“Calm down, darlin’,” Nelly says. “Why are you getting all riled up?”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I shout at the loudest volume I can get away with out here. “I’ll get all riled up about whatever the fuck I want to get all riled up about.”
I stamp to the RV, well aware I’m acting like a teenager. But tears are looming, and I don’t want to cry. Anger is easier, although they sneak out when I’m angry, too. Sure enough, they’ve come by the time I reach the bathroom, where I lock the door and take deep breaths until I’ve cut them off.
I look in the mirror and regret it immediately. It’s been days since I’ve seen my reflection. Penny might be right about losing weight—my cheekbones and collarbones look sharper, and I have new purplish shadows under my bloodshot eyes, although all three could be from exhaustion. I take down my hair and sigh at the greasy waves. It’s not much of an improvement, but it feels good to lose the buns for a bit.
I leave the bathroom as the RV rolls toward the gas station. Bits and Hank pull out the contents of the bag while the others look on: three cans of beans, a bag of frosted cookies, a jar of honey and a jar of olives.
“Can we have some cookies?” Bits asks no one in particular.
I avoid the eyes of everyone but the kids. “Ash’s seventeenth birthday is soon. Maybe we should save them if we can. In case we haven’t gotten to Alaska yet.”
Ashley ducks her head, pleased I’ve remembered her birthday. I walk to the bedroom and perch on the bed. We have enough people that I can let the others handle the gas station. Peter enters and drops to the bedspread beside me.
“Sorry,” I say, and inspect my dry hands. I should’ve thought to look for lotion in the store. “I didn’t mean to flip out.”
“I’m sorry I scared you.”
I shrug and push down a cuticle. “You were ten feet away. I’m the crazy one here.”
“As usual,” Peter says, and bumps me with his shoulder. “It’s only been a few days since…” He drifts off. I think he was going to say something about Ana and the others. “And Mike, Rohan and Tony—was that yesterday?” I think for a moment and nod, relieved I’m not the only one who can’t keep track. “Really? That was yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
He scratches his jaw, which is heading from stubble to beard territory. “It feels like two or three days ago, maybe more.”
“I know.”
I’ve thought about the three of them today, but not as much as I think I should. I’m so preoccupied with keeping the people I have alive that it’s hard to mourn people I didn’t know as well. There’s a hierarchy of sorts when it comes to losing the people around you, and I’m afraid the next who die will be ones I can’t afford to lose.
He rubs his eyes. “I’m sorry I wandered off. I won’t do it again.”
“You didn’t wander off,” I say, feeling guilty that he feels guilty. He doesn’t need anything else to worry about, especially someone who loses her marbles over nothing. “I’m sorry. I got scared. It was stupid.”
Peter covers my hand with his. That’s something I’ve always liked about Peter. I touch people all the time—a squeeze, a hug, a punch, especially if it’s Nelly—and Peter does, too. “I’ll stick like glue from now on.”
“Except for the bathroom,” I say, and wrinkle my nose.
“Except for the bathroom.”
Nelly steps into the bedroom. “Everything settled or are you still yelling at people?”
I sigh. “I’m done. Sorry.”
“Glad to hear it. You want to go to Tim Hortons with me, Adam and Kyle while they check on gas? It’s totally clear out there.”
I look to Peter, who says, “You tell me. I’ll go if you are.”
“Let’s go.”
I braid my hair before tucking it into the back of my jacket, find my axe and wait by the door. “Be right back,” I say to the kids. “You guys can watch out the window and radio if you need to tell us something. You want to be our lookout?”
Hank scrambles for the radio and whispers, “Hank to Cassie. Over.”
“This is Cassie. Over.”
“We’ll let you know if anything comes.” He sets the radio on the table. “Don’t worry, I know it’s not a toy. We’ll only call if we have to.”
I nod gravely and once we’re outside say, “That kid kills me. He’s like a forty year-old in a ten year-old’s body.”
“He’s almost as odd as you,” Peter says.
We pass Shawn, who’s up to something under a neighboring truck, and circle the Tim Hortons to find the sliding window of the drive-thru has been smashed. Kyle calls through the hole and says, “Nothing, but it looks like it’s all gone.”
I pull myself through and sit on the counter, ready to vault back outside, but it feels and smells empty. Adam comes in after I drop to the floor. The names of the donuts on the empty glass cases taunt me, and I say them aloud. “Sour cream glazed, honey dip, double chocolate.”
Adam groans and points to another. “Toffee glazed? I would sell Nel into slavery for a toffee glazed donut.”
“I heard that,” Nelly says as he hits the floor.
“You were supposed to,” Adam says, tearing his eyes away from the case. “I guess we’ll try the back?”
A walk-in freezer and oven take up most of the space. There are no bags of baking mix, not even a dusting on the floor, which seems unlikely since there’s plenty of other trash and crumbs stuck in what might be chocolate sauce. The freezer is empty.
“Maybe they didn’t bake from a mix,” Peter says. He kicks a wrapper on the ground that says ‘Apple Fritter.’ “Looks like they probably got frozen donuts.”
Nelly roots around while I look in the freezer twice more for something to magically appear. I swear, every morsel of food in Canada has been eaten.
“There’s coffee and tea,” Nelly says. He holds up two bags of coffee and a few boxes of English breakfast tea.
I’d sell Nelly into slavery for tea, especially my favorite kind. There’s a box that promises hot chocolate, but it lies. We return to the station to find half of the pickup’s cargo on the ground and Shawn bent over the bed. He has smears of grease on his face along with a cocky grin. “We found a fuel container.”
“Where?” Kyle asks.
“Where’s a good place to store gas?” Shawn asks. We shake our heads. He leans on the truck and crosses his arms. “C’mon, guess.”
Nelly raises his eyebrow at me. “If we’re not allowed to joke, then we definitely don’t have time for riddles.”
“Shawn, just tell them your brilliant plan,” Jamie says. She returns a bin to the truck. “Or I will.”
“So, I’m thinking we need something that won’t corrode,” Shawn says. “And doesn’t have anything in it that would react with or ruin the fuel, right? But that’s harder to find than we thought it would be.”
Nelly searches the lot, probably hoping for Lexers so that Shawn will get to his point already.
“And how would we clean it out, you know?” Shawn continues. “So it has to be metal or a plastic we know won’t react with—”
“Gas tank,” Jamie says, and shuts the tailgate. “He took the gas tank off a truck in the lot. It’s in the bed.”
“Woman!” Shawn shouts.
Jamie tilts her head. “Oh, I’m sorry—did you want to tell them?”
“You’re lucky I love you.”
“I know that. And you’re lucky I don’t kill you.”
Shawn chortles. “Fair enough. So, is my plan not brilliant? It’s big, about forty gallons. James figured out plugs for the holes.”
Everyone agrees it’s the most brilliant plan ever. And it is pretty ingenious, but as it turns out, the fuel at the station is an unusable sludge.
“We’ll have to go into Edmonton,” Mark says. “Which once had a population of 800,000.” It’s an adventure even he’d rather skip, and I pray we find some fuel before it comes to that.
23
I can tell when we’re nearing Edmonton because the abandoned cars, which have been few and far between, grow in number. Doors hang open, and I know that more than a few of the driver’s side seats are not stained brown from exposure to the elements. Especially not when what I assume was the driver is still on the asphalt, shredded clothes barely covering the bone and mummified flesh that was left uneaten.
We have a few hours to find gas before we’ll stop for the night, and we want to be as far away from the city as possible by nightfall. Our first route is hindered by an accident that involved a tractor trailer and a school bus, and our second by a roadblock. Only one police truck remains in front of lines of cars that stretch as far as the eye can see. And bodies—so many bodies that even though they’ve been dead over a year, the breeze through the window carries a light putrid scent.
“They must have tried to quarantine, like in New York,” I say.
“Except there were no bridges to blow up,” Penny says. She’s come down from her perch over the cab to start on dinner. We had cold wheat berries for lunch, but the temperature is dropping and something warm might serve to warm us up. It’s not bad when the RV is moving, since the vehicle heat is on, but tonight is going to be cold.
“We need a phone book,” James says. He leafs through the atlas. “It’s too late to start with gas stations now. There were some nice houses back there. We could sleep in one of them tonight.”
We choose one based solely on the fact that it’s surrounded by a stone fence and follow the long driveway down park-like grounds that have become wildflower meadows. A lake backs the two-story stone and stucco house.
“This place is 6,000 square feet if it’s a foot,” Zeke says. “Damn.”
We enter through double doors into a large foyer with a marble floor and a curved staircase to the second level. A formal living room sits to our left, a formal dining room to our right. In fact, everything about this house is formal, from the furniture to the ten-person table. The woodwork and moldings are exquisite, the windows huge, but it doesn’t throw off the vibe that living people once resided here.
The kitchen is the same with its granite counters and steel appliances and empty cabinets. I get the sense that this house didn’t have much food in it unless they were throwing a catered party. The den attempts to be inviting with a large TV and leather couch, but it falls short.
“This is fancy,” Bits says.
“It is pretty fancy,” Peter agrees. He tries the gas fireplace, just in case, and shrugs when no fire bursts forth. “You like it?”
Bits shakes her head. “Me neither,” I say. “I feel like I’d have to use a coaster and keep my feet on the floor.”
“Coasters aren’t the worst thing in the world,” Peter says.
“I swore an oath that I would never own anything that would require me to slip coasters under peoples’ drinks. Have you ever been to a house like that? It’s awful.”
“I had coasters,” Peter says.
“It’s okay to have coasters and even use them occasionally. You never made me use them.”
“I didn’t care.”
“Because you didn’t want to be the person slipping coasters under peoples’ drinks, right? No one likes that person.”
He laughs. “You always cleaned up your condensation.”
“And you say I’m a slob.”
“Was that when Peter was your boyfriend?” Bits asks. “Did you go to his house a lot?”
Bits asks about our lives before Bornavirus like it’s a world she’s heard of only in stories. Who knows, in twenty years all she might remember clearly are these stories, and Penny’s baby will never know that world.
“Yup,” I say, and change the subject without looking Peter’s way. “Let’s go see the upstairs.”
The only thing good about being prone to blushing is that it keeps me warm. It’s strange to have slept with that Peter and be friends with this one, unless I keep it a distant memory. If there was one thing that our relationship didn’t lack—and it lacked a lot—it was chemistry. When I didn’t want to punch him, and even when I did, I almost always wanted to sleep with him. It was the one time and place where I didn’t feel that disconnect.
Our breath fogs as we climb the stairs, Bits and Hank running ahead. I pop each mental image that rises like a bubble—how surprised I was by my desire when we kissed on our first date, his hands on my hips as I moved above him, the way he would hold my gaze steadily, with no trace of fear or hesitation.
Peter catches my arm when I trip on a step. “Graceful as always,” I say. “Thanks.”
“See you next fall.”
I crack up. “I’ve never heard that one. How can that be?”
“I’ve been saving it,” he says with a grin and makes sure I’m upright before letting go. That guarded look he always wore has been gone for a long time now, and I’m glad that it’s a distant memory.
“Five bedrooms!” Bits calls from the top of the stairs.
“And a theater!” Hanks says. “Imagine having a theater in your house?”
“And a full bar in the attic,” Nelly says, appearing from the side of the landing. “Except for the alcohol. Which is gone, of course.”
“A man cave,” Adam says. “Pool table and everything.”
The master bedroom is gigantic, with a four-poster king bed and a walk-in closet that boasts more square feet than most studio apartments. The en-suite bathroom has a deep round bathtub set into marble. I drop my axe and step in, then sink down and close my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Bits asks.
“I’m taking a bath. Want to come in? Look at all this room. Let’s add more hot water and turn on the jets.” Bits steps into the tub, turns the dry faucet and leans back with a sigh.
“I take back everything I said about this house,” I say. “This bathtub is perfect. Except for the lack of water.”
“A small but very important detail,” Nelly says. “Holy crap, are those all jets?”
They’re everywhere, in configurations you know would feel amazing on your back and legs. Ashley walks in. “I’ve always wanted a bathtub like that.”
I step out. “Have a turn. I’m going to check out the other rooms.”
Two of the bedrooms belonged to children, one of whom appears to have left for college, and there’s nothing formal about her room. Her graduation cap tassel still hangs over the corner of her mirror along with a tiny pennant from a university. Photographs of teenage girls with bright smiles are stuck in the mirror’s frame. Her name was Aubrey, according to the sign on the wall, which declares Aubrey’s Parking Only. Magazines, toiletries and jewelry litter the desk and dresser top. Posters of bands featuring cute young boys with earnest expressions are tacked to one wall.
“Oh my God,” Ashley says from the doorway. “Look at all this stuff.”
She picks up lotion, sniffs it, and then squirts some on her hands. She rubs them together as she takes in the queen-sized bed with its black and white floral bedspread, the window seat behind white gauzy curtains and the state-of-the-art audio system that sits on built-in shelves below a flat screen TV. The closet has some clothes, probably all that Aubrey didn’t take to college, and Ashley pushes the empty hangers out of the way to see what’s left.
“It’s mostly summer stuff,” she says, and pulls out a black tank top that’s gathered on the sides. “This is nice.”
“Take it,” I say.
“Do we have room?”
“We’ll make room. Find some stuff you want. Think of it as a birthday present.”
Ashley wastes no time in opening the drawers. By the time she’s finished she has two pairs of jeans, three shirts, a couple of lacy bras and underwear. “Can I take the lotion and stuff?”
“Absolutely.”
I sit on the window seat while Ash dumps toiletries into a bag. The corner of an electronic device peeks out from under a pillow. I pull out an e-reader and press the button, thinking it won’t work, but it flas
hes to life. There have to be fifty or more Young Adult books on this thing. I search until I find the USB cord in the nightstand.
“What’s that?” Ashley asks. I hand it to her and she scans the screen. “Someone liked vampires, huh?”
“Just a little. I can charge it with my solar charger. Do you want it? I might borrow it if I get desperate for a book.”
“I never read the Twilight books. I was going to, but my mom said I had to wait and then…you know.”
She spins to survey the darkening room. It’s time to eat, find our sleeping spots and hunker down for the night.
“I think that’s it,” she says. “I wanted something, like, nice to wear, you know? It’s not like I think there’s going to be boys in Alaska or anything. I mean, it’d be nice…”
“I know what you mean.” I wave a hand at myself. “It’s hard to feel pretty in this getup.”
“I always thought you and Ana looked so good.” Ashley gives me a quick glance and continues when I smile at the mention of Ana. “Like tough and hot, you know? That’s why I wanted to do guard so bad.”
“Well, Ana may have felt gorgeous, but all I feel is dirty, bound up in too many layers and tired. And scared.” I turn her to the mirror. “Look. If you saw you, what would you think?”
She takes in her boots and tucked-in jeans, the quilted, fitted jacket that ends just above the knife on her belt. Her hair is in a French braid on both sides, accentuating the curves of her unblemished face with its full lips and rounded nose. She looks like a teenage warrior.
“I’d think I looked pretty cool,” she admits.
“That’s what Colin back in Winnipeg thought.” She smiles at the floor. “And so do I. When we get to Alaska, you’ll have a bath and dress up in your new clothes. Then we’ll go on the prowl for teenage boys. For me, of course.”
She giggles. I help carry her stuff and hope there’s a teenager of any gender in Alaska. A best friend is even better than a boyfriend, but I’m going to go for broke and hope she finds both.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 88
