“Teach me how to use that bow,” Malorie says one morning, alone with Sam in the living room. She’s ready now.

Sam nods.

“Of course.”

—

Olympia and Tom guide her as Malorie carries the weapon. She didn’t outright tell Sam what she’s doing, but he knows.

She hasn’t been able to bring herself to use Tom’s visor. It would be what feels like a seventeen-year leap. Yet, getting this done requires being able to see.

So she uses the eyes of her children.

This is the fourth time they’ve gone into town, looking for him, the man Tom still mistakenly calls Henry. The man Olympia knew, instinctively, was wrong from the start.

With each trip out, Malorie steels herself for change. She has never killed anybody. She has never had to pull a trigger, slit a throat, strangle an intruder. None of the dangerous people they encountered on their myriad journeys. Not even the uncommon strangers discovered in Camp Yadin, the place she last called home.

But killing Gary will mean more than just becoming a killer. She will also be leveling the loose ends of her time spent in the house with the housemates. The very friends she buried, finding everybody’s body but his.

They find him outside a former liquor store not far from where they stay with Sam. Olympia spots him and taps Malorie on the shoulder in the manner she’s been instructed to do.

“He’s sleeping against the outside wall,” Olympia says.

“It’s him,” Tom says.

The bow is formidable. But after seventeen years of living to protect, Malorie is the strongest she’s ever been.

“A little higher,” Tom says.

He’s at Malorie’s shoulder, helping her aim.

“A little more,” Olympia says. She adjusts the angle of the bow.

If they miss, they will have to think fast.

She can almost hear the door closing. The clicking of a lock. The past put away.

It strikes her as somewhat incredible that, in a way, Gary was right.

Man was the creature she and the housemates had to fear most.

“All right,” Tom says.

Malorie pulls the trigger. Gary makes no sound.

“It hit him right in his chest,” Tom says.

“His heart,” Olympia says.

The three walk cautiously to his dead body.

“Eat shit,” Tom says.

“Watch your mouth,” Malorie says. Then, “For someone who talked too much, he had no last words.”

Olympia guides Malorie’s hand to check Gary’s pulse.

He’s dead.

“Don’t remove that arrow,” Malorie says. “I want him to stay forever this way.”

—

The teens are asleep. Sam is asleep.