I should be wary of days like today, when the sun burns bright and the sky is a blinding shade of blue—the kind of day that hurts your eyes and squeezes your heart. It’s the kind of day that, even in the heart of winter, reminds you what summer felt like.

It’s a fucking liar of a day, and just like all painfully beautiful things, I should know better than to trust it.

Last night’s campsite is far behind us when Pestilence and I enter our first town of the day, the two of us soaking up the morning sun as we chat.

“… I heard a noise beneath my sink,” I tell him, right in the middle of my story, “and when I went to check it out, there was not one, but three rats.” I pause dramatically.

“I don’t understand how this led to the … fire alarm going off,” he says, hesitating a little before repeating the term. I’d only just explained to him what a fire alarm was, and how the one in my apartment escaped the Arrival unscathed.

“They ran at me!” I exclaim.

“So?”

“So?” Rats don’t run at people. Particularly not in an age when people will eat said rats. “So I grabbed a can of hairspray and a match, and I made a flamethrower.”

No one drives this bitch out of her home.

At that, the horseman throws his head back and laughs. I stop speaking just so that I can turn in the saddle and stare at him.

Only Pestilence could outshine the sun.

“Don’t tell me you tried to hurt the creatures?” he asks when his chuckles die down.

“You know, that’s real precious coming from you.”

He starts laughing again, and new life goal: get Pestilence to laugh more.

“Did it work?” he asks.

“Of course it didn’t work.”

That only makes him laugh harder.

“Well, I didn’t think it was very funny at the time,” I say, but I can’t keep a straight face. It’s impossible when he lights up like this.

He manages to smother his laughter enough to say, “Isn’t your job to put out fires, not—”

BOOM!

My body is violently thrown forward as the world explodes around me. I feel the heat, the terrible, scorching heat, at my back as I tumble through the air. It sizzles against my skin, though Pestilence’s body shields me from the worst of it.

I slam into the ground, my side flaring in pain at the impact. All around me, sizzling bits of asphalt and dirt rain down, singeing me in a dozen different places.

I lay on the ground for several seconds, breathing hard as thick smoke billows through the air.

What the hell just happened?

On the other side of the road, Pestilence lays pinned beneath Trixie, a pool of blood spreading out from the back of his head. His horse’s body is partially gone, and what remains is bloody and singed.

I let out a whimper at the sight.

Pushing my torso up, I begin to drag myself to them, my limbs screaming in protest.

Some of the road has been blown away, and it’s that, more than Pestilence’s unconscious form or Trixie’s ruined body that makes me realize we just survived an explosion.

Someone planted a bomb.

Dear God.

They come out of the woods as I crawl to the horseman, their forms quiet and sinister. There’s at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and unlike the last ambush, these people don’t bother wearing masks.

Know they’re going to die.

They do, however, dress in a similar fashion. Lots of black leather and camo print.

Gang, my mind fills in.

Their hate is visceral; it contorts their faces and thickens the air.

They won’t be like the others.

I’m not going to survive this.

“Pestilence.” I try to call out to him, but my voice is too hoarse from pain and smoke.

Even though he can’t possibly hear me, he slowly swivels his face to mine from where he’s pinned.

His eyes are full of fear.

For me, I realize, as the men close in on us.

The group doesn’t bother going for me first. Instead, they cluster around Pestilence. Deftly, they lift Trixie off of him, and for a moment, it almost looks like they’re saving him from being crushed to death, but I know better. People are not nearly so altruistic when it comes to the horsemen.

One of them holds a pump-action shotgun at his hip, pointing it at Pestilence.

Again my horseman’s gaze goes to me before moving to the people that surround him. “Spare my—”

BOOM!

The shotgun goes off, the cartridge blasting away Pestilence’s face.

A shocked scream rips from my throat.

Someone breaks off from the group. A woman, I realize. She steps up to me and cocks her head, inspecting me like a bird would a worm. Whatever she sees, it causes her to frown.

With a swift kick, she slams her booted foot into my temple, and the world melts away.