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“Excuse me?”

“I’m heading out. The—”

“Fuck that, bitch!” Jasper said it loudly enough so that several people, including Andre, heard him and looked up in shock.

“It’s okay,” Jill said, holding up her hands. “We’re good. Keep eating.” She turned back to Jasper. “I can’t stay. I did the thing where I followed, and—”

“Who said shit about following? Bitch, you started this, you for goddamn sure finishing it. These people need a leader—not that Council bullshit and not some asshole who’s been living in a building by himself. They need someone who’s been in the world, someone who can show them how to survive. And if some asshole does have a cure, someone’s gotta get it to them. That’s you, Officer Valentine.”

Jill opened her mouth, then closed it. She’d just assumed that Jasper would take over. He was a cop. He was suited to it.

But he was right. He’d been holed up alone for years. He wouldn’t know what to do.

Would she?

She thought about the last words she said to Carlos in the It’ll Do Motel in Idaho several billion years ago: “Besides, this needs to be done, and I’m the best person to do it.”

It was true then, and it was true now.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll stay.”

TWENTY-NINE

Carlos looked down at the thousands of undead, all clambering toward the fence that surrounded the old weather station. Also inside the fence’s perimeter were a ditch, a watchtower, and a helicopter pad, complete with the same helicopter that had taken Sam Isaacs away.

Isaacs had never really reached Carlos’s radar during his time at Umbrella. He’d come across the scientist a few times, and he’d always struck Carlos as a cold fish on those rare occasions when Carlos had given him any thought.

Now, as he lay on a ridge overlooking Isaacs’s haven, Carlos found himself wishing he’d spent more energy hating the man. Especially given that he was the one who’d turned Alice into something that caused her to stay away from him for so long.

He looked over at Alice, who was watching through a pair of binoculars. Carlos wasn’t sure what he was feeling for her—he’d never understood love back when there was a world, and nowadays, there just wasn’t any kind of time for it—but he knew that Alice had been important to him from the moment they’d met in the basement of Angie’s school. That was why he’d burned out of West Lafayette like a bat out of hell and chased her all the way to Detroit.

And now they’d finally been reunited—just in time for him to die.

“Definitely the worst vacation ever,” he muttered.

Alice put her binoculars down. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Behind them, Kmart pointed at the helicopter and asked Claire, “You can really fly one of those?”

Claire nodded. “I logged two hundred hours of flight time—”

“Wow.”

“—on Flight School Pro,” Claire added, sounding more sheepish.

Kmart stared at her.

Shrugging, Claire said, “PSP.”

“Great.”

“C’mon,” Claire said, “how hard can it be?”

Carlos was about to comment that this wasn’t the best time to be quoting Indiana Jones, when he was seized with another coughing fit. Putting the back of his hand in front of his mouth, he coughed hard enough to almost dislodge his rib cage for several seconds.

When he pulled his hand away, there was fresh blood on the back of his hand.

Alice was there, comforting him. “Hold on. They have the anti-virus down there.”

Snorting, Carlos said, “Too late, and you know it. Infection’s gone too far. And you need someone to get you in there.” Then he smiled. “Besides, I have a plan.”

“Well, that makes everything okay,” Alice said wryly.

Claire asked, “Does this plan get us through the remake of 28 Days Later down there?”

“If it goes right.”

Kmart frowned. “If it doesn’t?”

“If it doesn’t,” Carlos said, “I won’t care all that much, ’cause I’ll be dead either way.”

“What do you mean, either way?” Kmart asked, her voice rising.

Carlos walked up to Kmart, putting his less bloody hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with tears welling in