“I know, honey,” I say. “I know.”
I know and Bits knows and Peter knows. Everyone knows what it’s like to be an orphan now. Hank’s new to the club. I rock him while tremors pass through his body and whisper that he’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. It might not be true—it likely isn’t—but it’s what he needs to hear.
My voice cracks and the tears I’ve tried to restrain break free. I want to be here for Hank, to be strong, but I’ve just lost a father for the second time. I’ve lost my beautiful and fearsome sister. I don’t know what Dan would’ve been to me, now I never will, but he was a friend and perhaps a future. The day that felt like a new beginning has ended before it ever really began. I hold Hank as tight as he holds me and murmur promises I’m not sure I can keep.
Peter slows when we’re fifteen miles out. He doesn’t say a word after he pulls to a stop, just moves between the seats to Bits. His pain is so raw that I have to force myself not to look away. I take his slack hand in mine, and he lowers himself to the VW’s floor, mouth buried in Bits’s hair, and leans against me.
The Lexers are coming north, but we have time. Not much, but some—if every mile equals an hour of zombie walking. We sit in the silence of the dead world and take a few precious moments that might be better used running. But in order to run fast you have to want to live, and we need this moment in order to go on, I know we do.
78
Now that we’re a few miles from Quebec, we could raise them on the radio. They’ll ask who’s with us, though, and I don’t know what to say. Peter doesn’t suggest it either, just grips the wheel and stares straight ahead. I sit silent in the back, kids in my arms, and wonder how I’ll find my voice to tell Penny. A man I recognize from our trip this summer runs the gate open. Peter crawls along the main road, partly to avoid boxes, bags and discarded belongings, but also, I suspect, because he doesn’t want to reach Penny any faster than I do.
He pulls into the lot, next to the pickup Shawn was driving. The small school bus has also made it. Penny rises from a picnic table at the sight of our vehicle. I take a breath and step through the door. I hear the kids’ shoes hit the gravel and Peter’s footsteps, but I don’t break eye contact with Penny. Her face crumples when she moves her gaze to the empty road behind us, and she sinks to the bench with an open mouth. James stands with his hand on her shoulder as I walk across the impossibly mown grass and kneel in front of her.
“No.” She shivers and folds her arms. “No.”
“We couldn’t help her,” I whisper desperately. “We couldn’t.”
She inhales sharply, her face wild. “Did she turn? Is she…”
I shake my head so hard that a bun tumbles down my shoulder. “No. I—” I try, but I can’t say it. “I promise.”
Penny’s eyes widen, and she takes my hands in hers without asking more. I’ll tell her if she wants to know, but I don’t ever want to talk about putting a bullet dead center in her sister’s head. She sobs quietly, and I know Penny well enough to know that she wants me here but doesn’t want platitudes. I watch the reflection of the clouds move across the lake. The chairs Dan and I sat in on that first night are still by the shore. I wonder if he’s done it already—how long he waited, if whatever was in that flask made it any easier—and the burn in my throat is worse than when I drank that awful liquor.
“John?” James asks, although he already knows the answer. His face is drawn and eyes wet, but he’s not surprised that we all didn’t make it back. He’s probably surprised any of us did.
“Dan. Henry. Everyone on the bus. We think everyone in front of the bus.”
Bits sits at the table, hair a knotted mess, and watches Hank trace a gouge on the tabletop with his finger. Peter stands alongside us, his gaze on his feet.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a whisper. “I shouldn’t have let her—”
Penny jumps to put her arms around his neck. “You couldn’t have stopped her if you’d tried. I knew it would happen one day. I did.”
Penny may not be a fighter, but she’s one of the strongest people I know. Instead of falling apart, she’ll try to keep us all together. James wraps his arms around Penny’s waist, and she leans into him with her eyes closed.
“We have to leave soon,” he says, like he’s reluctant to bring it up. But no one looks at him askance; we know we have little time to mourn. “We’re just waiting on Whitefield.”
Maureen comes out of the stone house and picks her way across the grass. Her cheeks hang alongside her mouth. She holds us each in turn, like my mother would have, and I sink into her embrace.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Maureen sniffs and hugs me tight, then pulls Hank into her lap. She removes his glasses and wipes his eyes gently. She doesn’t cry, and I rub away my tears. I’m not going to cry anymore. Crying won’t get us fuel or food or drive us the thousands of miles to Alaska. I’m going to concentrate on what comes next, on keeping those who are left safe. I’ll cry when we’re behind fences again.
“Is Whitefield coming?” I ask.
“Gabriel said Whitefield called here when they couldn’t get us,” James says. “Said the pod had reached them and they were leaving.”
Pod isn’t the right word. It’s more like those armies of ants you see on nature shows, the ones that march forward unrelentingly, eating everything in their path. Or the swarms of locusts that used to plague pioneers. Whitefield might be caught in that swarm. I’m not sure I could stand to lose Nelly today, too.
“Quebec’s not going to Alaska,” Maureen says. “They’re heading up to northern Canada somewhere.”
“There’s no Safe Zone,” James adds. “They don’t know what’s up there. Some of the others from Kingdom Come want to go with them.”
“What?” I ask. “Why?”
James shrugs. “It’s closer. I don’t know.”
Gabriel comes down the porch steps with a large box. Clara follows behind with winter parkas. I meet up with them at their van.
“Cassie,” Clara says. “I’m so happy you’re here and all is well. Your friends were very worried.”
I nod. They don’t need to hear what’s happened. “You’re not going to Alaska?”
Gabriel stashes the box and says, “It’s too far. We’re taking the James Bay Road to Radisson. There may be survivors there, and there’s the hydroelectric dam.”
James has followed me over, and now he shakes his head. “But it’s flat. I think mountains would be better.”
“There’s only one road between here and there. And many lakes,” Gabriel says. He looks to Clara, who nods. “We think the water will protect us. We can get there on the fuel we have, rather than finding ourselves out of fuel halfway to Alaska.”
“The western mountains are a better bet,” James says, and looks to me. “There’s a reason John and Will chose it, right? We’ll have the Cascades, the Rockies and the Alaska Range in our path. Alaska’s had a quarter of the Lexers we’ve had.”
My heart stops at the mention of John. I’m not sure we can make it to Alaska without him, but if it’s where he thought best, then he must have been right.
Gabriel sighs. “Yes, as you say, it is probably better. But this is our decision.”
Clara smiles apologetically and turns back toward the house.
“We leave in ten minutes,” Gabriel says. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, of course. You’ll tell Whitefield they’re welcome to join us?”
James and I walk back to the table, and Gabriel resumes his packing. Two men pull down the rear door of a box truck loaded with food.
“They don’t have enough food for the winter,” James says. “I think we should stick to the plan. We know where we’re headed is safe. They think it’s safe up there. By the time they find out it’s not, it’ll be too late to turn around. I want those mountains around me.”
I want them, too. All the pictures I’ve seen of Alaska, where the smallest mountains are the height of the t
allest here, flash through my mind. Alaska has food and warmth; they told us to come.
James explains the situation to the others, and Bits pulls Peter’s hand. “I want to go to Alaska.”
“That’s where we’re going, baby girl,” Peter says, and absently runs a hand down her hair.
The other survivors from Kingdom Come walk toward the small school bus. Jamie and Shawn come our way, followed by Barnaby. I kneel to throw my arms around him; I never thought I’d be so happy to see this dumb dog. He spins in a circle and his tail hits me in the eye hard enough to make it water.
Shawn’s normally jovial expression has been replaced by sloping eyes and a downturned mouth. Jamie checks over Bits and Hank. Doc is gone, too; he was on the big bus with Chris. Liz, Mikayla and Ben were in the first vehicles, but I don’t remember which. Maybe a truck got through to the west, and they’re heading for Alaska right now. It’s a slim hope, but it’s a possibility.
“Almost everyone’s going north,” Shawn says. “Mike and Rohan are coming with us. And Mark. That’s it.”
Mark sets his pack on the ground. “If it’s all right with you. I’ve secured the bows in the pickup, just in case.”
“Of course,” James says.
Ashley walks up and throws her pack on the picnic table. “I’m coming to Alaska.”
“Where’s Nancy?” Penny asks.
“We got separated,” Ashley says. She swallows and blinks. “She was on the big bus. I want to come with you.” Her hair is in a bun and she wears a knife on her hip like she’s one of us. She juts out her trembling chin in a tough girl act.
“Of course you’ll come with us, Ash,” I say.
Ashley sighs with relief, all her bravado spent, and glances at the little yellow bus. “Meghan and the others say I should go with them, but I don’t want to.”
We look to where over a dozen of the others stand. Meghan and her closest friends are huddled together, wide-eyed and unarmed. I can’t believe none of them is wearing a gun or knife. Maybe it’s good they’re going their own way. We have enough to worry about. I feel mean as I think it, but I can only protect so many people, and those people need to be able to help themselves if they’re over the age of eighteen.
We jump when Peter curses and strides across the grass, pushing through the remainder of Kingdom Come to where Oliver cowers in the back. He doesn’t say a word, only takes Oliver’s shirt in his left hand and draws back his right. I arrive just as his fist smashes into Oliver’s face. The crowd murmurs in surprise, but, honestly, I can’t believe that somebody else didn’t beat Peter to it.
I pick Oliver’s bent glasses up off the dirt. Oliver shrinks, but Peter doesn’t let go. I’ve seen Peter angry, but I’ve never seen this blank, murderous rage. There’s another meaty thud, and blood rushes over Oliver’s eye before dripping off his chin. I consider stepping in, but I want Peter to get a few more in—one each for Ana, John, Dan and Henry.
Oliver gasps, his mouth open in a rictus of fear. He fixes his good eye on Peter’s fist. “I’m sorry!”
Peter’s fist stops before it connects. He drops Oliver to the ground and bends over him. “Do you know how many people you killed today?” he asks in a scarily quiet voice. “Do you? I hope you have plans to go with Quebec. I guarantee you won’t make it to Alaska.”
Oliver hugs his knees and blinks up at Peter. I hold out his glasses, and it takes him three tries to get them on with the way his hands quiver. The crowd has reassembled around us. Penny, who usually abhors this kind of violence, wears a satisfied expression, but Meghan and her friends look at Peter in shock. Well, fuck them. Fuck everyone who was so scared to leave the farm, the ones who are going with Quebec. They’re going to find out what it’s like out here, and God help them if a fistfight is enough to cause such alarm.
“I forgot!” Oliver says with a whimper. The tears mix with blood to form a watery soup. “I—I was scared. I f-forgot. It was all so fast!”
Peter’s fist retightens, but then he takes in the pathetic mess that lies sobbing on the ground and splays his fingers with visible effort. I take his arm and walk him to the lake. If he punches Oliver again, he’ll regret it. I rinse the blood off his knuckles with a plastic bucket and dry it on my shirt, then seat him in one of the chairs by the water.
“Stay here until they leave,” I say.
Peter nods and watches the lake with a tight jaw. I sit next to him until I hear the engines fade into the distance. We’ve lost so many today that it almost feels the same as when the world ended a year ago. But we hadn’t let that destroy us—we’d built a new world, and now that’s ended, too.
79
Quebec took all the food, but they didn’t take the time to completely pick over the gardens. While we give Whitefield a few hours to arrive, I pick green tomatoes and snap hidden cucumbers off their vines. It may take the Lexers days to get up here, but we need more than days to cross the thousands of miles to Alaska. Our travels will take us across northern Canada, where the terrain might slow the Lexers down and the roads are less likely to be impassable.
Bits and Hank fill containers with anything that looks remotely edible in the garden we’ve been assigned to plunder. I’m glad we have something to do because the waiting is torture. Peter pulls a carrot out of the ground and tosses it into a bag. The next one’s stuck, and he curses and kicks the greens that rise aboveground until there’s nothing but a tiny stalk. I bring over my trowel and carefully dig up the carrot. My hands are steady, although my insides are so unsettled I can’t imagine a time when I might ever want to eat it.
I look up from where I kneel. “Why don’t you go rest? We can get this.”
Peter shakes his head and crouches to rip a carrot from the earth. He wipes his face with the back of his hand and furiously tears out another. His fingernails are black, and blood runs down his knuckles where his cuts have opened up.
“You’re bleeding,” I say. “Why don’t we clean you up? You need a band-aid.”
“Fucking stop already!” Peter yells. “I don’t want a fucking band-aid!”
Bits and Hank look up, mouths open. Hank takes Bits by the hand and leads her to another row. I’m not surprised by his outburst, though. Of course he’s angry.
“Then you don’t have to have a band-aid.” I hand him the trowel. “Use this.”
He stabs the trowel into the soil. I know about the anger that boils beneath the surface. The blame. The rage at the unfairness of it all. Sometimes it rises up and chokes you. Other times, you put it to good use. Right now, I’m doing neither of the two. The anger is in there, along with grief and despair, but I’ve buried it all with my resolve to think only of the practicalities of survival. Peter’s seething with it, though. It’s choking him. He’s not an angry person. He spent much of his life sad, not angry. The only person he’s ever hated with any intensity is himself.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know you were so vehemently opposed to band-aids, or I never would’ve offered you one.”
The trowel pierces the ground and stays there. I raise my eyes from my carrot to find him staring at me. My semi-joke to defuse his anger was a gamble, and I’m relieved when his shoulders soften and jaw unclenches.
“Sorry,” he says. “I just…I should’ve gone and—”
I look into his red-rimmed eyes. “No. It’s not your fault. Don’t do that to yourself. We got Bits. Ana wanted to save her as much as we did.”
He lowers his head and yanks me forward by my shoulder. I hold him as he cries, his breaths coming in hot bursts on my neck. I know what it’s like to need someone to cling to. I should’ve asked my friends for comfort after Adrian died.
I hear a rustle and spot Bits peeking at us from behind a bean bush.
“It’s okay, Bits,” I say, and hold out my hand. She steps softly on the earth but halts when Peter raises his head.
“Come here, baby girl,” he says. “Sorry I scared you.”
She balls up in his lap and he rests
his chin on her head. The blood is still running, but it’s slowed to an ooze. I take out my handkerchief and press it to his knuckles.
“I think I might need a band-aid,” Peter says. He doesn’t exactly smile, but some life has returned to his eyes.
80
The VW and pickup are stuffed to the gills, and those of us who are left cluster beside them. We’re giving Whitefield one more hour to arrive, and then we’ll leave a note with their two options of destinations. It’s late afternoon, but we won’t stop for night. The plan is to drive straight through, taking turns behind the wheel as long as it’s safe to do so. In a perfect world, it would take four straight days of driving at highway speeds. But this world is highly imperfect.
“We need zombie Doppler,” Mike jokes. He cringes and his eyes dart around our group. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mike,” Penny says with a weak smile. “Ana would be the first one to laugh.”
Mike puts an arm around Rohan and sucks in his cheeks.
“My dad said we had to joke after my mom and sister died,” Hank says from where he sits on the edge of the VW’s cabin. “He made me tell him every joke I knew. I didn’t want to, but he made me. We laughed so hard we had to stop in case we attracted zombies.” He kicks the dirt with a sneakered foot.
“So it worked?” I rest my arm around his shoulders. He leans into me with a nod. “Well, then—Knock Knock.”
He throws his head back with a groan. “This isn’t the interrupting cow one, is it?”
I push his foot with mine and pretend to be disappointed. “Am I that predictable?”
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 76
