Wyatt takes little time reaching me and pulling me off the ground. His hug is crushing and his words sweet and powerful in my ear. I feel the change in this moment—the actual hope that was missing in all our other fights. The good guys didn’t swoop in to win this one. It was only us. The dirty and conflicted. The morally questionable.
I look over Wyatt’s shoulder, searching for Cole, but he’s no longer on the stage.
“Where did he go?” I ask Wyatt.
“We’ll find him.” He looks past me and I see that Zoe is on the ground next to her father’s body. I take her hand and pull her away, back toward the way we came in.
Halfway across the platform, Parker and Mary Ellen appear from their hiding spot. Jude hobbles over, bloody from his fight with Jackson, and helps Parker back on the stage. They fall into a tight, heartbreaking hug and my eyes lock with Wyatt’s.
“Mary Ellen may need a little help,” I suggest. He raises an eyebrow but Zoe is the one that moves to help her. Once she’s on the platform, I can’t help but stare at the girl’s belly. Wyatt gives me a questioning look.
“She’s pregnant.” We watch Mary Ellen ghost her hand over the small bump protectively. “Finn’s, obviously.”
“Pregnant?”
I laugh at his confusion and it feels good. So good for something to break the fear and sorrow. “That still happens, even in the apocalypse.”
“I know that. I mean…” And for the few times since I’ve known and loved Wyatt Faraday, he looks afraid.
I pull him close, wrapping my arms around him. Death surrounds us. Hamilton is dead. Chloe gone. The Mutts are safe, for now, at least. Around Wyatt’s back I see my sister and father emerge from the rear of the stadium with Perez and her council. The Bama Brigade and Mutts are calm and organizing the crowds. Despite the sticky blood under my feet and the fact half our allies turned traitor, we’re stronger than ever.
“Tell me about that place again,” I say, keeping my eyes on my sister and father. I don’t want to let them out of my sight. “The one at the beach.”
His chin rests on my head and his arms squeeze me tight and Wyatt, whispering in my ear, reminds me of the little slice of heaven he claims waits for us further south. The place we can go to be together. Where we can exist in peace, away from the carnage and fighting.
Because after today, after the gunfire and blood, the girl who nearly lost it all in order to save those most important to her, plans one last thing.
To live for the future.
Epilogue
The air tastes salty, and when I step off the boardwalk my toes sink into the soft, gray sand. I can’t help but look down and marvel at the moment.
I’m barefoot.
Which is exactly how you get killed in the apocalypse.
There’s something else—at first it was jarring. The waves beat the sand unrelentingly, day and night. The sound settled in my ears, replacing the silence that has followed us for years, through the farmland and forests. Over mountains and in the dark of night. On our tiny island, silence doesn’t exist. The ocean is alive with the waves and wind. Wyatt was right. It’s perfection.
At first, I’m sure that we’ll all die. Me and Wyatt. Mary Ellen and the baby. I doubt Zoe will even make it on the trip. I’m convinced that now that we’re here, now that we’ve found the kids and the Armstrong family, I’ll bring danger with us. But Dorothy and her husband Matt are strong. Her daughters, their husbands and kids are even stronger. So we don’t. We don’t die out here on this island. Instead we survive. We live. And ultimately, although it’s in a different way, we thrive.
I sit on the bottom step of the boardwalk that leads up to the small beach house and think about how I got to this place. Before Chloe took over PharmaCorp, before I escaped north with my sister, I found three children in an abandoned, burned-out section of Augusta, Georgia. I found these three children, Devin, Kori, and Garrett, who needed a home. I couldn’t provide one at the time but Wyatt did. He went even further by giving them a family. A housewife and farmer he’d met and rescued from the Hybrid Army. He gave them a house, a beach, really, an entire island, isolated from the danger and infection of the world.
The kids race down by the water’s edge. Mr. Armstrong watches from the lifeguard chair dragged from some other part of the beach. Zoe, out for a walk with Mary Ellen and her baby, stroll near the dilapidated pier. M.E. named the baby, a girl, Finley, and she has her father’s eyes.
The sun beams overhead and the sky is clear and blue. We’ve made it to another summer.
Vibrations on the boardwalk alert me to someone coming, and although my hands ghost over the place my hatchet should be, I don’t panic when it’s missing. It’s taken months to fight the reflex. Wyatt says we shouldn’t lose it completely. That, realistically, we should find a place in the middle.
He thinks we should try to be happy.
His feet appear on the step, then down on the sand next to my own. I find them fascinating. They’re brown and tan and until we arrived on the island I’m not sure I ever saw them. But now they’re exposed all the time. On the beach. Through the house. In our bed. He rests his hand on my lap and I thread my fingers through his. He has a silver band that matches the one on my left hand.
“How was patrol?” I ask. He’d been gone since the day before with two of the other men.
“Good. Randy bagged a deer.”
“Really?” We don’t keep much meat. So something fresh is always a treat. “I’ll go up soon to help.”