“Gav,” I said, “I wouldn’t be—”
He touched my cheek before I could finish. “I told you before, and I’ll keep telling you: I’m not leaving you,” he said softly, and kissed me. His fingers grazed my skin, and his lips were warm and steady against mine. Then Tobias cleared his throat and Meredith giggled. I eased back, blushing.
“You should probably go see if those two have worked out who’s staying and who’s not,” Gav said with a smile. “Then come back and tell us when we’re leaving.”
“We can make it there,” I said as I stood up. “We’re going to find a way.”
“Of course we are,” Gav said.
Meredith trailed after me out of the cabin. Leo was standing by the nearest cluster of trees, his face tucked into his scarf and his arms tight at his sides. Alone.
“Mere,” I said, “can you go back to the cabin and see if we left anything—hats or mittens or whatever?”
“But I want to know what happened with Tessa,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Mere. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
She let out a huff of breath, cloudy in the cold air, and skidded off across the icy clearing.
I walked over to Leo, stopping a few feet from where he stood. He didn’t look up, but he had to know I was there.
After a minute, he raised his head enough to uncover his mouth.
“She didn’t think it mattered,” he said. “I think she was honestly surprised I was upset. She said of course it didn’t make sense for us to stay together if we need to do different things. She said hardly anyone does stay together when they’re sixteen, anyway. Why would we expect it to be forever?” He laughed, haltingly. “I wasn’t expecting forever. I was expecting maybe she’d at least talk to me before making a decision like this.”
“I don’t think Tessa’s very good at that,” I said. “Giving people a chance to disagree, when she’s already decided what she’s going to do.”
“Yeah,” he said. His mouth twisted. “I know you might think this isn’t true, but I care about her. A lot. If that’s more than she cares about me, well… Oh, well. She’s got to do what’s right for her.”
“Still hurts, though,” I said, and saying it I realized I was hurt too. I’d seen Tessa as a friend. We’d been through an awful lot together the last few months. But she hadn’t said anything to me either, even though she’d probably been considering staying since she first asked Hilary about the greenhouse.
I wasn’t sure I would have tried to sway her decision. Probably not. Which was probably why she hadn’t bothered bringing it up. Life always looked so straightforward to her. It must have been nice.
“You know,” I said, “you could stay with her. The vaccine—it’s my thing, I know that. I don’t want you to come if you’d rather be here.”
He paused, his brown eyes so dark they looked almost black.
“You don’t want me to come if I’d rather be here,” he said, “or you don’t want me to come, period?”
My throat tightened. “Leo…” I started, but I didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t want our lives to stay like this,” he said. “I don’t know if this vaccine is going to make a difference, but it could. It’s the best chance we’ve got. I want to fight for that. But if I’ve messed everything up so badly that you don’t feel right even having me around, then I’ll hang back, out of your way. You just have to tell me.”
There was a certainty in his voice that I hadn’t realized I needed to hear. He didn’t sound beaten or scared. He sounded like himself. And that was enough for a little light to open up inside me, like hope.
“Everything’s weird with us now,” I said. “But I don’t want it to be. Maybe it sounds stupid, but I just want to have my best friend again.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Okay,” he said. “Watch.” He smoothed his fingertips over my forehead, so swiftly I hardly had time to feel them, and did the same to himself. Then he flung out his hand toward the trees, as if throwing something away as far as he could.
“There,” he said. “All the weirdness, gone. Nothing left but plain old friends, like we’re supposed to be.”
It had only been a gesture, but right then, I felt released. As if he’d scooped out all the awkward and unpleasant feelings with that sweep of his hand and tossed them away. I grinned.
“Work that magic to find us a car, and we’ll really be getting somewhere,” I said.
I was about to ask him if he wanted more time, maybe to talk to Tessa again, when Justin came running through the open end of the clearing. He stopped when he saw us, panting.
“Take shelter!” he said. “Van stopped about a half a mile down the road from here, three people got out and headed this way. They don’t look friendly. One of ’em had a rifle.”
I stiffened. “What color was it? The van.”
Justin looked at me as if I’d asked whether the gun was pretty. “It’s green. Go! Under the beds in the cabins—you can pull out the siding and hide underneath. I’ve got to tell them to shut off the generator.”
A green van. As Justin scrambled toward the gathering house, I went cold from the inside out.
“Meredith,” I said, and ran across the field as fast as the ice allowed.
I burst into the cabin, the rush of the door fluttering the sheet on the bed. Meredith wasn’t there. “Mere—” I called, and caught myself. What if the people from the van were close enough to hear?
Something was scraping over the ice outside. I hurried out, swaying as I dashed around the side of the cabin.
Meredith was pushing herself back and forth on the ice behind it. She squealed as she slid into me, and I folded my arms around her, the relief that washed over me almost as cold as my panic.
“We didn’t leave anything,” she said. “Is Leo okay?”
“He’s fine,” I said. “Come here, fast.”
I dragged her back into the cabin. Bending down, I pressed my hands against the side of the bed, feeling until my fingers caught onto a notch I could grip. The wooden panel popped out. The space underneath couldn’t have been more than two feet high, but there was enough room for both of us to squeeze in even with our coats on.
“Get in,” I said to Meredith. “We have to hide. Someone’s coming.”
It was almost sad how quickly her attitude changed from playfulness to obedience—she crouched by the bed without stopping to ask who was coming or why. I pulled the blanket and sheets off the mattress. If the idea was to make the place look uninhabited, it’d be better to hide those too. Then I squirmed under the bed after Meredith. The panel slid back into place with a tug.
Less than a minute later, footsteps pounded by outside. The door swung open. I tensed. The people from the van couldn’t have crossed half a mile already, could they? A chill slipped around the cracks in the bedframe, and I understood. Someone was letting the air out of the cabins so no one would be able to tell they’d been heated. So the whole colony would look deserted.
All that bravado Justin had given us the other day, about how he’d have shot us if we’d looked dangerous, that had been for show, I realized. Of course they wouldn’t go around killing intruders on sight. If nothing else, the sound of their gunshots would have told people for miles around someone was here.
Meredith wrapped her arms around me, her breath sounding ragged in the narrow space. I hugged her close. I didn’t know if Tessa and Leo and everyone else had made it into hiding in time. Would someone have thought to go to the quarantine cabin and tell Gav and Tobias what to do? Gav would remember to hide the cold box, wouldn’t he? Would that be enough to protect us?
Hilary had suggested they’d managed to make raiders dismiss the colony in the past, but these people were looking for more than just food. They were still after us, the woman with the red hat and whoever was with her. Maybe someone had seen us in the town where that sick couple had approached us, and passed word on. Maybe they were just checking ever
y group of buildings between that first town and Ottawa.
Either way, they clearly had no intention of stopping before they found us.
I started to sweat inside my layers of clothing, but I didn’t dare move. Meredith curled her fingers into my coat. Outside, there was only silence.
Then a voice rang out in the yard.
“What’s with all the goddamned ice?”
“Who knows?” a woman replied. “Check the buildings, look for signs that someone’s camped here. You find anyone, haul them out. We can hurt ’em, just don’t kill anyone yet.”
Yet. The word echoed in my ears. I bit my lip as the cabin door squeaked. Feet clomped inside. Meredith clutched at me, and I squeezed her back.
The thin beams of sunlight around the edges of the panel shifted as the intruder walked from one end of the cabin to the other. The desk drawer rasped open and shut. The chair toppled over with a clatter that made Meredith flinch. The footsteps approached the bed, and I cringed at the sudden thump over our heads. Checking under the mattress, I thought, my eyelids tightly shut. That was all.
The intruder shifted, and kicked at the side of the bed. My eyes popped open in time to see the panel tilt, just slightly, the sliver of light widening. My heart stopped. Don’t notice, I prayed. Don’t notice. Don’t notice.
There was a moment of silence, and then the intruder stomped out again. I exhaled in a rush, my lungs burning, and hugged Meredith tighter. She whimpered into my coat.
More doors creaked outside. There was a scritching sound, a smack, and a groan, and I suspected someone had just fallen on the ice. Despite myself, I smiled.
“The place is dead,” someone said.
“Let’s get going before we waste any more time, then,” the woman’s voice replied.
The footsteps faded away. I counted to a hundred, then a hundred again, and there wasn’t another sound.
“Are they gone?” Meredith whispered in my ear. I nodded against her, but inside I felt sick.
They were gone for now, not for good. And I didn’t want to find out what they’d do if they finally caught us.
After Hilary called in to us that it was safe again and we crawled out from under the bed, I sat Meredith down on the mattress. She stared up at me with still-frightened eyes. Of all the choices I’d had to make since the epidemic started, this was one of the easiest, but that didn’t make seeing it through less hard. I swallowed and said, “What would you think if I said you could stay here?”
“What about the vaccine?” Meredith said. “If we stay, no one will get to use it.”
“Not we,” I said. “Just you. And Tessa. I’ll have to talk to her, but I think she’ll be okay with keeping an eye on you while I’m gone. It’s pretty safe here, right? You’ll have lots of food and somewhere warm to sleep. And when I find someone who can work with the vaccine, I’ll come right back and get you. Okay?”
Her chin wobbled. “You don’t want me to come?”
“Mere.” I knelt down in front of her. “I don’t like leaving you. But the people who came today are going to keep looking for us. You remember how mean the gang on the island was? Leo says these people could be even worse.”
“What if they hurt you?”
“We’ll be careful,” I said. “Tobias is a soldier, remember? He knows how to protect people. But it’s easier when there aren’t so many of us to protect.”
“I could look after myself!” she said. “I’m a lot more brave now than I used to be.” And then she burst into tears.
“Mere,” I said, pulling her into my arms. For a second, I doubted my decision. “Hey, hey, it’ll be okay.”
“I’m trying to be brave,” she said between gulps, “and strong, so I can help, but I’m scared, Kaelyn. I’m scared something bad will happen to you.”
A lump rose in my throat, and my own eyes prickled with tears. “You are brave, and strong,” I said. “Even strong, brave people get scared. It’ll be easier for me to look after myself if I know you’re somewhere safe, I promise. Waiting for me and doing your best not to worry means being brave too. Do you think you can do that?”
She choked back a sob, and then nodded. “I like it here,” she said. “But you’ll come back soon, right?”
“Fast as I can,” I said.
Tessa didn’t even hesitate when I asked her about Meredith. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll get her to help me in here, keep her busy.”
She beamed at me as she crouched over a bed of seedlings in the greenhouse. Her knees and fingers were smudged with soil, and she looked totally at home. I couldn’t be angry at her for wanting that, but I felt like I had to say something.
“Seems strange,” I said. “Going off without you. We’ve stuck it out together for so long.”
“You’re not leaving me here,” Tessa pointed out. “I’m choosing to stay behind. Like I would have stayed on the island with Meredith, if it wasn’t for the bombing.”
I’d almost forgotten the original plan. It had started to feel so normal for all of us to be traveling together. But this wasn’t quite the same. She was planning on staying here as long as they needed her, I could tell. And when I came back, I’d only stop in long enough to pick up Meredith. We were parting ways permanently.
The weight of all the things she didn’t know sank into my gut: my jealousy toward her when I’d still been pining over Leo, the kiss in the garage, the tension between him and me that we’d only just resolved.
“I want you to know I never thought you were just an extra mouth, okay?” I said. “I was glad to have you there.”
“I’m glad I was there too,” she said. “Deciding to stay here—it’s really only about me, Kaelyn. Since we lost the greenhouse on the island, and then my parents didn’t make it back when Leo did, I’ve felt…lost, I guess. I hardly wanted to move. And then we got here, and it’s the first time I’ve really had the urge to dive in, to get to work, in so long. I can’t let that go. I know you understand—it’s like the vaccine for you.”
It felt so strange, being choked up and wanting to smile at the same time. But I did smile. “Yeah,” I said. “I get that.”
We didn’t hug, because we never did, but I reached out, and she took my hand and gripped it just for a moment.
With the people from the van possibly still in the area, it didn’t seem safe to leave right away. So when Hilary invited us to stay until the next morning, I thanked her. But I hardly slept.
I’d told Meredith I’d be back soon, but that might not be true. This night could be the last time I spent with her, if the woman in the red hat caught up with us, if a blizzard took us unawares too far from shelter, if we ran out of food before we found a working car.
So many ifs. So many of them awful.
But if I was leaving for all the people who needed the vaccine, then I was leaving for Meredith too. Without a way to fight the virus, the world would stay like this forever. Probably it would get even worse. How could we rebuild if every time people came together they had to worry about getting infected? By going, I was trying to protect her not just now, but for her whole life. As scared as I was, I wanted to be that strong, brave person she saw when she looked at me. So I would be that person, for as long as I needed to be.
That thought settled over me like a sort of calm, and I finally drifted off.
We ate an early breakfast of stale Cheerios and powdered milk—Leo, Tessa, Meredith, and I—alone in the dining room. I hugged Meredith and kissed her on the cheek. After we said our good-byes, Hilary walked with me and Leo to the quarantine cabin, carrying a tray with cereal for Gav and Tobias. No one else had come to see us off—not even Justin. I wondered if he was on watch again.
Gav was sitting on the bed, coat zipped and hood up, like he was ready to head off that very second. But he pulled off his gloves to accept the bowl. I knew him well enough to recognize the tension in his shoulders, the slight stiffness in his expression that betrayed his apprehension. Guilt curdled in my stomach. It was
my fault he was starting to feel trapped, useless. He’d come all this way for me, and I didn’t know how to make the journey easier for him. All I knew how to do was keep going.
Tobias was fiddling with the radio transceiver on the floor. He’d asked me to bring it in from the sled for him yesterday so he could give it another shot.
“Anything?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Just a lot of static.”
Hilary hovered while they gulped down the cereal, then collected the dishes. She paused in the doorway.
“I wish we could offer you some food for the road,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re just not at the point where we can safely spare any. But you’ll always be welcome back. Just, please, don’t mention to anyone that we’re here. And take care!”
Gav stood up, stretching, after the door closed behind her. “I have the feeling they’re just glad to get rid of us,” he said.
Leo shrugged. “They didn’t have to help us at all.”
I swapped the ice packs in the cold box for the ones I’d left outside overnight to refreeze. Tobias wrapped the radio in its plastic casing, and we stepped into the forest where our sleds had been stashed.
“There’s only five,” Tobias said.
“The blizzard,” I said. “Tessa fell and lost hers between here and the freeway. What did she have?”
He studied our supplies. “The second box of rations, the one that was full,” he said. “Nothing else important that I can tell.”
“We might as well look for it while we’re heading that way,” Gav said. “But I don’t think we should hang around too long.”
We shifted our supplies so we could fit the blankets and empty gasoline jugs from Meredith’s sled onto the other four. Then we set off toward the freeway. As we pulled out into the field we’d crossed in the blizzard, I scanned the drifts for any sign of Tessa’s sled. A lot of snow had come down that night. It was fluffy, puffing out as I pushed through it, but it would have buried anything on the ground.