I match him up with various people at SPSZ in my mind, but, other than Indy, they’re either unavailable, young, or older. “That’s good, though,” I say. “I’m glad you’re thinking about it.”
“Bro, I’m always thinking about it.”
I laugh. “Sylvie thought you’d become asexual.”
“I was for a while there.”
“She also wants you and Indy to hook up. I think she envisions us all as one big, happy family.”
“Indy can’t stand me most of the time.” Paul’s not particularly distressed by this assertion, likely because he goads her into it. “And she’s always so sure of everything, like her way is the only way. It gets on my nerves.”
I could mention the pot and the kettle, or stones and glass houses, but I say, “Great love stories were built on less.”
“No, bro. Not happening.”
“Then I think you’re left with Claudia, Lupe, or jailbait.”
“Lupe’s got a little of that MILF thing going on,” he says. “Maybe I’ll ask Guillermo to hook me up.”
“That’d go over well.”
Micah laughs along with us as the vehicles come to a halt. Ahead on the right is a street-level plaza of stores and offices above the open-cut subway station. It was cordoned off at one point, which left the cross streets and our small avenue cleared of stopped cars.
As last in line, we’re at the bottom of a small rise on the third block behind the van at the lead. “Something moving at the plaza,” Guillermo reports from the van’s radio. “Making sure it’s not a mob.”
Our radios work fine at this distance. Often, a promised twenty-mile range becomes more like a quarter mile with city buildings. “As long as you can get past, the trucks will go fine,” Rob’s voice comes.
“Shit. It—”
His next words are lost in an eruption of gunfire from the radio and outside. I draw my gun, but I can’t see a damned thing with the back of Eli’s truck so close. Getting out will only get us killed. For a time-suspending moment, I imagine Sylvie and Maria and Leo waiting for people who never come home, then time speeds up to match my racing heart. Paul slams the truck into reverse and backs down the block, swerving to the side for a better view. I hang out my window. Figures ahead, bundled up in black and carrying weapons. Big weapons. I duck inside when three run down the sidewalk, laying a constant barrage into the trucks.
The windshield explodes in a hail of glass. Something flies toward us, and I shove Micah to the floor. Before I can follow him down, it flashes bright enough to blind and an impossibly loud bang knifes through my eardrums and reverberates in my skull. I drop down, clutching my ears. I can’t fucking see. I can’t hear. There could be a gun at my head and I wouldn’t know it. My ears continue to ring and my head throbs, but my vision clears after a few more seconds.
Paul pounds on my shoulder. He’s bent below the dash, face red, scared, and pissed as hell. His mouth moves. I can’t hear what he says, but he points at the steering wheel and motions behind us with his finger. Drive away. Good idea. We can’t help anyone if we’re dead, and they can’t escape if we don’t get out of the way.
I raise my gun at the missing windshield and point to myself, then to Paul and the wheel. Micah lifts his gun as if to say me, too and holds up three fingers, then lowers them and raises the first, counting off until we put our plan in action. Charades. We’re about to die and we’re playing fucking charades.
Third finger goes up and so do we. I fall back on my seat, aim through the no-longer-windshield and squeeze the trigger. The pistol jolts in my hand. Micah’s arms jerk at every shot he fires. The figures run for cover, so I know it’s working, but the sound is a light pop under the ringing. Another boom makes its way through. The engine of truck two, Rob’s truck, is on fire, and thick black smoke floods the street.
I can’t sit up straight. Can’t aim straight either, but these bullets don’t need to hit, just keep them at a distance until we make our getaway. The block flashes backward in a blur, the truck slams to a stop, and my temple hits metal doorframe. Pain blooms and adds a new level of misery to the stabbing in my ears.
Paul swings forward around a corner and stops halfway down the side street. He points at the avenue and pulls his weapon, not bothering to speak. We run for the two detached houses toward the top of the block. The men on the street are bound to follow the truck.
I can see fine, though the lack of hearing is disturbing. More like terrifying. And though I’m fighting my dizziness, the world is slightly tilted, whether it’s from the knock on my head or whatever ear damage I’ve sustained. It takes me two tries to get over the fence and into the yard of the house closest to the corner. My heart drums in my chest. My throat is raw from gasping frigid air. Micah peers through the gate while Paul and I search for an alternate route to the avenue. If we stick our heads around the corner, they’re bound to be blown off.
I turn at a thump on my back. Micah points at the gate, three fingers up, and swishes his pistol as though following them. Three men on the street. It’s a start. Paul’s mouth spasms, his eyes a cold blue, and then he nods. The lock is easily turned from the inside, and we swing the gate open just enough to squeeze through. We wouldn’t hear it creak, but they might. If they’re smart enough to find and use a flash-bang grenade, or whatever it was, they’re smart enough to protect their own ears while they use it.
I can feel the thud of my boots on the ground and my rapid-fire pulse in my throat, but not their sounds. We stay low behind an icy bush and watch the three men walk cautiously toward the truck with guns out. We follow, crawling behind parked cars. It was only yesterday that I worried how I’d feel about killing someone, but I feel nothing at all as I stand and lift my pistol. My only worry is that I’d better not miss because I want them to die, and I’m anxious I might, since the world slants like I’ve lost a few inches on one leg.
I aim at the leftmost man and pull the trigger. The bang is louder than before. He and the man beside him turn while the other makes a run for it. Missed. And it was such an easy shot. I pull again, and again, and down he goes. The other drops, courtesy of Micah or Paul. The third is limping, but he makes it into the cab of the truck. Seconds later it moves down the block, driver’s side door hanging open.
We approach the two men on the street. They’re dead. Oozing blood. Paul flips the one on his side over to reveal Desmond from Sacred Heart. The dreadlocks that escaped his hat are bloody and his skinny face looks surprised. We grab their rifles and run for the avenue, where Rob’s truck fills the street with black smoke. Beyond it, the van is engulfed in flames. The other trucks are gone, and the deserted street may be more surprising than coming upon everyone dead in the snow. We creep up the block and find Claudia face-down, the back of her head a mess of chewed-up bone and bloody hair.
I take off for the truck in case Rob’s in the cab, but land ass-first on icy ground seconds later, having sideswiped a parked car five feet off course from where I started. Paul hauls me to my feet and I follow him while I concentrate on straight, which I can do as long as it’s no more than a fast walk.
The truck’s interior hasn’t caught fire. Paul wrests open the door, pulls Rob out in a fog of black smoke, and I help carry him a good distance away while Micah keeps watch with his pistol. They say vehicles don’t explode as readily as they do in movies, but I’m not willing to test out that theory.
Micah pulls a body from the street ahead—Angel, shot in the chest. His eyes are open, his face lax. It’s obvious he’s dead, but I start CPR while Paul does the same to Rob. Quick compressions, breath, compressions, breath. I don’t think it’s working, but I won’t stop until I know for sure.
Hands pull at my coat. Eli, Indy, and Grace, bedraggled and slack-jawed with shock. Indy pushes me aside and sinks to the ground to take over. Grace clutches her upper arm as if hurt and moves her hand when I bend to see.
“It only grazed me,” she says. A bullet, but not life-threatening.
&
nbsp; “It was Sacred Heart,” I say, my voice tinny. I can hear under the ringing, but my head hammers with the exertion it takes to speak.
Eli puts a hand to his ear, so I shout it again. He nods, then spins and pukes in the snow. Grace runs to him when he staggers to the side, grabbing a fence rail for support with his left hand. It’s badly burned, the skin roasted and blackened.
I raise my rifle as someone hobbles into the street from inside the plaza a block away. Guillermo, hands waving in the air. Behind him, Dennis holds up Lucky, who hops on one leg, Harold on the other side. Tommy peers out the broken glass of a store window and trails after them.
Angel and Claudia both drove a truck. They must have been pulled from them and shot dead. Rob’s truck was too destroyed to jack. I turn to check on him as Paul gets to his feet, shaking his head. He taps Indy on the shoulder but gets no response, then he puts a hand under each of her arms and gently lifts her to her feet.
“Too much blood,” he says. The snow around Angel is pink and getting pinker, like a sick, horrific slushy.
Indy looks down and swallows at the sight of her blood-soaked jeans. Guillermo’s head swivels, his expression growing more frantic, and he races toward us. “My mother?”
Lupe’s nowhere to be seen. She insisted on coming, and she rode in the van that roars with flames. He drops to his knees in the snow. “She was out. She was out.”
“She went back with Junior,” Tommy says, his cheeks red and the rest of him ghostly. “For Jordan and the others. It wasn’t on fire, and they were right behind—”
Dennis howls and drops to his knees beside Rob. Paul drags him ten feet down the block, then returns for Guillermo. “Move back!” he commands, eyes on the van.
I stand like a spectator and watch the agony unfold. Everything seems distant, from their muffled voices to my semi-emotionless state. When the flames flare twenty feet above the van, Harold yanks me backward and I stumble through a building’s arched entryway into the protection of an open vestibule.
“Hey, man, are you all right?” he asks. I nod. He presses on my shoulders. “Stay here.”
Grace appears, pulling Eli by his good hand. He looks like hell, wan and confused. Grace sets him beside me, her eyes huge in her pale face. “Eric, he caught that thing they threw, the grenade thing. Did they throw one at you?”
I nod. My head pounds. Paul and Micah seem better off than I am. Hitting the doorframe probably didn’t help. I touch my temple to feel for the tender spot, which I find, along with blood I wipe on my pants.
The others stumble into the vestibule. We left with twenty-four and have eleven. Eleven people, four miles from home, and no vehicles. The temperature is dropping. We have to walk back, both to keep warm and get to safety. I’d rather sleep, but I’m alert enough to know that’s the head injury talking.
Paul walks to my side. “You okay, bro? You look fucked up.”
“I hit my head,” I say, and fight a wave of nausea. “We need to get moving.”
He nods. I lean against the cold brick of the building, eyes closed, while he rallies the troops. Guillermo refuses, and it’s a few minutes before he relents and we start to walk. Or some of us walk: Eli stumbles, Lucky and Guillermo limp, and I’m doing more of a slog, though focusing on the plan helps the cloudiness in my head.
We stay well away from our tire tracks in case they come for the final truck, or to finish us off. For a moment, I fear they’ve done the same to our Safe Zone, but they won’t get close with people on watch. I’m very glad Sylvie stayed home today, safe and sound behind our walls.
Chapter 84
Sylvie
Jorge and I sit in the front seats of the van, Brother David in the row just behind. We follow the black tracks of asphalt showing through snow that began to melt and is refreezing into ice. Leo is with Rissa, and I had to disengage myself from his painfully tight grip in order to leave. Rissa wasn’t much better. I still have nail marks in my arm where she held on, asking if her mom and brother were okay.
Jorge was unenthusiastic to leave Maria with so few to guard SPSZ, as was I, until people on the roofs reported black clouds miles away, hanging above or near the route they took to JFK. It’s not unusual to see smoke—whether combustible things explode, or there’s gas in some lines, or lightning strikes—but I know it’s them, and the blast of the van’s heat doesn’t stop my shivering.
“Getting close,” Jorge says, though there’s no need. My eyes have been locked on the cloud since we spotted it from the streets.
We turn down a small avenue. Just ahead is the metal shell of a van, with flames licking at the smoldering interior. Behind that is a tractor-trailer—not the one they took this morning—with tendrils of smoke leaking from under the hood. Identifying the van is impossible, and the truck unfamiliar. I make myself breathe. Maybe it wasn’t them. They could be loading up late, or on their way, or have taken a new route home.
There’s enough room to drive alongside the van, and we coast to a stop past the truck. The snow is muddled with footprints and tire tracks, and two bodies lie on the sidewalk. Brother David is out first, holding his pole with attached blade. When I’m close to the curb, he lifts dull eyes to mine. “Angel and Rob.”
It’s awful that the first thing I feel is relief it’s none of my most beloved people. The second, almost simultaneous, emotion is a stunned horror. Rob and Angel are dead. It was them. People might have been in the charred van. And poor Susan, who stands on a rooftop, waiting for the father of her children to come home.
I move closer. Whereas Angel lies in an icy lake of blood, Rob is unmarked except for his black-smudged face, where the soot is darkest around nose and mouth. I slip on the ice and Jorge steadies me, gazing down the street at a body-shaped lump on the snow. “I’ll be right back.”
I go after him, feet leaden. Claudia’s head is torn up in back, and the exit wound that took off the lower half of her face makes me heave. The rest of the vehicles are gone. We would’ve run into them on our way here, unless they took a different way to escape whatever—whomever—happened.
“We’ll find them,” Jorge says. I nod because he expects me to, not because I believe him. I should’ve been here, bad knee or not.
We drive the streets, calling for them, and come across Desmond’s body on a side street. This was Sacred Heart’s doing, as we suspected, but I can’t think about that just yet. Rage froths and simmers inside, buried beneath the frosty tingle of dread that we won’t find anyone alive.
The sun is fading when Jorge suggests we check SPSZ, which is a kinder way of saying we won’t find them here. We decide to come back for Rob, Claudia, and Angel—locating our people, and having room for them in the van, is most important. Brother David rests his hand on my shoulder as we drive, and all the while my insides grow as cold as outside.
A mile from home, we turn onto a street marked with footprints. Not the ones zombies made, which were in fresh powder before they froze, and then melted and re-froze with rounded edges. These footprints were made in the crust of newly re-frozen snow, some in the shape of a shoe where it broke through.
It could be I’m so desperate I want it to be true, but, when I point it out, Jorge steps on the gas. Brother David’s hand squeezes joyfully, if such a thing is possible. Two blocks later, a group of people disappear into a driveway at our headlights. I lean out my window and scream, “It’s us! It’s Sylvie!”
I’m out before the van comes to a full stop, my boots gliding on ice. Grace’s face is pale and pinched. Indy holds up Eli, Paul on his other side. I take in the others, too overcome to speak, but it’s Eric who makes my sob break through. He staggers toward me as I slide the final distance into his arms.
***
We should’ve blown up Sacred Heart months ago. The dread has been replaced by so much rage that the thought of the goat’s milk drinking baby isn’t enough to lessen my explosive urge. They tried to kill my people—they did kill my people—and therefore they need to die.
/> Eric is asleep in our bed. Maria said it was safe to let him rest once he’d been up a while, but I run a finger along his eyebrows until his eyes open. “Hi,” I say. “What’s your name?”
“Jimmy,” he mumbles. “Our president is a zombie, and I don’t know what day it is, but this week’s word is wherewithal.”
I kiss his forehead. “Okay, smart-ass, go back to sleep.”
He pulls me to his chest, which rises and falls with deep breaths a minute later. Mild concussion, ears ringing, cut on his head. It could be so much worse. All of them could be, except for the ones who are gone.
Eli caught a grenade. Not a real one, but one that was supposed to shock them into submission. It burned his hand and threw him for a loop worse than Eric, but that he muffled the blast and sound with his body kept Grace and Indy aware enough to get themselves and Eli off the street. Grace’s upper arm is sore but only grazed. Guillermo and Lucky both injured their legs, and Paul and Micah are hard of hearing. They all verged on hypothermia, but warmth and a hot drink fixed that.
By the time we returned, it was too dark to travel to Sacred Heart. Or to blow them up. I set Eric’s arm on his chest and pet Bird, who took it upon himself to guard Eric while I was on watch. I kiss his head and whisper my thanks in his ear.
For now, we have people on every roof. The problem is that thirteen of our competent people are gone, and eleven are close to useless. I change into pajamas and head downstairs. Maria is awake, as she’s put the injured in our house for observation, and Indy sits with her at the table. I take a seat after I help myself to coffee, but I can’t drink it—the ire has flared again. Jorge walks in from his watch shift, pours himself a mug, and sits with us. I open my mouth and close it, swallowing the same angry words I said before.
Jorge sets his mug on the table. “We agreed we’ll talk tomorrow,” he says, as he said twelve times before he left for his shift. “We’re spread too thin right now, Sylvie, and everyone wants Guillermo’s go-ahead.”