I never thought that I'd be writing this. Zombies, and I guess, the end of the world.
A week before the world ends, Skye's eyes change color.
Jane's don't- but her skin turns gray and starts falling apart and Batty's scared of both of them.
Skye doesn't blame her. She'd run from herself too, if she could.
Mr. Penderwick's locked himself in his office, and even through the locked door, Skye can hear the screams.
Iantha listens to the radio. She keeps it tuned to a station that plays white noise constantly, with the exception of the day that gunshots take over the airwaves. After that, Hound runs away and Skye finds herself missing Jeffrey. She hasn't seen him since winter. Nuclear winter, she reminds herself.
The winter that he kissed her and she kissed him and the sky caught fire and came down in pieces of scorched metal.
The house reeks of blood. She hasn't seen Rosalind for a while now, either.
Jane wanders aimlessly around the backyard, picking what's left of the flowers and presenting them in pairs to Skye.
Skye keeps them in a vase by the window.
Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction, Jane has Skye write for her. The start to a story she never manages to finish. The headaches are too much for her to continue.
Eventually, the stars start moving, and Skye tracks their movement in charts and graphs and maps of the horizon.
One day, she drives out to the sea just to see if it's changed at all. It's turned green, and Skye can't help but feel that maybe this was the way it was meant to be.
The time passes in the tang of metal and the sound of underwater.
She waits.
And then she doesn't.
She goes to find Jeffrey.