by E. M. Fitch
"Did no one tell you about the cars?" Rebecca asked in an undertone. Her eyes skirt about the perimeter of the camp, watching for eavesdroppers.
"No one told us much of anything," Kaylee answered, dropping the sack of food in front of Anna.
"Any sign?" she asked quietly. Andrew shook his head, no sign of Bill, or Jack and Emma. It was the third time he and Kaylee had gone out looking, and the farthest they had ventured yet, but there was no sign of any of them. The night sky was starting to bleach purple, just a faint impression of the day to come leaking into the darkness. Almost everyone in the camp was awake now, feasting on their finds or staring desperately at their neighbors for charity.
"No one is allowed cars. Unless you're in the Circle. And those have to be kept in the Circle, in case of attack," Rebecca said, smiling in thanks as Anna passed her a can of baked beans. Kaylee and Andrew had found a pile of cans by a loading dock in one of the stores they passed. He reminded her that it was Jack who told them to always look there. Her chest had clenched as she packed them into the motorcycle storage compartments.
"So no one is allowed to leave then?" Andrew said, peeling back the lid to his can. He bent the flimsy metal into a scoop, using it to dig out bites of his food.
"Oh, no," Rebecca said. "You can leave. No one will keep you here."
"Rebecca," Kaylee said as gently as possible, "who would leave on foot?"
The sun was threatening to rise as Anna suggested Kaylee and Andrew get some sleep. They agreed, stretching out in the back of an abandoned pickup truck that was rusting nearby. There was a modest supply of blankets and even two cushions Kaylee had taken from a nearby house to use as pillows. Anna would sit close to them, watching over the two teenagers and their supplies. Kaylee handed her their one gun.
What they really needed was more weapons. Kaylee had searched, finding one machete and a small collection of axes but no gun and no ammunition. The handgun they had was only good as long as they had bullets. She lay next to Andrew, on his good side so as not to injure him if she shifted in her sleep, and closed her eyes. She felt him toss the extra blanket over her, and even though she thought he should really take it, she didn't argue.
They would try again tomorrow night, looking for Emma and Jack and Andrew's father. But if they didn't find them soon, and after the last few nights, Kaylee was afraid they may not, they would have to figure out what to do for the winter. The days were getting colder. Kaylee wasn't sure staying in the Circle would work for them all winter long.
~
The sun was still bright when Kaylee awoke. Andrew had nestled up to her side, he had done that before, and neither had shifted away from the shared warmth. It was too cold to not appreciate it. Anna was huddled over the fire, her fingers laced in front of her mouth as she blew warm air unto them. Her curly head popped up when Kaylee rose.
Andrew grunted and rolled into the warm space left by Kaylee's body. The truck bed creaked as she jumped down but he didn't stir.
"That's good," Anna said, nodding towards Andrew. "He's pushing too hard. He really needs the rest."
Kaylee nodded and sat on an old tire laid by the fire. The black surface was warm underneath her. It stunk of burnt rubber and she knew it would seep into her clothing, but she felt it wouldn't matter. There was very little opportunity to bathe in the Circle. The only water available was kept in rain barrels by the privy set up in the far corner of the lot. There was barely enough for everyone to drink, let alone bathe. She and Andrew had been swapping out clothing every time they left, leaving their stinking used clothes in piles in the middle of empty stores. Today she had on cargo pants, the pockets still filled with lighters and pocketknives. She had kept her belt through the clothing changes. It held a large sporting knife, a holster for the gun, and had pouches for bullets, should they ever find any. She was able to hide it under her bulky winter jacket.
"How does your coat fit?" Kaylee asked Anna.
"Perfect, thanks," she answered, smiling. "And Rebecca really appreciates you grabbing one for her."
"Did you get anything else out of her?" Kaylee asked, accepting the sealed bag of dry cereal Anna passed her way. She opened the bag and took a handful of Cheerios. They were stale, but so reminiscent of a time before the infection, that Kaylee couldn't help the stirrings of a smile as she swallowed.
"She's pretty guarded," Anna whispered, casting a quick look around. "I feel bad for her. None of the others have really taken her in. And she can barely feed herself."
"Are they all just scared to leave?" Kaylee asked, chewing another handful of cereal. Anna frowned.
"You know, it's weird. There's an inner circle, I'm sure of it, but it's hard to pinpoint just who those people are. So it's impossible to ask around. You might end up talking to the wrong people. And Patricia likes to say she's in charge. But she seems to take a lot of direction from Michael. Only he's not really here a lot," Anna paused and took a sip of water from her canteen.
"So what's the point of all this?" Kaylee asked, looking around. On the surface, it was a camp. But it would be a stretch to call it a community. And if these people weren't looking for a community, what was their goal. Just survival? Just this day-to-day hunt for cans and dry foods that weren't spoiled yet?
Even in the firehouse, in a situation they all knew wasn't permanent, they had vegetable plants growing, apple trees fenced and protected, stores of canned food for emergencies. The Mill had a greenhouse, crops.
Here, you ate what you could bring in that day, without access to a vehicle for transport, and only stored food if you could find a hiding spot no one else would raid. It was crazy to think that could go on, especially through the winter.
"That's the thing," Anna whispered. "There has to be a point. Only some people, including us, don't know what it is. No one whispers as much as Patricia and Michael without planning something."
Kaylee nodded, rolling the top of the Cheerios bag and handing it to Anna. She tucked it away in the bag at her feet. Kaylee stood, stretching. She felt a pop in her lower back.
"Back in a minute," she said, nodding toward the privy area. Anna grimaced.
Behind a shower curtain propped in the open windows of two trucks, there was a hole in the ground and a bottomless bucket perched over it. The world as they knew it had ended and Kaylee accepted that, but even the most primitive toilets had the potential to be better than this. She felt the people of the Circle were just asking for disease to run rampant, the way they so sloppily went about their daily preparations and planning.
She paused at the rain water barrel after she was through, taking momentary advantage of the seclusion as she used the one shared bit of resource. She brought a handful of cold water to her face and splashed it down her neck. It was frigid, but reviving. It wasn't until after she took a few steps that she became aware of voices.
She stepped back and then edged toward the truck bed behind the toilet. The smell was almost overpowering, her stomach curled, but she knew that no one else would be hiding there.
The voices stopped just at the entrance to the toilet. Kaylee heard the swoosh of the shower curtain being pulled back before Michael's voice whispered.
"What is it now?"
"They have a vehicle," Patricia answered. Kaylee stiffened in the bed of the truck. "It's against the rules."
"Do you know where it is? What kind?" Michael asked. He didn't sound alarmed, or even concerned.
"No," she hissed. "I would have had it stripped if I did."
"They never leave all together," Michael said. "That one is always left behind. I don't think we have to worry about them. They're kids, looking for a dead man."
"We have the rules for a reason, or don't you remember?"
"I remember," Michael said, his words slow and lazy. "Do you remember the purpose of them? They don't look so wildly happy over there that I think we have to worry about it."
"You used to worry about someone sneaking off. That doesn't bother you now? What if the
y find them?"
Michael laughed. "Maybe they will. If you think so, we can always load them up with some of my stuff, let them do the delivering for us."
"Is that what you tried to do with James?" she asked. In the loaded silence that followed, Kaylee could feel the tension.
"That wasn't me. I told you," Michael spoke through clenched teeth. "They weren't ready then. And I wouldn't have used your cousin."
Patricia sniffed, but there was an undertone of amusement there now. "So, they're ready then?"
Kaylee didn't hear an answer, just a muffled chuckle as footsteps drifted away.
She climbed out of the truck bed more apprehensive then ever. No, they definitely couldn't stay with the Circle throughout the winter.
~
Kaylee rapped on Andrew's shoulder and the motorcycle slowed to a stop on the side of the road. They had been riding for hours.
"I need a break," she said, swinging her leg over and landing on the grass. Andrew nodded and cut the engine.
It had seemed so straightforward, following the men to the Walmart. Kaylee didn't think she'd have so much trouble finding her way back to where she left Emma and Jack.
But the landscape had shifted. There were bodies everywhere, clogging the roads, collapsing rotted porches and decks. A nearby bungalow had been stomped to the ground, twitching bodies were impaled on broken siding and floorboards.
Kaylee sat on the curb and reached for the water bottle Andrew held out to her. They had passed a stream not far back and filled up. As she sipped, Kaylee had unwanted visions of an infected man rotting upstream, his innards black and floating like seaweed in the currents.
She swallowed quickly before her imagination wouldn't allow it.
"We can't be that far," Andrew said, his eyes out over the road. "There's so many of them here."
Kaylee nodded and knocked back another gulp of cool water. She agreed that they were getting closer. The problem was, with the amount of infected laying on the ground, that was not a good thing.
Jack and Emma had very little chance of surviving a horde of this size.
"They could have gotten a car," Andrew mused as Kaylee stood and stretched. She didn't respond. He didn't need her to. He'd been replaying scenarios like that out for days now.
They couldn't find his father. They had found the Walmart, parts of it blackened with fires that had since extinguished. They rummaged through the aisles, calling out for Bill, searched the back exits. There was no sign of him. No trace.
Andrew thought that he would make his way back towards Emma and Jack, so they had been working in that direction, stopping at every store that hadn't been busted through, every home with boarded windows.
They hadn't found anything so far.
"Which way would Jack have taken her?" Andrew asked, kicking through the rubble of a store that had its whole front wall collapsed into a pile of bricks and glass. Kaylee shook her head.
"I have no idea."
"Nothing? He hadn't said anything before? What about North, isn't that what he wanted?"
"Yes, but without us?" Kaylee said, stooping to pick through a dusty rack of magazines that had toppled on the floor. She could just see a bright wrapper underneath. "Honestly, Jack would be looking for me. If they made it, he's looking for us."
"You don't think they made it."
It wasn't a question and it didn't need an answer. Kaylee's stomach clenched. She wanted them to make it, needed them to. But the evidence that surrounded her just didn't support it. There were too many bodies. Part of her was afraid to look too closely, afraid she would see Jack, recognize his features even as sickness overtook his mind.
She knew that wouldn't be Emma's fate, it couldn't be. So she didn't worry about seeing her little sister; she worried instead about seeing the stains on the concrete, the evidence of Emma's last fight.
They shoved the couple of items they found into Kaylee's backpack and got back on the motorcycle. The engine ripped the still night air apart, the tires spitting out gravel behind them. The wind was cold on Kaylee's cheeks. It whipped her hair back away from her face, reached cold fingers down through the opening of her coat.
Neither was prepared for the explosion.
The sky to their right lit in a slow, fiery blaze. The glow was sudden and intense and a lick of fear sprung up in Kaylee's chest. Her eyes sought out the motionless forms on the ground surrounding them even as Andrew veered off the road and almost into a tree. They jerked to a halt, both faces up and to the North, towards the sky lighting red and orange in the darkness. Kaylee scrambled off the back of the bike and ran to the middle of the road, away from the trees that swayed dark and leafless yet still blocking her view.
The noise had reached them just as the engine to the bike cut, a steady roar of tumbling brick and disintegrating concrete. It was both terrifying and comforting. She knew this noise.
"It's them," she whispered.
The city that was falling apart was too far away. They could hear the crack of explosions and the fall of the buildings, but not the rumbling of death, not the snapping of jaws as the beings trapped in the dying city were brought to life in the light of the flames. They were too far to hear the cut of the motorcycles Jack and Emma and possibly Bill were on, too far to hear the cries of triumph and the groans of hunger.
But it was them. She knew it. Hope welled in her stomach and surged up, almost suffocating her with the pressure.
They were alive.
Chapter 11
Emma was screaming into the night, whooping and hollering like she hadn't done since she was twelve, barely containing curses as she and her father rooted for the home team at a local hockey game. She remembered there had been a fight, a smear of blood and a tooth that was knocked loose skittering across the ice. It had been cold in the arena, even though it wasn't outside, the air conditioning pumping. Emma and Nick had cheered and clapped and booed more for the fight than for the actual game.
Of course Kaylee and her mother had sat with identical grimaces of disapproval, looking down their noses until Nick had given in with a sheepish grin and tugged Emma back into her seat.
Tonight the wind was rushing, the top of the convertible was still down, and the heat of the explosion, the bombs she had set off, was pushing her further towards the spot Jack designated. She felt alive, really truly alive, like she hadn't for years. Her skin tingled with the rush of it, her heart beat firm and fast in her chest. Tonight, she felt anything was possible, maybe even that Kaylee was still alive.
She recalled for a moment, with perfect clarity, the disapproving scowl her sister always directed at her. She laughed, loudly and out into the crumbling night. She laughed loud enough for it to sound over the rush of the wind and the force of the toppling bricks behind her, loud enough to be heard over the groans and the scraping of fingernails on the side of the car as she whizzed past. Kaylee's face morphed into Andrew's, the scowl remaining and nearly identical, and Emma's laugh dulled to a fond smile.
To her left, just as Jack had planned it, another explosion sounded. A wave of heat washed over her and Emma felt sweat prickling over her skin as a response. She didn't slow. The creatures all around her did, stumbling in the direction of the noise and heat and light. They roused from sleep, staggering towards any promise of meat. A few bounced off the hood of her car as she drove passed. She swerved around them as best as possible, but only to avoid getting a flat tire and getting stuck in a city that was about to be closed off forever.
She could see the target building ahead, see that it mostly lay in shadows and that nothing was stirring by the back entrance.
Just as Jack had planned.
Over the crash and the noise and the roar of the fire that was leaping up behind her, she heard the soft, mechanical whine of an engine.
It should really have been her on the bike, if would have made the most sense. If one of them bit her leg, scratched her with filthy nails, it wouldn't have done anything to her. Not like it wou
ld to Jack.
But she didn't know how to drive a motorcycle. She would need to learn how. Maybe, when she found Andrew again-
Her heart stopped in her chest, her veins felt clogged and her breath came harshly as she realized. She really did think he could still be alive. Not just think it, want it. Desperately.
She had one moment before Jack's motorcycle and her convertible would swerve together by the last bomb and she used it to murmur a quick prayer.
Please, let them be alive.
And then she skidded to a halt by a pile of gasoline soaked fertilizer bags, a bundle of dynamite, and some propane tanks she had found for good measure.
"Ready?" Jack screamed over the roar of the dying city. She nodded, unable to keep the smile from her lips. He lit the fuse to the sticks of the dynamite, all twisted together, and jumped the door into the passenger seat of the convertible. She floored the gas before his body even hit the seat. He bounced a bit before he settled, twisting back to make sure the fuse had caught. She didn't bother, keeping her eyes on the road before her, the swirl of the infected bodies as they slowly woke and headed into the city. The ones who didn't make it would be crushed by the collapsing building, just as soon as the fuse Jack lit sets off the explosion.
She's happy for it.
Emma pulled the car to a stop just over the bridge that first took them into the city. They may blow that up too, Jack wasn't sure yet. He thought he would be able to drop the last building and block the bridge and the bank of small river it crosses. They were about to find out.
She slowed to a stop just underneath a billboard. They had slept on the platform throughout yesterday, both too tired from setting up the bombs to make it back to the house they camped in before sunrise. They used their time wisely though, covering the faded advertisement with a new one of their own.
