The rain had stopped, and the clouds must’ve parted, allowing light from the full moon to find its way under the bridge. It was still dark, but the light illuminated the silhouettes of people sleeping around me. I could see the outline of Boden, standing by the mouth of the underpass, but there didn’t appear to be any cause for alarm.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking down at Max. He’d been sitting next to me, but he lay back down in the dirt.
“You were moaning in your sleep,” Max yawned, already settling back in to sleep. “It was freaking me out.”
“Yeah, she does that,” Daniels said. “You get used it after a while.”
He was lying beside Nolita, one arm draped over her. It was an affectionate, protective gesture, as if Daniels could protect her from anything.
The idea that I moaned in my sleep bothered me. I knew I had nightmares, though I tried my best not to remember them. I also knew that sometimes I cried in my sleep, because I’d wake up with tears drying on my cheeks.
But it scared me what I might say, that I might give something away that I’d much rather keep to myself.
“I moan in my sleep?” I asked Daniels, since Max had already fallen back to sleep, snoring softly. “Do I say anything?”
“Sometimes. Usually it’s just names, but other times …” He trailed off.
“Other times what?” I pressed.
He let out a deep breath. “Sometimes you say, ‘No, stop. Please. Stop.’” He paused and licked his lips. “That didn’t start until after you’d been in the quarantine for a while.”
I understood his hesitation about telling me. I may have volunteered for their experiments at the quarantine, but once they’d started cutting me open while I was still conscious, I’d begged them to stop. I’d pleaded with them while sobbing.
Daniels usually left before that. He’d never actually been present for a surgery, although he was the one who did my aftercare – cleaning my wounds, making sure I ate and drank, giving me IVs when I refused.
Once, after they’d removed my appendix, the pain had been excruciating. I didn’t think I would survive it. I’d lain curled up on my side, holding my stomach. The pain was so intense, I’d begun vomiting, which only made matters worse.
“Oh, Jesus, Remy.” Daniels had rushed over to me. He knelt down on the cot as I dry-heaved over the edge. “You’re going to rip your stitches.”
“I don’t care,” I said with tears streaming down my cheeks. “I hope I do. I hope I die.”
“You don’t mean that.” He pressed a cold washcloth against my forehead, which was searing hot from a fever. “If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you’re a survivor.”
“No.” I shook my head and swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. “I’m not. I can’t do this anymore.”
“It will be awhile before you have surgery again,” Daniels tried to reassure me.
He kept wiping at my face. I swatted his hand, trying to push it away, but I didn’t have the strength. Since I couldn’t push it away, I just grabbed his hand and held it, forcing him to look me in the eye.
“No, Daniels, I can’t do this. Please,” I begged him with tears in my eyes. “Please don’t make me go through that again. Kill me first. I can’t.”
He pursed his lips, then let go of my hand and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t know how long he was gone. I rolled onto my back and kicked at the wall. That only made my abdomen hurt worse, but by then, I was in so much pain, I could barely notice the fluctuations in it. It was intense, excruciating, and constant.
When Daniels came back, he was carrying a syringe. He sat down on the edge of my cot and reached for my arm, but I pulled it back from him.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’ll make you sleep,” he said and tried to take my arm again, but I jerked it back.
“What?” I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t, so I just glared up at him. “You have something that can make me sleep, and you’re giving it to me after the surgery?”
“I’m sorry, Remy. If they knew I was giving it to you now, they’d put me in the stockades.”
“Why?” I demanded. “If you have medicine that can help my pain, why wouldn’t you give it to me?”
His eyes were sad and dark when he shook his head. “We only have a finite amount of pharmaceuticals. We know how to make some of them, but we’re not equipped to mass produce them, so we need to be careful with what we have.”
“And they don’t want to waste them on me, because I’m going to die anyway,” I said, finishing his thought. “I don’t matter.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniels said, and it sounded like he genuinely meant it. “I don’t make these decisions. I just have to follow orders.”
“You and the Nazis,” I muttered and refused to look at him anymore.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make you as comfortable as I can,” Daniel said. “I can promise you that much. I know what a sacrifice you’re making for us all, and I know you deserve so much better than this.”
I didn’t say anything to that. He reached for my arm again, and I let him take it. He injected me with the syringe, and soon after, I fell asleep. I don’t know if I moaned in my sleep that time, but I woke up with tears on my cheeks again.
Even after the horrors I’d seen with the zombies, unspeakable vicious gore, the worst of my nightmares were of the quarantine’s operating room. Naked and tied down to a cold metal table, with the bright lamp shining down on me.
They were doctors, with scalpels and stiches and surgical precision. But they might as well have been serial killers, torturing me in their basement when I felt the knife slice into my skin, saw my own blood pooling in my naval.
Every time I went into that room, I was never sure if I would come out of it alive. Sometimes I’d pass out on the table, when the pain became unbearable, and I’d hope I was dead. But then I’d wake up to that horrible nightmare all over again.
I got up from where I sat next to Max and went down to the stream. I needed to clear my head. I crouched down on the bank and splashed cold water on my face.
Max had startled me awake, but I remembered the haze of my nightmares. Tonight they weren’t about the quarantine, although the alternative wasn’t much better. They’d been about Blue and Harlow.
The whole time I’d been in the quarantine, enduring everything I had, what got me through was the knowledge that I was doing it for the people I cared about. So people like Blue and Harlow, and Max and Lazlo, could have a better life without monsters roaming the Earth.
But nothing I had done had mattered at all. Daniels hadn’t been able to find a cure. Zombies were doomed to plague mankind until the end of the time. And Blue and Harlow were dead.
I hadn’t had a chance to mourn either of them yet, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to acknowledge the ever-growing ache in my chest.
To distract myself from my thoughts, I went over to see how Boden was doing. I walked past Serg on my way over to him, and he appeared sound asleep. He had used his bag as a pillow and draped his jacket over himself like a blanket.
Boden stood at the top of the embankment so his head almost touched the bridge above us. He had his hand up on it, resting against the concrete almost as if he were leaning on it. His gun hung over his shoulder on a strap, and he stared out at the moonlit night.
“Need any company?” I asked when I reached him.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
The storm might have passed, but the night was still chilly, so I wrapped my arms around myself to warm up. Boden was only wearing short sleeves and a threadbare shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind the cold.
“Have you heard anything from him?” I asked and nodded in the direction of Serg.
“Not a peep.” He shook his head, then looked down at me. “I heard you, though.”
I sighed. “It’s just bad dreams, I guess.”
“We all have bad dreams.” He
turned back to the long grass blowing in the wind. “This whole world is one long bad dream.”
16.
With the map spread out on the ground in front of us, Boden and I crouched low, both of us scrutinizing the quickest ways to Canada that bypassed major roads and towns. Bishop stood behind us, peering down at it.
“I think that’s the best bet,” Boden said, tapping the paper.
Most of the path he suggested would take us through a national forest, which should be fairly zombie free. But it came out near a city, and I’d been hoping to avoid cities completely.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “We’re coming too close to civilization.”
“We’d go around the city,” Boden said.
“We’re still too close,” I insisted. “I don’t like the idea of running into a swarm of zombies.”
Boden smirked. “Nobody does, Remy. But to give it the kind of berth you’d want, it would take us another day or two out of way. We’d be going toward the West Coast when we should be heading north.”
“So what if it’s out of our way?” I asked. “It’s not like we have a deadline when we have to be somewhere.”
“Maybe not, but I for one want to get someplace where we can settle down instead of wandering all over the planet,” Boden said.
“Me too, but not at the expense of everyone here,” I said.
“No, he’s right,” Bishop interjected. “The little ones aren’t going to be able to handle all this walking, not as well as the rest of us.”
I glanced back over my shoulder, where Teddy was helping Stella and Max pack up the rest of their things. The sun had risen about an hour ago, and the morning had been spent eating and getting ready to go. Boden, Bishop, and I didn’t eat anything, but the kids needed to, if we expected them to keep their strength up.
“Besides that, we can’t keep camping out like this,” Bishop said. “We’re too exposed to the elements. We need to find a safe place where we can stay.”
Boden exchanged a look with me, and I sighed. I didn’t like taking risks, at least not with Max’s life, but Bishop was right.
“So we take my route?” Boden asked, and I nodded reluctantly. “Good.” He folded up the map again and shoved it into his duffel bag. “We should get moving then.”
I stood up just as Serg came over to us. He’d woken up roughly the same time as we had, and he’d eaten breakfast out of his own food he carried in his bag.
“I just want you to know that I’m not following you,” Serg said, readjusting the straps of his bag on his shoulders. “But I’m going north, too. I hear there’s less zombies up there.”
“So you’ll be walking in the same direction as us?” Boden asked him.
“Kind of, yeah,” Serg nodded. “I just want to get to Canada as quickly as possible.”
Boden scratched his head and muttered something to himself. “You can walk with us, if you like. We can’t promise you protection, and we won’t share any of our provisions.”
“I understand.” Serg offered a small smile. “Thank you.”
Once he was out of earshot, I turned to Boden and said, “What’d you invite him along for?”
“I’d rather have him walking beside us than sneaking up behind us,” Boden replied simply.
We finished packing our things and headed out. We started out following Boden’s path as closely as we could, but when we heard the rumblings of zombies nearby, we had to diverge from the course.
It was nice that we had a map, though, and for once we weren’t wandering completely blind, even if it was hard to discern where we were since we weren’t really following roads.
The zombies called frequently in the distance, but we never got close enough to see them. But to be safe, we didn’t slow down. We kept as quick a pace as we could manage and didn’t take any breaks.
That ended up wearing on the kids. Teddy and Nolita ended up carrying Stella most of the day, taking turns between them. I would’ve offered to carry her myself, but I didn’t think she liked me that much.
Besides that, the walking was harder on me than I’d ever admit. My stomach ached terribly, and when I’d cleaned up in the morning, I’d noticed that my incision was leaking. I assumed that wasn’t good, but I didn’t want to ask Daniels for help. Not unless I absolutely had to, and I wasn’t there yet.
By midafternoon, Max really started trailing. I walked in the back with him, and eventually I took his hand, nearly dragging him along. He didn’t whine or complain, though – he just struggled to keep up.
Once Max stumbled and fell to the ground. To make matters worse, the death groans were nearby.
We were walking uphill through thick pines and scattered bare maples. The ground was covered in dry pine needles and patches of snow. It was colder up here, and we’d stopped once to put an extra sweaters on Max and Stella.
The trees offered cover from the zombies, but the zombies calls sounded like they were echoing off the tree trunks. It was hard to tell exactly where they came from, but it couldn’t be that far away. Our best bet was to stay quiet and keep moving.
Every time one of them would cry out, Ripley would stop, her ears pointed forward as she looked around. So far, she hadn’t spotted one, and I figured that was a good sign, since she had better tracking skills than I did. She just kept walking several feet away from us, weaving through the trees.
When Max fell, I was still hanging onto his hand, and it jerked me back. I started pulling him up, but he shook his head and refused to stand.
“Remy, I hurt my knee.” He let go of my hand and sat up. A rock had torn through his jeans, and his knee was scraped and bloody. “I don’t think I can walk.”
“It’s just a scrape, Max,” I said in a hushed tone. “You can walk just fine.”
“No.” He shook his head and looked up at me with sad eyes. “I’m too tired. I don’t think I can walk anymore.”
We’d already been lagging behind the others, and when I looked back up the hill, I could see the rest of them getting even farther away. Even Ripley continued on, her beige body almost disappearing in the trees.
“You can do it,” I insisted and took his hands. I tried to pull him to his feet, but his legs gave out, and he fell back to the ground. “Max, come on.”
“Remy, I can’t,” he said.
The plaintive tone in his voice made me believe him. Max wasn’t one to just give up or throw fits needlessly, but he was an eight-year-old kid. He couldn’t go on forever, no matter how much he wanted to.
With no other option, I tried to pick him up. The problem was that I wasn’t that strong anymore. I wasn’t eating, I was exhausted from walking, and I probably had an infection brewing. The adrenaline rush I got in battle with zombies made me capable of things that I couldn’t do in regular life.
Unfortunately, as worried as I was, the adrenaline hadn’t kicked in yet. Or maybe I didn’t have any left. Eventually, I supposed, my body would give out, too, even if I kept pushing it. Unlike the zombies, I wasn’t immortal.
I put my arms underneath Max and tried to lift, but my feet slipped in the dirt, and we both fell down. Bracing my feet, I picked him up, but the trembling in my biceps let me know that I wouldn’t be able to carry him for long.
Still, I was determined to do it as long as I could. Which only ended being a few steps before I stumbled and fell again.
“Remy, go on without me,” Max said.
“I’m not going anywhere without you.” I sat on the ground next to him and ran an exasperated hand through my hair, trying to figure out what to do.
I couldn’t call to the others, not with the zombies so close. Max and I were talking in whispers, afraid of alerting them to our location. If I yelled for Boden or Teddy, the zombies would be on us, and that wouldn’t be good for anybody.
Our best bet was to wait here silently and hope the zombies moved on without spotting us. When Max had enough strength, we could get up and catch up to the others.
“Y
ou should keep going,” Max insisted.
“No.” I looked at him and smiled grimly. “If you stay, I stay. We’re in this together, remember?”
I put my arm around him and stared down toward the bottom of the hill. I had my brother again, and I wasn’t about to leave him behind. We sat there for a while like that, listening to the death groans of the zombies growing closer. Max covered his knee in mud, trying to hide the scent of his blood. I held my breath, and waited.
17.
A twig snapped right behind us, and I whirled around, expecting to find a blood-thirsty monster. Instead it was only Boden, trudging downhill to us by himself. I stood up, wanting to ask him why’d he come back here, but I was too afraid to make a sound.
Without a word, he bent down and picked up Max. He swung Max around to his back, so Max wrapped his arms around his neck. Then Boden started hurrying back up the hill, moving as fast he could without making noise.
I followed after him, determined to keep his pace. I’d had a bit of a break waiting with Max, and I felt a second wind coming. Or maybe that was the adrenaline from thinking that Boden was a zombie about to tear us to pieces.
Based on the fading sound of their death groans, I guessed the zombies were moving slower than us. They were wandering without a real purpose, possibly drawn to the scent of people but without a clear target. We were on a mission to get away from them.
When the zombies sounded far enough away for that it was safe to talk, I finally asked Boden why he’d come back.
“I noticed that you and Max weren’t with the group anymore,” Boden said.
“You didn’t need to come back and risk running into zombies.”
“I don’t leave anyone behind,” Boden said simply. “Not if I can help it.”
“How’d you know we hadn’t been eaten by zombies already?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” Boden admitted. “But I figured the kid had just needed a break.”
“Thank you for coming back for us,” Max said, and I realized that I hadn’t thanked Boden either. “Remy wouldn’t go on without me.”
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