by Cross, Amy
“Why?” I ask, following and starting to do as I was told. “To sabotage it and make sure that no-one else can ever use it again?”
“To make it start, dummy,” she replies. “It's a potent little mix that'll give the truck some real power. I remember coming up with it years ago. Some asshole kept laughing at me, telling me it'd never work. I soon wiped the smile off his face, though. The best part is, I never explained the formula to him. He was begging me by the end, but I didn't feel like telling him anything. I'm sure he's dead by now. I hope he is, anyway.”
I watch as she finishes pouring the bottle into the tank, and then I take my turn. The bottle is heavy and unwieldy, and I struggle to keep from spilling half the oil onto the tarmac.
“Don't worry,” she says, “there's more than enough now. And it's not as if we'll be able to get this piece of junk much further down the road anyway. We only need to get it to Boston.”
“You seriously want to go to Boston?” I ask. “After everything that's happened?”
“I want to walk into the lion's den. I'm dying anyway, so I might as well see what's going on.”
“But Patterson -”
“Bill Patterson is dead, Thomas.”
“I saw him!”
She sighs.
“I swear,” I continue, even though we've had this conversation several times this morning. “Right at the end, as we were driving away, I saw him coming out of the hospital's main door.”
“He's dead.”
“I saw him!”
“And I killed him, so I think I should know!” She sighs again. “I drove a blade into his brain, Thomas. That's a very reliable way to kill a man. Even an idiot like Patterson. I mean, I half-suspected that his brain was in his ass, anyway, but that's beside the point. He's dead. He's gone. He's expired.”
I want to tell her that she's wrong, but there's no point. Everything she says makes sense, and I know I saw him die. At the same time, I swear I also saw General Bill Patterson at the top of the hospital's front steps. I guess it's possible that he used the zombie sickness to save himself in some way, but even that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I guess the most likely explanation, all things considered, is that I was simply wrong. At the same time, I remember the sight of him so clearly, and I still can't quite ignore something that I saw with my own eyes.
Suddenly hearing a bumping sound, I turn just in time to see Carter clambering into the truck and positioning herself in the driver's seat.
“Maybe we need to start thinking about a plan B,” I tell her. “So far, there's no -”
Before I can finish, she turns the key in the ignition and to my surprise the engine starts rumbling to life. I wait, convinced that it'll cut out, but finally after a few seconds the noise becomes steady and I realize that Carter was telling the truth when she said she could Get this thing up and running.
“Are you going to stand there looking like an idiot all afternoon?” she asks, turning to me with a self-satisfied smile. “Or are you going to fetch Elizabeth and Polly so that we can set off?” She pauses, and then her smile grows. “Or you know, do you think maybe we should just leave them here?”
Elizabeth
“Boston's the only destination that makes sense,” Carter explains as the truck continues to rumble along the deserted road. “Hell, it's the only place we can hope to reach, and even that is pushing things a little.”
I know she's right, but at the same time I've got this deepening, tightening knot of fear in the pit of my belly. For the past week or so, I've been able to tell myself that Dad's fine, that some miracle would have happened and that of course he made it out of Boston safely. Now, however, I can see the city in the distance and I know that I'm going to get a firm answer. By the end of the day, I'm going to know whether or not Dad survived.
And the odds aren't great.
“Are you okay?”
Turning, I see that Thomas is watching me from one of the other seats.
I nod.
“You look a lot better,” he adds.
“Thanks.”
“I didn't mean it like that. I just meant... You look healthier. More alive.”
“Thank you.”
“How's your head?”
“It aches a little.”
“But what about your thoughts?”
“If you're worried I might suddenly get a craving for human blood,” I reply, “you can relax. I feel completely normal. If anything changes, I promise I'll tell you.”
He pauses, before nodding.
“And Thomas...” I pause, as I realize that this is the best chance to say something I've been meaning to say for the past twenty-four hours. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For saving me back there,” I tell him. I should have said all of this sooner, but to be honest we haven't had a spare second. “I get the feeling that without your help, I wouldn't have made it. I'd be dead. Maybe I'd still be moving around, but I'd be dead all the same. I'd be one of those things. So thank you.”
He nods again.
“You're welcome,” he says. “I'd have done it for anyone.”
The truck bumps over a particularly rough patch of road, just as I smile.
Thomas smiles back at me.
“Kiss,” Carter says suddenly, and we both turn to her.
She's grinning, while watching me in the rear-view mirror. I haven't known this Carter woman for long, but I'm starting to find her quite annoying.
“I promise I won't make fun of you,” she continues. “Try not to do anything too naughty in front of the kid, though. She's not exactly -”
“Don't be gross!” Thomas blurts out.
I turn to him.
“I didn't mean it like that,” he replies, “I just...”
“It's okay,” I reply, hoping to fix the awkwardness. “I get it. I'm the same.”
“It's not because you're part zombie.”
“I'm not part zombie,” I remind him, “but... There are more important things to be thinking about. We have to stick together, as friends, if we're going to get through this. I mean, we are friends, aren't we?”
“Totally,” he replies, and then he hesitates before reaching toward me with a fist. “To being friends.”
“You want to do a fist-bump?” I reply, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Um...” He pauses again. “No. Definitely not.”
“You're such a liar,” I say, leaning over and giving him the fist-bump that he clearly, desperately wants. At the same time, I can't help laughing for probably the first proper time since I recovered from being sick, even though I feel a flicker of pain in my belly. I guess some parts of me haven't quite healed yet. “Fist-bumps are cool.”
“Fist-bumps are cool?” Carter says, sounding mildly disgusted. “Wow. If the human race needs people like you two to handle the re-population endeavor, we're all totally screwed.”
“I thought you wanted the population cut down,” Thomas says, turning to her.
“The population has to stay low,” she replies. “It's not necessarily that I want that to happen, it's that I recognize the fact that we don't really have a choice. At the risk of sounding like some kind of hippie, this close-call disaster has been the planet's way of showing us that we're dramatically over-populated. If we're lucky, the old seven billion level will have been cut at least in half. In fact, I figure we can probably do just fine with as few as one billion people left on the planet.”
“You can't be serious,” I tell her. “It's almost as if you're glad that this happened.”
“Glad's a strong word,” she replies, “but I'm not exactly shocked.”
“Didn't you lose anyone important?” I ask.
I wait, but now I seem to have shut her up. Then again, after a few seconds I start to worry that maybe I've upset her.
“His name was Bobby,” she says suddenly.
I turn to Thomas, but he merely shrugs.
“I'm not going to get melodramatic and
start opening my heart up to you two weirdos,” she continues, “but... I guess everyone has someone. I had, or sort of had, Bobby. You're probably too young, all three of you, to understand how complicated things can be sometimes, but Bobby and I were close. When all of this shit started, I tried to save him, but I was too late. I saw him die, right in front of me, just a few days after everything went bad.”
I wait for her to continue, but now she seems to have fallen silent.
“I'm sorry,” I say finally.
“Thank you, that means a lot to me.”
“I'm sure he felt the same way about you,” I suggest, hoping to make her feel a little better. “I'm sure he was glad if he was with you at the end, at least.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Sometimes I think I could have done more, though.”
“I'm sure you -”
“Maybe I could have found some fresh batteries.”
The truck thunders over another bump in the road.
“Batteries?” I say cautiously.
“I don't think we want to know what she's talking about,” Thomas says, and I turn to see that he looks faintly disgusted. “Seriously.”
“It doesn't matter what I think or feel,” Carter says with a shrug. “Facts are facts, and reminiscing about the good old days is a sure-fire way to end up getting distracted. And as you guys might have noticed by now, getting distracted is a sure-fire way to end up dead. Now buckle up, all of you, because I see a checkpoint up ahead. And I don't think post-apocalyptic checkpoints are going to be too much fun.”
Looking out the front of the truck, I realize that she's right. There are several men blocking the road ahead, and Carter is already slowing us down.
“What do they want?” I ask.
“They're probably just going to want to know who we are,” Carter says. “Trust humanity to get the busy-bodies back in business at the first hint of an upturn. You see, this is one of the main reasons why I hate people.”
Bringing the truck to a halt, she winds down one of the windows as a heavily armed soldier comes over to greet us. I can't help but notice that, at the same time, the other soldiers are keeping us covered with their guns, almost as if they expect trouble to break out at any moment.
“Carter, Sarah,” Carter says breezily. “Doctor. I'm with Patterson's group. How's Bill Patterson, anyway? I do hope he's fighting fit after all the... Well, after all the fighting.”
“You going to Boston?” the soldier asks, while conspicuously peering at the rest of us in the truck.
“That's what the message told us to do,” Carter replies. “Besides, Boston's the only place we can reach in this pile of junk. We're not exactly overflowing with gas.” She smiles. “You wouldn't turn us away, would you? We'd surely end up dead.”
“Are you carrying weapons?”
“No, Sir,” she lies. “Go ahead and take a look.”
He pauses, before taking a step back.
“Keep going,” he says gruffly, “until you reach the next checkpoint. They'll tell you where to go next. And don't try deviating or causing any trouble. You'll be expected to do your bit for the city while we wait for full government assistance.”
“I wouldn't have it any other way,” Carter replies, as she eases the truck forward and the other soldiers step out of the way. “See you around.”
The truck rumbles past the checkpoint.
“Asshole,” Carter mutters, glancing back at the soldiers for a moment before looking forward again. “Prepare, kids. We're going to meet a lot of stunted little morons with delusions of grandeur, drunk on the measly spot of power they've been permitted. Try to keep your lunches down and leave the smart comments to me. After all, I'm the only one who knows how to get away with them.”
Looking out the window, I see the city looming ahead. We're already in the old suburbs, and smoke's still rising from the various sites that were used in the battle. Soon I'm going to find out the truth about Dad.
Thomas
“This must have been some battle,” I say as I climb out of the truck and look along the street. “It's like a bomb went off.”
As soon as those words have left my lips, I realize how stupid I must sound. Of course a bomb went off. In fact, as I look around, I figure hundreds and hundreds of bombs must have gone off. The nearby buildings have been absolutely wrecked, with huge chunks of concrete left all across the street. There are burned, overturned cars, and several large dark patches have been left on the sidewalk. I'm no expert, but it looks to me as if a lot of blood was spilled around here.
“Humanity getting back to what it does best,” Carter says, as she and Polly come around from the other side of the truck. “Have you noticed all the bullet marks on the walls? And some of those windows over there aren't broken, they've been melted, so there must have been some immense fires in the area.” She turns and looks the other way. “They might have contained the fighting in certain key parts of the city, or maybe the whole place has been trashed like this. It's going to be fascinating to learn how the battle played out.”
“Sure,” I murmur, “fascinating.”
Turning, I see that Elizabeth is still in the truck. It's as if she's scared to come out.
“Hey,” I say, “are you okay?”
She looks at me, and I swear I can see real fear in her eyes. It takes a moment, but then I remember everything she told me about her father, so I wander over and peer in at her. She's sitting in the darkest part of the truck's interior, and she looks as if she's dreading coming out.
“I can come with you,” I tell her. “To look for your father, I mean. It's okay, I don't have anything else to do. I mean, there's probably no-one here for me to look for, anyway.”
I wait, and for a few seconds I start to worry that maybe she's suffering some kind of relapse into her zombie state. Then I see the tears in her eyes, and I realize that her response right now is actually 100% human.
“He sent me away,” she says finally. “He didn't think I could face the battle.”
“Parents are weird,” I point out.
“It's not just about if he's dead. It's also about how he might have been killed. Did he get shot, or was he captured and -”
“Don't think about stuff like that.”
“I can't help it! It's swirling around in my head and I can't stop! People do really bad things to each other in wars, don't they? I've seen clips about it. People start acting like animals.”
“But -”
“What if I could have saved him?” she asks. “What if I could have been here and done something and made everything alright?”
“In the middle of a war-zone?”
“Exactly!”
I open my mouth to tell her that she's talking nonsense, that she'd most likely be dead now if she'd stayed, but at the last second I realize that maybe that wouldn't be a very helpful suggestion. I pause for a moment longer, wondering how I can make her feel better, and then I reach a hand out toward her. I might not be very good with words, but at least I can keep her company.
“Unless you're planning to live the rest of your life in the back of this truck,” I say, “you might as well come out now. I don't know what's going to happen or what you'll find out, but you'll be okay. I mean, you've already technically been dead and a zombie, and you came back from that.”
She hesitates, and then slowly she starts inching her way out of the truck. She struggles on her single foot, but finally I manage to help her out and she stops to look around at the massive damage that has struck this city. There are signs of the battle everywhere, and even the survivors look weary and broken as they traipse past. Some of them look more zombie-like than actual zombies I've encountered, and the only indication of humanity is the way they occasionally glance at us with sad, pained expressions. Are they just exhausted, or are they numb from the horrors they've witnessed? Maybe they're even angry at us for having not taken part.
I've got a feeling that the battle for Boston must have been even worse th
an I anticipated.
Spotting little Polly nearby, I head over and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Stay close, okay?” I tell her, as I glance around to make sure that we haven't attracted too much attention yet. “Don't go wandering off.”
“Well,” Carter says as she comes over to join us, “it looks like the goodies won and the baddies were all beaten. That's nice and neat, isn't it?”
She's acting as if she's not worried, but her eyes look lively as she continually looks at our surroundings, as if she's scared she'll be recognized at any moment.
“It's funny,” she continues, “I thought we'd be met and frog-marched away. Instead, it's almost as if no-one's really too concerned by the fact that we're here. That suggests to me that there's not really any kind of centralized command system yet. I mean, there aren't even any Wanted posters on the walls. At this rate, I'm going to start feeling a little ignored.”
“So where do we go?” I ask, before turning to Elizabeth and seeing that she still looks terrified. Nauseous, even.
“Someone has to be in charge,” Carter replies, “or at least, someone has to be trying to be in charge. Even in a time of war, some asshole will have invented some forms for everyone else to fill in.” She turns to me with a grin. “I want to find that asshole and fuck his day up.”
“We're going to go and find Elizabeth's father,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“Because he's here, and she's worried about him!”
“So what exactly are you going to do?” she asks. “Wander around and call his name until you happen to bump into him?”
“We'll do something,” I reply.
“He was on the other side, though,” she points out. “If he's not dead, then for his sake I hope he made it out of town in time. I wouldn't want to be captured by these idiots.” She turns to a passing, wounded soldier. “No offense.” She turns back to me. “But seriously, these idiots are actually surprisingly dangerous, so we need to protect ourselves. Forget the girl's father, he's gone.”
“You don't know that,” Elizabeth says.
“I can take an educated guess,” Carter replies. “I want to know where that message came from, and what's supposed to happen next. Then I can figure out what to do next.” She takes a step back. “So are you three losers coming with me?”
