I pictured this differently in my head. Pictured the turning slow. Baxter starts breathing again. Relief flashes across Grace’s face until she notices the difference. The terrible familiarity of the sound creeps up on her. The mechanical breaths of the dead.

Baxter’s body jerks once.

He opens his eyes.

His irises are white.

“Grace, get back!”

Baxter grabs Grace and in one swift motion, their positions are reversed. She’s on the floor, on her back, and he’s on top of her and someone is screaming, everyone is screaming—

“Get him off her—get him off her now!”

Grace pushes at his shoulders, tries as hard as she can to get Baxter’s mouth away from every part of her flesh and then Harrison shouts, “Trace, the gun!”

But I don’t think there’s time, there is no time. Baxter grabs her wrist and pulls it to his lips and I do the only thing I can think of to do—I grab Baxter and I pull him off her and then there’s a shot, this incredible bang and it’s so in my ears I feel it in my teeth. Baxter rolls sideways and I go with him, but he is not dead. It wasn’t a good enough shot. Baxter starts to twitch my way and I’m frozen but if this is it, it’s okay because I saved Grace. I saved her.

“Sloane, move!” I don’t know who shouts it. Cary, Rhys, Trace. There’s another shot, another shock, and then, Baxter is motionless on the ground. Trace’s aim was true this time.

Blood pools onto the floor from Baxter’s head.

“Shit!” Trace is shaking. “You said he said he wasn’t—you said he wasn’t infected!” He says this to me like this is my fault. Like I brought Baxter back into this school. He stares at the gun for a minute. “I killed him,” he says stupidly. He laughs. “Holy shit, I killed—I—fuck! That was close—Grace—” He turns to her. “Grace?”

We all turn to her.

She’s still on the floor, dazed.

Trace hurries to her. “You didn’t get bitten, did you? Did you—”

“No…” She tries to get to her feet but it’s like invisible hands keep her pinned to the ground. Her eyes widen in faint surprise. “Oh…”

Trace sets the gun down and a dull whine fills my head, my heart breaks in half. His hands hover over her like he’s afraid to touch her and Cary shines the light on her slowly and I see red, her stomach is red.

“Oh Grace,” I say. “Grace—”

“I’m okay,” she assures us, and she tries to get up again but she can’t and her eyes settle into a kind of understanding that makes me want to run so far away.