I ring the doorbell again, and Emmaline goes wild, yipping and howling like a coyote. I put my face to the mail slot and say, “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s just me. I promise I’ll give you a belly scratch when . . . Oh!”

Death sends sickly, noxious creepers into my nostrils in spite of my mask, and I bend over, gasping and gagging.

Something snaps inside me, and suddenly I’m banging on the door with my fists and then my knees, and kicking and kicking until pain bursts sharp and bright in my big toe. I pause to suck in breath as my toe throbs with my heartbeat. I’ve probably broken it. I hardly care.

I have to get inside Mrs. Carby’s house. I lift the doormat, looking for a key—nothing. I search the nearby planter and above the doorframe. All the while, Emmaline barks raggedly. Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been barking a long, long time.

I give up searching and find a big, decorative rock instead. It’s half the size of a basketball but ten times as heavy, and I can barely hold it. My heart is huge in my chest, and I think, I am too thin, too weak, to hold my own heart inside myself.

You’re a warrior, Paige. Do this.

With all my strength, I hurl the rock through the front window. It shatters, and Emmaline comes flying out of the jagged hole. I squat down to hug her as she licks and nips at my face, her tail wagging so fiercely I fear it might fly off. Her long sable coat is horribly matted, and she stinks of poop, but I hug her anyway.

I rise, and Emmaline stands on her hind legs, batting at my thighs with paws that smear blood all over my jeans. Poor thing ran through broken glass to reach me. In any other circumstance, I’d tend to her paws, make sure there isn’t any glass left inside, but I have to get to Mrs. Carby’s phone.

I remove my coat and bunch it around my fist. With my makeshift glove, I punch out the glass around the edges of the window. Then I unwind my coat and drape it over the ledge to protect myself and climb in, one shaky leg at a time.

The smell is awful. Even worse than at home. “Mrs. Carby?”

I’m not sure why I call out. She’s dead, taken by whatever took my brother and my parents. By whatever has taken a lot of people in my neighborhood.

I’m alone.

I know it. No, accept it. And something like relief-but-not-quite washes over me. It was part of the fog in my brain, the knowing but not accepting.