“You know,” Sadie said, finally bringing up the subject she’d been avoiding, “You realize that when we get there, we…we won’t be able to be together anymore.” Amelia said nothing. “They’re gonna make both of us get husbands. You remember that, right?”
“Yeah,” Amelia said weakly.
“So, what, you’re okay with that?” Sadie tried to keep the edge out of her tone, but she couldn’t help it. Did Amelia like the idea of throwing away everything they had?
“I’m not…” Amelia paused, and Sadie let her lover search for the right words. “I mean, I can see why it would be, like, practical, you know?”
“Not really,” Sadie insisted stubbornly.
“You know, like, getting married and having kids? Way back when, that’s what I always thought would happen to me.”
“So you agree with them,” Sadie said, staring out the windshield. She thought she could see Manny sitting in the back of the van through its rear window. “You agree with Glenn. That’s all we’re good for anymore.”
“It’s all that matters anymore,” Amelia said quietly. “Taking care of each other and trying to, like, rebuild things. Ensuring there’s gonna be a next generation, let alone making things okay for them. That’s what Manny was talking about last night. Don’t you wanna be part of that?”
Sadie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She had nothing left to say. As the day wore on, and Amelia dozed in the seat beside her, Sadie started to think that this place wasn’t for her, after all. Maybe everyone would be better off if she dropped Amelia and Christian at the gates, and took off in the truck on her own. She could go back to the farm, or try her luck in one of the cities, head down to Vancouver or something…
As it was getting dark, Remy signaled that he was pulling off again. Sadie pulled up behind him. Amelia finally stirred. “Are we there?” she asked, sitting up suddenly, alert.
“Nah,” Sadie said. “I think we’re just taking a quick break.”
Amelia looked back at Christian. He was awake, too, but so quiet Sadie hadn’t known it. How long had he just been lying there? “Christian?” Amelia reached back and touched her son. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” Christian whispered.
“Are you hungry?” Christian shook his head. “I’m gonna go for just a minute,” Amelia said. “Sadie will stay with you.”
“I need to piss, too,” Sadie complained.
“You can go when I get back,” Amelia said. She grabbed the rifle and went out behind the brush, not far from where Remy had disappeared.
Sadie was rummaging around in the glovebox for a joint. Manny said that their vehicles would be searched, and any “contraband” would be taken. She might as well get high one last time. But she forgot her mission when she heard a rifle shot go off.
Sadie was out of the truck in a second. “Amelia!” she cried into the dark, running off the side of the road. She heard yelling and veered in that direction, crashing through the dried brush.
Amelia was clutching the rifle, trembling. Sadie looked at her for a moment before noticing where her eyes fell. Sadie looked down at Remy’s twitching body. The zombie, its face blasted off, lay just a few feet away.
“I got the thing, but it’d already…” Amelia dropped the rifle and put her face in her hands.
Sadie knelt down next to Remy. His eyes were glassy, uncomprehending. He was gone, along with a large section of his skull. She thought she could see his brains leaking onto the dry ground…
“Oh, my God,” Manny gasped behind them. She and Johnny came just in time to watch their brother die. Manny sobbed in her brother’s arms. Johnny’s eyes were dry as Sadie stood up.
“You know what you gotta do,” Johnny said, and Sadie nodded. Johnny held his sister and led her back to the van.
What Sadie had to do was burn her friend’s body. She didn’t like it, but she had to do it for Johnny and Manny. Before she got to her horrible chore, she wrapped her lover in her arms.
“Go wait in the truck,” Sadie said.
“No,” Amelia said, letting out a shuddering sigh. “No, I’ll help.”
“Are you sure?” Amelia nodded. “Okay.” Amelia kept the rifle close at hand while they covered Remy’s body in dry grass. There didn’t seem to be any other zombies around that evening, but they couldn’t be too careful. The burning body would attract some attention, and they couldn’t just up and leave it. They had to make sure the body burned completely, and the fire was out.
Sadie had barely enough gasoline to spare, with just enough left to get the truck all the way to SC, and she doused her old friend’s body in a small amount. She used one of the plastic lighters he’d gotten for her to light up a bit of grass, tossing it on the pile. Amelia stood at her side, clutching her arm, as they watched Remy’s body ignite.
Sadie’s legs trembled as she watched Remy burn, but she didn’t run away and she didn’t throw up. She kept looking around, but didn’t see any figures stumbling towards them. They were alone, on the side of a Canadian highway, as Remy’s smoke and ashes floated into the evening sky.
“He was a nice guy,” Amelia said. “He liked Christian.”
Sadie nodded. “He always had candy or something for him. He gave him all those comic books.”
They said nothing more about the deceased. After the fire burned for quite some time, Amelia finally stomped out the embers. That was that.
Sadie walked Amelia back to the truck. “I’m gonna check on them,” she said.
Amelia nodded. She was no longer in a hurry to press on. Christian had somehow fallen asleep again in the middle of the whole thing.
Sadie kissed her lover before leaving her. She went to the van’s sliding door and knocked loudly.
Manny opened the door and waved Sadie in. Sadie climbed in, crouching down as Manny slid the door shut. “Where’s Johnny?” Sadie asked, glancing up at the cab of the van. It was empty.
“He’s out patrolling or something,” Manny said. “He’s got the rifle. I think he just wants to shoot something.”
The back of the van had no seats. A bunch of pillows and blankets were stacked on the floor. Manny sat with her back against the side of the van, clutching a pillow in her lap. “Shit,” she said. “All those times they’ve gone to the Peg or wherever for supplies, and now he…” Manny squeezed the pillow. “Johnny blames me, I think.”
“How’s it your fault?” Sadie asked. She sat beside Manny, her legs crossed.
“Just a few more hours,” Manny said. “We’d all have been there.”
Sadie said nothing, just took her friend’s hand and let her talk. About how Remy took charge after Aaron left, when their parents were too sick and tired to do much. How he held their family together as best he could. “When I told him I was leaving, he said I was ungrateful,” Manny recalled. “But I promised him I’d come back for him. And I kept my word.”
“Of course you did,” Sadie said. They were lying on top of a pile of quilts and blankets. Sadie held her friend, trying to comfort her.
Manny shook her head. “I can’t help but take it as another sign, you know? Once we’re behind those walls, we won’t have to worry about this kind of shit ever again.”
Sadie couldn’t tell her that it could be interpreted as another sign. After all, Manny said herself that her brothers had been all over Canada, coming out of their little missions more or less unscathed. Manny didn’t need to be made to feel worse than she no doubt already did.
Sadie and Manny smoked a joint and fell asleep in the back of the van. Johnny didn’t return to the driver’s seat until the sun was starting to rise.
*
For the last few hours of their trip to SC, there was tension in the truck. And it was about more than Remy’s untimely, violent death.
Christian dozed off and on for the last leg of the trip. Amelia was still anxiously checking on him every few minutes, but when she wasn’t whispering reassurances to her son, she was sitting in the
passenger’s seat with her arms crossed, staring out the windshield.
Sadie, exhausted from barely any sleep and the previous day, didn’t notice her lover’s anger at first. But she finally asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Amelia snapped. “I just spent the night waiting up for you, that’s all.”
“I was with Manny,” Sadie said. “She was upset.”
“Of course she was,” Amelia said. “I just didn’t realize you two were so close.” Sadie said nothing. “I mean, you never even mentioned her before, but it turns out you two are, like, best friends or something.”
“I barely know anybody,” Sadie pointed out. “So, yeah, I guess she’s one of the few friends that I have.”
“She closed the curtains on the rear window,” Amelia pointed out. “Why would she do that?” Sadie shrugged. She felt her face glowing warm. Nothing happened with Manny the previous night, but Amelia wasn’t entirely wrong to feel jealous. “Have you ever slept with Manny?”
Sadie sighed. “Years back, when I’d go to La Ronge with Glenn…yeah, we’d fool around in her bedroom.”
Amelia crossed her arms again. “You never told me.”
“I guess not,” Sadie snapped.
The tension in the truck grew. Sadie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. A part of her wanted to confess everything to Amelia, to admit that she and Manny had been sleeping together right up until Manny left for SC. No…right up until a couple of nights before, in the dark, empty store, while everyone else was upstairs. She and Manny had been banging all along…but at least Amelia didn’t have to hear it through the wall or anything.
“What’s that?” Christian suddenly asked. Sadie turned for a moment, surprised to see her little brother sitting up. He was clearly pale, but his eyes were wide with excitement as he pointed through the windshield.
In the distance, Sadie could see a couple of tall towers, perhaps a couple of miles apart, sticking up over the broken landscape. Over the next few minutes, the towers got closer, and the concrete wall was soon visible as well. It was tall, about fifty feet high, Sadie thought, high enough to keep out zombies and other things, protecting the people who resided within.
Sanctuary Coast.
Sadie was dismayed when she pulled up behind the van. There was a line of cars leading to the steel gates. “They’re not gonna let all these people in,” Amelia insisted, panicking again. But it didn’t take long for Sadie to notice that the line was moving along. She rolled down her window and stuck her head out, seeing a beat-up SUV going through the steel gates before the line inched forward again. No one seemed to be getting turned away.
Sadie was surprised when, as they crept up again, Amelia reached over and took her hand. “We’re almost there,” she said. “It’s really here.”
“Yeah,” Sadie agreed. She brought Amelia’s hand to her lips and kissed her lightly. All thoughts of leaving them behind vanished. How could Sadie leave her lover, or her little brother? They were the only family she had.
It took less than an hour to reach the front of the line. Sadie watched the Charles family’s van disappear between the narrow steel opening before she pulled up next to the guard. The guard was a tall woman in a uniform that made Sadie think of the police from another life.
The guard offered a friendly smile. “Good morning,” she said. “Welcome to Sanctuary Coast.”
“Hi,” Sadie said.
“Who’ve we got?” the guard asked, holding up her clipboard, pen in hand.
“I’m Sadie, and this Amelia,” Sadie said. “And we’ve got a little guy, Christian, in the back. He’s…he’s infected.”
The guard hardly seemed fazed to hear this. She mumbled something into the radio that was clipped to her collar. “Surname?” she asked.
Sadie actually had to think about this for a moment. “Kopecky,” she remembered. “We’re all Kopecky.”
The guard smiled. “When you pull in, turn to the right and park in front of the brick building,” she said. “You’ll see it. We’re sending some people to come out and assist your boy, so just hang tight there for a moment.”
“Thanks,” Sadie said.
“Go on in,” the guard said. “Welcome home.”
PART TWO:
SANCTUARY COAST
Chapter Eleven
Sadie was up before the alarm went off, as usual. She shut it off before it could wake Johnny. He’d sleep until the very last minute before stumbling out of bed and biking over to the farm. Sadie left him alone after she dressed in her work clothes, a dorky navy jumpsuit that all the mechanics had to wear.
Out in the kitchen, Sadie put on the kettle and let it heat up as she stepped into the backyard. Like all the yards in SC, it was perfectly manicured, the lush green grass trimmed twice a week. Sadie and Johnny took turns, as they did with most responsibilities around the house. In many respects, they were a model SC couple…besides the fact that they didn’t have any kids yet. And at this rate, they never would.
Sadie went around to the back of the shed. In the small space between the shed and the tall wooden fence, Sadie was growing a couple of marijuana plants. She still found weed to be helpful for trade, not that it was needed for survival anymore. And some days, she just needed to smoke to keep from going nuts.
Her plants were doing all right in their sunny spot, already absorbing the morning light. It was midsummer, beautiful and mild on the coast, and Sadie wouldn’t need to worry about the plants too much. She went back inside, just in time to take the kettle off and pour herself a cup of tea. Unlike her husband, she gave herself plenty of time to get her head on straight before work.
Sadie was sitting in the kitchen, trying not to think about much, when she heard a knock at the front door. She didn’t bother to look through the peephole before answering. She wasn’t surprised to see Manny standing there.
“Hey,” Manny said, and Sadie nodded, letting her friend (and sister-in-law) in. Manny sat down at the table.
“You want anything to eat?” Sadie asked. She’d been planning on just popping a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster for herself. Even after a couple of years in SC, she was still amazed at how easy it was to throw together a simple meal. A couple of pieces of toast back on the farm required some time and consideration.
“I’m okay,” Manny said. “We’re still working on the casserole Johnny sent over a couple of days ago.”
Sadie poured her early morning guest a cup of tea. “You got something planned?”
“Actually, Vanessa wanted to have a few of us over to her place tomorrow night,” Manny said. “She’s throwing this little welcome party for a newbie. Sophie or something, I think.” Manny grinned. “Should be fun.”
Sadie shrugged. “Okay.”
“You seem like you’re in the mood to party,” Manny remarked, nudging Sadie lightly.
“Don’t come up so early and expect to find me at my best,” Sadie griped. Manny smiled and leaned in to kiss Sadie, only a little more than a friendly peck on the lips.
“Don’t be a grouch. It’s a beautiful morning.”
Sadie shrugged again. The weather was usually pretty nice in SC, but Sadie hardly took notice. She had too much on her mind, plenty to be grouchy about.
Manny noticed that Sadie was more thoughtful than usual. “You still haven’t gotten in to see Christian?”
“The trial period isn’t up for another week,” Sadie said. She knew it was a miracle that Christian was still alive, so long after being infected. He was still in the hospital, and the treatments that they gave him, all experimental, weakened him but kept the virus from taking hold.
Sadie went to see her little brother as often as she could. She went during her lunch breaks, knowing she’d avoid Amelia, who would only be able to see him at the end of the school day. But when Christian was undergoing some sort of treatment, his visitors were sometimes barred. Sadie hated to think of how it was for the kid, scared and alone and in pain. He put a brave face o
n whenever she saw him.
“He always comes out of it okay,” Manny reminded Sadie. Manny was her best support when she was stressed out about Christian. It wasn’t like she could talk it over with Amelia. “I’d like to see him the next time you visit. I’ve got pictures of the bike he designed.”
Sadie smiled. Manny was indulging him by building his dream bike in the warehouse. She hoped he’d have the chance to ride it around the pretty streets of SC someday.
“You’ve got time before work,” Manny insisted, suddenly jumping to her feet. “Let’s take a ride to the shop and I’ll show it to you.”
Sadie had nothing better to do. She didn’t wake up Johnny to let him know she was going. They lived together, shared a bed, but lived parallel lives. It was the best way they’d found to deal with the situation.
Sadie’s bike was blue and chrome, made by Manny herself when Sadie was first getting settled into the community. The basket in the back was almost ridiculously huge, but Sadie found it useful when getting supplies or hiding a marijuana delivery. She and Manny rode on the paved streets of SC, past the brightly painted houses. When Amelia first saw the little town, she said, “It’s so cute!” And she was right.
The trees in SC were young, but plentiful, lining the wooden walkways in front of houses and storefronts. Sadie and Manny rode past the little shopping district, where food and clothing and books and other necessities were always available for purchase, something that Sadie still didn’t take for granted.
The bicycle shop was located in a warehouse just north of the developed part of town. It had expanded since Sadie arrived a couple of years before, needing to meet the demand of the ever-growing community. During the day, there were dozens of people working, welding together bicycle parts or putting wheels into place, assembling as many bikes as possible. Sadie was grateful that Manny was taking the time to do a project just for Christian.
The warehouse was dark and quiet before hours. Manny turned on the big overhead lights, and they buzzed above them, glowing dimly and brightening slowly as Manny led Sadie to her workstation.
In Another Life Page 13