Until the End of the World (Book 3): All the Stars in the Sky

by Sarah Lyons Fleming

  “You were so worried that you wouldn’t talk to me? That makes no sense. Why do men act like idiots when they’re worried?”

  “Because we’re idiots.” Peter gives me a rueful smile. He’s annoyingly handsome and affable, even with the dark hollows below his cheekbones and under his eyes.

  “Stop being charming. I’m mad at you.”

  “You know I can’t help it. It comes naturally.” I roll my eyes at his wink. His expression grows serious as he drags a boot through the grass. “I thought we were too late when we got there. I left you when I was supposed to stick like glue.”

  “I’m glad you were safe.” I’d relive the whole experience, and even worse, before I’d take the chance that Peter die.

  “I’m not glad. I could have protected—”

  “I don’t need protecting.” It’s not strictly true—we’ve all needed protecting at some point during the past year, but I can take care of myself most of the time. And, as much as I took care of myself the other night, I would’ve liked some protection. Not only do we women have to worry about marauders and Lexers, but we also get rapists—the post-apocalyptic trifecta.

  “I know that,” he says, as if it’s a slightly irritating quality instead of a kick-ass one. “I know you’d fight to your last breath.” I shake my head and he says, “You did.”

  “I didn’t. And when he—in the truck, I decided to stop fighting altogether. I gave up. And it didn’t even work. Maureen is….” Her death hangs around my neck like an albatross. It feels as though it was someone else who lay in the back of the truck and surrendered. Someone I don’t like very much. Those moments when I welcomed death play on a loop in my head. I swore I wouldn’t let this world get the best of me again, but it did.

  Peter’s eyes darken. “What you’re forgetting is that Ashley is okay, and so are Bits and Hank and lots of other people. You were willing to do that for them. You were strong, just not in the way you thought you should be. Okay?”

  I nod and try to believe that my momentary lapse was just that. Maybe I would’ve fought no matter what, or maybe I fought the only way possible in that situation. Shadows flit across Peter’s face, reminding me of how he killed Twitch and Dark-hair. Peter does what’s necessary and never utters a word about it, but he’s so kind that I fear it affects him.

  “I don’t know if you feel bad about killing those—”

  “Not in the least. When I saw one had his fucking hands on y—I’m glad you killed him, but I wish I had.” He seems unaware of the way his hand grasps his machete’s hilt, knuckles white, and I take it in mine until it releases.

  I have no qualms about killing those men. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares, but I have no qualms. I stare at my red shoelace. I think it might belong to one of them, but I don’t want to ask. Instead of letting it creep me out, I decide to see it as a battle trophy—a head on a pike, a scalp on my belt.

  “What I said before, in the kitchen?” I say. “It’s not true. You’re allowed to be as angry as you want. It’s not your job to make me feel better.”

  Peter lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, Cassandra, it is. You hired me for that job a few days ago.”

  I remember our conversation in the nursery and knock on my head. “I totally forgot!”

  “I knew working for you would be a pain in the ass.” Peter catches my incoming fist and turns it over in his hands. “You mean a lot to me, you know. That’s why I was so angry. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, too.”

  I can’t put into words what he means to me without it being corny as all get out, so I simply say, “You’re my best friend.”

  “You’re mine. How’d that happen?”

  “I have no idea. But we’re gonna need one of those best friend necklaces where we each get half a heart and when we put it together it’s whole.”

  Peter’s laugh helps to fill the hole that’s been in my chest since Grande Prairie, since Adrian. My heart’s gotten used to feeling like one of those necklaces. I know it’s on the mend, though I wish it would repair itself a little faster.

  “Sometimes it feels like I only have half a heart,” I say. “Sometimes it hurts so much you can barely stand it. But just when you think it won’t ever be whole again, it starts to regenerate. I didn’t believe John when he said that, but it’s true.”

  “I know,” he says. I think he must—he’s lived the majority of his life with a broken heart—but I want him to know I understand.

  I use my free hand to pick at a string on my jeans—Ana’s jeans. I wonder if it’s hard for him to see me in them or if they’re just a regular old pair of jeans to him. “It’s like a lizard’s tail.”

  “What is what?” Peter asks.

  “The heart. It’s like a lizard’s tail. I read once that when the tail regenerates it’s never an exact replica, but it’s a tail nonetheless.”

  “You do realize you get a tiny bit weirder every day?” Peter asks. “The heart is like a lizard’s tail? It’s very poetic.”

  “So I should give up painting and become a poet?”

  “I wouldn’t quit your day job just yet.”

  His anger has been swapped for crinkly eyes and a light voice. That I might have had something to do with it fills that hole a little more.

  “We’re all packed,” Penny sticks her head into the yard and calls.

  Peter spreads his arms when we stand and I bury my face in his coat. “You smell clean,” he says before he lets me go.

  “Jealous?” I sniff my armpit. “It’s one of the many perks to being held down in the back of a pickup truck against your will.”

  Peter’s lips clamp but a laugh escapes. “I can’t believe you went there.”

  “I’ll go wherever I need to go for a laugh. You know you love it—that’s why you’re my BFF.”

  “It’s part of it,” Peter says. “An infinitesimal part that’s so small it’s almost nonexistent.”

  “You’re pretty funny when you’re not being a party pooper.” My cheek hurts from smiling, and I raise my hand to it with a wince. “Ouch. No more jokes.”

  Peter points to his own cheek and then takes my arm. “Hurts, huh? A taste of your own medicine. Let’s go, weirdo.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Fort St. John had a Safe Zone back when this all began. It became a black pin on Whitefield’s map when zombies took over, and we don’t want to go anywhere near it now. We don’t know exactly where the Safe Zone was. Some Safe Zones were named for their exact locations and some for nearby cities. I’d check on the paper map we brought from Vermont, but it was destroyed by the contents of Boss’s skull.

  I’m in the RV, which has prompted only a few moments of residual panic. Peter drives and I sit in the passenger’s seat with Bits on my lap and Hank on the floor between us. They’re often drawing or reading or whispering, but since the other night I’m glad they’ve stuck close.

  “We’re going to have to go through the bottom of the city,” James says. “It’s just a few miles. It should be quick, if all goes as planned.”

  “And when does that ever happen?” Nelly calls. He has the perfect vantage point from the nightstand between the two beds in the back, allowing him to sit with Adam and toss out smart-ass comments at the same time.

  James lifts his eyes to the ceiling. “Never. Thanks for the reminder.”

  But the few miles of wide, paved lanes and empty businesses are quiet. Once we’re past the city, we come across the Safe Zone at the lake where we’d planned to fill the water tanks. Whether a giant pod has reached this place or every zombie in Fort St. John is here, I don’t know, but the Safe Zone sign that hangs from a telephone pole would be laughable if it wasn’t so terrifying, hanging as it is over a giant mass of Lexers.

  “Keep going,” Zeke’s voice comes over the radio. “Go on through.”

  Whatever’s kept them focused on the lake and woods is not as appealing as us. We zip by and watch them spill onto the road in our wake. I tighten my arms around
Bits when twenty or so appear around a bend. The last thing we need is a kid going through a windshield. I slide off the seat with her in my lap. “Hank, get in the seat and buckle.”

  I’ve given up on trying to keep myself and them buckled in, especially in this older RV, but the chance of an accident has just multiplied. Hank’s up and belted in immediately. He’ll make a good patroller one day, although I pray we have no need for patrols. Small isn’t an issue—as long as he’s strong and fast and as quick-witted as he is now.

  “Where do we turn?” Zeke’s voice breaks through the silence. James flips pages and curses without answering.

  “We need that west road,” Zeke’s voice comes again.

  “There is no fucking west road!” James yells. “We passed it at the lake. There’s another up ahead.”

  I relay his response into the radio sans cursing and brace myself for a collision. Just when I think we’re out of the woods and regular breathing has resumed, the RV slows.

  “Jesus,” Peter breathes. “James, you’re sure there’s not another road?”

  James peers out the windshield. “That is the other road.”

  I stand and snap up the binoculars. The crossroads ahead is filled with Lexers that feed from the west onto the Alaska Highway. They’re hundreds of feet deep and who knows how many more are waiting to make the turn. Of course they’d follow the roads up here; it’s the path of least resistance.

  Zeke reverses the pickup and hangs out the window. “Can you see how far they go? Can we get through?” I pass him the binoculars. He raises them briefly and lets them fall to his lap. “God-fucking-damn it.”

  “There were houses down that incline toward the lake,” Mark says. “Let’s head there before they spot us.”

  We reverse slowly to avoid drawing their attention and follow the pickup to a string of lakefront homes tucked in the trees. A three-story house with a lakeside deck and two balconies looks promising if we have to stay for the night, as it’s built into a hill and surrounded by a chain-link fence. Mark closes the gate after we’re through and Nelly busts a window to open the door. We file in silently, quickly, and I sense everyone feels the dread that’s overtaken the lingering trauma from the other night. Everyone except Sparky, that is, who naps on a windowsill in the RV.

  Penny bolts the door and sinks to the white couch. The whole interior is white with turquoise accents, as if the owners had wished they lived by the sea. Hank stands at the sliding door to the balcony and watches the floating bodies that dot the lake. “I know they can’t swim, but can they still get to us?”

  “We’ll see them if they do,” Mark says. The house isn’t fenced at the waterline, so we’ll have to watch in case they’re not too bloated to come ashore.

  “Are those islands?” Bits asks. I follow her finger to the dark, distant masses of Lexers in the water. She realizes her mistake and shudders before I say a word.

  Jamie and I distract the kids with a tour of the house while James and Mark study the maps for an escape route. We end up in a walk-out basement rec room. Bits and Hank don’t ask to play ping pong when they see the table, but Nicki practically begs.

  “It’s too loud,” Jamie says. “We’re playing a fun game right now. It’s called Who Can Be the Quietest?”

  “That’s the game you play when you can’t play anything,” Nicki says, lip jutted and on the verge of a tantrum. I can’t blame her as she’s four, broke her arm and almost lost her dad in the past two days. I’d have a tantrum too if I could get away with it.

  “I’m going to win,” Bits says, sounding smug. “I’m really, really good at that game.”

  “No, you’re not!” Nicki says, ping pong forgotten. The nice thing about four year-olds is that they’re easily distracted. “Listen to how quiet I can do this!”

  She tiptoes up the stairs, and I wink at Bits and Hank when they follow. Jamie leans on the banister with her eyes on the lake. “I’ll be okay,” she says when I touch her hand. “Last year was worse. It’s just that he was all I had left.”

  I think of how devastated I was after Adrian died—how I still have to work at not dwelling on how different things would be if he were here—which makes me wonder how last year was worse for her. I’m about to ask, but Nelly’s voice comes down the stairs. “Y’all had better come up here.”

  We crowd around the table while James shows us the lake on the map. “Here’s where we are.” He points to spots at the north and south ends of the water. “Here are the pods.”

  There’s not a single road west. To our east is lake. We’re well and truly trapped. The only thing to be thankful for is that we didn’t hit them at night. We would have been eaten, not trapped, had we not seen them in time.

  “If we were on the east side of the lake we could drive around.” He traces a line that heads north and circles to the Alaska Highway. “We’d hit the Alcan forty miles north of here.”

  “What about crossing the lake in boats and finding some cars?” Kyle asks with eyes closed due to his pounding headache. His only concession to Jamie’s badgering was that he agreed to sit in an overstuffed chair instead of lying in a bed like she ordered. He might be worse than Nelly.

  “If we’re going to do it, we have to move now,” Mark says. “We have, at best, thirty-five hours to meet up with the highway before the monsters get there, if they haven’t already.”

  “Are there any other roads in case we’re cut off again?” Peter asks.

  “There’s one,” James says, and flips to a new page that’s almost unmarked by roads except for a few lonely lines. “This would put us 150 miles farther north on the highway, but even if we beat them, we’d be out of gas long before Whitehorse.”

  “How long is that route?” Zeke asks.

  “A thousand miles,” Mark says. There’s a collective moan—that’s all the gas we have. “We could head north to Yellowknife, but no one’s heard from them since last year.”

  James blows out a breath. “So, our choices are either we cross the lake and find something that’ll take us to Whitehorse or stay here for the winter.”

  CHAPTER 38

  There’s a third choice, too—the death wish choice of trying to drive our way through a pod of Lexers. We’ve all seen how that goes, so we settle on hunting down boats. Zeke, Peter, Nelly and I walk down to the lake’s edge and find a rowboat under a tarp. It’s an easy climb to the next yard and the next, where we find a canoe.

  “See that boathouse?” Zeke asks, pointing to where the shore bends out. A sprawling house is set back on an overgrown lawn with a tiny version of itself suspended over the water at the shore. “People store their boats full of gas and disconnect the battery for the winter. We could do with a motorboat, noise be damned—I don’t see how we’ll get our gear across without one. Those fuel tanks are heavy.”

  At the fourth house, we find another rowboat and an electric motor in the shed. It works for thirty seconds before it dies. “We’ll use the battery in the RV,” Zeke says. “How ‘bout a ride to the house down the way?”

  With four of us, three of them good-sized men, the boat sits low in the water. “You want to row, sugar?” Zeke pulls at the oars and winks.

  “Biggest one rows. That’s the rule. I’m not dragging you giant people around.”

  “That’s not a rule,” Nelly says.

  “Well, it should be,” I say. “So it is. Therefore, I’m going in a boat with one of the three of you every time.”

  It’s quiet on the lake. I sit in the stern with Peter and watch Zeke pull the oars through the water like he was born rowing. He’s got a bit of a belly from all the good eating at Whitefield once the summer crops were in, but underneath is all muscle.

  “You’re good at this,” I say. “I’m in your boat.”

  Zeke chuckles. “Spent a lot of time out on lakes as a kid. There wasn’t much quiet in my head, except when I was on the water. It’s peaceful.”

  “It is.” I watch the Lexer islands bob a half mile away
. “Or it could be.”

  The two Lexers we pass are bloated, but not as bloated as I think they should be according to the absolute nothing I know about the subject. One does the dead man’s float and the other lifts an arm as we go past. It spins face first into the water, where it flounders for a moment before going still.

  “Well, they can’t swim worth a damn,” Zeke says. “If we can get between those islands we’ll be good.”

  A few minutes later, Nelly ties the frayed rope to the dock at the boathouse. The structure is silent but for the sound of water lapping at its posts and has a door that’s quietly jimmied open by Zeke. “Another thing I was good at,” he says.

  “You’re a mysterious man, Zeke,” I say. “Dentist, boater, felon. One day you’ll have to tell me your story.”

  “One day I will.” Inside, Zeke pulls the cover off a glossy white motorboat that’s suspended in midair by a pulley system. “Let’s get her down.”

  Peter examines the control box. “I don’t see a hand crank.”

  Zeke sighs. “Christ on a crutch, is nothing ever simple?”

  Cutting through the steel cables that suspend the boat isn’t an option—the boat won’t fall evenly and the crash would destroy it. I move to the edge of the floor that runs the perimeter of the room and back away when a white, almost featureless, face rises from the water. There are many horror movie moments these days, but this thing, with its wide, dark mouth and white expanse of swollen flesh, might be the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.

  Nelly kneels across from me and looks up with a grimace. “That thing must die,” he says. We can’t reach it, though, and we watch it wade under the boat in fascination. “It can’t see us with no eyes. And the lack of a nose isn’t helping any. My hypothesis is that it hears us.” He knocks on the wood floor and the thing turns. “Yup, hears us.”

  “I think I found something,” Peter says. We look up from Nelly’s science project. “I need an allen wrench.”

  He pulls out toolbox drawers until he finds a few, then fits one into the back of the motor and cranks. “Keep going,” Zeke says. “It’s working.”