“But I…” Alf didn’t know what to say. She was crying. And her arm was bleeding. He couldn’t just leave her. But she’d told him to go away. What was he supposed to do?

“Sorry.” He backed away to give her some space. “I’ve never been good at knowing what to say. With people and stuff. It’s like everyone is talking in code, but I got the wrong codebook.”

She didn’t say anything, so he sat down and waited, watching her shoulders tremble with each shuddering breath. They looked so broad from behind. And her waist was so tiny. Her back was practically a triangle. Crap. There he went creeping on her again. No wonder she was mad. What had she called him, a crudinophile? He reached for his phone, but of course it was gone. The dust had even stolen his pockets.

“I guess I just thought, because we both have SBS, maybe we’d be working off the same codesheet,” he said. “I didn’t mean to…”

A strange noise drifted up the street. At first he didn’t notice it through the drifting fog, but a vague haze was winding its way up the road like the ghost of a rhino-sized snake.

“Blix?” He tried to keep the gentleness out of his voice. “There’s a stream of dust coming this way.”

Either she didn’t hear him, or she was ignoring him. Or she just didn’t care.

But she had changed clothes back at her dorm. What if the dust changed them to burlap again? And her prosthetic legs…

“Remember what it did to our clothes?” He edged closer to her. “It’s moving fast, and I thought, maybe, if you don’t mind…”

Crap. The dust snake was almost on top of them. “This is me not being gentle.” He grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her to the side of the street, her foot blades scraping twin trails across the gritty blacktop. “Sorry.” He hit the curb and tumbled backwards onto the steep embankment, hauling her down on top of him with a way-too-audible oof.

She twisted and tried to sit up like she wanted to run back out onto the road, but he wrapped his arms around her waist and held on tight as the dust passed by a scant few inches from his feet.

“Hold still,” he hissed in her ear. “At least till it passes. Then you can punch me all you want.”

She arched her back, grinding her head into his collarbone, and then, like a ripped beach ball, the fight drained out of her until she was a limp rag in his arms.

Slowly, the snake drifted past them and disappeared around the bend.

“Sorry.” He released her waist, but she just lay there. For a long time. Right on top of him. Like he was some kind of air mattress, and she was some kind of… girl. Who felt really nice.

And then, with no warning or provocation, she elbowed him in the ribs.

“Hey!”

She twisted around to face him, pounding the air out of his mattress.

“You’re so full of crap.” She snuggled into him, resting her head against his chest like she was settling in for a long nap.

“Um…” His brain was a complete blank. She was so soft and warm and… Seriously, he had to think of something else, or she would pound him to a bloody pulp.

“I hate being treated like I’m helpless,” she said in a soft voice. “And with the world going all…whatever. Just don’t patronize me, okay?”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Now would be a good time to shut up.” She pushed herself off him with a breathy whimper that was so cute he almost peed his pants.

He climbed to his feet and stared deliberately after the swirling mist while she grunted and whimpered behind him. Should he offer to give her a hand up? Guys did that all the time. Didn’t they?

While he was still trying to decide, she staggered to her feet and took his hand. He tried to grip it naturally, not too soft- or hard-boiled, but nothing was natural about holding a girl’s hand, especially a girl who had just been lying down on top of him.

“Hey!” A shout shattered the silence.

Alf squinted into the rolling mist as a dim shadow resolved itself into a group of four rough-looking guys. And two of them were carrying wooden poles.

“You two,” one of them called. “Drop your weapons!”

Alf stepped in front of Blix and held his hands out to show they were empty. “Have you seen any others?” he called out. “You’re the first conscious people we’ve seen, but we keep hearing this freaky scream.”

The group came to a halt about thirty feet away. A red-faced, football-player-looking guy stepped forward. He was wearing a rough-woven tunic exactly like Alf’s—only his was about three times bigger. “What’s with the girl?” he called out. “Has she always been like that?”

Alf swallowed back an angry retort as Blix pushed her way past him.

“What about you?” she called out in a hard voice. “You always been like that?”

The guy’s brow jutted, setting back his appearance two full rungs on the evolutionary ladder. “I’d be careful if I were you.” He directed his words at Alf. “People’s been turning into monsters all over the place. Your girlfriend looks halfway there, if you ask me.”

Alf sighed. The last thing he wanted was to provoke these guys. He needed a way to deflect their attention.

“We saw hundreds of monsters back on campus,” Blix said. “Some started out human. Some started out as animals. We decided the smartest move would be to get as far away from the city as possible.”

“What’s in the bag?” a tall guy called out from behind the big guy.

“Just a Beauty and the Beast sleeping bag.” Alf looked pointedly at Blix, giving her shoulder a playful shove. “You know, the glittery kind that are only big enough for six-year-old girls.”

“I’d like to see that.” The big guy stepped toward them, slapping the staff into his palm. “The mist got all our supplies. I know you don’t mind sharing, what with us all being humans and such.”

Alf took a step back. Running with Blix wasn’t even a possibility. And appealing to their humanity wasn’t likely to be much better.

“Alf!” Blix shrieked.

At first he thought the guys had done something, but then he saw the dust coiling up her legs. It was eating her blades, unraveling her new clothes like before.

He wrapped his arms around her, turning his back to shield her from the Neanderthal ruffians. Threads tugged and coiled beneath his arms. It felt like she was being torn apart.

His backpack crashed to the ground. Shouts sounded all around him. The Neanderthals were surrounding them. He had to do something fast or they were going to attack.

“Aaahhh!” He screamed like he was being swarmed by killer ants. He shook Blix from side to side, thrashing her around like she was being electrocuted. And then she was screaming too, hanging limp in his arms as pieces of her prosthetic legs clattered onto the asphalt. Were the guys going to attack? He crumpled onto the ground as the dust cloud engulfed him completely. Rolling onto his side, he squinted to see through the haze.

Good. They were running away.