“I just don’t want anything to happen to us,” she says closing her eyes. “We’ve all had enough near-death experiences for now, don’t you think?”
I nod my head. I slip my hand behind her neck and kiss her gently on the lips. Her muscles tense at first, but then, she pulls me in closer and grabs a handful of my hair. Her breathing quickens, and I wrap my arms around her body.
Her skin is warm against the cool winter air. I don’t want to let her go—ever.
If we didn’t have a nine-year-old in the backseat and cannibals chasing us, I’d be doing much more than kissing her. No sooner did the thought cross my mind did Hayley pull away. It’s like we’re on the same cycle or something—wonderful.
“We can’t do this right now,” Hayley says nodding her head towards the car.
Just my luck. “No, yeah,” I say. “We should get moving.” Just my piss-poor luck.
We climb back into the SUV, and Hayley drives off into the night. The amount of sexual tension that fills the car makes us both fidget in our seats. This whole walking-on-ice thing is finally starting to get to both of us equally, I think. Change the subject—focus on the present situation Xavier.
“I know it could be a lost cause,” I sat after a while of brooding. “But we should just try. Even if it’s just a drive by.”
Hayley sighs and nods her head.
“I’m just tired of almost being safe and then, getting it ripped away from us.”
“I know. I almost lost you the last time,” I say. “I don’t want that, but I don’t want to be on the road anymore.”
Hayley nods her head. I take hold of her hand and squeeze. Her palms are dry and calloused from—well, I guess from months on the road. I try to remember what they were like back when we were camping in New Paltz. But all I can remember was the fire burning, and Hayley almost falling off the mountain; the last normal day in our lives for the both of us.
Hayley squeezes my hand and whispers, “Go to sleep, I’ll wake you up when we’re at the fort.”
I close my eyes and nod my head. I don’t need much persuading from anyone to catch up on my sleep.
* * *
“Xavier,” Hayley calls from the living room. I walk without moving my legs; must be dreaming, I guess.
“Coming,” I say. Don’t want her to think I’m ignoring her.
When I look down at my feet, a small splatter of red blends into the light brown of my hiking boots. Another droplet splashes onto my other foot—where is it coming from? I look down at my hands and see nothing but red. Blood—I’m covered in it. I try to run in the other direction, but my legs drag me on towards her voice.
“Xavier? What’s wrong?” Hayley’s voice calls again.
“No, Hayles,” I yell. “Please, don’t look!”
Her scream echoes in my ears. I look in the mirror and see my bloody hands and clothing and know it’s from them—it’s their blood.
It’s from all the people I’ve killed.
* * *
I jolt awake, and Hayley jumps swerving the car across the road. “Jesus!” she yells looking over at me. “Are you all right?”
I swallow and look down at my hands—no blood, good.
“Yeah, just a—”
“Nightmare.” We both sit in silence. I know well enough that she’s had her share of them.
“How long was I out?”
“Oh, about twenty-four hours give or take,” Hayley responds. A sign up ahead burns in the sunset. The faded white letters spell out Fort Ticonderoga. I smile as we pass by it. It’s like being on Heaven’s doorstep. Well, I hope so anyway.
“What’s going on?” Aisley groans from the backseat. “We’re almost there, Aisley!” I yell.
Hayley giggles and grips my hand. When I look up I can see the sunshine glint off her deep brown eyes. She looks—happy. I haven’t seen her look like this in years. I reach my arm around her shoulders and squeeze. I can’t keep the smile from plastering itself across my face. Freedom is so close that my heart pounds in my chest. Nothing can touch us. I know that the fort is the answer to everything. And at this moment, I’m counting the seconds until I know we’re all safe again.
“Looks like paradise,” Hayley says.
We head over a hill’s peek, and my stomach drops. The Fort Ticonderoga exit is demolished—an eighteen-wheeler sits in the ditch where the ramp once was.
Paradise Lost
“Oh my god,” Hayley whispers.
Smoke burns from the trees surrounding the highway. A pile of cars are mushed together at the edge of the blacktop. Hayley slows the car to a stop and climbs out.
“Stay in the car, Aisley,” I mutter and climb out as well.
The smell is horrendous. I can’t tell if it’s because of the cars that are still on fire or people inside of them that could still be burning.
“This can’t be happening,” Hayley says. Tears cover the bottom of her eyelids completely masking the happiness I saw earlier.
“Let me go take a look—”
“Hell no, Xavier!”
“Hayles, I’ve got to—”
“The hell you do! Blown up trucks at a crumbled road are not a sign of hope!”
I breathe deeply. I know she’s right, but part of me has to see Fort Ticonderoga for myself. We traveled too far and have been through too much to just let the possibility of safety bleed through our fingertips.
“I’ll be right back, Hayles. I’m just going into the woods, I promise.”
She nods her head and jogs back to the car. Once I hear the door close, I walk into the woods. I climb a tree that towers over the rest of the forest. This forest will be the end of me, I swear. I actually have come to hate it. I hate having to take a bow and arrow in there every time hoping, waiting, searching for anything that could sustain us for one more day. I’m done with it.
I know I promised Hayley that we would drive by if things were bad, but I made my decision. I’m not running to a new safe house somewhere probably farther from where we are now. Fort Ticonderoga is our last hope—is my last hope. If we can’t get there, I don’t know how much longer I can take of this moving around waiting for an accident to split us apart.
I can vaguely see the outlines of the fort from the top of the tree. Other than the smoke coming from the wreck by the exit ramp, I don’t see any movement. Aside from a small plume of smoke, the sky is a clear blue over the outlines that I can see of the fort. Thank the lord.
I scale down the tree until I’m back on the ground. I’ve got to tell Hayley; it’ll be just what she needs to hear. A hard cold object presses deep into the back of my head.
“Don’t move.”
Fuck.
From The Tree Tops
“You’ve got any weapons on you,” the voice behind me asks.
“No.” I should have listened more closely when I got down from the tree or looked around before I descended. How long were they stalking me? What if they know where I came from? Hayley and Aisley. Oh god.
I hear the gun disengage, and it depresses from the back of my head. I turn and face a man about my age, maybe older, wearing an oil-stained denim jacket and a black T-shirt. His hair is long and dark as onyx. I can’t tell if the darkness of his skin is from soot or from consistent sunlight.
“You’re not one of them,” he says.
I frown and shake my head because obviously he knows something I don’t.
“Thank fucking god. It’s hell man, hell on earth,” he says. “Judgment Day is here.”
“What do you mean?”
The man pushes his hair out of his face and breathes in deeply. “Talk is that the entire state of New York is gone. All of it lost to psychopaths who eat people.”
“Excuse me?”
“Haven’t you noticed? The growling from the forest,” the man says, his eyes wide and darting around the woods.
“Are you telling me there’s fucking zombies out here?”
<
br /> “No—god no! They’re just like you and me. More animalistic sure because we are the only food source left,” he responds cutting me off.
“That’s not true! Myself and two others have been surviving for months off of hunting and gathering—”
“And the others? The ones who don’t know how to do any of that?” he says. “They’re fucking starving. What would you do if you had nothing and you watched everyone around you slowly die from starvation?”
“I’d plaster my brains across the wall!”
“The ones out there might see that as an open buffet,” he says.
His glare is hollow—I think he might actually have seen that happen. My mind flashes back to Mr. Henderson. It was like a switch flipped in his brain. All the blood, the teeth marks in the deer, the bites in Mrs. Henderson’s neck and body—it all makes sense now. Mr. Henderson was a monster—a cannibal. I swallow roughly and break his gaze.
“If you’re heading to Fort Ticonderoga, it’s a bust,” he says.
I look up at him and see no change in his expression. “There’s no smoke over it—”
“Did you miss the tanker that blew up the exit?” he mocks. “They destroyed it for a reason, Ace. They don’t want anyone coming in.”
Fuck this guy. How the hell am I supposed to trust someone who just had a gun to the back of my head five minutes ago? But there’s something in his eyes that screams at me that he’s telling the truth. No one could lie about something so gruesome as people eating each other. And after Mr. Henderson—well shit, I thought I was going crazy. I knew something was wrong with him.
Something was wrong with the entire town of Pine Bush. Everyone seemed to disappear at once. It was like an extinction just wiped everyone out back home.
“I heard a broadcast—”
“Yeah, so did I. I’m telling you man, they turned me away,” he says running his fingers through his hair. “I begged. Got down on my knees asking them to let me in—they fired a warning shot that hit the pavement right behind my head. So I just ran back into the forest.”
“Was the fort taken over?”
“No, it was military,” he responds and leans up against a tree. “I guess they tried to help for as long as they could, but got overrun. People in swarms were waiting outside on the verge of a riot. One day, they opened fired on them all. The survivors dispersed throughout the area and some just kept moving. They heard rumors that out west was fine or that Canada wasn’t affected. But rumors are just that—rumors.”
“What about the government? Why haven’t they done anything to stop what’s going on here?”
“I have a feeling the government is in on this,” he says. “All the food going missing within a night? That’s gotta be orchestrated by someone with a lot of power.”
The guy is right, and it makes me bend over to prevent the nauseousness from making its way up my throat. Our government is behind this, and Fort Ticonderoga is gone. I feel something die in me. My heartbeat isn’t as loud as before. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Hayley and Aisley. I don’t want to keep moving. I want to be safe. I want to keep Hayley in my arms while we watch Aisley play with kids her age. The realization that that will never happen stings like venom.
“Is there anywhere safe near Fort Ticonderoga?”
“There’s a hotel about four and a half miles through the woods. It’s where I came from,” the man says staring that cold glare at me again. “No one touches it really. The last guy I ran into there was at the shootout, and he told me everything before he left.”
I nod my head and look through the trees for any movement.
“You got a kid with you,” he asks.
I frown at his question. Is he some kind of pervert now? For fuck’s sake, I don’t need to deal with that shit, do I? “If I do?”
“You’ve got a shot at getting into the fort,” he says. “People said they want to help families. Not individuals. I would give it a go.”
I nod my head. He holds out his hand, and I grip it as tight as my strength allows. “You should stay at the hotel for a couple days,” he adds. “Get your strength up. Recover from whatever. The trek to Fort Ticonderoga is insane. Scavengers are everywhere. The hotel was a Super 8. It’s directly across from absolutely nothing so—don’t get lost. If all else fails, it’s better to be farther away from town, if you ask me.”
“Why is that?”
“The town around Fort Ticonderoga—has food,” he says and then walks deeper into the woods in the opposite direction.
“What type of food?”
His lip twitches into a smirk. “The kind that screams.”
Scavengers—cannibals. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to tell Hayley and Aisley. I know the color is drained from my face, and I’m not walking as tall as I was before. And for the first time, I’m afraid for us all.
Hope
I make it back to the car and whistle when I’m within earshot. Hayley pokes her head up just enough to see through the window. She climbs out of the car and closes the door.
“Jesus, you took long. I was starting to get worried,” she says folding her arms across her chest. “See anything?”
“There’s a shot we can get into Fort Ticonderoga.”
Hayley’s face lights up, and she smiles so wide I think it’s going to spread right off her face. I try to return it, but my mouth just won’t cooperate. She frowns in response. “Why aren’t you happy,” she asks.
“I met someone in the woods that said the government was responsible for all the food going missing, and that some people, not as lucky as us, were—hunting each other.”
Her frown doesn’t disappear from her face while she tries to make a connection in her head. “What do you mean,” she asks. “You mean like assassins?”
“No, Hayles. Like hunting. Like I do with animals so that we can eat.”
Her skins go completely white, and her eyes wide. She leans heavily on the car and doesn’t speak.
“You all right?”
“My father was one,” she says. “He tried to eat my mother—didn’t he?”
I feel so sick right now. I don’t want Hayley to hear an answer like the one I know in my head. Yes, yes he did, Hayley. He tore into your mother’s throat, stuffed her in your fridge, and ran off to hunt more. I walk over to her and hug her tightly. “I’m so sorry, Hayles.”
She pushes me off of her and runs behind the car. I can hear her gagging. I lean against the passenger-side door and wipe a thin layer of sweat that beads its way across my forehead. I hear a knock at the window and see Aisley’s small eyes questioning what is going on. I fake a wink at her and motion for her to lay down. She nods her head and disappears under the blankets in the backseat.
I walk around the back of the car and rub Hayley’s back until she stops vomiting. “What are we going to do,” she asks leaning on me with all of her weight.
“The man I met said there were two safe places here. There’s Fort Ticonderoga which we have a shot of getting into because we’re a family.” Hayley looks up at me and smiles regardless of her pale complexion. “And then there’s a hotel that he says no one touches. We could grab a couple things from the stores in town to survive off of. Make a home for ourselves. I can hunt nearby.”
Hayley nods her head and leans it on the back window. “What do you think we should do,” she asks.
I scratch my fingers against the surface of my head and shrug my shoulders. “Get our strength back. Then, try the fort.”
Hayley nods her head in agreement. “Then that’s what we’ll do,” she says.
“Now we just need to find a way in.” I help her to her feet and walk her to the passenger side opening the door for her. She climbs in and lays her head on the headrest. I can hear Aisley shoot off a dozen questions at once before the door closes. I walk around the front of the car and climb into the driver’s seat.
“Xavier, what’s happening! Are we going t
o the fort? Is there anyone out there? What did you see—”
“Aisley, just relax, and I’ll explain everything to you when we get there.”
She pouts and slumps back into her seat. Hayley grabs my hand and squeezes hard.
“Hey,” I say. She looks over my way, her eyes wide and nostrils flared. “Everything’s going to be ok. I won’t let anything happen to this,” I say pointing a finger at each of us. “We’ve been through too much to let it all crumble now.”
She smiles, plants a sweaty kiss on my cheek then lies her head on my shoulder.
I know she can tell I’m lying. She’s avoiding eye contact with me because she knows I’m not sure about anything anymore.
I tried to make her believe the opposite, but she knows me better than I know myself. She knows that I can’t promise her anything for sure.
The Hotel
Eventually, we find a clearing someone made from their house to the highway. We manage our way through back streets to the town outside of the fort. Both Hayley and I agree we should wait on trying to enter the fort because of our lack of nutrition. I’m sure they don’t want to take us the way we look right now.
Hayley’s face, normally a pale complexion, takes an off-white shade now, and her brown irises look black coals in their sunken sockets. Her shirts used to cling in all the right places, but now, they just fall limp, and she’s practically swimming in all the clothes I got for her only a couple of weeks ago. I’m afraid that if we were to keep running, she won’t make it. Aisley is even starting to look a little thin despite the extra helpings Hayley gives her.
“That’s supposed to be our savior?” Hayley mutters as the hotel comes into view. The building itself has several broken windows, mostly on the bottom floor. The side facing us looks like it was lit on fire sometime before we came. The parking lot has three cars, all of which have missing tires as well as smashed windows.
Burn Our Houses Down [Book One] Page 11
