“James, this guy was tall and skinny. You should try on some of his clothes.”
He takes a pair of flannel-lined jeans and some Levis. I hold the woman’s jeans up to myself and groan. It may be superficial, but there’s no way I can bring myself to put on these high-waisted, pleated jeans that puff at the hips and taper off at what would be way above my ankles. Not unless I was naked and freezing to death, and even then I wouldn’t want to be caught dead in them. Nelly strolls in and stops, his trademark smirk appearing at the sight of the jeans.
“It’s the pleats that make them, isn’t it?” I ask.
“I’d pay good money to see you in those. Try them on for me.”
“Not happening. Too bad money isn’t worth anything.”
“Please?” Nelly clasps his hands together. “Please? Let me take a picture of you in them. I’ll give you my dinner.”
“No way. And we already ate.”
Nelly laughs. “Breakfast and lunch tomorrow, then.”
“So you have a picture to hang over my head for the rest of our lives? I’ll never be that hungry.”
He fingers the denim sadly. “You need clothes. You should bring them just in case.”
“Why? So my other jeans can have an unfortunate accident?” I’m down to my last clean outfit, but I’d wash out and wear my slightly stinky jeans before I’d touch these with a ten foot pole.
“You know me too well.”
He’ll bother me about this all night, but Nelly can always be distracted by mind-altering substances. “James found cigarettes. Want one?”
Nelly perks up, the jeans forgotten, and drags us into the backyard. I sink into one of the chairs on the covered patio and light up. The stale cigarette crackles, but it tastes fine. Nicotine and lack of food give me a head rush that doesn’t quite reach the level of nausea, so I help myself to another drag.
Nelly puts his feet up on the table and squints through his smoke. “How many were in there?”
“Six,” James says. “Now three.”
Zeke comes through the sliding glass door. “Now two, you mean.” He settles into a chair and lights up. “Ten years ago I swore I’d never smoke again. It’ll send you to an early grave.”
“So will zombies,” Nelly says.
“True enough.”
Peter steps out. Nelly holds his cigarette down by his side. “Narc.”
“Are we not past that now? Enjoy.” Peter waves at the cloud of smoke that’s trapped under the patio roof, then sits in a chair and turns to me. “But I thought you wanted to live.”
“This is living. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Peter reaches for my cigarette and I look at him in disbelief. “Really?”
“Hand it over.”
We watch Peter take a drag, holding the cigarette awkwardly between his fingers. It’s more than I would inhale, even having been a smoker myself. His face goes red and smoke comes out in choking, coughing spurts. I pluck it from his hand and help myself to more while I laugh at him.
“Amateur,” Nelly says.
“Why the hell would you want to smoke?” Peter says between gasps. “It’s like licking an ashtray.”
“A delicious ashtray,” I say. “Want to try again?”
“I think I’m good.”
“Are you on watch with me?”
“I am.”
“Well then, I guess we should get inside.” My mouth does taste like an ashtray now that I’m done. “I want to brush my teeth.”
Peter stands with his lips quirking. “It’s gross, isn’t it? Admit it.”
“Never,” I say.
28
The next morning, we hit our first service station. Kyle turns off the ignition and rolls down his window. Everyone gearing up for our usual procedure freezes when he sniffs the air and swivels his head. “You smell that?”
I hear them before I see them. The same sound I heard on our last day at Kingdom Come—a droning hum that gets louder by the second. The first few stumble from the wooded area on the south side of the highway and are followed by a whole lot more. They spill out between the businesses down the road to the west.
“Sit down!” Kyle calls.
I hold Nicki in my arms while we screech out of the lot. Voices call from the radio, but I can’t hear a thing over Nicki’s wails. Nelly turns from the windshield, face pale. “There’re more coming. Hold on.”
Thankfully, last I saw there weren’t many cars on the road. A swerve in a giant box like this RV, at this speed, would surely send us rolling. Peter holds the counter, eyes out the side window, and his face slackens a moment before the rear of the RV is hit from the left. I thud headfirst into the cabinets on the opposite side and Nicki flies out of my arms. When I can focus again, I crawl to her.
Kyle straightens out the shuddering RV. Peter’s on the floor, Bits and Hank in his arms and feet braced on a cabinet. I pull myself and Nicki into the short hall between the bedroom and kitchen and do the same. The RV skids to the right and I close my eyes, sure we’re going over—and, therefore, sure we’re only minutes away from death—either by car crash or the swarm of Lexers.
Kyle makes a sharp right and a minute later calls, “I see the bridge. It’s fine.”
I don’t know what we would have done if it wasn’t. The noise from under the tires changes when we hit the bridge’s road surface. I move to the bedroom window with Nicki in my arms, since she whimpers and refuses to let go. Dark shapes float in the river, and the Lexers that have washed up on the northern shore struggle to their feet. If that pod was as large as the one in the east, who knows how many thousands will come through here. Some are bound to make it across and up the steep riverbank. I just hope they won’t make it over the immense mountains to the west. That hope is the whole reason we started on this trip.
“Everyone okay?” Kyle yells.
We answer in the affirmative, but Nicki yelps and clutches her arm to her middle when I jostle it as I set her on the bed. I sink to the floor. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“My arm,” she wails.
“Can I see?”
She yanks out of my reach, fat tears dripping down her cheeks. “No. It hurts.”
Maureen has come into the bedroom, and now she sits beside Nicki and says, “We have to look at it to help you, sweetheart.”
Maureen coaxes Nicki into her lap and nods my way. It might do more harm than good to raise Nicki’s arm to remove her sweater, so I slice my knife through the sleeve and ease it down to find a lump in her forearm where one shouldn’t be. I fight a wave of nausea. I can kill zombies without getting ill, but the sight of this little girl with a broken arm makes my saliva thicken.
“We’ll get you all fixed up, don’t worry,” Maureen says. Her voice is relaxed, even as she looks at me with troubled eyes. “Cassie, why don’t you go get Daddy for Nicki? And we need Jamie and Zeke.”
Jamie was Doc’s part-time nurse at Kingdom Come and the closest we have to a doctor besides Zeke. I reach the front on unstable legs and touch Kyle’s shoulder. “Nicki’s okay, but we think her left arm is broken. Is it safe to stop so we can switch drivers and get Jamie?”
His hands tighten on the wheel and he throws a wild glance over his shoulder, but he doesn’t slow. “She’s okay?”
“She’s scared and it hurts, but she’s okay.”
“I’ll stop in a few miles.” He swallows hard and calls, “I’ll come back there as soon as I can. Okay, baby?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I had her, but I dropped her when they hit us.”
“Not your fault,” he says, but I still feel responsible.
The mountains ahead of us are dark against the light blue of the sky. The pod is behind us, but not far enough behind, in my opinion. The road climbs higher until we have a clear view of the river and surrounding land. I’m not surprised to see figures stumbling north in the clearings.
A few miles later, when the trees are shorter and the grass doesn’t reach th
e height of the grass at lower elevations, Peter takes the wheel. Jamie and Zeke examine Nicki, who’s entered a state of what could be calm or shock in Kyle’s lap. He looks as shocked as she. “I know it hurts, baby. Jamie’ll fix it.”
Jamie nods, but when she moves behind Kyle for the first aid kit the look she throws me is anything but confident. Her hands shake as she fumbles in the bag for gauze. “Cassie, can you get the book?” She looks around. “A splint. What can we use to make a splint?”
I find the medical book and flip to the pages on broken bones. The picture looks just like Nicki’s arm, lump included. So far, Jamie’s doing everything right.
Zeke looks for splint material while Kyle watches us, breathing deep and murmuring in Nicki’s ear. I find her dosage of children’s ibuprofen. “This is yummy stuff,” I say. “Right, Bits?”
“It’s so good, Nicki,” Bits says in a singsong voice from where she sits on the table for a better view. “I wish I could have some.”
I wink at her and whisper to Nicki, “It’s like candy. You’d better take it before she does.”
Nicki offers me a wan smile and opens her mouth. Jamie sits with the papers by her knee. “It doesn’t look too swollen yet. We have to set it. We should stop while we do that. Zeke, can you hold her upper arm by her side?”
“If only you’d broken a tooth,” Zeke says with a smile. “That I could fix up right quick.”
Jamie studies the instructions and whispers to herself as the RV slows. “Cassie, come here a sec? Zeke holds, you pull and I’ll line up the break.” She points to the drawings, which show another set of hands are helpful to be sure the bones line up properly.
“This is probably going to hurt, sweetie. But you can’t move your arm, okay?” Nicki’s lower lip trembles when she nods. “Okay, Cassie, pull now.”
I’m not going to be a baby about this and ask someone else to do it, although I’d really, really like to. I hold the base of Nicki’s hand and pull gently. Nicki screams, but if we stop now it’ll be even worse to try again. The lump in her arm disappears and Jamie uses her hands to adjust the bones.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jamie murmurs. It might be in answer to Nicki’s cries, but I think it’s partly for herself, too. “Let go, Cass.”
Jamie wraps gauze around Nicki’s arm and places the cardboard packaging Nelly has cut and folded underneath. I hold it in place while she wraps an elastic bandage around the whole thing. She looks up from her work when she’s secured the end. “I think we’re good. There are instructions on making a cast when the swelling goes down, but we’re going to need plaster.”
Kyle murmurs his thanks and asks, “Does she need a cast? Will it heal on its own?”
“I don’t think we should take the chance. I’ll stay in here in case Nicki needs me. Let me go tell Shawn.” Jamie pulls me out the door and walks up the rocky grass on the roadside, her breaths coming in giant bursts of fog. She stumbles back to where I stand on the asphalt. “Oh my God. I had no idea what I was doing. I think we got it, though.”
Her face is pale, eyes perfect circles. She takes her hair out of its messy bun and shakes out the sweat. Now that it’s over, mine has turned to ice. “You were great,” I say. “I wanted to faint.”
“I kept talking just so I didn’t. I saw Doc do it last year, but that was before I was his official nurse.” She leans on the RV and blows out a breath. “Now we have to go to a hospital for that plaster. We can’t let her arm heal wrong.”
Hospitals are places to avoid at all costs; they’re full of Lexers. But Jamie’s right: you can’t grow up nowadays with an arm that doesn’t work properly. It could be a death sentence.
“How about an art supplies store?” I ask. “They always have those plaster of Paris strips there. I don’t know if it’s the same thing, but it’ll probably work.”
“They do?” Jamie asks. “Who knew being an artist would come in handy?”
I think of the painting I made for Dan of Fenway Park. It didn’t save his life, but maybe it made him happy for what ended up being his last few hours. And Bits has the locket with the painting of her mother; otherwise, she’d have nothing of her past. Inside my second bag, the one I grabbed when I rescued Sparky, is the box Dan made for me. I took it for the phone charger and other assorted things I’d stored in there, thinking I’d remove them when winter came and we were safe until spring. I’d hoped the giant pods wouldn’t make it before the freeze, but I was prepared to be disappointed. I am, after all, my father’s daughter.
29
I want to sob when the mountains become a faded blue as we head northeast to Grande Prairie for fuel and plaster. The mountains here are more like hills in comparison, and even those are flattening out. Everyone either sits unnaturally still or, like Maureen, has busied themselves doing things that don’t need doing. Now that it’s a certainty we’re in a race with the Lexers, we don’t have time to waste. James and Mark have informed us that more could very likely be traveling up the highways in British Columbia—and there isn’t a wide selection of roads to choose from. Had no one taken out those bridges up north, we would’ve never gone to Hinton. But that’s how it is out here—one thing leads to another until you find yourself on a different course entirely.
It’s afternoon by the time we hit the city. We’ve eaten lunch and given Nicki an MRE dessert, which she ate before falling asleep on Kyle. The other kids refused a taste when she offered, and I plan to reward them by giving them every last dessert when the MREs are finally cracked open.
The first barren gas station we hit has a phone book. We find a wide, empty crossroads south of the city for the RV to wait while the pickup goes for fuel and plaster. We’ll have to hit the busy sections of town, where there’s a better chance of fuel and there’s definitely a craft store. Or I should say they’ll have to hit it, given that I’ve promised Bits I wouldn’t go—a promise I already regret. Heading out with a purpose is better than waiting.
Everyone is packed inside the RV, mapping out gas stations or making sure blades are sharp and guns are loaded. “I’d like to stay with Nicki, if no one minds,” Kyle says.
“And I should stay in case she needs something,” Jamie adds. I know, like me, she’d rather go. Shawn blinks a few times. They’re always together, and he’s not fond of the idea at all.
“I’ll go, Shawn,” James says. He touches Penny’s shoulder when she pales. “I practically have the map memorized.”
“All right,” Zeke says. “Me, James, Nel, Margaret and Mark are going.”
“You could use six people,” Peter says. “Two for the pump and four to watch. I’ll go.” My mouth drops. This is not what I’d call sticking like glue. But I notice Bits’s anxious expression and bite my tongue.
They fill the RV with all the fuel it will hold before tossing the empty containers in the pickup. I stand on the road beside Bits and smooth down the flyaway hair that the never-ending wind has pulled from her braid.
“Be good,” Peter says to Bits. He lifts her above his head and then pretends to drop her while she cackles. She still hasn’t grown tired of their game, and she’s still small enough to do it at almost nine years old. “Love you, baby girl. More than all the stars in the sky.”
“Love you infinity,” Bits says once she’s on the ground, and then she runs off to hug the others.
Peter turns to me. I haven’t said a word, but it’s obvious he knows how I feel by the way he sucks in his cheeks. “They could use the help. We don’t want what happened to Mike and—”
“I know.” I watch the grass bend in the wind. I’d thought we left the stupid prairie behind us, but here we are yet again.
“You’re not mad?”
I drag my eyes to his. “No. I’m scared.” Now it’s Peter’s turn to stare at the stupid prairie and run a hand through his hair. I clear my throat. “Just come back.”
He pulls me into a hug. I grab the back of his coat and consider refusing to let go. I could throw a little tantru
m right here and maybe get my way, but I won’t. We all have to put ourselves on the line; it’s just that I want Peter’s life to be on the line when I’m there, too.
“I will. Promise.” I step back with a shake of my head. Peter can’t promise something like that, and he knows I’m a stickler for promises. He pulls me close, jaw set and eyes ink-black. “I promise.”
It shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does. I’m beginning to think Peter could make me believe anything at all. “I’m holding you to that. If you break your promise, I swear I’ll kill you.”
Peter’s teeth flash. “Deal.”
Dinner has grown cold and the sun is setting. They were supposed to be back by nightfall. I never thought that people actually wring their hands, but Penny and I have become masters at it. I spent my watch shift on the RV’s roof staring down the road for the red pickup. I kept thinking I heard it, only to have my heart plummet when it was once again the sound of the wind rushing over the grass and through the few trees.
“They might have to stay the night somewhere,” Penny says. “Or they’re heading back right now. It’s just taking longer than they thought. What if they have to leave the city by the north and make their way down? There could be cars to move and…”
She trails off. It’s not the first time she’s listed all the things that could be happening, but there’s one she leaves out and it’s the most likely of all. We can travel 400 or so miles on the fuel we have, enough to get out of here and find gas someplace else. It won’t be easy with a hand-pumped siphon and only a few of us who can fight.
We’ve agreed to leave if they haven’t returned by mid-morning tomorrow. When they get close, they’ll call on the radio. The radios have a decent range on flat terrain, but all we’ve heard so far is static. I take out my buns so I can lie down comfortably but leave on my coat and boots because I want to be ready to help if need be. Maybe all they need is help. I refuse to contemplate any other outcome.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 91