They were working the reception table at the dance, taking tickets. They wore matching dresses, as always.

They were beloved. Because they were never cruel.

Despite how beautiful they were, and how popular, they never once went out of their way to hurt anyone else. They were kind to the mumbling boys who worked up the courage to ask them out, no matter how dorky. They never joined in the nuclear-grade annihilation of their classmates with the mean girls at the lunch table in the cafeteria. They were nice to everyone.

Even Wade Wellman. They smiled pleasantly as he entered the lobby of the gymnasium in his black leather trench coat.

Wade opened the coat and brought up the AR-15 and fired.

The first slug hit Hope in the face. She toppled over, dead in an instant, as the second round shattered her sister’s sternum before shredding her heart and lungs.

Wade fired off another burst. He tagged John Mercer in the leg, breaking his tibia and fibula, turning his calf into hamburger. A ricochet from the same burst sent splinters of cinder block from the wall into the face of Terri Rogers. She was blinded permanently in one eye, and John would need a cane to walk at graduation, but they would survive. Max Wagstaff, Jay Dreyer, Elena Santos, and Amy Parker did not.

The others in the lobby got away. They said later that Wade was smiling the whole time.

He was. He’d never felt better in his life.

Wade had been angry and lost after Goodson died. He’d felt something powerful when he worked with the salesman. He figured out very quickly that they were doing more than selling chocolates; it’s hard to con a con man, right? So Goodson had brought him into the scheme. He knew he was helping to sucker his classmates into something horrible.

But he didn’t care. He liked being on the inside. And he liked having real strength for the first time in his life.

When the other Followers in Middleton found Wade, they told him he could be part of something bigger on New Year’s Eve.

He jumped at the chance. The other Warriors went along with him. They had helped with the preparations for tonight. They’d bought the rifle and the ammo. They’d helped buy the fertilizer and the diesel fuel for the bomb.

But they’d all turned coward tonight. They’d all found reasons to avoid Wade in the past couple of days, as all the big talk got closer to reality. They were probably hiding in their bedrooms at this moment, hoping the worst would pass them by.

He didn’t care. Wade would be the only one left standing in the new world. He’d be a king, like the Followers promised.