Chapter 40. Are You Okay?

“We are three… the homestead is dozens. Maybe they just want to stay where they have more to kill.” Carmen chimes in bluntly, as gracious as ever, and I shudder at the thought. Maybe she’s right, even if she said it without tact or obvious emotion. What are three lone wolves when they have an entire homestead of hundreds left behind? If blood and destruction are what they’re after, we are too much effort to chase when they can’t get into our steel box.

The thought makes me sick, and as we hightail it onto the main route and relatively clean air with no more impaired vision, the sun warms us as it starts to reach higher in the sky. If we were not on such a depressing mission, it would be the start of a beautiful and unusually warm day. I rub my temples, overwhelmed with utter sadness and despair at what we must do, and force Colton out of my mind again. The constant craving for him never seems to subside, and now we’re leaving them behind. I experience a new sense of longing an