by Fitch, E. M.
It was odd though, she had never seen it circled with the rest.
Yet, she could plainly see when she looked inside, someone was definitely using it. The back was filled with cans. Kaylee thought to reach in and take a few before mentally chastising herself. They could find food. Just because they were going to steal a car, didn't mean they had to start stealing everything they needed. But even as the admonishment went through her mind, something else caught her eye.
They weren't normal cans. On first inspection, in the dark, they seemed to be. But the shiny metal sides were covered in something other than labels. Duct tape. They were all wrapped in the stuff. She almost missed it. And there was something else, something that reminded her of the fuses she and Jack set in her hometown. Each can had a short, black fuse sticking out at odd angles, like cherry bombs stuffed in soup cans. They weren't alone either, half a dozen boxes covered the floor of the van. Dynamite. The long tubes were packed in sawdust, fuses already curling from the ends.
Before Kaylee could inspect further, Andrew tugged on her arm. The men across the street were breaking up. It was now or never.
The final jeep in the line was twenty yards ahead, parked on the side of the road. It was alone, waiting for the signal to pull out. Its driver, Jim, was just where Kaylee and Andrew had last seen him, leaning against the side of the jeep, staring off into the woods. A cigarette hung out of his mouth. A thin curl of smoke lingered in the air around his head, a bizarre halo.
He barely even looked over as Andrew's fist landed on his skull.
It sounded so loud, his body collapsing to the pavement, Andrew's fist coming down after him; but in reality, it was muffled. His cry was cut off, something in the way Andrew was hitting him stopped him from yelling. Anna slid into the driver's seat, Kaylee sitting next to her. She opened her mouth to call for Andrew to get in when Anna turned to her.
"I can't drive stick," Anna hissed. Without waiting for Kaylee to say that she could, Anna launched herself from the driver's seat. Jim had just staggered to his feet, Andrew wheezing. Anna's fist connected with his jaw and sent him flying back down, her tiny body landing on top of his. Kaylee had enough time to see Andrew's boot disappear into Jim's chest, hear the whoosh of air as it was forced from his chest, before she twist the keys in the ignition and felt the engine come to life in the vibrations of the steering wheel.
When Anna and Andrew jumped into the jeep, Anna in the back seat and Andrew right next to her, Jim was still faintly stirring on the ground. Alive, though hurt. The tires crunched over gravel as Kaylee directed it onto the road.
She didn't turn the headlights on, she didn't dare. She pressed hard on the gas and the jeep lurched, revving loudly. The gear shift caught when she tried to shift, but only for a moment. They shot forward, a dark streak in the night.
If they weren't so focused on escape, on getting away as fast as possible, if the lights had been on or they had been more careful, she might have seen him.
The jeep was fast, yet everything it drove towards seemed frozen, like Kaylee was watching a movie in slow motion. She caught a glimpse of him in jerky frames. A look of shock and surprise at the jeep hurtling towards him, the barrel of a gun, a Glock like hers, rising up to point at them. He wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, no jacket, and for a bizarre, unreal moment, Kaylee thought how stupid that was, when it was clearly too cold to be without a coat.
She jerked the wheel, moving it fractionally away from him, but the moonlight glinted off the barrel and without thought, she pulled the wheel back. Her foot was like lead, pushing, pushing, and she hit him before he could get a shot off, before he could even try to stop them.
His body connected with the front grill of the jeep and rolled. She saw, with too much clarity, the moment his skull connected with the corner of the windshield, denting the bone with the force of the jeep's frame.
His body landed with a thud on the pavement behind them, rolling to a lifeless stop. It all happened so fast, that by the time Kaylee processed it, his body was barely distinguishable against the dark concrete, a blur on the pavement. The wind whipped passed the windshield, hissing in her ear. She could hear the faint pants from Andrew next to her. His hands were pressed to his side. Anna was trembling. Kaylee could feel it in the way her headrest quivered where she gripped.
"Is he dead?" Kaylee asked wildly. "Did I just kill him?”
A familiar feeling swamped her, rushed from her stomach and through her throat. The car swerved, her fingers slipping on the steering wheel. Andrew leaned over and caught it in time as she veered to the side of the road. She was pushing through the door before the jeep rolled to a stop, tripping over her feet as vomit spewed from her mouth.
"It's okay," Anna murmured, getting out of the car and putting a reassuring hand on Kaylee's back.
"Kay, we have to go," Andrew muttered, now seated behind the wheel.
She hardly heard him. Her eyes were stinging, her gut roiling. Anger, fierce and hot and stronger than she had ever felt before boiled inside her. There was a rock, just below her, the size of a baseball. She was hunched over it as the last of her stomach contents were forced from her. She stooped and picked it up. She threw it as hard as she could at the nearest tree, watching as the bark splintered off on impact. She threw another and another. And when Andrew called out again, she turned. She kicked the tire, brought her fists down again and again on the hood of the car until the metal bent and her palms ached.
"Kay," Anna murmured, finally bringing her arms around her whole chest and squeezing tightly. Her arms were shaking but firm, too. Kaylee went to fight her off but deflated, nearly sinking to the pavement before Anna lifted her up and pulled her off the side of the road and into the back seat. Andrew hit the gas and the car went forward, bouncing over the curb.
The car was silent except for the whistling of the wind. It blew through the cabin, sweeping her hair back and then dragging strands passed her eyes. She stared forward, through the cracked windshield.
"I'm sorry," she said after a few miles. "I used to be a good person.”
"You're still a good person," Andrew said gently.
Kaylee didn't bother to answer.
Chapter Thirteen
"So, I'm your sister-in-law, huh?" Emma muttered, twisting to get her jeans back up and fastened. They had stopped, for the first time in hours, after Jack complained he had to take a piss. The men of the New North America grunted, indicating that he should go right ahead and do so on the side of the road. It was only after a very pointed look towards Emma, who was squirming herself, that they let her go off the road. Not too far, of course, and not alone, which Emma would have preferred. Still, though embarrassing, it was infinitely better to relieve herself in front of Jack instead of those men.
Jack's back was to her and she kept turned away, aware of the sounds of his urination.
"Yeah, well, I thought it'd sound more serious, you know?" he answered.
"So it's not real.”
"Well, it would be. At least for me," Jack said. He finished up and Emma heard his zipper being pulled. "But when your sister finds us, let me ask her first.”
Emma couldn't help a small and pained smile at that. She kept trying to tell herself, this is what we wanted. They were headed north to find others, find the best chance of survival with a pocket of people who would have been least affected at the outbreak. That's why the goal was Alaska.
And here they were, arriving in the New North America.
The men had told them little, but enough, of the place they were taking them. The group had been out scavenging, but as soon as the explosion sounded they had been ordered to check it out. Their base camp was only a few hours walk away.
It was close to how they had envisioned it. Over two years ago, when the infection first swept the world, the northern most part of the continent wasn't much affected. The worst problem was the lack of supplies. People got sick, may died of disease and starvation. But some made it through. Food was still scarce
though so, slowly, people starting migrating south. But they were smart about it.
"We built a wall, a huge one, you could probably see this beast from space!" said one of the men. He was short with brown skin and brown eyes and hair so black that the coating of road dust showed plainly. His name was Marco. No one refuted him, though Emma still thought it was probably a bit of an exaggeration.
They kept building, pushing the fences out further and further. The wall was the most solid, but from there, fences rippled out, circling ever further. They moved down the coast, pushing inland and south and killing every infected caught within the fences.
"There aren't as many of us left," Marco went on to say. "Started with a few thousand. But we're down from that now.”
A few thousand humans. The thought was staggering. That was enough, enough to start over, to clean up the world, to save it. Emma and Jack were floored. And they were less scared than before.
The NNA had strict rules. There was a procedure to follow, they explained to Emma and Jack. First step: secure new arrivals. Second step: integration.
"It's less scary than it sounds," a man named Corey grunted. He caught Emma's eye and then shifted uncomfortably, moving towards the front of the marching line.
It wasn't wooded where they were, mostly fields and the occasional smattering of houses. They saw the fence coming from a distance away. Emma wasn't sure it wouldn't be seen from space.
It was massive, concrete and brick and chain link all meshed together, but the gate they had built at the center looked like something out of Jurassic Park, something that could ward off a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The two hung doors were wooden, like thick reinforced barn doors, only several stories high and wide enough to fit a tanker truck through. The columns supporting it were concrete and thicker than the length of Emma's body.
The fence sloped down from there, sweeping from the highest point to a more modest twenty feet high. It was a patchwork of ingenuity after the massive gate, parts welded into place, all kinds of materials used to keep the infection out of this protected little part of the world. It went as far as Emma could see in both directions, though her eye kept getting drawn back to the entrance.
"Pretty impressive, huh?" Marco said, sidling up to Emma. He nudged her casually with his elbow, his eyebrows bouncing up and down on his forehead. Emma cringed away and then remembered herself, smiling in apology. "That's the base camp for this winter. There's a few of them, gates I mean, that size. Wherever we end up for the winter, we build a giant entrance like that, easier to come and go when we get new machinery.”
"What happens to the old gates?" Emma asked. She envisioned the old wall crumbling, the press of the infected too much for it to handle without people manning it.
But that was not, as Marco explained, the reality. Behind each gate, all six of them, there were small towns. People had chosen to stay, live, raise families, and keep the wall intact. There were many different jobs and each individual in the community was assigned one, some were Scroungers, like Marco and the rest of this group, but there were cooks and laundresses, garbage men, handymen, builders, farmers, and a group of people dedicated to clearing the fence, patching up the holes, and cleaning the infected that collapsed against it.
It wasn't until they were almost directly beneath the entrance that Emma realized the gate wasn't their only defense.
"Watch your step here," Marco cautioned, offering a hand to steady Emma. She thanked him but didn't grab for his outstretched fingers. Her eyes were downwards, looking through the grates that stretched without end from were she stood to the opening gate. The doors were opening slowly, a single man stepping out and calling to their group.
"Who do you have there?" the stranger called. Jack waved and introduced them but Emma couldn't look up from the grates.
The New North America had dug a pit, a large one, there would have been no way to jump across it, and filled it with infected people. They roamed, knocking into each other, snapping their teeth. Their bodies were emaciated, all sharp angles and protruding bones, and they began to crowd before Emma, their bony and broken hands reaching up, some able to stick their fingers through the grate to scrape at Marco's shoe. He moved aside without even looking down, obviously accustomed to this.
The men started walking across, the pitch and intensity of the infected shifting as they did, they followed like sharks under water, snarling up at the boots that walked above them. Jack followed them slowly, after a look back at Emma. She froze.
It was Marco who came back for Emma.
"You okay?" he asked, looking from her to his feet. An older biter, probably in his sixties when he turned, was reaching up for them. His fingernail caught on the grate and slowly peeled off his finger, the black flesh underneath giving it up with ease. The deaden bit of nail hung off his finger at a right angle. Emma shuddered and looked up.
"You use them like this? For what, defense? From who?”
"Other people," Marco answered, shrugging in sheepish acknowledgement. "It's our moat.”
"But if they can't get out, how-“
Marco looked towards the gate and waved. In answer, a section of the grate was peeled back towards the wall, retracted, like a gym floor hiding away a pool underneath. The men still walking across gave it a wide berth. The infected below shifted though, heading towards the opening, waiting for someone to slip.
"It opens?" Emma asked in a whisper. Marco nodded.
"But only when and where we decide it does," he answered. "C'mon, it's time to meet the Council."
~
That night, Emma dreamed of shifting grates and floors opening to swallow her whole, a pit of rotting teeth and yellow eyes waiting to tear her to pieces.
Jack was already awake when she shot up.
"You okay?" he asked, looking over at her. The New North America had set up for the winter in the remains of an old summer camp. Tucked behind the massive gate, a collection of long cabins, some smaller ones, a mess hall, even an office sat on the edge of a modest lake. It was stocked with fish, or so Marco said, and the water was clean enough to drink. It was the perfect set up for a group this size, a great place to wait out the winter. The cabin they had been offered for the night was small, only one room really. The lantern Jack sat by illuminated the entirety of it. There was a wash station with a jug of cold, clean water, some packaged food, an old arm chair, a wood stove, and one large bed. Jack made her take the bed. Apparently they were in one of the married bunks. Jack had insisted after Emma had another mild panic attack when she was told she would be assigned to the women's dorms.
"I'm fine," she murmured, getting out of bed and pouring herself a glass of water. It was an odd sensation, drinking out of a glass, when for so long she had been slurping from plastic jugs and water bottles. It felt clean, and oddly familiar in a homey sort of way.
When they first arrived, they had been taken directly to the Council. It consisted of two men and two women. Emma and Jack sat facing the four of them, the only people in the office the Council used as their headquarters. Chairs were stacked around the edge of the room, though only two were placed before the Council's long table. Emma assumed the space doubled as a meeting hall, or even possibly for some kind of entertainment.
No one had said any one person was in charge, but there was a subtle deference, Emma thought, for one of the men, Harris. He was balding, with only wisps of white hair at his temples. He stood straight and tall, like a rod was fused to his spine; even after he sat, he was stiff and formal. He spoke little, allowing the others to orient Emma and Jack, and maybe it was that, his quiet nature and stiff posture, the way his eyes seemed to focus and absorb information that Emma and Jack didn't even want to offer. Or maybe it was the shifting of the others, the way they seemed to orient themselves around him, always glancing in his direction before committing to an answer. Either way, it was clear to Emma, there may be a Council, but Harris was the leader here.
The orientation itself was straightforward and
simple. There were rules, many of them, it seemed, but it was all so much like before, like Emma was a child again, that they seemed pretty commonplace, almost expected. It reminded her of the old movies she had seen as a kid, the ones where young women lived in boarding houses and had curfews and expected behaviors. Only these rules of conduct applied to the whole town.
It was Marco who explained to her why they were in place at all. With downcast eyes, he filled her in after the Council had released them. Before there were rules, before they even began their expansion down south, there had been people who took advantage of loss of government and police force. People were hurt, scared. It was Harris, not that this surprised Emma, who insisted they needed conduct rules. Miranda, Samuel, and Carla agreed. They named themselves leaders, the new Council, and the New North America was born.
Most of the rules were as expected. No murder, no theft, no attacking one another. Some seemed like they were out of another century. There were dorms for the men and separate dorms for the women. There were smaller homes and cabins, like the one Emma and Jack were in, reserved for married couples and families. There were nightly curfews and penalties for not getting to your assigned bunk on time. It seemed a little extreme to Emma, policing people's private behavior like that. Though Marco said, when she mentioned it, that things hadn't been good without it.
Marco had been kind, almost too kind, Emma thought. Well-intentioned and sweet, though she wondered if that was because he was just being nice, or perhaps that even though they had hundreds of people to live with, single women might still be a commodity. She tensed after she realized this. That was not an option for her, even taking Andrew out of the picture completely.
"I hope they get here soon," Emma murmured, stirring under her blanket. There was a pop from the wood stove as the flames found a pocket of sap in one of the dead branches. Jack nodded, looking thoughtful. She wasn't sure why, but since they arrived she had had a burning feeling that her sister and Andrew were still alive, that they had seen the explosion and were on their way with Anna and Bill. She couldn't explain it, except for maybe that seeing so many other people alive, living and well, had stirred some kind of hope for humanity that she didn't even realize she still possessed. She still couldn't be positive that she wasn't the youngest person left alive, a title she had joked with her sister about so often. Still, there were more people here than she had seen since the outbreak of the infection. The thought drove her wild with hope.
