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So fine: Amber was dead. I wasn't. If I wasn't dead, it stood to reason that some of the others might not be dead, too. Audrey might not be dead. And if Audrey was alive, I couldn't stop fighting. Not for a minute, not for a
second
. I had to get back to her. Whatever it took, I had to get back to her.

My captors may have taken the time to re-dress and—presumably—decontaminate me before shoving me into a drawer, but they probably hadn't given me back my weapons. That would have been too much to ask. All logic said that I was unarmed, and that they'd be expecting me to be unprepared when I awoke. I couldn't do anything about the first part. My field training meant I was better equipped than most to handle the second.

I began calmly and systematically tightening and relaxing the muscles in my arms, legs, and back. As a meditation technique, it was supposed to help relieve tension and prepare the body for a long, restorative sleep. Sometimes it helped with my nightmares. I wasn't meditating now, and I didn't want help with my nightmares: I wanted my nightmares to help
me
. I was thinking the darkest, least relaxing thoughts I could, trying to keep myself primed to move. None of the straps were tight enough to cut off blood flow. That was good. I wanted to be ready to leap into action the second I had the opportunity to do so.

Eventually, they were going to have to open that drawer. There was no point in taking us alive if they were going to leave us in here to die—unless, murmured a small, traitorous corner of my mind, they were looking for zombie gladiators. I'd heard about the underground fighting rings, like something out of a horror movie, where the fresh infected were pitted against the unprepared living. Most of the time, the “fighters” would have the same weapons that the dead did: teeth and fingernails and desperation. But while the zombies were desperate to feed, the living were desperate to escape, and those two goals were never going to be compatible.

No. I was being silly. If they'd taken us for the sole purpose of killing us, they'd
do
it. Allowing us to die of starvation or thirst would just leave them with a bunch of substandard zombies. No sport or show in that. The sort of people who'd swarm our ATV, shoot Amber, and seize the rest of us were absolutely the sort of people who would think zombie pit fights to be the height of sophistication. They'd know how to make it as interesting as possible.

On some level, I knew I was doggedly pursuing this idea—born of purest supposition, with no evidence whatsoever to support it—because the alternative was to let myself consider that maybe the raiders had only taken me. Some of the folks who chose to go off the grid in modern America were racial supremacists of one stripe or another, and all the faces I'd seen during the assault had been white ones. It was less of a stretch to assume I was alone than it was to assume that we'd all been taken. But if that was so, if I was the last one standing, then I wasn't going to be standing for long. The people who'd put me in this drawer were going to learn, in short order, that it was better not to fuck with the Irish.

I don't know how long I lay in the dark, methodically tensing and relaxing my muscles to keep myself warmed up and alert, my eyes open and staring into nothingness. It was long enough that the beat of my heart seemed to be impossibly loud, echoing in my ears like a countdown to some terrible inevitability.

Something clanked, the sound of a great key being turned in an even greater lock, pulling back some unspeakable tumbler. This time when I tensed, I did not relax. Things were about to start moving again. I was going to rejoin a world where things happened, and those things were going to happen to me. That seemed inevitable.

The second clank was smaller, and closer, coming from the end of my drawer. I squinted my eyes shut just in time to block out the majority of the light as someone pulled the drawer open and the sterile hospital glare of the former morgue came flooding inside. No natural light here; this was all man-made and cruel, as unforgiving as anything.

“I think she's awake,” said a voice, female and a little awed, like finding a prisoner already conscious was unheard of. Maybe it was. Maybe they usually supplemented their head trauma with the sort of drugs that required a counteragent before they could be thrown off.

Lucky me, I'd gone with the pure “concussion” package. “Sure, and I've been awake for hours,” I said, eyes still virtually closed, hitting my Irish brogue as hard as I could. If these were white supremacists, they might take my foreign origins as a sign of “purity,” which could buy me the time to find out where they'd taken Ben and Audrey. If they were just bandits, they might panic at the thought of kidnapping a foreign national. Either way, the less American I could sound, the better off I would be, at least for right now. “What took you lot so long? I was starting to get bored in there.”

“Awake, and a snotty little thing,” said a male voice. It was deep and surprisingly smooth, the sort of voice that should be accompanied by a glass of good Scotch and a blazing fire. A hand touched my cheek. It was a light contact. It was still enough to feel like a violation. My stomach did a slow roll in protest. “Pretty, though. Look at this skin. Red and white all over. Are your eyes blue, girl? Are you a living American flag?”

“I'm Irish,” I said, and opened my eyes, which struck me as suddenly traitorous. I didn't want to be blue-eyed for this man, whoever he was. He had the power to let me
out
of the drawer, which meant he'd probably been the one to put me there in the first place.

The light stung. I blinked repeatedly, eyelashes growing damp with unshed tears. Eventually, the room came into focus, bringing the two people I'd heard speaking into focus with it. The female voice belonged to a gawky brunette with short-cropped hair and a tattered lab coat. Faint brown stains down one lapel said “blood” to me, even though it had clearly been bleached until the protein strands broke down. She'd tried to cleanse herself. She just hadn't been able to replace her coat once she was done. We were in a place that had supply-chain issues, then, where things couldn't be thrown away for the sake of something as petty as mental or emotional distress. Lots of people had panic attacks at the sight of bloodstains. They meant death, danger, and exposure. All good reasons to get a new damn coat.

The man was tall enough that I had to crane my neck to see his face. Tattoos covered almost every inch of his exposed skin, leaving only the palms of his hands and most of his facial features unmasked. “Most” because the skin above his left eyebrow was tattooed with a dense block of Cyrillic text, and a lightning bolt scar was tattooed under his right eye, standing out green and black and painful against his pale skin. His eyes were cold, and his hair was buzzed so short that I couldn't quite tell what color it would have been if allowed to grow out to a proper length. A white tank top strained to contain his massive chest, and camo pants covered his legs. A real tough-guy type, it seemed, and one who was better left uncrossed.

Too bad I've never been good at leaving better off alone. “Got a few tats there, haven't you?” I asked. “Must not have much of a problem with needles. Brave of you. Brave enough that you ought to be able to unstrap an unarmed Irish girl, not worry about whether I'm set to claw your eyes out.” My grammar was slipping, becoming a parody of itself. I was almost grateful. The nice thing about having an accent in America was the way people would forgive my words for getting jumbled: It was like they thought there was no way I could put a proper sentence together, and were hence happy to have their prejudices proven.

Or maybe that was just the nice thing about having a
white
accent in America, one that came from “the old country” and not one of the places good patriots still assumed were hemorrhaging immigrants onto American soil. As if there would have been a modern America without immigration, people coming from far away and trying to make a home for themselves amongst the stones and the sky. The people who'd owned the continent before Columbus showed up would probably have had a few things to say about immigration. I doubt any of them would have been very pleasant, or very welcoming.

“Undo her straps,” said the man.

“But sir—”

He turned to the woman in the stained lab coat, the skin around his eyes tightening until it was like gazing at a shark: cold, implacable, and deadly. “I'm so sorry, Jill, I missed the announcement that you'd deposed me. Tell me, was it poison? A sliced artery that's been bleeding for the last hour without my noticing it? Have you science types finally mastered nanotechnology? Am I about to be reduced to a pile of quivering gray goo?”

“N-no,” she said, voice shaking. She didn't step away from him. I had to admire that, even as I thought it was likely to get her killed. Put more stains on that lab coat of hers, these ones too deep to be washed away. “It's just that she doesn't know the situation here, and unstrapping her could be dangerous.”

“Ah. Worrying about my safety, then, so a tiny British girl doesn't somehow overpower me and take what's mine as hers.” The man glanced back to me, eyes lingering on my midriff. I didn't know whether it was covered or not, but in that moment, it didn't matter. I glared at him, hating the fact that he'd called me a Brit, but I didn't speak. “I think I can handle myself. Undo the straps now, and I might be able to forget that you ignored my first order.”

“Yes, sir,” said the woman—Jill, her name was Jill—before starting to unstrap me. Her hands were trembling. I couldn't blame her. Somehow, this didn't strike me as the friendliest of working environments.

“Besides, she's not going to make any trouble for me, are you, Ginger?” The man grinned at his own joke, displaying surprisingly white, even teeth. “She's a smart little thing. She'd have to be, to have made it this far from civilization. Not
too
smart, however. She would have chosen a different route and less breakable traveling companions if she'd been
too
smart.”

My heart sank at the mention of my traveling companions. I forced it back up again. They weren't dead. They
weren't dead
. I wouldn't allow it. I sat up as soon as the straps allowed, making a show of rubbing my wrists, like they'd been chafed.

“I'm not here to make trouble,” I said. My change of position had answered the question of what I was wearing: My sundress was gone, replaced by a white sports bra and a pair of running shorts. Good gear for working out. Not good gear for much of anything else. Still, under the circumstances, I was grateful. I could as easily have been naked. “Sorry to have blundered into your hunting party, or whatever that was out there. If you'd return my people and my vehicle, we'd be thrilled to get out of your hair. We won't come back, I promise.”

The man blinked, looking like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Then, to my annoyance—and relief, which annoyed me even more—he burst out laughing. “Oh, I
like
you, Ginger. You have a sense of humor. You have no idea how rare that is around here.”

“Given that you've had me shoved into a cadaver drawer for the last little while, I'm not even at my best right now,” I said. Finding the right balance between cocky and insulting was never my strongest suit. I wished desperately for Mat. Mat would have been better at walking this tightrope, saying the right things without crossing the line and going too far. “Look, I don't mean to be a bother, but we have somewhere we need to be. It's quite important we make it to the Canadian border before the elections.” Once the elections were over, we'd know how much trouble we were really in. If Ryman won, the Masons would draw the majority of the attention. If Kilburn won…

People might start wondering about our conveniently timed deaths. They might start asking why no one ever found the bodies.

“Then you're in luck, because the elections aren't for months,” said the man, with another flash of those straight white teeth. “I'm Clive. This is my place. While you're here, what I say is what goes, and what I say is that you're going to stop asking about things that don't concern you anymore. You're going to be staying with me for a while, Ginger.”

He reached out and gripped my chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting my head back until my eyes were locked on his. I didn't look away. I didn't dare. When a man like this started throwing his weight around, it was better to hold my breath and ride it out.

“You're pretty,” he said. “I like the way you roll your ‘r's. Makes me think you must have a clever tongue. If you can learn to control it, we might be able to make a go of it.” He shoved me when he let go, sending me back down to the bunk where I'd been strapped. I managed not to cry out when I hit the metal, still warm from the weight of my body. It was a near thing.

“Get her cleaned up and explain how things work around here,” he said to Jill. “I'll be back.” He turned and strode toward the door, leaving us alone.

“What—” I began. Jill's eyes widened and she held up her hand, signaling me to silence. I closed my mouth and waited.

After a count of twenty, Jill's shoulders relaxed. “He always waits a few seconds,” she said. “It lets him be sure the people he's walking away from don't immediately start plotting against him. I think he read it in a book of management tips somewhere, that if people are going to talk behind your back, they'll do it quickly, before they lose their nerve. He likes self-help books. You wouldn't think it to look at him, but he does.”

I pushed myself upright again, giving her a bemused look. “You're talking a blue streak, but you don't seem to actually be
saying
anything,” I said. “Where am I? What is this place? Where are my friends?” The last question was really the only one that mattered, and the only one I was afraid of having answered. If they were dead…