by Amy Cross
She stares at me.
"Drive!" I shout.
"I don't know how," she says quietly.
"It's really not that hard. There are no other vehicles on the road, so you just have to focus on following the signs and keeping the truck on the road. I'll show you the basics."
"I don't think I can do it..."
"You have to. I need to sleep, and apparently we can't even afford to stop for a couple of hours."
She stares at me, and it's clear that she's stunned by my request. The truth is, I'm too tired to really care about her feelings, and I'm starting to feel annoyed by the fact that both Quinn and Kaylee seem to have been relying on me to do everything. As I wait for Kaylee to show some sign that she's going to help, however, I realize that we probably wouldn't even be safe with her behind the wheel. At the same time, I really don't think that Quinn's going to be much use.
"I don't think I can do it," Kaylee says again.
"What's going on back here?" Quinn asks as she climbs out of the passenger seat and comes around to join us. "Are we having some kind of meeting? We really don't have time for long, meandering discussions, you know. The future of humanity is waiting for us, and even a half hour could make quite a difference."
"Either someone else drives for a few hours," I say, turning to her, "or we stay here while I sleep. There's no way I can keep driving. At this rate, I'm going to fall asleep at the wheel and then we're going to end up crashing. I'm not being lazy or weak, I'm just stating the obvious."
"But -"
"We'll die," I say firmly. "Either that, or we'll get injured, or at the very least the truck'll be wrecked. Can't you at least try to drive? It's just steering and choosing the right roads. You can even go a little slower than usual if that helps. Most of it's just about pointing in the right direction."
Quinn opens her mouth to argue with me, but finally a look of irritation reaches her face.
"Fine," she says. "I'll drive. Like you said, it can't be that difficult. I mean, billions of people used to do it. Even though I've got absolutely no experience with vehicles whatsoever, I'll just use my natural skills to work it out as I go along. Hell, a trained monkey could probably drive one of these things."
"It's a manual," I point out.
"A manual what?"
"Gearbox."
"I'm sure I'll work that out just fine," she replies, making her way around to the driver's side. "I pick things up fast, you know. Give me a few miles under my belt, and I'm sure I'll be driving like a professional."
A few minutes later, I'm sitting in the back of the truck as Quinn gets us underway. To my surprise, she doesn't seem to be having any problems at all, and I can't shake the feeling that she was lying when she said she couldn't drive. In fact, I'm convinced that she was just making that claim so she could get out of taking her turn, and now that she's got no choice, she's going to pretend that she's some kind of genius who picked it up in an instant. Settling into the corner, I close my eyes and try to get some sleep as the truck speeds along the road. After a moment, however, I open my eyes and see that Kaylee is staring blankly at me.
"You okay?" I ask.
She nods.
"You want anything?"
She pauses, and then she shakes her head.
Closing my eyes again, I figure I just need to ignore her. It's not as if I'm going to get a decent conversation out of her, no matter how hard I might try. Finally, as I sink into sleep, I find myself thinking again about George making his lonely trek to the north. Sure, he's never going to find what he wants, but at least he believes in something. Right now, I feel as if I'm on some kind of crazy journey with a mad woman and a girl who's borderline catatonic, and I can't shake the feeling that Quinn's not exactly the best person to leave in charge.
Elizabeth
"No!" I scream, still struggling as Toad gets in position next to my ankle. "Someone help me! Please!"
"It'll be over in a couple of minutes," he explains calmly.
Seconds later, I feel the edge of the saw being placed gently against my swollen throbbing ankle. As I try to get free, the blade moves a little and ends up closer to my knee. It's as if he's trying to determine the best place to start.
"You can't do this!" I shout. "I don't give you permission! You can't do this to me without my permission!"
"I'm going to cut here," he continues. "I need to be sure that I'm getting the entire damaged area, so I might end up taking an inch or two more than is necessary. Still, it's the best approach. I know you probably can't understand this, but -"
"If you even touch me," I shout, "I'll kill you!"
"Try to understand -"
"I'll kill you!" I scream, pulling on the rope so tight that it starts digging into my wrists. "I swear to God, I will kill you if you don't let me go! If you do this, and if I get better, I will wait until you're not looking and then I will kill you! I swear to God, I won't let you get away with this!"
I feel him adjusting the blade, getting ready to cut.
"I'll kill you!" I shout again, before breaking into a series of sobs. Tears are running down my face and although I'm still trying to get free, I feel completely helpless. "Please God, don't let him do this," I shout through the tears. "Somebody help me! Anyone! Please!"
Nearby, Rachel has finally started to cry.
"I'm sorry," Toad says calmly.
"Stop!!" I shout. "If you touch me, I swear to God I'll -"
And that's when he starts.
I let out a cry of pain as I feel the blade slice through my flesh and scratch against the bone, a little way below my right knee. To my shock, he immediately starts sawing, and I can feel my entire leg vibrating and throbbing with pain as he grinds the blade through the bone. The pain is beyond anything I've ever experienced in my life, and even though I scream as loud as I can manage, the agony quickly rises through my body until it becomes a kind of white hot flash in my mind, pushing all other thoughts away. For a few seconds, it's as if my personality has been pushed to the edges and the pain has become all of me.
The worst thing is the sound. I can hear the saw squealing as it grinds through my bone, like fingernails being dragged down a blackboard.
After a few seconds, the pain changes, becoming deeper and more intense. I can feel the blade going through the marrow in the center of the bone, and suddenly there's a jarring moment of agony as the saw seems to get stuck. I continue to scream as Toad adjusts his angle and resumes the job, but the pain is now so overwhelming that I can't even think. My eyes are squeezed tight shut and I try to scream even louder in an attempt to drown out the sound of the saw, and finally I feel as if I've reached a point at which it's no longer possible to feel any more pain.
And then I feel something snap in my leg. Something's different, not only about the weight but also the way Toad is holding me. It's as if my body has fundamentally changed. At first, I assume it must be the blade, but as Toad moves away from my leg for a moment, a more horrifying thought hits me.
That was my leg.
It's gone.
"Stop!" I scream, suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful sense of grief. I can't stop thinking about my leg - my leg - being take away from me. I want it back.
"It's okay," Toad says, his voice somehow getting through to me.
"Stop!" I scream again, unable to stop sobbing. "Please, stop..."
After a moment, I start to feel something warm and wet flowing from my body, and it takes me a moment to realize that it must be blood. Toad immediately raises my leg and applies a thick bundle of bandages. Opening my eyes, I find that I can barely see; my vision has become blurry, but I can just about make out a bloody red stump, with Toad holding some kind of instrument in his hand as he continues to work on me. The pain is still overwhelming and after a few seconds I tilt my head back and scream at the sky. I feel as if someone has to come and save me, but after a moment I realize that I might have briefly passed out.
"Where are you?" I whisper.
No reply.
"Toad, where are you?"
Again, no reply.
Suddenly I realize that I don't think I said those words out loud. They were just in my head. I try to move my lips, but somehow I seem to have forgotten how to communicate.
"Where are you?" I try to ask again, but it's useless. "Please. Talk to me..."
Looking back down toward the lower half of my body, I see through my blurred eyes that Toad is still working, although he seems to be a lot further along. I blink, trying to improve my vision, and finally I'm able to make out my raised right leg with a thick collection of bandages wrapped around the knee. Toad is frantically working, and eventually I realize that he seems to be trying to sew the edges of my skin together. I stare at him, and for a few seconds the pain seems to dissipate and I feel almost as if I'm watching him work on someone else.
Time seems to slow down.
Rachel is crying, but she sounds as if she's so far away. I can only hope that she doesn't understand what's happening, and that she can't see anything. Even though she's so young, something like this could scar her for life.
"It's okay," Toad says, his voice echoing in my head. "It's all going according to plan. You just have to sit tight."
I try to ask him what he's doing next, but I still can't quite manage to speak.
"You're doing great," he adds.
I open my mouth, trying to speak, but I can feel something moving through my soul. After a few seconds, I realize that it must be the pain. My mind has somehow found a way to block it out, but I know it's going to come back soon, like a huge wave waiting to break and wash over the shore of my consciousness. Holding my breath, I try to push it back, but I can feel my soul starting to strain under the pressure. Finally, it happens: the pain bursts through me and I let out an involuntary scream. I know it's crazy, but I just want someone to come and help me. I don't care who they are, just so long as they get me away from Toad and put my leg back on.
All I can think about is the fact that he should have left me to die. Anything would have been better than this. As another burst of pain rushes through my body, I scream again, and this time I can't stop.
Thomas
At first, it's just a vague sensation that something's wrong. As I emerge from sleep, I can feel... something nearby. Finally, opening my eyes, I find myself face to face with Kaylee.
Literally face to face.
In fact, almost touching.
She's kneeling in front of me, staring straight into my eyes as if she has no idea that she's being weird. As the truck continues to speed along the road, all I can do for a moment is stare back at her until, finally, I slip to one side, managing to get a little space between us at last. To be honest, I'm kind of stunned by the way she's gone from blatant disinterest to rampant fascination in the space of just a few hours.
I wait for her to say something.
She just stares at me, still looking sad.
"You okay?" I ask, feeling a little dazed. I'm not sure how long I was sleeping, but it sure as hell wasn't long enough. I'm pretty sure I was having bad dreams too, although they've already faded from my memory.
"You were talking in your sleep," she says eventually, keeping her eyes fixed on me.
"What about?"
"You kept mentioning someone named Joe."
"Huh." I pause for a moment. "He was my brother. He died."
"Oh." She seems lost in thought. "There was something about an old man too."
"That'd take too long to explain."
"And someone named Robert... Helms or Harms or -"
"Haims. Robert Haims." I pause again. "He was a cop. He died too. A lot of people have died lately."
I wait for her to say something else, but she seems so completely blank, it's as if nothing really gets through to her. Turning, I look through to the front of the truck and see that Quinn is doing a fine job of keeping us on the road; in fact, she's going way faster than I'd prefer, and it's clear that I was right when I suspected she was bluffing about her driving skills. I guess she just wanted to pretend that she'd picked it up fast.
"My parents died," Kaylee says suddenly.
I turn to her. "How?"
"Those creatures."
"What happened?" I ask.
"They were just..." She pauses. "The creatures got them. We were in the street. I managed to hide behind a car, but they couldn't get away. I heard..." Another pause, as if she's reliving everything in her head, over and over. "I didn't see what happened to them, but I heard the sound of them being torn apart. It was like a kind of sticky, slurpy noise. I know that sounds silly, but it's really how it was. They were screaming at first, but after a while it was like their mouths were full of blood, but they were still calling out for help, and then that stopped and I think it was kinda worse. I could hear their bones cracking as they were just being..."
Her voice trails off.
"I couldn't run," she adds. "I just had to wait."
Staring at her, I finally realize what's wrong with her. She's in shock. I guess it must have been a month or so since her parents were killed, and she's still trying to deal with it. That faraway, vacant look in her eyes is obviously due to the fact that she's reliving those final moments over and over again, never quite managing to get past them. For the first time, I feel as if I can actually understand a little of what she's going through. All those people back in Chicago were probably in shock as well; they'd all lost loved ones, and they'd all seen their lives being torn apart. It's impossible to know how different people will react when something like that happens, but all those people staring at the platform... They were all in shock.
"Sorry," Kaylee says quietly. "I didn't mean to say too much. It's just something I think about a lot. Like, all the time. I wish things were different."
We sit in silence for a moment as the truck speeds along the road. The wind is whipping Kaylee's hair a little, but she doesn't seem to mind. In fact, right now, she doesn't seem to mind anything. It's as if she doesn't really care about the world around her.
"My parents died too," I tell her. "My father went into town, and later we found his body. Then my mother got sick. We burned the house in the end, but then my brother died, and he came back as one of those things, but he still kinda had his own mind." Pausing, I realize that maybe I'm still in shock too, albeit in a different way. "I killed a girl too," I add. "The other day, when we arrived in Chicago, I thought she was one of those creatures, and I panicked..."
"Her name was Alice," she replies.
"Did you know her?"
She nods.
"What was she like?"
"Shy." She pauses, as if she's finding it hard to remember. "She didn't say much, but we used to go searching for food together sometimes. I usually had to be in charge, 'cause she'd just follow me around without saying much, but I didn't mind. I managed to get her to talk sometimes, but she wasn't the most interesting person in the world."
"I'm sorry," I reply. "I didn't mean to kill her, I swear, I just -"
"I understand," she says, interrupting me. "Things happen. You shouldn't blame yourself. Everyone's dying anyway. No-one knows what's going to happen next, but you could tell, back there in Chicago... They were all just waiting for the end. Quinn kept telling us that we had a chance to survive, that we were the lucky ones, but I don't think anyone believed her. The city is the worst place to be right now, 'cause that's where all the diseases are spreading, but people still want to be there. It's like some kind of nostalgia thing. Habit, maybe. I guess everyone deals with things differently. Like Quinn."
"She's crazy," I mutter.
"Her son died."
I stare at her for a moment.
"Didn't she tell you?" she continues. "It wasn't long after everything went wrong. I didn't know her at all back then, but I heard a lot of stories. She had a son, he was about nine or ten. I think she was raising him alone. I didn't see what happened, but I think it was similar to when my parents died. She left hi
m alone or something while they were out looking for food, and then she heard him screaming. That's when she changed, apparently. She started to be... weirder. Like she couldn't stand to deal with the world in the same way. I met someone who knew her before all this stuff happened, and apparently she was, like, a junior accountant at some firm. Pretty normal stuff."
Looking through to the front of the truck, I stare at the back of Quinn's head for a moment as she continues to keep us speeding along the road. I was always sure that something wasn't quite right with her, but it never occurred to me that she might have suffered some kind of trauma. I guess her enthusiasm for this journey is understandable; she wanted to get the hell away from Chicago, but at the same time she wanted some kind of destination. It also explains her disdain for George's mission to find his family; if her son died, she probably sees no need for that kind of thing anymore. For the first time, I actually feel sorry for her.
"Are we really going to find anything?" Kaylee asks after a moment. "She keeps going on about this signal, but do you think it's real? I'm worried it's all just in her head, or she's making it up. It's just so hard to believe that this could actually be happening."
"I think there's something out there," I reply. "I don't know what it is, and I'm not sure it's a person, but there's something. Either way, it's good to get away from the city. Like you said, that's not the best place to be right now. I don't think the people we left behind are going to last much longer. At least out here, we've still got a chance."
"I just don't want it to hurt," she continues. "When I die, I mean. It's inevitable that it's gonna happen. No matter how I try to stay alive, I'm not equipped for a world like this, so there's a part of me that's okay with getting it done as soon as possible, just so long as it doesn't hurt. Whenever I see a dead body, I kinda envy them, like they've already been through it all and now they're at peace. I want it to be painless."
"I don't think there are many painless ways to die," I tell her.
"But there have to be some, right? Like, maybe something that's so quick, your body doesn't even have time to send pain signals to your brain. Vaporization, or just getting blown to pieces in a fraction of a second. That can't hurt, can it? Or getting killed while you're asleep. You wouldn't even know! That'd be, like, heaven!"
