“Ah,” Tinker hesitated. “Babel might not like this.”

Bugsy scoffed. “What, ’cause he’s a joker? Screw her. All the better if it twists her nipples. Come on.”

The joker-hating soldier began to protest, but his superior officer shut him down. He said, “They’ve just become Committee business. Let ’em alone, soldier.”

As Marcus started forward, feeling the first sense of relief in days, Olena said, “Wait! Marcus, the villagers. We can’t leave them.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Marcus pulled up. “Hey, it’s not just us. We’ve got a village with us. Good people. They helped us get here. We gotta get them inside, too.”

The aces exchanged glances. “Not likely,” Bugsy said. “We’re not running a shelter here.”

“Not a joker shelter, that’s for sure.” The hater again. Marcus felt like slapping him.

“Your villagers are jokers?” Bugsy asked. “In that case forget it, kid. There’s not a chance in hell. Babel runs things by the book, and a bunch of useless jokers ain’t in this particular book. Come on. And I’m not asking. Consider it a Committee order.” He moved off, Lama trudging glumly beside him. Tinker shrugged apologetically and turned to follow them.

“Marcus, we can’t just abandon them,” Olena said.

“I know.” He thought fast, watching the aces recede toward the gate. “I won’t do that. I promise. But this is our best shot. Get inside. Talk to people in power. We’ll find a way to get them inside.”

“You are promising?”

“Yes. Straight up promise. Come on.”

The sun beat down on her unmercifully. The last time she had eaten or had anything to drink had been in the Kazakh army camp. And now that she’d used the last of her fat, she was cadaverous and weak.

But, at last, she was out of the crazy zone. And the horror of what she’d done washed over her again and again. She relived every moment with ever-increasing shame and remorse. But even as she agonized, in some horrible part of her, remembering blasting Aero’s head apart came with a deep glee.

And then there were tears. They rolled down hot and bitter. Who was she now?

And she hadn’t saved Adesina at all.

That brat.

Shut up!

She kept walking. Step after staggering step. She didn’t know why.

You do, too.

And she did. She was going back to see her daughter and Joey. She wanted to be with them when the world came to an end.

Joey said, “I’ve got something!”

The constant terror of flirting with madness, of opening portals into hell and closing them before the devil noticed, had left Mollie exhausted and numb. Hours and hours of endless dread melted together into … boredom.

She’d heard this before, too. But every time one of Joey’s zombies glimpsed something that might have been a survivor, inspection with living eyes always revealed a gibbering vaguely human abomination that was too distorted to identify as a former Committee member.