Chapter one

My husband looked me up and down like a piece of luggage and decided I wasn't worth the weight.

"Step out, Tamsin."

I thought I'd misheard. Behind us, the dead were tearing through the fence, close enough that I could hear their jaws working. In front of me stood the cargo lift to the plane, the only way out we had found in ninety days. I was in its doorway with forty pounds of our food on my back, and my heart was pounding with something close to joy.

Then the joy went cold.

"What?"

"The lift only takes four," Caspian said. "You'll slow us down. You'll eat our supplies. You're too fat, Tamsin. There's no room for you."

The words reached my ears, but my body didn't understand them. I just stood there, gripping the gate, my face burning, as if the shame had arrived before the fear.

Supplies. I had crawled through a ruined pharmacy on my stomach for those supplies. I had walked at the back of the line every night so that if something grabbed us, it would grab me first.

"Cas, I'm your wife." My voice came out small. "I'm your wife."

"It's just math."

His mother, Marguerite, stood behind him clutching her handbag, staring at the wall. His uncle Barrett tore the pack off my shoulders so hard I stumbled. Forty pounds of food, gone, thrown in beside her feet. Then his boot hit my ribs, and I fell onto the concrete.

I scrambled back and caught the gate with both hands.

"Please." I was sobbing, ugly and loud, past caring who heard. "I'll eat nothing. I'll walk behind the plane. I'll carry everything. Please, Cas, I love you."

He turned his back.

He actually turned his back and stared at the wall, and something inside me split down the middle, quietly, like ice.

"Dally." I looked past him, at the girl I had loved for ten years. "Dally, please. I gave you my coat. I gave you my antibiotics when your cut went black. I skipped meals so you could eat."

Odalys stepped forward, wearing my coat. Up close, I could see the shine on her face. It wasn't guilt. It was a delight.

"She's been sneaking food for weeks," she said sweetly, to nobody, to everyone. Then she bent down to me. "Thank you for everything, Tam. You were such a useful friend."

I stared at her. Ten years. Every birthday, every secret, every night I had held her hair back. All of it, a lie she had worn like a coat.

Then she stepped on my fingers.

I screamed. My hand slid free. The gate clanged shut, and the lift groaned upward with my food, my husband, and my best friend. Nobody looked down. Not once.

The dead reached me a moment later.

They poured out of the smoke in a ragged tide, gray skin, milky eyes, clothes stiff with old blood. A woman in a nurse's tunic with her jaw hanging loose. A man whose scalp had peeled back from his skull. They ran, stumbling and jerking, mouths working like they could already taste me.

I slid down the cold steel and found, strangely, that I had stopped screaming.

My fingers were broken. In my jacket was the last can of peaches. I had been saving it for Caspian's birthday. 

Tomorrow.

I thought of my grandmother, who used to cup my face in her flour-dusted hands and say, you are enough, my girl, exactly the size you are. I had spent my whole life shrinking so someone would love me. And they had still thrown me away for being too much.

"If I had another chance," I whispered, to the dark, to anyone, "I would never carry anyone again. I would never beg again." My voice cracked. "I would take everything you have. Your money. Your name. Your plane. And I'd make you kneel."

The first hand closed on my ankle, cold and slick, the nails black. A gray face lowered over mine, teeth stained dark, eyes empty of everything but hunger.

The can of peaches rolled across the concrete, pointless and gold.

I woke up screaming.

My sheets were soaked. Sunlight lay across my bedroom ceiling, ordinary and absurd. I clawed at my ankle, my ribs, my fingers. Whole. Unbroken.

I pressed a hand to my chest. My heart was pounding, loud and stubborn and mine. I cried until my throat hurt, and then I cried some more, for the girl who had begged on that concrete and the girl who had believed them.

She was never going to beg again.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, again and again.

Caspian: WHERE IS THE 20 MILLION?? I'm meeting the investors at noon. Grandma's money is just sitting there, Tam. You're being selfish,transfer it today or I swear I'll divorce you. See how you like being alone.

I read it with my hands shaking. Not from fear. From the sheer, disbelieving rage of seeing his name light up my screen as if he hadn't left me to be eaten.

Twenty million. My grandmother's entire estate, sold and wired to my account only last week. In my last life, I had sent every cent, because he had cried and called me his only believer. He wanted it for his business investment, and I had wanted him to be happy.

A thin, cold chime rang in my skull.

[System bound. Host: Tamsin Orrey. Apocalypse in thirty days.]

I sat very still. Then I smiled for the first time in months, and it felt like a knife leaving its sheath.

Me: Divorce me, then.

Caspian: lol. You wouldn't last a week without me. Nobody else would ever want you, Tam. Now send the money.

I had lasted ninety days of the end of the world, carrying him on my back. He had thrown me away on the ninety-first.

A message from Odalys slid in underneath.

Odalys: Tam!! Bringing your favorite lemon cake tonight Love you forever!

Forever. I read it three times, and my thumb hovered over the screen like it wanted to crush it.

I crossed the hall to his study. His laptop sat open on the desk. Once the investors signed, he had promised me, the whole family would fly to Marlowe Island for a week, a celebration, a fresh start. I had been so happy about that trip.

On the screen, a confirmation email glowed.

Charter Confirmation: Marlowe Island Celebration Flight. Departure: the last day of the month. Passengers: Caspian Rook, Marguerite Rook, Barrett Rook, Odalys Fenn.

Four names.

Mine wasn't there. It had never been there.

He had planned to leave me behind before the world even ended.