by Kyla Stone
They trudged along the grass shoulder, following the group back through the abandoned town. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. Her whole life, she’d lived in fear of her deadly form of epilepsy, always careful to hide the secret, illegal medication her father developed for her.
Every seizure was potentially devastating, resulting in brain damage, memory loss, reduced functions like balance and coordination, and even death. Very few people with her prognosis saw the age of twenty.
By now, she should be severely brain-damaged. Or dead.
All this time, she’d worried about her medication running out. On the half dosage, she was twice as likely to have a seizure. And in less than two weeks, she’d be out completely.
But she was still alive. Against all odds, she had survived. She survived epilepsy and her migraines. She survived her father’s rages. And then she’d survived the hijacking of the Grand Voyager, Gabriel’s betrayal, and Kane’s assault.
She had survived it all, only to be taken down by this—the disease-infested droplets from a simple cough. She would laugh if the tears wouldn’t come soon after. She couldn’t cry. Not yet. She had Willow’s brother to think about now.
After an hour of walking, they crested a small hill and glimpsed a cluster of houses. A sound came from behind them, like something scuffing against the pavement. Amelia twisted around, scanning the empty street.
“Miss Amelia?” Benjie asked.
She raised her finger to her lips, her instincts on high alert. But there was nothing. There were no people. The sun shone on the metal roof of the gas station, glittering glass strewn across the parking lot. A faded yellow sedan slumped on the side of the road like a dead thing. No breeze stirred the grass or scuttled the leaves on the ground.
Still, the back of her neck prickled. The hairs on her arms stood on end. They were being watched by something; she was sure of it.
She turned around slowly and gestured for Benjie to keep walking. They were falling further behind the group. She tried to walk softly, stepping over scattered leaves and crumpled trash, straining her ears for anything unusual.
It came again. That scuffling, scratching sound.
She whipped around.
Something darted behind the sedan, a shape slinking low to the ground. Some kind of animal. A wide snout poked out from behind the car’s bumper, then a black, furred face. A pair of brown eyes stared unblinking back at her.
“It’s a Rottweiler,” she said. “Someone’s pet.”
“There was a dog in the gas station,” Benjie said in a trembling voice. “It was mean. Lo Lo said they aren’t pets anymore.”
The way the Rottweiler stared at her, silent and unmoving, unnerved her. Her fingers found her charm bracelet through her shirt. “Maybe you’re right.”
She picked up her pace to catch up with the others. Benjie hurried beside her. When she turned back around to check again, the dog wasn’t there. Still, she felt its presence. For a long time, the hairs on the back of her neck remained raised.
She didn’t want to let her brain formulate the thought her gut already knew. The dog was stalking them.
13
Micah
Micah sensed movement out of the corner of his eye. But when he looked, nothing was there. He shook his head and scanned the neighborhood again.
Still nothing. Everything was quiet and still. Eerily quiet.
No electric hum of cars driving to and from work. No dogs barking. No children shrieking and playing in the yards. And no surveillance drones buzzing about.
They were in a small subdivision of older homes. The abandoned houses were ransacked, their windows broken, their front doors smashed to pieces. Graffiti sprayed the walls of some.
But other houses were left alone, the ones that entombed the dead. Not even the Headhunters wanted to risk infection that badly, it seemed. But they didn’t need to. There were plenty of other places to scavenge.
But Micah’s group was that desperate. The two bug-out backpacks Finn and Willow carried would only feed their large group for a couple of meals, if that. They needed supplies to make the trek to Macon’s FEMA center.
If they didn’t find vehicles, Jericho estimated it would take a week on foot, since they weren’t conditioned and would have to travel at the pace of the slowest in the group, an eight-year-old boy.
“Keep your gloves on at all times and don’t touch your face for anything,” Nadira instructed. Her mother had been a midwife back in Syria, which was the closest thing to a doctor they were going to get. “We need N95 masks to protect our noses and mouths. And goggles, glasses, protective eyewear, whatever you can find.”
“And guns and ammo,” Jericho said.
“Try garages and sheds, first,” Micah said. “We should stay out of the houses as much as possible.”
“I’ll keep watch on the prisoner and guard this end of the street.” Jericho pointed. “Silas, you take the other end. Whistle if there’s trouble.”
Silas nodded and took off down the tree-lined road at a jog. Benjie and Amelia sank down beneath a maple tree in someone’s yard. Amelia leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her fingers twitching reflexively. She was playing the violin in her head, Micah realized.
He forced himself to tear his gaze from her as the rest of the group broke into threes and fours. Micah joined Willow and Finn. Nadira joined up with Elise.
“Why don’t you come with me, Celeste?” Horne demanded more than asked, his hand on the butt of the pistol Jericho had reluctantly lent him. “You never know what might be out there.”
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” She tugged on one of her coppery coils, looking a bit lost.
Nadira tapped her arm with a friendly smile. “Would you like to come with us?”
“I suppose,” Celeste said airily, though she looked relieved.
“I’m willing to stay put and keep an eye on the kids.” Horne gestured at Amelia and Benjie with an oily smile. “Wouldn’t want anything untoward to happen with no one to guard them.”
Micah met Amelia’s gaze. She rolled her eyes. He grinned back. Horne was as transparent as a glass jar.
“Fine.” Jericho frowned as he gave last-minute instructions. “Touch only what you have to. Any infected have likely been dead for a while, just like at the hotel. But stay on your toes.”
Micah didn’t want to imagine the dead. He stared at the rows of silent, empty houses, trying not to shiver. A tricycle lay on its side in a winding driveway. On a white peeling porch, overgrown yellow and purple flowers tumbled out of several ceramic planters.
The houses were old and dated, built sometime near the turn of the century. But still, you needed money to live anywhere outside the cramped, overcrowded cities. This place looked . . . safe. That was the word he needed. Or at least, it had been.
“How is Benjie?” he asked Willow as they walked.
Her lips tightened. “No coughing other than the usual. And Amelia?”
“The same.” It was still the first day of exposure. They wouldn’t know whether Amelia and Benjie were infected for a while yet. He knew he shouldn’t hope, but he couldn’t help it. It was in his nature. “We’ll make it to the FEMA treatment center in time. Don’t worry.”
Her eyes told him she never stopped worrying. Benjie was her little brother. Gabriel felt that way about Micah, once upon a time. He bit the insides of his cheeks and forced himself to think about something else. Thoughts of Gabriel were too painful. “Let’s get this over with.”
Micah, Willow, and Finn spent the next several hours searching a half-dozen garages. They filled trash bags with tarps, a couple of tents, a solar stove, a few bent pots and pans, a bunch of canned and packaged prefab food, and several pairs of work gloves. They didn’t find any masks.
They searched a small garden shed behind a brick house, the ceiling so low Micah had to stoop. Finn bent nearly sideways. Only Willow could stand straight.
Micah pushed behind a metal shelving
unit heavy with drills, hammers, and other tools, grunting and coughing in the swirl of dust. “We should take a few of these hammers.”
“For what?” Finn stared at him.
“For protection,” Willow said. “We don’t all have guns.”
“Hammers wouldn’t have protected us against the Headhunters,” Finn said quietly.
“True, but we don’t know who we’ll meet and what they’ll want.” Micah hated saying the words, hated the thought of using a weapon against another human, whether a gun or something else. But they also needed to protect themselves. He hated that he was being forced to become something he didn’t want to be. “Hopefully, a show of force will scare most people off.”
He handed a hammer to Willow, who tucked the handle into her belt. When he handed one to Finn, he shook his head. “No thanks, man.”
Willow frowned. “Are you sure?”
“I really don’t need it.”
Micah shrugged and shoved it into his own belt instead. He adjusted the rifle slung over his shoulder. He was about to shove the shelf back into place when he noticed an old, cob-webbed cardboard box tucked into a dark corner next to a couple of rusted shovels.
“Can you give me a hand, Finn?” Together, they lifted the shelf and moved it out of the way. Micah opened the box gingerly. A thick, brown-furred spider scurried over the lid. He bit back a squeal and swatted it away. He despised spiders. Loathed them.
The box was full of painter’s supplies—brushes, a canvas tarp, blue tape, and buried at the bottom, several packages of masks. More spiders scuttled across the supplies, crawling over everything. “Ugh!” Micah backed away, fighting down his revulsion.
Finn laughed good-naturedly. “No worries. We’re all scared of something.” He leaned in and brushed off the spiders. “I will remember this little nugget of information for later, however.”
There were six masks in the box. They each put one on, stashed the other three in Willow’s trash bag, and kept moving.
The late afternoon sun had lengthened their shadows by the time they found the first house with solar tiles. In some cities, thirty to forty percent of buildings were solar-powered. In desert states like Arizona, he’d heard it was more like eighty percent.
Out here in the boonies, things were different. People were too poor for much but surviving.
The house was nestled among pine trees at the end of a long driveway. It was a two-story colonial with white siding and crisp red shutters. Overgrown grass bristled in the yard, but it was weeded not that long ago. Someone had bothered to paint the entire house. None of the windows were broken. The front door hung half-open, squeaking in the slight breeze.
Micah pushed down his dread and strode up the front steps. They’d avoided going inside an actual house yet. But Amelia needed to get the blood and infectious fluids off her. If the water worked, they all needed to drink and wash up.
“Go in quiet,” Willow whispered behind her mask.
Micah nodded. He pushed the creaking door all the way open with the muzzle of his rifle. They paused for a few moments in the doorway, blinking and waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dim light.
At first glance, the living room looked normal—couches, coffee table, a huge holoscreen on the far wall. The other walls were covered with digital photos of a Chinese family with shiny white smiles, two little girls in pigtails grinning in every picture.
Willow tapped his shoulder and pointed at the coffee table. An old-fashioned picture frame was knocked over, the cracked glass spidering over the picture of the girls on swings. He nodded, his gut tight, and moved quietly into the house.
In the kitchen, bowls of oatmeal were still on the table, the food shriveled, crusted, and covered with ants. An electric candle set glowed in the center of the table. So the electricity worked, at least.
Willow picked up one of the candles. “Whoever lived here left in a hurry.”
Micah moved carefully down the hallway. A cramped bathroom, no toilet paper. The first bedroom frilly and pink, drawers opened, clothes and faded stuffed animals strewn everywhere, graffiti spray-painted on the walls. The second bedroom, the master, large enough for a bed, the mattress half-yanked off, a scarred dresser with broken drawers, and a bookcase.
Micah let out his breath, his heart leaping in his chest. Real, physical books filled the bookcase. Half of them were knocked from the shelves, the pages torn from their bindings, but the lower shelves were untouched, as if the thieves hadn’t bothered to bend down. A surge of anger swept through him at the destruction.
He squatted on his haunches, running his finger along the aged spines, and picked out a dog-eared copy of The Old Man and the Sea. His mother had read this book to him before she died. It’d been one of her favorites. His throat tightened at the bittersweet memory. Be good, she always said to him. Be brave.
“Whatcha got there?” Finn stuck his head in the doorway. He carried a rectangular box under his arm.
Micah held up the book. “‘Man is not made for defeat,’” he quoted his favorite line.
Finn flashed a crooked smile. “And here I thought it was about a fish. Look what I scored.” He carried an old board game, ‘The Original Game of Sorry’, scrawled in faded red letters across the bent cardboard cover. “I thought Benjie’d get a kick out of it.”
Willow appeared in the doorway, her hands fisted on her hips. “And I thought we were scavenging for important things, like food.”
“This is important,” Micah and Finn said at the same time.
Willow rolled her eyes. “That’s it. We’re all gonna die.” Her face was still tense, but her snarky attitude was back. Micah marked it as a good sign.
He tucked the book in his back pocket. He was about to turn from the bookshelf when something caught his eye. Something metallic glinted in The Old Man and the Sea’s empty slot. He reached in and pulled out a tin of prefab tuna. Two dozen more were wedged between the narrow hollow between the books and the back of the shelf.
He raised one in triumph, unable to keep the grin off his face. “See? Literature can feed the soul. Who feels like fish?”
14
Gabriel
Gabriel sat on the floor, leaning against the cabinets, his handcuffed hands resting on his knees. The fishy, chemical smell of faux tuna filled the room, making his stomach growl. He hadn’t eaten in two days.
No one turned the lights on to keep any inquisitive souls from noticing them, but they did use the water, filling empty water bottles and wiping themselves down with washcloths. Only Amelia took a full shower. Nadira rummaged in the closets and brought her a fresh change of clothes. Amelia and Benjie were sealed in the kids’ room for the night.
Jericho found a wheel of wire and strung it around the perimeter of the house, setting up a trip wire. He stationed Silas at the kitchen’s back door and took the front entrance himself. “Micah and Finn will switch after four-hour shifts,” he instructed.
“You need me,” Gabriel said again. “You don’t have enough people to take shifts. None of you will get enough sleep. You need to be alert.”
Silas snorted. “Right. Like we’re gonna let you take watch so you can sneak off in the middle of the night and escape. Or, you know, slaughter us all in our sleep.”
“I won’t,” Gabriel lied. He would in a heartbeat—not the killing, but the running. But not to escape. Remaining here, so close to Micah and Amelia and yet so far away was its own sort of torture. He couldn’t stand the wounded look in his brother’s eyes, the grief and betrayal in Amelia’s.
He needed a gun and a clearing in the woods where he could put an end to the guilt and loathing eating away at him.
But he wouldn’t be running as long as people surrounded him. Nadira stood at the stove, humming to herself. Jericho, Elise, and Horne murmured in the living room, while Willow, Finn, Micah and Celeste squeezed around the scarred kitchen table.
Celeste stared at the pinkish meat substance with a look of horror on her face. She poke
d listlessly at her opened tin. “This tastes like dead worms. And looks like it, too.”
“Something you have experience with, then?” Willow asked sweetly.
“Of course not. It’s a phrase.” Celeste’s mouth twisted in distaste. She pushed the tin away. “I’m not hungry enough to eat like an animal.”
“Suit yourself.” Finn reached out, grabbed her meal, and shoveled it down in several gulps.
Celeste slitted her eyes in disgust. “Your manners are atrocious.”
“Thank you.” Finn let out an enormous burp. “I maintain the firm belief that it’s rude to waste food.”
“If you call that food,” Celeste said. “You know what we really need?”
Willow slouched in her seat. “Safety? Freedom?” She slanted her eyes at Gabriel. “Justice?”
“A toothbrush.”
“Well, that was a bit of a letdown.” Finn lifted the tin and licked it clean. “Here I was, all prepared for a mind-blowing revelation.”
“How are you not revolted by the state of your hygiene?” Celeste’s delicate face scrunched into an un-delicate frown. She tugged on one limp, straggly coil. “I’m dirty and sweaty and disgusting. My scalp itches from who-knows-what. And my teeth are all furry.”
Nadira turned from the stove and ran her tongue over her teeth. “It is pretty disgusting.”
Celeste raised her hands. “See? At my mom’s penthouse, I showered twice a day. Three when I was at my dad’s.”
“We’re a long way from your penthouse, Dorothy,” Finn said.
“What was your first clue, Sherlock?” Willow shot back.
“Everybody just shut up already,” Silas muttered, glowering at them all.
Gabriel leaned his head back against the cabinet door, tuning out their meaningless prattle. He was more exhausted than he thought. Every muscle ached. A soul-deep weariness dragged at him. His eyes closed. He almost drifted off when he sensed movement. He forced his eyes open.
