"Look, lady, I'm having a really bad day. Who are you and who was that little guy you just killed and where is Teacup? Where's Ringer?"

"I told you, Zombie." With a trilling little laugh. "She's behind you."

I raise the gun to the level of her eyes. I'm not scared or confused anymore. I'm just pissed. I don't know if she's the Silencer of the caverns and I really don't care. I'm killing every stranger in my path until I find somebody who isn't one.

I know what's what. Jesus Christ, of course I know. I knew it before I left the safe house. It's all been for nothing, nothing. Dumbo's going to die for nothing, because Ringer is nothing. She's lying in that tangle of bodies, a raven-haired, smile-less nothing, along with Teacup, both of them nothing, like the seven billion other nothings busy breaking down into random molecules of nothing. And I'm going to help. I'm going to do my part. I'm going to murder every dumbass stupid bastard who's unlucky enough to cross my path.

They wanted a mindless, stone-cold killer to let loose on the world. They wanted a zombie. Now they've got one.

I take aim at that silly, smiling, busted-up face and squeeze the trigger.

29.

RINGER.

I'M PROBABLY going to regret this.

Keeping Constance around is like finding a viper in bed with your kids. Going after it risks hurting the kids more than the snake.

So I almost let Zombie do it. It was tempting. But a millisecond before the bullet exits the barrel, I ram my open palm into his elbow, throwing off the shot. His gun is in my hand by the time the report sounds.

He whirls around, his hand balled into a fist, which is aimed at my head. I catch it.

Zombie's shoulder jerks on impact-as if he's punched a brick wall-and then his mouth drops open and his eyes grow wide with astonishment and disbelief, a reaction so cliched and predictable, he almost does it: He almost gets me to smile.

Almost.

"Ringer?" he says.

I nod. "Sergeant."

His knees wobble. He falls into me and presses his face against my neck, and over his shoulder I can see Constance smiling at us. I'm not sure who's holding up whom at this point.

Using the 12th System, I pour myself into him. Where there is pain, I give comfort. Where there is fear, hope. Where there is rage, peace.

"It's all right," I tell him, looking at Constance. "She's with me. You're safe now, Zombie. We're all perfectly safe."

My first lie to him. It won't be the last.

30.

HE PULLS OUT of my arms. His eyes wander over the starlit fields, the road beyond, the bare, uplifted arms of the trees. He wants to ask but doesn't want to, either. I tense, waiting for the question. Is it cruel to make him say it aloud?

"Teacup?"

I shake my head.

He nods. Lets out the deep breath he's holding. Finding me was a kind of miracle, and when one miracle happens, you expect another.

"The little shit," he mutters. Looking away. Fields, road, trees. "She snuck off on me, Ringer." He gives me a hard look. "How?"

I say the first thing that pops into my head. "One of them." I nod toward the pit. The second lie. "We've been dodging them all winter." The third. It's like I've jumped off a cliff-or pushed Zombie off. With each lie, he recedes from me, accelerating as we fall.

"But not Cup." He steps over to the pit and stares into the mass of decomposing remains. "Is she in here?"

Constance jumps into the conversation; I'm not sure why. "No. We gave her a proper burial, Ben."

Zombie looks at her. Glowering. "Who. The fuck. Are you?"

Her smile expands. "My name is Constance. Constance Pierce. I'm sorry. I know we've never met, but it feels like I know you. You're practically all Marika talks about."

He stares at her for a second. "Marika," he echoes.

"That would be me," I tell him.

Now staring at me. "You never told me your name was Marika."

"You never asked."

"I never . . . ?" He hiccups a humorless laugh and shakes his head. Then, without another word, he drops into the pit. I rush to the edge, thinking he's lost his mind, gone Dorothy, that Teacup's death was the final, tiny straw that broke his back. Why else would he jump in there? Then I see him grab his rifle, sling it over his shoulder, and crawl back to the edge. We lock our fingers around each other's wrists and I pull him out.

"Where're the others?" he demands.

"Others?" That loaded word.

"Survivors. Are they in the caves?"

I shake my head. "There are no other survivors, Zombie."

"Just Marika and me," Constance chirps. Why does she have to be so goddamned cheerful?

Zombie ignores her. "Dumbo's been shot," he informs me. "I left him in Urbana. Let's go."

He brushes past me and strides toward the road without looking back. Constance is watching me.

"My! Isn't he a cutie?"

I tell her to fuck off.

31.

I FALL IN next to him. Constance trails several yards behind-out of normal human earshot, but Constance isn't a normal human. Zombie walks with shoulders hunched, head thrust forward, eyes darting up, down, side to side. The road stretches before us, cutting across rolling farmland that will never be farmland again.

"What Teacup did was her choice," I say. "Not your fault, Zombie."

A sharp shake of his head, then: "Why didn't you come back?"

Deep breath. Time to lie again. "Too risky."

"Yeah. Well. It's all about the risk, isn't it?" Then: "Poundcake is dead."

"Impossible." I saw the surveillance tape. I counted the people in the safe house. If Poundcake's dead, who's the extra person?

"Impossible? Really?" he says. "How do you figure?"

"What happened?"

He waves his hand at me like he's brushing away a gnat. "Had a little trouble after you left. Long story. Short story: Walker found us. Vosch found us. A Silencer found us. Then Cake blew himself up." His eyes close briefly, snap open again. "We rode out the rest of the winter in the dead Silencer's safe house. We have four days left, which is why Bo and I decided to come for you." He swallows. "Why I decided."

"Four days left till what?"

He glances at me, and the smile that crawls across his face is frightening. "The end of the world."

32.

THEN HE TELLS ME what happened in Urbana.

"How about that, huh?" he asks. "My first kill of the war, and it's some random old cat lady."

"Except she wasn't random and wasn't a cat lady."

"I never saw so many cats."

"Cat ladies don't eat their pets."

"Handy food supply, though. You'd think after a while the cats would get wise."

He sounds like the old Zombie, the one I left behind in that rat-infested hotel wearing a ridiculous yellow hoodie while he flirted with me. The voice is right but the appearance is wrong: restless, sleep-deprived eyes, downturned, grayish mouth, cheeks camouflaged in dried blood. He glances back at Constance, then ducks his head slightly and lowers his voice. "So what's her story?"

"The typical one," I begin. Here comes lie number five. "Rode out the plague in Urbana, then headed north to the caves after her family was gone. She guesses over two hundred people were holed up down there by the first snow of the season. Then the priest showed up. Around Christmas," I add, a nicely ironic detail. You can't have a good story without one or two of those.

"Nobody caught on at first. Someone goes missing one night, well, maybe they panicked and hit the road. One day, they wake up and realize over half the population is gone. You know what happened next, Zombie. Paranoia. People forming factions, alliances. Your basic tribal response. This person is accused. That person. Fingers pointing everywhere, and in the middle of it all, this priest trying to keep the peace."

I rattle on. Adding detail, nuance, a snatch of dialogue here and there. I'm surprised by how effortlessly the bullshit flows from my mouth. Lying is like murder-after the first one, each one that follows is easier.

Eventually, inevitably, the priest is found out for the Silencer he is. Mayhem ensues. By the time the survivors realize they're no match for him, it's too late. Constance barely manages to escape, returning to Urbana and skipping from abandoned house to abandoned house, by dumb luck staying in an area between the cat lady's territory and the priest's-a place that's rarely patrolled by either of them.

"That's where we found each other," I tell him. "She warned me off the caverns, and ever since then we've been-"

"Teacup," he snaps. He doesn't give a shit about The Adventures of Constance and Ringer. "Tell me about Teacup."

"She found me," I say without thinking. The truth. Now for the next lie. Sixth? Seventh? I've lost count. This lie to shift the burden from his hunched shoulders onto the ones to which it belonged. "Just south of Urbana. I didn't know what to do. Didn't want to risk bringing her back. Didn't want to risk taking her with me. Then that choice was taken away."

"Cat lady," he breathed.

I nod, relieved. "Just like Dumbo, only Teacup wasn't so lucky." See, Zombie, I'm the one who lost her-and you're the one who avenged her. Not exactly absolution but the nearest I can give him.

"Tell me it was quick."

"It was quick."

"Tell me she didn't suffer."

"She didn't suffer."

He turns his head and spits on the side of the road. A bad taste in his mouth. "A couple of days, you said. 'I'll scope them out and be back in a couple of days.'"

"I don't make the rules, Zombie. The odds-"

"Oh, take the odds and stuff them up your ass. You should have come back. Your place is with us, Ringer. We're all you've got and you left us."

"That's not what happened and you know it."

He stops suddenly. Beneath the rust-colored mask, his face is a deeper red. "You don't run from the people who need you. You fight for them. You fight beside them. No matter the cost. No matter the risk." He spits out the word. "I thought you understood that. You told me in Dayton that you did. You said you were an expert on what matters, and I guess you are, if what matters is saving yourself while the rest of the world burns."

I don't say anything because he isn't talking to me. I am the mirror.