Whatever it takes to survive, baby, Gideon says in my memories. And I wonder if he thought that entirely through.
When we’ve emptied every last drop of paint onto the van, we take a step back and inspect our masterpiece. We walk around it once, laughing at the ridiculous—but awesome—camouflage job.
“Time to load,” Logan says, handing me his M16. “You stand at the door to keep watch, and I’ll bring you shit to load on.”
“Sounds good.” I open the rear doors of the van to the wafting of various nasty odors, and Logan ventures inside.
“How’s your aim?” he asks.
“Near-sniper when I was sixteen. Maybe better now, though.”
“Yeah. Well, give it a few more months. You’ll have plenty more practice.”
Logan hops down and jogs into the store, and I look to the skies. There’s a bouncing light off in the distance, but I can’t tell if it’s moving farther away or getting closer.
Logan returns with our bags from the breakroom, and I point to the light in the sky.
“Is that one of them?” he asks.
“I think so.”
“Watch it.” He passes me to load our bags near the front. “If it gets too close, we shoot it out of the sky,” he says, heading inside for more.
I split my attention between the streets around us and the hovering, distant light, closer now but not really moving in our direction. It may be looking for me, though, and that thought brings a chill. With the world the way it is now, why would they waste their time on one girl?
There are two possibilities: one, it’s Gideon who’s trying to find me that way, but I doubt that. Or two, the Suits. If it is them, they must really want to find me . . .
When I remember the boy I killed when I escaped, how naïve he’d been—probably a virgin—it settles down inside me, hot and unnerving. Whoever he was, he was somebody one of them cared about, and now they’re going to hunt me down until they find me, give me what I deserve.
As much as I want to deny it, I know I’m right.
Thirty-Four
The light in the sky disappears to the east as Logan and I finish loading the van. We’ve cleared every possible useful item—for bartering purposes—and the whole van is packed to the brim.
“This is the last of it.” He hands me a cluster of sacks, tied closed. “Makeup and feminine products. You’re welcome.”
“Appreciated.”
There’s a shuffling sound about a half-block away, and the clanking of metal, as if someone had kicked over a trash can. I squint into the darkness, unable to see them. But they’re out there.
“That’s a big-ass horde of them.” Logan shuts the doors and taps my arm. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I follow him around to the driver’s side and climb over the seat to sit beside Buddy and Missy. Logan hops in, closes the door, and goes for the ignition, but stops, ducks. “Get down. Dead fuck parade at two o’clock.”
I see them, the biggest mob of rotted flesh and hungry decay I’ve seen yet. I yank Missy down with me, and she trembles beneath my arm. “Come on, boy,” I say to Buddy, patting the free space on the floorboard. He hops down, and I couldn’t be more relieved that our new companion is obedient.
“How many, do you think?” I ask Logan.
“Hundreds. Too fucking many.”
In minutes, we’re engulfed. The van sways on its struts as they bump into it, move around it. Buddy growls. Afraid he might bark and give us away, I pet him. “Shh . . . it’s okay.”
But he keeps on.
“No,” I scold, and he stops. “Good boy.” I breathe a sigh of relief and scratch him behind the ear. There’s a reason he’s stayed alive this long. I’m sure he’s learned that they chase him when he barks, and he’s seen what they do when they catch you.
I move a little to give Missy some breathing room, but I don’t dare raise my head. Until the stormy sea of bodies subsides, I won’t risk it. Logan settles into a crossed-legged crouch on the floorboard, then digs into his pocket. He takes out two blue pills and puts one in my hand.
“Wow, Xanax. How much of that do we have?” I drop the pill in my throat and swallow it with my saliva.
“Three or four bottles of various milligrams.”
“Where did I pack all of the meds in the van?” I mumble to myself.
“I put our stuff in various product boxes, and the stuff for barter in grocery bags. Where you put it in the van, I have no clue. Hopefully these guys will be cool and not just take our shit and . . .” He stops, aware of Missy’s gaze on him. He nods toward her. “Think we should give her a quarter of one of these for her anxiety?”
I almost say no, but old-world rules no longer apply. It’s medicine, and it’ll make her feel better. Not giving it to her would be the crime.
“Yeah, we should.” I lean in to Missy’s ear while Logan digs another pill out of his pocket. “We’re going to give you some medicine to make you feel better, okay?”
She nods her consent without a second thought. Logan breaks the pill in half with his thumbnail, then he breaks the two halves in half. He gives two pieces to me, drops one in his own mouth, and places the remaining piece in my palm for Missy. I hold it up to her mouth, she opens, and I place it on her tongue. I locate a bottled water from the floorboard, hand it to her, and she takes a careful sip, then another, before handing it back to me.
“Good girl.” I run my fingers through her hair, while again considering the dark lessons we’re teaching her. Feel bad? Take pills. Shoot things into your veins. Smoke things, and drink, and huff chemicals—whatever you have to do to not feel the pain. Whatever you have to do to survive another day.
In many ways, though, that part isn’t too much different from how things were before. Our society has always medicated our problems. Pruned back those wild branches and ignored the roots. We slapped Band-Aids over bullet wounds, treating the surface, ignoring the source.
But now, things are different. The world is a meat market with predators on the prowl. The life we once knew is a fading memory. We could be dead in minutes, hours, days . . . Not much different from before, but now, survival means fighting to the death. It means running, hiding, hunting, killing, saving as many as we can. It means we treat the root of the problem when we see it, because nobody has time for bullshit anymore.
The difference between surviving then and surviving now is that, even though we could die at any moment, that chance has escalated about five thousand percent in the last few months. It’s not a matter of if we’ll be violently ripped from this life, but when. But at least we no longer have to follow some outdated social structure built upon the white collars and in the deep pockets of our forefathers three hundred years ago. Our government and society was FUBAR’d decades ago and there was no way out, no U-turn or reverse. This was the only way to get us back to ground zero. Another tragic triumph.
In a few short minutes, Missy relaxes beside me. “Feel better?” I ask her.
She nods, yawns.
“Yeah, it’ll make you a little sleepy.” I move closer to Logan to give her even more room. “Why don’t you rest down there?” I point to the floorboard beside Buddy where there’s enough space for her to curl up. She considers it for mere seconds before sliding the rest of the way from the seat into the floorboard. With another yawn, she rests her head on Buddy’s back, and in minutes, she’s asleep.
Logan takes my arm and gives it a little tug, then he spreads out his legs to allow me room to move closer to him. When I’m snug against his body, he snakes his arms around my midsection, and I rest my head against the door, above his shoulder. He plants a kiss on my cheek, then his lips travel along my jawline to my neck. The van sways, but the Xanax hits me, too, and I don’t care about that.
“How do you feel?” Logan asks me.
“Better.”
“Wanna feel even better?”
I peek at him from my peripheral, and he grins, taking a leather zipper pouch from
the side door. It appears to be a bag the store once used to hold money. But he opens it up to fresh syringes and that brown bottle, and my stomach swims.
“Fuck yeah,” I say. “Why not?”
Thirty-Five
Logan gives me my shot first, then hurries to administer his own. He removes the needle from his arm and slumps against the door. Too fucked up to care, I lift my head just enough to peek outside. Either I’m too fucked up to see, too, or they’re gone.
“All clear,” I say.
“Oh, yeah?” Logan gives me a sheepish glance. He rises to his knees to look outside, then checks to make sure Missy is still asleep. He guides me up onto the long van seat and leans down to kiss me softly. I return the gesture with a kiss to his collarbone and the tattoo there.
“Carpe Diem,” I read. “Seize the day.”
“I would,” he says, thrusting into me, “but we’ve got a kid and a dog as an audience.”
“Not into voyeurism, eh?” I smirk.
“I didn’t say that.” He kisses my belly and tugs at the button on my pants to pop it open, slowly unzipping my leather pants. He gives me a little tease with his tongue, then kisses me there.
“How old were you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” He kisses his way up my abdomen.
“When you lost your virginity.”
“Nine. I fucked my babysitter.”
“No way.”
“Yup.”
“How old was she?”
“Sixteen.”
The similarities with my first sexual encounter are uncanny.
“Did she . . . rape you?”
“Well . . . I didn’t really know what was going on, so I guess you could call it that. We were fucking for a year after that, though, so . . . who the fuck knows what it was.”
“I was raped by a sixteen-year-old boy when I was nine,” I say, before I’m ready to.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s just a part of who I am now.”
He kisses me again. “Damn straight. And I’m definitely glad you’re you.”
I want to ask him what I’m supposed to do when—and if—Gideon ever finds me, or I find him. But I don’t want to ruin this moment of peace with what-ifs no one has any answers to.
“I guess it’s time to move out, huh?” He reaches up to turn the key in the ignition, and the engine rumbles. “Should we wake her? Make her sit in the seat?”
“No, I think she’s okay.”
“The blonde looks hot on you, by the way.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“The length, too. It shows off your neck and shoulders. Sexy.”
I grin, fastening the seatbelt over my lap. “The black looks hot on you, too.”
“Does it?” He pulls away from the store.
“It does.”
We both watch the CVS in the rearview as we drive away, and it dawns on me, when I sense apprehension in Logan, that it’s been months since he’s been outside.
“I bet it feels good to be out of there, huh?” I ask.
“Hell, yeah. I don’t want to see the inside of a CVS for as long as I live. Which will hopefully be through the day.”
“Fingers crossed,” I mumble as he pulls onto the main road. “We don’t know about tomorrow, but we have now. We’re alive, and we’ve got something to look forward to.”
Logan peers at me, entertained by something.
“What?”
“I like that—the optimism. You should do more of that.”
“I’ll do my best. I haven’t had much practice in my life.”
“Me, neither.” He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “But like everything else now, we’ll learn together. We’ll do it together.”
There isn’t another corpse for miles, as if they all got together and decided to take a stroll down Market Street past CVS. But I’m not complaining now. It’s nice, driving at night on clear roads. The highway is clustered with vehicles and debris in some areas, but there are also stretches of nothing that seem to go on forever. And for a moment I imagine the world the way it was before and pretend we’re on a road trip to someplace exciting. The vision always caves to longing, though. The façade can only be held for so long before it shatters from the weight of innocent bloodshed.
Missy finally awakens, startled, but relaxes when she sees us, and Buddy still asleep on the floor beside her. I pat the seat and she jumps up into it, moving closer to me. She devours the view around us, experiencing freedom from the same hell as Logan.
“It’s pretty, huh?” I ask her, and she nods, gazing out through her window.
“Just like two girls I know,” Logan says.
Missy giggles. It’s such a sweet sound, and makes me want to hear her voice even more. But I won’t push her. She’ll speak to me when she’s ready.
After another twenty minutes of navigating through thick highway blockage, we skirt around a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler to a long, empty stretch of highway before us.
“Almost there.” Logan pulls the van over to the side of the highway and lets it idle.
“Why are we stopping?”
He dips back behind his seat and yanks at something until he dislodges a cardboard box. “Bet we can get a signal now that we’re this close.” He sets it in his lap and opens it up, removing it from its case.
Logan’s radio is a peculiar contraption: an old, gutted cable box with random mechanical innards. He plucks a black wire, stripped at the end where the silvery hairs show beneath the sheath, and he stretches it through his cracked window to wrap around the antenna.
While he adjusts the dials on the radio, my thoughts drift to my past again, filled with too many emotions. I had the most beautiful things . . . but I let them slip through my fingers like water through a drain, with as little thought. And now, in hindsight, through that bittersweet, rose-colored glass, I see them all for who they really were.
Corbin was a blessing to us all—an angel, a divine gift to a barren mother. He was a miracle. And he was perfect in every way. His parents already knew that. I wish I would’ve realized the magnificence of it sooner . . .
Eve was always Lucy, and no amount of black hair dye, makeup, and witchcraft could ever change that. She was my best friend first, my greatest friend ever, and my soulmate. She was so delicate that I felt I needed to grow darker to protect her, shelter her from the sun’s harmful rays. All I ever wanted to do was love her and keep her safe, because deep down inside, I always knew she was a shooting star, like Corbin, the brightest flashes of light who change your sight forever and always leave too soon.
And Eileen . . . the way she’d gazed at me with such awe and admiration on the car ride to my forever home from my foster home. She was beside herself with joy, both of them were, teary-eyed and chattering non-stop. It was the most awkward-yet-exciting moment of my life. Eileen was a lover, a giver, a caretaker, a peacemaker. She was the kind of woman who would choose that puppy at the pound just because it was about to be euthanized, no matter how old, broken, or ugly it was. I was that puppy, and my euthanasia was my everyday life in foster care, killing me slowly from the inside out.
Henry was the perfect father and husband. Kind, faithful, gentle, and loving. Sure, he lacked strength in many ways, but come to find out, his love for his family was his greatest strength of all.
As much as it hurts to, I hold that moment in the car with them now, as one of my most prized family heirlooms. Everything tangible is gone, but I have these moments to fall into again, to relive them—or live them for the first time, really. It’s both fascinating and devastating, how twisted my mind was. What’s the point of loving so much, if you only realize it when they’re gone?
When I glance at Missy’s profile, I find my answer. Because of what’s happened, I have the fire of survival lit inside me, and the strength of body and mind to keep others alive. Because they died, Missy might live. It’s a ca
tch-22 I have no choice but to accept.
“Got something.” Logan twists the dial again and it comes in clearer. My heart jumps when speaking comes across the radio.
“It’s Spanish.”
He cranes his neck closer and squints, concentrating. “I can make out words here and there, but I flunked out of Spanish two years in a row.” He laughs. “How’s yours?”
“About the same as you. I took it in high school.” I listen for a few seconds, but they’re speaking too fast, and there’s too much static for me to make anything out.
“Comida.” Logan grins. “That’s a good start.”
“That means food, right?”
“Yeah.” He peers off down the dark road. “If they’re underground, that could be why the signal’s not clearer. So . . . ?”
“So, what? Let’s go. We won’t know until we try. Not like we have a ton of better options.”
With a nod of agreement, he carefully sets the radio between us and puts the van in drive, pulling back onto the highway. “We’ve got about two or three miles to go. If the signal gets any clearer, that’s a good sign.”
As we travel toward our dark and cryptic beacon, the signal does get louder, and I begin to pick out words I recognize, but not enough to understand what they’re saying.
“It’s definitely a community of some sort,” Logan says, lighting a cigarette. He hands me the pack. “I’ve heard ‘food,’ ‘travel,’ ‘clothes,’ and ‘bathe.’ I think we’re headed in the right direction.”
“Okay, but . . . is it strange to you that it’s in Spanish? Why isn’t it in English?”
He shrugs. “No idea. But I guess we’re gonna find out soon.” He points to a green sign hanging over the highway: Exit 34 to Ericsville—1 mile “You can’t see it at night,” Logan says, chuckling to himself, “but during the day, if you look to the west, you’ll see some hills and shit, with trees, and there’s a cliff with a giant rock in the shape of a penis.”
“Oh, Cock Rock? Seen it. Evie and I drove out here once to take pics.”
When the enormous grain silo comes into view, I recall a church trip I was forced to go on once. We drove by the silo at night, and I remember thinking how spooky it looked. A girl said it was haunted.
Murray's Law Page 18
