by Megan Crewe
“So why didn’t you tell the guy?” I asked. “You told them everything else, didn’t you?”
“You just don’t get it,” Anika said. “A couple weeks ago there was a kid—a kid—tried to hold me up for whatever food I had, with a shotgun he got who knows where. I don’t have any feeling left in the fingertips of my left hand, ’cause I was stupid and fell asleep without mitts over my gloves one night, and it’s so goddamned cold. And every time I go outside there are people coughing and sneezing and screaming, and I know that it could be me next. I knew if I could get in good with the Wardens, then I’d be okay. I just wanted to be okay again.”
Her voice faded out.
“So why didn’t you tell them about Tobias?” Leo said.
“It wasn’t okay,” she said softly. “When we got to the condo and saw you’d taken off, one of the guys said I should have come to them sooner. He shoved me into the wall—my shoulder still hurts when I move it. And then they made me go around with them looking for you all night, and the next day, and today. They only let me sleep a few hours at my place last night before they came by to get me again.”
“We feel so sorry for you,” Justin said, with blatant sarcasm.
Anika went on without acknowledging him. “I started thinking, I’m not really any safer with them than I was with you. You’ve got guns, you’ve got food, you’ve got the vaccine. And you let me in without expecting me to pay my way. You didn’t hurt me even when I tried to screw you over.” She paused. “I’m sorry about the spray.”
Justin snorted.
“We also have a whole bunch of people who want to hurt us on our tails,” I said. “We’re not exactly safe.”
“Yeah,” Anika said, “but if Michael gets the vaccine, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to use it. You want everyone to have it. I don’t want to be scared of getting sick anymore.”
“You’re not getting any vaccine until we find someone who can make more,” I said. “I don’t know how long that’s going to take.”
“That’s okay,” Anika said. “It’s better than never.”
It might be never, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t trust her. I couldn’t imagine letting the cold box out of my sight while she was around. But she sounded like she believed what she was saying.
She believed in our way of doing things over the methods Michael and his people used. She believed in me.
Tobias hadn’t put away his gun, but his expression was torn. Justin shook his head. Leo just looked back at me evenly, as if he trusted that whatever decision I made would be right.
Maybe she could help us. Maybe she’d screw us over again. There was no way to know. But they were all waiting for me. I had to decide.
She could tell us when the Wardens might patrol next, what their habits were, help us figure out a route through the city so we could avoid them. She might even know where to find a car.
I remembered, suddenly, the moment when we’d stood in the harbor across the strait from the island, with Tobias and his truck. We hadn’t trusted him then, either. He’d been party to a catastrophe far worse than anything Anika had created. But without him, we wouldn’t have made it anywhere near Toronto. We might all have been dead by now.
I reached out and, ignoring Justin’s squeak of protest, opened the door. No one rushed at us with guns raised. There was only Anika, standing with her arms wrapped around a bundle of what looked like little bottles, her face pale beneath her dark hood.
“Thank you,” she said, holding out the bundle. “I brought this for you. I know it doesn’t make up for what I did, but I thought I should at least try. It’s medicine. For your boyfriend, Kaelyn.”
Leo eyed the package as I took it from her. “Medicine from where?”
“A veterinary clinic,” she said. “I don’t think many people have tried that. The first one I went into was still totally stocked. My grandfather was a vet—I looked through one of his old reference books. There’s nothing that seemed safe that’s supposed to kill a virus, but I found sedatives. If they’ll calm down a cat or a dog, they should work on a person, if you give him enough.”
An animal sedative. I should have thought of that. If we could be sure Gav would stay calm and quiet, he might not be able to walk, but he’d be perfectly safe in a vehicle.
If we could get a vehicle.
Anika looked at me hopefully, and I was struck by the knowledge that, under her layers of makeup, she was only a year or two older than me. In the lives we’d lost, we would both have been hanging out in cafeterias with friends and arguing with parents who were still alive and not worrying about whether we might die tomorrow. But this was what we had.
“Thank you,” I said. “There is something else you could do. Something that would make up for everything. Do you know how to get us a car?”
A slow smile spread across her lips. “Yeah,” she said, her eyes brightening. “You bet I can do that.”
Anika said she’d bring the car “sometime” the next day. By the late morning, we were all on edge. Justin started barking about her being late when Tobias came up from his turn at watch. Hearing him, I left the bedroom to settle things down.
“We want her to be careful,” I reminded Justin. “If she’s not, we’re all screwed.”
“She’ll come,” Tobias said.
“You just want her here because you think she’s hot,” Justin said, and Tobias blushed. He was standing strangely, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders stiff.
“If you’re so worried,” I said to Justin, “why aren’t you down there keeping an eye out for us? It’s your watch.” And then he flushed too.
He hurried out the door, and I was about to turn back to the bedroom when Tobias said, “Kaelyn, can I talk to you for a sec?”
When I said, “Sure,” he turned and stalked into the second bedroom.
“What’s going on?” I asked, following him.
“I want you to tell me, honest to God, what you think,” Tobias said. He let his hands fall from his pockets to hover, clenched, at his sides. “When I was down there on watch, I started… There’s this spot…”
His control broke. His right hand leapt to the back of his neck, and he closed his eyes as he scratched at the patch of skin that must have been driving him crazy. My heart sank.
“Tobias…” I said, and then I didn’t know what else to say.
He forced his hand down again, grimacing. “It’s been nagging me for maybe half an hour now.” His mouth twitched. “Do you think— Have I got it?”
“We’ve been so careful,” I said. “You haven’t been anywhere near Gav.”
Then I stopped. Because he had been. At the very beginning, in the car. Gav had sneezed and coughed after we’d left city hall, before he’d gotten out, with nothing shielding his face.
“Leo was there too,” I said. And Leo was looking perfectly healthy, and not at all like he was hiding some secret itch. “He’s fine. It could still be nothing.”
“Leo’s had the vaccine,” Tobias said.
“We don’t even know—” I started, and cut myself off. If Tobias was sick and Leo wasn’t, then maybe we did know. As well as we ever would, without mass testing.
Tobias swallowed audibly, and guilt welled up inside me. He was terrified, and I was thinking of him as a test subject.
“Maybe I should stay back,” he said. “I’m putting you all at risk.…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Gav’s coming, and we know he’s sick. Just…just make sure you keep your scarf tight over your mouth and nose the whole time we’re in the car. And if that spot’s still bothering you, put some snow on it—the cold might help.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “I mean, I’d get it—Gav’s your boyfriend, and I’m nobody.”
“Tobias,” I said firmly, “we are not leaving anyone behind. We came this far together, and we’ll keep going together. Okay?”
His eyes flickered with what looked like relief. “Okay,” he said, and loosened his scarf t
o pull it up over his nose.
Leo glanced up as I came back down the hall. I tried to study him surreptitiously, pausing for a second outside Gav’s room. He looked a little tense, but his hands lay easy and open on his legs where he sat by the window, and his expression seemed unguarded.
“Everything all right?” he asked me.
“I think so,” I said, and then, before I could stop myself, “You’ve been feeling okay, right?”
The momentarily puzzled look he gave me dissolved all my fears. Then understanding dawned in his expression. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. No worries.”
A shiver of excitement raced through me, as awful as I felt for Tobias. For so long, we hadn’t known. I hadn’t known if all the danger we’d faced bringing the vaccine from the island had been worth it. But maybe I’d just gotten my proof.
“Are we leaving yet?” Gav asked when I came back into the bedroom. He was sitting propped up against the wall, but his face looked washed out, and even his sneeze was weak. He was still refusing to eat. I couldn’t see that my attempted blood transfusion had affected him at all. The brief excitement drained out of me.
“The car’s not here yet,” I said.
He rubbed his knee absently. “Are you really sure we should go? I don’t like this place much—it smells and it’s cold—but it’s better than wandering around, isn’t it? Unless we go back to the island.”
“We’ve talked about that,” I said, sitting next to him. “It’s not safe to go back to the island. And we still have to take care of the vaccine.”
“We were going to take it to Ottawa and that didn’t work, and we were bringing it here and that didn’t work either,” he said. “It’s just going to be the same thing in Atlanta, isn’t it? And we’re going to be even farther from home.”
We don’t have a home anymore, I wanted to say. The world that had been our home was gone. But I didn’t think this virus-afflicted version of Gav would understand.
“You’re right,” I said. “Our other plans didn’t work. But I think—I really think Atlanta could be the right place. We have to try.”
I brushed my fingers over his cheek. His skin was burning up.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” he said. “I’m tired. You dragged me this far, Kaelyn, but don’t you think it’s enough? This is crazy. The vaccine probably doesn’t even work. There’s no doctors to help us. They all took off. We should too. We should go home. We were happy there. I was, anyway.”
My eyes got hot. “I was too,” I said.
He turned away, coughing. His whole body shook. I rested my palm on his back, wishing I could send him strength through my touch.
Feet clomped past the door. “I heard something!” Tobias said.
Gav straightened up and shifted his weight onto me. He crossed his arms behind my neck, pulling me close. “We could let them go, and we could stay,” he murmured. “It doesn’t have to be you. They can take the vaccine. Then it’d just be the two of us, like it was supposed to be. You told me, before—you said—”
The front door burst open. “She’s here!” Justin called. “Let’s move!”
Gav nuzzled my nose with his, and an ache spread through my chest.
I could do it. I knew, in that moment, I could. I could tell the guys to take the cold box while I stayed here with what was left of Gav until the end, the way he wanted.
I let the idea hover in my mind for maybe half a second, and then I pushed it away.
What Gav had said about the vaccine wasn’t true. I knew as well as I ever would that it probably did work. And what I’d said to Justin that first day in the city, that was true. It was Dad’s vaccine. It was my mission. My responsibility to see it through. Leo and Tobias and Justin—they were counting on me to know what to do, to keep them going. Just like Gav had been counting on me to keep going, before he’d gotten this sick.
“We’ve got to leave, Gav,” I said, taking his hand and intertwining my fingers with his.
“No,” he said as I stood up. He sat there looking up at me like a petulant kid. My stomach knotted, but there wasn’t time for this. I had to make him come, now.
Even if that meant being cruel.
I let go of his hand. “I have to,” I said. “I want you to come with me. If you won’t, I’ll have to go without you. You’ll be here on your own.”
If he’d called my bluff, I’m not sure how far I would have taken it. To the apartment door? Into the hall? At some point I would have turned around and come back. But he didn’t make me. Panic flashed across his face, and he scrambled to his feet, swaying.
I adjusted his scarf to cover his lower face and wrapped over it the second one I’d brought, so there were four layers of fabric between his breath and the air. Then I slung my bag over my shoulder and grabbed the cold box. Leo opened the bedroom door.
“You okay?” he said. “Justin and Tobias have brought everything down. We’re ready to go.”
“I need to sit down,” Gav said, his voice muffled by the scarves. I pulled his arm over my shoulder and walked him into the living room.
“Come quickly,” I said. “You can sit in the car.”
“So bossy today,” Gav muttered, and I saw Leo bite back a smile.
“Here,” he said, taking Gav’s other arm. “You can lean on me too if you need to.”
We made it down the stairs in fits and starts, stopping so Gav could rest against the wall and breathe at every landing. By the time we reached the first floor, he was coughing a little with every step.
Outside, a few flakes of snow were drifting past the lobby doors. Tobias was standing on the sidewalk, beside a black SUV with tinted windows.
“Well, what did you think I was going to get?” Anika was saying from the driver’s side. “I knew where to find the keys for this one. They’ll all think one of the other Wardens took it out. If you’d come on and get in, we’ll be out of the city before they realize anything’s wrong.”
Tobias started to argue, but I cut him off before he could finish the first word.
“It’s fine,” I said. “This is what we have—too late to change it now.”
I didn’t even feel surprised. It made sense that she would have stolen from the Wardens to get what we needed, just like she’d once tried to steal from us for them.
As the others tossed our supplies into the back, I sat Gav down on the edge of the backseat and pulled out the bottle of water I’d dissolved four of Anika’s sedatives into. I’d stirred in some powdered orange-drink mix we’d found, to try to hide the taste. Gav eyed it suspiciously.
“It’ll help the coughing,” I said. “Your throat’s got to be pretty sore.”
His nose wrinkled, but he shifted his scarves and took it. “Drink as much as you can,” I said.
He gulped down several mouthfuls before stopping with a gasp. “Ugh,” he said. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah, well, medicine doesn’t normally taste good,” I said. “Let’s get in. You can have the window seat.”
I helped him shuffle across to the opposite side of the car. The hatch banged shut behind us. Justin and Tobias squished in after me, and Leo scrambled into the front with the map book. It was a tight fit. Gav ended up half on my lap. He tipped his head against the back of the seat, shuddering. A seat-belt receptacle was digging into my butt, but all I cared about was getting out of there.
“Okay!” I said. “We’re all in.”
We eased down the street amid the snow. Tobias twisted around, peering first out the side window, then out the back. His hands stayed tight in his pockets. There was a dark splotch on the back of his scarf that I guessed was from melting ice.
We passed stores, banks, a church with shattered windows. Gav squirmed against me. His eyelids were drooping.
“I feel weird,” he said, and then something else I couldn’t make out. I took his hand in mine.
Anika slowed down as we edged around a streetcar stalled in the middle of the road, and I gritted my teeth wi
th impatience. As she pressed the gas again, Tobias stiffened.
“A car just came around the corner a few blocks back,” he said. “Heading this way.”
“It’s probably nothing to do with us, just some other Warden business,” Anika said. “As long as they don’t see who’s driving, we’re good. Here, we have to turn now; they’ll go right by.”
The SUV slid a little on the snow as she took the left, but she managed to hold it steady. Justin and I craned our necks toward the back window. I watched the road behind us, waiting for the other car to pass by. All I could hear was the growl of our engine and Gav’s ragged breath.
A navy blue truck cruised into view. Instead of passing, it turned onto the street after us. My heart skipped a beat.
“They’re following us,” Tobias said.
“Fuck!” Justin said. “We’re screwed.”
“No,” I said, over the thudding of my pulse. “We’re not screwed unless they catch us. We just won’t let them do that.”
“How the hell are we going to stop them?” Justin demanded.
The engine roared as Anika put her foot to the gas. She took another turn at full speed, skidding, and nearly plowed into a streetlamp. Gav’s head bumped against mine. He coughed faintly and mumbled, but his eyes were drifting shut.
“I don’t know how they figured it out,” Anika said. “I swear, I was so careful.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tobias said. “Maybe we can outrun them. I think there’s only the one vehicle chasing us.”
“If they have a radio, they’ll be telling the others,” Leo said.
I peered out the back again. The truck had come around the corner behind us, only a couple of blocks away now. I could make out two figures through the windshield. The one on the passenger side leaned out his window, pointing a narrow object at us.
“They’ve got a gun!” I said. A shot ran out, painfully loud, making a metallic ding as it hit the back of the SUV. Anika yelped. The four of us in the backseat ducked down, me sliding my arm across Gav’s back to keep him still.
“They’re going to kill us!” Justin said.
He was right. Another shot crackled past us, puncturing a stop sign we were whizzing by. They couldn’t aim well, not while driving, but when they got closer they’d start hitting their mark. I doubted they cared about keeping us alive.
