Lying in a hospital bed, Alamo Joe Rogan has nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company—and one relentless question: Was he infected? The wound at his throat could mean salvation or damnation. If the curse passed to him, Rogan knows exactly what he must do…but he needs certainty before making that choice.

Hospital staff take X-rays of the injury, studying the shape of the gashes to determine whether they were made by teeth or claws. As Rogan waits for the doctor to review the results, Rosa and her children arrive to see him. Despite their grief over Eric, they offer kindness. Rosa tells him, “The living must support the living.” She admits Rogan is not always a gentle man—but she knows he is not a wicked one either. She urges him to live, insisting that taking his own life is not the answer.

Rogan listens, but his resolve remains fixed. Everything now depends on those test results.

After Rosa leaves, Rogan calls Madge. He tells her she can finally stop worrying—he killed the demon he had been chasing for so long, the creature that stole him away from her. What he doesn’t tell her is that the same demon may have sealed his fate.

He hangs up as the sheriff enters, ready to confront Rogan about the night’s carnage. With a dead deputy and a killed prisoner on his hands, the sheriff informs Rogan he is facing a murder charge. Their tense exchange is cut short, however, when an urgent call comes in from the morgue.

Eric Cord’s body is gone. The body storage compartment door is bent and smashed from the inside.

With Eric no longer legally dead, the sheriff is forced to drop the murder charge—reluctantly and with more questions than answers. At that moment, the doctor arrives with the results Rogan has been dreading, the truth he’s been building toward since the attack: The answer to whether the curse has passed to him.