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The tree shudders again. I have a good hold, but I frown down because I don’t know what was making the tree shake. The dog is ten feet from the trunk, and the pale man is where I last saw him, also not near the trunk.

At first I see nothing. Then a shape separates from the darkness of the trunk and looks up. A zombie, half its face missing as it clacks its jaws.

I shudder and grip the tree harder. I’m stable here. One zombie isn’t enough to shake me down. I squint. Okay, make that two zombies. Maybe three?

Still, the tree is wide and sturdy and—

A crack, and something hits my left shoulder, slicing through exactly where I was shot earlier. I press my hand to the spot and feel fresh blood welling.

Another crack, and I instinctively pull myself in just as a bullet embeds itself in the branch where my hand had been a moment earlier.

I look over the edge. There, directly below, is the shooter, grinning up at me. He takes aim, and I pull myself in as tight as I can. The bullet whizzes past, and I exhale. Then another shot, and pain explodes in that left shoulder, not a graze but a bullet sinking in. My hand automatically relaxes and I’m trying to grab the branch again, ignoring the pain, when another hits me in the hip, knocking me to the side, and I grab frantically for the branch, but I’m falling.

My arms and legs go wild, flailing, trying to find something, anything. There is nothing, and below me, the monsters screech and howl as I fall into their midst.

FORTYHENRY

“You little bitch!” the bartender snarls, and Ellie disappears.

Vanishes before Henry can blink, and it takes him about three heartbeats to be sure she’s gone, as if she might somehow just be hidden from his view. That’s not unreasonable, under the circumstances. He even paws at the air where she was, hoping to find her.

“She’s gone, you stupid oaf.”

There are many insults the bartender could hurl, and they wouldn’t penetrate at all. Henry grew up hearing them whenever he left the relative safety of the reservation, a pocket universe of its own. Yet this was the only insult that pricked his thickened skin.

Stupid oaf.

A big guy who didn’t say much, who wasn’t quick to anger. Slow to react must mean slow all around, right? A big dumb ox of a boy. A big stupid oaf of a man.

He turns on the bartender, who only curls his lips in what is supposed to be a malicious smile, only there’s no smile, only malice. His eyes are still those black pits, as if he hasn’t calmed down enough to conceal that inhuman part.

“Don’t like that?” the bartender taunts. “A little too close to the truth? Jenn was the smart one. That’s why you liked her in school. You admired how smart she was, because no one ever called you that.”

Henry looks at the bartender. It’s true—no one ever called him smart. He wasn’t. But neither was he stupid. He rode that center line of average, where he never risked failing a class but never considered college either, until Jenn prodded him and then he’d had to work for it, but he’d done just fine.

The bartender’s barb might have landed, but the sting is already fading, mostly because he realizes that’s what it was—a barb. The bartender is pissed. Furious with Ellie for what she did, and he threw her out, but that leaves him with only Henry to vent his rage on.

“Where is she?” Henry says. “Out there?”

“No, idiot. She’s under the floorboards. I turned her into a mouse.”

Henry strides for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the bartender calls after him.

Henry grabs the knob and pulls. The door starts to open and then snaps shut. He doesn’t react, only scoops up a chair and heads for a window.

“You’re going after her?” the bartender says. “Really? You know you’ll die out there. Or are you too stupid to understand that?”

Henry swings the chair at the window. It’s not a brutal blow fueled by insult and anger. He puts just enough force behind it to break the glass. The chair vanishes before it hits the glass.

“Stop that,” the bartender snaps. “You might not be a genius, Henry, but you know you can’t save her. How about a deal instead?”

Henry pivots the bartender’s way, and the man—demon—smiles.

“There,” the bartender says. “Now that I have your attention, let’s open negotiations. Since we are, effectively, down from six corrections to one, I’m feeling generous. I will let you go.”

“And Ellie?”