“You have two.”

Scarlet looked around to the rest of us. “Will someone please tell Nathan this is a bad idea?”

“I’m going with you,” Elleny said quietly.

Scarlet smiled and touched her cheek. “I need you to stay here where it’s safe. I can’t concentrate if I’m watching out for you, too. Got it?”

Elleny clearly didn’t like it, but she nodded.

Joey stood up. “I’m going, too.”

Scarlet held out her palm. “Now him I’ll take. You,” she said, pointing her palm at Nathan, “are staying here.”

“Don’t make me do this,” Nathan said. He took the few steps to stand next to her, touched his fingers to her arm, and spoke with subdued desperation in her ear. He was becoming agitated, and that wasn’t like him.

“Do what?” Scarlet said, instantly defensive.

“Choose between you and my daughter.”

Scarlet was speechless, like the rest of us. Finally, she spoke, pulling away from him. “I would never ask you to do that. It’s not a choice, Nathan.” She began to open the door, and Nathan took her wrist in his hand. “Let go,” she said calmly.

“Scarlet, I’m asking you. Don’t do this.”

“I’m not waiting for them anymore. I have to help them. This is the only way I know how.”

“And what if you get yourself killed and they show up here? What am I supposed to tell them? That they came all the way here for nothing?”

Scarlet stared at Nathan, wriggled her wrist out of his grasp, and then looked to Joey. “Are you coming or not?”

“Right behind you.” Joey began to follow Scarlet, but he stopped at the door. “I’ll keep her safe, Nate.”

Nathan nodded.

Bryce kissed my cheek. “I’m going, too.”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“I want to make sure she doesn’t get herself killed before her kids get here. I’ve been watching her wait on that porch every morning for a month. I’ll be damned if she doesn’t get to see them because we didn’t help her.”

“Then I’m going, too,” I said.

Bryce shook his head. “No, you and Ashley need to stay here with the girls. Coop?”

“Yeah,” Cooper said, leaning over to kiss Ashley. Against Ashley’s persistent pleas, he grabbed a baseball bat and followed Bryce out the door.

Once the door closed behind Cooper, the house was instantly and eerily quiet. Nathan took Zoe and Elleny to the table and began pulling out food for breakfast. Ashley stood at the door, watching Cooper walk down the road.

“You really think her kids are out there?” Ashley said, keeping her eye on the group. “You think they’re still alive?”

“Yes,” Nathan said from the kitchen.

“You shouldn’t have let her go,” I snapped. “Everyone we love is out there.”

Nathan’s worried eyes softened as he looked down at his daughter. “How could I argue with her when I would do the same?”

Scarlet

Four pairs of shoes on dirt and gravel was the only sound. No one said a word as we walked east up the red dirt hill and back down, toward the intersection and then back north toward the cemetery at the next mile section. Bryce and Cooper trailed behind Joey and me by about ten feet—on purpose, I assumed.

Despite being determined not to, Nathan’s pleas for me to stay kept entering my mind. I glanced over my shoulder, seeing Ashley at the door, wondering where Nathan was, if he was angry with me. If I had a type, Nathan was not it. I knew right away when he showed up in a loose tie and slacks. The day before our lives changed forever I would have appreciated his body for a few moments before dismissing him. Until I’d gotten to know Nathan, I thought a man that spent too much time in the gym was either vain or had self-esteem issues. I preferred men with dark hair, eyes that you couldn’t look away from, and at least a head taller than me—even though I dwarfed Andrew when in heels. If Andrew had taught me anything, it was what I didn’t want in a man. Sometimes I used my strict list of musts to push potential interests away. It worked for me. As a single mother, it was my job being picky. After failing Jenna and Halle so many times, I owed them that.

Even after half or more of the population had been wiped out, it wasn’t a good enough excuse to throw away the list—regardless of the strange excitement that I felt every time Nathan was in the same room.

We weren’t a mile away from the entrance of the ranch when Joey tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the field on our left. It probably wasn’t the best idea, leaving that early in the morning with the sun in our eyes, but I could still see her, limping across the knee-high wheat stalks.

“ted, ten o’clock,” Joey said, alerting the others.

We approached her carefully. She’d noticed us right after we saw her, and instantly turned in our direction, her low moans signaling her excitement at the prospect of a meal. She reached for us as she walked, and I held the hatchet tightly in my hand as I charged her.

I lifted the wooden handle of the hatchet high in the air, and just before I was within her grasp, I brought it down to her skull, letting the weight of it work with me. The steel pierced bone, and then slid easily into the softer part of her brain. She instantly froze, and then fell to the ground.

I bent over, steadying myself with my foot on her head, and then pulled, releasing the edge of the axe from her head. Joey, Cooper, and Bryce were all watching me, their expressions ranging from disgusted to awestruck.

“What?”

Joey glanced at the other boys and then back at me. “I’m not completely convinced at this point that you needed us with you for anything other than chitchat.”

I laughed once, and continued on. “Come on. She isn’t the ted I saw from the porch. There is another one out here. To the south.”

We crossed the field in search of the large male I saw lumbering across the wheat. He met the same end as the previous ted, but then I wanted to return to the road. The girls only knew how to get to the ranch from Halle’s song, so the roads were what needed to be cleared first.

We had eliminated a dozen or so teds by lunch time, stopped to rest and snack on the potato chips I’d stuck in my pack.

“So . . . Nathan . . . ,” Cooper said with a smile.