by Lissa Bryan
The few survivors were those who’d taken a flu shot that year. Except for Kaden. He didn’t think he’d had one. He told Justin that one evening as they mucked out the barn. Kaden’s mother had distrusted vaccinations and got the bare minimum necessary to enroll her son in public school. From the strain in the boy’s voice, Justin knew it troubled him. He didn’t want to be the one who shot down Carly’s theory, the single theory they had for why they had survived and others had not.
But did one exception mean there was some natural immunity to the Infection? Justin had thought there must be—among animals, for certain. No virus was one hundred percent lethal. It could be damn close if it was engineered for lethality, as he suspected the Infection was, but viruses mutated as they spread.
The Infection still lived in the survivors, though it hadn’t managed to attack the brain tissue. Somehow, their bodies kept it in check. Would it someday mutate again and overcome their defenses? It was a thought Justin didn’t like to consider. He could do nothing about it, helpless in the face of something more powerful than himself, something he could not fight with his guns or a knife, something he could not outwit or outwait.
When it hit the townsfolk here, it had been hard and fast. Andrea, Tom and Cynthia’s daughter, had died a little more than twenty-four hours after Justin and Carly’s little band came through the gate. A shy, sweet girl who had given them a pitcher of lemonade and a smile—and then had died a day later.
He looked down at the grave. “I think you’d be proud of what we’ve done here.” He plucked a dandelion sprig and tossed it away. “Carly wants to rebuild what you had here. It’s not really possible, because everyone that’s here now is a survivor, someone who went through hell before they came to our gates. It changes a person. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. Things get burned away by the fire. All the excess—down to the bare bones sometimes. What you keep depends on what you think is most important to you.
“Anyway, Carly’s done a damn good job of building a community. Not just people who live together in the same area, but a real community. I haven’t seen something like this since I was in the Unit. I let her take care of all that social shit, because I’m not really good at it.
“I just wish …” Justin picked a piece of grass and turned it in his fingers. “I don’t know what we’re doing wrong with the farming, but the crop yields are small. Seems like we’re getting less each time we harvest instead of more. I’d hoped by now we’d be building up a good stock of food.
“It’s been a good season. Plenty of rain, and if not, we’ve got the irrigation system set up. Mostly sunny days. The birds were bad last year. We had to have the kids act as living scarecrows, running up the rows to frighten them away. I think I told you about that. All of nature is out of whack right now because of the die-offs. Big gaps in the food chain, predators not keeping things in check …
“The Swintons left last night.” Justin plucked another blade of grass and turned it in his hands. Carly had found the note on the porch this morning when she went to get the eggs. She’d brought it to him with tears on her cheeks.
“I expected some would leave,” he had said to her as he folded his arms around her. The Swintons were recent arrivals, a family of a woman and two husbands. He remembered the awkward concern in their eyes when Erica had introduced them. They wondered if they’d be rejected, but Justin and Carly didn’t care about people’s love lives. They cared about their skills and willingness to contribute.
Justin nudged one of the rocks to more perfectly align with the others. “Their note said they just couldn’t stand the thought of living under siege.”
“I thought they were here because they believed in what we were doing,” Carly had said, and her voice had been strained from suppressed tears.
“They did, Carly. They were here because they wanted to be part of a peaceful community, a new America. But they weren’t prepared to go to war for it.”
“I don’t think anyone is, really.”
But they had to be. This wasn’t a world for pacifists. If the Swintons weren’t prepared to defend what was theirs, they wouldn’t last long in the wasteland. Any place worth staying would have to be defended at some point.
The residents of Colby were more prepared than Carly thought. Most of them had to do it before and would do it again. He met with them alone and in groups, and he could see it in their eyes. They had enjoyed the illusion of normalcy inside Colby’s walls, but they knew what was outside, and they knew this day would come.
They were helping him prepare, moving obstacles to create bottlenecks and choke points, entrenched fallback positions, sniper posts, and strategically placed cover. If the town was to be a battlefield, Justin would have it designed to be as beneficial to their side as possible.
He looked down at the silent spot of earth and stood. “I’ll figure out something.” He scratched his head and stared off at the horizon. “I always do.”
Chapter Eleven
Justin dreamed he was in Lewis’s office.
His hands trembled as he folded the map and slipped it into his pack. Lewis watched him with icy, dispassionate eyes. It was so quiet, Justin could hear the buzzing of the electric wall clock above Lewis’s desk.
“Twenty percent,” Lewis said. “I give it a twenty percent chance you’ll all make it back. Ten percent chance you’ll accomplish the mission and all get back in one piece.”
“I know,” Justin said. “But we have to try. We can’t just—” He took a deep breath. “We have to try.”
“This is foolhardy.” Lewis stood and walked to the window. “I could order you not to go.”
“Yeah, you could. But you won’t.”
Lewis turned and gave him a small smile. “No, I won’t. But I already regret losing some damn fine men to this madness. Have you told them?”
“I did.” Justin slung the pack over his shoulder. “They all still want to go.”
Lewis said something, but Justin wasn’t paying attention. He had spotted something he’d never remembered seeing until now.
The men in the Unit were specially trained in observation. One never knew when a seemingly inconsequential detail would be the key to everything. Lewis drilled them on it, asking the color of the stone in a lady’s ring after they’d passed her in the hall, the number of books on a shelf in one of the simulated houses on the training grounds. They all had a heightened retention of detail, even if they weren’t aware they were collecting the data.
What Justin remembered now in his dream was the picture on top of Lewis’s filing cabinet. A picture of a smiling man with brown eyes. Carly’s eyes.
Justin’s puzzlement turned into conscious thought, and he woke, sitting up in the darkness.
He swung his legs off the side of the bed, propping his elbows on his knees. Was it truly a memory, or something his dreaming mind had created? If it was a real memory, why would Lewis have a picture of Carl Daniels in his office? Lewis hadn’t even displayed a picture of his own wife.
Carly muttered something about eggs and turned over in her sleep. Justin tugged the covers up over her shoulders and smoothed back the tumbled caramel hair from her face. The eye shape was unmistakable. Carly even had her father’s stubborn chin.
He lay back down on his side of the bed, but sleep was elusive as he stared up at the darkness.
“Everybody clear!” Justin called. The tree seemed to consider the matter and then decided to surrender to gravity. It leaned over for a moment, and then the last small section of un-sawed wood cracked and the tree crashed down, sending up a wave of stagnant swamp water as it landed.
The men had looked at him as though he was insane when he showed them the model he and Kaden had built on the floor of the warehouse where they practiced their raids. It showed the swamp around Colby, each tree and stump recreated out of Legos. Justin showed them how he intended to make the swamp impassable by boat by felling certain trees around the perimeter.
“See
, over here, the stumps are too closely placed and the vegetation is thick. They wouldn’t try to come through there. If we knock down these trees here, here, here … they wouldn’t be able to get through.”
“They could get out and pull their boat across the logs.”
At the same moment, Pete said, “The gators are gonna love sunning themselves on those half-submerged platforms.”
“Another natural deterrent,” Justin said. “Some of them will be submerged, and they won’t see them until they hit them. Others will be built to make them decide on another route, and that route just might have hazards of its own.”
Justin watched Kaden on the opposite site of the swamp, cutting the branches high up in a cypress, hacking them with a machete until they were jagged spikes. When their group brought that tree down, those submerged jagged branches would rip apart any inflatable boats that might come that way. Similar traps had been set up already, hidden just below the surface of the murky water. In the low-oxygen environment, they would last for years.
Justin rubbed his face against the shoulder of his shirt to wipe off the sweat, then piloted his craft over to the next tree to come down. It had a small bank of earth around its base, and he gingerly tested to make certain it would hold his weight while Grady grumbled, holding tight to his rifle, his knuckles white against the stock. They all had to have someone riding shotgun, watching out for gators that might be brave enough, or hungry enough, to try to lunge at one of the loggers.
It was hot, dangerous work, and despite being slathered with bug repellant, all of them slapped and cursed at bites. Justin was filthy from a fall into the slimy swamp water.
He hid a wince as he picked up the saw. His hands were raw with blisters, but he couldn’t stop now. This task had already taken precious time away from the myriad of other tasks waiting for his attention. The saw bit into the wood and he gritted his teeth.
He wondered how Carly was doing. He was worried about her. Something seemed … off. Maybe it was the heat. She picked at her food and she still coughed, an odd, dry cough. Allergies, perhaps? She didn’t want to bother Stacy with it because her symptoms seemed mild, but if she didn’t manage to shrug it off in the next couple of days, he was going to insist.
Darkness halted their work. It was too dangerous to cut once the light began to fail, but Justin was feeling rather cheerful about their progress. He and Kaden were exhausted, and their steps were heavy as they trudged the road.
“I told Carly I’d stop by Mrs. Davis’s house to pick up Dagny,” Kaden said.
Justin smiled in approval. “Awesome.” He stopped by the edge of the road and took out his knife to cut some flowers.
“What’s that?” Kaden asked.
Justin looked at the blossoms with a critical eye. “Hell if I know. Little yellow flowers. Daisies or something.”
“No, what’s it for?”
“Carly.”
“To make something?”
“No, just to make her smile.” Justin took out his bandana and wrapped the stems before sticking them in his back pocket.
Kaden stared at him as though waiting for the punch line.
“Girls like this kind of shit,” Justin said. “Kind of says you’ve been thinking of them all day, you know.”
Kaden snickered. “Girls want to think you’re thinking about them all the time?”
“When you’ve got the right one, you will be.” Justin started off down the road again.
“What’s it like?” Kaden asked, his voice low. He kicked at the crumbled asphalt.
“What’s what like?”
“Being … you know … being in love.”
Justin smiled. “It’s like there’s a reason you’re here.”
They walked through the gate and turned onto their street, but Kaden veered away toward the Reverend’s house. “Hey, Kaden?”
“Yeah?”
“Walk home slow.”
Kaden blinked and then grinned. “Okay.”
Justin ruffled his hair, and Kaden strolled off down the street.
The house smelled like bleach, the smell strongest in the kitchen where Carly was scrubbing the floor. She hadn’t let the baby down to crawl on the tile yet, and he knew she wouldn’t until she gave it a “good cleaning,” treating it like it was the bathroom floor of a gas station or something. Carly came in from the kitchen and was delighted with the flowers. Justin swooped in for a kiss, but she demurred with a laugh when she saw how filthy Justin was.
“Take a shower first!” she said.
“Nope, I can’t wait.” He grabbed her in his arms as she shrieked and peppered kisses all over her cheeks, laughing as she writhed to get away.
“Ew, now we both need a shower!”
“That was the plan.” Justin scooped her up into his arms. He carried her downstairs into their bathroom and deposited her on the sink where he began to unbutton her shirt.
He peeled his own T-shirt over his head and turned to toss it in the hamper. Carly let out a shriek, this one genuine. “What? What is it?”
She was green. “Oh God … you have a … a …”
“What?”
“A leech!” She recoiled in horror. “On your back! A leech!”
“Oh.” He relaxed. “Christ, you had me scared for a moment.”
“Ugh!”
He reached back, patting every bit of skin he could reach. “Where is it?”
“Between your shoulder blades.” Carly looked like she was going to gag, and he almost laughed. The girl could shoot and skin an alligator, but a little leech made her pale.
“You’re gonna have to get it,” he told her, and managed to keep a straight face even at her expression of horror.
“I have … to pull it off?” she said in a small voice.
“No, pulling it off might make it break in two.”
At that, Carly did gag. Justin had to rub his fist over his lips to hide his involuntary grin. “You need to make him let go. Do you have your Zippo?”
“You want me to set it on fire?”
This was just getting better and better. He bit inside of his lip. “If you burn it, it will let go.”
Her eyebrows had a crumpled ridge between them. “Is there another option?”
“Salt. Salt will burn him and he may let go.”
“It won’t … melt like a slug, will it?”
“Nah. Nothing like that.” He’d tortured her enough. “Just get the salt shaker and he’ll plop right off.”
She hopped off the sink, so frazzled he had to remind her to button her shirt before she went up the stairs. He chuckled but used the time to check his hair, and then his sensitive areas, to make sure there were no more surprises lurking. He thought of telling her about the time one of his buddies in the Unit had discovered a leech attached to his junk, but decided against it.
Carly returned with the salt shaker in hand.
“Salt him good,” Justin said and crouched down so she could reach. She shook the shaker hard over his back, probably emptying the thing. “It … oh God!”
“Did it let go?” He looked down and sure enough, saw the leech writhing on the floor. He stomped on it, and she let out a small, “Urk.”
He couldn’t help it—he laughed.
“It’s not funny. You’re bleeding.” She dabbed at the wound with toilet paper. She drew back the soaked wad she’d grabbed, her eyes wide.
“It’s the anticoagulants. It looks worse than it is, I promise.”
“Just as long as you also promise to clean up that squashed leech,” she said. She grabbed another wad of toilet paper and pressed it to the wound. “Do not move your foot until I’ve left the room.”
He laughed again, and it felt great, even though she stuck out her tongue at him before she scurried out the door. He cleaned up the splattered leech and tossed the remains, calling out to her once it was safe. He then got the delightful shared shower he’d been looking forward to, though they stayed under the cold spray no longer than neces
sary before diving into the bed together to “warm up.” It was the stolen moments like these that Justin was working so hard to protect.
He paused for a moment to look down into her sweet, soft brown eyes. “I love you, Carly,” he said and knew that he didn’t say it like this often enough. He shifted his body over hers, enjoying the sensation of her smooth skin against his own.
“I love you too-ooh! Do that again!”
He was happy to comply.
Carly wiped the sweat from her forehead and lifted bleary eyes to check how far down the row she had come, and tried to calculate how many more potato plants she had to set before she would be done. The math was too much for her pounding head. She needed a drink, but the last time she’d taken a sip of the homemade sports drink, she’d felt like she was going to vomit. She wanted water.
There was a cooler at the end of the row, and it looked like hers, but she couldn’t remember bringing it. That had been yesterday, hadn’t it? No, yesterday had been Sunday, and they’d all gone to church, even Pearl. Or had that been last Sunday? She couldn’t remember. She tried to remember how many Sundays had passed since the fire and gave up when it only made her head hurt more.
Carly thought of this morning when she’d pumped the horses a trough of water from the old-fashioned well near the barn, and she’d wanted to drink straight from the spout—that cold, clear water, redolent of the earth through which it seeped. Boiled water seemed to have a flat, metallic taste, and she craved a nice, deep drink of that cool water, wanted it so badly, she’d stared at it for a long while, losing track of time the way she used to do right after the Crisis, when her mind would wander off and she would get lost in her memories.
She saw Justin at the edge of the field, lugging in another bag of the potatoes over to where the Reverend’s wife, and some of the older children were cutting them up to plant. He stopped and looked at Carly with an odd expression. She gave him a little wave and turned to walk toward the water cooler at the edge of the field when the ground tilted.
