I hit a dead end. Nothing ahead but a brick wall streaming with black moisture—either dirt or mold.

“There’s nowhere to go,” I say.

Trey crouches, yanking Tanq and me down by our sleeves. “Remember the hospital?” he says. “No sound, no movement. Maybe it will lose track of us.”

I nod, then look up at the strip of cloudy sky between buildings. A shadow passes overhead, but the angle is all wrong and I can’t tell what it is.

It passes again from a different direction, and this time I catch the telltale silver glint. It’s higher up this time, and it suddenly darts away—eastward, I think—like a dog that’s just seen a squirrel.

Beside me, Tanq begins to rock on her heels. Her eyes are glassy, and her fingers clutching her backpack tremble violently.

I grab one of her hands, and she jolts as if to skitter away.

“Tanq!” I whisper. “Stay with me, okay? Breathe. Like this.” I demonstrate, inhaling through my nose for four counts, exhaling through my mouth for four. Just like Coach Dalrymple taught me.

She follows my lead. Inhaling, exhaling, her gaze never leaving my face. After a minute, her hand in mine wraps around my fingers, but she keeps breathing.

Emmaline looses a single bark and dashes away, toward the alley entrance. “No! Emmy, come back!” I rip away from Tanq’s hand and try to chase after my dog, but Trey is in my way, and the alley is too narrow to maneuver.

“You can’t, Paige,” Trey says, yanking me back down. “I’m so sorry, but you can’t go after her.”

I nod, gulping down a sob. Visions fill my head of Emmaline getting zapped out of existence, of a brand-new crater forming in the parking lot—

“Hey!” comes a male voice. “This way. Hurry!”

A shadowed face peeks at us from the alley entrance. I can’t see more than pale skin and sandy blond hair.

“Holy shit, it’s a person,” Tanq says.

Suddenly Emmaline is there too, bouncing around beside her new friend, this mysterious human I can’t get a good look at.

“The drone won’t be distracted for long,” he calls toward us. “You’ve got to hurry. C’mon.”

Trey is the first to dislodge himself and squeeze back toward the entrance. I help Tanq to her feet, and we follow. Part of me twitches to run. Another part urges caution. A lifetime of “stranger danger” warnings is hard to shake, even in the apocalypse.

We exit the alley and blink against the relative brightness. A boy stands before us, seventeen or eighteen years old, with close-cropped blond hair, hazel eyes, broad shoulders, and smooth skin stretched over a jaw like a cinderblock. A pit bull in human form.

“I’m Wyatt,” he says. “I’ll explain more later, but for now you gotta follow me. We have to be quiet and fast, yeah?”