Pestilence watches me, his face solemn. For a moment, I think I see hope spark in his eyes.

He thinks I’m changing my mind.

Steeling myself, I face the street once more and walk away.

Chapter 52

I don’t hear the news. Not for weeks and weeks.

Still, I should’ve known. The truth was so obviously in front of me.

Instead it takes an outpost owner near the Canadian border to convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“That blighted horseman’s gone. I swear it on the newly dead, he is,” the man says, leaning on the pine countertop as he adds up my things.

The sight of the man himself, alive and bustling about his store, is surprising enough, but then again, I’ve ran into others on my way back up the coast. I assumed their presence had to do with Pestilence spreading his plague solely southward.

Now I stare at the store owner, his news not computing.

The world thought Pestilence was gone when we were holed up inside that mansion, but once I left, I assumed that he’d resume his travels.

“You mean there haven’t been any new sightings of him?” I ask dumbly.

He shakes his head.

No new sightings of him. An unpleasant sensation twists my gut, but I can’t say what causes it.

Maybe there’s no longer anyone left alive to spot him. The territory from Washington to California is vast … vast and full of the dead.

“Have you not heard?” the owner asks when he notices my surprise.

“Last news I received was that Oregon, California, and parts of Mexico were infected,” I say. Even now a chill slides through me at the thought. I played a role in that.

The man lets out a wheezy laugh, pulling a slim case from beneath his counter. Opening it, he takes the raw ingredients from inside and begins to hand roll a cigarette. “Oh, you’ve missed so much.”

Intentionally.

I made a habit of avoiding small talk like this, the guilt its own sort of illness. But now that we’re on the subject of Pestilence, a sick sort of curiosity comes over me. I find I need to know how much of the world still lives—and how my horseman fared.

Hearing that Pestilence hasn’t resurfaced since I left him …

The loss feels physical, like a limb’s been lopped off.

The outpost owner finishes rolling his cigarette, licking the edge of the white paper to seal the seam closed. “Pleased to tell you that all the sick recovered.” He shakes his head. “Damn miracle it is.” The man strikes a match and holds the flame to the end of his smoke, inhaling a grateful drag. “I’m not a praying man myself, but even I sent one up when I heard the news. Thought He’d left us to die.”

Wait—what?

I stare at him in shock.

All the sick recovered.

Can’t seem to catch my breath.

“You mean … all of those sick—they … lived?” I say incredulously.

It cannot be. I was with the horseman. I saw his anger, witnessed his unbending will.

No way had he changed his mind.

“Yep,” the man says cheerily enough, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “Even us up north here recovered—news didn’t bother mentioning that.” He frowns, like that’s some great travesty when oh my God, all those millions lived.

“Fucking plague came back right as I was re-opening my store,” he continues. “Thought I’d caught my death.”

There’s a pain in my chest that’s equal parts joy and anguish. I don’t want to believe him because if I’ve misunderstood, the disappointment might crush me alive.

I brace my hands on the countertop as I sway a little.

My God.

Pestilence retracted his plague. I don’t know how, but he did.

He must’ve done it while I was confined to that damn room. I’d thought the worst of him then, and all the while he was curing the plague he’d brought down upon the masses.

The only thing besides his love that I ever wanted. He gave it to me.

Had I but turned on the fucking T.V. I would’ve seen this.

Pestilence stopped the plague, and still I left him.

I swallow back a choked cry.

Why didn’t he tell me? By God, that would’ve changed everything.

“And the Fever,” I ask, somehow finding my voice, “has it spread since then?”

Have to be sure I understand this correctly.

The outpost owner frowns, considering my words. “Not that I’ve heard, though who knows where the world’s at these days? It hasn’t been back around these parts, and that’s good enough for me.”

I thank the man for the news and walk away from the outpost in a daze.

My last encounter with Pestilence fills my mind.

I surrender, he’d said, casting his crown aside.

He had already reversed the plague by then.

I may have laid claim to the world but I’ve lost you, the only thing I ever really wanted.

Why didn’t he say anything? Did he think I was watching the news in that room, that I’d learned that he’d cured them all and still decided to walk away?

These thoughts are gutting me. Because I’m still in love with Pestilence, and now, after vindicating himself, he’s gone.

Chapter 53

By the time I return to my hometown of Whistler, I hear enough reports and firsthand accounts to believe the incredible.

The plague really did disappear over the course of days.

Just … poof, gone, and the horseman with it. I try not to think about that. My heart aches enough as it is.

I learn that, like me, people didn’t believe the news—not at first, at least. Weeks without incident had to pass before anyone dared to hope that the Messianic Fever was truly over and that the horseman had vanished.

Then people began to hope—in that ridiculous way we do—that other things would return to the way they once were. That electricity would begin to work as it ought, that batteries would hold a charge and perhaps even the Internet would eventually come back.

They hoped in vain.

The world never went back to the way it was. I doubt it ever will.

Without the horseman by my side, no one recognizes me as the girl he kept. Despite the few blurry photos that once circulated, not a single person has connected the dots.

When I finally arrive home, I get a hero’s welcome—the firefighter who took a stand against the horseman, the woman they all thought long dead.

My father holds me for a long time, and my mother openly weeps. I’m blubbering like a baby when I see them both alive.

Plague never got them.

Our reunion is touching and ridiculous and beautiful, and I just fucking love my parents.

When I return to the fire station, Luke is the first one to see me. It’s almost comical, the way the shock registers on his face.

“Holy motherfucking shit! Burns!” He nearly overturns the chair he sits in when he sees me. “You’re alive!”

“So are you!”

It’s startling to see him after all this time. He looks a little leaner, not that I should be surprised. Living through a Canadian winter post-Arrival is difficult enough. Living through a Canadian winter in the frozen wilderness is near impossible. And that’s what he and all these other survivors had to do to escape the plague.