He drops the paper to the ground and attaches the clips that run the pump to the battery. Shawn is an all-around big guy—tall, broadly built, thick arms, big voice and bigger laugh—but his hands are surprisingly nimble.
“Ready?” Peter asks, nozzle in the truck’s tank.
Shawn starts the pump at our nods, and Jamie climbs to the roof of the cab for a better view. The golden arches of McDonald’s are in my direct line of vision, and although not a place I frequented much, I’d love to plunk a fifty on the counter and order one of everything on the menu.
A minute into our watch, Jamie knocks on my head. A pack of Lexers is turning off the side street. Shawn looks up at her yell and follows her finger. It’s a lot for the four of us, but we need the fuel. The pump quiets and the guys hop in the bed to wait while they close the final ten feet. The one at the head of the pack looks fresher. The gaping hole in her side is still a pinkish-gray, and the small capillaries on her skin are more purple than black. Her clothes don’t look new, but they haven’t faded to the colorless garments the others wear. She must have survived the winter and possibly most of the summer. And here she is as one of them, cementing the fact that we’ll never be safe as long as a single Lexer roams the world.
I kneel to drive the spike end through her eye and stand for the next. The others slash and grunt. The stench of new Lexer mixes with old. I try to keep the splatter off my clothes, but when I bury my axe in one’s scalp, my jeans are splattered with pinkish-brown jelly.
There’s no time for relaxation after they’re down. The pump resumes its buzz just as a new group rounds the corner. This time it’s too many: a few dozen, with more behind them. Peter drops the nozzle and runs to Shawn. He shuts off the pump and retrieves the hose, while Peter reconnects the battery and throws our empty gas cans in back. Jamie and I stand in the bed, guns leveled, until Peter and Shawn are safely inside the cab. We sink down as the truck heads back the way we came.
Peter pulls over at the train tracks. “What do you think we got?” he asks Shawn.
“Dunno, maybe thirty gallons altogether. Not enough.”
Peter takes the container of antibacterial wipes I hand him and wipes down his hands and the steering wheel. There may be no food or fuel, but no one’s made a run on antibacterial wipes. And a year later, as long as they’re unopened, they work fine. I wipe black sludge from the edges of the truck bed and then my jeans. Once they’re soaked with cleaner, I’m satisfied they’re not contagious, but it doesn’t improve the aroma all that much.
“How about the one on the other side of the highway?” Jamie asks.
“If those stations were empty, then that one probably is,” Peter says. He looks at the map. “But it’s our only option, unless you want to head past that group and go deeper in.”
None of us does, but thirty gallons is a hundred gallons short of what we were hoping for.
“Let’s do it,” Shawn says. “What’ve we got to lose?”
We drive in silence while I calculate how far we’ll get on the fuel we have. It’s a discouraging thought. I sigh louder than I intended.
“What’s up?” Jamie asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “It just sucks.”
If we’re stranded out here for the winter, if we last until then, we’re probably dead. I imagine watching Bits starve to death, wasting away in front of my eyes, and a steady beating starts up in my temples.
“We’ll find somewhere to stay and scavenge food if we have to,” Peter says, reading my mind. “Then we’ll go into Winnipeg when they freeze. We have enough gas to get back there.”
I’m sure I could find twelve flaws in his plan if I tried, but I want to trust we’ll make this work. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Peter asks incredulously.
“We’ll figure it out.” Peter almost looks disappointed. Maybe he likes to convince me as much as I like to be convinced. “See? Right down off the ledge.” He laughs, and I want to hug him for being such a good friend when I know he must be miserable. It feels like a month, but Ana’s only been gone a matter of days.
We make it into an industrial part of town with no problems. A Walmart sits to our right, and a gas station to our left, surrounded by a few empty car dealerships whose missing cars have been moved into lines to form a passageway that stretches across Walmart’s lot to the rear of the gas station.
More cars surround the entirety of the empty gas station. It’s a large one, with twelve pumps, a convenience store and two fuel tankers sitting off to the side.
“Wow.” Jamie leans her head against the window. “I don’t see anyone. They probably would’ve come out already.”
I nod, afraid to jinx it. This is the answer to our prayers. We could take a tanker, if one runs and has fuel, and never have to stop for gas again. Whoever was here seems to be gone, and I hope it wasn’t because they ran out of fuel. Shawn opens the doors of the two vehicles not sitting sideways that, if moved, would allow us access to the tanks.
“No keys. No problem.” He scoots under the SUV and hums while he works his magic. Jamie has situated herself behind the wheel, and she steers while we push the truck to the side. We freeze at the noise of an engine coming up fast. A pickup veers around the convenience store inside the circle of cars with four men in the bed, and four rifles trained on us.
CHAPTER 17
I sight my pistol on one of the four, a man in his sixties with pouches under his eyes and thick gray hair. There isn’t enough time to escape; our only recourse is to make it clear that we can kill them as easily as they can kill us. The truck blocks the opening and the man in my sights yells, “We just want to talk. You can put those down.”
“You can put yours down,” Jamie calls.
The man rests his rifle on the roof of the truck, but when the others don’t lower theirs, neither do we. He hops down and moves to the cars.
“Careful, Bob,” one of the other men says.
Bob stops twenty feet away and calls, “We don’t want any problems. This is our station. You want fuel, go to the others in town.”
“The others are all empty,” Peter says.
Bob looks over our truck. “You have anything to trade?”
“What do you need?” Shawn asks.
The three men in the truck have greasy hair and rumpled clothes, but all in all they look like they’ve done pretty well for themselves this past year. A young one with a beard and snub nose swivels his head between me and Jamie in a way that says he might not have had female companionship in a while. I point my gun at him.
“Why don’t you tell us what you have?” Bob asks.
“Let’s just go,” I mutter. My stomach is in knots. I’ll happily spend all winter in Winnipeg. The idea is sounding better by the minute.
“We need the fuel,” Peter says quietly. He looks to Bob. “We have ammo. Looks like you have some .22s. We have .22 Long Range. We don’t want any trouble, either. We’re on our way from Vermont to Alaska. If you don’t want to barter, we’ll leave.”
Bob takes in our Vermont license plate and looks us over as if he hadn’t believed our story until now. “That’s a long drive.”
Peter tells Bob our story as succinctly as possible. At the end, the pouches under Bob’s eyes hang lower and the men in the truck murmur, but their rifles stay aloft. “South America? Shit. We thought one or two more winters here and we’d be good.”
My arms ache from my death grip on my gun. I loosen my fingers one hand at a time while Bob mulls things over. He might not have a lot to do today, but we do, and I’m getting tired of this standoff. They know they have the upper hand.
“How much ammo do you have?” Bob finally asks.
“Enough,” I say. I feel Peter’s eyes bore into me, but I’m not telling this guy what we have so he can demand it all. “How much gas do you have?”
“Enough,” Bob says, and now he half-smiles. “That’s the reason you couldn’t find any. It takes a lot to run the generator in the store.”
So they’ve taken all the fuel in the surrounding area. I open my mouth and then close it when Peter mumbles, “Will you let me handle this?”
He holsters his gun and calls, “I’m coming to you.” Bob nods and Peter strolls toward him like he hasn’t a care in the world.
“Peter!” I call. He waves his hand behind him.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Shawn mumbles.
I can’t hear what Peter says before they shake hands. His shoulders are squared, but not like he’s gearing up for a fight—more like he’s confident Bob is going to help. He leans on a car’s hood like there’s nothing he’d rather do than shoot the shit all day. This is the old Peter, the one who did pointless things with lobbyists. His hair may be longer, with days of stubble and dirty jeans, but I can see he’s making headway by the way Bob relaxes and motions to the cars and Walmart as if bragging about his setup. Peter says something and flashes white teeth. A couple of the men in the pickup laugh at whatever he’s said.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Shawn says again.
The men drop their weapons at a motion from Bob. Peter beckons us over, and although I’ve holstered my pistol like his nod suggests, I don’t drop my hand from the grip. I try to look as self-assured as Peter, but it’s all I can do to not trip.
Up close, Bob looks more like he’s in his seventies. His teeth are stained brown, and I wonder if dental care isn’t high on his list these days. But he appears friendly now that they’ve reached some sort of agreement.
“Ten rounds of .22 for every gallon,” Peter says. “Plus three boxes of .38 and .30-30.We can swing that, right?”
Over a thousand rounds: two large boxes of .22 gone and six precious boxes of the others. I don’t see any other choice but to agree. Gas is more important than ammo at the moment. We try not to fire our guns for the most part, but ammunition is finite unless we come across the equipment we need for reloading empty rounds.
“Go ‘head and move the truck,” Bob says.
Shawn maneuvers our truck through the opening until he’s flush with the ground tanks, but I don’t move after the others.
“Trust me, it’s fine,” Peter says in my ear. “They’ve had some trouble in the past.” I nod, but I’m still jumpy. With zombies, you know exactly what they want. People lie.
We use their pump, which is quietly powered by a generator somewhere in the store. I sit in the pickup’s bed to keep an eye on our new friends and wave halfheartedly when Peter introduces me. Bearded Guy rests an arm on the side of the pickup. The odor that escapes makes it obvious he hasn’t showered recently—not that I should talk, although I’m not in a store with a generator—but his smile confirms that he brushes his teeth.
“You’re Cassie?” he asks. I watch Shawn stick a nozzle in the truck’s tank and say, “Yeah.”
“Chad. It’s been a long time since I met anyone new.” I give him a friendly nod. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t like having my attention diverted. “So, you’re heading to Alaska?”
“Yeah.”
“Supposed to be nice there. Some of us might like to head there, too. You know, since the Biters are coming up from the south.”
I think he just asked to come along. He’s nice enough, but I’d noticed that once he found out Jamie and Shawn were married he’d wasted no time in coming my way.
“Anyone who wants to come is welcome,” I say truthfully. I would never turn him or anyone looking for safety away. “I have two kids, so we could always use more adults.”
“Oh, are you married?”
I wish I could say yes, but if he comes, he’ll find out soon enough. “No.”
“Boyfriend or anything?”
I’d really like to hide under the truck. If Chad comes because he thinks girls are on the menu, it’s going to be awkward. I get it, I do—it’s lonely out here. And from the conversations I overhear I know that there are fifty people in the Walmart, most of them families, which doesn’t leave much for a single guy. But I am not on the market.
Peter has been behind me talking to Bob, and now he leans over the tailgate for the ammo, but not before squeezing my waist. “This everything, sweetie?”
Chad can’t see Peter’s wink, and I would laugh if it wouldn’t seem out of place. I hand him the boxes and turn back to Chad. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Aw, nothing.” Chad scrapes at dirt on his wrist. “How many people do you have?”
“Seventeen. Four kids. Some older people. A couple of guys our age, though. You’d like them.”
“Yeah,” he says. I feel bad at his obvious disappointment. Not bad enough to sleep with him to make up for it, however.
“Well, you’re welcome to come.” And he is, except for the fact that Peter and I will have to stage a breakup or start sleeping together to keep up the subterfuge. I almost laugh again and smile to cover it.
“I’ll probably stay here. We’ve kind of become a family, you know?”
I think of Bits and Hank, and this time my smile is real. “I do. You couldn’t get me to leave, either. The kids aren’t really mine, you know, biologically.” I point to Peter. “They’re kind of our adopted kids.”
I’m filled with a rush of gratitude that I don’t have to do this alone. I’m surrounded by people I love in a world that doesn’t have many people left. I even have a pretend boyfriend to keep unwanted suitors away.
I ask Chad about himself. It turns out he’s a year older than I am and has lost everyone he knew, except for a friend who lives in the Walmart. Now that I don’t have to fend him off, I listen to him recount everyone he failed to find. When he talks about his younger brother, who was on his way home and never arrived, I tell him about Eric. Sometimes I hate hearing these stories because it rips the gauze off the wound. Sometimes it’s cathartic to find everyone else is just trying to staunch the bleeding, too. Today it’s the latter.
“I’m the last of my family,” he says. “The last of the Bakers. Maybe one day…”
He drifts off when the pump does. We’re full, and we’re finished here. I pat his arm. “One day for sure. There are people out there, waiting for this to end. One day they’ll all come out of their hiding places and there’ll be a baby boom.”
“I hope so,” Chad says. “It was nice to meet you.”
It turns out that it was nice. Everyone has a story, and if I hang around long enough to listen, I remember that most of us are just scared and hurt and tired of this. “You, too. I’m sending any single ladies I find your way with orders to look up Chad Baker of Walmart.” I give him a big wink.
Chad slaps the truck with a laugh. “I’d appreciate that.”
When they’re finally gone from sight, I allow myself to exhale. We meet the RV where we left it and in the same condition, fortunately, and after I step out of the truck, Bits rushes into my arms and sends us both to the ground.
“You were supposed to catch me,” she says, her nose pressed on mine and eyebrows wiggling.
“When did you get so strong?” I shift to get a rock out from under my shoulder blade but don’t get up; I need hugs as much as she. Every time I think of Eric, of Adrian and Ana and everyone else, my second thought is I have Bits. It makes it all bearable. “Next time I’m sending you for fuel. You’ll come back in five minutes, full up.”
She rolls off me and giggles. “While you were gone Barnaby barked at two Lexers in the field and they came over. Zeke killed them.”
I don’t say anything, but I know Peter can hear what I’m thinking when he gives Barn’s head two heavy pats. He tried to get Barnaby to bark this morning so he could teach him to quiet, but Barnaby just stared blankly and wagged his tail. Jamie and Shawn recount the story of our fuel while Peter and I put the extra gas cans in an RV storage compartment.
“Thanks for saving me with Chad,” I say.
Peter turns away with tight lips. “Sure.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Nothing.”
Of co
urse everything is wrong. It could be he’s so solid that I forget to treat him like someone in mourning. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asks.
“For Ana.” I want to say her name. None of us has, and it feels like she’s being erased. I don’t want to erase all the people who are gone because it hurts too much to remember them. They don’t disappear—they haunt you. “I wish she were here.”
He brushes his cheek with the back of his hand and makes a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “She probably would’ve shot Bob.”
“Definitely. It would’ve ended in a bloody firefight, but we would’ve won.”
We smile for a moment before Peter’s gaze wanders to Barnaby, who’s enthusiastically attempting to cover up his poop by scratching at the asphalt with his back legs. Barn turns, finds the poop uncovered and tries again. Peter shakes his head. “Christ, that dog is so fucking dumb.”
I break into laughter. “Well, he’s yours now. I’m not taking him back.”
“How do you get a dog to be quiet? You’ve had dogs.” He looks desperate for an answer. I don’t know if it’s some sort of boyhood dog ownership dream or if he doesn’t want anything else to be left behind, but either way, I want him to get his wish. A dog shouldn’t be too much to ask.
“Not a dog like Barn. We’ll figure it out, though, okay? Nice negotiating today. You were cool as a cucumber.”
Peter shrugs. “You just have to know how to talk to people.”
“Exactly. I don’t, not in that way.”
“You’d learn.”
There’s no way I could learn: I can do goofy, angry or nervous to the point of stammering, but definitely not charismatic. I think of our earlier conversation and tap the gas can I hold. “So maybe it wasn’t all pointless. Look what it got us today. Doesn’t it feel nice to use it for good instead of evil?”
Peter rolls his eyes but his mouth twitches. “Yes, Cassandra, it does.”
CHAPTER 18
Until the End of the World (Book 3): All the Stars in the Sky Page 8
