Craig shrugs. “Good a place as any.” Then he laughs again, wheezing as he does. “I mean there’s nothing around for miles and miles.”

For someone who has been alone for so long, he seems strangely jovial. I can’t help but think of Emmanuel in the castle on the Thousand Islands. Being alone has driven him crazy, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe because being crazy has made it possible for him to survive.

There’s ample space in the bunker part for everyone to get a place to sleep, though we leave our stuff upstairs in order not to crowd the room. We all huddle up together, full after eating jar after jar of provisions. Knowing we’re so close to Houston—just an eight-hour drive—has made us throw caution to the wind. We all know that once we wake up tomorrow morning, we’ll head out on the open road and reach our destination. With the radio to help guide us, there’s no way we can fail. That doesn’t stop me whispering a prayer under my breath. This world is brutal and unpredictable and I know that between now and tomorrow evening, anything could happen.

For the first time in a long time, we feel like we can relax, let our guards down just a little bit. The bunker feels so secure, not to mention being in the middle of literally nowhere. But feeling secure gives our minds the chance to process what’s happened. One by one, our emotions creep up on us. Zeke and Stephan are dead. So are Rose, Flo, and Logan. We’ve all lost so much, seen so much, fought for so long.

“Hey, Molly,” I say when I realize sleep won’t come to me. “What did you mean when you said we all had pasts?”

I hear her sigh in the darkness. “I meant that I was a bit of trouble when I was a kid. The hotwiring cars kind. My parents were going crazy because of me. I was always in trouble. Then the war came and they died. There’s nothing like being orphaned to make you clean up your act.”

Her words hang in the air. Silence falls in the cabin as we all process what she said.

“I lost my parents too,” Ryan says. “During one of the first airstrikes.”

I roll onto my side and look over at where his disembodied voice is coming from. It’s so dark that I can’t even make out his silhouette. I wonder if that’s the reason for his sudden candidness. In all the six months we were together in Fort Noix, Ryan never spoke about anything personal like his family or life before the war. I never asked because I figured he had a reason not to.

“But it was when my sister died that it was the worst,” he finishes.

“What happened to her?” Bree asks softly.