Every turn brings the boat down a centimeter. An electric drill would speed things along, but that’d be asking for the moon. Peter spins until the boat is halfway down and then shakes out his hand when Nelly takes over.
“Look at you, figuring it out,” I say to Peter.
“Is that so surprising?”
“I guess all your yachting experience paid off. Aren’t those what you richies use for your regattas?”
Zeke chuckles and Peter lifts a boot to kick me in the rear. I hop away and teeter on the edge of the boathouse floor. Thankfully, the boat’s now low enough to catch myself before I visit our horror movie friend underneath.
Peter points a finger. “That’s what you get for ridiculing my enormous wealth.”
“I almost died right here and you make jokes. Nice, Petey.”
“You’re rubbing off on me.”
“It’s about freaking time,” I say.
We may be standing in a boathouse on a lake full of zombies, clock counting down the hours until we’re stuck for the winter, but I can’t stop smiling. It occurs to me that I do know why I don’t give up: Bits and Hank and Peter and everyone else. I don’t want to leave them, even if it is hard and discouraging. I want to see the kind of life we build when we make it to the end of this mess. The lines on Peter’s face smooth away when he beams back. I have an urge to throw myself at him for a hug but restrain myself with a punch to his arm.
“What’s that for?” he asks.
“It’s a love punch.”
He chucks me under the chin. “Right back atcha.”
I stifle my laugh, but only because we have to be quiet. I’m happy and I’m not going to talk myself out of it. No more saving things for later.
We startle at the sound of Nelly clearing his throat. “Grab those batteries, y’all. We’re down.”
The boat starts without a hitch—something is actually simple, for once. Nelly stabs the bloated Lexer as we pull out of the boathouse towing the rowboat. A few Lexers wade into the water and the floaters wave as we pass, but the trip is short enough that it doesn’t gather a pod.
At the house, Hank’s amassed himself a real estate empire in the game of Monopoly the kids play with James and Penny. When I say I’m impressed, he says, “I have a system. But I can’t tell you what it is.”
“My favorite’s Baltic Avenue,” I say.
He tucks his money under the edge of the board. “Baltic’s a waste of time. I’ll teach you one day. But only you.”
“I’m honored.”
“So, I’ll go across to look for vehicles,” Zeke says. “Let’s say three of us?”
“I’ll join you,” Mark says. “I can get an arrow into anything on shore before we reach it.”
Nelly agrees to be third and leaves to tell Adam. I wander over to where Mark fits his arrows into his quiver.
“Thanks for teaching me to use a bow,” I say. “You saved my life the other night.”
“I might have given you the skills, but that, my dear, was all you. I had my bow up once we were close enough, but you beat me to it.” His eyes twinkle like the elf he resembles. “Were you aiming for somewhere else or did you hit your target?”
I laugh, and somewhere I think I should feel bad we’re joking about killing another human, but I don’t. “Bull’s-eye.”
“Excellent.”
Margaret and James empty the hot water heater while the rest of us pack the essentials we’ll take across the lake. I sit in the RV’s bedroom with my two bags that must be winnowed down to one and realize I haven’t seen Adrian’s phone since checking the time when Boss showed up. I can’t remember if I left it on the table or returned it to my coat pocket—the coat that’s drenched with blood in the back of a pickup.
I paw through my stuff. There are plenty of phones in the world that could be charged, but only one has pictures of everyone who’s gone. Adrian’s in there, Ana, John and Dan, too. But that’s not all—I have pictures of Henry for Hank, of all the other people at Kingdom Come, the farmhouse, the garden in full bloom, the lake in Quebec. It’s every song I’ve ever loved, ever listened to with Adrian. It’s a piece of everything and everybody.
I dump out my bags, hoping that someone stuck it in without telling me. The box Dan carved hits the rumpled blankets and the unicorn inside rattles. I put the tiny figurine in my pocket. Dan had started on a unicorn family for Bits’s birthday that she’ll never get. I’ll give her mine. I can stand losing the box if I have to, but not the unicorn. I stare at the pile as if the phone will appear out of thin air and can’t even cry when it doesn’t. It’s the dog shit icing on the fucked up cake of this week.
Peter grabs his pack and sits on the bed across from me. “My God, that’s a mess.”
“My phone is gone.” I separate my stuff into two piles and finally remember how I slipped it into my coat pocket.
“I have it. It’s broken, but we can fix it.” He pulls it from a compartment of his bag. The front has been taped so that the gazillion pieces of cracked screen stay where they should. I turn it on and can just barely make out the icons.
“James is almost positive everything is still in there,” Peter says. “He can switch out the screens when we find a new one. I wanted to do it before you noticed.” He shrugs. “I cleaned it as well as I could.”
Blood has settled into a few of the cracks beneath the tape, but the rest is spotless. I think about Peter going through the mess of the truck to find this for me. Scrubbing off the blood until almost no trace remained, even in the cracks. It must have taken forever. The whole time I thought he was mad at me he was doing this. He might have been an idiot, but he was a thoughtful idiot.
“Don’t cry,” Peter says when I sniffle. He pats my knee awkwardly. “I know how much it means to you. We’ll fix it.”
“It’s not that. I’m crying because you cleaned it.”
“I’m sorry. I had to—”
I burst out laughing. Peter looks around for someone to save him from the crazy laughing-crying person on the bed, and my laughter wins out. “Really? I’m such a slob that I’d be mad you cleaned blood off my phone?”
A corner of his mouth rises. “You never know.”
“Thank you. I was trying to say thank you.”
“That would have been much clearer. I thought you weren’t going to cry until we got there.”
“You were right, it was a stupid plan. I don’t want to deny myself things and then kick myself when it’s too late. Not that crying is so spectacular, but I don’t want to miss out on anything, you know?”
“I do.”
I grab him by the shoulders and draw him close enough that our noses almost touch. “So let’s not save anything! Let’s eat all the food. You and me, right now.”
“I should’ve known it was an excuse to eat.” I let him go with a cackle. He goes back to his bag, removes the mini espresso maker and throws it to the side.
“You brought it?” I ask.
“It was so small, and I didn’t think I’d find another any time soon. Dumb, huh?”
“Not at all. You should keep it.”
I want him to have something that’s impractical, that makes him happy, but he shakes his head. “There’s no decent coffee. Or milk. What’s the point?”
“Because there might be? Because you like it? Because I really want a latte?”
He smiles but leaves it on the bed. I can tell it’s a lost cause. I zip the phone in my bag, and when he’s not looking I take the leather pants, baby dress and earrings from Ana’s bag. I leave her big bottle of fancy conditioner, although she would’ve deemed it necessary, give her bag a goodbye pat and pack the stuff with Dan’s box and the phone. My small pack holds useful things—ammo, poncho, dental care supplies, et cetera—but it’s quite possibly the least useful assortment of survival items ever. But that’s only if you’re thinking about food, water and zombies instead of people.
CHAPTER 39
Our three scouts radioed when they r
eached the other shore and then made their hourly check-in, but it’s been over an hour since then. One hour and eight minutes after the first check-in, which I keep track of by asking Peter for the time so often that he finally strips off his watch and hands it to me, they call again.
“Plan We’re All Gonna Die is a go,” Nelly says, voice crackling. “Coming back now.”
Our wafflecake lunch is made and supplies sit at the water’s edge by the time they step out of the boat looking tired, dirty and extremely satisfied. “We got ourselves a pickup,” Zeke says. “There wasn’t much to choose from, and it’s going to be a cold ride in the back. We’ll bring the batteries in case we find something else.”
“We’ll use less gas this way,” Mark says brightly. He’s one of those people who thinks it’s refreshingly brisk when I’m curled in a ball, shivering.
Most of us will be rowing because of the Lexers across the water; we can only use the speed boat once if we don’t want to be surrounded. I watch the men bring the truck as close to the boat as possible and then grunt and curse while they remove the in-bed gas tank. They follow it with the tank that Shawn took from the abandoned pickup. They must weigh hundreds of pounds.
“Sometimes I like being a girl,” Jamie says. She’s trying extra hard to be normal, but whenever she’s silent her face loses all animation.
“Except when it’s time to pee in the woods,” I say.
“I got my period behind a tree the day before yesterday,” Jamie says. Penny and I groan. “Yep, pretty fun.”
“That’s something I’m not missing about now,” Penny says. “Running faster than a snail, yes. Alcohol, yes.”
“Yeah, too bad for you,” I say. “You’re missing all those wild alcohol parties we’ve been having after you go to sleep.”
Nelly, James and Peter walk toward us. “Y’all going to do any work today?” Nelly asks.
“We were just discussing how sexy you all look doing manly things,” Penny says. “We couldn’t tear ourselves away.”
“Well, then, carry on.”
We pile the food bins and extra bags on the tanks and set Sparky’s box in a safe spot. Zeke, Kyle, Nicki and Adam will cross in the motorboat once we’ve made it ashore. That way we’ll limit the amount of time we give anything over there to eat us, although there are far fewer on the east side. We assign spots in the other boats, leaving Peter, the kids, Barnaby and me in a rowboat.
“Guess you’re rowing, huh?” I ask Peter.
“You are the biggest,” Bits says.
Peter looks at me. “I had nothing to do with that,” I say. “See? It’s just common sense.”
Peter swings Bits and Hank into the boat. I’ve locked them in lifejackets and offered to tie them to the boat, but they weren’t keen on that idea. I sit in the stern and face Peter, keeping an eye on how far they lean over in the bow. The other rowboat needs a lookout so the motor doesn’t get tangled in Lexer hair and clothing, and they’ve insisted we need one as well.
It should take about thirty minutes to reach the other side of the wide lake. It’s nearing late afternoon, but we won’t stop for night. What’s heading north on the highway is just as bad as or worse than anything we’d meet up with on a back road. The canoe skims across the water, leaving us in the dust, and the rowboat with the motor putts alongside for a moment before pulling ahead.
“We should’ve gotten a head start,” I say. Peter nods and pulls the oars. “I will take a turn, you know.”
“I’m fine,” Peter says. He stops and pulls off his coat and long-sleeved shirt. “Hold these?”
I put them in my lap and watch the floating Lexers on the still water in the distance. We’re lucky today is a lovely fall day with almost no breeze to make rowing more difficult. The sun is warm, the trees colorful, and the lake a mirror reflecting the blue sky—where it’s not a mass of dead bodies. I’d trail my hand in the water if it wouldn’t get chewed off.
“Cassie,” Hank says in a stage whisper and points. “Look.”
A Lexer floats face up, mouth opening and closing. Barnaby, who sits in front of Hank and Bits, lets out a low growl. “Quiet,” Peter says in a firm voice. Barnaby stops.
I look from Barn’s tilted head to Peter. “That’s impossible. Tell me that was just a fluke.”
“It didn’t take that long. He figured it out the other night.”
I shake my head when he shrugs. “This is a big deal. You taught our dumb old dog a new trick. I never thought I’d see the day anyone would teach him anything.”
I want to hug Peter for taking the time to save Barnaby. Not that I didn’t love Barn before, but he’ll forever have my gratitude and any extra food I can scrounge up in Alaska.
Bits scratches his neck. “You’re a good boy.”
Barn spins around, nails sliding on the metal, and the rowboat rocks until Hank tackles him. Barnaby may try to save lives, but he also tries to kill us on a daily basis.
“Barn, sit,” I say. He plants his butt on the boat and I raise my eyebrows at Peter, who grins.
“Good boy,” I say, and he resumes his prancing. “I think the problem lies with good boy. Whenever you say good boy, he totally freaks out.”
“Well, who doesn’t like to be told he’s a good boy?” Peter asks. He’s hauling ass across this lake. The muscles in his arms ripple with every stroke and his t-shirt is already soaked. I’d be bitching up a storm, but like I’ve said, Peter does what’s necessary and never complains about it.
I pat Peter’s head. “You’re a good boy. Who’s a good boy? Huh?”
Peter doesn’t stop rowing as he barks out a laugh. A few minutes pass in silence, then Bits says, “Cassie, look.”
The canoe and rowboat have just reached the two islands of Lexers we’ll have to pass between. As they weave their way through, the gentle splashing becomes a wild thrashing that reminds me of a school of piranhas eating their prey.
Peter watches me for instructions. “You’re good,” I say. “Keep straight.”
The water gets choppier. Twenty feet away, a tangle of clothing and bodies and hair moves. It’s impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins. The rowboat dips in a way that would make me seasick if I weren’t so anxious. Drops of water spray through the air. I keep my mouth closed against the onslaught while Peter rows like a madman. Bits grabs Hank when one rises from the water, peeling hands gripping an oar. I raise my axe, but Peter shakes it off and it sinks into the darkness of the lake, fingers flexing.
I grip the bench with one hand and order the kids to hold on. Tiny waves break on the sides of the boat. The smell of dead things mixed with the wet decay of lake weeds is everywhere. Peter keeps his eyes on me, trusting me to tell him which way to go, which makes me terrified I’ll fuck it up somehow.
“To your right,” I say. Peter dips an oar until I say, “Straight!”
The Lexers’ movement has narrowed the channel we have to pass through. I order Bits and Hank to the bottom of the boat as we near the entrance, and Barnaby begins a chorus of barks that echoes over the water.
“Quiet!” I scream.
Barn drops and looks at me with wounded eyes. I’ll feel bad about that later. I pull my poncho from my pack and call for Hank to catch it. He spreads it over himself and Bits like a fort. Peter must be worn out, but he pulls faster when the splashing becomes a downpour. I throw his jacket over his head and use the hand not holding my axe to cup over my eyes. Water streams down my face and over my lips. The boat rocks at a perilous angle when a hand grips the edge, and Peter leans to the opposite side so I can kill the Lexer without sinking us.
A few more strokes and we’re through. Peter’s jacket has fallen to the bottom of the boat and he pulls like he was captain of the rowing team at Harvard. Who knows, maybe he was. Now that we’re in calm water, I can hear his breaths with every stroke of the oars. Water soaks my hair and runs under my jacket into every spot that was clean an hour ago. Peter’s as drenched as me, but the kids are dry.
<
br /> I panic at the thought of what’s running down my back into my underwear, what has probably hit the mucous membranes of my eyes and lips. I snatch my mouthwash from my bag and gargle a small mouthful. The alcohol will kill any germs. I pour it in my gloved hands and rub them together and then pour more onto my bare hands to smooth over my face, neck and hair.
Between fifty-degree temperatures, water and now Refreshing Mint, I’m freezing. I dump out more and rub Peter’s face. I rake some through his hair and then get his bare arms.
“What are you doing?” he asks, screwing an eye shut. “That shit stings!”
“Sting or die,” I say.
He stops mid-row and stares at me in wonder. And not the good kind of wonder, either. “You are out of your mind,” he says, enunciating each word.
I’m hit with the absurdity of the moment. I’m kneeling in zombie water in a rowboat in British Columbia rubbing mouthwash on Peter. I’m minty and burning and sweating and freezing all at the same time. I collapse to the bottom of the boat and laugh until my stomach hurts.
“I really am,” I gasp. “Holy crap, I really am.”
CHAPTER 40
I change into Ana’s leather pants and spare bra, underwear and shirt, but only after rubbing myself down with the antibacterial gel that was in the speed boat. This is it—my final outfit. And the most uncomfortable of the bunch.
Nelly smirks when I walk outside. “Why are you walking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you have something up your butt.”
“Well, you would know.”
Nelly chortles and wraps an arm around me. “Good one, darlin’. You should’ve taken those mom jeans while you had the chance.”
“I’d rather be dead than have you see me in those.”
“And I’d gladly die for a chance to see you in them.” He takes a long sniff of my head. “You and Peter are minty fresh.”
“Don’t ever do that. There’s mint in my bones. I’ll never be warm again.”
Until the End of the World (Book 3): All the Stars in the Sky Page 20