Joel felt the knife press against his neck, just like Dylan must have felt. Joel closed his eyes. Was he even surprised to learn he was going to die this way? After all, he’d spent all week learning that he and his brother were far more alike than he’d ever thought.

A strange croaking noise came from the kitchen. Kimbra tried to rise to her feet, struck something, slid down again. She moaned.

“For fuck’s sake,” Browder shouted. His voice was no longer quite his own. He spun toward the kitchen and hustled in her direction. The wet knife left a string of black beads across the pale floor. A furious hiss seeped from the darkness in his mouth.

Joel heard, from a great distance, someone who sounded an awful lot like Clark shouting somewhere outside.

Kimbra moaned again.

Faintly, very faintly, Joel heard another truck approaching.

LUKE

Luke joined Bryan, the Perlin tackle, as the boy rushed outside the orange trailer at the first sound of distress. Bethany Tanner—how in all holy fuck had she made it here?—was being dragged across the dirt by her feet, the spangles peeling from her green Bisonette’s uniform like a fish’s scales under a knife.

Tomas Hernandez dropped her precisely where Luke had stood just a short time before, dead center in the circle of trailers. Mr. Boone awaited her. In his leather jacket and motorcycle chaps, surrounded by a small army of naked boys, he resembled some sad parody of a warlord in a decimated future.

Mitchell Malacek descended the creaking stairs of the triple-wide bearing a handgun of his own. Parter followed him, a pump-action shotgun in one hand. To Luke’s horror he saw the big man slipping something that looked an awful lot like a red .38 buck shell into the pocket of his old Bison jacket.

The hulking frame of Garrett Mason, sheathed in his pads and helmet, emerged behind them, a long, black AR-15 semiautomatic rifle braced across his chest.

“The fuck are they doing?” Luke said to Bryan, appalled.

Bryan was shaking. “Shut up, fuck, shut up.”

Mr. Boone and Coach Parter and Garrett and Mitchell all came to stand above Bethany, regarding her. The generator rumbled. Bethany struggled to rise. Mitchell lowered his gun to within a few inches of her face. She went still.

Mr. Boone started to talk, turning to take in the two dozen boys standing on porches or framed in windows, their hands over their crotches and their mouths.

Boone couldn’t quite keep a nervous stammer from his voice. “I know none you boys want trouble here. None of you—”

“What’s that?” Garrett said.

The other boys stirred. Luke heard it too: the crunch of tires on dirt.

A sturdy-looking old Chevy rumbled to a stop between the green trailer (the trailer, Luke realized with a start, that held his phone and his keys) and the blue Water House. Four guns all swiveled around to face the truck’s driver.

The Chevy shifted into Park. Slowly, slowly, its door swung open.