Kenzie didn't understand it at first.
One second the Jeep was there—engine rumbling, exhaust curling low against the road, headlights cutting through smoke and dust—and the next it wasn't. It lurched forward without warning, tires crunching over debris, the sound stretching thin as distance swallowed it.
Gone.
Her brain refused to catch up.
She stood frozen, one hand half-raised like she could still grab the door, like if she just moved faster she could undo it. The image burned into her mind with cruel clarity: Tally in the doorway, body twisted toward her, mouth open in a scream Kenzie could still hear even after the Jeep disappeared around the bend.
Kenzie—
The sound lodged itself in her chest, sharp and unfinished.
Then someone grabbed her.
"Kenzie—MOVE!" Aaron shouted.
Hands yanked her arm hard enough to hurt, and suddenly she was running—stumbling, dragged forward, feet barely keeping pace as panic finally snapped her body into motion. She twisted once, desperate, looking over her shoulder.
The Jeep was already gone.
Just road. Smoke. Movement where there shouldn't have been movement.
Tally's scream echoed in her head, overlapping with her own breath tearing in and out of her lungs.
"I can't—I can't—" she gasped, but Alyssa was there now too, fingers digging into her sleeve, eyes wide and shining with the same terror.
"Keep running," Alyssa said hoarsely. "Please—just run."
They ran.
Past stalled cars and bodies slumped at impossible angles. Past people hanging halfway out of windows, waving shirts, cardboard signs, bare arms—HELP scrawled in marker, lipstick, blood. No one could stop. No one dared.
This was Day Two.
Everyone already knew what stopping meant.
Kenzie clutched her bag tighter as Barbie whimpered inside, the tiny tremors vibrating through her chest. She pressed her arm against the bag instinctively, shielding the dog as if her own body could still protect something in this world.
"I've got you," she whispered, breathless. "I've got you."
Someone ahead of them waved frantically.
"THIS WAY!" a man shouted from a recessed doorway. "BANK—GET IN HERE!"
Kenzie barely registered the word before she was being yanked sideways, shoes skidding as they veered sharply off the street. The glass doors were already open, one cracked, spiderwebbed but intact.
They spilled inside.
The doors slammed shut behind them, locked fast, hands scrambling to slide a heavy bench and a rolling brochure rack into place. Someone dropped the metal security gate halfway—not fully closed, but enough to buy seconds. Maybe minutes.
Kenzie collapsed against the wall immediately, sliding down until she hit the tiled floor.
The bank smelled wrong—but not abandoned. Stale coffee. Sweat. Copier toner. A sharp undercurrent of fear. Flyers still hung crooked on the walls. A digital clock above the tellers still glowed red, blinking the wrong time.
This place had been open yesterday.
Maybe even this morning.
Her chest heaved as she tried to breathe past the ache.
Barbie whimpered again, sharper this time.
Kenzie fumbled with the zipper just enough to slip her fingers inside the bag, touching warm fur, grounding herself. Barbie pressed into her palm, shaking.
"I know," Kenzie whispered, tears spilling freely now. "I know. I'm scared too."
The others spread out instinctively.
Aaron moved first, scanning the lobby, then the offices. Alyssa followed close, clutching a fire extinguisher like it was the only solid thing left in the world. Lila hovered near them, hands braced on her knees, breathing hard but steady.
Kenzie watched her without meaning to.
Lila's hair was plastered to her face with sweat. Dirt streaked her cheeks. Her eyes were red but alert—tracking exits, counting people, already thinking in survival steps.
Still standing.
Something twisted painfully in Kenzie's chest.
I didn't even know I was gay.
The thought surfaced uninvited and sharp, ridiculous and terrifying all at once. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe it was just fear. Trauma. The way Lila had grabbed her hand earlier without hesitation. The way she'd checked on Barbie like the dog mattered.
Maybe Kenzie was just clinging to the nearest kindness in a world that had stripped everything else away.
But whatever it was—it felt real.
And that scared her almost as much as being left behind.
She hadn't chosen this.
She hadn't chosen to leave the Jeep. Hadn't chosen to leave Tally. Hadn't chosen to trust strangers with half-formed plans and unfamiliar faces.
She was here because she'd been too slow.
Because Ethan hadn't stopped.
Because the world didn't wait anymore.
"They just… left?" Alyssa whispered, voice shaking.
Kenzie nodded once, unable to speak.
Her mind replayed the moment again and again—the Jeep pulling away, Tally's face, the scream. The raw betrayal of it. She knew Ethan hadn't done it to hurt her. She knew they couldn't stop.
But knowing didn't soften the ache.
Barbie shifted again, and Kenzie finally broke.
She folded over herself, silent sobs shaking her shoulders. The kind of crying that didn't make noise because making noise felt dangerous now.
What did I get us into?
The question echoed uselessly in the fluorescent-lit space.
Yesterday, she'd been worrying about classes. About graduation. About whether her parents were overreacting by calling every hour.
Now she was hiding in a bank on Day Two of the end of the world, the people she trusted gone, the person she cared about screaming her name somewhere she couldn't reach.
Kenzie wrapped her arms around herself, rocking slightly.
She didn't know how to survive without the others.
Didn't know how to survive this version of herself—the one who felt things too fast, too deep, in the middle of catastrophe.
All she knew was that Barbie was alive.
That Lila was alive.
That for now—somehow—she was too.
And that would have to be enough.
Even if it felt like everything else had been left behind on the road, getting smaller and smaller the farther the Jeep drove away.