Crows line the porch railing, and they barely react to my presence. Cold wind is like a block of ice to my face. Maybe I should go upstairs and face the inevitable corpses—on the chance one of the closets contains a decent coat.

But the barn door is open, and my feet take me forward, toward the comfort of friends.

I’m nearly there when Tanq manifests in the doorway and waves me inside. “We have good news and bad news,” she says.

Emmaline greets me when I enter, trots circles around me while my eyes adjust to the gloom. A squat car stretches before me, like a flat rectangle on wheels. Trey is loading something into the car’s . . . truck bed?

“We have a car,” Tanq says. “It has a full tank and decent tires. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a 1987 Chevy El Camino.”

“Hey!” Trey says. “This car is a classic.”

“A ’69 El Camino is a classic,” Tanq retorts. “This? Is a travesty.”

They’ve obviously been having this conversation all morning. “It’s . . . brown,” I say. “Mud brown.”

“I was thinking baby diaper brown,” Tanq says.

“It’s cinnamon,” Trey says, “and someone was lovingly restoring it when the virus hit.”

All I care about is: “Will it get us to Sandusky?”

“I think so,” Trey says. “We’ll be lucky to get ten miles to the gallon, but it should last. Someone will have to sit in the back.”

“Which will be cold and horrible,” Tanq says. “But me and Trey, we figure whoever’s in the back will be our spotter. Should have a good view of the sky from there.”

I nod. “We’ll take turns, do it in shifts.”

“Did you eat?” Trey asks me.

“Yep. Thanks for the sandwich.”

“I pulled five ticks off of Emmaline this morning,” Tanq says.

I gape at her. “How did you know to do that?”

“I used to pull them off the boys I lived with. They always played in the creek behind . . .” Her gaze darts away. “Anyway, keep an eye on her. We should all be careful, if we have to walk like that again.”

“Good thinking,” I tell her. Something glimmers outside the barn, and I’m ducking reflexively when I realize it’s just a goldfinch, flitting through the trees. Mom and I used to make a game of it every spring, seeing who would spot the first goldfinch of the year.

“You okay, Paige?” Trey prompts.

“You both let me sleep in again,” I accuse.

“You needed it,” Trey says, closing up the hatch as gently and quietly as he can.

“What I need is to contribute,” I say. “You don’t need to baby me.”

“You looked terrible,” Tanq says. “Pale like a zombie. I would have painted you while you were sleeping if I still had my paints, because you looked so dead. It was great.”