Atlanta was gone by the time Carl and Shane gave up on maps. The roads out of the city were a graveyard of burned cars and sun-bleached bodies. Shane walked ahead with a rifle slung across his back; Carl followed, taller and sharper than he had any right to be at eighteen, scanning treelines like he’d been doing it his whole life. They were a two-person unit now, a small, worn-out family built from loss. And buried under Carl’s silence was a truth neither of them said aloud anymore: Makoa was dead.