She sighs heavily. “Alone. I thought I was all alone in the world. The last girl left alive. It was amazing. The best thing that ever happened to me.”

Trey and I share a puzzled glance over her head.

“And then you two show up, and it’s like, I can’t even have one nice thing. Not even in the apocalypse. But maybe being alone isn’t so great, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Not so great.”

She rises from the couch and stands strong, hands on her hips. Her voice is fierce when she says, “There’s a house in New Albany. I have to get there. With my paints.”

New Albany is about twenty minutes away by car, and I’m not sure it’s safe to trek over there, but Trey gives me a slight nod, so I say, “Sure. Whatever you need. We’ll go tomorrow.”

It’s full dark. Tanq and I sit side by side on the bed upstairs, Emmaline at our feet. Trey is sleeping in another bedroom across the hall, though I won’t be surprised if he joins us at some point. It seems that guy never really sleeps.

Coach Buckell’s house has four bedrooms, plus a huge finished basement. Plenty of space for more people, if we can just find them.

“So this is where you first saw me,” she says, staring out the window toward the mansion with the tower.

“Trey and I started keeping a watch,” I explain. “We were hoping to run across more survivors. We saw the light in your window. Hey, do you have any personal belongings over there? We can go and grab all your stuff and—”

“Everything important is in my backpack.”

“Okay. Is that your house? Or were you just camping there?”

“I grew up on the east side,” she says. “Well, Whitehall. I bailed as soon as my mom got too sick to come chasing after me. Wanted to see how rich people live, so I holed up in the nicest empty house I could find. What about you? Is this your house?”

“I lived in Clintonville.”

“Nice neighborhood.”

“Yep.”

“But not as nice as this one.”

“Nope.”

Whoomp.

Tanq shoots up from the bed. “What was that?”

Out the window, the dark horizon glows soft blue for the space of three seconds.

“It’s happened a few times now,” I say. “Or maybe every night; I sleep through it sometimes. We don’t know what it is. Comes from somewhere up north. Wait a moment. It’ll happen again.”

She settles back onto the bed, hands clasped, shoulders tight in the space beside me, making herself as small as possible. Her wide eyes have a feral glint.

Whoomp.

Tanq recoiled as though struck.

“Weird, huh?” I say, trying to sound only casually concerned.

She nods. “North, you say?”

“Like, directly north. As north as you can get.”

“Sandusky, then.”

“You think?”