After all he’s been through, Tom could’ve surrendered to his anger and grief. He could’ve let guilt shut him down. When he came to a fork in the road, he chose the better, kinder route—though it was likely the harder one—and I can’t imagine him changing course now.
“I think you’re good,” I say, and I mean it in every sense of the word.
49
Clara
The fairgrounds are surrounded by a tall chain-link fence in some parts and an iron fence in others, and all have been covered to hide the interior. Privacy fencing, plastic sheeting, sheets, curtains, carpets, cardboard, doors—all have been taken from nearby homes and affixed to the fence.
At first, the residents were under siege by zombies growling through the links and rattling the fence every time they left the Events Center. Once shielded, they were invisible as long as they were quiet. Now that they’ve pushed the zombies back a couple of blocks, they keep the fences covered just in case.
Everyone over the age of eighteen has a job, and mine, along with Holly and Jesse, is to check those coverings for holes. I don’t mind working. Card games and pool get boring, and laziness quickly loses its appeal. This is work people avoid, though I don’t know why. No one looks over our shoulders. If holes are patched, we’re good, and the possibility, however unlikely, to practice killing zombies through the fence is a plus. It could be they avoid it for that reason—many of the residents fought zombies at the beginning, but some wince at the thought of doing it again. I don’t want to be like them. A month without zombies has allowed their fear to intensify. Just under a week has me doubting my own abilities. I’d carry my hammer with me just in case, if it didn’t have to remain hidden under my cot.
“Over here,” Jesse calls from ahead.
The wind has torn a sheet. I pull the cart containing our camouflage closer, and we search the contents until we find a small area rug that fits. Holly peeks out the hole, relaxing when there’s nothing but grassy field in view, then helps me hold it in place while Jesse clips a length of wire from a spool. He pokes it through the corner of the rug and winds it around the chain-link, moving through the carpet and more links until it’s secure. He finishes it off by twisting the ends of the wire with pliers, his hands as dexterous with them as with his guitar.
Nora walks by as Jesse tackles the next corner. She slows to a stop and puts her hand on the spot Holly holds. “I have it. You can let go.”
Nora is much taller than Holly, who stands on tiptoes. “I have it,” Holly says. “I didn’t ask for help.”
Holly’s heart-shaped face is set in bitch mode. It’s unlike her, to say the least, and Jesse pauses in his wire wrapping to glance her way. Nora stills for a moment, seeming puzzled, and, I think, hurt. She’s been nothing but nice to Holly—overly nice—and Holly has been politely dismissive since we arrived. This latest interaction doesn’t even fall into polite territory.
“Fine,” Nora says. “See you later.”
She walks off, tall frame bent. After she rounds a corner, I say, “Geez, Hols. What was that about?”
“I don’t like her.” She moves her fingers when Jesse reaches her hand with his wire, then steps away. “I don’t have to like everybody, do I?”
“Yes. That’s what you do.”
“Nora’s cool,” Jesse says. “Besides, Clary’s the bitch. You’re the nice one.”
I punch his side lightly. “But she’s nice. And she’s cute.”
If I were to design the perfect girl for Holly, she’d be tall and thin, friendly and kind, but also sporty and strong. Nora is all of those things, and she’s all of those things while she carries a rifle. Holly’s a sucker for a tough girl with a gun, which is why she’s dragged me to every action film ever made.
“Then maybe you should date her,” Holly says.
“Okay, I will. Maybe we’ll go to the drive-in tonight. Get a couple of malteds and neck.”
Holly looks up at the clouds, then sighs. “Fine, you want to know why I don’t like her?”
I nod. She pulls me away from Jesse, who calls, “Hey, I want to hear!”
“Nope,” Holly calls back, then faces me. “Remember that girl before I moved, at my old middle school? I know I told you about her.”
“Of course. The one you liked since second grade, who asked you out? And then she was a jerk or something? I can’t remember details.”
“I didn’t tell you the details. But that girl was Nora.”
“That was Nora? Hols, she’s a thousand years older now. You can’t hold seventh grade against her.” Holly’s crossed arms and unyielding expression argue that point, and I say, “You know dating in middle school is ridiculous. People say they’re going out and then never talk to each other until they break up. It’s like practice. Maybe she didn’t mean to be a jerk. What did she do?”
“She asked me out at the end of the day, and we spoke for two hours on the phone that night. I was so happy.” She shakes her head, annoyed at that past version of herself. “You know how my parents didn’t really have money until we were older?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know her when they had next to nothing, but cash was tight for a couple of years after we met. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Some moving guys threw open the back doors of their truck in our apartment complex, and it shattered our car’s rear window. The company had to pay for it, but it was all this paperwork and stuff. Which meant we had plastic sheeting on the back of our car for a couple of weeks. My parents couldn’t afford to get it fixed until they got the money.”
Holly pushes her hair from her face. “Anyway, I walked into school the next day and heard people talking about our car. Saying it was already a heap of trash but now it was official, things like that. I peeked into the room and Nora was there, laughing with them.”
Her eyes are fierce. As she said, there are five people in the world she’d do anything for—her family and me—and she wasn’t kidding. In high school, a girl started talking shit about Jesse, and tiny Holly got up in her face and threatened to beat her down. The girl steered clear for the rest of the year. Holly may seem timid, but if you fuck with her family, prepare to die.
“That was pretty dicky,” I admit.
“I know. I broke up with her through a friend and ignored her when she asked why. We were moving, anyway.”
“But that was forever ago. She seems nice now. She kind of seems lonely.”
“No.” Holly scowls. “You are not going to get me to like her by saying she’s lonely. She has friends here.”
“Sort of friends.” There are some other people our age aside from the soldiers: Amber, Damon, Kevin—whose policeman father was eaten a week into the outbreak—and Brenna. All are nice enough, though I don’t like the way Brenna eyes Jesse. I’m not about to throw down, since I’m not a nutcase like Super Bitch, but if Jesse ends up with her, I’m throwing in the towel for good. “I still think she’s lonely.”
“Too bad for her.” Holly looks away, lip caught between her teeth, and I sense that’s not the whole story. Maybe she was protecting her family, but it hurt her, too. Enough that she kept it to herself for ten years. She doesn’t easily confess to romantic feelings, and to have done so and gotten shit in return definitely didn’t help on the future relationship front.
“Okay, fine,” I say. “You have the right to hate her forever, but I still think you should give her a chance.”
Holly shakes her head as we return to our work. Fifteen minutes later, we come upon Rose crouched out back of our Expo Hall, messing with a contraption we found at Always Ready. It’s a tall steel cylinder shaped like a bottle, with both a side spout and an opening on top. It sits on a steel base with a hole in its side, through which I see a small fire burning.
“You brought that?” Jesse asks.
Instead of answering, Rose hums. I motion at the white cord that snakes out of her coat pocket, through her hair, and ends at earbuds plugged into her ears.
&nbs
p; “I swear, sometimes…” Jesse pokes her shoulder. Rose jumps, yanking out her earbuds and grinning when she sees it’s us. “Mom, we could’ve eaten you.”
“It was the one song I turned up, of course. Sometimes you need to blow out your eardrums. What’s going on?”
Jesse motions at her project. “You brought that thing?”
“It’s called a Kelly Kettle. I wanted to try it.” She points to the hole in the base. “You put water in the kettle’s tank, build a fire in here, and it’s supposed to boil in minutes. They say you can use any fuel, and you don’t need a lot of it.”
Rose has a small mound of twigs and mulch beside her, taken from under the trees and bushes around the fairgrounds. She drops a few pieces down the center hole of the kettle. “Once the fire’s going, you feed more fuel down the chimney. You can cook on top of it, too.” She opens a green drawstring bag and fishes out a metal pot and tiny rack that fit into the chimney. “Cool, no?”
We agree it is. “But why are you boiling water?” Holly asks.
“To drink. They ran out of treated water. They need to boil a batch and get more bleach. You guys aren’t drinking from the tap? Even for brushing teeth?”
“No, for the thousandth time,” Jesse says.
“Sorry for trying to keep you alive, smartass. We need to be in the best shape possible in case we have to leave.”
“We won’t have to,” Holly says, her voice higher than usual. “It’ll be over soon, right?”
Rose gazes at the fence with a slight frown, though she covers it with a reassuring smile. “I hope so, baby.”
Holly returns her mom’s smile. Her hands are behind her back, though, and her right thumb and forefinger pick at her left hand. She’s seemed much better since we came here, but it’s possible she’s only gotten better at hiding her fear.
Jesse throws me a look over Holly’s head: What’s with my sister? I shrug, but I suspect Holly has shored up the wall between herself and reality. With her dad alive and well, she’s regained her own unaffected bubble. Or she thinks she has, since she doesn’t know the truth about Rose and Ethan. I see the truth in Rose’s wary expression when he’s near, the way she consistently places herself out of reach as though by chance. I recognize someone avoiding intimacy—I’ve done it a few million times. Holly is observant enough to notice; maybe she’s hiding that, too.
Dad exits the door of our building. “What’s up?”
“I’m boiling water in the Kelly Kettle,” Rose says. “Are you drinking the—”
“I am not drinking the tap water, but I might start if you don’t stop asking me.”
“I’m saving lives here, and this is how you all repay me?”
Dad smiles and crouches to hold his hand above the kettle’s chimney. “Hot.”
“Fire usually is,” Rose says.
He laughs. Their eyes hold for a beat before she looks away, though he takes a moment longer. Rose lifts an earbud from her lap and holds it in Dad’s direction. “C’mere.”
“Why?” he asks.
“You can’t listen from there.”
He lowers himself to the ground. She sticks one earbud in his left ear, the other in her right, and then pulls out her phone. “Do you know My Morning Jacket?”
Dad’s big hands splay on his knees as though he doesn’t know what to do with them. “Sure. They’re great.”
That he knows My Morning Jacket exists is news to me. He liked good music once—Jeremy and I spent hours playing his old CDs and records—but I thought he stopped listening about the same time he got rid of his guitars. Some of my earliest memories are of watching his big fingers skim his guitar’s strings while he sang with me. Those recollections seemed so much like a dream, and so out of character, that I once asked Mom if I’d made them up. She’d assured me they were real, and when I asked why he’d stopped, she gave me a half-sad smile and said, I don’t really know, honey in a tone that matched her expression.
“This song is one of my favorites.” Rose’s finger hovers over her phone before she looks our way. “Don’t you people have work to do?”
We grumble and resume fence patching. Fifty feet down, a spot demands our attention. While we seal it up, I look back. Rose drops a twig into the kettle’s chimney, watching for the plume of steam that means boiling water, while Dad studies her as if he’ll be tested on the subject later. As if she’s a meal he plans to savor.
My stomach roils with a mix of emotions, the strongest being anger and resentment on Mom’s behalf. I have every right to make him feel guilty. I’ve never hesitated to hold something over my father’s head in our unending battle to prove the other wrong. I’d win this in a landslide because it’s too soon, and the wounds too fresh, that no one could blame me.
I watch Dad watch her. When Rose turns to him, his gaze cuts away until whatever she says makes him smile. Not just any smile—an unguarded grin I’ve hardly ever seen before. He’s fucking smitten.
The roiling intensifies, until I think of how broken Dad was, and how Rose has drawn him out of his shell—one Mom didn’t fully drag him out of, except maybe in death. Sometimes it seems like Mom died yesterday. In other ways, it feels like a lifetime. If she were here, she’d remind me that he’s a good man, the way she always did when I railed against him. There were times I hated Dad, but I never once doubted his love for my mother; more importantly, she never doubted it. If what I see is real, he must feel guilty enough.
I don’t hate him anymore, and I don’t want to lose my new father. For the first time in years, I care about his happiness. If it were anyone other than Rose, I might not feel the same, but I can’t—won’t—blame him for his fondness of someone I love, too. I’ve always wished the Winters were family. Granted, I hoped it’d be me and Jesse who were getting it on, but this would be a close second.
I watch a moment longer, long enough for him laugh at whatever she says. Long enough to see Rose’s contented smile, the way her gaze lingers on Dad before she dips her head. And though I know it might break my best friend’s heart, I can’t help but root for him.
When we finish our work, it’s hours later and beginning to rain. We bring our cart and tools to the Auditorium, which sits on the other side of the lot from the Expo Halls. A giant Quonset hut building with a curved wood ceiling inside, it’s stuffed with food and supplies. Toilet paper and cleaning products are stacked beside a collection of bedding, boxes of tools, and shelves full of medicines. Pallets and crates of food are arranged in aisles like a warehouse. About a dozen people are busy organizing stuff they found outside the gates yesterday.
Nora is with Barry as we enter, and she glances at Holly before she turns to a shelf and lowers her head. She still likes Holly. Holly hates her, and Nora clings to a ten-year-old torch. Meanwhile, I could throw myself naked on Jesse and he’d joke about the time he walked in on me coming out of the shower when I was fourteen.
“How’s the fence look?” Barry asks.
“We had to patch a few places,” Jesse says. “Otherwise it looks good.”
“You finished up right in time. The weather’s turning to shit. Maybe we’ll have a movie tonight. You in, Nora?”
Nora shrugs and moves a box from one shelf to the next. She’s freaking moping. Barry wears a perplexed expression and seems about to speak when a uniformed guy sticks his head inside. “Sergeant Wright! Sergeant Carver needs you now.”
He takes off without a goodbye. “Barry seems to like you,” I say to Nora, mainly because I feel sorry for her. “Did you know him before?”
“No.” Nora meets my eyes. Hers are a pretty brown like Holly’s, and they match the freckles sprinkled across her nose. “We just get along. He kind of feels responsible for everyone, steps in when your parents are zombies, I guess. Surrogate dad.” Her laugh is as far from humor as you can get.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I say, wondering what happened. I won’t ask—you don’t force someone to rehash their personal horror.
“
I came down from OSU that day. I was downtown that afternoon, when it started getting crazy.” Nora speaks in a monotonous voice, as though reciting something she’s memorized. “They think people came up from California before the roadblocks, maybe were infected but not turned. It started by the Park Blocks and worked its way over. I made it home, but my parents left a note saying they went out looking for me, so I went looking for them. I saw them both downtown. It was too late.”
“My mom and brother…” is all I say before my voice goes out.
I didn’t see my mother as a zombie—something for which I’m eternally grateful—but the image of Jeremy’s vacant eyes, his sweet expression turned murderous, haunts me. That’s another reason I won’t give Dad grief: I haven’t forgotten that moment after he took care of Jeremy so I wouldn’t have to. He was a shadow of himself, and I never want to see that again.
“I’m sorry, too.” Nora’s eyes gloss over, and I do think she’s sorry. If she was a jerk once upon a time, she isn’t now. “I couldn’t get back home. I ended up at Josie’s house.” She turns to Holly. “You remember Josie?”
“Of course,” Holly says. “Where is she?”
“She didn’t make it.”
Jesse lets out a breath. “Did anyone?”
It’s more of a rhetorical question, but Nora answers, “No one we know. No one I know, at least. Except you guys.” The box of ibuprofen packets she holds is mangled, and she attempts to straighten it out. “That’s pretty much everybody’s story, right? Anyway, I’ll see you at dinner, maybe. I have a lot of stuff to do with all the sick people.”
“All right,” Jesse says. “Come find us if you can.”
Nora returns to her shelves. Holly stands for a moment, watching her back. “I’m sorry about your parents.”
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 48
