by Lissa Bryan
“Get off me!” She shoved him to the side and scrambled over to Sam, who had gotten to his feet and was testing out his legs. Carly grabbed his collar and hauled him toward the door. Her only thought was to get them out of there and away from the crazy man.
“Jesus Christ!” Justin shouted as he ran toward her. He caught her as she staggered out the door. “Where are you hurt? Show me, Carly. Where are you hurt?”
She realized she was still holding the gun, and the front of her body was soaked in blood. Justin yanked up her shirt. “It’s not me, it’s not me. Check Sam.”
“What the fuck?”
“I shot the man,” Carly said. “I shot him.” She looked at the gun still in her hand and released it. It dropped to the gravel with a dull clatter, and Carly swayed on her feet.
A mantle of icy calm fell over Justin. “Tell me what happened.”
Carly pointed. “The crazy man, he tried to hit me—he did hit me. With a b-board. He was crazy. He—he was going to k-kill me.”
“Stay here,” Justin ordered. He dashed inside the building as he drew his own gun. Carly sank down until she was sitting on the ground. She spotted a penny mashed down into the gravel. She picked it up and rubbed off the dust with her finger. Canadian. Sam, limping with every step, circled around Carly as though trying to guard her on all sides.
Justin’s boots crunched on the gravel again when he returned. He took her by the arm, and Carly cried out in pain. Without a word, he whipped her shirt over her head and examined her arm and back.
“Check S-Sam,” Carly said. “He got p-punched.”
Justin said nothing. He was gently prodding Carly’s arm. He moved to her back, pressing all around the wound. He let out a relieved breath and handed Carly her shirt. He felt over Sam’s ribs with the same gentle prodding. Sam whined but endured it.
“There’s one hell of a vicious bite on that man’s shoulder.” He rubbed Sam’s ears gently. “Good boy, Sam.”
Carly started to pull her shirt back over her head and then recoiled from the blood. She tossed it aside with a grimace.
Justin scooped up the gun and helped Carly to her feet, keeping a grip on her forearm. Her body shook from adrenaline, and she felt a cold flutter in her stomach. “Is he dead?”
“Yeah, Carly. He’s dead.”
She nodded. “Excuse me.” She staggered over to the side of the road and lost her breakfast, from the pain as much as from the shock. She’d killed someone and it wasn’t even noon yet.
Justin’s large, warm hand was on her back. He held out a bottle of water to her. Carly took a small sip and swished out her mouth. She handed it back to him. “I’m sorry.”
“For wandering off like that? You should be. You nearly got yourself killed.”
“No, I mean for wussing out and getting sick.”
“I did the same thing.” He stared off into the distance for a moment and his voice was low and gruff. “The first time I killed someone, I puked, and then I cried. It’s not supposed to be easy, Carly.”
“Can we—Can we please move on, Justin?”
“Yeah, honey, we can. You want to rest for a minute?”
She shook her head and climbed onto her bike. As soon as she tried to lean forward to grip the handlebars, she knew she couldn’t do it. Pain ripped through her back where the board had struck her. She glanced over and saw Justin hadn’t tried to mount his own bike. He was watching her, waiting for her to say she couldn’t ride. But why?
Probably so he doesn’t have to listen to you yammer on about how you can do it, her mind helpfully supplied. She flushed and dismounted from the bike. The compassion in his eyes made it a bit worse. Was she really that predictable? She tried for dignity. “Should we set up camp here or try another one of those buildings?”
“I’m going to check out the houses. Rest here, all right?”
She nodded.
“Sam, stay,” he ordered and Sam gave a little “woof” of agreement. She leaned her bike against the wagon and sat down in its shade. Sam lay down beside her and pillowed his head on her thigh, though he remained alert, his ears locking in on any sound. He sighed, puffing air out the sides of his muzzle, and Carly stroked his head. “Thank you for coming to rescue me. I hope your ribs aren’t hurt.”
He licked her hand.
“It’s so strange,” she told him. “It’s already starting to feel like a dream I had instead of reality. I know I had to, but . . .” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “But it doesn’t make it any easier. Do you think he had family? Friends? At one time, I bet he did. Before the Infection, at least, even if he doesn’t now.”
Gravel crunched and she looked over her shoulder to see Justin approaching. She stood.
“I found us a house,” he said. “And I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you.”
She followed him up the hill without much interest. They walked inside the house, and Justin flipped a switch. The lights came on.
Carly jumped and gasped. “How is this possible?”
“There was an article on the refrigerator. They have a micro-hydro station. The electricity is generated by the creek, powering a turbine.”
“Oh my God, Justin, does this mean . . .”
He grinned at her. “Hot showers!”
Carly burst into tears.
Justin took her into his arms and stroked her hair. “Hey, honey, no reason to cry.”
But she couldn’t stop. A tumult of emotions, into which guilt and some leftover adrenaline were stirred, had broken loose, and she had to get them out. He murmured to her while she wept and waited until the storm had passed. He led her to the living room and instructed her to lie down on the sofa. Sam lay down on the floor right in front of her, his head pillowed on his paws.
Justin returned in a moment with a few bags of frozen vegetables in his hands.
“I really don’t feel like cooking now,” she said with a wry smile.
He chuckled. “They’re for your back. Lie on your stomach.”
She realized at that moment she wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her sports bra was more concealing than a bikini, and she’d worn it several times in the gym with nothing over it. But she was acutely aware of the amount of skin she was showing. Justin didn’t appear to be. He laid a towel over her back and then put the frozen vegetables on top of it. “I’ll get you something for the pain and swelling.”
“No,” Carly said. “Save it. We may need it later.”
“Just over-the-counter stuff, honey. We can find more. In fact, I bet if I look in the medicine cabinet, I’ll find a bottle of it.”
He went upstairs instead of out to the wagon and returned with a bottle of naproxen, and he dumped out a number of tablets. “Take two of these and call me in the morning.”
She didn’t get it.
“Sorry, old joke. Here.” He dropped the tablets in her hand and got her a bottle of water with which to take them. She tossed them back into her mouth and swallowed them before stretching out on the sofa with her head resting on her arms. She watched as he pried open Sam’s mouth and expertly shoved a pill into the back of his throat before Sam even realized what had happened. Sam gave Justin an offended look and huffed as he lay back down.
“I’ll be right back,” Justin said. “You all right for a few minutes?”
Carly nodded. It was a lie; she didn’t want to be alone. But she didn’t want Justin to think she was a coward, either. She heard the front door open and gazed around the room to take her mind off being alone.
The house was sternly utilitarian, with no attempt at decoration on the white walls. The carpet was plain beige, as was the cloth sofa upon which she lay. Two matching recliners shared the other wall, and all of the seating pointed at a television.
Television! They had electricity! The remote control lay on the end table between the sofa and the recliners. Carly grabbed it and turned the television on. A place this remote would have satellite, and sure enough, the remote bore the logo of one of the sate
llite companies. She turned it on and began to flip through the channels.
No signal.
No signal.
No signal.
Carly tried every channel, and none of them showed anything but a black screen with those two words. She turned off the television and dropped the remote back on the end table. Sort of silly of her to hope for anything different, she thought, but tears still stung her eyes. Modern America was truly gone if there was no television.
No more American Idol. No more evening news. No more daytime soap operas. At that moment, The Young and the Restless should have been on. It had been her daytime guilty pleasure when she wasn’t working. No more commercials, even. She would have given anything just to see an infomercial, something that would tell her there was someone out there, and that somewhere there was a pocket of normalcy. Justin had told her there was no normal anymore, but she still couldn’t force herself into believing it.
He came back inside with the bag in which they’d been storing their dirty clothes. “I’m going to toss these in the washer.” His eyes sharpened as he took in her glum expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just being dumb again. I tried the TV.”
He came over, crouched down beside the sofa, and gently tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry. Can . . . Is there anything I can do for you right now?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I can’t wrap my head around the fact everything is dead and gone.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s an enormous thing to digest; I’m not sure I’ve fully accepted it, myself.” He patted her shoulder, rose, and went into the little laundry room off the kitchen. He sang Come Sail Away as he loaded the washer, and Carly stifled a giggle. Being that off-key had to be intentional; another of Justin’s efforts to cheer her up using humor.
Justin came back into the living room and checked her back under his makeshift ice packs. “You’re going to have some bruising, and you’ll be sore for a few days. So, what do you say we stay right where we are until your back is better?”
Carly shook her head. As nice as it was to be inside a house, and one with electric power at that, she wanted to leave as soon as possible. “I want to go in the morning.”
“We’ll see how you and Sam are feeling.”
She glanced down at the wolf, who was deeply asleep, his paws twitching as he dreamed.
“How did you know what he could take?”
“I had a dog myself at one time.” Justin said this in a nonchalant tone, but she could detect hurt under his words, the pain of losing a pet. Carly smiled at him with sympathy.
“Would you like to watch a movie? There’s a DVD player. We could watch The Lord of the Rings, if you like.”
He knew she was carrying the DVD. Carly wondered when he had snooped in her pack and why he hadn’t said anything before. She shook her head. That movie belonged to the memory of her and her father. “Not that one.”
“They have a nice selection,” Justin said quickly, sensing that he may have hit a sensitive area unintentionally. “I saw more in the other houses. Most of it’s comedy and action.”
“You pick.”
He put in a DVD and settled down on one of the recliners. It was Dumb and Dumber, a movie Carly had seen more times than she could count; it always made her laugh, but at that moment, the humor fell flat. She kept wondering if any of the actors had survived the Infection. She wondered what had happened to the actress in the movie who also played Drucilla on The Young and the Restless. Her character had fallen off a cliff; a nice, open ending, leaving room for her to come back, but there was no more show to which she could return. Is she dead for real, now? Carly decided she didn’t really want to know.
Justin wasn’t watching the movie. He was watching Carly. She was stronger than she thought, but she had a tendency to push aside trauma rather than deal with it in the present. His greatest concern was that killing the man in the train station would push her back into her state of shock.
He wondered if he should tell her what concerned him the most about the incident; the man who attacked her wasn’t Infected. Justin had touched the body only moments after he died and the man was not fevered. Justin wasn’t sure what to make of it yet because it presented a troubling possibility—some people may have survived the Infection, but lived with brains fried from the fever. Healthy and insane.
Not everyone who had the Infection had turned violent, of course. It seemed dependent on the personality of the individual. Some searched for lost loved ones. Some hid in their homes, paranoid and terrified of monsters only they could see. Some tried to flee, as though the illness was something they could leave behind if they just got far enough. Justin thought of those bodies scattered on the ferry’s piers, those in the cars on the bridge, the people who had waited to be allowed to pass and died where they sat, still waiting. And he thought of the bodies he had seen at the town’s borders—bodies with bullet holes, those who persisted when the quarantine guards told them to stop. He didn’t think Carly had seen them. She always averted her eyes when they came upon bodies, a trait for which he was grateful.
Carly fell asleep halfway into the movie. She hadn’t even noticed when Justin added a sleeping medication to the small handful of pills he’d given her to take. He waited a bit longer to make sure she was fully under and then rose and turned off the television.
Justin went into the kitchen and picked up the telephone from its wall-mounted cradle. He hadn’t been sure, but he’d suspected that this place would have a satellite telephone system because of the border patrol station, and he was pleased to discover he’d been right.
Because of his dyslexia, Justin had memorized the phone numbers of his contacts. He dialed a number and listened to it ring. He tried another with the same results. And then another. He didn’t expect any of them to work, so it caught him by surprise when he suddenly heard the voice of a friend.
“Carter, it’s Justin.”
“Fuck me!” Carter exclaimed. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been keeping my phone charged using car batteries, but I thought it was only wishful thinking on my part.”
“I’ve dialed seventeen numbers. You’re the only one who answered.”
“Where are you, man?”
“British Columbia. You?”
“Fucking France.” Carter sounded disgusted by the circumstance. “We’re headed south. Think we’ll settle in Nice.”
“You’ve got someone with you?”
“My wife.”
“Your wife? That’s incredible. I’d say you’re probably one of the few intact couples in the world. The odds against both of you being immune are astronomical.” It gave him some hope that others he knew may have survived. Perhaps the Infection hadn’t been so bad in some areas. Perhaps—
“She wasn’t immune,” Carter said, his voice grim. “She . . . Well, the fever did something to her. She’s different now.”
Justin dropped his forehead against the wall. He’d hoped he was wrong about it. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m just glad to have her with me, even if she’s . . . different. She’s still in there. I see a glimmer of her old self now and again.”
Justin closed his eyes. He’d only met Carter’s wife once, but she’d been a nice lady, and Carter was head over heels for her. He couldn’t imagine what his friend had gone through, or what it must have been like to have to accept that he would never have his wife back the way she was before the Infection.
Carter changed the subject. “How the hell d’you end up British Columbia, anyway?”
Justin told him about deciding to go on the Deadhorse Rally on a whim and his detour where he had watched Juneau from the nearby woods. He’d tried to keep his cell phone charged from car batteries as Carter had, but as the Infection grew worse, it had been a risk he grew less willing to take. And by the time it was over, he couldn’t get a signal any longer. Carter was in one of the few areas where cell phones would still work
because some of the French cell phone towers were powered by solar and wind, technologies that had been tested there for use in developing countries.
“Shit,” Carter said softly. “I had sort of hoped . . . remote places like Alaska . . .”
“Juneau is a big tourist draw, and the incubation period was so long . . .” He thought of the cruise ships anchored in Juneau’s harbor, the floating tombs of those who had probably brought the Infection to the sleepy little town.
“That’s what we’ve been finding too,” Carter said. “Every little village we pass through . . . Have you encountered any survivors?”
“One.” Justin cleared his throat. “A girl I found in Juneau.” He did not mention the man in the train station.
He could hear the smile in Carter’s voice. “She cute?”
Justin clenched his fist. “I’m trying not to think that way.”
“If you’ve got the only sane and healthy woman in Alaska, I recommend you start thinking that way.”
Justin ignored him. “What would Lewis say about your situation?”
It was a catchphrase in The Unit: What would Lewis say? They’d even had rubber bracelets made up with the letters WWLS? Lewis had been one of the first commanders of The Unit, a cold, calculating man who could give exact odds on the success or failure of a mission. He had been technically retired, just as most of them were after a service period of five years, but he still showed up at the office every day, helping to organize and plan the missions. And he was almost always spot-on in his predictions. The one time Justin hadn’t listened to him had been bad. Really bad.
“Probably five-to-one,” Carter said after a pause. “I ain’t gonna lie to you, man. It’s bad here. I’m trying to skirt the populated areas, but I keep running into trouble, and one of these days, sum’bitches are going to get lucky. I’m saving back two shells, if you know what I mean.”
