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He sighs. “Human, you’ve piqued my interest—a rare accomplishment. Don’t squander it.”

“Squanderit?” Thisguy. “You mean by refusing to talk to you?” That’s real cute. “I’ll tell you a rare accomplishment—pissing me off.”

He guffaws. “You mean this hellcat nature of yours is atypical?”

Bringing out all my stabby tendencies.

“You want to know about me?” I practically shout. “Fine. My full name is nothuman, it’s Sara Burns. I’m twenty-one years old. And a week ago I was taken by aninsufferablehorseman. Would you like to argue about that too?”

I’m so ready to duke—it—out with Pestilence.

“Hmmm,” is all he says.

No scathing comments or smartass remarks. Justhmmm.

I could kill a bitch right now.

“What is it that you do to fill your days?” he asks.

I have to glance behind me to make sure I’m speaking to the same man who was taunting me literally seconds ago.

He stares at me, looking guileless.

I grimace. “Did,” I bite out. I don’t do anything at the moment, except (joyfully) slow the horseman down. (We all have to get our thrills somewhere.)

Facing forward, I add, “I was a firefighter.”

His fingers drum against my waist. “Did you enjoy it?”

I lift a shoulder. “It was just a job. It didn’t define me.” Not the way it did some of my teammates, who’d dreamed of being firefighters their entire lives. I blow out a breath. “I always wanted to go to college and study English,” I confess. I don’t knowwhyI’m admitting this.

“English?” Pestilence says quizzically. “But you speak it fine—if a little odd.”

“Not English as in the language itself,” I clarify, tipping back the last of the hot chocolate. I slide the thermos into one of the saddle bags. “English as in literature written in English. I wanted to study the works of Shakespeare and Lord Byron and,”—my favorite—“Poe.”

“Poe,” the horseman repeats, no doubt remembering the name from earlier. “Why didn’t you study these poets?”

Regret is a bitter taste at the back of my throat, and there’s no more hot chocolate to wash it out.

“Four horsemen came to earth and made a mess of the world.”

When we enterthe town of Squamish, it’s just as abandoned as I hoped it might be.

We pass by a gas station whose pumps are rusty with years of disuse, but whose store is filled with rows of preserved produce, nuts, and sweets.

Farther in, recently installed gas lamps still burn, though the sun has been up for hours. The lamp lighter must’ve evacuated before they could extinguish the light.

Like the gas station’s store, the trading posts we pass are still full of goods, a sure sign that their owners fled before they had a chance to stow away their goods. As a result, a few of them have been broken into and robbed.

Beneath my layers of clothing, my skin pricks. This all could’ve happened hours ago, and yet, there’s not a single soul to be seen. It’s vastly unnerving to pass through a town that by all rights should be full of people. It feels …haunted.

What must Quebec and Ontario and all the rest of the provinces to the east look like now that Pestilence has passed through them? What must the U.S.’s East Coast look like now?

Whether you make it out of this alive or not, the world is never going to be the same.

Pestilence turns off the main road and begins weaving through the town, and I have no idea what his game plan is. It’s too early to squat in some poor soul’s home, and so far, that’s the only time the horseman ever leaves the main highway.

It’s not until we approach Squamish’s hospital that I start feeling uneasy.