How It All Goes Down
- Jed doesn't give up. He tries to convince Mary to stay on the path to find another village, and begs her to at least wait until the morning.
- Mary thinks about both options—giving up on the ocean and sleeping—and tells Jed that the only time she can go is now. If she waits until morning, they'll be surrounded by flesh-eaters; plus, she says, the rain will help hide her scent.
- Jed reminds her of what happened to Beth, and she reminds him that that was because of Gabby the super-zombie.
- She slips through the gate and takes off into the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
- But even though she's like a walking mud-girl, the zombies can smell her bloody knee from a previous fall. Well, that's just peachy, ain't it?
- Mary almost heads back to the gate, but she changes her mind and keeps on keeping on through the woods.
- There's just one problem—she's super-weak from walking for days on little food, so the zombies catch up to her and there's nothing she can do to hold them back. She starts to melt under them.
- And then—poof—the zombies are gone, and she hears Jed screaming and sees him slashing at zombies left and right.
- She is up and running again. This time though, they head toward the sound of running water.
- They slip down a steep incline. Mary scrambles up to look for her big bro and sees him standing a little ways away, but then a zombie dude comes out of nowhere and flying-tackles him to the ground.
- Mary screams and grabs a branch. She throws the branch at the zombie dude's head, but there's no stopping him. He crouches down over Jed.
- Mary trips and fights off a zombie lady on her back. She sees that she tripped over Jed's scythe, so she uses his weapon to take out the zombie lady and then demolishes the zombie dude.
- Trouble is, Jed's still out cold.
- Mary tries to wake him up, kills a few zombie kids, and yanks at him. He opens his eyes, but is still kind of useless.
- She leaves him to defend them both against the zombie horde…
- But she knows she won't be able to succeed. There are just too many of them.