“Hadley, take care of them!” she yelled, pointing at the truck as she ran for Lopez. She heard shots a moment later, and then tires squealing. She glanced over to see the truck flying around the corner and out of sight.

She sprinted to Lopez, who was still on the ground. He’d rolled over onto his back. Blood pooled on the concrete beneath him. His eyes fluttered and then shut. His body went still.

“Oh god,” she said, kneeling down beside him. She fumbled for her phone, and then shakily dialed and pressed it to her ear.

“This is Maisie Rojas. I need you to send someone right now. Dr. Lopez has been shot.”

LENNON

TODAY, LENNON:

had been pushed from an airplane,

was captured by cannibals,

had gotten injected with an experimental vaccine against his will,

had participated in (okay, mostly watched) several gun fights, and

had lit two men on fire.

It had been quite a day, to say the least.

An ambulance had appeared to take Dr. Lopez away, and Lennon had been ushered inside with Hadley and Maisie. They took him to a hospital, and Lennon was deposited in the hallway, where he’d been waiting for the past two hours.

Apparently, they were no longer worried about him running away.

He’d actually considered going outside. He still hadn’t had much of an opportunity to explore, but he didn’t know what he’d do if he lost track of Maisie and Hadley. He had no phone—the kidnappers had taken it in Georgia—and even if he had, he didn’t think it would connect to the network in the quarantine zone.

People rushed by in the hallways, but rarely paid much attention to him, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall.

It was remarkably like a regular hospital. He wasn’t sure what he expected—chaos, maybe—but it all looked the same. Nurses and doctors in scrubs and masks, everyone holding a tablet that probably had patient charts on it. He wondered how they were trained. Schooling in the quarantine zone was a mystery, though everyone he’d talked to so far clearly had some kind of education. He was ashamed to admit that he’d sort of imagined them all as those cannibals at the border—dirty idiots with no common sense.

The door at the end of the hallway opened, and Maisie walked out. Her shirt had blood splattered across it—Lopez’s—and she’d haphazardly wrapped a piece of white bandage around her left hand.

“Sorry,” Maisie said as he got to his feet. “We wanted to stay until he got out of surgery, but turns out it’s going to be a while.”

“Is he doing okay?” Lennon asked.

“They think he’s going to pull through.”

“That’s good.”

“Listen, I don’t really know what to do with you, so you’re just going to come home with me. Hadley’s going to meet us there later.”

“Do you guys live together?”

“No, one of the bombs destroyed her place.” She sighed, pushing a hand over her ponytail. “You okay to walk? It’s a couple miles, but buses aren’t running. We walk a lot here.”