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Only four names down, I saw Niall’s name.

Niall Quinton Andrews. Deceased.

I kept going, reading through another ten names before I saw it.

Hunter Allen Evans. Deceased.

I started from the top and worked my way down the list again.

Niall Quinton Andrews. Deceased.

Hunter Allen Evans. Deceased.

No.

There had to be a clerical error.

The world wouldn’t be this cruel to me. It wouldn’t take my brother away after already taking my parents, and Aaron, and Niall.

There had to be a mistake. And I would prove it.

I needed to find Sarah.

She had been in Hunter’s group. She’d be able to tell me where he was.

She would’ve already made them correct this list if she’d seen it. But she was injured. She probably didn’t even know the list existed.

That had to be it.

We had to get to the infirmary, and fast. We were running out of time.

Leo followed as I sprinted through the auditorium and out the side doors, running across base and through the doors of the infirmary.

It was quiet, the lights dimmed for the night while patients slept. The smell of antiseptic and the sterile white walls jarring my senses.

Nearly a hundred beds were set up inside the large room. Blue curtains enclosing some of them.

Aside from a few nurses tending to soldiers, no one else seemed to be awake.

I looked for some sort of bulletin of who was in which bed.

“Here,” Leo whispered, passing me a clipboard with a map, a smug look on his face. “I swiped it off the front desk when we came in.”

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Maybe because you’re too worried about your brother being dead. That unruly inner voice of mine mocked me.

But he couldn’t be.

This would not be how Hunter fucking Evans dies.

I skimmed over the map. “She’s in Section three, Bed B.”

We walked swiftly through the rows and rows of bodies, reaching her bed concealed by curtains. I prayed she wasn’t in a gruesome state before I stepped inside, moving the curtain to the side so Leo could follow.

Sarah rested slightly curled, fast asleep. She was breathing on her own, no ventilator in sight.

A good sign.