Trace sits on the edge of her bed, looking out the window. The gun is in his hand. He runs his thumb along it. He turns to me and fear squeezes my heart until his expression softens, becomes something very sad, and then I’m not afraid anymore. It would kill her to see him like this. If she can see him like this now, it’s killing her.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me.

I sit down on the bed. He returns to the view of the street below. I follow his gaze and I see the infected walking slowly back and forth.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“Okay,” he says. He nods. “Good.”

He puts the gun under his chin and pulls the trigger.

Blood is in the air. It’s in my mouth.

I stumble away from Trace and then Rhys and Cary are at the door asking me what’s going on and then they see it and understand it immediately. Trace is dead. We’ve lost Grace, Harrison, and Trace. There are only three of us now. Only three.

Rhys grabs my arm and tries to haul me to my feet. “We have to go—” He pulls me away from Trace’s body but I dig my heels in because Grace wouldn’t want me to leave him like this. “Sloane, we have to leave—”

“But—Trace—”

“No, we have to go now!”

I glimpse the view out the window. The infected are scrambling, trying to source the sound of the shot. I can hear a familiar thudding echoing through the house. Splintering wood. We rush downstairs and I am trying to explain how Trace died, he killed himself, even though they know. I run into the living room, grab my crowbar. I try to get my book bag, fumble to put it on but Rhys and Cary are screaming that there’s no time, no time. The fridge teeters forward and back, the dead trying to push it out of the way. They know we’re in here.

“We’re close,” Cary says as we follow him down the hall, “so just run!”

He pushes the door open. I know this, we’ve done this before, those first few days. The streets bustling with hungry dead, us against them, no time to think up a better plan than just run and hope and pray. I take the lead and I make them sprint for a house across the road—it’s Mrs. Crispell’s house. The backyard is fenced.

“We have to get past the fence—”