The next thing I hear is the roar of a car’s engine. It’s struggling, like it’s stuck in second and whoever is driving the damn thing hasn’t bothered to change gears. I have this weird sinking feeling in my gut. It’s the feeling of acceleration. The feeling of speed.

I am lying down on the back seat.

And then I hear someone talk to me. They are telling me that I have a concussion. They are telling me that I can’t fall asleep. They heard if a concussed person falls asleep, they could die.

“I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I don’t want to find out. Please, Rebecca, you gotta stay awake. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I was scared. I had to do it.”

It takes me a second to realize the person speaking to me is a girl. It takes me another second to realize it’s Maria.

She keeps talking but I can barely hear her. The words are muffled like she’s speaking underwater.

I open my eyes but everything is out of focus.

All I know is, I’m in a car. Maria is driving at top speed and it’s dark outside.

Maria finally changes gear.

“I think they’re chasing us,” she says as she looks out the rear windshield. “There’s two of them. They’re bigger than the others.”

I try and sit up but the world spins and tilts and everything is distorted like I’m trapped inside a fun house mirror.

A million questions are shouted inside my head all at once.

Where are we?

What happened?

Where are the others?

Kenji?

Jack?

Daniel?

“Where are the others?” I whisper.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca,” Maria says. “I’m so sorry.”

She keeps saying sorry. She keeps saying that she had to do it. “I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.”

I can barely hear what she’s saying. And she’s not making a whole lot of sense.

I’m on the verge of blacking out, but then Maria swerves hard, keeping her foot on the accelerator. I manage to stay conscious. She changes gears again.

I open my eyes wider. My head is pounding. Maria is driving the car like the devil himself is chasing us. She’s looking over her shoulder every few seconds, looking in the rearview mirror.

Her mouth moves and I think she says something like, “They’re coming. I can’t lose them.”

But again, I can’t hear her properly.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I made the choice. This is on me. This is all my fault. I had to do it.”

And then it hits me.

And even though I can’t hear her properly, even though I can’t focus my eyes and it’s dark and I have this awful sinking feeling in my gut, I know what she is doing.

She is being stupid and brave.

Reckless.

And courageous.

Risking her life and mine.

I’m beginning to realize that everything has fallen apart. Everything has gone right straight to hell.

But how?

How?

This whole journey, each and every obstacle we had to overcome, every zombie and monster and madman we’ve come across, everything has been about survival.

Our survival.

Maria’s survival.

Every moment of everyday, we constantly weighed up the risk versus the reward.

Was the reward worth risking your life?

That was the one question we kept asking ourselves every single hour of every single day.

And right now?

Right now we are risking everything.

Again, I try and sit up but I can’t. My head pounds and my vision narrows and I’m trying to figure out how it got to this.

“How did it get to this?”

Where did it all go wrong?

I’m trying to think.

Come on Rebecca. Think.

Maria lowers her window. She has a grenade in her hand. I have no idea where she got a grenade from.

The wind roars through the car. It feels like we’re travelling at well over a hundred miles an hour.

Maria pulls the pin out of the grenade with her teeth and spits it on the floor of the car. She then throws the grenade out the window, out into the night.

I wait for the explosion but I don’t hear it.

And then slowly but surely, everything starts coming back to me.

Through the haze in my mind, I’m starting to remember.

We were desperate.

Dying of thirst.

Our choices were life or death.

We had one goal. Protect Maria. Get her to safety.

One goal.

I remember now.

I remember that Kenji is gone.

Jack is gone.

I remember that we messed up.

We failed.