by Fitch, E. M.
“Why’s that?”
Emma shrugged. “He just wasn’t as… I don’t know, concerned as I thought he should be. I mean, you were really out of it, mumbling and whatnot, and he was just prancing around.”
“I was mumbling?” Kaylee asked in a whisper, nervous now. “What did I say?”
“I don’t know,” Emma waved dismissively, sitting back on her bed. “Sometimes it was something about pine trees and other times you just kept repeating ‘not from there.’”
“Oh,” Kaylee mumbled, lowering her eyes. She knew exactly what had been going through her mind then. Jack.
Must just be because he was the reason I was hurt.
“Not that it mattered,” Emma continued. “No one knew what you were on about and don’t you think he should have carried you from the start?” she asked, switching subjects right in the middle of her sentence, as she was often prone to do.
“Who?”
“Jack! Back in the cornfield. You were a wobbly mess and he set you on your feet to walk! Jackass.”
“Em—”
“Don’t tell me he’s not, Andrew thinks so too,” she said, as though the fact Andrew agreed settled the matter.
“He made me breakfast,” Kaylee murmured, not sure why she was even mentioning it.
“Andrew?”
“No, Jack. He had honey to put on the oatmeal,” Kaylee explained, looking down to watch as she twisted her fingers together. “We took it to the roof and ate before Andrew came to get us.”
“Hmm,” Emma hummed through her frown as she got up and grabbed the doorknob. “I still say he’s a jackass.”
And as she strode from the room Kaylee heard her say, “But I might take some of that honey!”
~
His grip was warm and calloused and very strong and his eyes had an intensity that pierced you right through, nailing you to the spot.
“Nice to meet you,” Quinton said, the words rumbling from him as he shook Kaylee’s hand. She nodded up at him and returned the pleasantries, his skin a pleasant dark contrast against her pale hand. He was tall, taller than Nick or Bill and when she stood this close Kaylee had to lean back to look into his dark eyes.
“So,” Bill pressed eagerly, the most eager Kaylee had seen him in a while. “Now that we’re all here, what’s your plans?”
This question was most obviously directed at Quinton, who had backed away from Kaylee and taken a seat at the kitchen table. The silence swelled for a moment as Quinton took in the group. Kaylee wasn’t sure if this was for effect or because he was nervous speaking in front of groups. It most certainly wasn’t lack of confidence in his leadership abilities. Quinton exuded leadership. Everything about him from his posture and stance, to his calm demeanor, to the way he spoke with absolute certainty shouted that he was a leader. Andrew was right, there was something about this guy that made you think he was in the military. And maybe just not in the military, but in charge, a captain or lieutenant or whatever they called the men that told everyone else what to do.
The entire group was there, perched in various positions around the kitchen. Nick, Bill, and Anna had joined Quinton at the table while Andrew and Emma had jumped up on the countertops. Jack was leaning against the back window, chewing through another apple. He looked up and winked at Kaylee. She started, jumping from her position in the open doorway and quickly crossed the room to Andrew and her sister. Jack chuckled before taking another bite of his apple. Kaylee leant back against the countertop between Emma and Andrew, the latter knocking her with his knee and grinning.
He must not have seen Jack’s greeting, Kaylee mused, biting her lip after smiling back at him.
“Well,” Quinton started, his deep voice rumbling from him as he shifted in his chair and redirected his piercing gaze to the tabletop. Kaylee decided right then that though leadership truly suited him, he wasn’t all that excited about it. “Jack and I are going to Alaska. We’re starting over. We’ve been through the lower half of the United States. We’ve been making this country livable again.”
“By livable, you mean…” Nick trailed off though it was obviously a question. His features hardened as he spoke.
“Cleaning up the infected,” Jack answered, kicking off the wall and approaching the table. He pulled out a worn, dirty piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans. He threw the map of the Unites States, looking like it had been torn from a textbook and checkered with red and green and yellow squares, on the table in front of them. Bill understood immediately.
“You’re focusing on the places with the highest population densities?” he had asked, though the glint in his eye suggested he already knew the answer to his question.
“Yup,” Jack answered, shrugging.
“We were,” Quinton corrected. “Until we got the idea of Alaska in our heads.”
“So is there anyone there? What have you heard?” Anna had prompted, leaning forward across the table.
“Probably not much more than you. But think about it,” Quinton urged in a low voice and now his eyes lifted from the table to pierce the group around him. Kaylee noticed how each person, with the exception of Jack who was probably immune to him by now, had shifted forward towards Quinton. “It’s dark there for such long periods of time. And when the infection first took hold and spread—”
“October,” Anna whispered, eyes lighting in realization.
“October?” Nick asked, shifting his gaze from across the table towards Kaylee and Emma and back to Quinton. It was very obvious that Nick did not want this kind of talk in front of his daughters and that that desire was warring with his desire for information.
“The sun sets in Barrow, Alaska by November 19th for two months,” Jack answered, grinning as he snatched his map back off the table.
“But is anyone there?” Nick asked, argument in his tone. “Just because it’s dark there doesn’t mean anyone’s left. They could have been eaten just like the rest!” Kaylee had flinched at her father’s angry tone and Emma’s eyes had widened in shock. It was becoming more and more often that Nick would lose control, even in front of his daughters. Kaylee had heard him scream before, heard him rant and argue with Bill, and on one horrible occasion heard him sob as he leant into the window overlooking their old street, but it had been the exception, never the rule. Lately he had been altering between periods of total withdrawal and over reactive anger.
“Does it matter?” Quinton asked, squinting down at Nick from where he suddenly stood. “We could stay holed up, ignoring the world around us, and letting humanity die out; or we could fight. Fight for our land and our right to live free from fear.
“There are places in this world where you don’t have to sleep through the day and live through the night, where tomatoes don’t grow on rooftops, and your daughters could go outside without the fear of being devoured.”
“They’re too young,” Nick snarled. “They’re too young to travel with no guarantees of what’s out there or how to get to it.”
“But there are places—” Jack attempted to continue but Nick cut him off.
“Yes, there are places. If there are still survivors left than there are places where my daughters would be treated as currency, not as people. Do you think I don’t know what the concept of survival could mean for them?” He stole a sideways glance at Kaylee and Emma, both of whom were watching him with carefully blank faces.
“We could protect them,” Quinton offered in a quiet tone.
“Like hell you could!” Nick shouted. Bill placed a restraining hand on Nick’s shoulder.
“Calm down, Nick,” he whispered. “Let’s listen to what they have to say.”
“This isn’t right. I won’t have them auctioned off to the highest bidder,” Nick muttered, pushing away from the table. He got up and paced to the living room. Kaylee knew his forehead would be pressed to the glass of the window, his eyes on the street but his ears still listening to the meeting in the kitchen.
“We’re not like that,” Ja
ck muttered, staring down at his half finished apple, seeming to try to summon the desire to want another bite.
“Even if you’re not,” Anna spoke quietly. “Some will be. We’re not stupid.”
“I have to say I hadn’t really considered it,” Quinton offered in an even voice. “I suppose you’re right. It was never a concern of mine before. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t options and starting over will someday need to be a goal of all humanity, if we are to survive this.”
The noise of a chair being kicked sounded from the living room.
“We think so too,” Bill said, addressing Quinton. “But we know it’s impractical here. We’re just not sure exactly where we would go.”
“If you come with us, we’re—”
“No,” Nick insisted, rushing back into the room, his hands slamming down on the table as he glared towards Quinton. “Did you hear them, Bill? ‘Taking out the infected.’”
“Nick,” Anna warned.
“What does that mean to you exactly?” Nick continued, switching his gaze from Quinton to Jack. “You’re killing them, aren’t you? They’re people and you’re killing them!”
“We’re not.” Jack said evenly, crossing his arms as he stared at Nick with distrust in his gaze. Jack’s jaw was set and his arms tense, the muscles standing in contrast. “Atlanta was the first and I’ll admit, what we did wasn’t right. But we’ve learned from that.”
“Wasn’t right,” Nick sneered, pushing away from the table and pacing the length of the kitchen once again, his eyes darting towards the living room windows.
“We destroyed it, every last part of it," Quinton said and his voice was cold and hard. It was the angriest he had sounded yet. "We won’t be doing that again but we will isolate the largest population areas. The hope is that the food supply will run out and the infected will die off naturally.”
Every eye was once again on Quinton; and Jack, sensing that Quinton had regained control of the meeting, leant back into the wall, his jaw relaxing.
“But let me understand,” Quinton continued, his voice a deep rumble once again. “You don’t kill them? Not ever?”
“They’re people,” Kaylee spoke into the silence of the room in a small voice. Nick spared her one glance before he stopped his pacing, his back to the group. Bill and Anna kept their eyes on the tabletop. Kaylee looked around the little group. “They are,” she insisted. “They’re sick. How is it our right to end their lives?”
Jack opened his mouth to reply but a look from Quinton quelled his response. The silence enveloped them once more.
“Well,” Quinton began. “We had come here for supplies and with your permission will take enough gas to get to the next town. We won’t take any food or medical supplies that we can get elsewhere. As I said, our goal is Alaska. Any of you are welcome to join us, but the plan is to continue isolating towns as we go.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Anna asked. “Isolating towns?”
“It means a lot of explosions,” Jack answered with a grin.
“We destroy all means of escape from each city,” Quinton clarified. “Bridges, major roadways, sometimes we demolish buildings to block the way. The infected are caught within the confines of the city and from there, the food sources dry out.”
“And anyone uninfected left in the city?” Bill asked. Nick scoffed and paced back into the living room.
“We do a complete sweep first. We take all the supplies we can and leave a sign explaining when we were there and where we’re going—”
“Along with a few barrels of gasoline and some medical supplies,” Jack interrupted Quinton.
He nodded. “We leave all this in several stations along the perimeter of the cities. Just in case there are some survivors coming up from the south.”
“And how long will you be staying here?” Anna asked tentatively, looking from Nick’s rigid back to Quinton. He noticed her eyes shift and paused to search each face in the room before he answered. Kaylee didn’t know what he saw in her gaze, she wasn’t sure herself what she was feeling, but it did seem as though he stared at her for an awful long time.
“We’ll give you some time to think about this. Perhaps a week,” he answered softly. “I think I’ll retire now. Jack and I have been scouting all day. Jack?”
“Right behind you, Quinton,” Jack answered cheerfully. And without a backwards glance, the two newcomers left the group to their thoughts.
Chapter Six
“Hold up, that’s an eight thrown on an eight,” Emma said, grabbing Andrew’s wrist as he went to put his card on top of the growing pile. “So, you’re skipped. It’s Kaylee’s turn.”
“This is a stupid game,” Andrew grumbled as he pulled his hand, and his card, back.
“You’re just lucky she didn’t penalize you, she is the President, she could—” Jack cut off and Kaylee looked up to him in confusion, fumbling her hand as she did. She was about to throw her last ten, it would have brought her down to only six cards, though that was still two more than Emma. Jack’s look was all too innocent, an expression Emma shared, and Kaylee cast her eyes around, searching for the source of their synchronization.
“Oh geez,” Andrew mumbled, dropping his cards as he slammed his thumb on the table.
“Thumbs, right,” Kaylee exclaimed, placing her thumb on the edge of the table all too late. Emma laughed and gestured for Andrew to mark Kaylee’s blunder down.
“You are terrible at this,” Jack rumbled underneath a laugh. “You’re actually very lucky we can’t play this with alcohol. You’d be smashed.”
“So, if we have to take extra cards for every mistake we make, how are we ever supposed to catch up?” Andrew asked grumpily. He was frowning as he looked from his cards to the pile in the center of the table. Kaylee had been skipped after she was the last to put her thumb down and now Emma was looking apologetically at Jack.
“Sorry Jack, it’s not that I don’t like you or anything.” Emma’s grin was just a bit too smug as she drew one of her remaining four cards and threw it towards the middle. It was an eight. Jack grinned with his hands raised in defeat.
“So, it’s my turn now?” Andrew asked, the lack of excitement evident in his tone. Kaylee grinned towards her sister, knocking her with her knee. It was extremely obvious that Andrew was not enjoying the game Jack introduced to them, though whether that was the fact that he couldn’t seem to win a hand or because a steady dislike of Jack seemed to be growing Kaylee couldn’t be sure.
Kaylee couldn’t seem to make her mind up about Jack. One minute he was very nearly annoying the life out of her and the next she found him strangely… fascinating.
The things he had done! Of course, Kaylee knew they could just be stories, tall tales and fabrications designed to impress her group. But Quinton never seemed to contradict him and though Jack told the stories with conviction, it never seemed like bragging.
He and Quinton had literally been a two man wrecking crew through the lower half of the United States. Once they had decided to decimate the areas of highest infection contamination, no city was too big for them. Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville, Fort Worth, Tulsa, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Pittsburg were all in the process of becoming “livable” again; at least that what Quinton called it. He continued to insist that they were making the world livable again, Jack just seemed to enjoy blowing things up.
Kaylee wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it all. In this process of taking their world back, Jack and Quinton were destroying some of the very best things that civilization had built up, weren’t they? Was Cleveland’s Terminal Tower or St. Louis’s Gateway Arch still standing? Or were those skylines forever altered? Did Memphis and Nashville still hold their many museums, or did some become rubble to contain the roaming infected. They were questions Kaylee both wanted to ask and was afraid to have answered. There were moments when she wondered if it mattered either way, it wasn’t likely she be going to see for herself. But it did feel almost tragi
c, that these places where people had lived and worked and fought and died for were now nothing more than graveyards, a few of those not-yet-dead still wandering over them.
Andrew had played his hand, and Kaylee had fumbled until she was able to throw a King, Emma had frowned at her but also threw a King.
“Again, sorry, Jack,” Emma muttered. “She left me no choice.” Jack grinned good-naturedly and everyone else had to knock out of their turn.
Emma’s opinion of Jack had changed in the last three days. His friendly nature and casual charm had won her over easily and it wasn’t unusual to see them chatting and joking. Unfortunately it was usually at Kaylee’s, or even worse, Andrew’s expense. Andrew didn’t take well to it at all, but Kaylee knew no harm was meant, at least on her sisters’ part. Quinton had also helped to soften Emma. He had been teaching her the finer points of handgun and rifle tactics and she had taken to it with unchecked enthusiasm. Of course, their father had no idea that Emma was spending so much of her free time on the roof taking pot shots at parked cars.
Nick had holed himself up in his bedroom. Kaylee thought he was most likely pacing and staring. He did come out for meals and for the weekly chores. There was still crop tending, canning, fruit dehydration, safety checks, and raids to be done, as well as the normal maintenance that had become necessary throughout the year. The rainfall had been less as of late and Bill and Nick had set up collection points in other locations than the top of their building, the hinges on the main doors were rusting and cracking from the general abuse outside, and the one generator they had was breaking down regularly now when they did monthly tests.
And, of course, there was the general undercurrent of argument that Quinton and Jack’s arrival had brought. Nick remained adamant against joining them. Anna and Bill thought there’d be no other time.
“Nick,” Bill had argued in a hushed tone the night after Quinton’s speech. “There’ll be no second opportunity if we let this pass. We can’t stay here, they’re our best shot of getting out.”
