by J. L. Esplin
“Cleverly, I need to know what you have in your backpack.” I’m still smiling about the duck-husband thing, so my request comes off less than serious, when it really is.
She hesitates, and then nods.
While she gets her backpack, I put the tarp away and heave my pack onto my back, adjusting the straps on my shoulders. It feels heavier than it did before, but I know that’s impossible. I’m just weaker.
I watch Cleverly make her way back to me, slapping the tan dirt from the bottom of her backpack.
“Okay,” she says, unzipping her backpack and holding it open for me to look inside. “We left in a hurry. Keep in mind that we didn’t know … things would go the way they did.” Her voice trails off as my eyes search inside the bag. Mostly clothes. Not exactly survival gear. Although I do see a small flashlight and the handle of that steak knife from the trailer home sticking out of a notebook pocket.
She pulls the bag back, puts her arm inside, and starts pushing things aside. “A change of clothes for me and Will, pajamas, toothbrush, deodorant, a hairbrush, my dead cell phone, some cash.
“And we do have … this.” She pulls out a standard plastic water bottle—the kind that hold exactly 16.9 fluid ounces.
That’s a little more than two cups. It’s one-fourth the amount of water that Stew’s canteen could hold. It’s empty, of course, the label peeled off, the plastic thin and crinkled.
“This just saved the day,” I say with a smile. Which I realize is kind of an overstatement. But it’s something.
* * *
We get through the next couple of miles by putting one foot in front of the other and then repeating the process. And by talking about zombies.
Not my favorite topic.
“So you’re saying zombies caused the blackout,” Cleverly says to Stew. Will is beside her, holding her hand. Every once in a while, their hands break apart and she wipes the sweat off on her jeans.
“Yeah,” Stew says. “It’s just a theory at this point, but yeah.”
“Why zombies?” she asks. “Couldn’t it have been, like, werewolves or some other fictional creature?”
I look over at Will and he grins back—both of us thoroughly enjoying this.
“Fictional?” Stew says, completely frustrated. “No! Were you even listening to me? I just explained a whole theory in which a zombie pandemic could occur in today’s society. The Centers for Disease Control even put out an official zombie-survival guide—”
“Right,” she says like she’s trying extra hard to understand, “the comic book you were talking about.”
“No. I mean, yeah. It’s in the form of a comic book so people would actually read it, but it’s an official guide. Put out by the CDC.”
“Okay, so zombies exist,” Cleverly says, cutting to the chase, “and they took out our power. Because why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Will says. “To get the upper hand on us!”
“Thank you, Will,” Stew says, waving his arm out toward him, and Will grins in response. “Geez, this is not that complicated.”
Cleverly gives me a look, her eyebrows raised, and I shrug. I notice another mile marker ahead and I pull out the Sharpie, add another tally mark to my forearm.
Cleverly says to Stew, “Do we know how the zombies accomplished this takeover of our power grids?”
“Well … there are basically a lot of them. A zombie horde.”
“Seriously? How does that explain anything?”
Stew gives in with a shake of his head. “Okay, at this point, we do not know the ‘hows,’ only the ‘whys.’”
“Hmm,” Cleverly says. Then, “Let me ask you something, John.”
For some reason, my heart does this little flip when she says my name. “I don’t know anything about zombies.”
“He’s clueless,” Stew adds.
“… when it comes to zombies,” I clarify. “I don’t read much fiction.”
I do, actually, just not the kind with zombies, and mostly I just wanted to restate that zombies are fictional.
Stew glares at me.
“It’s not about zombies,” she says. “Completely different topic, but just as confusing. It’s kind of a ‘how’ question.”
“Okay. What is it?”
“Can you please explain to me how school works out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“What do you want to know about it?” I say, though I’m familiar with the usual questions. We have some cousins up in Idaho, and whenever we visit, they like to gather their friends around and have us tell them about our school experience in No-man’s-land, Nevada. The details seem to both fascinate and freak people out. It doesn’t bother me, though. Usually.
“Do you go to a regular school?” she asks.
“What do you mean by ‘regular’?”
“A building with four walls and a roof.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And this building is located…?”
“In Lund,” Stew answers.
“We saw no such school, did we, Will?”
Stew and I exchange a look—as if we would make this up.
“It was the building with four walls and a roof,” I say, and she frowns at me, so I tell her, “It’s off the highway. You wouldn’t have passed it on your way out to our place.” Then I go ahead and volunteer the usual information that seems to amaze kids from more densely populated areas of the country. “It goes from kindergarten all the way to twelfth grade. We have nine teachers. Last year, there were forty-seven students.”
There’s a pause of silence; then Will squints over at me and asks, “Forty-seven students in your grade?”
“No, forty-seven students, total. At the entire school.”
Cleverly is speechless. She hasn’t even heard the weirdest part—or at least the part that seems to freak out kids the most. Stew’s got this stupid grin on his face, so I know he can’t wait to tell her.
“In John’s grade,” he says, “there are three boys, and he’s one of them.”
It takes her a few seconds to understand what this means, and then she sort of gasps in shock. “There are no girls in your grade?”
“Whoa,” Will says, “that’s awesome!”
“Yep,” I agree, ignoring the heat blooming on my cheeks.
“No girls?” Cleverly repeats.
Stew can tell I’m getting embarrassed because his grin widens, the jerk. “No girls in John’s grade,” he says, “or the next grade down. But there are six girls in my grade.”
“Stewart’s class is the largest we’ve had in a decade. Ten students.” I state these facts mostly to get off the subject of me. It doesn’t work.
“But, John,” Will says, undeterred, “is Cleverly the first girl you’ve ever seen?”
Stewart bursts out laughing.
“No, Will,” I say shortly. “I’ve seen plenty of girls. One of my best friends—” I stop, suddenly noticing that they’ve all got big grins on their faces, even Will.
He’s messing with me.
“Okay, Will, you got me,” I say, unable to hold back a smile, though my cheeks still feel warm. “So tell me, how many girls are at your school in Las Vegas?”
“Too many,” he says, and Cleverly rolls her eyes.
“You know, boys can be pretty annoying too,” she says.
Will bites his lip thoughtfully. “Like Adam Leblanc.”
“Who?” Cleverly says. And when he doesn’t explain, I ask, “Will, are we supposed to know who Adam Leblanc is?”
He shakes his head. “He’s just this kid who sat next to me during math last year that would snap my pencil in half every day. I’d have to get up and sharpen it, and it’d get shorter and shorter until it was just a stub and I couldn’t write with it anymore—”
“Why didn’t you tell your teacher this kid was taking your pencil?” Cleverly says.
“He wasn’t taking it. He’d ask for it, and I’d give it to him, then he’d snap it in half—”
“Will, that doesn’t even m
ake sense. You were giving him your pencil?”
“You sound like Mom,” Will says, dropping her hand, wiping his palm furiously up and down his pant leg. “She kept getting mad at me for wasting her favorite kind of pencil.”
“Your mom has a favorite kind of pencil?” I ask, confused.
“The Ticonderoga. You know, ‘The World’s Best Pencil.’”
“Will, it’s not about the pencils. You shouldn’t have let that kid get away with treating you like that!” Cleverly insists. “You should have told your teacher—”
“You act like it’s my fault,” he says, jerking his hand away when she reaches out to take it again. “Adam Leblanc is bad at math, and he doesn’t like that I’m good at it, and he’s twice my size!”
“Okay,” she says quickly, “I shouldn’t have said it like that. Don’t get upset.”
Will looks away from her, swipes the back of his hand under his nose. He doesn’t say anything else about it, and neither do we. Although, the more I think about it, the more I’d like to meet this Adam Leblanc kid and break a few pencils myself.
Stew ends the silence, saying almost to himself, “That kid’s screwed.”
Will sniffs, looks over at Stew. “What do you mean?”
“Adam Leblanc. He’s totally screwed. Picking on someone half his size? That means he’s a coward. And cowards don’t stand a chance in a zombie apocalypse.”
Will sniffs again.
“Stew has a point,” I say. “He’s a coward and he’s bad at math? He’s screwed.”
Cleverly crosses her arms and grumbles, “The zombies probably already ate his tiny brain.”
A smile starts to tug at the corner of Will’s mouth.
“I’ve got this friend, Ryan Ericson,” I tell them. “He can be kind of wimpy, but he’s not a coward and he’s really smart. I think he could outsmart a couple of brainless zombies.”
“He’d do all right,” Stew says, shrugging. “What about his little sister, Maddie? She’s really brave. Remember when we slept out on their trampoline, and we kept hearing that scraping sound, and we all got freaked out and dragged our sleeping bags into the house? She slept out there the entire night by herself!”
“I think she was just too tired to get up.”
“Still!” Stew says.
“The bravest kid in my class is Izzy Rodriguez,” Will says. “She took on the biggest bully at my school for always cutting in line at handball. I bet she could take on some zombies.”
“I think my friends would do all right,” Cleverly says, “mostly because they’d stick together.”
“I’ll tell you who could kick butt against an entire zombie horde,” Stew says. “Our dad. He’s really strong, and he can figure a way out of pretty much anything. Right, John?”
You’re a lot more like your dad than you think.
Yeah right.
“Right, John?” Stew says again.
I push the thought from my mind. “Right,” I mumble.
Cleverly sighs. “Our dad would probably try to reason with them.”
“Yeah,” Will agrees with a crooked grin.
“What about Jess?” Stew asks me.
“Oh, she’d kick butt,” I say without hesitation.
“Who’s Jess?” Cleverly asks.
“Jess Brighton,” I say, emphasizing her last name. “She’s my age,” I add, still feeling weird about having no girls in my grade at school.
“Oh!” Cleverly says, her forehead creased in thought. “So there are kids at this Brighton Ranch?”
“Two,” I say. “Jess and her older brother, Nate.”
Stew says, “Jess is awesome. We go to the same summer camp together every year. This year’s camp is supposed to start next Monday, actually.”
“It’s probably canceled,” Will says, like he’s completely serious.
Stew shakes his head. “I don’t care so much about missing camp, but I do care that I won’t get to hike the Narrows with my dad.”
“The Narrows?” Will asks, his face scrunched up in curiosity.
“It’s this gorge in southern Utah,” Stew explains. “It’s called ‘the Narrows’ because it’s really narrow. The gorge is a thousand feet high on either side, and in some places, you can stretch out your arms and touch both sides of the canyon wall at once. And almost the whole time, you’re trudging upstream through water, even wading through it at some points.”
“That sounds pretty cool,” Cleverly says.
“Yeah, I really wanted to see it,” Stew says in a quieter voice.
“We can do the hike next summer, Stew,” I say. “When things go back to normal.”
He doesn’t answer, just keeps his eyes straight ahead on the road, his hands gripping the straps of his pack. I notice he looks kind of pale, tiny beads of perspiration wetting his hairline.
Then he says in that same quiet voice, for my ears only, “Will you do me a favor, John?”
“Depends what it is.”
“Just … will you tell Jess I’m sorry we couldn’t all hike the Narrows together?”
“Tell her yourself,” I say, and it comes out more sharply than I intended.
Stew whispers to me again, “But, if I don’t get the chance to—”
“You’re gonna get the chance to.”
“But if I don’t?”
“Fine,” I say, elbowing him away, just to make him drop it.
Because really, there’s no reason why Stewart can’t do it himself. He’s going to see her in a couple of days.
Then Cleverly says to us, “This zombie horde that took out the power … How come nobody smelled them coming?”
And just like that, we’re back to zombies.
9
“HOW MUCH FARTHER do we have to walk today?” Cleverly asks.
I get down next to one of those yellow reflective highway markers, drop the pile of sticks I’ve gathered, the wind barely a breeze now. I glance at my forearm, at the fifteen black tally marks, and frown because we haven’t made good time. “Eighteen miles to go,” I say.
Stew groans.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Will’s shadow slump, see Cleverly’s hand squeezing his a few times, as if she can pump strength back into him.
Stew collapses across from me. He leans back against his pack, like a recliner from the waist up. His legs stretched out in front of him, his arms resting limp on his lap.
“Isn’t the ground hot, Stew?” Cleverly says.
“My butt is on fire,” he confirms.
“Get the tarp, you can sit on it,” I say, and start to arrange the larger sticks of wood into a small log cabin. It’s mostly brittle tumbleweed, stuff that was easy to collect and break up as I walked—and stuff that also won’t burn very long. But I did find a couple of pieces of dry wood about the width of my wrist that will make better fuel for the fire.
We’re decontaminating the water now because the wind has stopped its attack. And because we can’t afford to put it off any longer—we’ll need water before tonight. But I can’t help feeling anxious about the passing time. The sun has crossed more than half the sky. To stay on track, we’ll still be walking well after it goes down.
“Can’t get up,” Stew says, dropping his head back, resting against his pack with his eyes shut.
I stop what I’m doing for a minute and get the tarp out of my pack so they can sit. Cleverly takes it from my hands before I even know she’s there. “What do you need us to do, John?”
“Spread the tarp out over there,” I say, pointing to a spot upwind. “You don’t want to sit too close to the fire. It’s hot enough as it is—”
“Okay. Now tell me what you need us to do.”
She’s looking at me, waiting for an answer. A real answer.
There’s a trail of dirt on her forehead where she’s wiped away sweat, and there are thin circles of red around her eyes because she’s exhausted. But she’s no worse off than me. We’re all exhausted.
“I need some rocks, a
bout this size.” I show her with my hands. “Maybe three or four.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“I need more wood, probably twice the amount I have.”
She nods. “Anything else?”
I shake my head. “No, that’s it.”
“Are you sure? You don’t need me to rub two sticks together or strike some flint?”
I reach into my pants pocket and hold up a box of matches.
“Right. I’ll go find those rocks.” She gives the tarp to Will so he can lay it out, and heads out to the brush. I watch her for a second, and when I turn back to finish building my stick cabin, I catch Stew staring at me with one eye open.
“What?” I say, my smile fading.
“Nothing,” he says with a shrug. “Help me up, will you? I think the asphalt has melted beneath me because I’m stuck.”
I take the pot from his pack and set it aside, along with some tinder—a bundle of dryer lint that my dad kept in our packs to use as fire-starter—and then I manage to pull Stew to his feet. He and Will go about three yards up the road to spread out the tarp, while I arrange the sticks, stacking them from largest to smallest until I’m satisfied with the little structure I’ve built.
I’d set aside a few skinnier sticks to use as kindling, and I break them up, twisting them into a bundle. I use my knife to shave more pieces of kindling from a larger piece of wood, gathering the shavings up as I go and stuffing them under my shirt, because it’s still pretty breezy.
When Cleverly comes back with the rocks cradled in her arms, she’s also got a bunch of sticks with her.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Is that enough to get two pots of water boiling?”
“I think so.” I scratch the back of my head. “But here’s the tricky part. Not only do I need to decontaminate the water, but I’ve also got to decontaminate the canteens holding the water, so we can use them again. And I’ve got to do a thorough job of it too. We can’t risk anybody getting sick.”
We get sick, we get dehydrated. We get dehydrated, we … Well, we can’t get dehydrated. Simple as that.
She crouches down, her hands on her knees. “Can you boil the water while it’s inside the canteen?” she asks skeptically.
These are old-school canteens. Metal, circular in shape, with a hard plastic cap, a canvas shoulder strap, and fabric on the sides. I can remove the caps and shoulder straps, but the fabric is glued on, with crimped metal around the edges. The best I could do is prop up the canteens in the fire and let the fabric burn off. But I’m worried about damaging the canteens. Worse, if they were to topple over in the fire, I wouldn’t be able to grab them and save any of the water.
