by Amy Cross
"They're gonna think what they want to think," he replies, "and whatever makes them feel safer. No, scratch that... They're gonna think whatever they're told to think." He pauses, wincing at the pain in his side. "If that means executing us, then I think we might need to come up with an escape plan." As he lifts the side of his shirt, I see that there's a dark patch under his skin, right in the spot where he was kicked. "Got any ideas?" he asks finally.
Elizabeth
"Day forty-eight," I tell Rachel as I finish changing her diaper. "Or forty-nine..." I pause for a moment as I try to work it out. "No, forty-eight. Definitely forty-eight. I should have kept some kind of diary."
Staring back at me, Rachel doesn't respond at all. She's still doing that staring thing, which freaks me out even more now that I realize it reminds me of the girl I met on the road a few weeks ago, the one whose name seemed to be Dawn until I found a chunk of metal wedged in the back of my head. Putting aside my worries about infection for a moment, I've checked every inch of Rachel, looking for some sign of an injury, but she seems to be completely undamaged. Whatever's wrong with her, and I'm convinced that there is something, it must be in her head. If that's the case, I have no idea how to help her.
"Hey," I say, forcing a smile. "How are you doing? Are you gonna maybe laugh for me some time? You used to laugh, remember? It was a long time ago, but..."
I wait.
Nothing.
"I'm trying," I say quietly, before looking up at the dull, gray morning sky. "Can you just give me a break? I'll believe in you, I swear, if you just give me one little thing that makes all of this easier. I want to believe, but you need to give me something. Make her act more like a normal baby, or give me more strength, or help me to understand. Anything."
Again, I wait.
Again, the answer is nothing but silence.
Suddenly Rachel lets out a faint gurgle. I look back down at her, but she's already resumed her usual stare. That gurgle was so brief and so faint, it's hard to think it could be a positive sign, but right now I'm willing to latch onto anything. Ignoring the pain in my right ankle, I decide that I just have to hope for the best.
"Please don't be sick," I whisper, holding Rachel up. "Please, please, please -"
Hearing movement nearby, I glance over my shoulder just in time to see that Toad has returned from his scouting trip. He's seemed tense all morning, as if somehow things aren't going according to plan, but I don't quite have the nerve to ask him if anything's wrong. I figure he'll tell me if it's necessary, and right now I've got enough to worry about. Working out a route is his job.
"Are you talking to that baby again?" he asks with a faint smile.
"She's a person," I reply.
"It's not like she can talk back, though."
"It's good for her. People talk to babies all the time. It helps her get used to language." I pause as I try to work out if any of that made sense. "I'm bonding with her," I add, although I immediately regret my choice of words. After all, Rachel isn't my child, and even though I'm the one who's looking after her, I'm not sure I should be assuming responsibility for her entire life. Still, right now she's a symbol of hope, and of the future, and she's helping me to keep sane. Well, relatively sane. I can feel myself starting to unravel, but I'm convinced I can hold myself more or less together, at least for now.
I guess I've got no choice.
"There's been flooding," Toad replies, opening the back of his rucksack and pulling out a small plastic bag. "The terrain's shifting, and I don't think now is the time to go taking any risks. You saw what happened last time we were out in bad weather, and we're too vulnerable to go through anything like that again. We're going to have to try a slightly longer route, around the edge of the forest and then across Dan Hodge's old farm. It'll add about a day and a half to our journey -"
"A day and a half?" I reply, shocked by the suggestion. "I don't even think -"
"We can manage," he says firmly. "If there were creatures around, don't you think we'd have run into them by now? They've all rotted away. It's natural, if you think about it. Whatever was controlling them, it couldn't halt the natural decomposition of dead bodies. We just have to focus on surviving the journey, and we have to hope that we can find somewhere that offers a chance for a future."
"Are you sure we shouldn't turn back?" I ask. "At least at the farmhouse, we had food and shelter."
"The food was running low. We might have felt safer in the short-term, but in the long-run we'd have just been sitting around, waiting to die. If I thought someone might eventually show up to put the world straight, then maybe it'd be an option, but that's not going to happen. We're on our own, and this isn't the kind of situation that favors caution, not when it comes to the big picture." He pauses, and for a moment he seems to be searching my face for something. "Are you okay? If there was anything wrong, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?"
"Like what?"
"Like an injury." He stares at me for a moment, as if he's trying to spot any hint of weakness.
"I'm not injured," I tell him. "I'm fine. I just wish I had a better idea of where we're going, or why we're walking such a long way. I want a plan, or at least some kind of destination, 'cause right now it feels as if we're just drifting through the landscape."
"The plan is to find out what's happening," he replies. "Would you really rather stay at the farmhouse and play happy families like we're the last two people on Earth, while we wait for the darkness to close in? I didn't want to scare you back there, but the way things were going, we only had about two weeks left."
"Things were that bad?"
"My food reserves were shot, and the land was dying. Every day, I went out and tried to find some kind of solution, but there was nothing. There was no choice, we had to leave."
Sighing, I look back down at Rachel. I know Toad is right, but I can't help feeling that we're completely exposed out here, as if danger could be coming toward us from every direction. At least when we were at the farmhouse, we had some kind of base, but at the moment I have no idea what we're going to do next. There's a part of me that feels we're going to end up dying out here, whereas at the farmhouse we could have focused on trying to make what's left of our lives a little more comfortable. Even if that was only a few weeks.
"You didn't sleep last night, did you?" he asks eventually.
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine. Your eyes are dark and you look pale, like you're about to collapse." He pauses, as if he's waiting for me to say something. "We won't be getting many opportunities to rest, Elizabeth. You need to take them when they come."
"I said I'm fine."
"Take half an hour," he continues. "I'll take care of Rachel -"
"No!" I snap, horrified by the idea of Toad looking after her. After all, the more time he spends with her, the more likely he is to realize that something's seriously wrong. I need to keep them apart as much as possible and just hope that somehow she's going to be okay. If that means I have to stay awake for a week straight, then that's just what I'm going to have to do. "This isn't your thing," I stammer. "It's mine. I'm in charge of it."
"Your thing?" he asks, sounding confused.
"I mean my job," I continue, my mind racing as I try not to sound too suspicious. "You've got your job, which is keeping us on the road, and I've gone mine. I'll look after Rachel, okay? You don't need to worry about her." I turn to him, and I can see that he's realized something isn't right. "Don't keep bothering me," I add. "I've got enough to do, looking after her. You said it yourself. We each have to stick to our roles here, and I'm sticking to mine. She's fine. Maybe you should spend less time worrying about her, and more time finding a safe route for us."
He stares at me, and for a moment it seems as if he might be about to call my bluff. I'm pretty sure I'm not fooling him, and that he knows I'm cracking up.
"We should get going," he says eventually. "The sun's up, so we need to make the most of it. Just... Next time we stop for a
rest, you need to actually rest. At this rate, you're going to end up collapsing -"
"Then you can just leave me behind, can't you?" I reply, interrupting him before realizing that I'm being far too defensive. "I'm okay. Really. I'm just trying to deal with a lot, and it'd be easier if you weren't second-guessing me all the time. I'm fine, and Rachel's fine, and if you're fine then everyone's fine and..." My voice trails off as I realize that I'm rambling. Damn it, I swear to God, I think I'm losing my mind. I never thought that the world could seem so chaotic and confusing.
"Five minutes," he says, clearly concerned. "Then we'll get going. I've got a new route worked out, but it's not going to be easy. I can carry her for a while, if that'd help. She must be heavy."
I keep my focus on Rachel, refusing to answer.
"Okay," he continues. "Let's just get ready to move on."
As he closes the rucksack, I look down at Rachel and try to pull myself together. I thought I'd be able to manage this journey, and it never occurred to me that I could end up turning into such a mess, but right now I'm terrified that Toad is going to realize there's something wrong with Rachel. There's no way he'll be willing to keep her around if there's even a chance of her being infected, but at the same time I'm convinced that I can keep her safe.
"It's going to be okay," I whisper, leaning down and kissing her forehead, while struggling to keep from crying. "Everything's going to be fine. You can trust me. I won't ever let anything happen to you. For as long as I'm alive, no-one's ever going to hurt you."
Thomas
"How many are left?" George asks as we're led through the empty streets. "A hundred? A thousand?"
"There are sixty of us," the guard says, walking a little way behind us. "Well, there were sixty of us until you showed up. Now there are fifty-nine. Although I guess you two count for now, so there are sixty-one. I guess it'll be back down to fifty-nine again soon."
I glance over my shoulder at him. He's got a makeshift weapon pointed at me, and even though I have no doubt that he knows how to use it, I'm already starting to wonder if I could overpower him. The weapon itself looks to be no more than an old rifle with a pair of large hunting knives strapped to the front. The problem is, he hasn't said anything about the rifle itself, so I have no idea whether it's in working order. Then again, I'm almost beyond the point of caring. I'm too weak to do much more than stumble along and do whatever I'm told. Even if I was able to get away, I don't have the truck anymore, so I don't know where I'd go.
Joe would be disgusted.
"Sixty people in the whole of Chicago?" George asks. "My God, there must have been close to three million here a couple of months ago. Three million living, breathing people with hopes and dreams."
"Most of them died overnight," the guard replies. "Some ended up with that... thing in them. They were walking about, talking... After a few weeks they started to rot. Their bodies were falling apart, and it only took a couple more days before they were pretty much gone. It was like a miracle."
"Convenient," George mutters.
"It's over," the guard continues. "At first we thought the creatures were going to overwhelm us. For two weeks, we hid and scavenged. It was like some kind of zombie apocalypse. I saw people being cut down by those things and ripped apart. Whatever the hell was going on, it didn't last long, and now we can start to rebuild. It's not about putting everything back to how it used to be. It's about making things better than ever and avoiding the mistakes of the past. We've got a whole city here to work with -"
"Where are the bodies?" George asks, turning to him.
"Keep walking," the guard says firmly, raising the weapon. "If you try anything, I'll cut you down."
"There should be three million corpses littering the streets," George continues as we make our way past an old restaurant, its windows darkened now. In the window, there's a large poster advertising a two-for-one pizza discount, but the door looks to have been forced open at some point, probably by looters.
"We started tidying," the guard continues. "We were worried about disease, so we didn't have any choice. Plus, the rats were becoming a problem, so we cleared a small section of the city. If you want to see real horror, all you have to do is go about four blocks in any direction, and you'll soon find more than enough. There are bodies all over the place, with rats picking at them. We started by quarantining a certain section of the city and then focusing our work here for now. It was hard, but we organized ourselves in groups and we worked day and night. Every street was scrubbed, every trashcan was emptied, every shop was stripped of anything that might be useful. It might sound like looting, but it wasn't; it was more organized and more effective. Everything's in hand and Quinn has it all under control."
"Quinn?" George asks.
"Quinn took charge. It's what we needed. People panic so easily, but Quinn came up with the answers we needed. There's order here now, and a system of rules. We're working together to make sure we have food and water, and to keep the sick and elderly from starving. In some ways, things are even better than before. As Quinn reminded us during a recent meeting, there were too many people in the old days. Life might be better when things have been pared back a little."
"Sounds like a typical dictator," George mutters.
"You should be careful, giving opinions when you don't know a damn thing about what's been going on around here."
"And what does Quinn get out of this?" George asks.
"The satisfaction of helping us all."
"I'd be interested to meet this Quinn individual," George continues. "I'm sure plenty of people set out with good intentions, but they always become bitter and twisted. That's just what happens when people reach a position of power. If I'm going to be killed for the pleasure of a new ruler, I'd at least like to see the color of that person's eyes before I'm cut down."
"You'll find out soon enough."
"Finally we have a name for the man in charge," George continues, turning to me. "It's always good to know the name of the despotic little tyrant who's planning to take over the world. It's human nature, really. Nature hates a vacuum, and where there's a lack of power, there's always gonna be some asshole ready to run into the gap and start issuing orders. Fortunately, I don't suppose there's much this Quinn individual can do from the ruins of Chicago. It'll be a pretty small kingdom."
"You need to shut up," the guard says firmly.
"Why? You're going to kill us anyway, aren't you?" George pauses, and it seems as if he might have finally given up all hope. "There's probably a little tin-foil ruler in every city, puffed up on delusions of grandeur as he tries to convince the idiots around him that he's the one true king. It's pathetic how humanity constantly reverts to type, but you can't deny it. The vast majority of people are so disgustingly credulous, and I include myself in that category. I've made my fair share of mistakes, listened to my fair share of bad advice."
"You should try saying these things when you're at the tribunal," the guard replies. "I'm sure it'll go down very well. You'll be given an opportunity to explain your actions and apologize for your sins, but if you prefer to use that opportunity to gloat and make foolish statements instead, then that's entirely up to you."
"Oh, I plan to," George replies. "Believe me, I have no intention of hiding my true feelings as I prepare to meet my maker. Might as well go out with a bang, huh?" He turns to me. "Don't you think so, Thomas? Who wants to be pleading and begging as the sword slices through their throat? No-one remembers a coward. At least piss people off and -"
Suddenly he trips and falls, landing hard against the sidewalk, and it's clear that the guard tripped him on purpose. Barely able to even think, all I can do is watch as George rolls onto his side and lets out a gasp of pain. It's almost as if he's got a death wish, since everything he says right now seems designed to provoke the guard. I guess he must have given up all hope of finding his family alive, but as he struggles back to his feet, I can't help wondering why he's so keen to invite pain.
"Fifty-nine," George says darkly, turning to him, "and all the better for it. I'm sure as hell not going to be fooled by this Quinn person, whoever he is."
"It doesn't matter whether or not you're fooled by anything," the guard replies. "Your personal beliefs and opinions are completely irrelevant. The tribunal exists for one purpose and one purpose only, and that's to determine your guilt or innocence in the matter of Alice's murder. It's really not so different to how things used to be. In the old days, you couldn't run a girl down and get away with it, so why do you think you should have that right today?"
George stares at him for a moment, before finally turning to me.
"I didn't murder that girl," I say, my voice sounding dry and hoarse. "You were there..."
"Come on," he says with a sigh. "Someone gave the dumb little man a big knife, and now he's in charge, so there's not much point fighting, is there? We might as well get this over with. Let's see what kind of twisted attempt at justice these people have managed to come up with. I've got a feeling it'll be rather sick, but at least it'll be entertaining."
I know I should answer him, but the truth is, I feel completely dazed. It's as if I've finally accepted that there's no way out of this situation, and now I'm just trying to empty my mind as much as possible, so that whatever happens next is a little less painful. That's all I really want now; I want to minimize the pain and just try to die without too much misery.
And then I want to see my family again, in a place that's better than this.
Elizabeth
"Elizabeth."
Ignoring the voice, I focus on moving forward. All I can think about is the fact that my bones are aching. I desperately want to sleep, but at the same time I know I can't stop. The weight in my arms - Rachel, sleeping or maybe just staring - is dragging me down, and as I stumble over a stray branch and almost fall, I feel as if the whole world is spinning around me.
