To my right, a line of thick smoke runs parallel to the highway, choking the sky with sickly brown. The air reeks of burning chemicals. Maybe this is why the birds have gone. Everything along the High Street sewer line, my whole neighborhood, Shawntelle’s neighborhood, is smoldering rubble.

Now that my heart rate has steadied, now that I’m a little bit safe, questions chase themselves around in my mind. “If no one is left alive,” I say to Emmaline, “what caused the gas explosion?”

Her tail thumps.

My grip on the steering wheel tightens, and I lean forward, renewing my search for signs of life. “I mean, maybe someone was smoking. Or had a candle lit. Something ignited that gas. It couldn’t just . . .”

I frown. It could just. All it would take is an abandoned generator, churning away after its owner died. A blown transformer. A metal gate sparking against concrete as it swung in the wind. It would be easy, if enough gas had accumulated.

Tears threaten again, and my throat is tight and hot. I push it all away and focus on a plan. I need food. Water. A safe place. But the world is suddenly my enemy, full of flies and birds steeped in carrion and all manner of things that could kill me slowly, as well as feral dogs and invisible dangers—like sewer-gas explosions—that could kill me instantly. And I have no phone, no internet, no friends to tell me what lies around the next bend in the highway. I must treat my hometown like a stranger I’ve never met. No, more like a psychotic stalker. I can’t let down my guard for a second.

I should leave the city. Go somewhere rural, where low population will mean low body count. The air will be cleaner, at least. I glance at the gas gauge. Only a quarter of a tank. That won’t get me far. I’ll figure something out.

“Food first, Emmy,” I say. “Supplies. Then we’ll find an old farmhouse to hole up in. Or something like that. And, hey, maybe we’ll find someone out there, right? Maybe this awful plague didn’t make it outside of Columbus.”

I know it for a comforting lie as soon as the words leave my mouth. That radio announcement had called it a “national” emergency. Besides, something so deadly that it makes a wasteland of Ohio’s largest city in six days is bad. Unspeakably bad. Apocalyptically bad.

Which strikes me as significant. I roll the thought around in my head as I pass under the exit sign for Upper Arlington. Six days. That’s how long it took for my city to die.