Elliott looks out the rear windshield one last time and then exhales, sagging in his seat. Then, after a long moment, he reaches up and buckles his seat belt.

I burst out laughing.

He stares at me for a second, then, ruefully, grins. “Safety first.”

“Sure,” I say. I feel giddy, my joints loose and slippery with relief.

We’re heading out of the city now and into a forested area. The road is lined by towering longleaf pines, their trunks pencil-straight and crowded close together, their sparse green tops hidden far above us in the thickening gray. I slow to fifty as heavier fog patches start drifting across the road, then, thinking better of it, I let the speedometer creep back up to fifty-five. This’ll be tricky; I need to go slow enough to compensate for the fog, but fast enough to outrun the Beings that are surely roaming through it.

That’s not our only worry, either. Judging by the fuel gauge we’ve only got a few gallons in the tank. We’re going to have to find some gas pretty quick if we want to keep our getaway car running. But for now at least, we’re safe.

Elliott is looking at me. His earlier smile is gone, a speculative look in its place. “For a second back there I thought you would leave me.”

My hands tighten reflexively on the steering wheel. I don’t need him thinking I’m going to “turn good” or be redeemed or whatever. Being good only means tying yourself to someone else’s set of rules, and following rules is as likely to kill me as anything else out here. “I’ll leave you next time,” I promise.

He raises his eyebrows but says nothing, instead pulling off the length of cord that’s still looped around his shoulder and chest. He starts working to untangle it. “So what do we do now?”

I’m silent for a moment. The giddiness starts to fade and my earlier fatigue filters back in. I’m going to need to sleep soon—but not yet. Not until I’ve got some sort of plan.

Ahead, a radio antenna looms out of the fog, its base overgrown by brown wire grass. The grass is about waist-high, spindly with tufted tops, and it almost manages to hide the claw marks gouged deep into the metal. This must be the antenna we saw from the helicopter, its snapped-off top sticking out above the fog. I’m almost positive it’s also the same antenna my brother promised we would climb together when he got back. This has to be the road we drove last year, when he moved me to Cisco Island.

I keep my eyes on the antenna until it recedes into the fog. Then I clear my throat. “I remember there being a small regional airport a few hours’ drive from here.”