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It was bloody back there Robbie’s body lay half off the air one out of theon a flattish rubber mat The blanket we’d thrown over top of him was saturated with blood in a couple of places

Just beyond him lay Mr Appleton, who had died in his sleep A o, to be sure As if to prove it, his air mattress was still pleasantly inflated

The outsiders who had coroup apart were now dead in the storeroom

I hadn’t had time to really think about Robbie and the way he betrayed us

He and Mr Appleton had come to the store and we had let them in But when it came time for them to leave, Robbie hadn’t wanted to Mr Appleton fell ill and then, later that night, we had found Robbie with Sahalia

In the scuffle, Brayden had been shot and Robbie had been killed

Mr Appleton died later in the night There wasn’t e that, I don’t think

But Robbie …

I could have looked at Robbie there and been angry As far as I understood it, he had tried to get Sahalia to sleep with him Whether by force or by manipulation, I’usting A, like, fifty-year-old ht he was a loving father-type guy and he turned out to be a letch

And if Robbie hadn’t assaulted Sahalia, Brayden would still be okay Niko and Alex and the rest wouldn’t have had to try to make it to Denver

But I just felt sad

Robbie and Mr Appleton were just two more people dead fro about what had happened and I had to keep it that way

I added "Hide the bodies" to s to do

After I fed the stupid strangers outside the store

The hatch to the roof was easy to unlock Niko had fixed sheeting over it with Velcro, so you could just rip it open and it would hang off to the side And the padlock had the key right in it

I set the bin down on the step in front of me and pushed the hatch up and open

The last ti about the co up from NORAD, thirty miles away

The last time I’d been on this roof I tried to kill my brother

It was dark now The air see out from the hatch The sky above was opaque black No stars No clouds Just blacka flashlight

I didn’t want to go all the way back for one, though, so what I did was set the box down on the roof and scooted it toward the edge, crawling behind it

I sure as hell didn’t want to fall off the roof in the dark

After a , the bin cae of the roof I tipped it up and over and listened to it co down

"Hey!" I heard Scott Fisher yell

"You’re welcome!" I hollered

They’d find the loot And I’d be inside by the time they did

They were lucky Astrid had a nice streak in her and that I was such a pushover

I edgedfrom the hatch I couldn’t wait to take the airlasses, but it e of my nose And my nose was still battered from when Jake had beat etto bunch up under ain, I tried not to think about Alex and Niko and the rest

They had sixtytheir layers and air hway And I hining to ot to my feet and started to make my way, slowly, back toward the hatch In a dark world, that leaked light looked really bright, I tell you

But I went slowly, because the roof was uneven and dented in places froo that had landed us safely in the Greenway

I was thinking about the hailstorrade-school bus driver, Mrs Wooly, had not only thought to drive the bus into the store to get the little kids out of the hail, but had then returned to rescue us high school kids I was thinking about Mrs Wooly and wondering what had happened to her in the end Had shefor us, as she promised, or had she just decided to fend for herself?

I was thinking about Mrs Wooly when the light from the hatch went out

I was alone, on the roof, in the dark

CHAPTER TWO

ALEX

61 MILES