After a few minutes he says, “You know, those aren’t for me.”
“Okay.” I glance at the back of his head and then resume my watch down the hall with a grin. “How’s Meghan? Oh, right, it’s been over three weeks. How’s the next girl?”
“I’m taking a breather.”
“But The Love Den looks like it’s open for business.”
“You and Nel. You guys don’t quit.”
“You’re an easy mark,” I say. “We can’t help it.”
He chuckles and turns to me, eyes squinted in the sunlight. “You seem different today.”
“I’m having fun. It’s nice to be out here.”
This isn’t what one would consider nice, but he nods. He raises his hand to his forehead to block the sun and watches the trees at the edge of the lot rustle in the breeze.
“Yeah,” he says. “I love the farm, but someti—”
He puts a finger to his earpiece, and what sounds like an avalanche of metal carries out of the store’s entrance. I take my cleaver from where it leans on the wall and look to Dan, who shakes his head. A whoop echoes from within.
“They’re fine,” he says. “Fucking Caleb. I think he’s going a little crazy.”
Caleb is on guard with me a lot. I like when he’s there because we don’t ask each other questions. We sit, making the occasional comment and walking the line. We have friendly arguments over who gets to finish off the Lexers. He hates them as much as I do.
The crash has brought something out of the Payless Shoes not far down. It was once a man, dressed in khakis and a t-shirt. He’s followed by a woman in a loose coat and two kids who look to be ten and eight years old. A zombie nuclear family. The only thing worse than regular zombies are zombie kids: you want to help them, even though they’d eat you just as soon as the adults would.
“Four coming this way,” I say.
Dan shuts the outer door and draws his machete out of its sheath. “Ready?”
“Yup.”
The adrenaline, the sense of purpose, fills me. We step through the debris. I don’t want to kill the little girl if I don’t have to—her long, brown hair reminds me of Bits. But I will, because every Lexer gone is one less to worry about. The man’s swollen tongue protrudes from his lips. This family is gray and cracked, lacking the pliability of new Lexers, but their speed increases as they close in. Maybe they were the ones who’d cleared the mall, but it still didn’t keep them safe.
The kids hiss. The woman groans and raises a hand that’s more like a talon. Dan hits the man’s throat with a wet-sounding swish, and I spike the boy in the eye and withdraw in time to get Mom, who lands on her back beside him. Dan squares his broad shoulders as the girl approaches. He takes in her dress and one sparkly shoe and then swings his machete hard enough to obliterate her face. After she hits the floor, he closes his eyes briefly.
“I know,” I say. We don’t say anything more, and in the silence I hear a small gulping noise. “Do you hear that?”
The hall is empty. Dan cocks his head and follows the sound to its source: Mom. He moves the flap of her coat aside to reveal a baby carrier. Its face is hidden, but tiny, sore-covered gray legs and arms wave through the holes. I’ve never seen a Lexer younger than five years old; I hoped I never would. Its hands make little fists. The mewling hisses ramp up. That could be Penny on the floor, a hole where her left eye once was. It could be her baby, whom she’ll be wearing in a carrier like this sometime this winter.
“Should we…?” Dan asks in a quiet voice.
It’s not going to grow up and eat people, but we can’t let it stay this way. It deserves to be put out of its misery. My mouth thickens with saliva. He did the little girl. It’s my turn. “I’ll do it.”
“You sure?”
I nod and stand over Mom. The baby has a bald spot on the back of its tiny head. It grinds against its mother’s chest as though looking to nurse. It takes two false starts before I bring the spike down. I close my eyes at impact and shudder when the skull gives way with a pop instead of a crunch.
I stride toward the Walmart entrance without a word. Dan follows and takes his post outside. I just killed a baby. I know it wasn’t a baby anymore, but that doesn’t make me feel much better. We wait in silence until headlamps light the registers just inside the doors. Peter and Ana’s carts are filled to the brim.
“We got everything,” Ana says. “Well, except earrings, because it turns out Walmart earrings are hideous. Really, really hideous. There’s so much stuff in there. I wonder why—” She breaks off and follows my line of vision to the bodies. “Oh, were they the only ones?”
“Yeah.” I don’t mention the baby. I don’t want everyone going over there to see. They won’t be able to resist; I know because I wouldn’t, and it’s just too horrible.
Toby and Caleb appear, heads down and shoulders hunched, pushing carts laden with bags of flour, sugar and other dry goods.
“We’re going back in,” Caleb says. He drums on his shopping cart handle and clicks his tongue to the beat. “There’s just too much good shit in there.”
“Cabe,” Dan says quietly, “if you pull another stunt like whatever that was in there, you’re never going on patrol again.”
Caleb’s mouth opens. Dan holds his gaze with icy blue eyes. “Sorry,” Caleb says. “I just—there was a Lexer, and I wanted to see what’d happen if I crushed it. Why so serious, man? You laugh at them.”
Dan takes a step toward Caleb, who backs up a few paces. “Yeah, I do. But I don’t make unnecessary noise to pull them out on my friends. And I try not to torture them. They were people, Caleb. They were babies. So grow the fuck up.”
Caleb nods, lips white. He’s half right—we do make fun of them and try to find humor in what isn’t at all funny. But you never, ever do something to endanger your patrol. Peter gives me a questioning look. Dan is almost never pissed, and even a stunt like Caleb’s would be mostly laughed off since we came to no harm.
“I’ll go back in with Caleb and Toby,” Ana says in an attempt to make peace. Ana may endanger herself but never anyone else. I’d trust her with my life. I do trust her with my life, regularly. “Why don’t you three load?”
They head into the store. I tell Peter about the baby and the little girl who looked like Bits while we stack the food in the van.
“I knew something was wrong,” Peter says with a grimace. He throws a bag of cat food into the pickup. “I don’t want to see. And don’t let Ana, or she’ll never want kids. It’d be the perfect ammunition for her argument.”
He says the last part with a wink. Dan and I smile at his levity, which is what we needed. I hold up boxes of birth control in every type and size before I add them to a bin. “Looks like you’re out of luck for now, but at least you’ll be getting lucky.”
“That’s if Dan doesn’t use it all.”
Dan throws up his hands in surrender and joins in our laughter. It’s the second time I’ve really laughed today, and I haven’t cried once.
CHAPTER 36
Patrol tired me out, but it didn’t put me to sleep. I leave Sparky sleeping on Bits’s hair and head for the main gate. Nelly’s on tonight, and he looks up from his game of cards with Mike’s son, Rohan, and Sue. Sue’s in her late forties, with long, frizzy hair that’s always covered with a baseball cap. She doesn’t do patrol due to a bad knee, but she grew up hunting and has no problem taking out Lexers near the fence.
“Want me to deal you in?” Nelly asks.
“What are you playing?”
“Poker. Texas Hold ‘Em.”
“Sure.” I drag a chair to the table. “But I don’t remember how to play very well.”
“I’ll learn ya,” Nelly says. “This was huge at the frat house.”
Rohan pushes his dark, shoulder-length hair behind his ears. “You were in a frat?” He’s more of a Dungeons and Dragons-type guy, and he eyes Nelly with suspicion.
Nelly laughs. “Yeah, but don’t worry, Cass here woul
dn’t have been friends with me if I’d been a real frat guy.”
I make a face. “No way.”
“Let’s walk the fence before the next hand,” Sue says. “I’ll go east. Rohan, you go west.”
After they’ve left, Nelly says, “So, darlin’, how was your day?”
“It was good. I had fun.”
He looks up from his card shuffling. “Good? Fun? Those are two words I wouldn’t use to describe patrol. Tell me more.”
“I like being out there. You don’t think about anything else.”
He gets it, but that doesn’t mean he approves, if the look on his face is any indication. “What’s going on with you? You went from crying all the time—which was normal, mind you—to almost acting like nothing’s happened.”
“I’m not acting like nothing’s happened! What do you want me to do? Sit around crying forever? There’s stuff that needs to be done so we all don’t die, Nelly!”
He puts his hand over where mine grips the arm of the chair. “All right, now, darlin’. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I don’t want you to cry forever, obviously. I just want to make sure you’re not pretending you’re okay.”
“Of course I’m not okay,” I say in a barely controlled voice and blink to hold back the tears. “But I feel most okay when I leave the farm.”
“You should feel most unsafe when you leave the farm,” Nelly says with a dramatic sigh. “But who am I to argue? Just your dearest and most intelligent friend in the world.”
He’s made a joke to stave off my tears, and I love him for it. “No, that’s Penny.”
“Dearest and handsomest?”
“You used to be, but now that I’m friends with Peter he might have that slot.” I clasp my hands under my chin and flutter my eyelashes. “Those cheekbones and straight nose? The dark, soulful eyes? I’m thinking no. Not that you’re not ruggedly handsome, of course.”
Nelly holds his wounded heart.
“Dearest and funniest,” I say. “And that’s the best slot of all. Don’t ever leave me.”
He chews on the inside of his cheek and looks away.
“What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“I was thinking that when we go to Whitefield this week…I might stay there for a while.”
I drop my gaze to the table. If Adrian were here I would’ve sent Nelly off happily, even though I’d miss him. Now it feels like everyone’s happiness is growing but mine.
“Y’all will be coming every other week for a while,” Nelly continues quickly. “So it’s not like we wouldn’t see each other. I’ll come here, I promise. And we can talk on the radio—”
“Nels, you know I hate the phone.” I cross my arms and pretend to pout. I can tell he’s been agonizing over this decision and wish he hadn’t been afraid to tell me. “The radio’s even worse! I’ll visit you, but only if you promise to take me out partying.”
“You’re asking me that? Like the first thing I do isn’t going to be checking out the nightlife?” His eyes grow serious. “Thanks, darlin’.”
“Why are you thanking me? I want you to be happy, too. But there’s one thing you need to do for me before you leave me here all lonely, eighty miles away.”
“Anything. Name it.”
“Tell me what base you and Adam—”
He slams his forehead to the table. “I knew it! God, I hate you.”
CHAPTER 37
“Big Bend and Gila both fell off the map,” Zeke says. He points at the new green pushpins stuck in Whitefield’s map in Command. “We haven’t heard anything from them in two weeks.”
Big Bend and Gila are Safe Zones, in Texas and New Mexico, respectively. And they’re both in the middle of nowhere. Even if a pod hit Big Bend, the Gila Safe Zone is so remote it seems unlikely they’d be overcome. When I was twelve, my parents took me and Eric on a cross-country trip, and I still remember the winding roads and steep drop-offs of the Gila National Forest.
“How many days apart?” John asks. “Could we be talking about a large pod?”
“The thought’s crossed my mind,” Zeke says. “Big Bend was supposed to check in a few days after Gila. We’ve tried to raise them on the radio every day, but so far, nothing.”
Zeke is officially Whitefield’s new boss. You can see it in the bags under his eyes and the way he’s not as apt to joke as he was a month ago. He twists his beard into a point and tugs. “We’ve been in touch with the Grand Canyon Zone, and Monte Vista, in Colorado. They’ve haven’t seen a thing, besides the usual.”
John’s bushy eyebrows practically touch when he inspects the map. “Dwayne can only go about six hundred miles in the plane before he has to turn back. Not enough to see anything. And it’d be a waste of fuel. Speaking of which, how’s the supply?”
Dwayne’s the only pilot left, besides the one at Moose River—the others were in the 157th.
“Low,” Zeke says with a sigh. “Will had plans to get more, but the plans were in his head. I don’t know where he was going to get it. We’ve bled all the closest airports dry, and we can’t head to Portsmouth without the 157th.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” John says, “except check in with Colorado and Arizona more often.”
“I’ve got even more respect for Will now,” Kyle says. “The planting’s bad enough, forget the other shit. I don’t know how he did it.”
I slide a sheaf of papers across the table. Kyle looks them over and the lines on his forehead smooth out. “It’s Whitefield,” he says, and hands them to Zeke. “All the crops mapped out. You do this, Cassie?”
“Adri—” I clear my throat. I haven’t said his name out loud. “No.”
Kyle nods quickly. “Thanks.”
It’s time to start the gardens, now that it’s the first of June. We brought a truckload of plant starts and extra food with us today, but it’s still going to be a tighter spring than we’d anticipated.
“One last thing,” John says. “We need a meet-up point, in case we ever have to bug out of the Northeast. Will and I discussed heading north across Canada, to the Yukon or Alaska. There’s the Whitehorse, Talkeetna or Homer Safe Zones. No sense going where it’s warmer, or where it’s flat.”
I shiver doubly at the thought. Not only is Vermont cold enough for me, but it would also mean we’d lost the farm. I’m comforted by the fact that Kingdom Come will continue to keep people safe, like Adrian wanted. And I like that he’s near, even if I haven’t gone back to the orchard.
“Alaska can take us in?” Zeke asks.
“They say the more the merrier. Good group of folks, it seems. Not a lot of Lexers to speak of so far this spring. They think the bitter cold might’ve killed even more of them than it did here. They still have to deal with stragglers from Fairbanks and Anchorage, but they don’t think many will make it over the mountains from the south.”
“Not like us,” Peter says.
We’ve had a daily average of thirty Lexers at the fence. Not enough to worry about, but enough to keep us on our toes. Enough that I have an excuse to stay at the fence and blow off things like art class and breakfast shift, where Mikayla’s sympathetic glances make me want to throw a pot at her.
“Then what would we do?” Ana leans back, boots on the table, and purses her lips. “It’d be boring.”
“Boring is good,” Peter says. “Boring is what we want.”
Ana throws a wink my way. She keeps me busy with weapons practice and guard. She’s tireless and brusque, two qualities that used to drive me crazy, but I now find them appealing. She doesn’t coddle me, and she doesn’t judge. I pretend I don’t see Peter’s frown when I fail to hide my smile.
***
Nelly and Adam have set up house in one of the barrack rooms. I gave Nelly a framed photograph that I found in Adrian’s things. Adrian, Nelly and I are sitting on a boulder, arms around each other, sweaty from a hike. None of us looks particularly well-groomed, but our smiles are so genuine that it’s always been one of
my favorites. I took a picture of it with the phone so I’d have it, too.
Nelly holds out his arms. “How is it possible that I’m going to miss someone I hate so much?”
“I hate you, too,” I say into his shoulder. “A lot.”
Nelly’s always taken care of me, even if it’s by bossing me around and making fun of me until I’m on the straight and narrow. I know he’s here, but it almost feels like he’s gone forever. I give him one last squeeze and turn to Adam. “Take care of him. He gets too full of himself and needs someone to cut him down to size.”
“Believe me,” Adam says with a grin, “I know.”
I don’t trust myself to speak again, so I wave and walk to our trucks. Henry and Hank are coming to Kingdom Come and have thrown their few possessions in the back. Hank practically shoves his father into the truck in his excitement, and I don’t feel as alone as I did a moment ago.
I pull the sleeve of Zeke’s black t-shirt. “Get some rest, Zekey.”
“Lord knows I’m trying. You too, sugar,” he says. “We could go on vacation with the luggage under our eyes.”
“Zeke! Are you implying that I look like shit?”
“Never, my dear. I’d elect you Miss Safe Zone if I could.”
I can’t stand to see him so serious, so I’m pleased to get one of his big laughs when I throw a pretend baton in the air. I blow him a kiss and jump in next to Hank.
CHAPTER 38
I flip over the dark earth with my trowel, lower a tomato plant into the hole and pat the dirt back around it. Bits works next to me, just like last summer. And, also like last summer, we’re both barefoot. I soak in the warmth of the sun now that the early morning clouds have burned off.
“So maybe they have special powers,” Hank says to Bits, paying no attention to where his trowel ineffectively jabs at the soil. “Like the girl can shoot bolts of lightning out of her hands.”