The next day, I felt certain my skull would split open from the agonizing pressure in my head. I woke up and immediately vomited, then collapsed by the fire.

Lying there, I was constantly on the edge of passing out, my surroundings churning as if I were at sea. Yet I was still more able-bodied than Kyle, who hadn't moved from his spot beside the fire for a full day.

We were doomed.

There was no getting around it now. I was beginning to swallow the difficult pill that we were both really dying. Being aware of it only made things worse. I was terrified. It was a kind of abject terror spilling from deep in my soul.

For a while, I blurred in and out of consciousness beside Kyle, my face pressed against the cold earth. I could do nothing to stop the waves of blackness. It scared me that any one could be the last. A small part of me wanted to lay down and accept it, until I opened my eyes again and saw Kyle.

Every absentminded touch, every meaningful glance, every time he had rescued me and I'd rescued him—all flashed before my eyes in my frenzied, feverish haze.

"I won't let you die on me," I said, prying myself weakly off the ground. I would save him again, whether he wanted me to or not. There was no other option in my mind. There never had been.

I grabbed his jacket collar and began to drag him backward, staggering toward the highest hill in sight. I don't know how I did it. Moments before, I couldn't stand. My legs felt like noodles, as if I would collapse with every step. Somehow, I willed myself to keep going.

Kyle's eyelids fluttered. He groaned in pain and whispered, with a flicker of eerie clarity, "What are you doing?" His lids fell shut, and it seemed to take him a monumental effort to pry them open again. "Don't," he managed to say. "Please don't do this."

I wasn't sure he was even lucid enough to understand what was happening, but his words hit me like a dagger to the gut. Still, I went on, desperately convincing myself I was doing the right thing, muttering under my breath.

In the distance, the hill seemed to tower like a mountain, looking warped and impossibly tall to my disoriented mind. I had to stop often to let my dizzy head go still and to fill my gasping lungs with air.

Kyle was becoming more and more delirious. He flitted in and out of consciousness, occasionally raising his head and surveying his surroundings with confusion.

"Mother," he said suddenly, in a small voice.

I froze and stared at him, my heart sinking.

He let his head fall back, eyes fluttering shut. "I can't go to school. I'm too sick."

I knelt down and rested the back of my hand gently against his cheek, cold to the touch. It took a moment for me to find my voice. "You don't have to go."

"Okay," he said in relief. "I love you."

My heart seemed to clench as if emptying itself of blood completely. "You know I've always loved you." I combed my fingers through his tangled hair.

He went quiet for a while as I forged on. It felt like the Earth's gravity was increasing with every desperate step, my muscles burning as if my blood had turned to battery acid.

Later, Kyle awoke with more of his wits about him. "You never promised," he said between sharp, pained breaths. "You have to keep going without me, as long as you can. I asked you to promise before, but you never did."

"I promise," I said dutifully, without thinking. I would have promised him anything in that moment.

He didn't speak again. I feared I would be too late. Repeatedly bracing my feet in the cold dirt, I wrenched him backward over and over again, using up every ounce of my dwindling strength.

After around an hour—we had a long way to go, and Kyle had at least fifty pounds on me—I spotted a figure in the trees.

"You never cared about me," came a faint whisper that seemed to echo in my head.

Immediately, I knew it was Matt. Tears sprung from my eyes. I couldn't speak.

"You brought me out here to die."

I turned my head to explain how wrong he was, how sorry I was, but there was nobody there.

There never had been, I realized with a slowly sinking heart. It was only endless trees blurred together, casting strange, morphing shadows in my periphery.

I was losing my mind.

I didn't realize we'd made it until we were at the crest of the hill. The trees below were tiny specks of green blanketed with white. I fell on my back and gasped for a few minutes, unable to do anything else.

Then my eyes flickered between Kyle and the sky, gray and cloudy. What was I supposed to do now?

Matt was there again, a ghost in the shadows. I could sense him staring at me like I was insane. Embracing that, I filled my lungs and screamed to the heavens, "You want us so badly? Take him! Reveal yourselves!"

It was anticlimactic. Nothing happened. I felt cheated.

Scattered memories began to flash through my mind: Emerging from a government complex with classified files, only for Kyle to tackle me to the ground for his own amusement. Him bursting into the dance club's bathroom to defend me, then taking me to the hospital after I passed out. Stealing a car from his father at gunpoint. Me driving us home after he was hit with a tranquilizer dart. Crimson blood dripping from his nose, the first sign that anything was wrong with us. Doc slicing his palm open, then soldiers grabbing at him as we climbed the ladder to the school's roof. Being pulled apart so many times, only to end up together again.

I sighed with subdued longing. What had we done to deserve this?

At that thought, a huge impact struck us, a shockwave ripping through the air.

It was like that night in the alleyway beside Jason, when I couldn't breathe, only drastically intensified.

The light was blinding, forcing my eyes shut. This time, there was something new: a horrible, unearthly screeching. The ground shook beneath my feet, vibrations tearing through my bones until my teeth began to chatter. I crashed to my knees, unable to withstand the forces surging through my body.

Kyle was on the ground beside me. He screamed as if in horrible pain. I tried to call out to him, but no sound came out. There was no air in my lungs to scream with.

That's when another force struck me, like being hit by a truck. I felt myself careening down a hill, sticks and rocks scraping and tearing at my face.

Finally, I came to a halt. The sensations lessened. I panted for air, now managing to draw in some breath.

On my hands and knees, I moved slowly, blindly, away from the intense light. It grew weaker until I could pry my eyes open, coughing and heaving for air. By the time I turned around, the light had vanished, and my eyes widened.

The entire hill was dead. It was as if the trees had been scorched, turned to white ash.

Kyle's black jacket would have stood out. He wasn't there. I felt certain he had been taken...or, if he was still up there, he had also been reduced to ash.

I found myself running away from the site as if repelled by a magnetic field. My instinct was to get as far away as possible. I was full of adrenaline-fueled energy now, no longer weak and exhausted.

I was going to keep my promise. I would forage on, knowing that if I collapsed as Kyle had, no one would be there to drag me toward life. Maybe no one would ever find my body before I decayed into earth, decomposed and consumed.

A bridge, the thing we'd been searching for so long, appeared on the horizon. Cruel that it should come when everyone else was gone. Its concrete was cracked, its surface littered with abandoned cars. This made me think their drivers had vanished suddenly, as if a bomb had gone off nearby. I prayed that Matt would be okay. The real Matt, not my feverish vision of him.

Before the bridge was a barren city of sprawling concrete and towering steel frames. One tall building near the river's edge looked to be mostly intact, at least from the outside. I hauled myself inside, into the safety of its walls. Shielded from the wind, I fell into a heap in a corner.

My ears rang in the sudden silence, the wind reduced to a faint howl outside. The countless scratches on my face stung, and my toes were frozen. I sat and gasped for air through chattering teeth, intense shivers rippling through my muscles. I was completely alone.

_________________

Shameless self-plug:

I started writing a new story...with vampires! So, if you're into that, maybe click on my profile and check it out. There's only one chapter, but I'm excited about it. I might work on it for a while after I finish this one. Have a beautiful day!