by Megan Crewe
I didn’t want to be soft. But I didn’t want to be like the people who’d hunted us down, either.
“Let’s leave that two-way here,” Tobias said, coming over with two of the other sleds. “At this point, I’d believe they’ve got some way of tracking those things.”
I realized I was still clutching it in my mittened hand. I stepped out of the van and hurled the radio over the fence. It plopped into the snow. Tobias watched it fall, his eyes distant and his jaw tight beneath the shadow of his hood.
“Is that the first time you’ve…” I started, and trailed off, uncomfortable with the question.
“Killed someone?” Tobias filled in. “Yes. I managed never to get shipped out, and there aren’t a whole lot of enemy soldiers to engage around here.” He tossed some of the empty gas jugs into the back.
“Justin was right, you’re good with the gun,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to use it.”
“That’s what the training’s for,” he said. “I just got as good as I could at everything so the sergeants wouldn’t have as much to harass me for. To tell you the truth, I only signed up for the armed forces because it was the one way I could put some distance between me and my stepdad. It turned out I hated it almost as much as I hated him.” He stepped back to meet my gaze. “But I don’t hate that I’m here,” he added. “You just do what you’ve got to do to get by.”
“Yeah,” I said, my throat dry. And from the other side of the clearing, Justin’s voice rose, strained but triumphant.
“Found the keys!”
I woke up in the dark, my cheek cold from pressing against the window. I blinked, searching for some sense of equilibrium.
We were in the van. Gav was driving, Leo looking at the map book—the map book I’d given him last night after I’d traded seats with him. Justin was drooped against Tobias, eyes closed and lips parted, a faint snore escaping them. Tobias had balled his scarf into a pillow to sleep, but he was stirring now.
Outside, the glow of the headlights streaked across the road. The sky was dull and overcast, only a smudge of moonlight showing through the clouds. The glimpses I caught of the trees lining the road didn’t look all that different from what I’d seen shortly before I fell asleep. For a second I had the uneasy sense that we’d been driving in place, going on and on and getting nowhere.
Gav must have noticed me lift my head. “If the clock’s right, it’s almost five,” he said. “We just turned off onto a local highway so we can look for a place to drop the van. The tank’s almost empty, anyway.”
“How far did we get?” I asked.
“We crossed into Quebec around two,” Leo said. “Just one more province to go!”
One more to go. We were so much closer than we’d been even a day ago. For a moment I contemplated keeping the van. We could make it to Toronto in just a few more days.…
But the people on the other end of the radio would be looking for it soon, if they weren’t already. There wasn’t exactly a whole lot of traffic to blend in with. And to leave it sitting in some town while we searched for gas, like a signal flag—we’d be asking to get caught.
“There’s a mailbox,” Leo said, pointing to a shadowy shape. The van slowed as Gav eased up on the brake. We rolled up to the mailbox and carefully turned down the driveway beside it. The van lurched, and Justin sputtered awake.
The headlights slid over the edge of a porch. The door stood ajar, only darkness beyond it. No one home.
“I’ll bring the van around back so nobody can see it from the road,” Gav said. When he’d parked, we all climbed out, Tobias carrying the rifle he’d taken from the dead woman. A frigid breeze cut across my cheeks. I tugged my scarf up. The heat from inside the van was already seeping out of my bones.
Gav and Leo turned on their flashlights, and I tried not to think about the last people who’d been holding them. But Gav’s light must have caught my face, because he stopped while the others went around to unload our supplies. He lowered the flashlight and touched my arm with his other hand.
“Hey,” he said softly. “How’re you doing?” The drive seemed to have done him good. He looked more at ease than I remembered seeing him the last few days.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just, you know, nervous.” A yawn stretched my jaw. “And tired.”
“We could crash here for a few hours.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to be able to rest until we’re away from that van. Let’s put a couple miles between us and it, at least.”
“I think we can manage that.” He leaned forward to kiss me and then pulled me into a hug. I hugged him back, my eyes squeezing shut against sudden tears. I hadn’t known how much I needed someone else to hold a little of my weight, just for a moment.
“You think there’s any gas left in the tank?” Tobias asked as we stepped apart. He held up the empty jugs.
“We might be able to fill one or two,” Gav said. “It’d be good to have a little on us.”
As he unscrewed the gas cap, I turned toward the looming presence of the house. Maybe it wasn’t totally empty.
“While you’re doing that, I’ll take a look inside,” I said. “See if there’s any food.”
“Good idea,” Gav said.
“I’ll come too, Kae,” Leo said. “I don’t think we should be going anywhere alone these days.”
Gav didn’t speak, just looked at Leo and then turned back to the van. I followed the beam of Leo’s flashlight onto the porch. As the light swept the front hall, it caught a series of grimy boot prints tracked across the hardwood floor.
“Looks like someone’s already been through here,” I said.
We searched the kitchen quickly, finding nothing but a few dishes in the cupboards. The stairs creaked as we headed to the second floor.
It looked as if someone had stripped the blankets off the beds, but the queen in the master and the two singles in the second bedroom were still wrapped tightly in their sheets. The cloth gleamed white when Leo ran the beam of the flashlight over them. I paused, thinking of our dark coats as we walked across the snow.
“We should take these,” I said, fingering the cloth. “We can wrap them over our coats so we blend in better. We’ll be harder to spot from far away.”
“Like arctic foxes,” Leo said. When my eyebrows rose, he held up a hand. “Hey, you pounded just about every fact about them there is into my head that month when you were obsessed with having one as a pet! I remember things.”
I cracked a grin, and his mouth curved with a hint of a smile. Right then, he looked like his old self again. A twinge of warmth fluttered in my chest: a pull toward him, a memory of his lips brushing mine.
I hadn’t forgotten the kiss, or how it had made me feel. Well, maybe I never would. But the air seemed clearer between us after our talk at the colony, like we both knew where we stood. So it was easier to breathe in and nudge the feeling aside.
“I really thought it was going to work,” I said, untucking the sheet. “How old were we, seven? But Drew had to overhear and crush my dream. ‘They arrest people for taking endangered species, you know.’”
“So that’s why you gave it up.”
“Yeah.” My amusement dampened. Thinking about Drew and where he was now. Who he was with.
I should have been happy he was alive. I was happy. It was just that the happiness was kind of numbed by the worry and fear that had come with it.
“What do you think he’s doing with these people, Leo?” I said.
Leo’s expression turned serious. “We don’t even know exactly who they are,” he said.
“We know they’d rather get the vaccine for themselves than let us find someone who can make enough for everyone. And they’re willing to lie to people, to hurt them, to get what they want.”
Leo shrugged and looked toward the window. His face was wan in the reflected glow of the flashlight. “You probably just described almost every person still alive right now, Kae. Maybe he had to join up with them to
survive.”
“But this is Drew,” I said. “You know him. He was like a freaking crusader, posting all over the internet, challenging injustice. It was kind of annoying sometimes, but that’s how he is. How can he help people who go around stealing and killing?”
“People change,” Leo said. “When the world’s going to hell like this, sometimes you do things you wouldn’t have ever thought you’d do, because you don’t see any other choice.”
“You mean like Justin?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “He wanted to shoot those people. It wasn’t just about surviving.”
“Maybe,” Leo said, his voice strained. “But I can’t judge him. I’ve done worse.”
The words hung in the air for a moment. Then I scoffed. “I don’t believe that. You would never—”
“You don’t know, Kae,” he interrupted. “You have no idea.…” He sat down on the edge of the bed, his head drooping. “I know you think I haven’t wanted to talk about how I got back to the island because of everything I saw. But it’s not that. It’s because of what I did.”
My heart stuttered.
“So what did you do?” I said.
For a few seconds I thought he was going to clam up again. He sucked in a ragged breath. And then he started talking with a hollowness that was almost as hard to hear as his words.
“I had to get home, back to the island,” he said. “But I hardly had any money at school. I stole all the cash out of my roommate’s wallet so I could pay for a bus most of the way to the border. I thought I was going to have to walk the rest, but a woman who was heading there too, she saw me and offered me a ride. She was sick. She was wearing one of those masks, but she kept coughing. I was terrified I was going to catch it from her. So I took off. At a rest stop. I jumped in the car and just left her there. I told myself she was going to die anyway, so it didn’t really matter.”
He stopped, swallowed, and went on. “And then there was the quarantine camp at the border. It was supposed to be just for a week, but the soldiers changed their minds every other day—it was two weeks, and then three—it started looking like they were never going to let us cross over, and the place was getting crowded, and supplies were running out, and they kept hauling people away who started showing symptoms.… I grabbed a guy’s coat, the only one he had, and a bunch of food that was supposed to be for everyone, so I could make a run for it.”
“Leo,” I said, and he shook his head.
“I had this idea I was a good person, you know? Like you said about Drew. That was just who I was. I would never have believed I could be that selfish. But I was. All I could think about was getting home, getting there alive. I don’t even know if I would take it back if I could, because I don’t think I would have made it otherwise.” He laughed. “I was so scared to see my parents—like they’d know what I’d done—to see how they’d look at me. Some little part of me was relieved that they were dead, so I didn’t have to find out. How awful is that?”
He kept staring at the floor, as if he was afraid to see my expression. Imagining Leo stealing, abandoning someone who’d helped him, made my stomach ache. But I couldn’t say I’d rather he’d died than made it home. Like Tobias had said last night, You just do what you’ve got to do to get by.
“You were trying to get back so you could help your parents, Tessa—everyone,” I said. “That part’s not awful.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like I screwed things up even more after I got back. I want to be the person I’m supposed to be. Tessa’s boyfriend. Your best friend. I feel almost normal, now and then. But then I think of what’s happened and the horribleness just rises up and I can’t pull myself out.”
I thought of how angry I’d been at him for not being himself, and my eyes prickled. He’d been carrying all this, every minute of every day. “You can’t help how you feel,” I said. “You’ve been through a lot. I was upset, yeah, and it wasn’t totally fair. I should have tried harder to talk to you.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he said. “Anyway, maybe I’m not the person I used to be anymore. Maybe this is who I am now. A thief and a cheat and practically a murderer and not really a good person at all.”
“You’re not—” I said, but he went on without letting me continue.
“Maybe when life gets tough enough, we all turn into bad people. I used to think most people want to do right, when they can, but now…”
I sat down beside him. “What if you’re wrong? What if it just takes a while for people to stop being scared and start thinking straight again? You remember you told me to think of people like animals?”
“Well, they’re acting like it, aren’t they?” he said.
“Yeah. And you don’t say an animal is ‘bad’ if it fights with another animal over the same food or a place where they both want to live. It’s survival. People panic; instincts take over.” I paused. “Like Justin, I guess. But if there wasn’t any more reason to panic, people could start acting like people again. That’s why we’re bringing the vaccine all this way, isn’t it? So life can get back to normal.”
He finally looked at me. “You really believe that? That everything could go back to how it used to be?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “Because most days I don’t feel like I could go back to the old me, the good one. Not ever.”
Justin eyed the sheets skeptically as I explained how we could use them, but he didn’t argue when I handed him one. We cut up the queen-size ones with Tobias’s army knife, covering each of the sleds with a white cloth and knotting the rest around the collars of our coats. They rippled with the rising wind.
The brownish glow of the coming dawn tinged the clouds along the eastern horizon as we backtracked to the freeway. My heart skipped a beat. “Let’s keep our distance from the road, like before,” I said. “And only talk if we have to. We need to be listening so we can hear anyone who’s coming before they see us.”
We set off across the fields. Scattered snowflakes drifted down, brushing my face with tiny nips of cold. The air above the chimneys of the few distant country houses was still and clear, and no tracks marked the snow except the ones we made.
We’d crossed into a new province, but everything was just as dead.
Even people who hadn’t gotten sick had probably ended up heading to the hospitals in the towns and cities, I told myself. Bringing family members who were ill, and staying in the hopes they’d be able to take them home again. Or getting stranded when gas ran out. Not everyone who’d lived here was dead. But I thought of what I’d said to Leo just a few minutes before, about the world going back to the way it used to be, and the certainty I’d felt then wavered.
What did I know about the world anymore? I hadn’t expected to come across a group like the colony, or this network of marauders, or to find out that the government had abandoned Ottawa. The truth was, I had no idea what we’d find in Toronto. I had no idea whether there was enough left of our world for anyone to pick up the pieces.
We passed the last field and wove through a mile of spruce forest. As we tramped out the other side, the wind whipped over us, spitting a gust of snowflakes into our faces. There weren’t many coming down, but they were whirling faster now, mingling with puffs of snow the wind whisked off the ground. I wiped my face and adjusted my scarf.
“It’s getting a little nasty,” I said, even though my gut knotted at the thought of stopping so soon. I remembered how quickly the first blizzard had overwhelmed us. If it got that bad, our pursuers would have to stop too. “Maybe we should find a place to hole up until the wind dies down.”
Justin squared his shoulders and pulled in front of me. “This is nothing,” he said. “How’d you make it all the way from the coast if you can’t take a little wind?”
If it stays this way I’ll be fine, I thought. If it gets worse…
“The clouds don’t look that dark,” Gav said, trudging on. “I think we’
ll be okay for a little longer.”
The clouds were lighter than those the other day. Still, I started scanning the landscape as we walked. Maybe half a mile away, a group of houses clustered around a laneway off the main road. Beyond them, a farmhouse stood alone except for the barn squatting behind it. It was closer to the freeway and farther from us than the others, but something about it made me look again. I squinted against the wind. By the side of the house, a lumpy brown heap leaned against the yellow siding.
Firewood.
I glanced at the chimney, but there wasn’t even a trickle of smoke. Abandoned like the others, I guessed. But it must have a working fireplace.
The wind blasted a stinging wave of snow at me. I shook it off. The flakes in the air seemed denser now. When I looked at the house again, I couldn’t make out the woodpile anymore.
Justin kept striding along ahead of us. If the storm held off a little longer, we’d be fine.
I’d taken maybe a dozen more steps when the wind shifted, shrieking past my ears, pelting me with snow from all sides. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and froze on my skin. The houses had vanished from view. Even Justin hesitated, looking back at us. The chill cut down my throat and into my lungs. I lowered my head.
We could stand here and hope the storm died down as quickly as it had come, but every second we wasted, we were getting colder and more tired. The image of the yellow house lingered in my mind. It wasn’t that far. If we could find it when we couldn’t even see it.
I closed my eyes, picturing the house. Birds could migrate across hundreds of miles and always return to the same spot. Cats and dogs could cross vast distances of unknown territory to find their homes. Whatever innate sense of direction they had, maybe I had it too, somewhere deep in my brain.