t understand, but still it’s familiar. Still I know it.

When we reach the clearing barricaded by fire still pouring black smoke into the air, I don’t slow. The rest do, but I don’t. I run. I run toward the fire and the haze. I run into the darkness blotting out the sun. To the rancid air stinging in my lungs, the smoke burning my eyes. I can barely breathe, I can barely see, and all I can hear is the persistent pounding that’s beating against my body, begging to come in.

I search the ugly gray world until I find it. Silhouettes of black against the darkness. There are so many of them. So many that I don’t know.