“Goddammit,” Jess says weakly, trying pointlessly to pull her hand from her neck, like there’s something he can do. He knows that’s not what he has to do. He stares at her helplessly and everything that comes out of his mouth next is something he’s going to regret for not being meaningful enough later. “Goddammit, Lisa, what the fuck … why …”
He starts to cry, his whole body shaking. Lisa’s eyes are wild and she’s making the kind of sounds I’ll never forget, her voice trying to work its way around the part of her throat that’s been ripped out. Her lips are flecked with her own blood. She’s not going to make it much longer than this and then she’s going to turn. She moves her hand from her throat and all the blood she seemed to be holding back floods out. She grasps Jess’s shirt, twisting it in her fingers, and suddenly, I’m not here anymore, I’m back, a month ago, I’m in a bedroom. I don’t want to hurt you. My only boy. Jess moans, bringing me back to this here, this now. My face is wet.
“LisaLisaLisaLisaLisa,” he says, his voice stuffy with tears and snot. “Lisa. Look at me. I love you.”
He shoots her in the head.
***
I get my shoe back on. I keep my distance from Jess. There’s no time for a burial, but the leaving is so goddamn hard without one. I remember standing in my parents’ room before I finally climbed out the window because the dead were at their door and the door was giving way. Even with the mess of blood, their broken faces, I wanted to keep close to them because once you go, you can never go back. Jess kisses Lisa’s coat-covered face and calls Ainsley over. I stay where I am and watch him explain to her what has happened. I can’t make out the words, but his voice is low and soothing, and whatever he says is terrible and simple enough to understand because Ainsley throws herself into her father’s arms and stays there. He gets to his feet, holding her, and makes his way over to me. His eyes are watery.
“I’m really—”
“We have to get as far from this area as we can and find somewhere we can settle in for the night,” he says. “I need you to carry Lisa’s gear.”
“Okay.”
“Check that body, make sure it’s not anybody you know.”
“Right.”
I make my way slowly over to the body the first two infected were eating, the one I worried was Sloane’s. When I get there, my heart is racing, doesn’t think it can take one more tragedy but one more tragedy’s always on the way.
It’s a girl. But it’s not Sloane. It reminds me of Sloane. It’s like when we found her father. The girl’s middle is so eaten out, the upper and lower parts of her body are no longer really attached. I’m so relieved but I try not to show it. I don’t want to make Jess feel bad that I still might have something when he just lost so much. That’s the worst kind of envy. I felt it when Sloane thought Lily was still alive. I didn’t want her to have it because I wanted it so badly for myself.
“Is it her?” Jess asks behind me.
Before I can answer, the girl opens her eyes. I yelp and jump back. This cycle is endless. Her hands stretch out, begging after me. I would stab her in the head if I could trust there was no chance she could pull me toward her. But leaving her like this feels wrong. Before, I got stuck on whether or not they had souls and I don’t think they do. I think that part of her is free. I have to think that part of her is free. But it doesn’t change the fact she was someone, once.
“Leave it,” Jess says. “Let’s go.”
So we leave her reaching and screaming and we walk for hours. Lisa’s pack is heavy but I can’t complain because Jess carries his and he carries Ainsley, rarely setting her down and when he does, it’s not for long. I know it’s not easy on him, the physical weight. He winces and rubs his arms in those rare instances she’s out of them. Ainsley just clings to her father like he’s exactly what he is: the last thing she’s got left.
When night closes in on us, Jess says, “Here,” and we set up. It’s awful. I see the places Lisa filled so effortlessly and they just drive home the fact that Jess is no longer one-half of a well-oiled machine. I prepare the trip wires, but I fuck it up and Jess has to fix them for me. I help him pitch the tent and the things Lisa just knew how to do, he realizes I don’t and it takes twice as long as it did a day ago. I dig the fire pit while he gets water. He takes Ainsley with him and having no one at my back is terrifying. My brain invents noises, imagines eyes on me in the darkness. When Jess returns, we prepare some MREs but he can’t entice Ainsley to eat and I’m not so hungry myself. Jess eats, though, all of it.
“Can’t afford not to,” he says, when he notices me watching him scarf the last of it down. He gets to his feet, dusting off his jeans, and puts Ainsley into the tent. When he comes out, he goes straight into his pack and pulls out a flask. He holds it out to me—the smell of the liquor inside is sharp—but I shake my head. He takes a long pull off it.
“You saved my daughter today.”
“It was nothing.”
“Think that little of yourself?”
“No, I mean …” I trail off. “There are some things I just don’t want to live to see.”
“Yeah.” He nods thoughtfully and just as quickly, his face dissolves. He buries his head in his hands and I don’t know where to look. After a minute he says, “Just go.”
“What?” I’m afraid of what that means.
“Get in the tent, I don’t want … I’ll keep watch.” He shakes his head. “Get in the tent or get the fuck out of here. Your choice.”
I go into the tent. There’s a small solar lantern hanging from the top of it. Ainsley is sitting up in her sleeping bag. She has that book in her hands. She’s chewing on one corner of it. I take up space on the opposite side of the tent and listen to the sound of Jess unscrewing the flask’s cap again. I peel off my socks and stare at my shredded heels. Doesn’t look good but I don’t really feel it. I wonder how Sloane’s doing. I imagine her, out of the river, surviving. Her face. Cutting her way through the darkness, to me. I imagine it over and over again to take the place of everything else I’ve seen today.
After a while, Ainsley crawls up beside me and when I look, she’s holding the picture book out. I can make out the title now. Molly’s Picnic. I look at Ainsley. Every part of how she’s holding herself is petulant. She wants this story. It’s a weird as hell feeling, her wanting me to read to her, but after today, how can I deny her? I take the book and open it. On the first page, there’s an inscription.
To Ainsley, love Andrew
Andrew. I wonder what he’s doing now. I flip past the title page and it’s all bright colors and cartoon faces. It’s a story about a little girl named Molly who is getting ready for a picnic. Ainsley and I follow her from page to page as she decides what’s going to go into her picnic basket for a perfect day in the park, where all the other little children are playing, just waiting for her to join them. It’s not a fairy tale, but I start it with once upon a time anyway.
I wake up to a soft whump against my chest. I bolt upright, terrified out of my mind, and a shirt and jeans tumble into my lap. Jess stands in the tent opening, bleary-eyed and puffy-faced—definitely hungover—but relatively awake.
“Those will probably fit.”
I rub my eyes, only aggravating the left one a little and I realize I can see out of it. I turn my head. Ainsley’s not there, so she must be with Jess. I pull on the shirt and jeans. They’re a little loose, but they’re better than the stale, bloodstained clothes I’ve been wearing. They aren’t Jess’s, though, wouldn’t even begin to fit him and I can’t shake the feeling if I knew whose they were, I wouldn’t want to wear them.
I’m taking my time, getting ready to face him, when I hear the tinkling of the bells and then I can’t get outside fast enough. It’s only Jess taking down the trip wires. I’m an idiot. He nods to where Ainsley’s sitting on a blanket, getting cold cereal all down her front. There’s some jerky laid out for me, and next to it, a small selection of first-aid stuff.
“Noticed
you limping yesterday,” he says. “Take care of it and I’ll get the tent down.”
I wonder where he’s put Lisa. Not her body—I know where that is. But where he’s put his wife, where he’s tucked her away so he can find the will to do something as simple as feed Ainsley breakfast or take a tent down. I wonder if all hearts are made with the same pockets for fear and pain and sadness. They must not be, or if they are, maybe we all don’t know how to use them. Because otherwise so many of our stories would have ended differently.
Soon, everything’s ready to go. The walking’s easier now that I’ve looked after my heels, go figure. Jess holds Ainsley’s hand, uses the other to carry his gun. He keeps tapping the trigger and then, after a couple of miles, glances at me and says, “I’ve got a map. When we stop, I’m going to show you where I’m headed.”
“Okay,” I say.
“It’s a cabin. It was over a decade in the making. Dead ain’t going to get through it. Reinforced doors and windows. There’s a safe room and a storage room with—well, we got close to five years’ worth of canned and dehydrated and freeze-dried food there, not accounting for any spoilage that might’ve happened since we last did inventory. Medical supplies. It was built to be self-sustaining too. We’ve been working our way to it for the last four weeks. It’s closer to us than you know.”
My stomach turns. “Where will you be?”
“Hopefully there with you.”
“What about Rayford?”
“Rayford is bullshit,” he says. “Every safe haven I’ve seen from Milhaven to here has fallen. I’m giving you the goddamn golden ticket, Rhys. Don’t be too stupid to take it.”
“What’s the catch?”
“If something happens to me, you make sure Ainsley gets there too.”
Jesus. I think I miss Lisa more than all of them now. I stare at the back of Ainsley’s head, her curls, and try to imagine being responsible for her. Just her and me, out here, trying to get through the woods to the cabin and then after that, what? I’ve been with these people for less than five days and I’m looking at possible guardianship of a four-year-old and everything inside me is telling me to drop my pack and run. Everything. But then I see Jess’s face, and it’s so desperate and broken, I can’t. This guy pulled me out of the river. Saved my life.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I say.
He cracks a small smile. “Well, it wasn’t going to before you said that.” And then the smile disappears. “If you have to, you’ll do it. You saved her once and she trusts you. I can tell. You’ll do it.”
“Yeah,” I say. Christ. “I’ll do it.”
But every step forward is me thinking how I can take every step back. We walk until the trees start to thin and that makes me uneasy. I can see the river to the left of us and to the right, the ground rises and seems to flatten out.
“That a road?” I ask.
“Yeah. Old road. Not maintained,” Jess says. “But that doesn’t mean no one’s been using it or died on it. Riverside’s close enough and that’s why we’re seeing more infected now. That’s why we got to be careful.”
Another mile, and another. Sweat breaks out all over my body. I shrug the pack farther up my aching shoulders. Ainsley starts lagging and Jess doesn’t seem to notice, but I’m afraid to ask for a break because there’s an energy coming off him that I understand and I don’t want to get in the way of. He’s found some kind of inner balance to keep him moving forward. I bet all his thoughts are lined up neat, one right after the other—get his kid to safety, get there alive—and any interruption could ruin him. If that happens, I won’t know how to pick up the pieces.
And then Jess says, “Fuck,” and Lisa’s not there to tell him to watch his mouth.
We stop. There’s an RV crumpled against two trees. The front is smashed, must’ve hit them hard. There’s only a crack in the windshield, though. There are blood streaks on the side of its tan exterior, like someone was hurt and dragged themselves away. The blood stops at the entry door, which hangs open and still, before starting up again. I glimpse a bit of the interior from here.
“Check it out.” Jess draws his gun. “See if there’s anything worth scavenging. If it’s empty, we could spend the night here.”
We circle the RV slowly and it and the surrounding area seem safe, for now. No signs of trouble. We’re just about to explore the inside when Ainsley frantically tugs on her father’s hand. She’s got to go to the bathroom. He nods at her.
“Take a look inside,” he tells me.
I face the entry, which is too narrow for me to get through with the pack. I set it down on the ground and get my knife out but I don’t think we’ll find anything. Any infected would’ve made themselves known by now. I take the steps in and a gunshot explodes in my ears. The smell of it in the air, the warmth at my neck, tells me it was close, that it’s not Jess, it’s someone inside. The bullet tears through the driver’s seat just next to me. I cover my face with my hands.
“Don’t shoot! I’m not infected!”
“Rhys?”
My heart stops. The voice is so familiar and right that I can’t believe it. I’m afraid to believe it, I’ve wanted it so bad.
I lower my hands.
“Rhys,” she says again.
I don’t understand.
The people I want don’t come back. But past the smell of gunpowder is the smell of sweat and blood, another person. The blinds are drawn and the light in here is so weak, but I would know her silhouette anywhere. I memorized it.
She’s here and every moment without her was a lie.
“Rhys?” Jess shouts. “Rhys?”
“It’s okay! I’m okay—it’s okay.”
I stumble over everything that got strewn on the floor when the RV crashed. I trip over cups and forks and clothes and magazines, a vase and its scattered dried-out, disintegrating flowers. She’s at the back of the RV, in the bedroom. She’s on the floor at the foot of the bed, propped up against it. Her face is pale, the bags under her eyes as dark and purple as bruises, or maybe they are bruises. There’s a gash on her forehead, the blood of it fresh and all over and I have to force the next question through my teeth, asking it so quietly no one else will hear.
“Are you bitten?”
She blinks, several times, like she can’t believe any of this, either, and then she shakes her head. Her lips are cracked and bloody.
“No,” she says faintly.
“What happened to you?”
The blood from her forehead stains the side of her face, trails down her neck. It’s soaked into the collar of her shirt. Her legs are sprawled out awkwardly in front of her and the knees of her pants are torn up, and her skin there is crusted with blood. One arm is curled against her stomach and that hand holds the gun she fired at me. Her other arm hangs at her side and—Jesus, it’s dislocated. I recognize that weird separation happening under the skin because it’s the same shoulder she dislocated at the school. She’s dirty, scratched up, and has a few cuts. Jess storms into the RV, I hear him behind me. I bring my hands to her face and it feels good to touch her. Her pupils are blown. One bigger than the other. That’s a concussion. She’s panting, a little, in pain.
“I looked for you,” she manages.
“Me too.” I press my fingers into her skin because I can’t hug her because she’s hurt but all I want to do is put my arms around her. “I looked for you too. God, how’d you get here? Did you see any infected? What happened?”
She frowns, swallows, and it’s all probably too much to throw at her at once. “There weren’t infected at first … but then there were.” Her eyes drift up to Jess, but she doesn’t ask. She turns back to me, losing focus. “I found a hunting—there was a hunting tree stand, it was old, but I got up there and I tried to wait them out, but—”
Her eyes drift shut. I bring my hand to her shoulder and squeeze. It takes her a long minute to open them, like now that she’s around people she can finally turn off. “Hey. Stay with me.
But what? What happened after the tree stand?”
“It was rotting and I fell,” she says. “And then I just ran.”
I take the gun out of her hand and tuck it into the back of my jeans and turn to Jess. Ainsley hides behind him. He stares down at the two of us in wonder.
“Sloane,” he says, before I can tell him.
***
“We’re going to have to set that shoulder,” Jess tells her after I’ve hastily introduced them and he’s looked her over. “That’s going to be goddamn unpleasant.” He turns to me. “I can’t give her anything for the pain until we know how bad the concussion is.”
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, meeting my eyes and I just stand there, running my hands through my hair and smiling like an idiot, which feels like asking for it, but I can’t stop. I watch Jess pinch the top of her hand. As soon as he lets go of her skin, it jumps back into place.
“You’re not dehydrated,” he says. “What’ve you been drinking?”
“River water.”
“Well. Not the best thing you could’ve done. Miracle you’re not sick. If you do get sick, I’ve got something I can give you. Can you stand?”
“Yeah.”
She struggles to her feet one-handed and I get stupid and try to help her, but I end up grabbing the wrong parts of her to do it. She yelps and her knees buckle, but between me and Jess, we get her upright. We navigate her through the narrow space, passing a wide-eyed Ainsley, who sits on her knees on the pullout sofa.
Outside, Sloane lays on the ground. Jess digs some of his clothes out of his pack and bundles them up, tucking them into Sloane’s armpit. Cary did it a different way, when we had to do this at the school. Jess sits on the ground next to her, grabs her arm with both hands, and puts his foot against the clothes. He starts to pull her arm toward him. The pain of it startles Sloane, makes her half-rise, her body desperate to get away from this, so they have to reposition and start again. The second time, she clenches her teeth and moans. Sweat dots her forehead and tears leak out of her eyes and then her shoulder pops back into place.