Clint hunkered behind the wall and watched as Malina stole across the street. She knelt down low against the side of the house, hidden from their sight only by a dense rosebush. When the men turned away, their calm conversation carried on the wind, Malina burst out of her hiding place. She was fast, faster than Clint had expected for someone her age. She skittered across within seconds, and by the time the guards turned back around, she had already dove behind the flowerbed across the street. Clint could no longer see her. She had to be belly-flat in the grass, gasping there, barely daring to move.

He leaned against the fence, watching the men through the slats of the posts. The grenade in his hand was a cool, unfamiliar weight. His rifle hung against his belly, more reassuring now than ever.

Clint inhaled, deeply. Exhaled. Yanked the pin out of the grenade. Stared at it for a couple of seconds, his heart rabbiting against his ribs. Just before she dashed across the street, Malina had told him, “If you throw it too soon, they’ll have time to run away. But don’t wait too long or you’ll fucking kill yourself.” And she had laughed and patted his shoulder. “Count to three. You’ll be fine.”

He hurled the grenade.

It spiraled through the air in a perfect arc and sunk into the driver seat of the jeep. Neither one of the men even looked.

Clint watched, counting seconds in his head, and moments later the car exploded outward. He had to close his eyes against the dense blinding heat of it; shrapnel rattled against the fence. When he opened his eyes again, the men and the car were just husks of themselves: a blackened metal frame, two pairs of boots with ruined shins protruding out. Right on time, six more people came pouring out of the house. One of them, a woman, barked into her walkie talkie for reinforcements.

Malina’s grenade soared through the perfect blue sky. The people were too busy scouring the ruined jeep to think to look behind them. Only the person still standing on the porch screamed at the rest of them, “Grena—” but the blast blew him back into the house before he could finish his sentence.

Clint vaulted himself over the fence. Adrenaline sent him up and over and solidly back on his feet again. He did not stop to wonder at how he’d done that without fucking it up. He only raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger. The force of the bullets rattling out pushed the muzzle of the gun up and away, and the line of bullets wobbled uncertainly until Clint’s aching arms locked up and the rifle steadied.

He just held down the trigger and did his best to aim.

Only two people were still standing. Three more lay pooling blood, dead or dying. One of them had a huge chunk of his skull ripped out and still crawled gasping over the pavement for his gun.

Clint aimed at the rest of his skull. Tried to pretend this was just a video game, and this was not a real human really trying to claw their way back to life. He squeezed the trigger. But it only clicked, metal on metal. He smacked the magazine out with the heel of his hand, fumbled for the ammunition in his side pocket. His pulse pounded so hot in his head he could hear nothing but the thum thum thum of his own blood. His ear drums were a wall of shrieking static.

Then the man’s head exploded like a dropped watermelon and his body collapsed limply to the ground. Milliseconds later, the crack of Malina’s shotgun shattered the air. Clint felt it reveberate once, twice, and he raised his eyes to see Malina flick the two spent shells out and jam two more in.

Only one of Florence’s gang still stood. And she had her machine gun trained straight at Clint. He threw himself to the ground, but the bullet caught him in the chest. It hit him like a punch, and he just lay there on the grass, gasping in disbelief, until the boom of Malina’s shotgun snapped him back to the present.

He crammed bullets into the empty magazine. And when he sat up, his own dark blood stained the grass.

“Malina,” he said, woozily. He pushed himself to his feet and retched stomach acid into the grass.

Someone rubbed his back in reassuring circles. For a split second, he wanted to shove the end of his rifle into their belly and squeeze the trigger. But when he turned his head he saw only Malina.

“Come on,” she told him, gently. “We have to keep going.”

“I think I got fucking shot.”

“You did. It will heal. You heal quickly here.” She unzipped the back pouch of Clint’s backpack and rattled out a few pills into her palm. She placed the rest of the bottle back in his bag. “Here. It helps take the edge off. Moves things along a bit quicker.”

Clint threw the pills back. He wanted to pause and wonder at the bleeding hole in his upper chest, but Malina took his hand and pulled him back toward the backyard they’d come from.

“We have to hurry,” she told him. “One of them radioed for help.”

“This isn’t good,” Clint muttered.

“It’s better than it could have been.” Malina picked up the magazine he’d almost left in the grass and clicked it back onto his gun for him. Like she couldn’t help mothering him, now that he was hurt. “You can run. I know it hurts, but you’re not going to die. But if we don’t leave now, we just might.”

Clint nodded and followed her. Every breath and step sent pain whistling through every part of him. But it didn’t take long for the opiates to numb it. His blood stuck tacky to his skin, but it was a slow steady ooze. He would not bleed out. Somehow, this post-death body would fix itself up again.

There was nothing else to do but run. And hope no one else would beat them to it.

They spent hours walking around the full length of the map. The sun relented for part of it as the clouds came out and filled the air with rain. The cool water was a stinging relief against his broken skin.

Pain was real here. Palpable. He could feel it in every breath and every gasping tug of his backpack. He carried his Kalashnikov unslung, because the weight of it pulled at the hole in his chest and reopened it bit by bit.

“How long does it take for it to go away?” Clint muttered when they stopped once for water. They were all the way on the western edge of the circle, almost halfway opposite the map from Florence’s gang. Their efforts had brought the number of players down to eighty-one, and while they were walking Florence’s crew dropped it another few to seventy-eight.

“For what?” Malina asked. She dipped her head up and he realized she was walking staring down at the map. Her eyes looked busy. She looked at the wound on Clint’s chest. “We should wrap that up. It will go a bit faster. Should be done in another few hours or so.”

They paused under the shade of an oak tree, where the rain wasn’t falling quite as thick. They set down their packs, and Clint sat on top of his with a heavy sigh. He pulled off his shirt. The upper part of the plate was dented and twisted, and a half circle of the bullet’s trail tore through the shoulder strap.

“Could have been worse.” Malina peeled off his bulletproof vest, ignoring his yelp of pain. She only squeezed his forearm and reminded him, “Stay quiet. Where’s that rubbing alcohol you found?”

Clint sat still, biting his fist, while Malina doused the little hole below his collarbone in clear liquid. It stank and stung, and he seethed through his teeth, but within moments the burning lowered to a constant dull ache. Malina slapped a wad of bandages over the spot. Clint held it in place while she looped medical tape over his shoulder and under his armpit, a few tight revolutions that held his bandage fast.

“Shouldn’t we take the bullet out?” he ventured.

“Just like in real life, you’ll cause way more damage doing that than if you just left it in. More abrasions, more bleeding, more infection.” Malina tore the tape with her teeth and knotted the end of it. “I tried it once.” She pulled up her shirt to show him her soft belly, the spidering scar near her hip. It was dark fresh scar tissue.

“Jesus Christ. What happened?”

“Nearly died my first day here. Now, I’m more careful.” She tossed him his shirt and stood with a stretching sigh. “We have to keep moving,” she reminded him. “Our little diversion will only work for so long.”

Clint nodded and rose to his feet. Winced and gasped as he eased back into his shirt. The bulletproof vest that may have saved his life. The bandage helped the backpack burn a little less when it pulled at his clavicle.

They kept walking.

As they eased into the northwest curve of the circle, they found the suburbs giving way to a dense grove of trees. The trees were full of birdsong and chittering squirrels. Clint nearly walked with his head up, watching the branches. Nearly forgot where he was. But when they entered the grove Malina raised her gun and whispered to him, “This is an easy place to get caught out. Lots of little hiding places.”

Clint nodded. He raised his rifle and cushioned it against his left shoulder. His right arm was stronger, but he couldn’t imagine the backwards pounding of his rifle against the bullethole in his shoulder. Great fucking stars of pain.

They split apart and walked low through the trees. Malina was only thirty feet or so west of him, picking her way near-soundlessly through the brush. To his right, through the trees, Clint could see the field she had talked about. The sage grass was at least up to his hips, deep enough to hide him crawling through, backpack and all. Beyond the field, he could see two distinct buildings opposite them. One was larger than the other, its parking lot a fleet of muddy vehicles: trucks and humvees and jeeps, a small pack of motorcycles. And near spitting distance away from it, separated only by a grove of trees, sat a low square building.

The library.

As usual, Malina devised their plan. And Clint did not try to debate her, despite all his qualms, because he knew he could not think of anything better.

Now three-quarters of his map was filled in. He sat at the very top of his map, the northern edge where the trees grew sparse and thin. A quarter mile of grass sat between them and the school, a huge sprawling building with dead-eyed and shattered windows. No sounds came from there: no shouts, no laughter, nothing. Quiet as a grave.

“Do you think they all left?” Clint whispered to her.

“Doubt it. But I would believe most of them left.” Malina reached into her pack and produced a scope for a gun she did not own. But she squinted through it at the windows, turning the lens gently to see more. “They know they’re under attack. They don’t know who’s doing it. They have no choice but to go hunting for us in each and every house.” She smirked sideways at Clint. “Which is precisely what we want. Distraction.”

Clint nodded and swallowed the cold husk of his fear. He asked, “Are you ready?”

“If anyone is there,” she warned him, “they’re going to see us. There’s no point crawling. We just need to run, hide behind the nearest car, and pray to fucking hell that we don’t get shot. Okay?”

That expression made Clint laugh. It was appropriate, of course; praying to God wouldn’t do much good in a place like this.

He said, “I’m glad I met you.”

“Don’t be sappy. We’re not dying.” But she gripped his forearm tightly, like it was the closest she could bring herself to hugging him. “Okay. Keep your head down. Try to make yourself as small as possible. Make yourself harder to hit.”

Clint stared across the brief stretch of open field left. The sky was nearly black with storm clouds, and Malina’s words were punctuated by the faraway hum of thunder.

They set off sprint across the field. Clint lowered himself down, and crouching like this with their guns raised and sweeping the field in front of them, he and Malina ran at the same speed. They bolted across the field like mice trying to make it to their burrow before the fox comes.

Clint expected gunfire. He expected a warning shout. But they dove behind the car, and the only thing he heard was another low rumbling from the sky.

“Do you think,” he gasped, “anyone’s there yet?”

Malina just shook her head at him and pressed her finger to her lips. She leaned over the hood of the jeep and peered her shotgun around. Looked at the dark-eyed windows of the school with her detached scope once more. “We have to hope we don’t have to head back the way we came,” she muttered. “We might have timed it while they were out, but if they come back while we’re still in there…”

“We may be fucked,” Clint agreed.

“Right.”

He glanced toward the library. His heart huge and happy in his chest. Light as a bird. He couldn’t help his laugh. “I’ll race you there.”

Malina barked a laugh. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”

The rain sliced through the air. It rattled against the windshields and roofs of all the cars. At the very least, if they had to shoot someone, it would be hard to hear over the rain and the dull cry of the clouds.

They set off together across that last stretch of field. Clint did not feel safe until they were pressed against the trees bordering the library parking lot.

“Holy shit,” Malina whispered, gasping. She reached out and clutched Clint’s hand for a moment. “You’d better be right about this place.”

Then she jogged over to the closest window and banged out the remaining window panes with the butt of her gun. She pulled her sleeve over her hand to dust the rest of the glass out.

Malina grinned over her shoulder at him. Then she vaulted herself through the open window and disappeared inside the library.

Clint hurried to follow her.