I glanced over.
Libby sat in the passenger seat. Blood on her sleeve. That dark smear still on her cheek. I reached over and grabbed her hand. She looked at me.
Still here.
I exhaled.
“Everybody good?” I asked, my voice tight.
A chorus of shaky “yeahs.”
I nodded once.
Didn’t say anything else.
Just drove.
Because stopping wasn’t an option anymore.
Thirty One
The Entire Mass -Libby
“Okay, Libby.” Finn’s voice cut through the noise in my head. “You know this city better than I do. Nearest highway off-ramp—how do I get there?”
I blinked. My hands lay in my lap as if they belonged to someone else entirely.
“Why an off-ramp?” The words came out distant, thin, as if they’d traveled a long way to reach the surface.
Finn glanced at me—half a second, no more—then back to the road, his jaw tight enough to cut glass.
“People were fleeing,” he said. “Not coming in. We go against the current; we stay ahead of it.”
“Right,” I whispered, forcing myself to locate the part of my brain that still functioned. “Okay. But you’re not going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“Most of the highways are underground now,” I said, swallowing against the dryness in my throat. “City revitalization project years ago. They buried a lot of it.”
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Finn’s eyes found mine—a quick flicker—and then returned to the road.
“No tunnels,” he said.
“No tunnels,” I confirmed, nodding once as we moved on.
“Turn up here,” I said suddenly, recognition clicking the street into place in my memory. “That alley on the right—we can cut across and pick up a side street that feeds directly onto an exit ramp. No tunnels.”
“Got it.”
He cranked the wheel hard, and the Suburban lurched into the alley, the turn so sharp my shoulder met the door.
And then we stopped.
Dead.
“Oh… my… God,” I breathed.
