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Angela was scared.

Then Ms. Gorfinkle, the lunch lady, grabbed Jill. Angela hadn’t seen her coming. Ms. Gorfinkle was a monster now, too, of course.

Every person who’d been attacked by a monster became a monster. But Jill didn’t—instead, she got Ms. Gorfinkle in a headlock and then did something that made an awful snapping noise.

Ms. Gorfinkle fell to the floor.

“Okay?” Jill whispered to Angela.

Angela gave Jill an “okay” sign with her fingers. She liked her new friend a lot.

They were hunkered down by one of the stoves. Unfortunately, one of the dog monsters was now standing over Jill’s gun.

Jill looked up at the stoves.

Then she smiled.

She turned on each of the burners. Angela could hear the whooshing sound of the gas—and she could smell it, too.

The dog monster started sniffing the air. Angela knew from science class that dogs had better senses of smell than humans, and she figured monster ones did, too. If she could smell the gas, so could the dog monsters.

Jill reached into her pocket and pulled out a book of matches.

Then she grabbed Angela’s arm and they ran for the cafeteria.

As they ran, Jill lit one of the matches without removing it from the book, then tossed it behind her.

Angela glanced back to watch as she ran away. Daddy had always told her that it was dangerous to light a match near a stove burner because the gas would catch fire. But now, Jill wanted the gas to catch fire to stop the dog monsters.

The book of matches was ablaze. It tumbled through the air.

The dog monsters were heading for them.

The matches went out.

Before they hit the gas.

The dog monsters kept coming.

Angela heard a slight hissing sound. She looked up to see a cigarette flying through the air, which was weird, since nobody was allowed to smoke in the building.

A blond woman was standing in the doorway. Angela didn’t think she had ever seen her before, but she looked kinda familiar anyhow. The woman grabbed Angela and protected her in the folds of the coat she was wearing.

Angela felt the heat of the explosion through the woman’s coat, heard the sound of it slam into her ears.

After a moment, the woman unfurled her coat.

“Thank you,” Angela said to her savior.

Jill was on the floor, which was weird, since the blond woman had managed to remain standing.

“Nice of you to show up, Alice,” Jill said. “You’re making a habit of showing up in the nick of time to save my ass.”

But the woman—Alice—wasn’t listening to Jill. She was staring at Angela.

Angela stared back.

Somehow—with the same clarity with which Angela knew why the monsters were ignoring her—Angela knew that Alice was like her.

Had Daddy helped her, too?

“You two know each other?” Jill asked.

“She’s infected,” Alice said. “On a massive level.”

Jill frowned. “How can you know that?”

Angela answered the question. “Because she is, too. Don’t worry, I know how strange it must feel.”

Whirling on Alice, Jill started yelling, “Wait a second! You’re infected? And when were you going to tell me that?”

Alice kept ignoring Jill, which Angela didn’t think was very nice. Instead, she stared at Angela’s lunchbox.

“Let me see.” Alice held out her hand.

“No!” Daddy had told her never to ever let that lunchbox out of her sight.

But Alice took it anyhow, yanking it away from Angela.

She popped open the box, to reveal what Angela kept with her at all times because Daddy had told her to.

Some kind of gray foam took up most of the inside, protecting four fancy needles. Daddy called them syringes—he also called them really really important.

“This is the antivirus,” Alice said. “The cure to the T-virus.”

“There’s a cure?” Jill asked.

Alice nodded, then looked at Angela. “Isn’t that right?”

Angela didn’t say anything.

“How did you get this?”

At first, Angela didn’t say anything. Then Alice closed the lunchbox and handed it back to her. As she took it, she decided to tell them the whole story. Jill said Daddy had sent her, after all, and they had both saved her life.

“My daddy—my daddy