A gun fired.
“No!” I screamed to my friends on the roost.
As the shot rang out, hollow screams erupted from the woods. As if people were screaming by breathing into their lungs and not exhaling. We were surrounded. My sister flew to the ground as the bullet hit her chest. I couldn’t see anyone else around me. Just my sister. Lying motionless on the ground. Smoke rising gently from her chest where the bullet hit. My hands shook.
“You have to get back up here!” Oliver shouted.
But this was my sister. She was not some casualty that deserved her fate. She was the one piece of innocence I couldn’t save. Thoughts of running into the shelter took over me, but echoes of memories froze me from action. First, all I remembered was running from my stepfather shooting at me from the roost and screaming to myself, I must save them! But the soldiers were on us, the ones I had led. My stepfather had turned to fire at them, and they’d fired back at him. If I had paused to find my sister, my stepfather might have had time to lock himself in the shelter.
The memory ended, and I whispered, “Sorry.”
I took a step forward. Another step and another. Long grass covered my sister’s body. I heard the worst of the screams. They began with a moan, echoing in the clearing against the wall of trees that surrounded my home.
“Ethan! You have to come back inside!” Oliver yelled at me again, his voice high-pitched.
When I was nearly by my sister’s side, she started screaming. Slowly, she sat up and opened her mouth. As she rose, her voice got louder, until it pierced my eardrums. When she was fully standing, she stopped screaming. Her jaw locked in a snarl, her rotted teeth grinding as black saliva dripped from her lips. Her fall had twisted her broken foot. I couldn’t imagine her pain. I couldn’t imagine anything left of her in that body.
As she got closer, the stench of her rotted flesh made me gag. I remembered not to let her bite me. I drew my machete from its sheath, tucked my hand beside my left ear. She stumbled toward me, teeth gritted, eyes like two gray marbles. No emotion in her. As if she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. Maybe she wanted me to kill her.
I swung the blade left to right in a downward arc, slicing her head clean off her shoulders. At that moment, I hated my stepfather for making me so good at this.
I fell to my knees as a hand rested on my shoulder. It was Oliver’s, and he was shaking me.
“They’re here! You have to RUN!”
I sat there, staring at my lifeless sister. I expected her features to soften, the color to flush back into her cheeks. To see any sign of a person return. But even after I decapitated her, her face stayed like stone. Frozen in a twisted expression of anger. Not a person. Not a person.
When I looked away, I saw at least two dozen deaders walking in a mob, all heading for me. Somewhere in the back of my mind was Oliver, still screaming for me to get back into the house. But the fury rang so loudly in my ears that all I could hear were my footfalls pounding the ground toward the deaders.
Shots rang out, and a few deaders collapsed to the ground, their brains exploding out the back of their heads. When I reached them, the gunfire stopped. Neither Big Guy nor Oliver was a good enough shot not to hit me.
I sliced a deader in the knees, and as it fell I hacked deep into its scalp. The others fought each other desperately to be the first to get to me. I downed two before my adrenaline burned out. I realized what I was in for. Too many. Too close. My colony could not help. Once again, I was that helpless boy in the woods my stepsiblings were hunting. I was alone.
Bolts chunked into their heads, and the deaders started to fall. Oliver was a dozen paces behind me. He cleared off enough so that I could run back toward the house. As I did I heard Tom in the roost, finishing the rest off with the rifle. I walked back to my sister, where she was still lying dead, and I collapsed to my knees. Emotions pushed their way up into my chest. I fought them down. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
“It wasn’t her,” Oliver told me, as he rested his hands on my shoulders.
I didn’t move. The pain growing in my chest kept me locked kneeling on the ground. Oliver slid his hands around my shoulders and, kneeling, he hugged me from behind. His head rested in the crook of my shoulder. His tears were on my neck. He squeezed me tighter and tighter, as if he were trying to squeeze out the pain from my chest as he would water from a sponge.
And the pain did flow out, as a wetness down my cheeks that dripped onto the brown grass where my sister would be set to rest. I vowed this would be the last time I would cry.
MY STEPFATHER HAD KEPT shovels, hoes, and gardening rakes at the back of the house, all leaning against the wall. After several minutes, I grabbed a shovel, walked a few paces from the swing, and started digging. I shoved the tip of my shovel into the hard, cracked dirt. Dust rose into the air, some flying away on the wind and some covering my shoes. Oliver and Tom muttered behind, discussing if they should help me.
I would dig the hole six feet deep and four feet long. My sister would finally rest in peace, probably with my mother. That she’d rest beside her swing comforted me somewhat. Me being the one to put her there was fitting, since it was where she and I had played together and stolen moments of joy. Conner trotted over to me, sat with his head tilted, and watched. Oliver brought a shovel and started digging.
“No!” I grabbed his shovel and shoved him. “I didn’t ask for your help!”
I didn’t wait for him to react, or speak, or say anything. I expected him to wander off, maybe complain about me to his buddies. At that point, with my shovel sinking into dirt, with the reeking scent of my sister’s decayed corpse beside me, I couldn’t have cared less.
But he just stood there. Watching me. Leaning on his shovel. I dug up a few more clumps, and Oliver started again. I blocked his shovel with mine, and then hooked the edge of my scoop in his and pulled it from his fingers. Then I kicked it away.
Oliver looked over his shoulder at the shed, and squinted at me. He walked to his shovel, picked it up, took a few paces back toward the house. He sighed so loudly that I was sure he meant to tell me how frustrated he was by me. I kept digging.
But then Oliver came back, and when his shovel hit the sod, I stopped.
“What do I have to do to make you leave?” I took a few steps toward the house, where Kady watched from the roost while Big Guy and Skinny dragged bodies into a pile. “WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE YOU ALL LEAVE?”
Big Guy and Skinny turned their attention to Oliver. When he just kept on digging, they kept on with what they were doing. I held my shovel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. I wanted to stomp the ground, to throw the shovel at Oliver, and then scream at the sky. But Oliver just kept digging. And Big Guy and Skinny kept piling the deaders. And Kady just kept watching the road. So I returned to the grave, and started digging as well. Softening the dirt with my tears.
Chapter Eleven
I checked my compass to make sure Oliver and I were headed in the right direction as we made our way through the woods. The trees were our best cover, not from the deaders but from the two surviving camps that we knew of—my stepfather’s and the army brats’. The fellow hanging at the gas station was probably a warning for the brats, telling them that Clinton was now the One-Eyed King’s territory. That they didn’t listen told me they had firepower. Whatever firepower they had probably made them believe they had little to fear, but they didn’t know my stepfather the way I knew him. They had much to fear.
Connor walked close to my side but sniffed the air and ground as we moved. His tail was up and wagging, so I knew he wasn’t sniffing any deaders. The walk was steady and quiet, except for the sloshing of water as Oliver’s bottle slapped against his leg. He had it hooked into his belt for easy access, instead of in his pack like mine. While he seemed calm when we were with the others, he kept glancing around the woods at every noise. For me, walking through the woods felt no different than my training sessions. Something scurried in
the bushes nearby and Connor dashed after it with a bark. Oliver readied his crossbow, spinning toward the commotion and sending his water bottle smashing into his leg.
“If you accidentally shoot Connor, you and I will have a problem.”
“Sorry. A little nervous being out here after yesterday.”
“If you’re nervous because of me,” I paused and caught the words in my throat, “I’m sorry.”
“No, as much as you probably should, you don’t scare me.” Oliver smiled and gave Connor a pat on the head as he trotted back, having failed to catch his dinner. “When I saw you save this one, I knew you were one of the good guys.”
On hearing that term, good guys, the memory of my stepbrothers’ blood on my hands made me aware that no matter my penance, no matter the good I might do, nothing was ever going to make me one of the good guys. We said no more to each other as we continued to the end of the woods in back of the Jeffersons’ very modern, white-wood-siding, two-story home. Large glass windows, big patio. Impractical for an apocalypse.
Before we left the safety of the woods, I checked my notes to remind myself what we were looking for: fence post driver, wire for a fence, gears, and something to use as a windmill. Canned goods and maybe some toiletries were unlikely bonuses. The Jeffersons’ farm had a crop duster and was the best place to scavenge gasoline and tools.
I put out my arm to stop Oliver. As he bumped into it, I felt a vest of some sort. He was smart enough not to speak. We both just listened. I should have been hearing chickens, ducks, cows. Instead, I listened to the whisper of wind against the poplars behind us. I glanced at Connor, who was completely calm—so I knew no deaders were nearby.
“Someone has been here,” Oliver said.
“Someone might still be here,” I told him. No deaders didn’t mean no one was here.
As we walked toward the house, I was more and more certain there would be nothing left to salvage. If the livestock were gone, chances were so was the gasoline. As we neared the house, my primary concern was that Mr. Jefferson could still be alive. If so, he might be desperate to defend what was left of his home. More so now than when the scavengers before us had come.
Oliver walked up the steps first. I didn’t stop him. This could have been a trap, and better he was caught than me. The doorjamb was splintered, probably from a crowbar. Confirmed our suspicions that someone was here. No bullet holes—so no gunfight.
With the butt of his crossbow, Oliver pushed the door open, and it creaked on worn hinges. If anyone—or anything—were inside, they would know we were there. Oliver’s nose wrinkled and he gagged a little. Connor whined, but he wasn’t freaking out. As Oliver stepped inside, the stench of decay reached me. It reminded me of my shelter, and I felt a sense of safety inside the darkness. My eyes took a second to adjust. The Jeffersons, one of the wealthier families, had a state-of-the-art home. All the gadgets and luxuries of the Modern World. About as useful now as a lead boat.
As we moved into the living room, I sighed with relief. At the same sight, Oliver gasped. We had just found the whole Jefferson clan, each family member dead on the floor.
“There are times when I wonder if it’s a blessing I survived,” Oliver muttered.
Mrs. Jefferson and the two kids had bullet holes in the tops of their heads. Dried blood had soaked into the carpet—I couldn’t tell where one pool stopped and the next began. If this had been a murder-suicide, Mr. Jefferson would have shot himself beneath the chin to guarantee a clean shot through his brain.
While he did appear to have a gunshot beneath his chin, he also had one in the top of his head. Just like the others. Someone had forced them to their knees and shot them through the top of the skull. I stepped over the blood and picked up Mr. Jefferson’s arms, pulling down his sleeves to see his wrists. Rope cuts on wrists. No suicide.
“Shit, don’t you have any respect?” Oliver gasped. He pushed me away from the bodies. Connor growled and jumped between us.
“They’re dead. The killers are long gone, and we’ll have nothing left to scavenge here.”
Oliver’s eyes were wide and glued to me as I started for the door.
“Killers? He obviously killed his family and then turned the gun on himself.”
I paused at the door before going back out into the sun, astounded that Oliver couldn’t see what I did.
“The blood splatter under Mr. Jefferson is wrong, and he has two bullet wounds. Whoever did this was sloppy, and didn’t realize the second shot from beneath his head didn’t exit the first. There are also cuts on his wrist from when they tied him up. Someone murdered this family, probably for their supplies, but didn’t want to alert others who might happen on them.”
“Why would they care? There aren’t exactly cops to worry about.”
“No. But they may want to do the same to us if they find us. This way, when they come, we still wouldn’t be expecting them.”
My hope was that Oliver would start to understand why I needed him and the others to stay on watch and to train. I took a sip of water from my nearly empty bottle. This gave me an idea.
“Their hot water tank might still be full, and the water in it will be clean. We should fill our bottles.”
“How can you be so cold? This is horrible!”
“We need water and supplies. How is that cold?”
“People died here! Take a second to be shocked, or sad, or something!”
“Tears won’t bring them back. Fear will get us killed.”
Oliver tried to speak, but tears were forming in his eyes and the words stuck in his throat. Getting emotional about this was a waste of time. The Jeffersons were nothing to me. Did Oliver not understand that we might have had to do the same if they’d been alive when we arrived? Or if the Jeffersons had happened on us, wouldn’t they have been as ruthless?
I wondered what we would have done. If the Jeffersons had fought us, how far would we have taken it? Would we have executed them? You would have. You were once mine, I heard my stepfather say. But I wasn’t my stepfather. I might have offered a peaceful trade alliance.
From the living room, we could see a large glass patio door off the kitchen. It was closed and probably locked. Doubtful anyone else was in here, unless they were upstairs. I wondered if the Jeffersons had put up a fight for their resources, or if they had just refused to join another colony.
“You check the kitchen. I’ll go upstairs and check for medicine.”
I didn’t wait for Oliver to follow; I just started toward the stairs. If there was a clean mattress upstairs, we needed it to replace the bloodied one in my parents’ room. I wasn’t sure how we’d get it back to our camp, unless we were lucky enough to find a truck with a tank of gas.
“Wait,” Oliver put his hand on my shoulder, “I’ll check upstairs. You check the kitchen.”
What difference does it make? I thought to myself.
He wiped tears from his face, and I wondered if he hoped there’d be tissues upstairs. I didn’t say anything and walked toward the kitchen. Connor followed close on my heels. The cupboards were bare, and the electricity had been off for so long that whatever was in the containers in the fridge had gone bad. Connor walked straight to that scent, but whined and sneezed at it before walking elsewhere to sniff.
OUR FOOTPRINTS HAD streaked the linoleum flooring. Those were the only markings. Whoever else had been there had made sure to clean up their mess. This was targeted. The other possibility was that the previous intruders were still here. Had there been any mud when Oliver and I arrived? Couldn’t recall. We hadn’t been looking for it. Were men still in the house, and had they scrambled upstairs to avoid being seen? I didn’t hear Oliver, and I wondered if I’d sent him to his death. Better him than you, my stepfather would have said.
I took the stairs slowly, with my machete held close to me. Connor was in front of me, sniffing every step. If there were any men in there, they wouldn’t be diseased—they’d be fighting back with weapons. Connor might not rea
ct the same way as he did with deaders, but hopefully he would react.
The top stair turned onto a landing, from where three more steps led to the top floor. I was in the center of a hallway—two closed doors on the left, and one closed door on the right. Sound, like a toilet flushing, was coming from the door down the right hall. I walked toward it.
Just as I was about to push the door, Oliver swung it open. He screamed and fell back into the shower. The curtain broke off the rod. He was caught in it.
“Shit! What is your problem? Were you listening out there?”
“I thought you might be in trouble, so I came up to help.”
Oliver stared at me for a few seconds, perhaps to decide if I was telling the truth. He glanced back and forth between me and Connor. “I looked inside the other two rooms, but closed the doors again. The toilet works if you pour water into it.” He gestured at two pails filled with what looked like dishwater as he took to the stairway. “They saved their brown water.”
I realized he was upset that I had startled him. Actually he was probably embarrassed. But would he rather I had just let him die when I thought he might be in trouble?
“I’m sorry,” I called after him.
He was already nearly out of the house. I didn’t expect him to hear. He did. At the doorway, he stopped and turned to face me as I stood halfway down the stairs.
“I need you to communicate better. Tell me when you are going to do something, and maybe offer a teaser as to why. Maybe, just maybe, you could show a little pity, too. These people had families—they were your neighbors. You’re acting like you don’t care.”
I shrugged. I considered putting my hand on his shoulder, but it didn’t seem as if that would work this time. All I could think to say was, “These people never did anything to help me, or my dead mother, or my dead sister.”
“Oh. I never saw it that way,” Oliver said.
As I stepped past him, he wrapped his arms around my neck, and I swiveled, ready to kick his knees out. But he’d done this slowly, gently, and I wasn’t sure it was an act of violence. He didn’t react to my struggle. He pushed his head into my neck and placed one of his hands, again gently, on my back. He squeezed.
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