“Who indeed?” Henry says. “And it makes you wonder, it makes you ask, who is the monster? Not I, Tom. Not us. Indian River has accepted me. Just as it accepts everyone. Your mother would say a place like this must draw the psychos. And maybe it has. But a madman at ease is safer than a sane woman unsettled. The creatures may be monsters, but as evidenced by your mother and the life she deemed fit for you…those nasty things are not the problem. Man is the creature he fears.”

The words rattle in Tom’s head like broken sticks outside Cabin Three at Camp Yadin. Tom hears them, yes, thinks he even knows what they are, yes, but his mind is on other things.

Amazing things.

Outside, Athena Hantz calls for him. And beyond her voice, the sound of a community celebrating.

Already, Tom thinks.

Before even trying it.

And isn’t that everything he’s ever wanted? To celebrate the effort? The results be damned?

“Best be going,” Henry says. But his hand is still on Tom’s shoulder, keeping him rooted to the ground. “You thought you cut the apron strings by leaving the train…” Henry laughs. Not the happy kind. “You’re about to positively slash them.”

THIRTY

Malorie smells rot seconds before Olympia tugs on her arm.

“Mom…”

Malorie stops walking. It’s harrowing enough to grasp the reality that her daughter can look, but the gravity in Olympia’s voice chills her.

“How bad is it?”

They’ve reached Indian River. It’s as black as it’s ever been behind Malorie’s blindfold.

“Well,” she says, “in sight, from where we stand, and we’re just at the border, literally…”

“Olympia. Out with it.”

“Bodies, Mom. So many bodies.”

Malorie knows that, right now, this moment, she has to be as strong as she’s ever been.

“And there’s…” Olympia’s voice trails off the way it does when someone is observing something bad. “Flags. Plastic flags…pinned to each of their chests.”

“What do you mean?” But it doesn’t matter. Whatever Hell unfolds before them, they must go through it.

“Heroes,” Olympia says. “Tributes, I think. To the fallen.”

Malorie thinks, Sacrifices.

“It’s bad,” Olympia says. “I’ve never seen…so much…”

It smells to Malorie like an entire graveyard’s worth of bodies never buried.

“Okay,” Malorie says. She’s trying to remain calm. She must. “Do you see your brother?”

“No,” Olympia says, her voice shaken. “It’s not like that. The road leads toward buildings. Bodies in the road.”

“Don’t look at them. Don’t think of them. Do you see Tom ahead?”

Malorie hardly recognizes the stability in her own voice. A thought flutters distantly; all her paranoid preparations, all her rules, have led to this moment in time.

Is she ready? Has she done right by herself, by her teens?