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Whatever boundary exists, it exists only for us. We need to get past it, and we do not know where it is. So we run. We just run.

A rumble sounds overhead, like the first notes of thunder. I look up to see a faint tinge of red in the sky.

It’s ending. Our five minutes are ending, and we are not out.

Faster. We need to go faster.

My legs twists, and before I can react, Henry scoops me up under his arm. My feet pedal madly, and I tell him to let me down, but he doesn’t.

A roar to our left. The giant rabid dog charges out. Henry steers to the right, and the forest there erupts with zombies. A shot fires. The dog is coming full speed, and Henry can’t veer any more to the right or we’ll run smack into the zombies, a horde of them shambling from the woods.

The dog is nearly on us.

“Run!” I say. “Put me down and run!”

Henry swings one giant fist at the dog just as it leaps.

And his fist passes right through it. I see the dog then, semitranslucent. Up ahead, there are stars in the sky and a brilliant white moon. Directly overhead, that red seeps in like blood into clear water.

I open my mouth to tell Henry to ignore the dog and run, but he already understands. The pocket is still reconstructing. The monsters can’t hurt us. Not yet. Time is ticking, though, the last seconds of it, but that moon shines bright and the dog keeps yapping, and it’s right there, the world where the sky isn’t bloody yet, a world that will close off to us in mere seconds.

The rabid dog is right behind us, slavering and yowling, and I hear it give a cry of triumph as it leaps. Something brushes my leg and Henry stumbles forward. The dog is materializing fast.

Henry runs full out, and then the end is there, shimmering right in front of us. We hit it and run through to—

My car.

I’m in my car.

I blink hard.

I’m back to where I was when this all started. In my car, rain pelting the roof, the wipers going, the windshield fogging up.

Is it over? Is this how it ends, that I’m back in my car on this road?

“Ellie?”

I jump and twist to see Henry in the passenger seat.

He’s breathing hard, and he looks as if he’s struggling to stay calm.

“Drive,” he says, the word a croak. “Just drive.”

I nod, and I reach out with my right hand. He takes it, clasping it tight in his. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m afraid of what’s happening, afraid it’s some cosmic joke, and everything is starting over again, just a little different this time, Henry in the car with me.

I duck to look at the sky. It’s dark, no sign of red. Does that mean we’re out?

“Ellie!” he says sharply.

And I see what he does. The figure on the road. Just like last time.

Maggie. Standing in the middle of the road. My weak headlights illuminate her face, and it’s just like it was before. Impassive. Resigned. That’d made no sense then, but it does now. She had to stand there, to start the chain reaction of events, the punishment for her mercy.

“Keep driving,” I whisper.

Henry’s breath catches.

“She said that, over and over.”