When the silence finally got to me, I turned to Yuche.

"Where are we going?" I asked. I could feel the tension in my neck and shoulders every moment I was pulled away from my couch and dramas.

I really didn’t think that I would be able to hold on much longer and be sane.

"I thought we could do a Costco run," replied Yuche, his voice annoyingly carefree. "I figured that that place has everything. It’s a good place to start." He looked into the rearview mirror, a smirk twisting on his lips as he stared at Chenghai. "Do you have your shopping list? I always end up spending too much money in that store if I go in with no plan."

"No," spat Chenghai, and the tone was a lot more vicious than I had ever heard him use before.

"This was your idea," I remember him. "And if you keep acting like this I am going to turn the car around and you don’t get your supply run."

Zhenlan narrowed his eyes at me, and I could see his teeth clenching. "Costco isn’t a good idea. After all this time, there probably isn’t anything left."

"Take it or leave it," I shrugged, turning my attention back to the road in front of us.

"I’ll take it."

The rest of the drive to Costco was somehow both boring and horrible.

Which felt unfair.

Since we were going through all this trouble to get ’supplies’... not like I needed them... then the universe should have the decency to make the trip interesting in some way that didn’t involve plants eating road signs and zombies getting composted on the shoulder. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

I hummed to myself as I thought what would make it worth my while...

A zombie horde?

Another Banshee?

Another Butcher?

But no... apparently I was not a universal favorite today.

Grumbling under my breath about inconsiderate zombies, I continued fighting with the radio like it had personally wronged me.

Static.

Emergency alert.

Static.

Someone yelling about root systems.

More static.

At one point I found three glorious seconds of music before a recorded government message interrupted to tell us to remain calm and report all unusual plant activity to local authorities.

I changed the station.

"The authorities are busy being eaten by unusual plant activity," I muttered.

Lingyun leaned forward between the seats. "That song sounded familiar."

"It was probably the last good thing humanity had left and they ruined it with instructions," I grumbled back.

"Maybe that was their problem? Not enough instructions before the world when to shit. Well... unless you count ’don’t drink battery acid’ and ’don’t eat laundry soap’ as instructions and not something that should be universally understood."

Yuche snorted at that, but continued to concentrate on the empty road in front of him.

"Maybe that’s why they’re losing," I mused, turning off the radio for a second time. "Too many people eating pods and drinking the battery. I kind of wish that the Darwin Awards were a real thing. It might have saved us all this."

In the backseat, Chenghai didn’t say anything. He had one of the radios held close enough to his ear that I was starting to think he might eventually merge with it.

Zhenlan sat beside him, silent and stiff, his eyes moving constantly from the street to the windows to the rooftops to the cars abandoned along the curb.

Then there was Lingyun, squeezed between both of them with a bag of chips on his lap and the exact expression of a man who had realized too late that he’d chosen the worst seat in the vehicle.

"This is awful," he announced.

"You volunteered for snacks," I reminded him.

"I did not volunteer to sit between two statues who look like they’re about to declare martial law."

Neither Chenghai nor Zhenlan reacted.

Lingyun looked at me through the rearview mirror. "See? Terrifying."

I turned back around in my seat. "If they start issuing curfews, I’m throwing myself out of the car."

Yuche’s hand tightened slightly on the steering wheel. "You are not throwing yourself out of a moving vehicle." He paused for a second. "We’ll throw them out of a moving vehicle. You are too precious to get a scratch."

"Awe," I purred, returning Yuche’s smirk. "I knew you loved me."

I shifted slightly in my seat before rolling down the window enough to stick my hand outside.

My vine took the chance to launch itself outside the car and straight at the nearest zombie stumbling along the side of the road.

I wasn’t worried. If it had found me once, I knew it would find me a second time. And I knew, without a doubt, that there was nothing in this world that could hurt it.

Besides, it was better than being trapped in this moving cage.

I let out a long breath, as warm wind curled around my hand as I moved my fingers up and down as if they were riding a wave.

There was something surprisingly soothing about the movement.

A vine, hanging from a streetlight brushed lazily across the side of the SUV as we passed. The second it touched the vehicle, it immediately recoiled backward into the greenery.

I hummed softly to myself before leaning my elbow against the door.

"Roll the window back up."

Zhenlan’s voice cut through the car sharply enough that I blinked.

Then slowly turned around in my seat.

"What?"

"The window."

His jaw tightened slightly. "It isn’t safe. You have no idea what could grab you right now. You can disappear before your next breath if a zombie took you."

For a second, nobody spoke.

Then Lingyun looked at Zhenlan like the man had suddenly grown a second head.

"...Do you have that whole Fifty First Dates thing going on?" he finally asked carefully. "Do you seriously think something out there is capable of hurting Rouxi?"

"That isn’t the point."

Chenghai’s voice was colder than normal.

Way colder.

"What she thinks she knows or doesn’t know does not give her permission to put the rest of us in danger."

The inside of the SUV went silent as Yuche’s eyes lifted toward the rearview mirror to stare at the two men.

"You are only alive because of her," he said evenly. "I would think someone in your position would be a little more grateful."

Chenghai’s expression didn’t change.

Neither did Zhenlan’s.

And somehow?

That bothered me more than if they had argued back.

I slowly rolled the window up the rest of the way before turning back toward the windshield. Apparently, I was rewarded with a giant sigh from the back seat.

But I don’t think the man who did it understood just how serious Yuche was.

Zhenlan and Chenghai?

Yeah, I was beginning to understand that these two were not my guys... no matter how much they might look like them.

And that sent a tingle of fear down my back.

Closing my eyes, I shook my head and took in a deep breath.

I wouldn’t trust them. Not until I figured out what was wrong with them.

But I also believed in survival of the fittest.

And at the end of the day, I could do a lot of things to make sure that I was the last one standing.