by Jones, Isla
Vicki made a squeaky sound. Was it a sigh of relief?
She looked at me, but her face was unclear to my watery eyes.
“We can’t be sure.” It was Adam. I recognised his voice through the eternal hum in my ears.
“Were you not watching?” Vicki shrieked. “They didn’t even flinch! She’s not with them, Adam.”
He squared his shoulders and narrowed his eyes at her.
I opened my mouth to speak, but all that came out was a whisper of a cry.
Adam scoffed. “What, she just turns up when we’re trapped in the city, infiltrates our group, and then the next day by total coincidence, not even twenty-four hours later, another group snares us and opens fire? She led us right to them, and they knew we were coming. They blocked the fucking highway and waited for us!”
“Just shoot them!” A survivor pushed to the front of the crowd. A burly man with a ratty beard and black eyes. Ivan was his name. “Get it over with!”
The teenager spoke, tied up across from me. “There are more of us. If you so much as lay a finger on any of us, they’ll end you all—”
This time, I managed to scream.
Blood and brains sprayed in the air. A huge chunk of it smacked my face and slopped against my hair. A little had even gotten in my mouth.
I’d seen people die before. I’d seen horrible things happen to innocent people while I hid. That is why I stayed away from people; they were cruel before the apocalypse, but they mascaraed behind the illusion of ‘humanity’. That charade was gone now, and I was caught in the middle of man-kind’s true nature. I was covered in it; the brains and blood of a teenage boy.
My wet eyes raised to see the teenager face-down on the road. The back of his skull caved into a single hole, where the bullet had entered. I shuddered to imagine what his face would look like. It would’ve taken the blast of the bullet leaving. I am almost certain that I was wearing bits of his face on my own.
I couldn’t help it—My body heaved and bile poured from between my lips. The brown acidic liquid splashed onto the road, merging with the lumpy residue of the teenager’s life. No one cared.
“Was that necessary?” asked Leo.
“He talked too much,” said Mac as he tucked his gun back into its holster. Vicki swayed beside him, her skin a light shade of green.
“Don’t waste ammo,” said Leo. “A knife works just as well.”
As the words slipped from his tongue, he and Mac slipped knives from their belts. I grimaced and looked away. It was cowardly, I know; but the screams of the other two prisoners were enough to haunt my dreams forever. I didn’t need the image to go with it.
When the screams stopped, I heard Vicki snivel. I pried one eye open and hesitantly looked around. Most of our group had gone back to their stations. I couldn’t blame them. Not many people—sane people—wanted to stay and watch murder.
Adam leaned back against the hood of the van to my right. I couldn’t see him through Leo, but his voice gave away his location. “What do we do with her?”
Instantly, I tensed. Or, at least I think I did. I was likely trembling and sobbing uncontrollably. The memory is a haze.
“I don’t think she set us up,” said Mac. It surprised me, and I chanced a glance at him. He was wiping his blood-soaked knife on a rag, and his gaze was on Leo who seemed to be pondering my fate. Would they kill me in cold-blood with the stained knives in their hands? Would they leave me out there on the road, alone? I hoped for the latter. Alone was sounding more desirable with every passing horrific second.
“I didn’t …” My voice was weak, barely a whisper, but Leo heard me. His gaze asked me to explain, to plead my case. “If … If I was with them,” I said, “why would I join your group? What reason would I have to infiltrate you lot? I had no say in where you were headed, or the roads you took. Check my bag! I don’t have any way of talking to them—no radios, no walkies, nothing! I really … I really don’t know those guys. I’ve never seen them before.”
“They could have tracked us,” said Adam. “They wanted our supplies, vehicles, and weapons.”
I shrilled, “That doesn’t explain why I would join this group from another! If I was with them and we wanted your stuff, why wouldn’t we have just hot-wired the vehicles when you were in the department store?”
“Weapons,” said Adam. “Our weapons were with us. Only the cars were on the road.”
I shook my head; the exasperation was evident in my hollow laugh. “You can’t even answer my question. Why would I infiltrate your group if I was with them? What would I get out of that? How would that help me or them? Go on—tell me!”
I was desperate. The icy touch of my fate licked up my bones and clutched my thudding heart. I didn’t want to die, not that day, not on the side of the road like roadkill—or like some worthless rotter.
Adam didn’t respond, but his mistrusting eyes never strayed from me.
Vicki stepped forward. “I believe her.”
My gaze jerked up to her. Her cheeks were blotchy and her eyes were blood-shot. “Can we make a decision now? You—” She gestured to Adam. “—can’t prove she’s was a part of that ambush. And you—” She looked down at me, but with noticeable pity. “—can’t prove you weren’t. A decision has to be made. We can’t just stay out here, wasting time, out in the open.”
“Vic’s right,” agreed Mac. His hand snaked around her waist. I suspected it was a comforting gesture. “If there are more of that group, we’re sitting ducks out here. We should keep moving.”
Leo seemed to agree; he tucked his gun into its holster and waved Adam away. Huffily, Adam stormed back into the van. As the door slammed shut, Leo grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet. But I wasn’t having it—I wrenched my arm from his grasp and faced him. The pain from shoulder twisted my set mouth, but I didn’t cry out. I waited for his decision.
All scraps of confidence vanished the moment he took one steady step toward me. I stumbled back, cradling Cleo in my good arm.
“If I find out,” he said quietly, “that you had anything to do with that ambush, I’ll not only kill you, I’ll let you turn.” —I whitened to the shade of pearls smeared in dirt and blood— “I’ll lock you in a room with that mutt of yours, and let you rip her apart.”
If my eyes had widened any further, they would have popped right out of my head. He seemed satisfied with my terrified expression, and smirked. “Got it?”
I wanted to punch him in the throat. I wanted to knee him in the balls, take his gun and blow his damn head off.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I nodded. I chose survival for Cleo and me, even if it was for just one more day and with a group of monsters.
“Got it,” I said.
5.
Three days on the road, and I had begun to feel a little safer. The others weren’t welcoming to me yet, but Vicki had warmed. Leo and Mac paid me little attention, and I was just fine with that. It only became awkward when Vicki and Mac would disappear into the caravan bedroom after Mac’s driving shift was over. Then it was just Leo and me.
Sometimes we talked, but not often. When we did speak, it was mostly Leo asking me to make coffee or tea. He obviously couldn’t do it—he was driving. I didn’t mind, because it meant I could have one too. Before the end of the world, I’d hated instant coffee. I much preferred the espressos at my local Starbucks. But these days, I gulped it down like it was the elixir of life from the Holy Grail.
“Winter.”
Wrenched from daydream, I tore my gaze from the window and looked up. It was Vicki—she carried a first-aid box, and slid onto the seat beside me.
“I have to redress your wounds,” she said.
I grimaced, and my fingers curled into fists. Vicki slipped the strap of my top down my shoulder first. Then, she removed the bandages from my shoulder and peeled away the gauze. My toes flexed in my boots and I swallowed back a shout.
“It’s healing nicely,” she said. “Does it hurt?”
<
br /> “Only all the time.” The bitterness in my voice was clear. “Especially when I move it.”
Vicki smiled and dabbed some stingy stuff onto the wound. “Then don’t move it. Doctor’s orders.”
“You look a little young to be a doctor,” I gritted out through clenched teeth—she’d started to clean the wound, which was an agonising experience. Though, not as painful as getting shot.
“I might look young, but I feel a century old,” she mumbled. “Besides, I’m not a doctor. I was a Vet nurse.”
Furrowing my brows, I asked, “Like, in the army? Or with animals?”
“Animals,” she replied, packing everything back into the first-aid kit. “I always liked them better than people.” Vicki clasped the first-aid kit shut and drummed her fingers on the metal. “Animals,” she said, “would never have done that to you.”
“What, shoot me?”
“Hold you at gunpoint,” she said. “Shoot blanks at you, threaten you to scare other prisoners.” She sighed and met my curious gaze. The music at the front of the caravan had quietened, indicating that Mac and Leo were eavesdropping. “Sometimes,” she added, “animals possess the humanity people lack. The world as it is now doesn’t bring out the worst in us—it reveals our inner nature. Paranoia, mob mentalities, violence, murder … I wish we were better than that, but we aren’t.”
“It was poor timing for me,” I admitted, pulling up the strap of my top. “I wasn’t a part of that ambush, but I know how it looks. It depends on how you perceive it. What you might call paranoia, others will call caution. It’s the same for murder and violence; they can be considered survival. If we didn’t fight back, the other group would’ve killed us all, or left us out here to die. We wouldn’t have the supplies, the cars, the weapons, and maybe not even our lives, if we didn’t fight back.”
It felt strange to include myself in the group, because I certainly hadn’t fought back or resisted. Under attack, I was focused only on Cleo. But I left that tiny detail out.
Vicki placed her hand on the first-aid tin. “Sometimes survival isn’t always for the best. Most of all, when it comes to us humans. We aren’t meant to survive.”
I just stared at her. There was something about her words or the despair in her voice that rattled me.
The caravan slowed. Vicki and I glanced over at that driver’s cabin. The few vehicles in front slowed too, and flickered their brake lights. It was time for driver shift swaps, vehicle refuelling, and the bathroom break. As there was a functioning toilet in the caravan, I didn’t need to relieve myself, but Cleo did.
After finding Cleo in the open cabinet beneath the sink, I lifted her up and balanced her on my good arm. We all left the caravan; Leo and Mac to stretch their legs and supervise. Vicki threw back her head and sucked in a long breath. She did that often, I noticed. Whenever we stopped, she was outside in the heat, inhaling the fresh hair until it filled up her whole body with oxygen.
I couldn’t imagine why she did that. The heat outside was awful, like the dry air in a sauna. And that day was no different—the skies were clear of clouds, so the sun had free reign on the barren earth. I squinted to see down the road, but the desert landscape stretched farther than I could see. All I knew was that we were in Texas.
Gently, I placed Cleo down on the sharp grassy soil. She trotted off and I trailed her every step. Cleo liked privacy while relieving herself, but I couldn’t allow that. To take my eyes off her for a second could mean the difference between life and death for her.
As I followed her, I drew nearer to a cluster of survivors. Raucous laughter erupted from them frequently. They seemed to be some sort of clique, I’d learned over the past few days.
I was glad that Cleo eventually squatted and pooped near them; I could eavesdrop without being too obvious.
“—no way,” a woman said. Her name was Halsey. “He had to have been a dentist. He’s always carrying around dental floss and passing it around.”
“Maybe he just likes clean teeth,” a younger boy said. I guessed his age to be the same as the boy who was killed a couple of days ago. “I stand by my guess,” he said. “Ivan was a bar owner before all this, and he lived in some small-hick town with a population of sixty.”
A woman I recognised shouted over the crowd. “Hey, Ivan!” She was the woman who had shot me a hostile glance when I’d first joined the group—America’s Sweetheart. Though, ‘Apocalypse’s Sweetheart’ was probably more fitting, I thought.
The bearded man, Ivan, grumbled and swaggered over to them. “What?”
America’s Sweetheart smiled. “Kevin thinks you were a bartender before this. A bartender from a small town in the middle of nowhere.”
“Bar owner,” corrected Kevin.
“That right?” asked Ivan. He hooked his thumbs into his belt and pushed out his chest. Summer called that ‘peacocking’.
“That’s my guess.” Kevin looked confident. Smug, even.
“Wrong,” said Ivan. “Your three guesses are up, kid.”
I glanced at Cleo, who was attempting to bury her waste. Vicki appeared beside me, stretching her arms above her head.
“It’s a game they play,” she explained, looking pointedly at Ivan and the others. “Everyone in the group has three guesses for each person, and we all guess until somebody gets it right.”
“We guess their jobs before the end of the world?” I clarified.
“At first, yeah,” she nodded. “When the jobs are guessed correctly, we move onto what kind of house they lived in, their favourite food, their family—”
“Their family?” I interrupted. “Isn’t that a bit … invasive?”
“Maybe. But it helps pass the time, and not all of us want to forget the people we loved. Only some do.”
I understood—I didn’t want to forget Summer. I was determined to be reunited with her, not pretend she’d ever existed. But everybody coped with the apocalypse and loss in their own ways.
“Ivan’s story hasn’t been guessed correctly,” continued Vicki. “Same goes for Leo and Adam.”
“They’re easy,” I snorted. “Soldiers.”
“I guessed that on my first try. They said I was wrong.”
“If they weren’t soldiers before this, then why are they wearing …” My hand flittered behind me, gesturing to Leo and Mac by the caravan and their black combat gear. “And they act like soldiers.”
She placed her hands on her curves. “I don’t know.”
“What about Mac? What was he?”
A smile tugged at her lips. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, Vic!” shouted Mac. Vicki and I looked over our shoulders at him. He nudged his head at the caravan he leaned against. Vicki turned and followed him into the RV.
My lips puckered and I whistled for Cleo. She ran after me as I trudged over to Leo. But as I went, the narrowed venomous eyes of America’s Sweetheart didn’t escape my notice. Cleo barked at my heels and, obediently, I lifted her up with my good arm.
Leo’s moss-green eyes followed me as I approached. “Finished?”
“Yeah,” I said, kicking the dirt at my feet. He pushed himself from the caravan and yanked open the door for me. I jogged up the steps and dropped Cleo onto a bench seat when Leo closed the door behind us.
“You can sit in the passenger seat,” he said, already preparing coffee. My eyes gleamed with delight when he pulled out two mugs from the overhead cupboard.
I wandered to the front of the caravan and asked, “Because you want company, or don’t wanna let me out of your sight?”
I heard the hot liquid pour evenly into the mugs. “Does it matter?”
Seating myself in the passenger seat, I glanced over my shoulder at Cleo. She was licking the window, quite content. Leo approached and handed me a mug of steamy coffee. Through the windshield, Adam counted the returning members of the group. I spotted America’s Sweetheart, and, again, she glared at me. Her incessant glowers were quickly becoming irritating. I wouldn’t go out of
my way to save her from an infectee, I decided.
“Who’s she?” I asked Leo. My eyes didn’t stray from her until she disappeared down the side of the caravan.
Leo regarded me with veiled eyes as he sipped his coffee. “Rose,” he answered after a pause. The van in front purred to life, and every other vehicle followed in a ripple down the line.
The vehicles began to move, driving down the gravelly dirt road. “What’s her deal?” Leo raised his brow and side-glanced at me. “I mean, whenever I see her, she’s always looking at me like I shoved her into a herd of rotters.”
“I don’t concern myself with the gossip that circulates,” he said. His eyes slewed to my fallen face. He added, “If I had to guess, I would assume she’s wary of you.”
I kicked off my boots and pressed the soles of my sock-covered feet on the dashboard. “I think everyone’s wary of me.”
“It’ll pass.”
“Will it?”
“If you let it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Isolating yourself from the others,” he said, “only feeds their mistrust of you. If you talked to them from time to time, they might be more hospitable.”
“It’s hard to do when I’m locked in here, away from the others.”
He smirked and glanced at me. “Would you rather be in a car?”
My eyes widened at the prospect and I sputtered out, “No, no, that’s not what I meant.” His smirk spread into a grin as he repressed a chuckle. “I guess I can talk to them when we pull over, but … it’s a bit daunting. Everyone already knows each other; they have friendships and … Well, I’m the new girl.”
“Not to mention most believe you participated in the ambush,” he added, not unkindly.
“Do you?”
My gaze raked over his stoic profile as he seemed to consider my question. After a moment, and a sip of coffee, he shook his head. “I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I trust you.”
I smiled, pleased with the progress we’d made in three days. “The others,” I said, “play a game. They try and guess peoples’ careers before this.”
