“There.” Trey points. The girl is two blocks away now and walking at a fast clip.

“Let’s go.” I head after her at a slow jog, not bothering to see if Trey follows. I open my mouth to call out after the girl, but decide against it. What if more of those nail-shooting things are lurking around?

Trey catches up to me. “You okay to run like this?” he whispers, keeping pace.

“Yep.” But my gasping breath gives me away. “Not for long though.”

We’re gaining on the girl. Our footsteps seem too loud, even though we’re running mostly on our toes, the crunch of fallen leaves echoing through the trees and the silent, ghostly mansions to either side of the street. But she walks on, caught up in her own thoughts, I guess. Her backpack jounces against her back. It looks deflated and empty. Maybe she’s making a supply run.

She whisks around a corner. Trey and I exchange a glance, then we sprint to catch up.

My diaphragm heaves with oxygen debt, but I don’t dare slow down. She’s only the second person I’ve seen alive since I woke, and I won’t lose her.

We round the corner. The girl is just ahead, close enough that I won’t have to shout. She’s tiny, barely more than five feet tall, and her side-swept hair reveals a thin, delicate neck.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Hello?”

She whirls.

Her huge brown eyes are rimmed with thick black eyeliner, her lips plumped with blood-red lipstick. She’s pale and small, with a heart-shaped face that ends in a perfect, pointed chin. She looks elfin. Vampiric, even. And she stares at us mouth agape, eyes wide with surprise.

No, not surprise. Rage.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she spits out.

“I’m sorry?” Trey says.

“Get the hell away from me,” she says.

I gape at her. “Why? I mean, you’re alive. I . . . we’re really glad to see you.”

Her body is wound tight, a coil of fury about to explode. “Just back off.”

Trey puts his hands up. “No worries,” he says. “We’re not going to hurt you. We just—”

“Leave me alone.”

“We could help you,” I insist. “We have food. Supplies—”

Her tiny hands become fists. “Oh, my god, did you not hear me the first fifty thousand times? I said back. The fuck. Off.”

She turns tail and sprints away, leaving Trey and me to stare open-mouthed.

I say, “Should we go after her?”

Trey shakes his head.

“But—”

“Momma taught me that a lady’s no means no. I expect that holds true even in the apocalypse.”

I frown. “It’s not like we’re asking her out.”

“She was very clear about what she wants,” he says.