Hank’s eyes widen behind his glasses. “Can you?”
“Of course I can!” I say, in mock horror. “This is my bow drill, given to me by my dad, who was the most hardcore survivalist I ever knew. We even lived in a lean-to he built in the woods for a month one summer. Just for fun.”
They both gasp and look to see if I’m joking, and when they see I’m not, they look impressed. We really did live in the lean-to, but I’m definitely not a hardcore survivalist like I’m pretending. Neither was Dad, but he did know a few tricks.
I show them the pieces. “The stick is the drill. You wrap the bow string around the drill once. Then you put the pointy end into the square piece of wood.”
I hold the bow in my right hand. The drill rests in the square of wood on the ground. I turn the rock over to show them the round depression underneath.
“So you hold the bow like this, and with the other hand you fit the rock on top of the drill stick. You don’t press down too hard or the stick won’t twirl when you move the bow.”
I begin to move the bow from side to side. The string that’s wrapped around the drill tightens and spins it, first one way and then the other. I do this for a couple of minutes until wisps of smoke appear where the drill and wood meet.
“It’s friction!” Hank says.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” says Corrine, in better spirits now. He elbows her, but they both laugh, excited by the new toy.
“Okay,” I say. “To really start a fire, though, we need tinder. That’s fine bits of shredded bark or leaves or anything that’s very dry. I have some here.”
I show them a little ball of fluff and place it at the base of the drill stick. I get into a rhythm again. When the wisps of smoke appear the kids point, and I nod and continue until I’m fairly certain I have a coal. I lift the drill and, sure enough, there’s a little glowing piece of wood.
“That’s the coal,” I say. I guide it into the tinder. “You have to be gentle or you’ll put it out and have to start all over again.” I pick up the tinder and blow softly until it smokes.
“You need to have progressively larger tinder and kindling ready, if you’re really building a fire. But that’s how it’s done.” I hear clapping and see I’ve gained an audience. I do a little curtsy on my knees.
“What else is in that bag of yours?” Nelly asks. “Books, bow drills, anything else weird?”
“I put all the heavy stuff in your bag so I’d have room.” He grins.
“Well, I’m impressed,” James says. “I want to learn, too.”
“Yeah, because there aren’t any lighters or matches in the world,” Ana scoffs. Peter snickers.
I give her a big smile, like Mother Teresa would have. “Survival isn’t for everyone,” I say, in a super-sticky-sweet voice, unlike Mother Teresa would have. I turn to the kids. “You guys are dying to use it, aren’t you?”
They nod eagerly and reach for the tools. I coach them until they’ve gotten the hang of holding all the components in place. Getting a coal is harder; I used to practice for hours when I was a kid.
I sit in a patch of sunlight at the picnic table. Nelly perches on the table while Henry paces at the other end. Ana deposits herself next to Penny and rests her chins in her hands.
I stroke Ana’s arm across the table. I know she’s scared. I am, too, but I guess I’m better at hiding it, or ignoring it. I should probably be more understanding of how she feels. It’s hard, because her general way of being doesn’t garner much compassion. She glares at me like she’s angry, but I can’t figure out why.
“Banana,” I whisper, “can I do anything for you?”
She narrows her eyes. “You can stop being a bitch.”
I recoil like I’ve been slapped. I sit open-mouthed and try to think of what I did to her. Sure, I’ve been irritated by her comments, but that’s par for the course. Everyone gets irritated with Ana, and it doesn’t seem to faze her at all.
I’m about to respond when Henry speaks. “Dot and I are thinking we should leave tomorrow. I’m afraid of getting stuck here the longer we wait. It might be best to get on the road before there are too many infected or desperate people looking for food.”
I’m still reeling from Ana’s comment, and it takes me a minute to process what he’s said. It’s only been a couple of nights, but the thought of going our separate ways makes me sad.
“I’ve been thinking, and I haven’t discussed this with anyone else,” I glance around the table, “that maybe we should stick together. There’s room at the house, and lots of food. You guys are heading into unknown territory. Getting enough food for a few months or even the winter, if it comes to that, might be impossible. You’re welcome to come with us.”
Everyone nods, except for Ana, who’s still glaring at me. Peter lets out an audible sigh. I don’t really care what he thinks, so he can stuff it.
“We can’t,” Dorothy replies with a wistful look. “It’s so kind of you to offer, and I wish we could, I really do. It sounds terrible to say that.” She looks to Henry, who explains.
“When we were at the storage place, Dottie sent out a couple of texts once we figured out where we were going. It looked like they went through, which means that we might have family meeting us there. The chance is slim, but…”
Nelly looks disappointed. “But you have to be there to meet them. Of course.”
I want to remind Dot and Henry that it’s unlikely their families got the texts, much less that they’ll make it there. But I won’t be telling them anything they don’t already know. If it were Eric I would be there waiting, too.
James breaks the silence by unfolding the map. “Okay, so are we all leaving tomorrow?” he asks, and speaks again when he sees our half-assed nods. “I agree with Henry. We should get going. We’re in a news blackout. If the virus spreads as fast as it seems it does, we should be traveling to safety before there are more infected than we can handle.”
He runs his fingers through his hair and makes an annoyed noise when it flops forward again. “I’ve mapped out the route I think we should take. The truck has a third of a tank of gas, so we’re going to need more soon. We can get more from abandoned cars with the siphons from the surplus place. I—”
He stops speaking when we hear the unmistakable sound of car wheels on a dirt road.
CHAPTER 37
I grab my pistol out of my pack. Nelly casually rests the shotgun on his shoulder, but I know he can fire it in a split second. A maroon car flashes between the trees. It slows when we come into view and coasts forward. We stand in a cluster, ready to fight. Even Peter clutches a machete in his hand.
A sporty, young guy in a baseball cap leans out the window. His eyes flicker around to assess our friendliness. The passenger, a girl with short hair and a white, fur-trimmed down vest, offers us a tentative smile.
“Hey,” he says, to Nelly and his shotgun. “We’re not looking to invade your space or anything. We just need somewhere to stay a day or two. Just drove up from north of Paramus, heading to—well, we don’t actually know where we’re heading to.”
Nelly nods. “Not our campground.” His voice is friendly enough, but he keeps his tough face on. “You’re welcome to whatever site you want. We’d like to hear what’s happening out there, if you can tell us. We’ve been here a few days and haven’t heard anything on the radio since yesterday. Name’s Nel.”
“Brian and Jordan. Listen, I gotta get out of this car. I’m going to go park, and if it’s okay we’ll come over and talk?”
He pulls into to a site a couple down and they walk over. Nelly does the introductions. Brian and Jordan stand and look uncomfortable.
“Sorry,” Penny says. She motions at the tables. “Do you want to sit? I know we didn’t seem very welcoming, but we haven’t seen anyone and didn’t know what to expect.”
Jordan sits on the bench. Brian stands and surveys the campground. “No one’s been here?” he asks.
Penny shakes her head. “We were thi
nking there’d be more people, but so far no.”
“Yeah. The highways are clogged with abandoned cars. We had a motorcycle at first. We passed people walking, but they won’t make it this far for a while. When we got out to the country, there weren’t many infected, but everyone is holed up anyway. Won’t even answer their doors. Or they went to Safe Zones.”
“They keep listing Safe Zones on the emergency broadcasts now,” James says.
Brian nods. “Yesterday the word went out that treatment centers were Safe Zones. Under protection, that’s what it said on TV. We went to the high school by us.” He laughs bitterly and looks at Jordan, who has yet to utter a word. She stares worriedly at him, her highlighted hair stringy under her hat, her eyes surrounded by mascara. Besides her vest she’s wearing spangled skinny jeans tucked into sheepskin boots. She’s dressed in what you would wear camping on a modeling shoot. Under normal circumstances it might be amusing, but it just makes me feel bad for her. None of us wants to be here. She wraps her arms around her waist like she’s protecting her vital organs.
“We thought it’d be a good idea. We didn’t have much food in the house, like they were saying you should. Our families said they’d meet us there.”
We wait for him to continue, and after a minute he does.
“When we finally got there we found that most of the people who’d been there, soldiers or whatever, were sent somewhere else. My brother and his wife and kids were there. They’d gotten there before the roads were clogged. Because, you know, everyone had figured out that this was worse than they were telling us. I mean, how can you tell people there’s no problem when they can look out their window and see the fucking problem wandering around outside? They blew up the bridges to New York. You guys know that?”
His eyes are wide and rimmed with red. He digs his thumb and fingers into them.
“We were in Brooklyn. We got out the night before they blew,” Nelly says.
Brian drops his hand. “Yeah? Well, you’re the lucky ones. If you had seen the footage they were showing of the city—”
“What’s happening there?” interrupts Penny, her face pinched.
“You’re from Brooklyn?”
Penny nods, and motions to Ana. “Our mom…”
Brian nods like he knows what she’s trying to say. Since only the two of them made it here, I have a suspicion he understands completely.
“Manhattan’s burning up. People were running out of buildings right into fucking groups of Eaters. I mean, what can you do? In a fire, you die. Maybe outside you live. If you can climb or run fast, you know? You’ve got to run fast.”
He looks to Jordan for confirmation, but she stares at her feet, arms gripping her sides. “Brooklyn wasn’t as bad. Parts were burning, but nothing like Manhattan. The infection is just as bad, but people, at least the people who don’t have a death wish, are hiding out for now.”
I picture the rows of brownstones in our neighborhood on fire, people spilling out of the apartment buildings straight into the arms of infected. Running across rooftops to avoid the flames and looking to the streets below for a safe spot to escape to.
“Okay,” Penny says, the worry in her eyes unabated.
Ana sits heavily on the bench next to Jordan. I glance at Peter, but he’s looking down at the ground, tracing an O with the toe of his shoe in the soft dirt. He does it over and over, like he’s solving a complex math problem.
“What happened at the high school?” I ask Brian.
His face closes, and I’m positive he’s going to tell me to mind my own fucking business. Then all the fight leaves him, and he sighs, shrinking an inch or two in all directions.
“Well, we were there,” he says, his voice flat. “My brother Chris, his wife, Jess, and my nephews. We got a corner by the bleachers. One lady told me there were power outages in the cities, no phone service, and I’m thinking that three days ago, three fucking days ago, everything was fine. You know?”
His eyes dart around the group for reassurance.
When his eyes meet mine, I nod. “It was fine.” As I say it, I realize it’s not true, it couldn’t have been. “It seemed fine here, on the East Coast, everyone thought so.”
The panic that he might be going insane, on top of everything else, leaves his eyes. “After a while we realized our parents weren’t going to make it out from the suburbs. We decided to wait the night and head to them in the morning. It was getting packed in there, and we could hear tons of noise outside. People caught up in all the traffic, honking. Then the little guy, my nephew, Ty—”
He stifles a sob and removes his baseball cap, then puts it back on and moves it side to side until it’s settled. Then he takes it off again and folds the brim in half, the way you do to make that perfect crease down the middle.
“Tyler. He had to pee, you know? So Jess took the boys to the bathroom. The honking turned into screams and gunshots, and people were running to the doors to see what was happening.
“So Chris tells us to stay there, that he wants to make sure Jess and the boys are okay. The screaming gets louder, and they’re trying to close the doors. But it’s too late, and tons of them, Eaters, are in. We couldn’t see, so we get on the bleachers right as Chris and Jess and the kids come into the gym.”
Brian stares into the trees, but he’s not seeing them. I can see what he sees. The way the lights in every high school gym cast a garish yellow glow, the bleachers that line the tiled walls, the windows covered with grates to protect them from an errant ball. The way everyone must have been running in circles, their screams amplified and echoing.
“I yelled at them to go back. They could’ve hid in the lockers, you know? They were surrounded, so they made a run for us. I wanted to help them, but Jordan held my shirt.” He looks at her accusingly. “She said I was going to get bitten. They—they got Jess first, just took her and Thomas down. Jess got right on top of Thomas and tried to fight them off. But she couldn’t hold them off long.”
I know where this is going and wish I hadn’t asked, but I don’t want to make him stop. He’s been watching his own personal horror movie on an endless loop, and now he’s vomiting it back up, trying to get it out of him for good.
“Chris was holding Tyler. He’s bigger than me, and he was throwing the Eaters to the side. Tyler’s arms were around his neck. I thought he was going to make it. So I go to hang off the bleachers and get ready to grab Ty.
“Then he trips. Without even trying, one of those fuckers trips my brother and he goes down. But he gets Ty up on his feet. Yells at him to run to me. Tyler, he tries, he’s pumping his legs. He’s yelling, ‘Uncoo Bri, Uncoo Bri!’ I was about to leap down, I just wanted to get to him, but they were under me. They must have been pouring through the door the whole time. And his fucking eyes. They’re huge and he’s running, and then Tyler, h-he runs right into one’s arms and…”
The baseball cap brim is folded beyond repair. Brian’s eyes are puffy and a worm of snot runs out of his nose. He looks so lost, so like a Little Guy himself, that I put my hand on his shoulder.
“You couldn’t help him,” I say. It was a hopeless situation. “You wouldn’t have made it back in time. You did try.”
He nods, but his eyes say he doesn’t believe it. All he sees is his Little Guy running for help he didn’t give. He raises his arms and I think he’s going to shove me, but he grabs me in a hug that takes my breath away. I hold up all two hundred pounds of him, even though my legs tremble with the effort. His sobs are hoarse and shuddering; they remind me of how I sounded after my parents died, when I would cry alone.
Jordan gets up, her eyes shiny behind the smeared makeup. She rubs his back with a hand that wears a diamond engagement ring.
“Bri,” she says in a gentle voice. She cranes her head around my shoulder. “Brian? She’s right. You couldn’t save him, baby. I know how you… I didn’t mean…”
He catches his breath and his body tenses. He lets go abruptly, and I stumble until James
catches me and sets me upright.
“If I’d gone earlier, if you hadn’t argued, I might have. But you held me back. It’s your fault he’s dead. Your fault they got Tyler.” He grimaces like he’s just eaten something disgusting.
Jordan’s eyes overflow and she shakes her head. She’s gone pale under the spray tan. “Brian, no, it just would have been you, too. Don’t you think I wanted Ty safe? I loved him so much. You know—”
He clenches his teeth. “Shut up, Jordan. Just shut the fuck up.”
She runs to their car with a sob and slams the door. We all turn to Brian, who looks after her with a face devoid of emotion. I’m thinking that Brian is cracking up a little, just as he seems to fear.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve got to go talk to her.”
He walks away with downcast eyes.
CHAPTER 38
We’ve got the beginnings of a plan. We leave at first light. We’ll have to part ways immediately, since we’re heading in different directions. I think the Washingtons have a good chance, since they can wend their way along small, isolated roads. We’re going to cross the Hudson at the base of the park and drive along a network of back roads, also.
Nelly, Henry and James have, after fifteen minutes of manly deliberation, decided on the best placement for kindling and our campfire is ablaze. Dottie insists on sharing what’s left of their now un-frozen burgers with us. When we protest, she reminds us in a don’t-even-argue mom voice that the meat will spoil. I snicker when Nelly murmurs, “Yes, ma’am,” even though she’s not that much older than us.
Hank and Corrine watch the flurry of packing with bleak faces from their spot by the fire. They look like they’ve just seen the world for the first time, and it’s turning out to be a much shittier place than they thought. And they’re right. The world just went from semi-shitty to never before seen levels of shittiness. I get the last of my stuff in my pack and zip it up. Then I pull a couple of things back out before going to sit next to them.