by Megan Crewe
“Play dead!” I said, already moving. I threw myself onto one of the higher drifts, shoved some snow over my back so it would look as if I’d been there awhile, and lay still. There was a brief shuffling around me that I hoped was the others following suit. I held my breath, the chill of the snow seeping through my scarf.
Possums could hold themselves like this for hours. Other animals too. My grandmother on my dad’s side used to tell the story of her big family trip to South Africa when she was nine, rubbing the scar on the back of her hand while she talked. She’d seen a snake lying in the grass with its tongue hanging out, poked it a few times with her toe, and it hadn’t looked anything other than dead until she’d crouched beside it and reached out to feel its scales.
I wasn’t sure I could pull off a performance that convincing, but hopefully no one was going to come close enough to poke me.
The ground vibrated faintly as the car rumbled by. It slowed, and my pulse hiccuped, but the driver must just have been turning a corner. The noise of the engine rose again and faded gradually into the distance.
When I couldn’t hear it anymore, I pushed myself upright. The others picked themselves off the ground, brushing bits of snow from their clothes. Justin was grumbling, but suddenly I felt like smiling for real. At least he was listening now. We’d managed to stay safe one more time, without having to fight, without being hurt. That was a sort of victory.
My mind slid back to Gav, waiting for us at the end of our walk, and my exhilaration dampened. It was a victory that didn’t bring me any closer to saving him.
“You still haven’t seen any phone books in the condos?” I asked Tobias as we set off.
“I’d guess they weren’t sending out the printed ones anymore,” he said. “Everyone just used the ’net.”
A lot of good that did us now. “We need to find one,” I said. “It might have the address for some of the private labs.”
“Do you still think we’re going to find doctors somewhere here?” Justin said, kicking at a chunk of ice.
“There are people here,” I said. “Lots of people, considering. There has to be someone left with a background in science.”
But we were running out of time. Gav was running out of time. I picked up my pace. “I’m going to look through the whole building myself when we get back.”
In my hurry, I didn’t catch the flicker of movement behind us until we’d climbed up the first two flights of stairs in the condo building. Fabric hissed against the wall somewhere below us, and I paused, the back of my neck prickling.
We had a shadow.
I made myself keep walking. When we reached our floor, I nudged Tobias’s shoulder and continued past him up the next flight. The others looked confused, but they followed. On the fifth-floor landing, I pushed past the doors and backed several paces down the hall before I stopped.
“What’s—” Justin started, and I jerked a finger to my mouth.
“We’re being tailed,” I said. “Watch.”
We stood in a row, braced and waiting. A few seconds later, the stairwell door eased open a crack. Whoever was behind it must have seen us, because it stopped.
There was no hiding and no losing them, not when they’d followed us this far. We’d just have to hope they were peaceful.
“You want something?” I said. “Come out and we can talk about it.”
The door twitched, and then yawned further open. A hooded figure in a long black coat slipped into the hallway.
“Don’t be mad. I just wanted to see what you’re up to.”
The voice was a girl’s, soft and squeaky. She took a few steps toward us, placing her heavy combat boots so carefully they didn’t make a sound. Then she slid back her hood.
She was older than her voice had made me think—older than me, I guessed. Her nose was small and upturned, the mousy effect offset by the gray shadow smudged over her wide eyes and the maroon gloss on her lips. Light brown hair streaked with bleached highlights fell around her narrow face. She looked as if she should have been waiting in line outside a nightclub, not creeping after us through an abandoned building.
“I saw you at the hospital—at Mount Sinai,” she said. “You looked…nice. Not like most people these days.”
The hospital name sounded familiar, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention to know how long ago we’d been at Mount Sinai.
“There are a lot of assholes around,” Justin said, watching her as if he thought we might have to break into mortal combat. “We don’t want anything to do with them.”
The girl offered a smile that might have been amused or appreciative—it was hard to tell. “I’m Anika,” she said, spreading her hands in a gesture of supplication. Her fingernails were painted the same color as her lips. “I don’t want to barge in on you, but it’s so brutal in the city right now. I’ve been on my own for weeks. You all seem like you’re sticking together. I guess I hoped maybe I could stick with you. For a bit?”
She ducked her head with a nervousness that looked more coy than authentic.
Tobias opened his mouth, and then looked at me. Justin was frowning.
“You carrying weapons?” Leo asked.
Anika blinked with what appeared to be honest surprise. She turned out the pockets of her coat, then unzipped it and held it open so we could see she wasn’t hiding anything under it other than a purple turtleneck and jeans tight enough that it would have been obvious if she’d had a gun or a knife tucked away in them.
“I could maybe even help you a little,” she suggested as she zipped the coat back up. “I’ve been here the whole time—well, I’ve lived here my whole life. You’re looking for things, I might know where they are.”
My pulse skipped. Maybe she was just what we needed. Whether she was telling us the whole truth or not, she didn’t seem dangerous. And there was just one of her and four of us—and we were armed, taller, and probably stronger.
It was worth the risk.
“All right,” I said. “We’re one floor down.”
When we stepped into the apartment, Anika’s eyes opened even wider, taking in the leather couch, the granite countertops, and the crackling fire. I noted with relief that all the food we’d scavenged was safely out of sight in the cupboards. The cold-storage box had stayed in the bedroom with Gav, all the better to make sure Justin wasn’t tempted by it.
I was about to suggest we all sit down and talk when the sound of coughing carried through the bedroom door. Anika tensed, her head twitching toward the other room.
“You’ve got a sick one,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied stiffly.
“It’s okay,” Tobias said. “He stays in the bedroom. We’re really careful.”
“I’ll be back in a sec,” I said, grabbing one of the bottles of boiled water we’d left to cool on the window ledge.
Gav was sitting cross-legged on the bed when I came in. He chugged half the bottle I handed to him and tipped his head against the wall, closing his eyes. Even though only a thin heat seeped through the walls from the living room, his fever was bad enough that he’d stopped wearing his coat. Since lunchtime he’d pulled off his sweater and tied it around his shoulders over his T-shirt. He looked leaner than it seemed to me he should, and I didn’t think it was just because he’d taken off a layer of clothing.
With a ragged breath, he straightened up and swiped at his nose with the rag he’d been using as a handkerchief.
Anika’s voice started to rise and fall on the other side of the door.
“You brought someone back?” he said.
I traded my outer clothes for the sickroom spares I had left on the dresser, and climbed onto the bed next to him. His arm slid around me automatically.
“A girl followed us back to the apartment,” I said, keeping my voice light. “Says she wants to join our club. You think we should hold an audition?”
Gav cracked a smile. “Maybe we should just take her at her word. There seems to be a lot of turnover in
this saving-the-world business.”
I thought he meant Tessa and Meredith. He must have, because we still weren’t talking about the fact that at some point in the next couple days, if I didn’t find help, he wasn’t going to be himself anymore. But for a few seconds, I choked up and couldn’t speak.
I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him, and he squeezed me tighter, but after a moment his arms sagged. The coughing and the fever were sapping his strength.
“You think she’s really okay?” he asked, more seriously.
“She might know something that could help,” I said.
“Well, you’d better get out there before she’s done telling her story, then,” he said, “so I can hear it from you later. I don’t want to be totally out of the loop.”
“Of course,” I said, kissing his cheek. “I’ll bring the full report with dinner.”
I could feel his eyes following me as I stepped out, his hunger to take part in what was happening a palpable weight on my back.
Anika was perched on the couch. Justin and Tobias sat on either side of her, Justin as if he were standing guard, Tobias as if he were afraid if he took his eyes off her she might disappear. Her hands flashed through the air as she spoke.
“And by the time Mom checked in to the hospital, they weren’t letting visitors come in. That was when there were still people working in the hospitals to stop us, right? And they’d canceled all the classes at the college, and most of my friends had gotten sick or left town. But I didn’t want to just abandon her, even if I couldn’t go see her.”
I grabbed a chair from the dining area and sat down by one of the living room’s tall useless speakers. Anika’s eyes flickered over to me and then back to the rest of her audience.
“Must have been rough,” Tobias said. His face turned pink when she smiled at him.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “The next thing I knew, people were trashing the hospitals left and right, and the doctors were freaking out and disappearing, and I don’t even know what happened to Mom in the end. She was at Mount Sinai, but when I looked for her, I couldn’t find her. So I’ve had to get by on my own.”
“You look like you’ve been doing all right,” Leo said mildly.
“I guess it could have been worse,” Anika said. “I found a place like you have here, that no one seems to bother with, and Dad was kind of paranoid; he bought this camping stove and a bunch of fuel before the panic really started, so I’ve sort of been able to cook. I’m not, like, starving. But the people around here are crazy, most of them. It’s scary. That’s why I was so happy when I saw you.”
“Who’s the makeup for?” Justin demanded. “It’s kind of weird, you going around like that.”
“It’s for me,” Anika said. Her eyes narrowed for just a moment before she seemed to catch herself, and she tossed her hair with a laugh. “If you look older and like you’ve got yourself together, people don’t bother with you so much. They go after the ones who look like victims.”
I wondered what we looked like to her.
“You said the doctors were disappearing,” I said. “Do you know if there are any still around, maybe in a smaller clinic or office that the looters could have missed?”
“If there are, they’re keeping pretty quiet. But I could ask around.” She cocked her head toward the bedroom. “That why you came all the way here from out east?” she asked. I guessed the guys had told her that while I’d been out of the room. “Because of him? It’s a long way.”
“We figured we had the best chance of finding someone who was still working on a cure in the big city,” I said.
She shifted, her knee brushing Tobias’s. He flushed darker. “I did hear something about a week ago,” she said. “These guys were talking about a vaccine someone found, something like that? I don’t know if it was real, but they sounded pretty worked up about it.”
She glanced at each of us, her expression hopeful. Justin was staring at her, looking twice as suspicious as before, which was almost as bad as saying we knew all about the vaccine. Leo’s mouth had flattened into a stiff line, and Tobias looked down at his hands. I held my face carefully calm, but my voice was stuck in my throat.
If someone had been talking about the vaccine here a week ago, when we were still holed up in that farmhouse, it could mean only one thing. The group who’d sent the people in the green van after us, who’d lied to us over the radio, had allies here too.
“If there’s a vaccine, that’d be amazing,” I said, hoping I sounded like this was the first I’d heard about it. “Who were these guys? Where’d you see them? Maybe we could find them and ask what they know.”
“Oh, they were just guys,” she said, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall awkwardly. “I don’t know them. They were checking out some stores near the place I’m staying at. I only listened in because I heard one of them mention the vaccine thing.”
“Did they say where they thought the vaccine was?” Leo asked.
Anika shook her head. “I don’t think they knew. It kind of sounded like they thought someone might be bringing it here. But like I said, they could have just been speculating. Maybe it’s only a rumor.”
My eyes met Leo’s across the room and saw the worry I felt reflected there.
We hadn’t outrun our enemies. We’d run right to them.
I’d been spending my nights in the bedroom next to Gav. The others camped out in the living room by the fire, where it was warm, and Gav had tried to convince me to join them, but I wasn’t going to leave him alone in the dark and the cold while the virus crept deeper into his brain.
“I want to stay with you,” I’d told him, and when he started to protest, I’d looked him right in the eyes and said, “Shut up.”
He’d stared at me for a second, and then, like I’d hoped he would, he’d laughed. He’d pulled me closer and kissed me and admitted, “I want you here too.” And he hadn’t tried to make me leave again.
The night after we met Anika, he dozed off quickly, but his arms and legs still twitched with the itches that never quite left him. I lay beside him, my eyes closed and my mind buzzing. I was all too aware of Anika’s presence on the other side of the wall, an interloper in our midst. It’d seemed cruel to kick her out once night set in, and she’d offered to take us to a couple of government buildings that might have labs in the morning, but I wasn’t sure how she was going to fit in with us yet.
Mostly, though, I was thinking about Gav. About how few nights like this we had left, before the virus gnawed into the part of him that controlled what he said and did and he started spewing out every unpleasant thing in his head, whether he meant it or not.
Dad hadn’t managed to stay with Mom overnight after she got that bad. Would it be easier for me with Gav because I hadn’t known him nearly as long? Maybe nothing he said would be able to sting too much.
Maybe tomorrow we’d reach someone who could help, and I wouldn’t have to find out.
My thoughts were finally slowing, unraveling, when my ears picked up a faint squeak. The air shifted against the blankets. Someone had opened the bedroom door.
Burrowed under the covers, I couldn’t see even when I opened my eyes. I lay quietly and listened. Footsteps brushed over the floor. With a click, a faint glow seeped around the edges of the blankets. A flashlight?
Our plastic bags crinkled. The footsteps moved around the bed and paused. I tensed.
The cold-storage box was sitting there at the foot of the bed.
I could have thrown back the covers and confronted whoever it was right then. But I wanted to know exactly what they would do. How far they would go.
There was a soft scraping sound as the lid was lifted, and an intake of breath. The seals snapped back into place. The light clicked off. And the box bumped the wall as it was lifted off the floor.
I didn’t need more than that. I flung back the blankets, throwing my legs over the side of the bed. The figure with the cold box whipped around and ran for the door. I c
aught the sleeve of her coat, but not tightly enough. She yanked it from my grasp.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Anika’s boots thumped over the floor to the apartment door. I charged after her. Sleeping bags rustled in the living room as the others roused themselves in a jumble of voices. “What?” “What’s happening?” “Someone—”
Anika fumbled with the dead bolt. As I grabbed the handle of the cold box, trying to wrench it away from her, she jerked her arm toward me. Her elbow smacked me square in the forehead. My head spun, and my grip loosened. She pulled the box closer to her as she yanked on the doorknob.
But before the door had opened more than an inch, another arm shot out, slamming it shut. Anika flinched back, and froze.
A tall figure I dimly made out to be Tobias raised his hand. The low firelight caught the black shape of his pistol. His thumb rose and flicked off the safety with a click that sounded incredibly loud in the sudden silence. His voice came out strained but steady.
“I think you’d better give that box back to Kaelyn.”
Anika lowered the cold box to the floor and released the handle. Leo and Justin came up behind Tobias, sleep-rumpled and frowning. I touched the spot where Anika’s elbow had jabbed me and winced. Stepping just close enough to her to reach the cold box, I pulled it away and opened it.
Despite the scuffle, all the vials were intact.
“Kae?” Gav’s voice wavered from the bedroom. “Everything okay?”
I exhaled and resealed the lid. “Yeah. It is now.”
“They’re going to end up finding you,” Anika said. “It’d be better if you just let me take the vaccine. Then they won’t be after you anymore.”
“What ‘they’?” Justin demanded. “What do you know about them?”
“The Wardens,” she said. “Michael’s Wardens.” Her gaze slid over our faces, and her eyebrows rose. “You don’t even know about Michael, do you?”