Peter whispers, “Once they start coming, we run.”
His heartbeat pulses in his neck, but he looks focused. Adrian was focused, right before he took off to save me. Peter wouldn’t hesitate to do the same, and the thought of him running off is more terrifying than zombies.
“Together,” I whisper. “Don’t leave.”
Peter grips my arm and leans close. “Never.”
We dodge from tree to tree and slam through bushes when we’re close. At the top of the rise, it becomes apparent just how many there are, and they all start toward us at Peter’s yell. We space out our shots to keep their attention away from the distant hatchet thuds I think I hear.
They’ve closed in enough to cause panic, for me if not for Peter, and we run for a clear area of forest away from Kyle and Liz. I fire into the crowd, not caring if I hit, only that I make enough noise to keep them coming.
“Behind you!” Peter yells, and grabs my hand before I have time to fully take in the new group coming our way.
We run in the direction of the road, zigzagging through trees and over logs until we come upon a solid line of Lexers that blocks escape—a search party combing the woods. Peter drags me straight toward them. He’s planning to hit them head-on. The Lexers move into thicker formation, but Peter doesn’t stop and neither do I, although in a perfect world I’d sit him down for a discussion of what exactly doing something stupid entails. When we’re five feet away, Peter yanks me down the line to an opening that wasn’t there before, and we’re through.
We slide through a muddy ditch and cross the road into the north woods. Lexers march down the gravel and struggle up the incline behind us, but the forest is clear except for a few buzzing around that we don’t bother to kill. The cold air burns my lungs as we climb higher into the trees. The house is built on a hill; if we move up and to the west, we’ll eventually find it below.
From our vantage point, we see that though many of them walk east to where Peter and I disappeared, plenty remain. The train tracks are still our best bet. We stop to catch our breath on a steep ridge. Peter’s smile is bright against his smudged face. “We did it.”
I don’t want to count our chickens before they hatch, but this should be the easy part. Of course, that could be said about almost everything else in the past week. “We did it,” I repeat with an answering grin. “Although I thought you’d lost your mind there for a minute. Thanks for pulling me through.”
After I say it, I realize I could be thanking him for any number of things. He pulled me through Bennington, through Adrian’s death, through thinking I was a horrible mother, through the four thousand miles of this trip, through the night when I thought for sure Bits was lost. Every time I come up against a wall, Peter opens a door.
“Not that you needed me to.”
“I did,” I say, and I mean it. “Let’s get out of here.”
We walk slowly, both to keep quiet and because my muscles aren’t capable of much more. Strenuous exercise and the lack of food are taking their toll. I have a tickle in my throat which I want desperately to clear. We spot the house and pick our way down to the side window where Nelly’s golden hair shines in the gloom. Only two Lexers remain at the base of the driveway.
Nelly hooks his hands under my arms when I struggle through the bedroom window. Once we’re in he says, “The tree’s down. We’re ready to leave.”
I collapse on the edge of the twin bed. It’s afternoon, but as far as my joints are concerned it’s bedtime. The mattress has been moved to the living room, but I could happily curl up on the box spring for a week.
“You okay?” Peter asks.
“I’m just tired.” He furrows his brow when I stand and stagger. “C’mon, let’s go.”
50
It’s so easy it’s mind-boggling. By the time we’re in the vehicles and down the driveway, they’ve only just noticed us. We kick up gravel as we round the bend and bump onto the train tracks. I offered to ride in the pickup bed, and now my skull is about to crack open from the jouncing. It still might be better than the VW, which bounces along at a slant beside the tracks so it doesn’t bottom out.
It’s only a few hours to Talkeetna, and I can take a few hours of anything if the end means food and warmth and safety. I eat my mini box of Fruit Loops with my eyes closed and try to ignore the way my throat hurts when I swallow. My plan is to sleep for two days when we get there, after I eat some real food.
The bouncing ceases. I hear a cheer from inside the truck when we reach the highway and my head cheers by reducing its banging to bearable. I nestle in my blanket and sleep until Nelly’s elbow hits my side. “Wake up, darlin’. We’re turning onto the Talkeetna road.”
We count down the distance. The town is fourteen miles from the turn, but we’re bound to hit a fence sooner. I wish everyone were here for this moment. I’ve been plowing through, trying not to think about anything but making it here, and now all the losses press down on me. I’ve cried along the way, but I feel a doozy coming on once I’m through their gates.
We hit a guard house at a crossroads—a cabin high above the ground, same as ours at Kingdom Come. Two men and two women stand on its walkway and watch Zeke step from the truck.
“How are y’all?” he asks. “We’re here from Vermont and Whitefield, New Hampshire.”
The other two above wave while a man and woman climb down the ladder to stand in the road. The woman slings her rifle on her shoulder and sticks out a hand.
“I’m Patricia,” she says. She’s a couple of years older than me, with shoulder-length platinum hair and features that would be delicate if they hadn’t just turned slightly bitchy. She looks us over, a line forming between her eyebrows.
The man is late thirties, with dark, almond-shaped eyes and dark hair tied in a short ponytail. He gives Zeke’s hand a rough shake and says, “Terry. Glad to have you here.” Patricia shoots him a look. He points two fingers up the road. “The gate’s a mile ahead. They’ll meet you up there.”
He waves when we pull away. Patricia stands with her hands on her hips, mouth moving a mile a minute in Terry’s face. I try to figure out what’s wrong with us, but come up with nothing.
“She was nice,” Nelly says.
We pass houses and a sign for an airport before we reach the chain-link gate with a log wall on either side. It heads west down a dirt road and ends at the railroad tracks a few hundred feet to our east. A thin man with a hook nose and a friendly expression swings open the gate. “Hey there. I’m Clark, but everyone calls me Eagle. Frank will meet you down at the brewery. Make a left on Main. You’ll see the sign.”
The two-lane street has wide shoulders that serve as sidewalks. Wooden houses that were once businesses now look more like living quarters. We’re the only vehicles on the street, and the people walking stop to watch us pass. A few raise their hands.
We turn left at a small village green. Main Street is lined with everything from log cabins to larger wooden buildings, many with slightly rusted tin roofs. It could look dreary, but the overall impression is of a quirky, welcoming village.
A man waits outside a blue two-story building whose sign says Talkeetna Brewery. Rooms, a few the color of freshly sawed wood, grow off it in all directions. The man’s skin is tough like he’s been around a lot of Alaskan winters; he could be anywhere in his forties to sixties. He folds his arms as we step out. I take Bits’s hand. She still looks ill, and I’m worried they’ll accuse us of bringing Bornavirus to their Safe Zone.
“I’m Frank,” the man says. “How many are you and were you wanting to stay?”
“Nineteen,” Mark says in a friendly tone, as if the man’s question hadn’t been curt and bordering on rude. “And, yes, I believe you spoke to John at Kingdom Come and told us we’d be welcome? The Vermont and New Hampshire Safe Zones were both compromised by the large pods—you must have heard of them.”
“We’ve heard of them,” Frank says. “But we have a problem. Why don’t you send whoever�
�s in charge inside so we can talk?”
We look around for the person in charge until finally Zeke says, “Why don’t you tell us your problem?” He crosses his arms in a mirror of Frank’s stance, mouth a line under his beard.
“We can’t take in anyone else. We’ve got a lot of the Whitehorse Safe Zone here.”
James draws himself up to his full height. He’s thinner than usual, but he manages to loom over Frank, and he most definitely isn’t calm. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Bits whimpers and begins to cough. Frank tries to speak over her coughing but finally gives up and waits it out with a blank expression.
“There’s no room?” Peter asks, hand on Bits’s shoulder.
“There’s room,” Frank says. I’m thinking he could look a little more apologetic about the fact that we’ve driven 4,000 miles to get here and are being told we can’t stay. I’m also thinking I’d like to punch him. “There’s not enough food. We’re short food for forty of our people. Add in another nineteen and we’d be cutting it too close.”
Penny steps forward. “We have seeds, and potatoes that could be used for seed.”
“That’s all fine and good come the spring.” Frank speaks quickly as a man and a woman exit the restaurant and walk to his side. “But it won’t do us much good in March when we’re starving.”
“Well, we don’t have food, but we have a dentist.” Mikayla gestures at Zeke and then points to James with her smile that’s never failed to make a friend. “And he’s an expert with solar. We can set up greenhouses. Ben knows farming and the rest of us have been doing this for a year. We’re not here to just eat your food. We’ll work…” She trails off when he shakes his head.
“There are houses on the other side of the fence,” Frank says. “You’re more than welcome to stay there and hunt for your food, set up however you want. But we can’t help you. I’m sorry.”
I drag Bits toward the VW. I’m not going to beg to live in this stupid town. We’ll walk to Anchorage if we have to, where we can winter over and find supplies after the Lexers freeze.
“Cassie, where are you going?” Peter asks.
I spin around. “We’re leaving. Fuck this shitty little town.” Frank looks at me with raised eyebrows. I glare at him. “If you’d shown up in Vermont we would’ve taken you in. We would’ve figured it out.”
“We sure as shit wouldn’t have told you not to let the gate hit you in the ass,” Zeke says.
The woman to Frank’s left tries to speak, but I cut her off. “You don’t know what we went through to get here. We lost people. We couldn’t save them, but this—” I wave my hand at the kids, “this will be on you.”
I suppose I’ve just effectively killed any chance we have of living here, but I enjoyed seeing Frank blanch like I’d hexed him. I set Bits in the VW. She closes her eyes, pale and drawn. She needs to be warm and fed. I’m so angry I want to kill everyone here and take over the place myself. Hank follows, then Peter and Penny. Zeke opens the truck’s door and Liz hops in the bed. We should’ve gone to northern Canada, where we’d probably already be dead, but at least we would have died with people who gave a shit we were dying.
The woman comes forward, hands fluttering. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.” She has soft wrinkles around her eyes—true laugh lines—and short gray hair tucked behind her ears. “Let’s talk about this. We’re a Safe Zone, Frank. And we’re not a Safe Zone if we refuse to keep people safe.”
“We don’t have—” Frank begins.
“Shut up, Frank.” She stretches a hand through the open door of the VW. It takes me a second to realize she’s reaching for me. “My name’s Glory. Please come inside and talk.”
51
It would’ve been stupid to refuse, which is how we’ve found ourselves inside what was once a brewing company and restaurant. The main room is full of booths and wooden dining tables, and the rooms beyond it look to be the same. It still smells of hops and something’s cooking somewhere. My stomach growls when I perch on a barstool.
“Would you like something to eat?” Glory asks.
“The kids would,” I say.
I would too, more than she’d believe, but I’m not taking anything from these people. I guess the others feel the same because no one takes her up on her offer. If they say we can stay, I’ll have to for Bits’s and Hank’s sakes, but after Frank’s greeting it’s going to take quite a large gulp of my pride.
Glory walks into the kitchen area and returns. “They’ll bring some food outside.”
“Thanks,” I mumble.
She removes her coat, under which she wears a long tie-dyed tunic and jeans. Her earrings jingle when her head swivels around the six of us who’ve come inside. My mom would’ve loved her, and I feel myself soften a bit at the kindness on her face. She perches on one of the tables next to the bar and leans forward. Frank and the other man, an older guy with a white moustache and bushy white brows, seat themselves at a table farther back.
“I just want to talk,” Glory says. “We three don’t make all the decisions, but we’re the counsel for Talkeetna. I’m sorry that we started off on the wrong foot. Frank’s our hotheaded one.” Frank mutters, and she flaps a hand behind her without looking back. “Oh, Frank, you know I’m right. I’m the soft-hearted hippie.” She points to the white mustachioed man. “And Bernie’s the voice of reason.” Bernie nods impassively and inspects us over his steepled hands.
“So talk,” says Kyle, who looks more pissed than I am.
Glory walks behind the bar and raises a pitcher. She fills glasses and pushes one in front of me, Peter, Kyle, Zeke, James and Liz, then moves around the bar to her table. “At least have some water. We don’t have enough food for the winter, but that’s something that can be worked out.”
“How about hunting and fishing?” Zeke asks.
Bernie speaks up. “We still get infected from Fairbanks and Anchorage. This summer we had several pods north and south of us. They scare away the game. We’re hoping they come back when the snow starts or that we can get to the herds, but we can’t count on it. The river was full of floaters and we’re just now catching up on our fishing. There hasn’t been a problem with eating the fish so far, but…”
“We met people who ate zombies,” I say. Glory gasps and the men look sickened. “As long as they were cooked they didn’t infect them.”
“But it might’ve made them crazy,” Kyle says with a glance at me. “They weren’t right in the head.”
“Dinky-dau,” I say, to which Kyle snorts. He’s getting the hang of this humor thing.
Zeke clears his throat. “Fish are fine as long as they’re cooked.”
“Good to know,” Frank says, but he doesn’t get up to embrace us.
“Let’s come up with a plan,” Glory says. “I know I won’t send anyone away. And I know that Frank won’t either. Right, Frank?” She rolls her eyes when he doesn’t answer.
“There’s a grocery store distribution center in Anchorage,” Bernie says. “People lived in there last year, but a month or two later they were attacked by a pod. Most of them turned. It’s full of food. We’ve been trying to get some more volunteers to go down before the snow—”
“The last group didn’t make it back, except Terry and Patricia,” Frank says. “It’s impossible. No one’s voluntee—”
“We lost a lot of good people,” Bernie says. “And we don’t want a repeat of that. We have the food divvied up, but we could factor you in for the next two months. If hunting doesn’t pick up and food runs low enough that we don’t think we can feed you through the winter, we might have to ask you to leave.”
“I’d never ask you to leave,” Glory says.
“It’s only fair,” Frank says.
“Why not wait until they freeze?” Zeke asks.
“It took a long time for them to freeze last year,” Bernie says. “And once they did, we had too much snow on the ground. What we would have done was snowmachined down and killed them fr
ozen, then hit the place in the spring, but we didn’t know about it ‘til this summer.”
“And if we volunteered to go down there?” Zeke asks. “Would that give us some stake here?”
I’m not the only one who glances at Zeke in surprise. If we’re going to do it, we should keep it all for ourselves. But we still wouldn’t have a doctor or a safe place for the winter and, more importantly, spring.
“With that, we’d have enough through the winter and more,” Bernie says with a nod. “No matter what, we’d take in your kids and the pregnant woman for good. But give it a lot of thought. It might be less risky to see what happens with the hunting.” He stands. “I’m going to call Terry up from the guard house. He can fill you in.”
In the ten minutes that we wait, a platter of bowls leaves through the front door—enough to feed everyone out there, I’m pleased to see.
“When is your friend due?” Glory asks.
“December,” James says.
“I’m a midwife. I’d love to speak with her.”
James sags against the bar, and I know this has clinched it—he’s on board with whatever we’ll have to do as long as it means Penny’s safe. “We heard there was a midwife. The baby’s moving fine, but we want to make sure everything’s okay. She hasn’t had much to eat in a couple of weeks.”
“Are you Dad?” she asks, and gives a warm smile when he nods. “Well, she looks healthy. I’ll take you both to my office after you get settled in?”
“That’d be great,” James says.
Terry steps into the restaurant, hands in his pockets. “What’s up? They said you wanted me.”
Terry nods after Glory explains. “I was in the second group that went, and I knew one of the guys who’d lived there and managed to get out. I can tell you what to expect.”
“Can you draw a map of what you remember?” James asks.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 102
