It takes two tries to break the window with the crowbar. The first time it recoils and only cracks the glass. Second time’s the charm. It shatters. I try to clear away as much of the broken pane as I can but Cary tells me to stop, stop it we have to go. Except the window is too small to fit through with our book bags on. We toss them out ahead of us and then we squeeze through slowly. I go first, after the last book bag. The glass cuts into my arms and I think of that woman twisting her way through our picture window. The picture window. How can it be safe at home if the picture window is broken?

Rain spatters against my face. I land on the ground. There are no dead here, but I don’t know what’s beyond that fence. Harrison is next out the window and then Cary. As soon as he’s clear, an ominous rumble sounds overhead. The sky opens up and drenches us.

We have to crawl down the hill so we won’t be seen. We drag ourselves across muddy, dead-spring grass. It’s a full-on storm and the only thing I’m grateful for is the smell of earth this close to my face. I dig my hands into the grit. I like how it feels.

Even amid all this, I like the way it feels.

I don’t know how long it’s been since we left the school. It’s light out now. It can’t be that long but maybe it has been. Time has a way of shifting funnily in situations like these. There is not enough of it or there is too much of it and it’s always one when you need the other.

We finally get to the edge of the fence and press our backs against it. We can’t stay here long. Sooner or later, the dead will drift from the car—the alarm has stopped—and stumble their way down here. And the fence—it’s not the kind you can jump.

I press my face against it, like I could hear through the wood, through the rain. I can’t hear anything. I don’t know what’s on the other side. I hate to gamble like this.

We crawl along. Trace is in the back. Cary is in the front. I’m behind Cary, Rhys is behind me, Harrison is behind Rhys. Lily will freak when she sees me like this, covered in mud, alive. I wonder if she’ll cry, if she’ll believe I’m there, if she’ll press her hands against my face to prove it. I bet even then she still won’t believe it.