Chapter 14: The Gate

Jonas's POV

I have kept a count since I was nineteen.

It started with the first man I carried out of a burning house who did not make it, and it has grown a name at a time.

Reese was the first name I ever took off the list.

I was thinking about that when I drove her toward the river on the twenty-first day, because I had a new count that week, and it was her lies.

Six.

She had told Keaton she was going to help Linda pack.

She had told the captain she was riding with me for a pump part.

She had told her mother the truth, and her mother had looked at me and said, "Bring her back."

Keaton and his people had left for the Anchor the morning before, when the radio said the armory was taking survivors.

He had kissed Reese in front of me at the truck.

I had stood there with my keys in my fist and counted that one too.

She sat beside me now with her hair tied back and her canvas jacket buttoned to the chin.

She was very calm.

I had learned in nine days that calm was when she was most frightened.

"You've been in love with me since the overpass," she said.

I almost put the truck into the guardrail.

"What?"

"Your ears." She did not turn her head. "It's the thing they do."

"I have a very good plan," I said, "which is to say nothing about that."

"That's fair."

"It's also true."

She smiled at the windshield, and I drove on with my face burning.

The armory sat on a bend of the river behind a wall of stacked shipping containers.

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