There were two men and two women from what he could tell. One of the men was huge in both height and strength. The others all seemed rather similar to each other. Each had an overstuffed pack on their shoulders, and the way they were walking, slumped and haggard, showed they’d been at it a long time. They stopped, dropping those heavy packs carelessly to the ground, near the foot of the bridge, perhaps seeing it much like the Orphan and Roxy had seen it—an excuse to stop and rest. In fact, daylight was melting into twilight; they were probably going to camp over there.

“Do they seem like murderers?” Roxy asked.

The Orphan eased backward down the slope until confident of being unseen, then stood up and walked back to the truck. Roxy followed right on his heels.

“Well?” she pushed. “Do they look like bad guys or good guys? I think they seem perfectly harmless.”

But he couldn’t give her an answer, yet—he wished she’d stayed on the hill. Placing both hands on the hood of the vehicle, his back to her, he closed his eyes and forced himself to take five long, deep breaths.

Minho, he thought. My name is Minho. He held on to that, tried to push away the instinct that had come over him. The instinct to kill and ask questions later. But no sooner had he gone that mental route before he doubted himself. Those people could be infected. Those people might have the same instincts as me.

“We need to leave,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they hear us—we’ll be long gone by the time they do. We can just drive farther north, follow the river until we find another bridge—this one is too frail to hold us, anyway.”

She didn’t respond, not even a grunt of disagreement or an “Mm-hm” of acknowledgment. He sighed, wishing that he could be alone to deal with this. He wasn’t in the mood to argue. Releasing another sigh, exaggerated with frustration, he turned around and leaned backward against the truck.

She was gone. Vanished.

He sprinted back up the hill, hoping she’d kept her senses. He reached the top.

No . . . she hadn’t vanished at all.

Down below, she’d just stepped onto the rickety frame of the bridge.

Her days went through cycles, and after so many days of going through those cycles—usually in the same order as the day before and then again the day after—it all became a routine. A routine dug deep, all the way to bedrock. Jackie gave up on breaking it, even if she had wanted to.