by Kyla Stone
Benjie’s face brightened. “And if I win?”
Finn rubbed his chin. “I’ll give you my share of dessert.”
“Deal!”
Willow rolled her eyes. Like there was going to be any dessert. But Finn was so eager, so earnest, it was hard not to be drawn into his games. And it was a good distraction for Benjie. “All right, you guys, let’s go.”
They stood outside the motel front doors. The sky glowered a bleary gray, the morning air crisp and chilly. They broke into groups of two or three, with plans to return to the abandoned checkpoint at noon. Even those without working SmartFlexes could tell when the sun rose to its highest point.
Jericho assigned Willow and Finn the job of searching cars. Many vehicles had shattered windows, their interiors scraped clean of anything but trash and dozens of empty water bottles.
Breaking into cars sounded fun enough, and Finn was good at it. He found a couple of loose bricks around the side of the building. He hurled a brick at the passenger side window. The glass dented.
He gave her brother a turn. Benjie tried a few times before it splintered. A few more throws, and the glass shattered into gummy shards.
They’d searched a few dozen vehicles when they stumbled across the first bodies. Finn broke the front pane of a dusty SUV with darkened windows. He stuck his hand in and released the latch from the inside.
Finn recoiled, stumbling back from the window, thrusting his hand over his mouth and nose. Willow smelled the stench. It was the putrid stink of living things decomposing, liquifying from the inside out and releasing all their gaseous fumes.
“Stay back,” she told Benjie. She covered her nose and circled the vehicle, keeping her distance.
Two large men slumped in the front seats, blood staining the masks still over their mouths and streaking from their eyes. The bodies were bloated and discolored, their swollen limbs locked in some writhing dance of agony.
Finn gagged and vomited. Willow’s own bile roiled. The stench overpowered her, the sight of the dead revolting—and terrifying. They died in extreme pain. That much was evident. What kind of bio-engineered flu was this? Dread swirled in her stomach.
“What is it, Finn?” Benjie asked in a muffled voice, his hands clasped over his mouth.
“Mister Finn,” Willow corrected automatically. “Don’t come any closer.” She circled to the rear of the SUV. The victims wore masks and gloves, though it hadn’t done them much good. Maybe they had more supplies stored somewhere. “Can you break the back window?” she asked Finn.
Finn wiped his mouth and stood up. He flexed one huge arm. “Do you not see these manly muscles?”
“Of course. That’s why I asked.” She tried to keep her voice bright for Benjie’s sake, but inside she wanted to scream.
“You can’t get enough of that lovely scent?” He flashed her a crooked smile, but it wavered. He was shaken, too.
“Something like that.”
Finn smashed in the back window with the brick. Willow stood on her tiptoes and peered inside, keeping her mouth and nose covered with her hand. The stench made her dizzy. It was the worst thing she’d smelled in her entire life. But it was worth it.
Two backpacks lay in the trunk next to a tarp, a shovel, and a cooler. She climbed on the bumper and reached inside.
“What are you doing?” Finn asked.
“We need the supplies. The only reason no one broke in is because of those bodies. Every other car we search will be scavenged already, at least in this town.”
Finn took a reluctant step closer. “What if the virus is on that stuff?”
Willow hesitated, weighing the odds. “Those bodies have been dead for a while. A week at least, maybe more. Amelia said the CDC lady told her twenty-four hours. This stuff was in a separate compartment. We have to take a few risks, Finn. We have a long way to go.”
He nodded grudgingly. “Do it quick.”
Like if she was speedy enough, the virus wouldn’t have time to infiltrate her skin. She plunged her hands in lightning-fast anyway. A little superstition never hurt anybody. She grabbed both backpacks by the loop at their tops and yanked them up and back. She tumbled off the bumper and smacked her butt hard on the pavement.
Benjie laughed out loud.
Finn grinned. “Anybody tell you that you’re about as elegant as an elephant on roller skates?”
Benjie giggled as she jumped to her feet and rubbed her butt. She gave an awkward bow. “Hilarious, I know. I’m here all night for your entertainment.”
“I’m entertained,” Finn said. “Are you entertained, Benjie?”
Her brother nodded, his goofy hair sticking up all over his head. Willow rolled her eyes and unzipped the first pack. Finn hovered anxiously over her shoulder, trying to peer into the bag. “Finn, you’re blocking all my light like a towering tree.”
He took a step back. “Oops. Sorry. You know what they say. Great men cast long shadows.”
“That must be it.” She pulled out several bottles of water, a dozen tins and foil packs of various prefab meals, a hunting knife, a digital compass, a roll of duct tape, water purification tablets, two boxes of plastic gloves, and a bag of five N95 respirator masks. No goggles, but good enough.
Her stomach twisted. These people were prepared. They owned bug-out bags and were prepared to get the hell out of dodge. The Hydra Virus snared them anyway. To survive, Willow and her people would have to be better than everyone else, and more prepared. She couldn’t let her guard down for a second.
“Jackpot!” She handed out the masks and opened the box and slid on a pair of gloves, then added another pair for good measure. On Benjie, the gloves flopped loosely at the fingers and wrists. Willow taped his wrists with duct tape. “Looks good, kiddo.”
She and Finn each shouldered a backpack. The thing had to be half her weight. The bottom bumped against the back of her thighs. Finn choked back a laugh. “You should really see yourself right now.”
“Don’t say a word,” Willow muttered, trying not to collapse or lose her balance. But after a few minutes of clumsy awkwardness, she adjusted to the weight.
Before the cruise, she’d worked for a landscaping company, hefting fifty-pound bags of mulch and fertilizer every day. She was short, but she was strong. Her lack of height gave her a low center of gravity, and the extra chub added balance—or so she told herself.
Benjie flapped his loose gloves at her. “I gotta use the bathroom.”
“Can it wait?”
Benjie squirmed uncomfortably. “Nope.” Oh, crap. The potty dance.
Willow looked around. They’d scoured the motel parking lot and most of the road leading to the perpendicular main street. Down the street, Amelia and Micah entered a McDonalds.
To her left, Celeste rested beneath a tree on the side of the road. Horne lounged a few feet away, his eyes closed. It figured. They were like two lazy-ass peas in a pod. Elite princesses who weren’t used to doing a thing for themselves.
“There should be a bathroom at that gas station.” Finn pointed. “Though it looks like there should be a sign: ‘use at your own risk’.”
They headed toward it, hefting their packs as they weaved through dozens of abandoned, gutted cars, turning right on the main strip. Trash, crumpled leaves, broken glass, pop cans, and scattered papers littered the road. Willow stepped around a dull red splotch that looked an awful lot like blood.
“What’s that?” Benjie bent and picked up a stained and ripped green paper. “What’s F-E-M-A?”
“Let me see.” Willow took the flyer from him and rubbed out the creases. Anyone exhibiting the following symptoms should immediately make their way to their nearest regional FEMA medical center for treatment. It included a list of symptoms: runny nose, sneezing, coughing, fever, headache, vomiting, bleeding from orifices. And below that, a list of the closest FEMA centers. “There’s a treatment,” she said, her voice rising. “A place to go for help.”
“Is that where people go to get bette
r?” Benjie asked.
Willow nodded. She folded the flyer and slipped it into her pocket. “We’ll give this to Jericho later.”
Her gaze snagged on dozens of green slips of paper scattered with the rest of the trash. Maybe a helicopter flew overhead and dropped the flyers, so everyone knew where to go. But the guys in the white SUV hadn’t made it.
Is that why people abandoned this town? How many people got sick and fled to the FEMA center, leaving their entire lives behind? She shivered and kept walking.
“Look,” Benjie said.
The gas station’s windows were shattered. So were the barber’s shop and the hardware store. Small holes punctured the walls and riddled the driver’s side of a faded green Jeep parked in front of the gas station.
Anxiety and dread swelled inside her. What happened in this town? She wanted to curse, but resisted in front of Benjie.
“Bathroom,” Benjie repeated.
They made their way to the gas station, crunching over glass. Broken shards thrust from the frame of the broken front door. Inside, shadows crouched in every corner. She blinked to adjust to the dim light. The shelves were mostly picked clean. A rack of postcards was tipped on its side next to a rack still full of sunglasses.
“I guess cool shades and mail service aren’t essential elements of the apocalypse.” Finn grabbed a pair of sparkling purple sunglasses and slipped them on. “What d’ya think?”
Benjie made a face. “They’re kinda ugly.”
“Oh, yeah?” Finn grinned crookedly. “Well, Santa Claus isn’t real.”
Benjie’s eyes widened.
Finn winked at him. “Just kidding. He totally is.”
Willow glanced around the empty gas station, her nose wrinkling. “It stinks.”
Finn sniffed his own armpits. “And all this time, I thought I smelled like roses.”
Willow rolled her eyes, but Benjie giggled. She was glad Finn was distracting him. This place gave her the creeps.
The air smelled foul, like moldy prefab burgers and rancid milk and something else even more disgusting. A strange buzzing noise came from the back, almost like fluorescent lighting, but the electricity wasn’t working.
She scanned the rest of the gas station. The back door was propped open. The floor near the freezers was sticky with pools of spilled pop. The coffee machine leaked all over the counter, brown stains dripping down the cabinets.
A dog stood in the middle of the center aisle.
Willow stared at it, startled. The dog just stood there, surrounded by empty shelves and crumpled candy bar wrappers. It wore a bright orange collar and looked like a Pitbull, with short mottled brown fur and a narrow, angular head.
It was so strange to see a dog inside. The way it watched them unnerved her. Its ears flattened, tail down, the hairs along its spine rising. Alarm bells went off inside her head.
Before she could seize his hand, Benjie bounded toward the dog with a gasp of delight.
“No!” she cried.
The dog growled, spittle flying from its jowls. Its saliva was flecked with red. Blood stained its fangs.
Benjie skidded to a halt a few feet from the dog. He glanced back at Willow, suddenly unsure. But he was still too close, and Willow too far. If she went for Benjie, she might scare the dog into attacking.
“Benjie.” She forced her voice to remain calm, though she felt like screaming. “Don’t move. Stand still as a tree. Don’t look at the dog. Do you understand?”
Benjie whimpered.
Finn went stiff beside her. “He’s scared like you, buddy. We don’t want to make him more scared, okay?”
“O—okay,” Benjie stuttered, his breath hitching. If he panicked, he would hyperventilate and trigger an asthma attack. She carried the inhaler the medical staff had provided at the base, but it wouldn’t do any good unless she could reach him.
“Stay calm.” She took a slow, small step forward, willing her body not to tremble, willing herself not to show her terror. Couldn’t dogs smell fear?
The dog lowered its head, growling louder, hackles raised all the way now. Willow froze. It didn’t back down. This was its territory, not theirs. They were the intruders. But they couldn’t leave, not without Benjie.
Her gaze moved past the dog. A pair of legs poked out from behind the next aisle. Human legs. They weren’t moving. She recognized the strange buzzing sound now. Flies. Hundreds, maybe thousands of flies.
Her veins turned to ice. She had to do something. That stupid animal wasn’t just defending its territory; it was defending its meal. Or else it was stalking its next one.
It wasn’t afraid of them. They needed to make it afraid. She searched the gas station, looking for something, anything that could help them. She didn’t see anything that might be used as a weapon. A gun could be hidden beneath the register counter, but it was too far away to help them now.
Her gaze snagged on the rack of sunglasses. It was within reach. Carefully, she stretched, straining for the rack. “On my count, Finn, scream and yell as loud as you can. Benjie, you run like hell back to me, you understand?”
Benjie nodded, his breath ragged.
“One, two, three.” Willow shrieked and jerked the rack of sunglasses, knocking it to the tile with a loud crash. Finn bellowed at the same time, flailing his arms and charging at the dog.
The creature yelped, startled by the crash and the suddenly crazy humans. It staggered back, its nails scrabbling on the slick floor, before turning and fleeing out the back door.
Benjie ran to Willow. She thrust the inhaler to his mouth, and he took in several deep, rasping gasps. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” she repeated over and over, wrapping him in her arms. Tears stung her eyes. He was all she had left. She couldn’t lose him. She would not lose him. “Don’t ever do that again. Do you understand?”
“He’s wearing a collar,” Benjie gasped, trying not to cry. “He’s a pet.”
Willow squeezed him tighter. “No, he’s not. Not anymore.”
After a few minutes, she made Benjie sit by the rack of sunglasses until his breathing normalized. Finn moved to her side, his expression grim. “That dog was rabid.”
“Something like that.”
His eyes took on a distant look. “My dad had a Great Pyrenees, once. I named him Marshmallow—don’t judge. He was huge but gentle as a lamb. When I was fifteen, a rabid raccoon attacked him. My dad paid for every experimental treatment available, but he still contracted rabies. We kept him in the backyard, hoping against hope.
“The vet-bot gave us an injection to put him to sleep. Dad wanted one of us to do it, but we kept putting it off and putting it off. One day, Marshmallow seemed like he was acting almost normal again. I went out in the yard to see if he’d gotten better. I brought one of my dad’s golf clubs with me, you know, in case. To protect myself, if I needed to.”
Willow felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. This story wasn’t going to end well. “But he wasn’t better.”
Finn shook his head. “He wasn’t better. And when he came at me, I froze. This is my Marshmallow—that was all I could think. I couldn’t make myself hit him. I just couldn’t.”
Willow glanced back at Benjie, making sure he was safe. “What happened?”
“My dad ran out and grabbed the club from me. And my dad—he’s not violent at all. He volunteered at animal shelters and nursing homes, and you know, literally wouldn’t hurt a fly. I should’ve given Marshmallow the injection myself, to spare my dad. I should’ve been able to use the club when I had to. But I didn’t. My dad’s the one who had to kill Marshmallow, the dog he loved, in the most horrible way.”
Willow didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t much good at this kind of thing. Finn was so good-natured and funny most of the time. It was easy to forget he’d suffered and lost things, too. “Your dad sounds like a good guy.”
Finn trailed his finger in the dust on the top of one of the shelves. “He was. And Marshmallow was a good dog. Just li
ke that Pitbull.”
“It’s not them anymore.” Willow shivered. “They turn into something else, you know?”
Finn blew the dust off his finger. “Yeah, I know.”
They headed out of the gas station. “Well, at least we know one thing for sure.” He reached down and tousled Benjie’s hair, his typical crooked grin back on his face. “We’re definitely finding a different bathroom.”
8
Amelia
Amelia rifled through another empty cardboard box. The shelves of every store they checked were almost completely cleaned out. It didn’t make sense. “It’s only been six weeks.”
“The supply chain likely broke down a few weeks ago.” Micah emptied a bag of rice into a plastic shopping bag. Less than a hundred grains spilled out. “They say stores only keep three days’ worth of supplies on the shelves. And the last few years, with those antibiotic-resistant blights destroying crops around the world, most places had even less.”
Amelia just stared at him.
“You didn’t know how bad things were,” he said without bitterness.
“I—your brother told me.” Her face heated, fresh shame at her own arrogant ignorance flushing through her. “I’ve never—my family and friends never really talked about it.”
He shrugged. “You elites practically lived in a different world. I wonder if it’s still the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are there still enclaves where everything—electricity, food production, the internet— works fine? Places where people don’t know what’s happening here?”
She hoped so, then felt a stab of guilt for thinking such a thing. “I don’t know.” She thought about all the hundreds of hungry people who might have come through here, kids and mothers with babies, all of them searching for something they wouldn’t find. Her stomach rumbled. She ignored it. “We’ll bring food back here, if there are any survivors.”
Micah sighed. He smoothed the rice bag, folded it, and placed it back on the shelf.