“Look at you out here with all this nothing for it,” he says, sounding halfway amused. “You got no gear. Your shoes are shit for hiking—”
“Watch your mouth,” Lisa says.
“There’s nothing I can do about it now,” I tell him.
“I suppose not.” Jess digs into his pack and hands me a small shovel. “Dig two holes, ’bout sixteen inches wide, a foot deep. Tunnel one through to the other. Understand?”
“Dakota fire pit?”
“Yeah. You done it before?”
“I’ve been camping before.”
“Lisa, you want to round up some firewood? Ainsley, you stay close to me.”
I start working the dirt. The ground is hard, soil difficult to shift. It gets my hands good and messy. The feel of the earth reminds me of my father. The camping trips he took me on. I was so fucking abysmal at it, just being in the wilderness, and he let me know. He loved telling the story about the trip we went on when I was five. I couldn’t stop poking the fire. When he saw me enthralled with a burning stick, he told me to get rid of it and I threw it into the woods, alight. Almost burned the whole goddamn forest down. I’d give anything to hear him tell it again. It hits me: that’s going to die with me, that story. My story. My family, everyone in the school, their stories too—I’m the last person who could tell them and if I die, they’re gone.
“Good work,” Jess murmurs when I finish. I wipe my hands on my jeans and it doesn’t do much to clean them and the running water in the house in Fairfield feels like too much of a memory now. “Lisa, start the fire. Rhys and I will collect some water.”
“Come back,” Lisa says simply.
“I always do.”
We take a bag of water bottles and I follow him through the woods. With him ahead of me, I pay less attention to what’s around us, which is stupid but if he notices, he doesn’t say anything. Eventually, we reach the bank, follow it to the edge of the water, where he stops abruptly. I freeze. He looks at me and then he jerks his head, directing my attention across the river. I squint. Other side of it is a field. A group of infected are running through it.
The water’s between us and the current would take them if they saw us and tried to cross, but I keep still. I just watch, with Jess, the gracefully determined way they move. Their steps seem so heavy, but they’re so impossibly fast. They veer left, all of them, so sharp that—
“Are they chasing something?” I ask.
I step forward, trying to get a better look, but Jess holds his arm out, keeps me back. “It’s an animal, most likely.”
“How do you know?”
“If it wasn’t, we’d hear the screams.”
My stomach turns. “So what do we do?”
“They’re on the right side of the river,” he says. “But we shouldn’t stay here long. We’ll get the water, we’ll get some food in us, and then we’ll move out.”
We wait until they’re no longer in sight before we gather the water up and by the time we get it back to the camp, Lisa has a small pot hanging over the pit. The smoke and flame are only just visible from their holes. Jess pours the first bit of water we gathered into the pot and once it’s boiled, he tells Lisa to get the MREs and he goes through the process of preparing them. He opens them up, tossing the dried food our way. A stick of jerky for me, a packet of M&M’s for Ainsley, crackers for Lisa. Ainsley melts the candy in her hands and it gets all over her face. Lisa cleans it up with some of the towelettes from the MRE packs. Jess uses the clean water to activate the flameless ration pouches, for the meals themselves. They’ve got a whole rhythm here that I can only sit back and watch. By the time we’ve got chicken stew in front of us, I’m trying to get a handle on these people I’ve managed to find myself with.
“Were you in the army or something?” I ask.
Jess exchanges a glance with Lisa. “No.”
“You said you’ve been on the road since this started.” I gesture to the packs, the food. Everything. “That mean you been on the road like this since it started?”
“Yep.”
I look from him to her. “You … didn’t know this was going to happen, did you?”
“Not this exactly,” he says.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Watch your mouth,” Lisa tells me.
“We’re Preppers,”Jess says. “You know what they are?”
I know what Preppers are. I’ve seen those crazies on Discovery a few times. People getting ready for any kind of apocalypse like total ass—oh. Jess watches these thoughts cross my face, leans back looking all smug about it.
“You think the people laughing at us then are laughing at us now?”
“How long you been ready?” I ask.
“Working on this since the towers fell,” Jess replies. “My father died that day.”
“You were waiting for another terrorist attack?”
“What makes you think this isn’t one?” he asks. He spoons some stew into his mouth, swallows, and shrugs. “I was waiting for SHTF. Could be a terrorist attack or civil war, government going crazy, the economic collapse, a pandemic. Everything but zombies.”
“Wait,” I say, as it dawns on me. “So that means you’re headed to a bug-out location, doesn’t it? You got a place?”
Jess stares at the fire pit, nods.
“How do you know it’s still standing?”
“No one’s going to find it,” is all he says. “Made sure of it.”
I go back to my meal, trying to think how Sloane and I could win these people over. Because I’ll find her along the way—I will, and we’ll need a place. And if I don’t … I’ll still need one. It could be their place. And it’d be better than the school because at school, we didn’t have survivalists, we were just a bunch of kids who wanted to survive. I want these people. I want their walls.
“She’s quiet,” I say.
Lisa looks at me. She’s sitting on the ground with Ainsley in her lap. Ainsley digs through Lisa’s bag because I guess that’s what passes for kid entertainment around here. We walked until we started losing light faster than we were gaining ground and then Jess picked a spot for us to set up. I helped Lisa put the trip wires up around us. Before we hear that sick sound of the dead, we’ll hear bells chiming.
Jess pitched the tent, but I won’t be staying in it. They have a mat, a sleeping bag, and a bivy sack for me. Jess and Lisa will take turns on watch, but for now Lisa’s letting Ainsley wind down and then she’ll put her to bed with her father. Ainsley’s been distracting, but not for the reason most kids are. She doesn’t screech, doesn’t whine, doesn’t make any verbal demands for attention. She doesn’t talk. When she walks, she must have her hand held. If she’s not walking, she’s carried and whenever she’s carried, she twists her parent’s hair around her fingers and stares into the distance, her eyes intently scanning her surroundings.
“She’s my quiet girl,” Lisa says. She kisses the top of Ainsley’s head. “So how are you feeling?”
“I think I’ll be of more use to you tomorrow.”
She smiles politely. Doesn’t argue, doesn’t agree. After a second, Ainsley produces a small book. I glimpse its brightly colored cover in the dim light, but not its title. She holds it to herself like a kid would a prized stuffed animal.
“It was in the car,” Lisa says. “When we lost the car, we didn’t even know she managed to grab it to take with her …”
Ainsley holds the book out to me, surprising Lisa and me both. She wants me to read to her. I shake my head stupidly because I don’t know what else to do.
“Oh,” Lisa says softly.
She gently takes the book from Ainsley’s hands, then encloses her daughter in a hug, ducking her face against Ainsley’s curls so I can’t see it. If this was supposed to be story time, it never happens. Lisa stays frozen in that position for a long time, before finally taking Ainsley to the tent. When she returns, she doesn’t look at me. We sit in silence until Jess wakes up to take watch. He
plants himself in the middle of the camp and stares into the darkness.
“How’s your head?” he asks.
“Down to a dull roar,” I admit.
He tells me to go to sleep. I feel this need to prove myself by keeping my eyes open. It doesn’t feel gracious, to close my eyes, but in the end, I can’t stay awake.
***
Get your mother, Rhys. This place isn’t safe—
My only boy.
I don’t want to hurt you.
What can you want from this?
The way Sloane’s voice works its way into my head, I’d swear her mouth was right next to my ear. I open my eyes and expect her to be there and she’s not. I expect to be in the school and I’m not. I want to be at home and I never am.
The sky isn’t quite the dark it should be, so morning must be on its way. Jess is on the ground, watching me. I exhale. I feel better. Well. Relatively. The ground’s hard under the sleeping bag, does no favors for a body that’s taken on more than its fair share of abuse in the last couple days, but I felt worse then, so I must be better now.
“I was about to wake you up,” he says. “You were dreaming. Making noise.” He clears his throat. “Called out for your parents.”
“Oh,” I say. Cary told me I did that in the school sometimes, the dead of night. He was the only one who heard. Or if anyone else did, they didn’t say anything. He’d just nudge me in the ribs and tell me to shut the fuck up because he was trying to sleep, man like it was no big deal. It never felt like one when he did that, anyway.
“How’d your parents die?” Jess asks.
I stare at the ground, my lips pressed together, while his eyes stay on me. What he’s asking—he has to know what he’s asking me.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “But you don’t make much of a case for yourself, if you don’t. Unless you’re the reason they’re dead.”
“What kind of case do you think I’m trying to make?”
“Don’t act stupid.”
“I, uh …” My mouth is dry. “The first night. The house got overrun. Our house. One bit my dad and we locked—we … we holed up in their room, waiting for the police. He got cold. He turned. We didn’t know what was happening. He bit my mom.”
“You finish them?”
The last person I talked about this with was Sloane and I was sorry I did. It opened everything up. After, I kept seeing their deaths. I saw my hands and their deaths. A horror movie doesn’t look good in real life. People turn into nothing and the way they do is so messy and wet and red. It will make you so sick. You’ll discover you weren’t strong, that however hard you brought the weight down wasn’t enough. You’ll look at your father’s wrecked face and his mouth will still be moving, hungry. You’ll think nothing could be worse than that, so when your mother shows the first signs of turning, you won’t wait for it to happen. And then you’ll find you were wrong. There is something worse. The last thing the monster with your dad’s face sees is a hero—at least that’s what you’ll tell yourself. But your mom, she’ll just look at you. Her only boy. She’ll cry with every blow until she doesn’t anymore.
“I had to.”
“So your parents are dead and your girl’s gone,” he says after a while and I laugh in spite of myself. He looks at me like I’m crazy. “What’s funny about that?”
“It sounds like the most pathetic country song ever,” I say and then even he chuckles.
“You’re right. Sorry.” He gets up, stretching his legs. “Lisa says Ainsley wanted you to read to her earlier. She doesn’t even let us read to her.”
I don’t know what to make of that.
A sudden, distant noise in the woods turns Jess’s head in that direction. We’re still, not even breathing, waiting for it. Something. But there’s nothing, not this time.
“Hi, Ainsley,” I say, when she comes out of the tent with Lisa.
Because I am making a case for myself.
The kid startles at her name, or my saying it. She stares at her mother in wonder, like she needs confirmation she really heard it. This is what I know: Ainsley’s not just quiet. There’s something wrong with her. But I’m not stupid enough to ask after it. We eat a dry breakfast and pack up camp and move. It feels good to keep moving, to be looking for Sloane. It also feels bad to keep moving. The first time we stop for a short break, I find blood staining the heels of my socks, especially the left. Seems useless to bitch about it, so when Jess asks if we’re ready to head out, I say yes.
Keep going, keep looking.
My gait become increasingly uneven the less weight I’m able to put on my left foot and when Jess stops, I think it’s because he notices. But it’s not. He makes a gesture at Lisa and her eyes widen. She pulls Ainsley away, tiptoeing back. I’m about to open my mouth and ask but Jess raises his finger to his lips and then I hear it.
Once you know the sounds of teeth tearing into human flesh, the wet, sloppy noise of skin and organs rolling around an infected’s mouth, of fingers with the kind of hunger driving them enough to make it possible to rip a belly open and pull all its insides out, you don’t forget it. Jess looks at us and raises two fingers. He kneels down slowly and waves me forward. I make my way over and the little I stir the ground under my feet is too loud, too much. But the sounds never stop. I duck down beside Jess and he points. I see them, in the middle of a clearing. Two infected, feasting on a body. They’re older. Adults. A man and woman.
“Shit,” I breathe because I don’t know who they’re eating. Jess throws me a sharp look for talking, but I think a train could blow through here and the dead wouldn’t move for it because they won’t want to leave the table before everything is cleared from their plates.
I watch one yank out … God, intestines. The slick, red strand hangs sloppily from its hand, dragging in the dirt momentarily, and then moves to its mouth and I don’t think the dead feel anything that’s human, but I can only describe what I’m seeing in a human way. The dead man looks satisfied as he brings the guts to his closed lips, painting them red like it’s lipstick because he’s too excited to remember he needs to open up first. That doesn’t last long. Soon he’s chewing on them, gulping them down, and when he’s done, he’ll still be hungry.
Don’t let it be Sloane.
“I gotta see if it’s her,” I whisper.
It can’t be her.
Jess reaches into his waistband for his gun.
I look behind me, to see what Lisa’s doing. Her eyes are fixed on the dead. Ainsley stands beside her, but she’s not looking at any of it. She’s staring at something to her left. My gaze follow hers and I see what she’s seeing.
An old man.
His head is tilted, staring at Ainsley and Lisa with increasing understanding of what they have to offer. His shirt is covered in blood. His eyes are white. He opens his mouth and screams.
“Shit,” I say and I scramble to them, forgetting my bloody, torn-up heels. I reach Ainsley at the same time he does, barreling into her as he barrels into me. My body covers hers, keeps her safe, but just because I didn’t want to see a four-year-old get eaten today doesn’t mean I wanted to die for her, either. And then two things happen at once: Lisa starts screaming, pulls Ainsley out from under me, and the old man goes after the only thing left.
Everything fades out. All I can hear is my heart, nothing else, not even the rattling breaths and snarls of the man on top of me. He has that same frenzied response to meat the others did, doesn’t know which part of me he wants first, when there’s so much to choose from. He tears at my clothes, his fingernails digging into me and I push against him with one hand, reaching across the ground for the knife with the other, but I only feel dirt and nothing else. Fuck, fuck. I reach for his face and just miss his mouth. Grab him by both sides of the head and try to push him back and he’s so fucking strong for an old fucking dead person. I jam my thumbs in his eyes and I push as hard as I can, but nothing about that is as easy as it looks in the movies. His eyes start
to give, start to fill under my fingernails, but it doesn’t hurt him, and if it doesn’t hurt him he’s not going to stop. I bring my legs up, using them to put more space between us and let one hand off his face, reaching out on my opposite side. My fingers curl around a—rock.
It takes everything to heave it against his face. I swear I hear his jawbone crack. He goes sideways and it’s all I need to scramble back from him. He recovers too goddamn fast and grabs my foot, pulling it toward him, and then I can hear everything. The snarling, the screeching, the screaming, my own voice yelling itself hoarse, and the loud bang of a gun gone off and I’m hoping it’s in this direction but it’s not. I kick out as hard as I can and my shoe comes off, but that’s what I need to be free. I trip myself to my feet and finally find the knife, glinting against dead leaves. I drive it into the old man’s head and he finally falls like he’s supposed to, and he stays down like he’s supposed to. I stumble back and everything else has gone to hell. Ainsley is cowering behind a tree, and those dead that were feasting before, they’ve been called away from the cold plate for a warm meal. Jess is keeping the woman back as best he can while trying to aim his gun. But the man has overwhelmed Lisa. She’s screaming for help and before I can get to her, the gun goes off, the woman crumples to the ground, the man rips out Lisa’s throat with his teeth, and then she crumples too.
Jess dispatches the man with his gun, another loud crack sent through the woods.
“Ainsley, stay where Rhys can see you, but face away from me,” Jess says in a voice that sounds much calmer than his shattered face looks. Ainsley understands. She turns around like she’s done this before. I edge closer to her, curling my socked toes into the cold ground.
Jess moves to his wife, who is on her back, twitching, drowning in her own blood. She brings her hand to her throat, clutches it as if she could stop it and I think that’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, her heart still beating hope enough to try to save herself, even like this.