She looked up, up, up. To the sky. To the stars.
To the star.
Brighter than the others, steady and not twinkling. Everything inside her knotted tight at the sight of it. Her mouth opened, and a noise came out of her. Low, buzzing, not a song, not words, it tickled her throat and the inside of her nose but made everything else fade away but the sight of that bright and steady light in the sky.
From far away, she heard her mom saying her name, but Maddy ignored her. The star was singing to her, sweeter than any lullaby her mom had ever sung. Better than anything, ever.
And when it stopped, Maddy’s mouth closed. She blinked and blinked. She looked at her mother, who was still coughing into her hand.
“It’s ready now,” Maddy said. “It’s all ready now.”
TEN
59
Sometimes there’s a warning before something extraordinary happens, but most of the time the world changes around you before you have more than a couple breaths of time to prepare. If Maggie had known this morning that everything was going to change she’d have worn something other than a pair of ratty jeans and an ancient, wash-worn men’s button-down shirt rolled up to her elbows. She’d certainly have slicked on some lipstick instead of wearing nothing but last night’s smudged mascara and the under-eye circles of a restless night. Instead she was up to her elbows, literally, in soap suds. On her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor when the door bell rang. When she answered it and saw the man standing there, she instantly understood two things.
One, if Jake had come for her, the world was about to end.
And two…so long as he was there, she didn’t much care.
“Promise me,” Maggie says. “Promise that if you ever find out it’s going to happen, you’ll find a way to let me know.”
It’s the talk of lovers, whispered on a summer-hot night against the sleekness of his bare skin. She presses her face to his belly, breathing in the scent of him. She can’t get enough of it.
“I promise.”
“I mean it.” She pushes herself onto one elbow to let her fingers trail along his chest and lower, to his belly where she’s just finished kissing him. Everything about him is still so new. It will always be new.
He stretches under her touch, offering his body to her greedy gaze. Her needy hands. “I promise you, if I find out the zombie apocalypse is coming, I’ll let you know. I’ll do better than that. I’ll come for you.”
And then there’s no more talk of the end of things. There’s only love that feels like a beginning.
But of course that had been a reminder to them both of just how unlikely that would ever be. How it would take the end of the world before he could make that leap from the tangle of sheets and the sweat-salt taste of lust into something more, or before he’d allow it from her. Now here he was on her front porch, and time had passed but Maggie was both ashamed and unsurprised to discover that her feelings for him hadn’t changed, not even with time and distance to soften all the jagged edges of her love.
They stood and stared at each other, and she remembered how once they’d been able to share so much with just a look.
She couldn’t read his face now, however. His hazel eyes were without spark, his face expressionless, no hint of the ready smile she’d missed so much all these long years without so much as an email or a text. She’d thought of that smile more than anything else, though the truth was, she’d given up remembering him the way you give up booze or cigarettes or sugar, a hard-won self-denial that was supposed to be better and never really was.
“Hi.”
The last words they’d ever spoken to each other had been bland and nondescript, the weight of what was not being said heavy on her tongue. So it was no surprise to her that the first thing he said to her after so long was equally as unexciting. Even so, the sound of his voice left her so stunned that at first, she couldn’t reply.
“Can I come in?”
“What? Of course.” She stepped aside to let him in, holding the door and sucking in a breath as he pushed past her.
She closed the front door behind him. He stood in her foyer. Taller, somehow, than she remembered. Broader. Still so beautiful it made every part of her ache.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“No. Bill’s here. He’s downstairs.” Simply saying her husband’s name aloud to him sent home the fact that all of this was different.
Things had changed.
“Good. I was worried he might be at work.” Jake hesitated. Put a hand to his forehead for a second. She wasn’t used to him looking uncertain. “Shit. What is today? I’ve lost track of time. I got on the road as soon as I knew for sure.”
“Oh, God. So it’s true? Something is happening?”
“Yes. Or it will be, soon. Have you been watching the news?”
She usually didn’t. Too much shit in the world, too many bad things. But she knew what he was talking about now.
“The tornados?” There’d been a lot of them recently, a spate of odd, out-of-season or unusually located storms. The devastation had made national news, hitting even her limited radar.
“Yes. Can I get something to drink?”
She felt instantly stupid. Embarrassed. “Of course. Water? Soda—”
“Liquor. Whatever you have. I need a drink.”
This gave her pause. Jake didn’t drink. He’d been sober for fifteen years when she met him, and he’d worn his sobriety not like a cloak or a shield, not like something to either shame or laud him, but simply as the most important part of him. Jake did not drink alcohol. That was who he was.
Maggie went to the liquor cabinet anyway and found an ancient bottle of Bushmill’s that had been a gift from a long-ago Christmas party. She wiped the dust off it and poured him a healthy dose. No ice.
The first sip sent a shudder through him. The second seemed to warm him, and with the third he drained the glass. He held it out for another shot. She hesitated, but poured.
He didn’t drink this one right away, but lifted the glass and held it to the light, turning the glass as though inspecting the contents. He looked her in the eyes. “More than storms are coming.”
60
Maddy skated. And skated. And skated. Up and down the corridors, in and out of every room that was open to her — and they were all open to her, because she was the boss. She had the keys. She was in charge.
She skated into Mom’s room, where Mom lay in bed, her face turned to the side. She’d coughed and coughed until Dad said she had to go to bed. She’d coughed and coughed until blood came out. Dad saw it. Maddy saw it. Nobody else saw it, because Dad had made her go to bed, and he’d closed the door. Dad didn’t want anyone to know what was going on with Mom.
People might panic, Dad said. The ones who’d been here since the beginning, but there were new people here, too. They’d come in from the outside. They weren’t supposed to let people in, that’s what Dad said, only the ones who’d paid to be here were supposed to get to stay, but Maddy had found the others upstairs and outside, and she’d brought them in because they smelled of…of…the stuff that was inside them all. And because the stars had been singing inside her and them, too, nobody else heard it but Maddy did.
Maddy heard it.
Something was coming from up there in the sky. It was where everything had started from. Nobody had told her this, no picturewords or soft hushhush voices. Maddy’d figured it out. Something had come from up there and spread around down here, and pretty soon, it would be everything. All.
Other.
Maddy skated closer to look at Mom’s face, or rather what was left of it. The squiggle things had burst out of her a day or so before. Maybe she was dead. It was hard to tell. She couldn’t moved much because Dad had used a lot of duct tape to stick her tight to the bed. He’d put more tape over her mouth and nose and eyes, too, even though Maddy could’ve told him it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t keep the squiggle things inside if they wanted to get out. All the t
ape did was make it impossible to see if her eyes were open or not.
“Mom.” Maddy poked her cheek.
Mom wiggled, but the tape on her wrists and ankles kept her in place. The tape covering her face oozed with thick liquid, black tinged with red. Maddy drew in a deep breath. Then another. It smelled soooooooo gooooood. So good she leaned forward and licked some.
It didn’t taste as good as it smelled. Something twisted and wiggled in her brains, and she frowned. “No. Maddy’s in charge. Maddy’s the boss.”
Mom groaned. Maddy dug her fingers into the edge of the tape. They sunk a little into mom’s cheek, and she wiggled them just for fun, to see if it would make mom wriggle and giggle. Mom did wiggle, but the noise that came out of her wasn’t much like laughter.
Maddy ripped off the tape. The smell got thicker, and she opened her mouth to breathe it all in. Yum.
Now she could tell if mom’s eyes were open or closed. The tape had ripped off most of her face, including the shreds of her eyelids. Black goo oozed out of the holes where her nose had been. Thin red tendrils with the small buds of blue flowers waved gently inside the mush of her face. Maddy studied them.
“Dad shouldn’t have kept you in here,” she said matter-of-factly. “You were supposed to be out there, with all those people. With those new people too, who came from the outside. So you could all become…become…”
The words left her. Maddy’d always had a “superb vocabulary.” That’s what her sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Stuyvesant, had said. Superb. That meant really good, and not just big words. Lots of different kinds of words. Maddy always had the best vocabulary of anyone in her class. She always got the best speller ribbon. But now she fumbled on the words, trying to find what exactly she meant to say.
“Other,” she said, finally. “We’re all going to become other.”
61
It had been a long, long ride. The bikes had made it easier, even though there hadn’t been much room on them for supplies and it had been nothing like the bounty they’d had when they pulled into Dennis’s mother’s garage. Still, the trip was easier than the one Kelsey had made on her own after being rescued from the ship.
Because she had Dennis.
Kelsey had been with a lot of men. Dennis had been with no other women. It was the end of the world.
But she was in love.
Not ooey gooey, gushy, bouquets-of-flowers and boxes-of-chocolates love. Not romantic walks along a moonlit beach or lovesick ballads strummed beneath a window. There wasn’t time for that, and besides, Kelsey’d had all of that stuff a few dozen times over. It had all been window dressing. Shallow, and in the end, meaningless. She’d been in love before based on all those things, and while she couldn’t say that none of it had ever been real, none of it had ever been like this.
Dennis listened to her.
He might’ve been the first man to ever do that. To take her seriously, to look at her as something worth more than a giant pair of tits and a flat belly and a plump ass. On the road, they needed to make decisions on how to proceed. How to survive. And Dennis never failed to make sure he asked her what she thought or what she wanted to do.
They were a team, and a good one. And that was how she knew it was love and not some random sex thing. Or something based on circumstance. He’d rescued her; lots of women would have fallen for him for that reason alone. But in a way, she had saved him too, Kelsey thought now as she watched Dennis sleeping, his chest rising and falling, his breath misting in the chilly morning air.
He woke as she watched him. The first thing he did upon seeing her was smile. That made her want to cry. She didn’t. It would worry Dennis if she burst into tears and buried her face against him. It might prompt him to make love to her, right there in the sleeping bag on the side of the road. But it would also alarm him and make him ask her over and over if she was all right, and how could she possibly explain to him that she was more than all right? That here with him, even wearing filthy clothes, covered in scars, living off whatever they could scrounge from abandoned houses and looted stores, she was happier than she had ever been in her life? That even though the world had ended, hers had just begun.
“Hey,” he said, blinking sleepily.
“Hi. I made coffee.”
“You’re an angel,” Dennis said.
She laughed when he said that. “Dork.”
“The coffee angel.” Dennis sat up, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He looked around and shivered. “Cold.”
Kelsey tipped her face to the sky, which was gray and cloud-covered. “It’s too early for snow, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. But we should start thinking about finding a place to hole up for the winter. Lay in supplies.” Dennis took the mug she brought him from the fire and warmed his hands.
Kelsey snuggled up next to him, content to share his warmth. She put her head on his shoulder. On the bikes it had taken longer to travel than it would have in a truck, but they’d been able to go off road when necessary to avoid the residual groups of soldiers that had been getting fewer over time. The government was giving up on trying to control anything. The gangs were worse than the soldiers. People fighting to keep what they had and take what they didn’t. Dennis was right, though. They’d come too far North to survive outside. They needed to find a place to go for winter.
“Someplace set back from the road. A farmhouse, maybe,” Dennis said.
Kelsey laughed. “We’re right outside Pittsburgh. I doubt there are any farmhouses. And we want to avoid the city, right?”
“Yeah.” For a moment Dennis looked wistful. “Though if we could find a nice, high apartment or something, it would be easily defensible.”
She leaned to nuzzle against his cheek, thinking of how each of them had grown up so differently, and yet both of them were primed for survival, no matter the cost. “Water. Heat. The possibility of getting trapped.”
He laughed, low. “Yeah. I know.”
“Better to be away from people. House with a well. Septic,” she added with a grimace.
It had been weeks since she’d used a toilet. Or a bath that didn’t come from a stream or an occasional frigid spurt of water from a hose still connecting to a water source that worked. If anyone had told her a year ago she’d not only be okay with this sort of grubby existence but that she’d be loving it, Kelsey would’ve called them crazy. Then again, the entire world had gone crazy, so why couldn’t she?
“Wherever we go, we need to find a place where we can lay in supplies. Weapons.” Dennis yawned and stretched, tossing the dregs of his coffee to the ground and pulling out a canteen from his pack to rinse it before tucking the metal camping mug and the canteen away. “Do you have the map?”
She did and unfolded it for him while they both studied it. Dennis had marked possible routes with a yellow highlighter. Kelsey rested her chin on his shoulder while they looked at it. She pointed.
“If we avoid the city, we can check out this green area, here. Looks rural, but I bet there are plenty of houses that are unoccupied.” She tapped the map. “Maybe like that place we found in Maryland? But without the garrison.”
He laughed a little. “Yeah. That was fucked up.”
They’d been invited, rather forcefully, to join a community behind a wall, but after seeing the way the men’s eyes had crawled over her, Kelsey had pulled Dennis to the side. Told him she didn’t think it was a good idea. When the man in charge of the group had talked to Dennis about raiding another group a few miles away, Dennis had agreed with her. Defense was necessary. Attack, not. They’d snuck away in the night, avoiding the other group too and heading north.
“Dennis.” She looked at him, trying to find a way to say what she’d been thinking for awhile but hadn’t wanted to talk about. “This is the way things are going to be from now on. Huh.”
He’d been reaching to poke the fire, but now looked back at her. “I think so.”
Kelsey was silent for a moment. She thought it might be
appropriate to weep for a world gone to pieces, for everything that had been lost. In the months since the storms had spread whatever the hell it was that got inside people and killed them before exploding out of their faces and bringing them back to life, so much had changed that it did seem mostly impossible that it would ever be the same again. And maybe, she thought as she and Dennis packed up their camp and she stretched muscles gone tight and hard from hard work and not time in a gym, that wasn’t such a bad thing.
62
Abbie was exhausted, but could not sleep. That was when they’d come, when she closed her eyes and lost herself in dreams. Too many times she’d woken to find the signs they’d been there when she’d given in to unconsciousness. Bits of broken crayon. Toy cars with the wheels gone missing. Once, a cracked plastic sand shovel she hadn’t seen in years but must’ve been lost in the woods the boys had taken over as their own. All of these things like offerings left at a shrine.
How many times had they stood over her, watching her sleep? Had they crept closer meaning to hurt or even kill her and been unable to at the last minute? And if so, why? It was too much to hope they had some remaining humanity. Some kind of love. She’d seen them both running through the woods, hunting down squirrels and rabbits and once, incredibly and horribly, a fawn separated from its mother. The boys had fallen on it like wild things themselves.
Yet, though they’d had the chance, they hadn’t killed her.
She shook her head, forcing her eyes to stay open. The weight of the blade in her hands made her fingers ache, but though she could shift it from hand to hand, she didn’t dare put it down. She’d made that mistake once, tragically, the day last week when her trap had worked and caught one of the boys, but she’d been without a weapon and the other had come screeching and raging out of the trees to fight her for his brother’s life.