Furious, I run over to the road that we’d come along. Sure enough, there are little droplets of gas all along the road. I run back to the others.

“Okay, now we really have to get out of here,” I say, urgently. “We’ve made a trail with gas all the way here. If there are slaverunners on that road, we’ll lead them right to us.”

Everyone looks terrified.

“You want us to walk?” Bree says, trembling. “In the pitch black?”

“We have no choice,” I say, marching ahead. “Come on! Everyone, get a move on!”

I’m starting to lose my cool. But the rest of the gang knows I’m right and they start to follow.

As the night grows darker and colder I curse under my breath. Our two-hour drive has just turned into a twenty-four-hour trek.

*

The sun starts to rise. We’ve been walking all night. As the black nothingness I’d found comforting disappears, I’m now faced with a sight of destruction and devastation.

Up ahead a rusted metal sign reads Galesburg, but it’s the only thing left standing. The rest of the town has been reduced to a huge crater. Someone dropped a bomb here so powerful it wiped the entire town off the face of the earth, leaving behind nothing but a welcome sign teetering on the edge of the crater.

It’s heartbreaking to think of what this place once was. To think of all the innocent families blown to pieces, their lives cut short in one catastrophic moment.

“I don’t believe it,” Ben says, breaking through my thoughts.

I look up. Just ahead, the only thing standing beside the long, straight road, is a used car yard, still filled with cars.

I try not to let myself feel too hopeful, but as the gang rushes over, the dogs barking excitedly at our heels, I start to feel that we might have had our first stroke of luck in hours.

Together we rush across the street to the auto salvage yard. They cars look like ones from the 1950s. The doors, thankfully, are unlocked.

Zeke climbs in the front driver’s seat.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he says. “It has a full tank of gas.”

I can’t believe our luck. But no sooner do we get the good luck than we’re immediately hit with the bad luck.

“Damn, no keys,” Zeke says.

“That’s not a problem,” Molly replies. “I can hotwire a car.”

I raise my eyebrows at her. She shrugs.

“We all have pasts, Brooke,” she says with a haughty little smile.