Two large sedans block the road. I steer left and bump up onto the sidewalk to get around them. “That’s not a bad idea. No, wait. What about all the bodies?”

“Right. Let’s not live in the hospital. There are probably thousands . . .”

As his voice trails off, I glance at his profile. That muscle in his jaw is twitching again.

I say, “It’s okay to be grossed out by all this, you know. It’s epically disgusting.”

“That’s not it.” His voice is suddenly low and dangerous.

“Oh?”

He’s silent a long time, and I just let him be. We turn south on Kenny Road. I’m only a few minutes away from seeing the place where my mom worked.

“Does the sky look weird to you?” he asks finally. “It seems a little green.”

“Smoke and decomp, I guess.”

He ruffles Emmaline’s fur, and she leans against his chest in rapture. “That makes sense. Billions of humans dying all at once probably released a ton of methane into the air.”

I barely stop myself from hitting the brakes. “Is that toxic? Are we breathing bad air?”

“I doubt it. The extra methane is a lot at first, but it can’t possibly make up for everything else. Think about it: we’ve had a 100 percent reduction in vehicle emissions. So it will be gross for a few more days—maybe a week if the weather stays cold—but then it should clear up.”

“Okay. I guess we have scarier things to deal with.”

“You mean like figuring out who wanted humanity dead and why? And how we can avoid something we don’t even know enough about to avoid?”

“Yeah, that.”

His arm around Emmaline tightens. “Well, I’m keeping an eye on that sky all the same.”

We fall back into silence as I steer through the deserted streets. A cardinal wings by, a bright red flash in a quiet, hazy world. The carrion birds are nowhere to be seen.

I turn onto Medical Center Drive, curve around the four-story parking garage toward the main entrance, and suddenly I can go no farther.

“Damn,” Trey says.

Cars and ambulances choke the area. There must be a hundred, maybe more, bumper to bumper along the sidewalk, filling the street, even squeezed together on the green divider that used to serve as a picnic area. There’s no order to the mess; people parked wherever they could, and fenders point in all directions.

I pull on the brake and turn off the engine. “There’s no way through. We have to climb over.”

“Let’s go then.” Emmaline darts out as soon as he opens his door.

I open my own door and climb out. My knees buckle. Suddenly I’m flat on the pavement, my shins bruised and my right elbow stinging with a scrape.

“Paige!” Running footsteps, then Trey is looming over me as Emmaline laps at my face.