“I think rice,” Ash says, her laugh mixing with Bits’s giggles.
I throw on water and measure out enough rice for everyone to have a cup once it’s cooked. Ash and Bits declare it movie time after the braid has been admired, and the kids head for the bedroom.
Peter places home-canned chicken stock and a bottle of oil on the counter. “Use these, too.”
“Wait, why am I cooking when you’re standing right here?” I ask.
He nudges me out of the way. “I’ll take over. That was nice of you.”
“What? Lunch?”
“No, talking to Ashley. You weren’t kidding about not crying, then.”
“Nope.” I lean against the sink and watch James and Mark trace routes on the atlas. James has found himself a map buddy, which allows Penny to rest rather than listen to him yammer on. Knowing where we’re going is interesting, the ratio of paved roads to dirt roads in any given map quadrant is not. “We’re going to get there, right?”
He lifts the lid of the pot and sets it back down. “We are. Why, are you on the ledge?”
“No, I just don’t want to miss out on a good sobfest,” I say. He watches me closely, until I start to squirm and ask, “What?”
“You’re a nice person,” he says with a shrug.
“Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.” Peter has me beat any day of the week. I get emotional and cranky at the drop of a hat, while he rides along on an even keel 99 percent of the time. But I still feel my cheeks warm from the compliment.
“I don’t know that your plan’s the healthiest, though. Especially for you.”
“Crying’s like crack—one taste and I can’t stop,” I say. “I’m just saying no.”
He laughs and dumps in the rice.
Twenty minutes later, we’re at the side of the road by a tiny pond eating the extra delicious rice that Peter made. He added some dried fruit, which has plumped up and adds sweetness to the lightly salted rice.
“Why do any of us ever bother cooking when Peter could do it?” Maureen asks me.
“I have no idea.” I stick a bit of my rice in Hank’s and Bits’s bowls and then finish off what’s left. “I’m going to wash up.” I’ve added gasoline to my collection of odors and want to use the pond to rinse my gloves and leather jacket.
Nelly hands me his coat and gestures at the pond. “If you would.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He joins me with a grumble. I squat by the edge of the water and squirt dish soap on my gloved hands, then foam them and my coat sleeves. Nelly does the same and lets out a giant sigh.
“Really?” I ask. “All because I wouldn’t wash your coat?”
“Not that. Adam doesn’t want me to help with the gas in Yorkton.”
I heard them speaking in forceful whispers but ignored it because I like to maintain the illusion of privacy. I thought Kingdom Come was bad. Try living in an RV with seventeen people.
“You don’t have to,” I say, and rinse my sleeves. “We have enough people.”
“You have Bits and Hank. They’re kids. If anyone shouldn’t go, it’s you, Peter and Kyle.”
“We could argue all day about who’s most important. I don’t like the idea of you going, anyway. I like to keep my eye on you.” I raise two dripping fingers to my eyes and then point at him.
Nelly pushes me with his shoulder and brushes the water off his coat. “I just think families should be together.”
“We’re all family. You and Adam are a family.”
“Yeah, but we can’t repopulate the Earth if you all die.” I burst out laughing, and he rescues me from falling into the pond.
“There’s no procreation going on in my neck of the woods, either. He’s worried. Just give him this one little thing. Next time I’ll stay with the kids and you can go.”
I’m scared to go into Yorkton, and I’m scared not to. If I’m there maybe I can stop something terrible from happening. Zombies have given me OCD and made me a control freak. It’s another reason to despise them, not that there weren’t plenty already.
“You sure you don’t mind?” Nelly looks across the field, jaw locked. He’s pissed, but I understand why Adam wants him nearby today.
“Mind that wittle baby has to stay home ‘cause his Mommy won’t wet him go?”
Nelly attempts his signature icy blue stare, but a laugh escapes the corner of his mouth. “You’re such a shithead.”
16
It’s the same old story at every gas station we come across, and it doesn’t bode well for Yorkton. We stop at every house that doesn’t look ransacked, but aside from one can of pineapple chunks, they’re empty. The gas tank door of every car has been pried open.
Armed with a phone book and map, Peter, Jamie, Shawn and I prepare to leave the RV parked outside of town. Bits holds Hank’s hand and tries not to cry.
“I can stay,” I tell her and kneel for a hug. “I will if you want me to.” She shakes her head and buries it in my neck. “I promise I’ll stay next time, okay?”
I kiss her and Hank’s heads, add in one for Ash, and get in the backseat of the pickup with Jamie. Shawn drives and Peter holds a map marked with an X for every gas station. We’ll try the ones on the outskirts first and then move into the city if we have to. I think of how resigned Bits looked at the idea we might not come back. I don’t want her to get used to losing people. I clench my fists and ask someone—my parents, Adrian, John—or something to get us back okay.
“Ugh,” Jamie says, “didn’t these people get tired of looking at the same thing all the time? It’s looked the same for over a thousand miles.”
“Grass, trees, lake,” Shawn says. “Lather, rinse, repeat.”
“You guys are from Massachusetts, right?” Peter asks.
“Yeah, right outside of Boston,” Jamie says. “We bought a house there.”
“Expensive as shit, but we could swing the payments because my lady brought home the bacon,” Shawn says.
Jamie was a lawyer in her past life. “Shut up, Shawn,” she says.
“You guys know she made close to two hundred thou a year?”
I look at Jamie, whose olive skin has reddened. “So you were a fancy lawyer?”
“Yeah, corporate law.”
“You worked for the devil?” I ask, and kick her foot with mine.
She kicks me back. “Yes, yes, I worked for the devil. But I swore I’d only do it until my loans were paid back. Then the house was expensive. We were thinking of selling so I could quit, but…” She points out the window at the new, unimproved world we inhabit.
Shawn says, “The neighborhood had great schoo—”
“So, now you know,” Jamie cuts him off in a tight voice. What she used to do isn’t a big deal, but something sure seems like it is to her.
“Don’t feel bad,” I say. “Peter had a lot more money than you. He did evil stuff with lobbyists.”
Peter turns in his seat. “It wasn’t evil stuff. It was—”
“Did you save people or animals or the environment, or even the country from a foreign threat?” He shakes his head. “Then it was probably evil. Or pointless.”
“I’ll give you pointless,” he says with a laugh.
“Don’t worry, we still love you,” I say to Jamie. She wraps her arms tight around the knees she’s brought up to her rapidly rising chest. “If we can love Peter after that, we can love anyone.”
I can tell she doesn’t want to have a breakdown right now, if ever, and it looks like she’s heading that way. I tousle Peter’s hair to let him know I’m kidding. Peter catches sight of Jamie and hangs his head. “It’s true.”
Jamie gives him a quivery smile and smacks the side of Shawn’s head. “No, if we can love Shawn, we can love anyone.”
The first gas station comes before we hit the town, just behind a Staples and a garden supply store. It’s a no-frills kind of place, with no roof over the pumps or a tiny store, but the expanse of concrete is blessedly empty.
I stand in the truck bed and watch for Lexers. I’ve barely had a chance to get my bearings when Shawn curses. “The tank’s already open. Nothing.”
We head for the next on the list. It’s only a few blocks away, and it takes us three passes before we’re sure it doesn’t exist any longer. Shawn leans his head on the steering wheel and sighs. “What’s left?”
“7-11, which is down this road, or we can try the one that’s farther out,” Peter says.
“Oh, thank Heaven for 7-11,” Shawn says, and rolls down the main drag.
Everything from fast food to medical supply stores line the sidewalks. Most of the buildings were built in the time when people thought square and unornamented were attractive. A few have older brick facades on their second stories, but some genius thought to renovate the business levels to match the newer buildings’ complete lack of charm. Inside a small city park, a few Lexers lift their heads at our passing. One takes a couple of steps and trips, which we find endlessly amusing. You have to take your laughs where you can get them.
We cross railroad tracks and hit streets lined with pretty yellow and orange trees. The 7-11 is on the corner of a heavily landscaped residential block, and suddenly I hate trees because they block our view of any lurking zombies.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because the tanks are empty. Shawn pulls to a stop at another station down the road. The lot is full of Lexers, none of whom rise at the sound of our engine. They’ve been dead for months; they’re not yet skeletons, but they are shrunken.
The covers to these underground tanks are our favorites—if it’s possible to have a favorite underground tank access route—small outer covers with unlocked caps on the pipes. Sometimes it’s a large metal disk that has to be pried up. Sometimes they’re locked. The keys can often, but not always, be found in the manager’s office. A padlock is easy enough with our bolt cutters, but if the keys can’t be found for an interior lock, it’s a matter of beating the shit out of the cap until it relinquishes its hold.
Jamie and I stand in the bed and leave the grunt work for the guys. They lower the hose and pull it out again. Only the tip is wet with fuel.
“There’s some,” Shawn says. He brushes the tip of the hose with a square of white paper and inspects the color before sniffing. “Seems okay. Not great.”
He drops the paper to the ground and attaches the clips that run the pump to the battery. Shawn is an all-around big guy—tall, broadly built, thick arms, big voice and bigger laugh—but his hands are surprisingly nimble.
“Ready?” Peter asks, nozzle in the truck’s tank.
Shawn starts the pump at our nods, and Jamie climbs to the roof of the cab for a better view. The golden arches of McDonald’s are in my direct line of vision, and although not a place I frequented much, I’d love to plunk a fifty on the counter and order one of everything on the menu.
A minute into our watch, Jamie knocks on my head. A pack of Lexers is turning off the side street. Shawn looks up at her yell and follows her finger. It’s a lot for the four of us, but we need the fuel. The pump quiets and the guys hop in the bed to wait while they close the final ten feet. The one at the head of the pack looks fresher. The gaping hole in her side is still a pinkish-gray, and the small capillaries on her skin are more purple than black. Her clothes don’t look new, but they haven’t faded to the colorless garments the others wear. She must have survived the winter and possibly most of the summer. And here she is as one of them, cementing the fact that we’ll never be safe as long as a single Lexer roams the world.
I kneel to drive the spike end through her eye and stand for the next. The others slash and grunt. The stench of new Lexer mixes with old. I try to keep the splatter off my clothes, but when I bury my axe in one’s scalp, my jeans are splattered with pinkish-brown jelly.
There’s no time for relaxation after they’re down. The pump resumes its buzz just as a new group rounds the corner. This time it’s too many: a few dozen, with more behind them. Peter drops the nozzle and runs to Shawn. He shuts off the pump and retrieves the hose, while Peter reconnects the battery and throws our empty gas cans in back. Jamie and I stand in the bed, guns leveled, until Peter and Shawn are safely inside the cab. We sink down as the truck heads back the way we came.
Peter pulls over at the train tracks. “What do you think we got?” he asks Shawn.
“Dunno, maybe thirty gallons altogether. Not enough.”
Peter takes the container of antibacterial wipes I hand him and wipes down his hands and the steering wheel. There may be no food or fuel, but no one’s made a run on antibacterial wipes. And a year later, as long as they’re unopened, they work fine. I wipe black sludge from the edges of the truck bed and then my jeans. Once they’re soaked with cleaner, I’m satisfied they’re not contagious, but it doesn’t improve the aroma all that much.
“How about the one on the other side of the highway?” Jamie asks.
“If those stations were empty, then that one probably is,” Peter says. He looks at the map. “But it’s our only option, unless you want to head past that group and go deeper in.”
None of us does, but thirty gallons is a hundred gallons short of what we were hoping for.
“Let’s do it,” Shawn says. “What’ve we got to lose?”
We drive in silence while I calculate how far we’ll get on the fuel we have. It’s a discouraging thought. I sigh louder than I intended.
“What’s up?” Jamie asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “It just sucks.”
If we’re stranded out here for the winter, if we last until then, we’re probably dead. I imagine watching Bits starve to death, wasting away in front of my eyes, and a steady beating starts up in my temples.
“We’ll find somewhere to stay and scavenge food if we have to,” Peter says, reading my mind. “Then we’ll go into Winnipeg when they freeze. We have enough gas to get back there.”
I’m sure I could find twelve flaws in his plan if I tried, but I want to trust we’ll make this work. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Peter asks incredulously.
“We’ll figure it out.” Peter almost looks disappointed. Maybe he likes to convince me as much as I like to be convinced. “See? Right down off the ledge.” He laughs, and I want to hug him for being such a good friend when I know he must be miserable. It feels like a month, but Ana’s only been gone a matter of days.
We make it into an industrial part of town with no problems. A Walmart sits to our right, and a gas station to our left, surrounded by a few empty car dealerships whose missing cars have been moved into lines to form a passageway that stretches across Walmart’s lot to the rear of the gas station.
More cars surround the entirety of the empty gas station. It’s a large one, with twelve pumps, a convenience store and two fuel tankers sitting off to the side.
“Wow.” Jamie leans her head against the window. “I don’t see anyone. They probably would’ve come out already.”
I nod, afraid to jinx it. This is the answer to our prayers. We could take a tanker, if one runs and has fuel, and never have to stop for gas again. Whoever was here seems to be gone, and I hope it wasn’t because they ran out of fuel. Shawn opens the doors of the two vehicles not sitting sideways that, if moved, would allow us access to the tanks.
“No keys. No problem.” He scoots under the SUV and hums while he works his magic. Jamie has situated herself behind the wheel, and she steers while we push the truck to the side. We freeze at the noise of an engine coming up fast. A pickup veers around the convenience store inside the circle of cars with four men in the bed, and four rifles trained on us.
17
I sight my pistol on one of the four, a man in his sixties with pouches under his eyes and thick gray hair. There isn’t enough time to escape; our only recourse is to make it clear that we can kill them as easily as they can kill us. The truck blocks the opening and the man in my sights yells, “We just want to talk. You can put those down.”
“You can put you
rs down,” Jamie calls.
The man rests his rifle on the roof of the truck, but when the others don’t lower theirs, neither do we. He hops down and moves to the cars.
“Careful, Bob,” one of the other men says.
Bob stops twenty feet away and calls, “We don’t want any problems. This is our station. You want fuel, go to the others in town.”
“The others are all empty,” Peter says.
Bob looks over our truck. “You have anything to trade?”
“What do you need?” Shawn asks.
The three men in the truck have greasy hair and rumpled clothes, but all in all they look like they’ve done pretty well for themselves this past year. A young one with a beard and snub nose swivels his head between me and Jamie in a way that says he might not have had female companionship in a while. I point my gun at him.
“Why don’t you tell us what you have?” Bob asks.
“Let’s just go,” I mutter. My stomach is in knots. I’ll happily spend all winter in Winnipeg. The idea is sounding better by the minute.
“We need the fuel,” Peter says quietly. He looks to Bob. “We have ammo. Looks like you have some .22s. We have .22 Long Rifle. We don’t want any trouble, either. We’re on our way from Vermont to Alaska. If you don’t want to barter, we’ll leave.”
Bob takes in our Vermont license plate and looks us over as if he hadn’t believed our story until now. “That’s a long drive.”
Peter tells Bob our story as succinctly as possible. At the end, the pouches under Bob’s eyes hang lower and the men in the truck murmur, but their rifles stay aloft. “South America? Shit. We thought one or two more winters here and we’d be good.”
My arms ache from my death grip on my gun. I loosen my fingers one hand at a time while Bob mulls things over. He might not have a lot to do today, but we do, and I’m getting tired of this standoff. They know they have the upper hand.
“How much ammo do you have?” Bob finally asks.
“Enough,” I say. I feel Peter’s eyes bore into me, but I’m not telling this guy what we have so he can demand it all. “How much gas do you have?”
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 84