He tilts his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What’s life and what’s existence?” He takes another deep breath and another, as if he can’t get enough air. I scramble at the rocks, knowing that once he dies he’ll Return and that behind him even more dead are coming. “Which would you choose?” he asks, his voice gravelly and wet.

I set a rock aside in case I need to use it against him. I make sure my machete’s within easy reach. The sound of the dead approaching rumbles and roars, making my work take on a frantic edge.

“It’s a fool’s choice, that’s what it is,” I tell him. “One brings you pain and the other numbness.”

He smiles wider, enjoying himself. “Isn’t that the question of life?”

I don’t answer. I dig.

“I know you think I’m a bad person, Annah,” he says softly. I glance back at him. He’s rolled almost onto his side. He’s gulping for air. I’m the last person he’ll ever talk to. The last person he’ll ever see—at least when he’s alive.

“I think we all make choices,” I tell him quietly.

And then he stops breathing.

I scramble for the machete and start running toward him, hoping to end it before he can Return, but when I’m halfway there I realize just how deafening the moaning through the tunnels has become. I recognize the beating under my feet, so constant that I’d grown accustomed to it. The air swells around me, and when I look up I see their eyes first.

They’re coming for me, a wall in the distance. I glance back at Ox, my grip on the machete so tight that my knuckles ache. He’s already twitching; his mouth opens and he screams loud before his vocal cords collapse and he’s struggling to his feet.

Terror wells inside me, as frigid as ice water. It threatens to paralyze me but I break against it, sprinting back to the debris pile.

They come after me, shuffling and stumbling and thundering with their moans. I tear at the rock wall, try again to shove myself through the gap. It’s still too narrow.

I can’t stop glancing back, some sick part of me needing to know just how much time I have left. Ox lumbers toward me, the rest of the horde closing in around him. He raises his arms, reaching for me.

I hack at the stones again with the machete. Anything to make this gap a little wider. For a brief moment I even consider taking the machete to myself—cutting off an arm so that I could fit through the opening—but I know it would be useless. I’d bleed to death before I ever made it outside.