Then the world came to an end and the rules changed. A lot of the pretty kids got eaten. Those that still had enough meat on the bone to reanimate were now pretty fucking ugly. And their clothes looked like shit. How embarrassing to be wearing last year’s fashions forever? That made Dahlia smile, even now. Even though it was petty and a little catty. It was also surreal, though. In a different way, and not entirely in a bad way. Not for her. While everyone she knew at school was dying, she’d come more fully alive. She’d become the leader of a roving band of survivors carving out their place in a post-apocalyptic world mostly populated by zombies. Actual zombies.

So freaking surreal.

And now . . .

Now this.

Dahlia stood in the center of a clearing, wearing a blindfold around her eyes, holding a Sharpie in each hand. Red in her left, blue in her right. Instead of knives. It was day seven of her training. And her life had now become some kind of action movie training montage. Weird exercises that were part wax-on, wax-off and part Jedi mind tricks. She’d tried calling the old man “Mr. Miyagi” or “Yoda,” but instead of taking offense he’d merely told her to grow up. That stung. A lot more than she thought it would.

“Again,” said Mr. Church.

She heard his voice but couldn’t tell exactly where it came from. He was spooky like that. He made only exactly as much sound as he wanted to. He could vanish without her hearing him go, and could appear as if he’d teleported down from the Enterprise. Scary. Some Jedi mind tricks for sure.

In this exercise he circled her and would lightly touch her somewhere—shoulder, arm, calf—and based on that touch Dahlia had to react, determine the angle of his body to hers, and touch him with one of the markers. He wore a white boiler suit, like a Hazmat suit but without a mask. Any marks she made would reveal how accurate she was, how smart her choice of targets, how fast she moved.

So far she hadn’t made a single mark on him. Not a dot.

She tried to stretch out with her senses. To hear and smell everything. To feel changes in the air around her. Had his voice come from her left side and a little behind? She thought so and shifted her weight to jump that way.

When it came, the touch was on her right hip. A fingertip against her hipbone. Dahlia whipped around and slashed right and left with the markers, crisscrossing the air in overlapping patterns.

There was no resistance.

“Again,” said the voice out of nowhere.

Another touch. Another move, faster than before; really trying.

“Again.”

“Again.”