I looked to Walter. "I need to fill up myself." I looked to the group. "I'm traveling with my daughter, Zoe," I said, gesturing to the porch. "We're leaving soon. I'm looking for a place out of the way. Someplace safe."
One of the boys smiled at Zoe and waved. I stared him down, and he immediately righted his posture. "I have a little sister about her age," he explained.
"This is pretty out of the way. Where are you all headed?" I asked.
They all looked at each other again. They had a destination in mind. It must have been good if they were protecting it.
"We can help ya with the gas," Walter said, "in exchange for helping Nathan and Zoe to a safer place. You have my word that he's a good man. I don't really want them to leave, to be honest, but he's right. They need to be farther away from those things."
They all watched us, especially Red and the soldier.
"We'll think about it," she said, turning and leading the rest away.
They left us, walking two by two except for the soldier, who brought up the rear. The redhead was with the tallest, and the blonde was with the jock. I wondered where the soldier fit, and then when I saw them all crowd into a Volkswagen Bug, I really wondered where he fit.
Walter and I returned to the porch to join Joy and Zoe. I sat on a rocking chair, and Zoe sat on my lap, watching the kids talk around their vehicle.
"They seem nice," she said simply.
"I think so. I don't really know them."
"They're strangers?"
"I suppose so."
"We're not supposed to talk to strangers."
"No, kids aren't supposed to talk to strangers."
Zoe turned to me, her brows pulled in. "But what if the strangers are kids?"
I kissed her cheek and pulled her against my chest, rocking her and ignoring that her heels were digging into my shins. Her hair was starting to smell less like shampoo and more like sweaty skin. I imagined I didn't smell so great, either.
"Joy?" I said.
"Yes, dear?"
"May we use your facilities? I'd like to make a good impression on this doctor."
Joy chuckled. "I doubt he's dressed for church, either, if you know what I mean."
"That's true."
Joy shook her head and made a face. "Lord have mercy, I am so rude. Of course, Nathan. There is a shower in the bathroom in the hall. I'll get you some towels."
I nodded. "Thank you."
*
THE BLONDE SAT ON THE bottom step of Walter's porch, disinterested, and the rest of them stood before us. Having so many eyes on us was a bit intimidating, even if they were just kids. I looked down at a stain on my Oxford shirt. Now that Zoe and I were freshly showered, our clothes smelled horrible, and felt heavy with dirt and sweat. Joy had offered to wash them, but I was afraid they wouldn't be dry in time and the kids would be antsy to get going and leave us behind.
The redhead spoke first. "I'm Miranda Hayes. That's my sister, Ashley," she said, nodding to the blonde on the steps. "Our father is Dr. Hayes. He lives about nine miles north, up the road, there, and then back west. It's perfect for you and Zoe. If you help us fill up our tank, and a few gas cans, you can follow us. I can't promise you that my dad will let you stay, though."
"No deal," I said, my eyes narrowing.
"He'll probably let you," Ashley said, finally looking up at us. "He won't turn away your little girl."
"But we don't know how many people he's helped already. I expect he will, but I can't promise. Understand?"
"What about the guys with you? How will you get him to let them stay?"
"We have an open invitation," the jock said. "Well, except him."
He was talking about the soldier. They must have picked him up along the way. I decided that if they had done that, they must think the father is open to more guests. "I'll take my chances."
"It's getting late," Walter said. "Meet us at the station in the morning. You got a watch?"
The soldier nodded.
"Eight a.m."
Miranda
"HOME SWEET HOME," ASHLEY SAID. She was holding an empty gas can, looking up at the two-story building just four blocks from the general store.
"Not really," Cooper said, shrugging his shoulders to redistribute the weight of his bulging backpack.
I shook my head. Why did guys insist on stuffing everything they needed for a weekend in a small bag? As if it wasn't manly to appear to need more than one set of clean clothes?
The house wasn't anything special. The windows were darkened by dirty screens. The chipped paint--on both the house and the concrete porch--admitted years of negligence. One small, apologetic spot of soil in the front begged any visitors to believe all wasn't lost. Even though the rest of the house might have been too much for the owner to keep up with, that two-by-two plot of ground was adorned with every color of pansy in existence. Not a single weed in the bunch. Every blade of grass was carefully trimmed at the borders of the square of flowers, and fresh soil had been added not long before.
The home was at the end of a dead-end road. Continuing on was possible, but only through tall prairie grass and about a hundred head of cattle. Only one other house was two lots away, across the street and on the opposite corner. We'd pushed the furniture against any entrances the first night and used wooden planks from the privacy fence down the road to board the windows, and then slept in the basement, each of us taking watch every two hours. Well, except Joey. He never seemed to sleep.
The first morning we secured the windows and doors, but we still slept in the basement. We pulled the mattresses downstairs. Especially after seeing Nathan and the old man walking down the street a few days before with their guns and reappearing with at least fifteen more, it just felt safer. When we saw them return the next day, we watched where they went, waited until they left the redbrick house on the next block, and then searched it ourselves. It didn't take long to find out why they were making the trip. The house was full of nearly every gun imaginable. More than my dad's collection. More than any collection I'd ever seen--and my dad had dragged me to more than one of his fellow gun enthusiasts' houses. We took a few pieces and ammo ourselves, and quickly returned to our safe house. When we saw the duo visit the redbrick house again, we followed them home to the other side of town. It was less than a twenty-minute walk. That's when they spotted us, and when we made the deal to show Nathan to my dad's ranch in return for helping us with the gas pump.
I followed Ashley up the steps, and then stopped when Joey's arms appeared in front of us.
"Hold up. Let me clear it first."
We waited, Ashley biting her nails, and me kicking at the welcome mat as if it were perfectly normal that the soldier we'd just met was searching our temporary home for any curious dead ones.
Sensing Bryce's irritation, I turned. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek, making that face. The one that distorted his beautiful green eyes and made them glow and change into beady, unfamiliar pools of emerald.
"What?" I asked.
Bryce began to say something, but Joey poked his head from the door with a trace of a smile. "Clear."
We unpacked our newest treasures, ranging from more packs of condoms to cans of corn. Bryce walked into the back bedroom and sat on the box springs, making fists and then stretching his fingers, and then repeating the process.
"Tell me," I said, knowing if he kept another thought to himself, he might burst.
Bryce stood up, took a step, and swiped at the door, making it slam and my shoulders shoot up to my ears.
"I take it you're upset?"
"Who is that guy?" Bryce said, pointing to the closed door. "We pick him up from his shitty pickup and the girl he killed in the street, and suddenly G.I. Joe is running the fucking show?"
"Is that what you think he's doing?" I asked calmly.
Bryce was only blowing off steam. He got that way any time he'd been under stress for any length of time, like when his dad left his mom for Danielle the nail tech
for a few weeks before he figured out he was already married to the best woman he could find. He also yelled at me over the phone much like he was yelling in that bedroom the time Cooper's little sister got really sick and Bryce agreed to drive him home from school. By the end of the phone call he was sobbing, barely able to describe how hard it was to watch Cooper and his family so worried and sad.
Bryce trusted me to love him anyway, even at his worst, just like I did when I was snapping at my dad for things out of his control. Dad always listened patiently, and then no matter what I said or with how much anger I said it, he responded with words of unconditional love. After he and Mom split, that was one trust I didn't make him earn back, and he took the responsibility of that trust very seriously. That wasn't the only thing I pretended I hadn't learned from him.
"Wait," Bryce said, mimicking Joey's deep voice and holding out his arm. He had the most ridiculous, smug look on his face, a thousand percent more arrogant than Joey's. "Clear." Bryce rolled his eyes.
"He just got back from a tour in Afghanistan. They talk like that, don't they?"
"Who cares?" Bryce seethed. "He keeps telling us what to do. I'm fucking sick of it. We somehow managed before he came along."
"True," I said, nodding.
"We don't need him. We should leave him here. He probably knows how to hotwire a car. There are dozens here to choose from." When I didn't respond, Bryce's eyebrows pulled together, and he ducked his head to make eye contact. "What are you trying to say? You want him with us?"
Bryce and I had been together so long, I didn't have to say everything. It was one of the many things I appreciated about him.
"He's a soldier. It makes sense to keep him around, don't you think?" With his intimidating size and piercing glare, Joey's looks alone were enough to scare off any living person who might want to harm us, and his particular skill set made him an asset against the dead ones. Bryce was taller than Joey, but his biceps didn't bulge from his sleeves the way Joey's did. Come to think of it, all of Joey's muscles seemed to bulge from his clothes.
"No! I don't!" he said, incredulous. His anger helped my thoughts break free of the chiseled parts of Joey's body--which were all of them.
Bryce paced, and after several minutes, his breathing slowed, and he stopped fidgeting. "You . . . do you really think we need him?"
I shrugged. "Not if you don't. But, he's a good shot. And he's smart. And I'd rather have him ducking into a house first than you."
Bryce glanced up at me from under his brow, fighting a smile. "I love you, you know that?"
I wrapped my arms around his waist as he towered over me. "You should. I'm fairly awesome. Or so I've been told."
He laughed once. "That was probably me. Actually I'm sure it was me. I'm your biggest fan."
"My tallest fan," I said with a smile, reaching up on the balls of my feet to kiss him as he leaned down. His soft lips touched mine, reminding me of better days. Normal days.
Bryce pulled me over to the box springs, and we lay together on the bumpy springs and wood covered by a thin layer of fabric. He unzipped my jacket, and I kissed him, silently agreeing to his equally silent request.
"We might as well christen the zombie apocalypse," he whispered in my ear.
"You're so romantic," I said, watching him with a smile as he pulled my jeans down over my hips and knees, and finally my ankles.
Bryce stood at my feet, unbuckling his belt and then unbuttoning his jeans. He used the toes on his right foot to pull off his left sneaker, and then repeated the action on the other side before kicking it aside. He pulled his cream henley over his head and tossed it on top of a growing pile of his clothing.
I reached down to the sides of my panties and lifted my hips and pushed down the fabric at the same time. It had stopped being romantic for him to undress me over a year ago, and that was one thing that hadn't changed in the last few days. My feet fluttered back and forth a few times before my panties catapulted to a dark corner of the room, and then Bryce reached down to pull off my socks at the same time. We were smiling, relaxed and comfortable; our sexcapades had graduated from trying to be sexy or feeling uneasy long before that evening.
After pushing down his jeans and stepping out of them, he lowered himself on top of me, kissing the corner of my mouth. To my surprise, he kept kissing me without advancing to any other part of my body. Just before I asked him if everything was okay, his head slumped and he buried his face in my neck.
"I can't."
"You . . . can't?"
He fell onto his back next to me on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. "I think I'm too stressed. Or tired. Or both."
"Oh. Oh." I shouldn't have been so surprised. Sometimes before a basketball game he couldn't get it up, either. The end of the world definitely qualified as a source of anxiety. I guess knowing it had been over a week made me assume he would be beyond capable. "It's okay," I said, snuggling closer to his chest. "I like just being like this, too."
Bryce took a deep breath and blew it out, making my hair tickle my face. "We're going to be at your dad's tomorrow. We may never have sex again. It's not okay."
I giggled. "We've been sneaky before."
Bryce wrapped both of his arms around me, and kissed my temple. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, you know. I'm glad it happened this way."
"Yeah?"
"I might have gone crazy worrying about you otherwise."
I closed my eyes and listened to Bryce's breath as he inhaled and exhaled. He fidgeted more than usual, still restless for any number of reasons. I fantasized again about the look on Dad's face as we pulled up into the drive, and wondered what his reaction would be to Nathan and Zoe. He wouldn't turn Zoe away, but desperate times made people do weird things.
"Bullshit!" Cooper said from the living room.
Bryce and I stood up quickly and got dressed, both awkwardly reentering the world, feeling like everyone knew what we were supposed to be doing but weren't. My fingers knotted in my hair as I twisted it up into a messy bun and sat on the floor with my sister. She sat next to Cooper, and Joey was standing by the window, peeking intermittently through the crack.
Joey managed a small, amused smile. "No, I'm completely serious."
"About what?" I asked, noting that Bryce already wore an unimpressed expression.
Cooper crossed his ankles and leaned back against the couch and Ashley simultaneously. "He's telling us war stories."
"It's classified," Joey joked.
"Picnic?" I asked, noting the small, empty bags of potato chips on the floor, along with a few empty cans of soda.
"What we need is popcorn," Ashley said. "Joey is quite the storyteller."
Joey made an airy sound with his lips in protest, and then glanced out the window.
"Anything out there?" Bryce asked.
Joey nodded. "One crossed the intersection earlier. Probably just turned and is making her way to the highway."
I shuddered. Whoever she was must have been bitten, otherwise she would have already been on the highway. "I wonder why it's different."
"What's different?" Joey asked.
"How long it takes them to turn. For some it takes days. Some just hours."
Ashley chewed on her thumbnail. "Jill didn't die right away after she was attacked, right?"
"But she got really sick," I pointed out.
"Maybe they . . . reanimate after a certain amount of time after they die," she said. "How long had Jill been dead?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "What about that woman upstairs? Anabeth? Ana . . . something."
"Annabelle," Cooper said, staring at the floor.
"It's different for everybody," Joey said, all joking stolen from his tone. "They said on the radio just before they stopped broadcasting that it had to do with the flu vaccine. Those who had it were turning more quickly."
"What about the girl you were with?" Bryce asked.
"She's dead," Joey said, matter-of-fact.
Bryce didn't
push the subject. Instead, he went to the food stash and picked through it until he found what he was looking for. After a few minutes, he brought over twin peanut-butter sandwiches and two lukewarm cans of Sprite.
"I love you," I said, biting into the sandwich. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until a whiff of peanut butter hit my nose as I was bringing the sandwich to my mouth.
"Enjoy it," Bryce said between bites. "Who knows if we'll eat bread again after this loaf is gone."
"That's depressing," Ashley said. "But not as depressing as chocolate."
Cooper made a face. "Just wait until we run out of toilet paper."
We all traded glances.
"This sucks," Ashley said, and we all agreed.
*
JOEY AND I SAT IN the middle of the floor, a few feet away from one another. The house we'd been staying in might have been the first one built in Shallot. It was older than the rest, and creaked and moaned like a grandmother complaining about her aging joints. The former occupants were definitely grandparents, easily deduced from nearly every surface and wall space covered in mismatched frames. Protected behind a slate of glass were their loved ones, frozen at each age, still alive and smiling. Some of the photos were decades old, some new. They surrounded us, a bright and cheerful wall holding out the hell outside.
The gold sofa's arms were worn, matching the rest of the house. The seat cushions were sunk in from years of visits from friends and family. I sat on the floor because it felt wrong to sit on their furniture. The house didn't belong to me, even if the owners were lumbering aimlessly on the highway, forgetting all about anything that mattered to them before.
I wasn't sure which old couple in the pictures were the owners of the home, but I liked them. The home they left behind made me feel safe, the love they left behind hopeful. The strangers in the pictures were fighting their own battle to survive like we were, and probably making their way to each other, too. At least that was what I wanted to believe.
The wind picked up, moving the house just enough for the moaning to begin again. It was eerie, like the groans of the dead ones when they noticed prey and got excited about the prospect of feeding. Other than that, the night was quiet. Even Joey's movements seemed to be absent of sound.
Bryce had fallen asleep downstairs several hours before. I'd tried to relax beside him, but my eyes were wide in the dark as I listened and assessed every sound the old house made. I finally peeled the covers away and climbed the stairs of the basement, joining Joey in the living room.