Free Please Remain Calm by Courtney Summers Page A

take the steps in and a gunshot explodes in my ears. The smell of it in the air, the warmth at my neck, tells me it was close, that it’s not Jess, it’s someone inside. The bullet tears through the driver’s seat just next to me. I cover my face with my hands.
    “
Don’t shoot!
I’m not infected!”
    “Rhys?”
    My heart stops. The voice is so familiar and right that I can’t believe it. I’m afraid to believe it, I’ve wanted it so bad.
    I lower my hands.

 
    “Rhys,” she says again.
    I don’t understand.
    The people I want don’t come back. But past the smell of gunpowder is the smell of sweat and blood, another person. The blinds are drawn and the light in here is so weak, but I would know her silhouette anywhere. I memorized it.
    She’s here and every moment without her was a lie.
    “Rhys?” Jess shouts. “
Rhys?
”
    “It’s okay! I’m okay—it’s okay.”
    I stumble over everything that got strewn on the floor when the RV crashed. I trip over cups and forks and clothes and magazines, a vase and its scattered dried-out, disintegrating flowers. She’s at the back of the RV, in the bedroom. She’s on the floor at the foot of the bed, propped up against it. Her face is pale, the bags under her eyes as dark and purple as bruises, or maybe they are bruises. There’s a gash on her forehead, the blood of it fresh and all over and I have to force the next question through my teeth, asking it so quietly no one else will hear.
    “Are you bitten?”
    She blinks, several times, like she can’t believe any of this, either, and then she shakes her head. Her lips are cracked and bloody.
    “No,” she says faintly.
    “What happened to you?”
    The blood from her forehead stains the side of her face, trails down her neck. It’s soaked into the collar of her shirt. Her legs are sprawled out awkwardly in front of her and the knees of her pants are torn up, and her skin there is crusted with blood. One arm is curled against her stomach and that hand holds the gun she fired at me. Her other arm hangs at her side and—Jesus, it’s dislocated. I recognize that weird separation happening under the skin because it’s the same shoulder she dislocated at the school. She’s dirty, scratched up, and has a few cuts. Jess storms into the RV, I hear him behind me. I bring my hands to her face and it feels good to touch her. Her pupils are blown. One bigger than the other. That’s a concussion. She’s panting, a little, in pain.
    “I looked for you,” she manages.
    “Me too.” I press my fingers into her skin because I can’t hug her because she’s hurt but all I want to do is put my arms around her. “I looked for you too. God, how’d you get here? Did you see any infected? What happened?”
    She frowns, swallows, and it’s all probably too much to throw at her at once. “There weren’t infected at first … but then there were.” Her eyes drift up to Jess, but she doesn’t ask. She turns back to me, losing focus. “I found a hunting—there was a hunting tree stand, it was old, but I got up there and I tried to wait them out, but—”
    Her eyes drift shut. I bring my hand to her shoulder and squeeze. It takes her a long minute to open them, like now that she’s around people she can finally turn off. “Hey. Stay with me. But what? What happened after the tree stand?”
    “It was rotting and I fell,” she says. “And then I just ran.”
    I take the gun out of her hand and tuck it into the back of my jeans and turn to Jess. Ainsley hides behind him. He stares down at the two of us in wonder.
    “Sloane,” he says, before I can tell him.
    ***
    “We’re going to have to set that shoulder,” Jess tells her after I’ve hastily introduced them and he’s looked her over. “That’s going to be goddamn unpleasant.” He turns to me. “I can’t give her anything for the pain until we know how bad the concussion is.”
    “It’s okay,” she murmurs, meeting my eyes and I just stand there,