I get up, completely naked, not really giving a fuck what War sees. “I’m glad we both know that’s all this is.” I begin to pull on my clothes. “I would hate for you to get the impression that I actually want you.”

“Oh, you want me.” The horseman sounds almost smug.

I shove my feet back into my pants. “Fuck. You.”

“Not until you surrender everything.”

Done, done, done with this. I finish getting dressed and begin to walk away.

“You will be riding back with me,” War commands from behind me.

I give him the finger in response.

I’ve barely walked twenty meters when I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn just in time to see the zombie from earlier loping towards me.

I manage not to scream, but I’m not going to lie, I pee myself a little at the sight of the creature sprinting towards me.

Behind me, War stands on our blanket, pulling his pants back on as he watches the scene.

“What are you doing?” I yell at War, never fully managing to rip my eyes from the zombie.

The dead man—pretty sure it’s a man at least—is hurtling towards me.

Fuck it—I begin to run.

I make it half a kilometer before the creature tackles me. The two of us go tumbling into the sandy earth.

Dear God, the smell. Like someone is raping my nostrils. I gag a little on it. And now when I do see the creature, I really do scream. This one isn’t as freshly dead as the men I fought a city ago. His skin is a greyish hue and it’s rotting away in areas, revealing his decomposing innards.

The zombie drags me to my feet just as the horseman rides over on Deimos.

He stops at my side, reaching out a hand. “Come, Miriam.”

I glare up at War. “No.”

“Then my man will be forced to escort you home.”

I think I have bits of that decomposing man in my hair. I definitely have them smeared across my shirt and pants.

Going to have to burn these clothes. Damnit.

“At least he’ll be better company,” I say.

War frowns at me, looking frustrated and bothered all at the same time. “So be it. Enjoy the walk, wife.”

And then he rides off.

Bastard.

It takes nearly an hour to make it back to camp, and the entire way the dead man has a grip on my upper arm. The stench of him is too much, and I vomit four separate times. Eventually I simply plug my nose and breathe in and out of my mouth.

In spite of this, I don’t regret my decision to walk back. Not even a little.

Right now the dead man is still better company than War.

I don’t see the horseman again for days. He doesn’t call on me, and I stay the hell away from his tent, spending my time reading, making weapons, and visiting with Zara and her frightened nephew.

So I’m surprised when, on the day we pack up camp, I’m given a horse and instructed to wait for War.

I almost don’t.

I’m no longer upset about the revelation that War’s dead haunt all the fallen cities of the world. It’s terrible and shocking and it makes the horseman even more barbaric than I already imagined him to be, but it is what it is, and now I know.

I’m not even upset about the nauseating walk back to camp—though I had been for a while after I returned.

At this point I’m just pissed off because I’ve been pissed off, and I don’t know, the emotion has developed some inertia of its own.

But then War comes riding through camp, looking like a red sun rising on the horizon, and I feel eager to see him—eager to be angry with him, eager to hear his deep voice and to gaze at that face. And maybe to even touch him. I may not like the guy, but I think I’m addicted to him.

The horseman stops when he gets to my side. His stares at me for several seconds.

“Wife,” he says. I cannot tell what he’s thinking.

“War.”

He gives me a slight nod and takes off again. I follow him to the front of the procession, feeling the eyes of the entire army on us. And then they’re behind us and it’s just me and War and the endless road ahead of us.

The horseman is the first one to speak.

“If we’re to be married, we have to get along.”

“We’re not married,” I say for the five billionth time.

“We are.”

Exasperating man!

“You had a dead man tackle me!” Okay, maybe I am still a little ticked about my walk back to camp. I have a fucking right to be. I smelled like a corpse for two entire days.

“You wouldn’t listen,” he says.

“No, it was you who wouldn’t listen!” I say, my voice rising. Oh yeah, I am so ready to jump back into the arena and fight this man. “You’re so used to commanding people that you think you can command me too.”

“Of course I can.”

I’d throttle War if I could get away with it.

“That’s not how marriage works,” I say, trying to simmer my emotions back down. “At least, not a good marriage—and you want this to be a good marriage, don’t you?”

Why am I even trying to reason with him?

He gives me a long look. “Of course I do, wife.”

“Then you need to listen to me and you need to respect my opinions.” It’s the two most obvious rules of marriage, and yet War is completely unaware of them.

“And you need to respect my will,” he fires back. “As my wife, you should be obedient the few times I demand it of you.”

Obedient?

I’m seeing red.

“Fuck it. I want a divorce.”

“No.”

“I’m not going to be obedient—hell, you don’t even want me to be obedient. I know you don’t.” He’s clearly been around too many misogynists.

War runs a hand down his face, one of the rings he wears catching the light. “Feel like I’m being beaten with my own blade,” he mutters. “Fine. I will try to be more … respectful. To your opinions … even when they are absurd.”

I glare at him.

“And I will listen to your soft mortal wants. But in exchange, you must listen to my will when I give it.”

“I will listen to it,” I say.

I just might not go along with it.

“Good.” He looks pleased.

I just give him a look.

This is going to be a long ride.

I’ve abandoned my rules. The ones for surviving the apocalypse. I don’t know when it happened—whether I left them back in Ashdod, or if they traveled all the way to Arish before I forsook them.

I only know that each one no longer applies to surviving the apocalypse now that I’m stuck with one of the horsemen orchestrating it.

The only rule I still fall back on is Rule Five: Be brave. Every single waking second of my day consists of me trying to be brave when all I really want to do is shit myself and hide.

Unfortunately, out here in the barren desert, there’s nowhere to hide.

It’s a long, lonely ride. The road we take is surrounded by uninterrupted desert. And even though I know that the ocean lingers off to my right, the highway is inland enough that I don’t usually catch glimpses of that blue water.

The summer sun cruelly beats down on the two of us, and for all the time we’ve been riding, we might’ve gone two kilometers … or two hundred. It’s impossible to say.