“Enough,” Bob says, and now he half-smiles. “That’s the reason you couldn’t find any. It takes a lot to run the generator in the store.”
So they’ve taken all the fuel in the surrounding area. I open my mouth and then close it when Peter mumbles, “Will you let me handle this?”
He holsters his gun and calls, “I’m coming to you.” Bob nods and Peter strolls toward him like he hasn’t a care in the world.
“Peter!” I call. He waves his hand behind him.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Shawn mumbles.
I can’t hear what Peter says before they shake hands. His shoulders are squared, but not like he’s gearing up for a fight—more like he’s confident Bob is going to help. He leans on a car’s hood like there’s nothing he’d rather do than shoot the shit all day. This is the old Peter, the one who did pointless things with lobbyists. His hair may be longer, with days of stubble and dirty jeans, but I can see he’s making headway by the way Bob relaxes and motions to the cars and Walmart as if bragging about his setup. Peter says something and flashes white teeth. A couple of the men in the pickup laugh at whatever he’s said.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Shawn says again.
The men drop their weapons at a motion from Bob. Peter beckons us over, and although I’ve holstered my pistol like his nod suggests, I don’t drop my hand from the grip. I try to look as self-assured as Peter, but it’s all I can do to not trip.
Up close, Bob looks more like he’s in his seventies. His teeth are stained brown, and I wonder if dental care isn’t high on his list these days. But he appears friendly now that they’ve reached some sort of agreement.
“Ten rounds of .22 for every gallon,” Peter says. “Plus three boxes of .38 and .30-30.We can swing that, right?”
Over a thousand rounds: two large boxes of .22 gone and six precious boxes of the others. I don’t see any other choice but to agree. Gas is more important than ammo at the moment. We try not to fire our guns for the most part, but ammunition is finite unless we come across the equipment we need for reloading empty rounds.
“Go ‘head and move the truck,” Bob says.
Shawn maneuvers our truck through the opening until he’s flush with the ground tanks, but I don’t move after the others.
“Trust me, it’s fine,” Peter says in my ear. “They’ve had some trouble in the past.” I nod, but I’m still jumpy. With zombies, you know exactly what they want. People lie.
We use their pump, which is quietly powered by a generator somewhere in the store. I sit in the pickup’s bed to keep an eye on our new friends and wave halfheartedly when Peter introduces me. Bearded Guy rests an arm on the side of the pickup. The odor that escapes makes it obvious he hasn’t showered recently—not that I should talk, although I’m not in a store with a generator—but his smile confirms that he brushes his teeth.
“You’re Cassie?” he asks. I watch Shawn stick a nozzle in the truck’s tank and say, “Yeah.”
“Chad. It’s been a long time since I met anyone new.” I give him a friendly nod. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t like having my attention diverted. “So, you’re heading to Alaska?”
“Yeah.”
“Supposed to be nice there. Some of us might like to head there, too. You know, since the Biters are coming up from the south.”
I think he just asked to come along. He’s nice enough, but I’d noticed that once he found out Jamie and Shawn were married he’d wasted no time in coming my way.
“Anyone who wants to come is welcome,” I say truthfully. I would never turn him or anyone looking for safety away. “I have two kids, so we could always use more adults.”
“Oh, are you married?”
I wish I could say yes, but if he comes, he’ll find out soon enough. “No.”
“Boyfriend or anything?”
I’d really like to hide under the truck. If Chad comes because he thinks girls are on the menu, it’s going to be awkward. I get it, I do—it’s lonely out here. And from the conversations I overhear I know that there are fifty people in the Walmart, most of them families, which doesn’t leave much for a single guy. But I am not on the market.
Peter has been behind me talking to Bob, and now he leans over the tailgate for the ammo, but not before squeezing my waist. “This everything, sweetie?”
Chad can’t see Peter’s wink, and I would laugh if it wouldn’t seem out of place. I hand him the boxes and turn back to Chad. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Aw, nothing.” Chad scrapes at dirt on his wrist. “How many people do you have?”
“Seventeen. Four kids. Some older people. A couple of guys our age, though. You’d like them.”
“Yeah,” he says. I feel bad at his obvious disappointment. Not bad enough to sleep with him to make up for it, however.
“Well, you’re welcome to come.” And he is, except for the fact that Peter and I will have to stage a breakup or start sleeping together to keep up the subterfuge. I almost laugh again and smile to cover it.
“I’ll probably stay here. We’ve kind of become a family, you know?”
I think of Bits and Hank, and this time my smile is real. “I do. You couldn’t get me to leave, either. The kids aren’t really mine, you know, biologically.” I point to Peter. “They’re kind of our adopted kids.”
I’m filled with a rush of gratitude that I don’t have to do this alone. I’m surrounded by people I love in a world that doesn’t have many people left. I even have a pretend boyfriend to keep unwanted suitors away.
I ask Chad about himself. It turns out he’s a year older than I am and has lost everyone he knew, except for a friend who lives in the Walmart. Now that I don’t have to fend him off, I listen to him recount everyone he failed to find. When he talks about his younger brother, who was on his way home and never arrived, I tell him about Eric. Sometimes I hate hearing these stories because it rips the gauze off the wound. Sometimes it’s cathartic to find everyone else is just trying to stanch the bleeding, too. Today it’s the latter.
“I’m the last of my family,” he says. “The last of the Bakers. Maybe one day…”
He drifts off when the pump does. We’re full, and we’re finished here. I pat his arm. “One day for sure. There are people out there, waiting for this to end. One day they’ll all come out of their hiding places and there’ll be a baby boom.”
“I hope so,” Chad says. “It was nice to meet you.”
It turns out that it was nice. Everyone has a story, and if I hang around long enough to listen, I remember that most of us are just scared and hurt and tired of this. “You, too. I’m sending any single ladies I find your way with orders to look up Chad Baker of Walmart.” I give him a big wink.
Chad slaps the truck with a laugh. “I’d appreciate that.”
When they’re finally gone from sight, I allow myself to exhale. We meet the RV where we left it and in the same condition, fortunately, and after I step out of the truck, Bits rushes into my arms and sends us both to the ground.
“You were supposed to catch me,” she says, her nose pressed on mine and eyebrows wiggling.
“When did you get so strong?” I shift to get a rock out from under my shoulder blade but don’t get up; I need hugs as much as she. Every time I think of Eric, of Adrian and Ana and everyone else, my second thought is I have Bits. It makes it all bearable. “Next time I’m sending you for fuel. You’ll come back in five minutes, full up.”
She rolls off me and giggles. “While you were gone Barnaby barked at two Lexers in the field and they came over. Zeke killed them.”
I don’t say anything, but I know Peter can hear what I’m thinking when he gives Barn’s head two heavy pats. He tried to get Barnaby to bark this morning so he could teach him to quiet, but Barnaby just stared blankly and wagged his tail. Jamie and Shawn recount the story of our fuel while Peter and I put the extra gas cans in an RV storage compartment.
“Thanks for saving me with Chad,” I sa
y.
Peter turns away with tight lips. “Sure.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Nothing.”
Of course everything is wrong. It could be he’s so solid that I forget to treat him like someone in mourning. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asks.
“For Ana.” I want to say her name. None of us has, and it feels like she’s being erased. I don’t want to erase all the people who are gone because it hurts too much to remember them. They don’t disappear—they haunt you. “I wish she were here.”
He brushes his cheek with the back of his hand and makes a sound that’s half laugh, half sob. “She probably would’ve shot Bob.”
“Definitely. It would’ve ended in a bloody firefight, but we would’ve won.”
We smile for a moment before Peter’s gaze wanders to Barnaby, who’s enthusiastically attempting to cover up his poop by scratching at the asphalt with his back legs. Barn turns, finds the poop uncovered and tries again. Peter shakes his head. “Christ, that dog is so fucking dumb.”
I break into laughter. “Well, he’s yours now. I’m not taking him back.”
“How do you get a dog to be quiet? You’ve had dogs.” He looks desperate for an answer. I don’t know if it’s some sort of boyhood dog ownership dream or if he doesn’t want anything else to be left behind, but either way, I want him to get his wish. A dog shouldn’t be too much to ask.
“Not a dog like Barn. We’ll figure it out, though, okay? Nice negotiating today. You were cool as a cucumber.”
Peter shrugs. “You just have to know how to talk to people.”
“Exactly. I don’t, not in that way.”
“You’d learn.”
There’s no way I could learn: I can do goofy, angry or nervous to the point of stammering, but definitely not charismatic. I think of our earlier conversation and tap the gas can I hold. “So maybe it wasn’t all pointless. Look what it got us today. Doesn’t it feel nice to use it for good instead of evil?”
Peter rolls his eyes but his mouth twitches. “Yes, Cassandra, it does.”
18
“We’ve got to find somewhere to stay, and soon,” Zeke says once we’ve put some distance between us and Yorkton. “We spent so long shitting around for fuel that it’ll be dark soon.”
I believe Peter’s assessment that Bob and his people were trustworthy, but I noticed he’d told them we were taking a different route than the one we’d planned. Unfortunately, the one we planned is not turning out to be the best in terms of finding a house for the night. This was farmland, you can tell by the occasional bale of hay that rises above the grass, sprouting greenery from its rounded top, but there are no farmhouses.
The sun has begun its descent, and it’s looking like we’ll be in the RV tonight until we see a small, gray two-storied house surrounded by trees. We’d hoped for something more open, but since we haven’t seen a Lexer since above Yorkton, it’s most likely not an issue. We split into groups to search the trees, which are empty. After crunching sounds from the house, Zeke emerges, trying so hard to look expressionless that I know whatever was inside wasn’t pretty.
“They’re bringing them out back,” he says. “Two of them. Smells pretty ripe in there. We cracked some windows.”
The bottom floor of the house is open, with only a half wall separating the kitchen from the living room. Margaret rises from below the kitchen sink with a can of air freshener. She circles the downstairs dispensing a fine mist behind her. Now it smells like Spring Garden and decayed flesh, but it’s an improvement.
A rose-colored velveteen couch with two matching chairs makes up the living area. A highchair sits at the dining table to the left of the kitchen. Zeke pauses to rest a hand on it as he walks by, and I know whoever sat in there must have still been in here.
“The upstairs smells better,” Zeke says. “The trees are too tall for a decent view even up there, not that we’d see anything come night.”
Jamie opens cabinets and plunks a few things on the counter. “Spices. We could use those, right?”
I don’t want to play the usual game of how the occupants became zombies, even in my own head, so I climb the stairs to a small landing. One bedroom belonged to someone big enough to have outgrown the highchair, and his many Disney toys are piled in the corner by a toy box. The other room has a queen-sized bed and a crib. I look through the dresser and closet before it’s too dark to see, but the woman’s clothes are too large, the kind of large that would give a Lexer extra cloth to grab.
Nelly enters and asks, “So, are we calling dibs on beds?”
“You can duke it out with the rest of them. I’ll sleep downstairs with Bits and Hank.”
He runs his fingers through the box of coins on a dresser by the window. “Maybe we should play poker for the rooms.”
“No one is dumb enough to challenge you to poker. But when we get to Alaska you’ll find a whole new set of suckers.”
Nelly flops on the bed with a squeak of springs. I lie beside him and pull the end of the covers over top. Between Nelly’s furnace-like heat and the blankets it’s almost warm.
“Think Adam would mind if I slept in the middle?” I ask.
“Does wittle baby need snuggles?”
I suck on my thumb and then open my eyes when Adam and Peter enter the room. The kids’ voices echo out of the boy’s room while they sift through his belongings.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Adam asks cheerily. His face falls when Nelly ignores him.
“You’re welcome to join us,” I say. “Nelly said I can sleep in the middle.”
“That might be preferable at the moment,” Adam says. He moves to the window and stares out.
A tense silence fills the room. The middle of a warm bed would be nice, but I don’t want to be in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel. I’ve just eased out of the bed and am heading for Peter and the door when Adam turns to me. “Sorry. Nel’s angry at me for making him stay today.”
Nelly stares at the ceiling, hands behind his head. He’s not big on sharing feelings, although he’ll discuss yours all day, and uses humor to brush off any attempt to get inside his brain. I know most of what goes on in there after all these years, but you have to be attuned to every nuance to tell.
“It was fine,” I say. “It’s not like everyone could go.”
“I didn’t have a good reason—I just didn’t want him to. I know it’s not fair. I won’t ask again.” He runs his fingers through the change the way Nelly did. The coins drop with tiny plinks in the silence. “I just couldn’t lose another…”
His eyes move from me to Peter. I creak across the floorboards to embrace him. “I’m staying next time because Bits wants me to. Nelly understood.”
Nelly has closed his eyes as if sleeping, but he’s listening for sure. This is the point where he’s supposed to jump in and agree, or at least forgive, but Nelly’s as stubborn as they come. Without breaking free from Adam’s arms, I take a quarter from the change box and chuck it at Nelly. He turns his head and glares at me.
“Last year, when I had to…stop Evan, I swore I wouldn’t ever do this again,” Adam says. “I thought it would be easy, you know? How many guys could be out there?”
Nelly’s face softens from stony to hard, although he keeps his gaze skyward. Adam’s eyes are moist when he pulls back. “But it happened anyway. And I love Nel more than…I’m just scared of having to go through that again. To believe in something good and have it taken away.”
My throat is so tight I can’t swallow. Hours after I believed again, Dan was gone. I imagine him putting his gun to his head, knowing it was his last second of life. That he would miss out on so much. I wonder if he sobbed before he did it or if he looked up at the stars—if he even waited until night—and believed he was going somewhere better.
A tear plops to my cheek. I let it run to my chin. It won’t count if I pretend it’s not there. Nelly has moved to sit at the edge of the bed and watch
es the floor with his big hands clasped together. Peter’s studying a framed Degas poster as if fascinated, but I know for a fact that Degas is far from Peter’s favorite artist.
“If I were as good as all of you are at this stuff, then I’d go with him. But, if I go, I could be the reason he or one of you dies. And I hate that.” He draws in a shaky breath. “It’s not fair to act like losing Nel is worse than any of you losing someone. That nobody else feels the way I do. We all have to put ourselves on the line.”
Nelly looks up, glassy eyes reflecting what’s left of the light before he drops his head in his hands. Maybe he’s realized that he doesn’t have to worry about Adam being sent into harm’s way, at least on purpose. He doesn’t feel helpless in the same way Adam does.
Tear number two races for my chin. This one isn’t for Dan and everyone else who’s gone—it’s for those of us left here to carry on. Adam says, “I’m sorry I let my fear get in the way.”
I wish Nelly could see the love that shines behind the fear in Adam’s eyes. It’s no small thing to be loved this way, especially now. I hope Nelly knows that.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” I kiss his cheek and walk to the door. “We’ll save dinner for you guys.”
Just before Peter shuts the door with a gentle click, Nelly rises to take Adam’s hand. We walk past the other bedroom and discover Hank surrounded by Lego bricks.
“This kid had a ton of Lego sets,” he says. “Star Wars and all kinds of stuff. I don’t think he even played with most of them. Some are still in their boxes.” He raises his hands like that’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard. If there’s one toy Hank still loves, it’s Lego.
I sit on the area rug while he explains the features of various plastic brick sculptures. I can barely see the colors in the gloom and ask, “Why don’t you bring them downstairs into the light?”
He sets them carefully into the plastic bin. Lego pieces are loud, but Hank doesn’t have to be told to keep quiet even though he’s quaking with excitement over his newfound treasure.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 85