We were going to need a plan once we told Diana that she didn’t need to hunt us anymore. We were probably going to have to seek out Stella Rathbone back in Greenfield and have her give us a crash course on living off the grid.
I had a sinking suspicion it wasn’t going to be that easy.
I didn’t have any doubts that we’d figure things out in the end, but the end seemed a really long ways away and I was pretty sure that the journey between here and there was going to be a bumpy one.
I clutched the wheel of the van as another round of lightning lit up the sky. We were right near the car dealership we had passed coming into town. I remember thinking that we might pick up a new set of wheels there. With the musky odor that had settled inside the van, I was starting to count that as a good idea.
Then I saw two poxers on the side of the road. Both were wearing short sleeve white shirts, and ties that were a bit too wide and a bit too short for this century. I instantly knew that they had probably grown up in Apple, gone to Apple High School, started working at the car dealership the summer after graduation, and never left.
Now they were dead.
That was just sad.
Nope. We didn’t need a new set of wheels just yet. Besides, when we passed the dealership this time, I noticed the name—Apple Auto and Piano Tuning.
I smirked a little because I couldn’t think of anything more random than mixing cars with pianos, but then again this was backwater Massachusetts. Frankly, it would have made a lot more sense if the sign read ‘Apple Auto and Banjo Tuning.’
A few minutes more and we were out of Apple. We drove alongside a stand of pine trees that were all so straight that they appeared as refined and polished as the Queen of England. The trees were closely packed together and the sky was black. I felt like I was driving through a murky alley with tall, dark buildings on both sides.
What made everything that much worse was the storm. Eventually, the rain got so bad that I had to pull over to the side of the road.
“What’s wrong?” said Trina.
“I can’t see,” I said as I motioned at the blurry windshield. “I just want to give it a minute.” If I was being really honest with myself, I could have given it an hour, or maybe even longer than that. I wasn’t all that anxious to get back to the guns.
I didn’t know for sure, but I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to control my own little rainstorm once I finally saw Dorcas and what the soldiers had done.
Her being shot and blood splattering all over the window was an image I had no chance of forgetting anytime soon. The vision was so permanently etched behind my eyeballs that every time I blinked, there she was, spouting a mouthful of obscenities before throwing the bus keys into the woods.
As I sat there slouched in my seat, with the rain pounding, I wondered which one of us was going to be next.
It was only by some sort of miracle that most of the adults survived getting sick, and even a bigger miracle that four-year-old Krystal made it, too.
Sooner or later one of us was going to turn left instead of right, or get too close to a poxer. Trina and I wouldn’t turn if we were bitten, but that didn’t mean that a bite couldn’t get infected without proper treatment.
Jimmy wasn’t safe either. He was fast on wheels, but that didn’t mean a thing. I could picture him being chased by a pile of poxers into a corner with no way out.
I didn’t want to think about Bullseye. No matter how good he was with a gun—no matter how resourceful he could be, he was only a kid. Kids make bad judgment calls all the time. I know I did when I was his age.
And don’t get me started on Sanjay.
He was smart. He knew stuff. In some sort of twisted way, I figured he might last the longest, and that’s only because every one of us would defend him to the end.
Even Andrew.
Even Newfie.
Even Poopy Puppy, if he were anything more than pieces of fabric and sawdust. Frankly, Poopy Puppy did save Sanjay back in Greenfield. If it weren’t for that stupid doll firmly planted between him and a poxer, Sanjay wouldn’t have made it.
I wished I believed in magic like Sanjay. I’m sure the feeling that I could conjure up safety out of thin air would be like a protective pillow all around me.
I really needed a pillow like that right now.
The worst thing is that I felt really selfish for thinking the way I was thinking. I was immune. What did I have to worry about? The truth is I wasn’t really immune. I might be safe from the gnarly teeth of a poxer and the little parasites it carried, but I was definitely not immune from getting eaten by one.
One false move, one tiny slip up, and I could have a whole gang of them descend on me with their bibs tucked into their grimy shirts and their forks and knives at the ready. Who was I kidding? Their forks and knives were more like clawed hands and nasty fingernails.
I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. It smelled really bad inside the van and my thoughts were only adding to the foulness because they weren’t getting any better. As a matter of fact, without any coaxing on my part, my thoughts went to the worst place of all. The place I never wanted to look at. Not ever.
What about Prianka?
There were just so many killer martial arts moves she had before she misjudged and swung her foot too wide. In a split second, a poxer could chomp down on her ankle and she would be a goner for sure.
How was I going to survive that? How was I going to survive any of them turning?
What would Trina and I do if we lost even one?
I think we’d die ourselves. That’s the God’s honest truth.
I think we’d surely die.
5
WE WERE STILL a few miles away from Swifty’s and smack dab in the middle of the winding roads of the state forest, when the wet smell of burnt wood came seeping through the air vents of the van.
Prianka put her hand to her face.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” said Trina. “The smell outside or the smell in here with us.”
Oh, sure, I could have responded with something witty like, ‘the one who smelt it dealt it,’ but I thought it was high time that tired, old joke got flushed for good. I had nothing else to say, so for once, I didn’t say anything at all.
The rain was still coming down in great chunks like a rushing river crashing over a waterfall. I supposed I should have been grateful. If it weren’t for the rain, we would be driving through a raging forest fire. Now we were just driving through the aftermath of one, with charred trees on our right-hand side.
Thankfully, there was no fire damage on our left.
That meant the forest fire never jumped the road. It just torched the woods alongside the Quabbin Reservoir, including the gate and the path that led to Black Point Fort, the other site we had found.
Good. Serves them right.
I guess.
Somewhere along the way, a new thought started forming in my head. I was still working it out for myself, but roughly translated, it had something to do with not wanting to see any more death—no matter if that death involved a bad guy or a good guy.
We were all people. I didn’t want to see any more people die.
Not even Diana, and if anyone deserved to be smudged out of existence, she did.
As we drove a little farther down the road, the rain began to lessen. The skies remained charcoal gray, but the thunder and lightning let up.
“Hey,” said Jimmy from the back seat. “The sun will be shining soon and all will be right with the world.”
Trina grumbled something.
I think she said, “Not likely,” but it didn’t matter. If nothing else, Jimmy James was a half-glass-full kind of guy. Even if that glass was filled with black poxer goo, he’d find some way to make it all good. Being positive
was sort of like his super power.
As for me, I was also trying to be positive. I really was—but the only positive thing I could come up with was something lame, probably sexist, and exactly what anyone would expect me to say.
“No more pink umbrellas for me,” I chirped.
From the way back I heard Sanjay say, “Pink is for boys. Marshall Fields and Poopy Puppy say so. Andrew and Newfie agree,” but his words trailed off along with the rest of the world.
We were absolutely shrouded in gray mist.
The rain might have started to disappear, but what was left behind was a dense fog that was probably more smoke than anything. We could all taste it in our mouths—almost like we had been given burnt marshmallows and had to eat the charred outsides to taste the melted sugar underneath.
I could smell the soot curling inside my nostrils.
It was the smell of destruction.
The frightening blaze that ignited the forest yesterday killed everything as though thousands of locusts has descended from the skies and stripped the woods bare.
I absentmindedly reached across the front seat of the van and groped around for Prianka’s hand. When I found it, I gripped onto it hard, not giving her a chance to pull away even if she wanted to. She didn’t even try. Instead, she gripped mine equally as hard and put her other hand over both of ours.
Instead of fighting with her since grade school, we could have always had this.
What a badirchand.
What a freaking badirchand.
Five minutes later, and driving at a snail’s pace, the smoky shadow of Swifty’s came into view.
So much had happened there. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when we pulled into the parking lot with wet smoke still hanging in the air and blotting out the sky. The little beady eyes of the fishing bear that sat on the front porch regarded us with a bit of judgment, like it was pissed off that we left it behind to burn.
I slowed the van to a stop. We were all eerily quiet, and for moment, we just sat there with gray smoke everywhere and no one saying a word. I guess we all knew we weren’t here for Swifty’s and the bins of penny candy inside. We were here for the school bus that was parked across the road and what we had left there.
Still, I wasn’t ready to move.
I’m not sure any of us were.
Finally, Bullseye took a deep breath and said, “I think it’s my turn next. We were doing the alphabet of the worst things in the world. I was E, right?”
“Go ahead,” I told him, but there wasn’t any levity in my voice. There was sadness and a little bit of pissy teenager added in for good measure.
“Okay,” he said. “E is for ‘Everything’ that Diana, the soldiers, and the helicopter people took away from us. E is for ‘Eddie who didn’t make it,’ and burnt ‘Evergreen trees,’ and ‘Eating Chinese food with my family’ because I’m never going to be able to do that again. E is . . . well E is for ‘Everything.’”
His words were soft but I could feel the anger behind them. I could feel the loss.
Just then a dark figure walked out of the smoke and I got scared way down deep. We all did. A hush fell over the van.
It was a moose—a freaking moose. The thing was enormous with huge antlers on its head and a giant bulbous nose on its face like a character out of a Dr. Seuss book.
I’d never seen a moose before—not in real life.
“Wow,” murmured Jimmy. “That’s amazing.” I think the rest of us were too dumbfounded to speak. We watched as the moose slowly turned its massive head and stared at us with liquid eyes before slowly clomping away and melting back into the smoke.
That’s when it occurred to me that moose were part of the ‘Everything’ that Bullseye was talking about. What’s more, Everything was important.
“Let’s start a new game,” I said. “Instead of listing all the worst things in the world, let’s list the best.” I peered through the rearview mirror at the crow sitting on Sanjay’s shoulder in the back seat. “A is for Andrew because Andrew is an animal and animals are important.”
I meant it.
A lot.
6
IN REAL TIME instead of scared-out-of-your-mind-because-monsters-exist time, I had only known Dorcas Duke for a few days. If it weren’t for our little medication run to Guilford where the two of us were almost turned into poxer-chow then captured by soldiers, I’m not sure I would have ever even talked to her.
Dorcas was a tough old piece of leather from the hill towns. She swore like a trucker and sucked on cigarettes. I was a privileged kid from the suburbs. We were total opposites in almost every way.
Still, she saved my life at least three times—once in Jolly’s Pharmacy when Roger Ludlow was ready to stick me with a knife; once on a dark road in the middle of the night when the helicopter people came, and she sent them packing; and a third time when she pulled her old, yellow school bus across the road to block any sort of passage, so that my family and my friends could be safe one last time.
And look what she got for it.
The blood splatter on the window of the bus looked dark and sticky. I stood just far enough away from the yellow monster that I could see the splotchy mess clearly through the mist and the smoke. I stared at the stain like I was standing in a museum studying a Picasso while trying to tease meaning out of it.
The truth was, there was no meaning there at all. Dorcas’s death was completely and utterly senseless.
Prianka came and stood beside me. She leaned up against my shoulder. “You don’t have to go inside the bus,” she said. Her words didn’t sound mean or judgmental, but I didn’t care.
“I can handle it,” I spat and pulled away. Honestly, I didn’t know if I could handle seeing Dorcas all dead and blue, but I was angry, and Prianka was the closest thing to hurl my anger at.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” Her words were so even and measured that my shoulders immediately drooped. “But you don’t have to. You can stay out here, and we can hand the guns to you through the window.”
“The blood-stained window?” I said then immediately felt sorry for it. I took in a deep breath, puffed my cheeks out, and let the air leak out of me slowly, like the blood probably leaked out of Dorcas when she got shot.
“I’m sorry.” I whispered. “I wish she was alive.”
“I do, too,” she said. “She seemed like a nice old lady.”
“She was.”
Prianka smiled a little. “Even when I gave her a boatload of crap for calling Sanjay a retard, she took it like a trooper.”
I nodded my head. “She did, didn’t she? I’ll never look at old people the same way again. Anyone at any age can be useful.” My eyes slid sideways and I glanced quickly at Sanjay, who was standing with Newfie and Andrew, clutching Poopy Puppy. Then my eyes caught sight of Jimmy. He was sitting in his wheelchair, his arms bulging, staring at the bloody splotch on the glass of the window with a sad look on his face. “Everyone is useful.”
Prianka lightly brushed her lips against my cheek. “You’re not such a bad guy, Tripp Light,” she said. “You know that?”
“Don’t lie,” I sighed. “You’re only going out with me because there isn’t anyone else alive our age.”
“Now you know my secret,” she smiled, and kissed me again, this time on the lips.
Meanwhile, Trina came out of the front door of Swifty’s, down the front stairs, and across the parking lot. She was holding several strips of cloth—probably remnants of Masshole tee-shirts. At first, I thought she needed to wrap her hands again because they were still red from the fire, but I was wrong.
“What’s this for?” asked Bullseye, as she handed him a raggedy strip.
“So we can breathe,” she said. “Outside with all the smoke and inside with, well, you know.”
> “Oh,” said Bullseye. Then his eyes grew wide. “Ohhhh. Because that old lady is dead in there and she stinks?” He motioned toward the bus where Dorcas fell.
Trina smiled and patted Bullseye on the head like a dog that had just performed a good trick. Then she went to Jimmy and handed him one of the strips, too.
“Smart,” he said.
“Hey,” my sister smiled. “I’m more than just a hot blonde, you know.”
Jimmy smiled. “I dig it.”
“Here,” she said as she handed a strip to Prianka and another one to me. “Cover your mouth and nose and tie it around the back.” I didn’t even want to look at my sister. This whole process was sort of gross and more than a little sad. Meanwhile, Prianka took another strip of cloth from Trina and walked over to Sanjay who was standing several feet away from the rest of us.
In short order, we all looked like a band of Western Massachusetts bandits itching to rob a bus.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Prianka asked me one last time.
I wasn’t sure, but I nodded.
It turns out I didn’t have to go inside the bus anyway.
7
“WHAT’S WITH HIM?” Bullseye said, staring at Newfie.
The huge Newfoundland had lowered his head and began to growl. He was staring straight ahead at the stranded bus.
“Newfie, shut up,” I said, but he didn’t stop. After a moment, he barked, but in a little bit of a scary way.
I looked up at the splotchy window, and that’s when everything went south. Andrew opened up his beak and began squawking. “Poxer.” Oh, great. “Poxer. Poxer. Poxer. Poxer. Poxer.”
There was something moving inside the bus.
Through the mist and the smoke, we could see its shadow slowly shambling past the windows. I had no idea how it got there. When Dorcas had a bullet blown through her and the rest of us left, I didn’t notice any poxers hanging around. For all I knew, the soldiers let that thing inside the bus to feast on her still warm body just for kicks.
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