by Fitch, E. M.
The tears that had threatened before now filled Kaylee’s eyes, they made her head throb. “I know,” she whispered.
“And then,” Anna continued in a softer voice, “you might not mind so much.”
Kaylee offered a weak laugh and brought a hand to her face, wiping away any moisture as she pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Trust me,” Anna answered, smirking slightly now as she stood and crossed the room. Kaylee rolled her eyes but nodded not only for Anna’s sake but to facilitate a faster end to the conversation.
“Are you coming or what?” a loud voice echoed through the closed door and Kaylee huffed in exasperation.
“Shh! I’m coming,” she hissed, getting out of the bed before turning to yank the covers back in place and bending to retrieve her shoes.
Jack knocked loudly on the door and Kaylee jumped. “He’s going to wake everyone up,” she complained. Anna merely hummed in agreement, not nearly as irritated as Kaylee thought she should be.
A second loud knock caused her to grit her teeth and slam her shoes on the bed before she turned for the door.
“What?” she huffed, wrenching the door halfway open so she could glare at a smug-looking Jack. “There are people in here still asleep, you know. You don’t have to be so loud.”
“I thought you said you were coming,” he mocked-whispered and Kaylee growled before slamming the door in his face. She heard a laugh on the other side.
“Jack seems nice,” she heard Anna mumble and she turned to stare incredulously at her. “Impetuous maybe, but—”
“He’s an ass!”
Anna’s eyes popped open at Kaylee’s statement and Kaylee huffed before sinking back on her made bed to pull on her shoes.
He is an ass! I’ve known him only a few hours and already he’s proven to be arrogant and self-serving, obnoxious and rude, and probably some kind of predator, watching me when I’m clearly in bed, no shirt…
Kaylee grit her teeth and tried to ignore the quiet laughter Anna was attempting to muffle. She dragged her fingers through her hair and pulled it back, wincing slightly when her hands brushed against the bump on her forehead, and muttered a “thanks” to Anna as she strode out the door.
Chapter Four
“Oatmeal okay? You don’t have much here in the way of breakfast.”
Kaylee blinked as she entered the kitchen, finding Jack leaning out the window and fixing a small batch of oatmeal over an open flame.
“We’ll have to fix that though. Ever thought of baking some bread? It wouldn’t be too difficult and the ingredients should be relatively easy to find. Quinton and I have managed it a few times, it’s no Wonder Bread, but it’ll do.” His tone was light and conversational as he spooned the contents into chipped mugs.
“You made breakfast?” Kaylee asked, her brow wrinkling. It had always been her job and no one other than Emma had ever even offered to help.
“Sure. Why, not hungry?” he asked, offering her a mug with a spoon sticking from the hot cereal. She took it with a shy grin.
“No, I am,” she answered, watching him as he moved to a bag stowed in the corner and pulled out a small, plastic, bear-shaped bottle. “But no one’s made me breakfast in over a year.”
He laughed. “The men here are that useless, hmm? Honey?”
Kaylee had opened her mouth to argue with him, intending on telling him that the men had other things they had to do in the morning and it was the least she could do to get breakfast started, it was one of the only things she felt truly capable of doing. But his last statement had caught her off guard and she found herself eyeing the bottle he was now offering her with curiosity instead.
“I have a bit of a sweet tooth,” he added, shaking the bottle in an effort to get her to take it. Kaylee felt her eyes widen as her fingers curled around the tiny bear. It had been a very long time since she had any honey.
“Yes, thank you,” she mumbled, pouring the syrup in scant amounts over her food. Just the sight of the golden hue mixed in with her brown oatmeal was absolutely mouthwatering. He grinned at her before squeezing a generous amount on his own food and taking a large bite.
“C’mon,” he said through a mouth full of food, nodding his head towards the door. She held onto her mug and followed him, her brow creasing in confusion.
“Where are we going?” she whispered once she had followed him halfway up the stairs.
“The roof,” he answered, not bothering to stop or look back. Kaylee frowned. She hated being on the roof in the middle of the day; the infected were always so active and loud.
“Jack, wait,” she said, pausing him as he rounded the corner to ascended the second flight of stairs. He looked back to her in curiosity. “Let’s stay in here. The roof is—”
“You can’t hide away from them all day long. It’s not healthy to never see the sun, look how white you are.”
Kaylee’s eyes flew from her pale arms to Jack’s deep, olive skin and she grit her teeth. Yes, it was true that her skin had seen tanner days. But she wasn’t hiding from them; the noises just… annoyed her. But by the time she had looked back up, Jack was opening the door to the roof and staring back at her.
“You coming?”
She frowned but her feet moved forward, propelling her up the stairs to where he held the door open for her. He smiled as she passed him.
“See? Not so bad, is it?” he asked, smirking.
The sun was warm, even for the season, and Kaylee closed her eyes as the rays flit over her face. Before the infection had hit and spread, she used to spend countless hours in the sun: playing in the park as a child, tanning with her friends, the occasional family trip to the beach, even watching the school’s soccer and baseball teams. She didn’t realize quite how much she had missed the warm glow.
Jack had walked away from her, either bored with her vacant expression or recognizing that she needed a moment alone. He was now examining the plants they had growing in the boxes on the roof. The tomatoes had lost all their fruit by now, and the plants sat there browning, readying for their winter’s hibernation. Jack had wandered down the rows and Kaylee caught up with him as he was eyeing an empty patch of soil.
“There were carrots there, but they’re out of season now,” she offered. “My dad, Bill, and Andrew set all this up and Emma and I tend it. We have eggplant and squash; tomatoes, obviously; carrots; green beans; and cucumbers. All things we can grow in the shallow dirt here. The corn and the fruit need more room.”
“Fruit?” he asked, his eyebrows rose hopefully as he turned to regard her.
“Sure,” she shrugged. “You had an apple before, didn’t you?”
He hummed in response and strode over to the side of the roof, peering in the direction of the old baseball field.
“Any oranges?” he asked, looking to Kaylee over his shoulder. She shook her head and his shoulders sagged just the smallest bit. “Too bad,” he sighed, walking over to one of the two camp chairs they always kept on the roof and sinking into it. He eyed her and nodded to the empty chair beside him.
“It’s what I miss the most,” he said as she joined him. He began shoveling mouthfuls of oatmeal and his next words were mumbled as a result. “The oranges, I mean. There were plenty in Georgia, not so much up here.”
Kaylee hummed through a mouthful of oatmeal and his words triggered a memory.
“You said you weren’t from Georgia.”
"I didn't, you did," he countered with a grin. She rolled her eyes and he continued. “I’m not really. My parents sent me there to school when things started to get bad. I’m from New York, originally.”
She made a non committal grunt of acknowledgement.
He lowered his spoon and looked at her, amusement shining in his eyes. “How’d you know?”
Kaylee frowned as she carefully took another bite of her breakfast. Her memory of last night was fuzzy at best and all she could really recall was that what he’d said hadn’t see
med to fit somehow.
“I didn’t really, I guess your accent gave you away.”
He nodded as he swallowed the last of the oatmeal. “People say that, said that,” he coughed lightly as he corrected himself. “But I’m surprised you picked up on it, your head all smashed as it was.”
Kaylee huffed and ignored him, scooping the last of her meal out of the mug and chewing it slowly. It was such a rare treat to find something other than maple syrup in which to drown the drab meal.
“Still, I miss the oranges though,” he continued, setting his mug down and stretching his arms over his head. “Not that it’ll matter much soon, not where I’m going.”
A surge of panic overtook Kaylee and she turned to face him.
Where he’s going…
He couldn’t be going anywhere. He was here, with them, wasn’t it going to stay like that now? They hadn’t seen anyone for over two years and at this point Kaylee felt that no matter how obnoxious and annoying a person might be losing them would just be intolerable. And what about his friend? Kaylee didn’t even know him, hadn’t seen him yet, and still felt as though his departure would be a loss. They had finally found people, how could they be left behind now?
“Where you’re going? But, you’re not… I mean you can’t—”
“What leave?” he asked, cocking his head as he looked at her, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Can’t stay here forever either.”
“Well, I know, but—”
“We’re looking for people. We’re looking to start over, somewhere far from any of the infected,” he answered, leaning back into the chair and closing his eyes, his face soaking up the last rays of the season.
“We’re people,” Kaylee offered weakly, her eyes still staring at his features. His face was relaxed as he laughed.
“You are, but what about the,” his arms spread before him and Kaylee turned to look out into the sky. She blinked as the sounds of the city assaulted her and she wondered how she could not have heard it before this. The infected swarmed below them, occasionally running into the side of their building, scrambling in the roads, and fighting for food.
“They’re everywhere,” she muttered, sinking lower into her chair and now unable to block the noise from her mind. “There’s no escaping them.”
“I disagree,” he said calmly, turning his head to squint at her. “You all have yourselves so locked up in here, in the middle of a city, where they surround you all the time, you don’t know what it’s like in the countryside, in the woods. My school was swarming with them, biting and devouring everything in sight and I barely made it out alive. I had no one when I escaped, no food, no plan. But I found the trees, learned to hunt a bit and fish. Sure I was skin and bones by the time Quinton scooped me up, but I wasn’t eaten, I wasn’t infected. They don’t run to those places.”
“How long?” Kaylee asked, her voice quiet as she attempted to imagine foresting for food and being all alone, as Jack had been. She shivered even though the sun was quite warm.
“Six months,” he answered and his voice was just as soft as hers had been. “It was a long six months.”
Kaylee nodded and her eyes drifted to her hands as she reflexively open and closed them around her empty mug.
Six months.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine how horrible that must have been. Six months with no help, no contacts, no knowing if anyone else was out there or where was safe. Six months without speaking. She couldn’t even imagine going anywhere near that amount of time without her father or Emma.
Or Andrew, she added as an afterthought.
“I’m sorry,” she offered. “It must have been horrible.”
“It wasn’t great. But it’s different if you’re with someone. Now I have Quinton at least,” he conceded, but he smiled as he turned to look at her. She wanted to ask about his family but had a sinking feeling in her gut not to. They lived in New York. Kaylee knew what had happened there: an absolute massacre. “What about you? How’d you get stuck in a firehouse? I would have picked a high rise myself.”
Kaylee sighed, her eyes leaving his and flitting over the horizon to the high rise they had been holed up in. She raised her arm to point. “See that one over there? Count ten stories up and six from the right and you’ll find my old room. We had waited there, just like Red Cross told us all to, but…”
The infected got in, had been in really when they closed the place up. It was still spreading slowly and people were still hoping for a cure. Her neighbors and friends had refused to turn their sick relatives in and as a result it only took a few days before the infection spread and the apartments were overrun.
Kaylee went very quiet as she remembered the night they had fled. The halls had been full of twitching bodies. She remembered very clearly running past a man who had been bleeding from the mouth, though whether it was his blood or the blood of one of his meals to this day she didn’t know. Fingers grabbed and teeth snapped and she remembered her father carrying Emma and her mother pushing her along and Andrew running from his hall to catch up with them and Bill and Anna slamming fire doors as they all passed safely through. They had practically flown down the stairs, leaping bodies as they awoke, their eyes dark yellow, their hands convulsing.
The lobby was filled with people rushing for the door and the infected were swarming around them causing a scrum at the exit. Kaylee remembered turning to see a ten-year-old boy that she had passed out Halloween candy to not so long ago, climbing over the crowds and sinking his teeth into the neck of his father. Blood was slick on the tiled floor and the group slid and tripped, before turning to follow Bill who had taken a fire extinguisher and smashed out a window. They ran for the twilight of the street, ran from screaming and terror to the abandonment of the pavement.
Kaylee’s mother Susan was the last to make it to the window and she stopped suddenly at the broken glass. She had locked eyes with her husband first, Emma cradled in his arms, her head tucked into his shoulder, before turning to Kaylee. She had smiled weakly as she showed Kaylee the bite mark on her arm but the smile faded as her hand betrayed her with that first twitch. Fear replaced the gentle assurances that her mother had been trying to convey and Kaylee had sobbed before Andrew had grabbed her around the waist and tugged, hauling her to the firehouse and her new home.
“They got in?” Jack asked, startling Kaylee from her reminiscing and dragging her forcefully back to the present.
“They were already in,” she whispered, angry at the tears that were forming as the memories assaulted her.
“You lost someone,” he said and Kaylee could feel his eyes on her but she refused to meet them.
“Hasn’t everyone?” she asked evasively, turning away and patting her sleeve over her damp eyes.
“But you lost someone that night,” he prompted and Kaylee let out a small breath before turning her eyes on him. He was watching her intently, not a trace of judgment in his features.
“My mother,” she answered in a soft tone. “She was bitten and stayed behind.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, offering a condoling smile. She nodded and took a deep breath before returning her gaze to her empty mug, the spoon rattled against the side as her hands shook slightly.
“So where are you going? Somewhere cold?” she asked after a few loaded moments in attempt to change the subject. Jack laughed and Kaylee looked up in surprise.
“You are damn perceptive!” he said, grinning at her. “Somewhere cold. Because no oranges, right?” Kaylee nodded sheepishly and he laughed again.
“Well, you’re right. We’re going somewhere cold.”
“We?”
“Quinton and me,” he clarified, though his gaze had now turned on her and he lifted one eyebrow. “Unless you’d care to join us? I mean I have to say, I thought I’d be disappointed when I finally saw you with a shirt on but I’m not, you’re still very pretty. I don’t think I’d mind you tagging along.” He smirked at her and Kaylee’s jaw dropped.<
br />
“You… you—” she spluttered at him, her cheeks heating up but he interrupted her.
“Handsome bastard?”
“Just bastard would do,” Kaylee muttered, crossing her arms as she set her gaze on the far wall. Jack was unaffected by her shift in attitude and he laughed as she frowned.
“So, for how long do I have to tolerate your presence?” she asked through set teeth.
“What, you mean your not tempted by my offer?
Kaylee scowled, turning in her chair to face him as she answered but was interrupted by a throat clearing in the doorway.
“Am I interrupting?” Andrew was standing in the doorframe, shifting from foot to foot with nervous energy even though his eyes were bleary with too little sleep. Kaylee smiled widely as he eyed them suspiciously. She jumped up, throwing her mug into the now empty camp chair where it rattled against the spoon. Running towards him with her arms outstretched, Andrew’s mouth finally quirked up into a grin.
“You’re okay?” he breathed into her, holding her tightly as he asked.
“Mhmm,” Kaylee murmured, pulling back a bit and looking him over. “You overreacted, didn’t you?”
Andrew’s eyes dipped to the rooftop and he smiled sheepishly. “I was worried, so was everyone.”
“Silly boy,” she chastised lightly, grinning up at him.
“Anyone else up?” Jack interrupted, standing and stretching before walking over to the pair. Kaylee felt a flush creep up her neck without really understanding why and she pulled out of Andrew’s embrace, he letting her go only grudgingly.
“Your friend,” Andrew answered, his tone had a slight edge. “But no one else. We don’t normally get up so early.”
“So I was told,” Jack said, scooping up Kaylee’s mug and spoon with his own and turning once to scan the sky. “Nice clear day though and we have some scavenging to do, so…” he trailed off and headed in the direction of the stairs.
“You will consider my offer though, right?” he asked, turning suddenly to look at Kaylee from the mouth of the stairwell. She grit her teeth.
