Can’t stay here, I realize. There’s no shelter left—no people left.
I look desolately around me.
Where am I supposed to go?
Chapter 5
Eastaboga, Alabama
July, Year 26 of the Horsemen
Three nights later, sitting off to the side of Highway 78, I roll my mother’s old wedding ring round and round my finger as crickets chirp around me. It’s the only thing I managed to salvage from the wreckage of my house, though that’s because my mother was wearing it, and she was one of the only things not buried beneath the rubble.
I took it off her finger. Bile rises to my throat at the thought. I took it like some shameless grave robber. What I should’ve done was bury her with it. It meant a lot to her. But I didn’t, and honestly, my guilt is eclipsed by the relief I feel that I have at least something of hers.
Besides it, the only things that are truly mine are my purse and my bike, which I happened to leave at the farmer’s market way back when this all started. So now they’ve officially become my few prized possessions.
I return my attention to the simple gold band, trying my hardest to un-see all the images that my mind wants to manically replay over and over. It’s not just my town that has been destroyed. Bremen, Waco, Tallapoosa, Carrollton—all the towns I have passed through seeking refuge—they have been decimated, their inhabitants dead, their buildings leveled.
I’m still rolling that ring around when it comes to me.
He needs to be stopped.
And if I’m the only one who can survive Death … then I must be the one who stops him.
Chapter 6
Lebanon, Tennessee
October, Year 26 of the Horsemen
The second time I meet Death, it’s by design, not chance.
I sit against an oak tree off to the side of the road, a bow and quiver at my side.
It took three months, lots of running around in circles, and many, many devastated towns, but finally I think I’ve gotten ahead of Death.
The autumn sun hides behind clouds, and the trees down the road are changing colors. This is about the time that football season is in full swing, when there’s a sharp chill to the wind. With that comes the promise of holidays and sweaters and warm drinks and family.
My throat tightens. Living alone has been its own kind of hell. I’m used to noise. My house was always filled with singing, cursing, laughing, talking. There was comfort in all those sounds. You couldn’t walk five feet without tripping on someone else’s toes. Even once my siblings had all moved out, they were always over, and when it wasn’t them, it was neighbors and friends.
Now the only company I keep are the corpses I pass and the carrion eaters that feed on them.
That, and the lonely howl of the wind.
I think the loneliness might drive me mad.
The afternoon wears on, and I begin to fidget. Hanging out on well-traveled roads is just asking to get robbed at knife-point. That’s how it happened to me. I’d been on my way home from a patient’s house after being up for over twenty hours, assisting with a particularly long and troubled labor. The doula I was apprenticing under had sent me home to get some rest. I was falling asleep on my feet when I decided to stop a little ways off to the side of the road and lay down for a minute. I woke to my neck getting slit. The highwaymen stole all of my things as I bled out. When I came to again, I was bloody and alone.
Lightning flashes, rousing me from my thoughts.
Not a minute later, a swarm of animals rush down the quiet highway. I stare at them in disbelief.
He’s coming.
Dear God, he’s actually coming.
I’ve gotten the horseman’s location wrong so many times in the last few months that I almost believed I wouldn’t cross paths with him again. But finally it paid off.
Briefly my hand reaches for a bow I picked up a month ago. I’m not a good shot, and it was meant more for scaring off dogs and hunting game. （I’ve yet to succeed at that.） But perhaps I could use it to stop Death.
I grimace. I’ve never deliberately hurt anyone before, and while I might have reason to now, I’m … I’m not sure I’m ready to do so.
I mean, I’m the girl that deliberately stitches daisies onto my clothing, I like to save baby animals in my spare time, and for the last few years I’ve been studying to be a doula, of all things. Also, it’s been proven that, when drunk, I’m a hugger.
A lone figure comes into focus. He looks like a dark smudge against the stormy horizon. I can just make out those terrible wings.
Overhead, rain begins to fall. First one drop, then two, then several, until it feels like the sky has cracked itself wide open. The wind kicks up and I shiver against the chill.