“Have you never had a hug before?” he asked.
“No,” I told him. I mean, I was sure I had before my mom remarried, but I was so young, how could I remember? I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I just stood there with my hands at my side. Did this make him feel better? Was it supposed to make me feel better?
“No one ever felt pity for you, did they?”
“Do you want me to hug you?”
Oliver laughed in a way that seemed to exhaust the tension between us. He let me go and punched my shoulder. “No.”
I took out my journal to write this all down. The Jeffersons, the scavenged farm, the importance of a hug to ease tension. As I was writing, Oliver wandered into the yard toward the big red barn. Connor settled by my feet. I wasn’t sure what the hell had just happened between Oliver and me—but I had a feeling it was significant.
I ran to catch up, nearly tripping over Connor. We carefully made our way to the barn to check for more supplies, hoping that whoever had been there first hadn’t known what to look for. The barn wasn’t locked, and the doors were wide open. No animals inside, though the smell of their presence still lingered.
We looked behind the barn. There was a plane. Intact, but too large for us to take back.
“You know how to fly one of these?” Oliver asked me.
“No, you?”
“No.”
“Whoever was here before us got what they came for. Animals, food, and most likely medicine. If we check the farm’s gasoline, I bet the drums are empty,” I said.
“So, what now, General? Not a lot of anything useful here.”
“The propellers on the plane. Possibly the alternator in the engine. What we need are batteries, gears—”
“For?”
“The wind turbine that Skinny will build us.”
“Stop being petty. Don’t call them stupid names.” He gave me a look that told me I was crossing a line.
“Blake. Whatever.”
I opened my notebook to my list of supplies Skinny needed. In the barn, I spied a rusted bike with gears we could scavenge. If we took our time, we could drag a couple of the propellers back with us. I looked Oliver up and down, and couldn’t help but think he didn’t have the muscle—or the energy—to pull something that heavy. He saw me sizing him up and blushed.
The sun started to fade as my mind worked this out. We needed a safe place for camp. A part of me wanted to stay in the house, but the stench of the dead was a little much, and those days one couldn’t always count on the dead staying dead. There was the coop and the barn. The barn was too big to hold should we fall under attack, and the coop was just too small. Staying outdoors was also out of the question.
“Hey, General”—Oliver spoke in a tone that I was fairly sure was mocking—“you want to let me in on that private conversation going on in your head?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your eyes are darting everywhere, and your forehead is scrunched the way mine gets during an exam. I’m wondering what’s going on.”
I nodded and found both comfort and concern knowing he wasn’t as clueless about me as I’d hoped. It could be that he was trying to lighten the situation just so he didn’t feel uncomfortable traveling with me.
“Let’s sleep in the house. We can choose one of the rooms, and barricade the door. It’s been hit recently, so we should be safe at least for tonight.”
“Agreed,” Oliver said, as we headed back to the house.
I WOKE BEFORE MY WATCH, but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the candlelight. Connor was fast asleep on the floor at the foot of the bed, and I decided to let him sleep. Oliver was standing by the window, and I could see by his reflection that he was sobbing. My first instinct was to scold him for standing by an open window—he might as well have had a target painted on his chest—but I just couldn’t. Whether I liked it or not he’d become Robin to my Batman, and like the Dark Knight, I had to take care of him.
“The world didn’t change for you all that much, did it?” Oliver asked. He wasn’t facing me. I assumed he saw I was awake from the reflection in the window.
“Life is pretty much the same for me,” I said, confirming his suspicions.
He smiled a yellow-toothed grin as he turned to face me, and I made a mental note that we all needed to start brushing to stay healthy. Cavities could cause a bacterium that led to weakened hearts and disease.
“That may be the first time you didn’t skirt a question.”
I shrugged. He walked over to the bed where I was lying. My machetes were on one side of me. He lay on my other side. The mattress was small, and he had to edge right up to me to fit. I thought he believed we were bonding. He continued to stare, and even after I closed my eyes, I felt his gaze boring into me.
“Better that you watch our surroundings than me,” I said, without opening my eyes.
I heard a scoff in his tone as he said, “Too dark to see anything anyway.”
Even with the world ended, I was reminded of how different I was.
“Maybe you should tell me why you fear everything,” I said back, trying to imitate the tone people had when joking.
His body turned rigid, and when he started speaking again, he seemed on the verge of crying.
“I came home halfway through my first year of university after all my profs got the virus. After my parents died, it was just me and my sister. The grocery stores all closed down when the trucks stopped bringing shipments, and we were running out of food. Next, the electricity shut off and the telephones. We didn’t expect help any time soon.
“When two men came dressed as telephone repairmen, I was so overjoyed that I let them inside. They had no tools. When I asked them about it, they claimed the tools were in the truck. First, they needed to check the jacks. When they saw my sister, and what food we had left, they told me they were taking it all. I threatened to tell the telephone company, and they just laughed. That’s when I realized they weren’t with the telephone company.”
Oliver paused. He turned over on his side so his back was to me. I could hear him sobbing quietly, and then he said, “They stole our food, and . . . beat me and my sister. After that, after the men left, she died and I was all alone.”
As Oliver wept, for the first time I understood that, as hard as my life was, it wasn’t the only hard life. I remembered him hugging me, after we’d argued earlier, and how he’d thought that would make me feel better. I wondered if that might help now, so I reached an arm around him and squeezed gently. At first he was awkward, as I had been, but then he relaxed and intertwined his fingers with mine. He still wept. But eventually, in the safety of my arms, he relaxed.
“No one will ever harm you again, I promise.” After I had whispered this, he moved his head so it rested on my shoulder. Having him so close gave me comfort. I felt . . . safe.
I remembered my stepfather yelling, “There is no safe! In the darkness, you will be prey or predator.” But the lesson he’d offered wasn’t for me. It was for his sons, as I stood on the edge of the woods while the last traces of the sun disappeared. It was cold enough that I could see my breath. I was only wearing sweatpants and a light sweater. Kyle and Zeke were wearing full camo jackets, army pants, and steel-toed boots. Nothing was on my feet—as though I were an animal and not a person.
“You need to hear and smell,” my stepfather continued to instruct. I shivered, but not from the cold. He was going to push me into the darkness, and I was scared of what I’d find. Or what would find me. I was like Bruce Wayne falling into his cave of bats.
My stepfather threw a bucket of water on me. When the water hit my eyes it burned and I smelled of vinegar. I rubbed my eyes, but that just worsened the pain. I tried to force my eyes open, only to feel a slap across my cheek.
I face-planted right to the ground. Tears flowed freely, and I started to whimper. I dared not let myself cry.
“You will hear him, and you will smell him.” My stepfather sp
oke only to Kyle and Zeke, as if I were a creature that couldn’t think. “You will hunt him, find him, and bring him to me.”
I wondered if my stepfather would have been so willing to teach my stepsiblings with me around had he known how closely I was listening. How much I’d been learning.
The candles fizzed out, casting Oliver and I into darkness. Before I could move off the bed for my watch, Oliver grabbed my arm.
“No one will come,” he whimpered.
I closed my eyes to sleep. He wasn’t wrong—no one was going to find us here. Probably. He held me beside him, and I decided to just stay.
“One day,” he said in the darkness, “you’re going to have to tell me why you feel no fear.”
I didn’t know why, but when he said those words, I instantly had an image of the shed in my mind. Of my stepfather dragging me into it. Of my mother crying from the doorway of the house as she watched, helplessly as he closed the door with us inside.
Chapter Twelve
After breakfast, Oliver and I took to the road east of Loon Lake toward Evergreen Resort, a series of cabins city people rented in summer and winter for fishing and the “wilderness experience.” The resort also had a store, and with any luck it was far enough east that the army brats hadn’t discovered it.
Oliver stayed more than a dozen paces behind me, and every time I turned to look at him, he diverted his eyes. I wondered if I should say something, or if that’d just make things more awkward. I tried not to think about it since we had a few more days on the road, thanks to the water we had found in the Jeffersons’ hot water tank. Hopefully we’d find more at Evergreen Resort, even some from a pump that we could boil, and then we could continue farther.
We came across a farm a few miles from the resort. The field was green, which meant someone had been irrigating it. We heard the sounds of cows and chickens, none of them distressed. The soft cluck of chickens as we neared the farm meant survivors. It was now midday. Once we spied the coop, we spotted an elderly woman throwing seed down as a dozen chickens pecked the dirt around her feet. I grabbed Oliver and pulled him into the treed area that surrounded the farm.
“What now?” Oliver said, though his voice didn’t peak at the end like a question. “Just sit and wait?”
I opened my notebook and looked back through the pages until I found an entry that fit.
Before the Fall, they were well known for their animals dying. They were from the city and never learned how to feed or care for them properly. Rarely did they have crops that didn’t fail. They were proof that Google couldn’t solve every problem.
“If they’re peaceful, they could be a trading partner. An ally,” Oliver said as I read.
“They’re old. Someone will come along and kill them eventually.”
Oliver shot me a harsh look, and I realized he thought I meant us. “Maybe they’ll accept our help,” I added quickly. My words were followed by a machine-gun blast.
Oliver and I hit the dirt. The woman who had been attending the chickens fell to the ground, and the birds clucked wildly around the spilled seed.
On the opposite side of the fence, a man dressed in camo, carrying an assault rifle, crept into sight. I scolded myself for not realizing we could have been trailing the army brats all along. They had been at the Jeffersons’ and, as we were, they were making their way to the resort.
The army brat used hand signals to someone behind him. We waited, and three more dressed the same followed ten paces behind him. I remembered the one I’d found in the town. Somewhere nearby, there had to be a military base—possibly set up when the infection began. Maybe at the resort—
“What do we do?” Oliver whispered as we listened to gunfire inside the farmhouse. Several shots fired for maybe half a minute, and then nothing.
“We stay hidden. And hope they don’t take everything.”
We watched. Four went in, but only three came out. Two were carrying bulging hockey bags. Hope that there might still be something left for us dwindled. Maybe we’d get lucky and the bags would be filled with body parts and not anything valuable.
I crept from the trees, Oliver following close behind. I held out my palm as a signal for him to stay put. He did. Slowly, I crept to the chicken coop. All the livestock had been left behind. The woman was on the ground, a ring of blood around her head soaking into the dirt. The basket she’d been carrying in the crook of her arm was now crushed beneath her. Seed mixed with her blood.
I waved for Oliver to follow, and we hurried to the house. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but hopefully Oliver wouldn’t experience the same level of shock as the day before when we’d found the Jeffersons. As we neared the house, Oliver pulled me to a stop.
“One is still in there. What if there’s more coming?”
I nodded. There could have been so much stuff they needed someone to stay as lookout. I drew my machetes and approached the front door. It was ajar, just enough that I could peek inside.
Even if I hadn’t seen the blood, I would have smelled it.
I silently stepped inside onto a shag carpet soaked with something sticky. Bullet holes riddled the walls—one of them from a 12-gauge. And then I spotted the owner of the home, collapsed against a wall, still clutching his gun. The home had been ransacked, but quickly. I walked into the kitchen. Oliver took to the upstairs. The cupboards still had china and silverware. Useless. But I found some spices that I threw into my rucksack.
I heard a sound, like the one my sister made when she sobbed herself to sleep. That muffled voice of a little girl trying to stay silent. It was coming from a cupboard beneath the sink. Someone was inside. Oliver was still upstairs, and a part of me thought I should wait for him. But if this were the army brat, she could be armed or even radioing for help. I tapped the cupboard door with my machete.
“You may as well come out. If we wanted you dead, we would have just fired through the door.”
A pause, and then the door creaked open. A little girl no older than five or six crawled out hands first. She was dirty with matted hair. Before I saw her face, I wondered if she was going to be a deader.
“P-p-pwease don’t h-h-hurt me,” she said, as tears cleaned a path down her muddy cheeks.
I sheathed my machete just as Oliver joined me in the kitchen. He pushed past me, and I noticed his full rucksack.
“Hey, you’re okay now,” Oliver said to her. “We’re the good guys.” To me he said, “The fourth soldier crawled up the stairs before bleeding out.”
He walked slowly to her and kneeled beside her. He stroked her hair.
She slowly looked up at him.
“Oh god,” I heard him mutter.
“Whatsa matter?” the girl asked, through a whimper. Oliver’s face flashed innocence as it changed from concern to casual. He didn’t have to tell me what he had spotted. Slowly, he rolled up the girl’s sleeve, and we both looked on a nasty bite that was oozing infection.
“What bit you, honey?” Oliver asked, his effort to mask his fear not well hidden.
The girl collapsed to the floor. She couldn’t stop blubbering. She was definitely scared. Barely, we were able to make out words such as “brother,” “bit me,” and “dad shot.” It was enough. We couldn’t take her back with us—but we also couldn’t spend a whole lot more time here.
“Stay here a moment, okay, honey? I just need to talk to my friend.”
The little girl nodded, and Oliver and I headed into the next room.
“What now, General?”
I knew what we should do. She was dead anyway, so it wasn’t murder.
“It would be,” Oliver told me directly to my face. “I know how that mind of yours works, and you can spin it any way you want. We kill her, we’re murdering her.”
“We take her back with us, we may be killing everyone else. Murdering us.”
“We can’t just leave her here,” Oliver said to me, leaving us in stalemate. The world was gone to hell, and the decisions we were making were tough. T
ruthfully, we could just leave her here. We didn’t have to kill her. Those army guys were coming back, and by then she’d be so scared she’d try and trust them.
“We take her with us. We try and clean the wound, maybe quarantine her for a week.” I heard the words coming from my lips, but couldn’t believe them.
Oliver wrapped his arm around me and gave me a hug. He whispered thanks.
I didn’t go with him into the kitchen. My mind was racing as to how I could go back on what I had just said.
But when Oliver returned with the girl’s hand in his, I couldn’t say no. Silently, we marched back toward our camp. A march that felt like a green mile.
BACK AT THE COLONY, the first thing the girl did was point at my sister’s swing set. Oliver told her she could play later, and I looked to the roost where I saw Big Guy watching with the rifle strapped to his shoulder. He saluted at me, most likely not to say hello but to show he’d seen me. I saluted back.
“Careful, you’ll become friends,” Oliver said, with a hint of mockery in his words.
I wondered if he was playing the Peter Parker of our group—quick-witted and holding a secret that made him long for revenge.
The girl wandered off to the swing. I started after her to stop her. Oliver rested his hand on my shoulder and shook his head no. “I’ll look after her. You do what you need to do.”
Before joining the girl at the swing set, Oliver ran inside the house, and returned wearing gloves. I recalled the first time he had tended my wound. He was gentle and knew what kind of bite it was. He was the right person to attempt to treat the little girl. The right person to decide if we could save her—or if the infection had coursed too far into her blood.
“What’s going on?” Kady asked, as she rushed beside me. She kneeled down to scratch Connor behind the ears.
“We found this little kid hiding in a house. Stay away from her. We think she’s been bitten.”
Children of Ruin Page 10
