They gathered in the living room of the guesthouse but didn’t speak for a while. Everyone needed to process what had happened. There was a lot to think about.
Annie had more to think about than anyone else.
Were they going to shoot Parker now? Banish him? Let him rejoin the group?
Against her better judgment, she sympathized with him. She knew how it felt to transform and how it felt to come back. Just as important, Parker must sympathize with her more now than he did. They’d been through the same hell. Parker was the only one in the world bonded to her like this.
His hell was worse, actually. He bit and killed one of his friends.
It wasn’t entirely for nothing. She did pass her immunity onto him. He got lucky. They got lucky. Apparently Parker did have the same blood type. The odds were forty percent. But she couldn’t pass her immunity onto the others. Just trying might kill them.
But the disease was preventable! If only they had a hospital, a lab, and some doctors.
And what about Kyle? Did Annie have a future with him after everything that had happened the past couple of days?
She finally spoke up.
“We need help.”
Nobody argued.
“We’re down to three now if we don’t include Parker,” she said.
“We’re not including Parker,” Kyle said. “So yeah, we’re down to just three.”
“Frank is dead,” Annie said.
“Because of Parker,” Kyle said.
“Because of us,” Hughes said.
“None of this would have happened if he was a civilized person,” Kyle said.
“Nor would this have happened if we’d done things differently,” Annie said. “It’s amazing that he’s alive at all. My blood could have killed him. The virus sure as hell should have.”
“Oh don’t worry,” Kyle said. “The virus didn’t finish him off, but we will.”
“Mmm,” Hughes said. Annie had no idea what that meant.
“You kill him,” Annie said, “and our experiment will be a complete waste.”
“It’s a complete waste anyway, Annie,” Kyle said. “Someone should explain to you the notion of sunk costs. You passed your immunity to him. Great. But you can’t pass it to us whether or not we keep him alive.”
“We need doctors,” Annie said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“What we really need is the Center for Disease Control.”
“Where is the CDC anyway?” Hughes said.
“It’s in Atlanta,” Annie said.
“You sure?” Hughes said.
“I grew up near Atlanta,” Annie said. “Sort of near Atlanta. I’m from South Carolina. I know that part of the country as well as Kyle knows this part.”
“What do you want to do?” Kyle said. “Send them an email?”
Annie looked hard at Kyle.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” he said.
Hughes’ face was unreadable.
“The West Coast was hit first,” Annie said. “Washington before Oregon, and Oregon before California. We’re at ground zero here. This is the worst place in the world for a vaccine to pop up.”
She watched Kyle’s face carefully. He was crestfallen. And angry. He knew that if she convinced Hughes, there would be no little new-world utopia for him in Eastsound.
“You may be right,” Hughes said, “but I’m going to say something anyway because it needs to be said.”
“Go ahead,” Annie said.
“We don’t know you’re the only one,” Hughes said. “For all we know, ten percent of the population has built-in immunity. I might have it myself and not even know it. Parker might have already had it. We don’t know if we’ve accomplished a damn thing here except getting Frank killed.”
“That’s possible,” Annie said. “But for all we know, I’m a freak of nature and medical science.” She let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “Although my sister might be immune too, and possibly one or both of our parents.”
“Where are your parents?” Hughes said.
“South Carolina. Assuming they’re still alive. They might not be. My sister probably isn’t.”
She accepted now that she would never see Jenny again. She hadn’t finished grieving yet for her sister, but she would finish in time. When she could.
“The East Coast was hit later,” Annie said. “They might have suffered less damage. They might still have functioning medical facilities if they fortified them well enough in advance.”
Kyle closed his eyes. He did not want to hear this, but he could not close his ears.
“CDC is in Atlanta,” Hughes said. “In the South. In the East.”
“Do I need to say it?” Annie said.
Hughes looked at her intently and shook his head.
“You’re saying we should go to Atlanta?” Kyle said.
“I didn’t say it,” Annie said. “You did. And yes, I think we should go there.”
“That’s insane.”
“They can develop a vaccine,” Annie said. “They can test your blood type and inoculate you on the spot if you’re a match.”
“You have no idea if the CDC still even exists,” Kyle said. “It probably doesn’t!”
“It might,” Hughes said. “It’s 4,000 miles away from ground zero. But the roads are impassable. We can’t take a boat. And none of us knows how to fly.”
Kyle put his face in his hands. He looked exhausted, a defenseless emotional wreck at the mercy of forces beyond him. His dream to start over on Orcas Island was sound. It was a beautiful idea, but it was a fantasy.
“So we walk,” Annie said.
* * *
Hughes knew they wouldn’t have to walk the whole way. They could wait for winter to set in and for most of those things to die off. Ride snowmobiles over the Cascade Mountains, drive a truck on the open roads of the American deserts, and take a boat down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. That would get them most of the way, but Atlanta was more than 100 miles inland in Georgia. Winters in the American South were too mild to kill all those things. The trip would be dangerous, more dangerous than anything any of them had ever attempted before, but it could be done.
One unsolved piece, however, remained: Parker.
Kyle paced back and forth in and out of the kitchen. The kid seriously needed a Xanax.
“We can’t kill him,” Annie said.
“He tried to kill me, Annie,” Kyle said. “He tried to kill me. For no reason at all.”
“You damn near got him killed on that other island,” Hughes said. “You damn near got all of us killed.”
“That wasn’t me,” Kyle said. “It was those things. And nobody died on that island.”
“You’re still alive,” Hughes said.
“I didn’t try to kill anybody. He did. Doesn’t intent mean anything to you people?”
“We punished him pretty severely, bro,” Hughes said. “Let me ask you something. Is what he did to you worse than what we did to him?”
Kyle paused before speaking again. “We had to do it that way.” He sounded a little unsure of himself.
“We most certainly didn’t,” Hughes said. “Not that way.”
“Frank got killed because we did it that way,” Annie said.
“You’re still mad that we set Parker up to be bit?” Kyle said. “Frank still would have died if we’d done it your way and injected him. Frank died because Parker bit him, not because Parker was bit. This is on all of us, including you. Especially you, Annie, because the whole thing was your idea in the first place.”
Annie bit her lip. Kyle was right about that much. Hughes agreed with Annie that they couldn’t kill Parker. Not now. Not after what they’d done to him. Not when they were down another man.
“I need him,” Annie said.
“What do you mean, you need him?” Kyle said.
“He’s the only person who understands what I’ve been through. Hopef
ully he’s the only one who ever will. God forbid you ever have to go through it.”
“It’s not all about you,” Kyle said. “It’s certainly not about your damn feelings. This is about safety for all of us.”
“There’s safety in numbers,” Hughes said. “Three of us aren’t enough. Hell, four aren’t enough.”
It was time for Hughes to step up and take charge, not just when everyone’s lives were in danger, but to take charge in general. He wasn’t up to it before—and truthfully he still wasn’t—but he no longer had any choice. He’d been content to let Kyle and Parker argue about where to go and what to do, but those two were incompetent. Parker was unstable and dangerous and Kyle was naive and a dreamer. Kyle took it hard when things didn’t work out, much harder than Hughes had expected, and he was no less capable of the wrong kind of violence than Parker.
So Hughes would take charge of them both, whether they liked it or not. They wouldn’t fight him. Nobody fought Hughes for long.
“Parker won’t be a problem,” he said. “We broke him.”
“He’ll kill us in our sleep if we let him go,” Kyle said.
“And then what? Try to survive by himself? No one can survive by himself anymore. Anyone who tries to be self-sufficient in this world will be killed in their sleep. Look, it’s like this. He just went through the most wrenching experience of his life. We all went through the most wrenching experiences of our lives when the plague struck, but it happened again to Annie and Parker.”
Annie shuddered. Hughes thought she might start crying, but she didn’t. The girl was tough.
“With Annie it was bad luck,” Hughes said. “But we did it to Parker. He’s going to have the mother of all attitude adjustments. He and I are going to have a little talk. And when I’m through with him, he will be in compliance.”
“You’re going to talk to him?” Kyle said. “That’s your big plan? You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think he’ll stop being a lunatic because you talked to him.”
“Kyle,” Hughes said.
“What?”
“I’m going to ask you a question. You don’t need to answer me now. You don’t ever have to answer me. But I want you think long and hard and carefully before you say anything else. I’m going to ask Parker the same question.”
He paused for effect, then continued.
“I’m going up there to talk to Parker right now. I’m taking the biggest kitchen knife I can find with me. I’ll use it to cut his ropes and I’ll use it to get his attention.” Hughes smiled. No one says no to a big scary black man with a butcher knife. “And I’m going to ask him the same question I’m about to ask you.”
Kyle paused before speaking again. “What’s the question?” He sounded slightly more cooperative now. At least he was curious.
Hughes had the man’s full attention. He paused another moment and made Kyle wait for it.
“What kind of man do you want to be?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kyle retrieved the rest of the supplies from the boat. He went alone. Everyone said they understood, but they didn’t, and he needed some time to himself.
Hughes had said only Annie and Parker faced the most wrenching experiences of their lives since the plague struck, but that wasn’t true. It had also happened to Kyle. And it had happened to Kyle repeatedly.
No one had ever tried to kill him before. Those things didn’t count. They were no longer people. An actual human being had tried to murder him in cold blood. The others had no idea how that felt, nor did any of them have the decency even to ask. And now Kyle was supposed to be friends with this person? To travel across the damn country with this person?
That was but one of the numerous wrenchings of Kyle Alan Trager.
The second was Annie. He loved her. He could admit that to himself now. It was his blessing and curse, but it was mostly a curse. She’d never love him back. He saw it all over her face. In her posture. Her distance. Her coldness.
And she had turned into one of those things. She’d killed people. Bitten people. Turned people. Even eaten people. For all he knew she had bitten and turned and killed and eaten some of his friends.
She had turned into one of those things, but he loved her anyway. She would always be by his side and forever untouchable.
That was the second of the numerous wrenchings of Kyle Alan Trager.
The worst, though, was the island.
He’d worked everything out. A community of survivors on Orcas, safe and secure in the most luxurious setting for thousands of miles in any direction. They could start over, not only with their own lives but with the story of the human species. They’d live simply, but they would not have to live primitively. All of humanity’s knowledge was stored in books. They could rebuild slowly and sustainably, free of all the detritus and junk of the twenty-first century. Best of all, free of the plague.
But it wasn’t to be.
His dream had shattered, and he suffered alone. The others did not even care. They weren’t interested in the first place. All they had done was come along for the ride. They never saw the potential, the beauty, nor did any one of them thank him for taking them there when it looked like everything would work out.
And now they wanted to give up on all of it and walk into the jaws of a pitiless continent.
* * *
Annie moved the rest of her belongings into her room in the guesthouse and shut the door. Wind whistled outside her window as evergreen boughs rose and fell on the other side of the glass. She could see her own breath and thought about putting on a hat and some gloves.
Instead she crawled shivering into bed fully clothed and pulled the cold covers up to her chin.
She shuddered when she thought about Frank.
And Parker. Oh God, poor Parker. He really got run through the wringer. She knew what it was like. She was the only one who knew what it was like.
For all she knew, they were the only two people on earth who knew what it felt like to have everything that makes us human stripped away and replaced with nothing but ashes.
At least now she was freed from her terrible secret.
Parker was not Jesus. He hadn’t died for her sins. He suffered for his own. He suffered something awful, but he suffered for her, in a sense, and relieved her of a terrible burden.
It might turn out that Parker suffered for everyone, even Kyle. If a vaccine could be one day made from her blood, Kyle could get an injection and become immune too. He’d survive if he gets bitten. So would Hughes.
But for now, what on earth was she supposed to do about Kyle? How was she supposed to feel about him? Had he turned into somebody else? Or was he never the man she thought he was in the first place? She had no idea. The man was a stranger. Kyle himself might not know who he was anymore. Earlier she had felt almost certain that she had a future with him, but the road ahead was unmapped and unlit. For now she did not want to touch him, did not want to look at him, did not even enjoy thinking about him.
She closed her eyes, shivered under the covers, and thought about the house she grew up in and how warm her bedroom was in South Carolina, how summer nights were often so hot, she had to sleep on the bed instead of in it.
December hadn’t arrived yet. Charleston was still almost balmy this time of year. Charleston was always balmy compared with the greater Seattle area no matter what time of year. How much colder would the snowy mountains of Idaho be? The high deserts of Wyoming? The windy frozen plains of Nebraska?
She’d shatter in that kind of cold. Of that she was certain. But that was the point. Only healthy humans could survive in those places without technology during the winter. The landscape would be littered with the frozen remains of the infected and those they had desiccated. Until they reached the American South, anyway. Winter was not going to kill all the infected ones there. But if she could make it to Atlanta, she’d make it to Charleston. She’d have to risk everything, and she probably wouldn’t make it, but she found herself smiling a
nd crying because she had finally found a way home.
The others would likely never see home again. Hughes could never visit his family’s graves even if he could manage to find them amid Seattle’s rubble and ashes. Parker would never see his old street, wherever that was. Kyle would never see Portland again or build his little dream town on that island.
Maybe he could find one in the Atlantic. Maybe.
Parker was going to change. He had just passed through an unspeakable transformation, but he wasn’t done yet. Not even close. He had no idea what was coming, that the virus would rewire his mind.
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
She shuddered.
Would he forgive her? Blame her? Blame himself? Blame Kyle? Blame Hughes? Blame all of them? Even Frank? Would he kill them all and then himself in a moment of blackness?
Or would Parker see in time that he was Annie’s blood brother now, that he, like her, just might help save what’s left of humanity, that without him, Atlanta would not be possible. It wouldn’t even be thinkable.
She scoffed. Saving humanity. It sounded ludicrous even when she didn’t say it out loud. Who was she to save humanity? Who was Parker? Who were any of them? They were just people. Ordinary people who were lucky to still be alive. Annie was immune by sheer chance. Parker was only immune because he tried to kill Kyle. Annie was not worthy. Parker was even less worthy.
But they would go to Atlanta or they would die trying.
* * *
Parker could hardly move after Hughes cut his ropes. And he could hardly believe it when Hughes told him he wasn’t going to be shot, stabbed, or hurled over the cliff. Parker deserved any and even all those fates, but by the grace of God, fate, and Annie Starling, he was given another life.
He should have died in that room. He had survived the worst pathogen ever to strike his species. It obliterated everything but the body. As far as Parker knew, he and Annie were the only ones who had ever come back.
He owed her his life. They all did. Not just because of her blood, but because of her decency. She had saved him not only from the disease, but from the cliff.
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