I start to speak, but Peter coughs and looks to Bits, who might as well be sucking her thumb by the look on her face. “I’ll go,” he says.
“Not if I don’t,” I say.
I’m not chomping at the bit to head into a city that used to have a hundred thousand people and now may have half of that number of zombies post-winter, but I’d feel guilty if I didn’t volunteer. And I want to keep an eye on Peter.
Peter frowns. “Why do you have to go for me to go?”
“I’m just saying that—”
“You stay.” Mark picks up his bow from where it rests on the counter. “I’ll come along.”
“I’m four,” Zeke says. “That’s good enough. If we’re not back in four hours, you start down the road again.”
7
Nelly, Peter and I keep watch from the RV’s roof. It’s a residential neighborhood, and there have to be Lexers in the side streets or backyards, waiting in that trance-like state for a meal. The plan is to make it past Thunder Bay before we find a place for the night. From what we can see on our useless map, there aren’t any roads that head north and skirt the town, so it could take hours.
“Let’s find a big house,” Nelly says. “With lots of bedrooms.”
“Bedrooms?” I ask with a wink. “Why? Huh?”
Nelly shakes his head. “You really never made it past ten, did you?”
“I did, just not when it comes to you and Penny.”
“Great.”
Peter laughs. “I’ll help scout out houses. Maybe a few of us should ride ahead and radio back if we see something that looks good.”
“You’re not going ahead,” I say. “No one is splitting up.”
“We’re split up right now.”
“That’s because it’s unavoidable. Even a few miles are too much if it’s not necessary. You can’t go without me, and you wouldn’t let me go, would you?”
“Why aren’t you letting me do anything, Mom?” Peter asks. “And why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like he’s about to cannonball into a pool full of Lexers,” Nelly says.
I look down because I know I’ve been caught. “I am not.”
“Just stop doing or thinking whatever it is that you’re doing or thinking,” Peter says.
The supply of people I love in this world is rapidly dwindling, and these two are at the top of the chart of those left. I rub at a scuff on my boot with my gloved finger. I don’t want either of them to see how scared I am at the possibility that they won’t make it. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Peter leans into my line of vision. “I’m okay.”
I believe him, but that only reassures me that he won’t do something dangerous on purpose. I have no control over the rest of the world, which appears to get its kicks out of throwing dangerous things our way. “Fine. But you’re not leaving me alone to raise two kids, so we have to do everything together.”
“So they’ll have no one?” Peter asks. “I fail to see the sense in that plan.”
“We’ll keep each other safe. Nelly’s in charge if we die.”
“Hold on,” Nelly says. “I’m the gay uncle. I didn’t sign up for gay dad.”
“Shush,” I tell him. I know he’d take the kids in a heartbeat. “The only option is to stay alive, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll be freezing our asses off in Alaska in no time.”
“Well, someone’s turned into Pollyanna Sunshine,” Nelly says.
“That’s right, so don’t fuck with me.”
A pounding starts up from the closest house. The glass window of the garage door shatters and the arms and head of a Lexer poke through. It tries to pull back, but it’s managed to wedge itself in the small space. It’s a perfect kill shot, and we have to take it because its noises will draw any nearby Lexers straight here.
“I got it,” I say, and climb down the ladder.
Peter hits the ground a second later and raises his brows when I turn to him. “Everything together, right? I’m sticking like glue.”
I snort and walk toward the garage. A year of zombiehood has not been kind to this one. Its skin has toughened into leather and only a wisp of hair remains. Nose gone, ear missing. You’d think the teeth would fall out of rotten gums, but those manage to hang on tight. A world of toothless zombies would be great. Or better. The damn thing keeps moving its head side to side, and I have to get closer than I’d like. I place one hand on his forehead and bring the tomahawk spike into his eye.
“At least he wasn’t a gusher,” Peter says about the body that now hangs out the window. The older ones usually don’t have a lot of muck, but every once in a while you get one that throws out a ton of fluid and it only takes a few drops to make you stink. “I would’ve done it.”
“Now you tell me,” I say, and wipe my axe in the long grass.
The sun goes behind a cloud once we’re back on the roof. I wrap my arms around myself. It’s warmer than I thought it would be, but it’s nowhere near the eighty degrees I prefer.
“What time is it?” I ask Nelly.
“Time to get a watch,” he says.
“You’re hysterical.”
He looks at his wrist. “Ten, they’ve been gone two hours.”
Another two hours and we’ll have to leave. I stand for a better view, imagining any number of ways they could have died, and see Lexers rounding the corner of a side street.
“About twenty coming,” I say.
“Shit,” Nelly says. “Now what?”
It’s too many to take on foot or from the roof for no good reason, and a waste of good, noisy ammo. Nelly lifts the other handheld and says, “Lexers on their way. We gotta go.”
They’re over a block away, but we still haul our butts to the door. Barnaby stands at attention and lets out a low bark. It’s his warning bark, soon to be followed by his incessant, incredibly loud barks. Tony fires up the engine and rolls back the way we came.
“Zeke’ll find us down the road,” Kyle yells over Barnaby, who, sure enough, has moved on to stage two.
“Quiet!” I clamp a hand around Barn’s snout until the only noise is quiet moofs. When he’s done, I pat his head with a sigh. I don’t want to leave Barn behind, but I’m afraid he’ll get us all killed.
Tony stops at the highway. It’ll take a couple of hours for that group of Lexers to get here, and by then the others will be back. Or they won’t.
“He wasn’t too loud, right?” Bits asks, imploring me to agree. “We can’t get rid of him.”
I don’t want to lie, so I make a sound that isn’t a yes or no. Immediately, her eyes fill and spill over. Peter rubs his forehead. He gives Bits anything she wants, within reason, and even he’s silent.
“Please,” Bits begs.
“Don’t worry about that,” Peter says. “Right now he’s fine.”
“I promise,” I say. “Okay?”
Bits nods, but she’s still on course for a sobbing cry when Mike says, “How about a story?”
Hank stops eyeing me and Peter as if we might kill Barn any second and asks, “What kind of story?”
Mike spreads his arms. “A story of wonder and heroes and fantastical creatures. Of dark and light and good and evil.”
Mike is a writer. His bug out bag contains mostly notebooks, with survival equipment thrown in as an aside. I get it; I would’ve loved to have brought art supplies. But as it is, I have enough things in my two bags that aren’t sensible.
“I want to hear,” Nicki says.
“Well, let’s go in the bedroom,” Mike says, and herds them away. “Once upon a time there was a princess—”
“This is a good one. My dad told it to me when I was little,” Rohan interrupts. He looks like his dad, with his pale skin and shoulder-length dark hair, and has the same good humor.
“That’s right,” Mike says.
“Was she a fancy princess?” Bits asks. “I don’t like princesses that much.”
>
“No,” Mike replies. “She didn’t wear a crown. In fact, she wore her hair in two buns and carried a gun.”
“Like Cassie!” Bits says.
Mike winks at me. “Exactly. Anyway, like I was saying, this princess was strong and fearless. She was being held hostage by the forces of darkness—”
“Is this Star Wars?” Hank asks.
“Are you guys going to let me tell this story or not?” Mike asks. He shuts the door behind them.
I kiss Barn’s golden-yellow head and turn away before he can give me a slobbery kiss on the lips. “We’ll have to do something if he won’t stop barking,” I say to Peter.
I don’t know what we’d do; I couldn’t possibly kill him, and leaving him alone somewhere makes a lump rise in my throat. I know he’s only trying to protect us, but these aren’t criminals who are deterred by dogs. They eat dogs, and his bark rings out like a dinner bell.
“How about a muzzle?” Peter asks.
“They tried that on the farm. He still makes a lot of noise.”
“Then I’ll train him to be quiet.”
“Do you know how many times people have tried to teach him a trick? It never works.”
Peter scratches Barn’s chin and then wipes his hand on his pants. “I’ll figure it out. I’ve always wanted a dog.”
“He’s all yours.”
Peter looks pleased by the idea. Nut job. He looks up when I rise to my feet. “Where are you going?”
“Have to pee. Want to stick like glue now? Could get messy.”
He laughs, and I realize I’ve made him laugh a few times today. My mother always said that humor is the last refuge of the damned, but I’ve found it’s the first refuge of the zombie apocalypse.
8
A cheer rises in the RV when the pickup arrives fifteen minutes before our scheduled departure. They don’t have another vehicle, but I’m so glad to see them that I don’t care. Shawn jumps out of the van and salutes us. He reaches into the door and pulls out a thick book. “One back roads atlas, as promised. Two, actually.”
James inspects the book. “Dude, this is perfect. What happened? We were getting worried.”
“That place is crawling with Lexers. We tried to lead them away from the dealership, but they wouldn’t follow.”
Zeke hands me a large shopping bag, and I hug him when I see the books it contains: Everything from kids’ books to sci-fi to chick-lit to an astronomy book. “Glad you like them, sugar.”
“I’m not hugging you because of the books, although you are my hero. I’m hugging you because you’re back. You know I can’t live without you.”
He dips me low with a booming laugh. Zeke is almost always in a good mood, and if he’s not, you only have to wait a few minutes until he is again. He tells me he wasn’t always that way, but it’s the only Zeke I know.
“You are sweet as sugar.” Zeke sets me upright. “Isn’t she?”
Peter and Nelly look at him like he’s crazy, and I glare at them before I kiss Zeke’s cheek. “Only with you, Zeke, because you deserve it.”
“It doesn’t solve the problem of another vehicle,” Zeke says, drawing out the word like vee-hick-ul. “But the RV’s a place to sleep if we can’t find one. Maybe it’s better this way.”
“This baby ain’t breaking down,” Shawn says, as he kicks an RV tire.
“Speaking of sleep, the kids are still sleeping,” Maureen says. “Why don’t we leave before they wake?”
“Your stories always put me to sleep,” Rohan says to his dad, who cuffs him good-naturedly.
The kids didn’t get much rest last night. Of course, this nap is probably going to lead to kids being awake all night, but cranky daytime kids are worse than happy nighttime kids.
While we drive, James sits at the RV’s dinette with his new best friend, flipping pages and muttering. Houses appear through the foliage that borders the highway, and with the increase in population comes abandoned cars. At first we can weave our way through, but then we hit what must have been a mass exodus out of Thunder Bay. Car doors hang open where people ran for their lives, thereby leaving lanes, the shoulder and the median unusable. A few figures rise in the distance and begin stumbling our way.
We sit, engines idling and James muttering, until he has us turn around. We head north on a two-lane road that’s seen better days, then a network of dirt roads that deposit us back on the main highway past Thunder Bay.
Bits, Hank and Nicki have awakened, and between their longing for another movie and treats, I wish they’d go back to sleep. I hate to say no about the treats, but as far as I’m concerned they can watch movies until their brains implode. Once we get to Alaska movies will be a rare occurrence again.
“Does it drain the battery?” Bits asks for the thousandth time.
“Isn’t there solar?” Hank asks. “Doesn’t that mean we can watch?”
“Can we, Daddy?” Nicki asks.
Kyle looks to me. Now that they’ve gotten a taste of movies they’re like desert travelers who’ve been allowed to sip from a full water bottle. “James?” I ask.
“It should be fine,” he says with a shrug.
James’s jaw-length hair is stringy and greasy. I brushed mine earlier before winding it back into buns and consoled myself with the thought that those natural oils were giving it the deepest conditioning treatment ever, which made me miss Ana. Even a year after the apocalypse I’m accustomed to being relatively clean, which is probably more than other survivors can say.
“Go ahead,” I say. Once they’ve scampered back to the bed, Ash included, I look to the others. “I wonder if we’ll see anyone.”
There are small groups who’ve contacted Safe Zones to let them know they’re out here. We know of one official Safe Zone on our way. It was a green pin on Whitefield’s map—meaning it hadn’t been heard from in a while—but we’re going to stop anyway.
Adam spins in the passenger’s seat where he sits next to Nelly. “They’re probably off the main road. And if they see us, they’ll probably hide. Wouldn’t you?”
“They might shoot first and ask questions later,” Kyle says. “Back home, anyone who wanted a piece of us wouldn’t take the chance. You think these people are as lucky?”
Kyle’s right that it’s different out here. I want to believe that most people are basically good, but desperate people do desperate things—I’d probably steal and lie to keep the kids alive if I absolutely had to. Others might want what we have, which isn’t much compared to what we had in Vermont, but it’s a lot to people living on the edge. We’re living on the edge now, and the difference between life and death this winter lies in our gas tanks and weapons and the tiny pantry of the RV.
“There’s a lake with a beach up ahead,” Nelly says.
We need to wash off the reddish-brown and black juices left by our ride through the pod. We’ve been opening the vehicle doors with rags, and I freak out whenever Bits or Hank go near the exterior, so this is time well spent in my book. The lake is surrounded by open fields and small clusters of trees that aren’t hiding any undead. I make the kids stretch their legs with the promise that the movie will resume after intermission, and then I stand on the shore with Peter while we wait for our turn with the sponges and buckets.
“Sparky doesn’t like the water,” Bits calls.
She’d insisted Sparky needed exercise, but it’s clear she likes the novelty of walking a cat. Sparky sniffs at the water’s edge and jumps back. Bits’s laugh echoes across the water when Hank picks up Sparky and pretends to walk her across the lake’s surface.
“They’re good for each other,” Peter says.
“Like a brother and sister who don’t fight all the time. Eric and I did at that age. It drove my parents crazy.” I wish Eric were here to fight with. To do anything with.
“My sister and I did, too. My mother would send us to one of our rooms and tell us to play until we could be friends.”
“How’d that work out?” I ask.
<
br /> “It worked until we got out of the room.”
I laugh and watch the kids dry Sparky’s paws. Hank folds the towel and drapes it over his shoulder; Bits would’ve dropped it on the ground and forgotten it immediately. “Henry and I had a deal. I told him I’d take care of Hank if anything happened.”
“We will,” Peter says.
I nod. The lake is huge and marshy, reflecting the gray of the now overcast sky. I tell myself we will hit the mountains. It’s just going to take a little longer than we’d hoped. We’ll have time. The more northerly our route, the longer it will take any northbound Lexers to reach us.
“You know, for someone who’s a big crybaby, you’ve hardly cried at all,” Peter says.
“When we get to Alaska I’m going to fall apart. So watch out.” Maybe he thinks I’m kidding, since he laughs. Boy, is he going to be surprised.
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” he says. “Promise?”
“I promise I won’t. You promise me?”
His nod is comforting. I need him for more than just raising two kids—I never would’ve gotten through this summer without him. I think at this point Peter might know me better than Nelly and Penny do, and he still likes me in spite of it, even when I’ve been at my most unlikeable.
“What are you two doing lollygagging over here?” Nelly asks. “I’m not cleaning off that crap without y’all.”
“You don’t want me on your cleaning detail anyway,” I say. “I’m such a slob, with junk drawers everywhere, right? How much help could I be?”
“Nice try,” Nelly says. “But no. The soap’s been sitting long enough.”
He hands us ponchos and rubber gloves. The others fill buckets for us to rinse and scrub until it’s as clean as cold water can make it. When we’re finished, I walk to where trees grow near the lake, strip to my tank top and roll up my jeans. I pant as I step into the cold water with a bottle of soap. This is an insane idea, but I can’t shake the feeling that I have cooties.
“Remember when we washed up in the stream at that campground in Jersey?” Penny asks.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 80
