Haru looked at the playground. “We’ve got about three feet of brush coming up through the asphalt, rising to six or seven if we can make it to what I assume used to be a soccer field.” He looked at Izzy. “I don’t think we can carry her.”

“I’ll grab her and run,” said Marcus. “You cover me. Those taller saplings are only—”

“No,” said Haru, “but that’s exactly what we’re going to pretend we’re doing.” He pointed behind them, a few feet past them along the base of the school wall. Marcus saw the black rectangle of a broken basement window. “You drag her in there,” said Haru, gathering a pile of broken asphalt chunks. “I’ll do my best to make it look like we’re crawling across the field.”

Marcus nodded. “How much time will that buy us?”

“Enough,” said Haru. “If it works. We’ll find another door and slip out of the building on the far side.”

Marcus sighed, looking at the ominous black hole of the basement window. “If I get eaten by badgers or whatever the hell’s down there, I’m going to pretend like this wasn’t our only viable option.”

“Go.”

Marcus rolled Izzy onto her back, brought her arms over her head, and grasped both wrists with his left hand; with his right elbow, on his stomach, he started crawling across the broken asphalt toward the window. The rough edges ripped into his clothes, and a bullet winged off the wall above his head. He kept low, trying not to shake the bushes. Haru threw rocks into the field, keeping the arc low so the Partials couldn’t see them; when they landed, they shook the brush. Marcus thought it must have worked, because the next sniper shot slammed harmlessly into the bushes about twenty feet out from the wall.

He reached the window and peered in; the air inside was dank, like a cave, and Marcus smelled wet dog. Unless recently abandoned, the basement had become an animal lair, though the dogs probably didn’t use this entrance; the ground around it was loose, not packed like a high-traffic passage would be. He couldn’t see much, and decided it was safer to crawl in himself before pulling the sick woman after him.

He was only halfway in when Haru scrabbled to a stop next to the window, breathing heavily. “Pretty sure the game is up,” he said. A bullet slammed into the brick wall above him. “Yep. Get out of the way.”

Marcus slithered the rest of the way through, dropping to the floor and immediately slipping in several inches of slick mud. He stood up and pulled Izzy through, listening as more bullets exploded against the wall. As soon as the window was clear, Haru launched himself through, landing with a strangled groan in the mud.

“It smells like dead dogs in here.”