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18

AUTUMN

The moment the guys start climbing out of the bunker, I drop to my knees and tear through the wreckage. Every corner. Every blanket. Every crate. I rip open a sealed bin that smells like rot and bile.

Nothing.

I yank the cracked plastic light fixture from the ceiling.

Still nothing.

I shove over an old metal chair, and it screeches across the floor before slamming into the wall.

There has to be more. There must be something else. Another name. Another clue. Something, anything, that tells me where she went next. Who is G.L.?

My fingers scrape under the cot frame. Nothing.

I tug at the floorboards, pulling at them until my knuckles split. Still nothing.

My heart pounds too fast. My lungs feel too small. “Come on. Please. Please, please, please.”

Footsteps pound down the stairs and rush back into the bunker. I feel three pairs of eyes on me, but no one stops me.

I hear the shift of boots. One of them starts forward, butthen stops. I don’t know who, and I don’t care. I’m already moving.

Outside, back into the dead light of morning. Is Summer seeing this same light right now? Does she have access to a window where we see the same light during the day, and the same moon at night?

The air is thick with rot and failure. I scour the overgrown dock ruins behind the building. Push through thorned brush. Crawl through collapsed doorways and over abandoned crates. Something sharp cuts across my shin, but I don’t stop.

“Summer!” I scream.

My voice bounces back to me off the concrete, empty, useless, and unanswered.

“Where is she?” I shout.

The world doesn’t answer, but the rotters do. They close in. I hear them, but I don’t stop. I keep screaming. Keep searching. Keep breaking.

“Hey, stumble your ugly asses over this way,” Mars shouts out before opening the music box again to draw the rotters toward me. It works. The rotters change direction and head right for me.

The music has an effect on me, too. It tugs at my frayed nerves, and another scream rips from my throat.

The guys move. They’re coordinated and ruthless.

One rotter falls.

Then another.

There’s silence again before another rotter follows my screams, only to be taken down by one of the guys. I don’t know which one. It’s hard to tell them apart through the tear collecting in my eyes.

They’re not trying to calm me down, or even trying to talk me through this. They’re clearing the way, letting me tear myself apart, and keeping me safe during the process.

I love them for it, and I hate they don’t understand. They can’t possibly understand.

Because they didn’t lose her. I did.

I reach the far wall of the ruins. There’s some rusted fence with no gate, some skeletal dead-end that doesn’t care how desperate I am. I scale the fence and drop to the other side.

My knees crack against the concrete, but I don’t feel it. My hands scrape the ground and I dig my fingers into the dirt as though I could pull her name out of it, but there’s nothing. Nothing other than me and the sound of my own broken breathing.