Sandra blinked, looked into her daughter’s blood-smeared face and touched her cheek tentatively. “You’re hurt.”

Katie shook her head. “Not me. Bruce.”

“Bruce?”

“That’s who I’m trying to tell you about. Bruce, the old man who lives across the street.”

“Archie’s serial killer?”

Katie rolled her eyes. “He’s a retired English teacher, and he’s a friend. He’s been teaching me to drive. He’s had this old Cadillac hidden in his garage and—”

“He’s been what?”

“Mom!” Katie shrieked. “Shut up and listen!”

Sandra recoiled. “Okay,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Bruce is a good guy. He’s my friend. He’s been teaching me to drive. And today we took out his real car so we could go find Archie, but then we got swarmed by those fucking cars and there was this hitchhiker with a gun, but we got rid of him and we thought we were in the clear, but then this Arrival T-bones us and Bruce is hurt real bad and I got back here and we have to find some way to help him or I think he’s going to die.”

Katie, somehow, managed to get that all out in one breath.

“Where?” Sandra asked. “Where is he?”

Katie filled her lungs with air and said, “Turner Point Road, I think it is. The car’s half in the ditch. When I left Bruce he was still alive but he’s not good. We have to get an ambulance out there.”

Sandra sighed. She told Katie, quickly, about what had happened to the ambulance at the community center. For all she knew, all island emergency vehicles had been brought down by the infected cars.

Sandra clasped her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “I want to help him. We’ll try to think of something. But right now, right this second, we have to find Archie.”

Katie bit her lip, then nodded. “I know.”

“You still have your phone?”

“Yeah, but whenever I tried to call you it never went through.”

“I lost my phone. I’ve been using Lisa Carver’s.” Sandra paused. “She’s dead.”

“Shit,” Katie said. “I mean, yeah, I’m sorry she’s dead, but shit, I saw that name come up on my phone and ignored it.”

“I’m going to Archie’s friends’. You stay here in case he comes back. If he does, call me. If I find him, I’ll call you.”

Katie looked unconvinced. “I don’t want you going out there.”

Sandra managed a smile, put her palm to her daughter’s cheek. “We’ve both survived this long.”

Sandra got Katie to tell her where, exactly, Archie’s friends lived. She told her how to find Rory’s house, that it was the one with the salmon-colored interlock brick driveway.

“You be careful,” she told Katie.

“I’m home,” she said. “Nothing bad can happen to me here.”