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And then, it’s not okay. The boy starts to convulse and memory-Henry’s demeanor changes in a blink, from calm and deliberate to frantic.

“John!” he shouts. “John! I need you over here now!”

“Busy,” comes the snapped reply.

“I need you! We’re losing him.”

“If you can’t do the job, boy, then you shouldn’t be doing the job.”

Henry sees the rage on his own face and feels it whipping through him. He’d only been a paramedic for a week. He needed help, and this bastard didn’t give it because he was plastered.

They’d been fighting about that when the call came in. It was right after lunch break, and John came back sloshing drunk. Henry wanted him to call in sick. He didn’t threaten to tattle—he said he’d support any story John told. All that mattered was that Henry, being new, wasn’t on duty with someone who couldn’t even walk straight.

John refused to stand down, and then came the crash and John knew his job would be on the line if he failed. So John let Henry fail instead.

Henry did his best, and he kept shouting at John to help but the bastard pretended his patient needed him, an unconscious woman with a fucking broken arm, a woman who would have happily given up that arm if it meant her son lived.

In the end, no one blamed Henry. Everyone knew what John was, and he’d still been drunk when support arrived. John got fired, and everyone reassured Henry that it wasn’t his fault, but none of that mattered, because a child had died.

Later, John had tracked Henry down and blasted him with that tirade about diversity hires and how Henry shouldn’t be working if he couldn’t save that boy. Henry had never come closer to punching anyone in his life. But he knew the rule.

“When you’re bigger than everyone else, Henry, you can never hit first or it doesn’t matter what they did—you’ll be blamed.”

For boys, “big” meant “bully,” so you had to do backflips to avoid the label. Which meant letting kids take swings at you and then, if necessary, restraining them. Don’t hit first. Don’t even hit back. Don’t lose your temper. Don’t get angry. Ever.

Henry had wanted to hit John so badly. A smaller guy could have done it. A white guy could have done it. All Henry could do was walk away and remind himself he’d earned this job, that he was good at it. But not good enough. Not that day, and it didn’t matter if any other new hire would have been in the same position, Henry wanted to be better.

He could have saved a child’s life if only he’d been better.

No, you could have saved a child’s life if only your partner hadn’t been drunk on the job.

The old rage whips through him, and he instinctively stifles it. What good does it do to get angry now? What good would it have done to punch John then?

None … but it would have felt good.

He squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them, and the memory version of him is gone. The boy is also gone, along with John. So is the old man, and Henry’s stomach lurches at that, his brain screaming that he let himself get lost in memories and the old man is gone, and Henry had a chance to save him and he messed up. Again.

No, the old man was never here. His corpse lies somewhere in the forest, and when this is over, Henry will blame himself for that, too, but right now, what matters is getting Ellie out of here. Out of whatever this is. A forest where things that should never happen are happening.

“Ellie.”

She’s still there. Right where she’s been, staring down at where the man had been, meaning she’d seen him, too. It was the forest. This fucked-up, murdering, wrong forest.

“Ellie.”

She doesn’t move. He’s still holding her hand, and he gives it a squeeze.

“Ellie? He’s not there. If you’re still seeing him—”

Ellie lifts her head, and underneath the hood, her face is blank. Completely blank. A white mask with no eyes or nose or mouth, and he lets out a yelp and releases her hand, and then her face seems to erupt from under the mask. Nose first, only it’s half gone, her mouth a gaping hole, lips torn away, one eye gone too, the other hanging, her skin rotting and falling off before his eyes.

The thing opens that lipless mouth, blackened teeth bared as she lunges at him, and he falls back, tripping, stumbling to the ground, hands raised in front of him to ward the zombie off—

And then she’s gone. He holds himself still, blinking and then looking around. It’s gone. Whatever that was, it’s gone. He takes a deep breath. And then a sound comes. A scream from deep in the forest.

But it’s not the old man.

It’s Ellie.