“No! You leave him alone!” she screams.
“Pam.” I have to calm her, explain to her what she doesn’t want to admit to herself. “He’s changing. Soon he won’t be Mike anymore. He’ll just be a Florae. He won’t know you.”
“I don’t care,” she says quietly. She wipes her tears with the back of her hand, smudging dark blood across her face.
I watch Mike. His hair has almost completely fallen out, his skin tinged a pale green.
“He’ll kill you,” I say.
“I. Don’t. Care,” she says to me in little more than a whisper.
I think of all the people still out in the Yard, fighting their way back to the cellblock, hoping to lock themselves into their cells and ride out the infection. Finally getting there, that close to safety, and finding Floraes waiting for them. “I can’t leave you, Pam,” I tell her. “Either he’ll kill you or turn you. I can’t endanger everyone in the block.”
Pam’s head drops as she digs through her clothing. She produces something from the pocket of her skirt and tosses it at me. It’s heavy and metallic—a large, opened padlock.
“Lock us in,” she commands.
I want to plead with her, but I know it’s pointless. She is determined to stay with her man until the end. “Where’s the key?” It kills me to ask, but I can’t take the risk that she’ll open the door after I’m gone.
Pam takes a key from her pocket and throws it to me. This time I don’t catch it, and it skitters across the concrete walkway and over the side, falling two floors down.
Once I snap the lock on them, there’ll be no turning back. My resolve breaks. “Pam, please,” I try one last time. “You don’t need to die.”
“If Mike dies, I don’t want to live.” She gazes at his face, stroking his head, pulling away the last wispy brown hair as she does so.
I place the padlock between the two bars of the door and the cell. “Last chance,” I tell her.
“Do it.” She doesn’t look up. I close the padlock with a click that echoes through the cellblock. I have sentenced her to death.
Mike reaches up as though to scratch his nose, then rubs it so hard it begins to come off his face. His mouth twists into a snarl, baring his teeth, sharp and yellowed.
“If you love him,” I say quietly, “you’ll let me end it.”
I don’t think she hears me, but just as I turn to leave she responds. “He’s still my Mike. I’ll be with him until he’s no longer the man I love. After that, I don’t care what happens.”
I force myself to walk down the hall, my limbs heavy. As I make my way to the roof, my body shakes with rage. I tell myself the screams I hear below aren’t Pam’s. And they might not be. So many people are dying right now, it’s impossible to tell who owns what cry of pain.
When I pull open the door to the roof, I see that dawn is breaking. With the light, the Floraes will become even more aggressive, even more lethal. As I look around, I inhale, startled to find a figure cowering by the door. It’s the Warden, clutching a rifle to his chest and muttering to himself.
“Warden?” I say. But he ignores me, too overcome by fear.
I step around him and head to the ledge, searching the chaos below for signs of Jacks, Brenna, or Ken. No hover-copters have come yet; the only things of note in the sky are a few clouds and the pink-orange color that marks a new day.
I turn my attention back to the Yard where so many have changed. Those still human are being slaughtered. I check my gun. My backpack lost to me, I only have the one clip with no more than thirty rounds remaining, and I shot at least three Floraes on the way to the cells. I wish I could do more. The Warden whimpers. I glance at him and consider the rifle he’s cradling. Depending on how many shots he’s taken, there could be as many as thirty more bullets, and a rifle would be more effective this high up.
I go to him and reach for the gun, but he twists away from me, clamping it to his chest.
“I need this,” he whimpers again. “For my own protection. My men are dead.”
“What men?” I ask to keep him talking while I calculate how to go about overpowering him. He’s not large, but he’s scared out of his mind, which could make him unpredictable. Especially with that rifle in his hands.
“My personal guards.”
I shake my head, unable to drum up any sympathy. He’s the one who let Hutsen-Prime experiment on his prisoners. He’s the one who continued to deal with New Hope after the Floraes appeared, selling out the people of Fort Black as lab rats. The only way he got to where he is now was by standing on the backs of the people he was meant to protect.
He’s not a threat, I say to myself. He’s a pest. I reach for the rifle and quickly pluck it from his hands.