by Jack Bates
But not long after that night, more and more videos started appearing on pages. Everyone was plussing them or liking them or pinning them. The videos went viral. The CDC quarantined the Everglades, calling it Ground Zero for the outbreak, but by then it was too late. Balzini’s Rash had become a pandemic.
I saw Lane one more time after that, and it wasn’t even in person. It was over my sister’s computer. We did a video link. He told me he was going with some of his friends to the Safety Zone. He offered to come to the city first to get me. I told him I was waiting for Jess and I asked him to email me or tweet when he got out west. I didn’t know then all means of communication were going to be cut off—except, I guess, for the people in charge.
“Maybe we’ll see one another again when this is all over,” he said.
At this point, I don’t think it ever will be over.
Seventeen
A few days later, I finally see Aubrey; it’s still kind of odd to call him by his first name of Nick. I don’t know why. Maybe because I knew a couple of Nicks in the old life and one was a real jerk.
I’m finally allowed to go outside of the headquarters’ compound. I’ve done well on the gun range and the obstacle course. LC Allison waves my survivalist training. “I’ve done well on my own,” she says. She gives me a smile that tells me she is impressed by me. On some level I begin to think I am her equal.
I’m still not certain why I had to wait. LC Allison kept telling me to be patient. I think I finally wore her down. She warns me, though, not to say anything about my videoconference with the Superiors.
Aubrey is sitting at a picnic table under some towering pine trees. The ground is a carpet of those dried, orange needles. Pinecones are littered about, and Aubrey sits on the tabletop, tossing small stones at them. I pick up a cone and it’s sticky.
“Hey, Robbie,” he says. His smile seems a little distant, but his hug feels really good.
“I see you guys made it,” I say. I sit down next to him. I have pine sap on my fingers and they stick together. I rub the residue on my compound issued pants. We’re both wearing similar military fatigues.
“We got here the same day you did.”
“Did you guys have a party that night? I wanted to come over, but they wouldn’t let me.”
“Yeah. They’re big on not letting people do things around here.” He tosses a couple more pebbles at the pinecones. If I had my wrist rocket, I could shatter them.
“Where is everyone else?” I ask.
“You mean Matt?”
It’s a leading response. I can hear the tinge of jealousy in it. “Was he killed?”
Aubrey shrugs.
“You mean you haven’t seen him since we got here?” I ask.
Aubrey is avoiding my questions. “I’ve only seen Shannon. She’s staying with her husband, Gordon, over in K building.”
“Gordon? Wasn’t he the soldier that was at the Velodrome?”
“Yeah. You know, everyone thought Denny killed him.”
“Because Denny wanted Shannon as a wife?”
Aubrey shakes his head. “Alpha male thing, I guess,” he says. “You know. Two guys, one girl.”
“But Denny had his harem of wives.”
“Didn’t mean he didn’t want more.”
I shudder. Denny Erickson was a deranged lunatic. “What happened to Denny?”
“I haven’t seen him. So they either killed him or he got away.”
“I saw him kill Cage.”
Aubrey searches my eyes, then stares at his feet.
“If he killed people, why did everyone stay at Freedom House?” I ask.
“Where else would we go? Fifteen miles north to Gumm’s place? It wasn’t any better there. Maybe people thought joining a tribe would provide a haven from the Guard.”
“Safety in numbers?”
“I don’t know.” Aubrey gets quiet again. “Sometimes people just need to be around other people. Good or bad. I guess it keeps us from going crazy from the loneliness.”
“I know all about that,” I say. I rub his shoulders. His skin is tight. Not because he’s been working out or training, but because he’s stressed. I wonder if he’s preparing to be a soldier for the Elite Forces. It’s just about then that I think I should tell him what I heard from the Superiors.
I ask, “So how was the party?”
“You mean the bonfire? Everyone made it seem like things were going to be a little more normal. But then we woke up the next day and you know what?”
“Same shit, different day?”
Aubrey laughs and smiles at me. “Yeah. Something like that. How did you know?”
“It’s something my dad used to say to my mom whenever she asked him how work was. If my mom said it to my dad, though, he’d get all pissy and be mad at her. He told her she was lucky to be able to be at home with my sister and me.”
“I only saw my dad on weekends. There was usually a new ‘aunt’ with him whenever I saw him. My family life pretty much sucked.”
“Do you know where they are now? Your family, I mean.”
He shakes his head. “I was working on Mackinac Island, remember? My mom was seeing some friends in Chicago. I think my dad was in Vegas.”
I stare at the side of his face. He has a straight, rugged jaw. His hair is getting a little curly around the ears because he hasn’t had it cut in a while. Although I’m not looking him directly in the eyes, he has an air of melancholy about him; he’s seeing images from his childhood, from when the world was full of the magic of televisions and ice cream trucks, when he had a home and a family. It tugs at my heart.
“How did you get off the island?” I ask. “Did you swim?”
“No,” he says. His says it in that way that makes me seem crazy for asking it. “There were three of us that worked at this little ice cream stand by the docks on Main Street. The place was a zoo and the ferry services weren’t running and the harbor was all gummed up with boats trying to get out at once. We went over to Robert’s Landing on the west side of the island. It’s low, beneath Devil’s Bluff. We found a skiff with a motor and headed over to St. Ignace. We found a guy with a school bus who said he was taking people to Camp G and we could go with them, but we’d have to pay. The fee was whatever we had on us. We had nothing.”
“So how did you get down state?”
“We walked across the bridge.”
The bridge he talks about is a five-mile suspension bridge crossing the Mackinac Straits. It’s the spot where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan come together. It surprises me that he walked it because there were always high wind warnings up when it was in use. Two cars actually went over the side; one was on purpose.
“Were your friends at Freedom House?” I ask.
Aubrey shakes his head. “Once we got across, we realized we were all looking for people in different parts of the state. We wished each other luck and headed for home. There were a couple of people with cars, and the other guys bummed rides, offered to drive, whatever it took to get as close to home as they could. That was it.”
A mosquito lands on his neck. I flick it off before it gets its stinger under his skin; who knows what those pests are carrying anymore. The sudden touch makes him flinch, and he reaches up to pull my hand away from his neck. When our hands connect, we don’t let go. Instead, we turn sideways, holding onto one another, our knees touching. I can feel him press his knee harder against mine. He squeezes one of my hands.
“You’re driving me crazy,” he says suddenly.
“Me?”
“You act like you like me, but you’re all up in my face about Matt.”
“I’m worried Matt got killed when the helicopter crashed back at the Velodrome.”
“What was so special about Matt?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. He’s kind of funny. He reminds me of a kid brother or a cousin or something like that.”
“It looked like he was more than a brother in the Freedom House cellar.”
“W
e were just keeping warm. It was cold down there.”
“Wasn’t that cold.”
I take my hands away from his. “See? This is why I’m worried about Matt. You’re too hard on everyone. You close us out. I want to get close to you, but you get all testosterone-ee on me and it turns me off.”
Aubrey gives me a funny look. He chuckles. “Is that a word?”
I’m still a little defiant. “It is in this new world.”
We stare at each other for a second. I’m not sure who breaks first, but pretty soon we’re both laughing. Aubrey slides closer to me and puts his arms around me. He holds me against him. I can smell his skin, the first sheen of sweat on a hot day.
“I’m worried about Leslie, too, you know? I mean, she was so fragile, even with the other wives around her. Now that they’re both gone and she’s separated from everyone she knows, it must be killing her.”
“Leslie was never all there,” Aubrey says. He taps his head. “I don’t know. I never got why Denny made her a wife.”
“Did he—I mean, you know. With the wives?”
“They were his wives.”
“That is so gross. They were so much younger than him.” I think about what he might have had in mind for me. I would have never let it happen.
“He was afraid of you,” Aubrey says, like he’s reading my mind. He squeezes my hand. His blue eyes search mine. “That’s why he made you a rabbit.”
“Did he tell you to shoot at me?” Aubrey looks away. He tries to pull his hand away from mine, but I hold it tighter. “Hey,” I say. I lift his chin and stare into his eyes. “What is it?”
“I was such a jerk, Robbie,” he says. I can hear the pain in his voice. “I mean, it’s no wonder why you dig Matt and not me.”
Not true, I think, but then again, I don’t know. “Denny made you do it, didn’t he?”
“Not directly. Thing was, I knew it would please him. I was more concerned about protecting my own ass, so I did things I thought would please Denny, keep me on his good side. Every time I released the pellet, I hoped it would miss you.”
“Did you mean to shoot that guy in the temple?”
Aubrey drops his head again. He begins to sob. He tries to talk, but the tears are too much and they break up his voice. I put my arms around him and hold him against me. He sniffs a couple of times. When he looks up at me, I am ready to kiss him.
A utility vehicle arrives from the HQ compound. It’s an open top, wide nose vehicle that rides high on its wheels. There are no doors on either side. One of the men from the guardhouse the night we arrived honks the horn and waves me over. It’s Wayne, the soldier who made fun of Yano’s ass-kicking.
“I guess my time is up for the day,” I say. Aubrey stands up. He wipes an arm across his face and keeps his back to the soldier driving the utility vehicle. Aubrey offers me his hand to get down off the picnic table. It isn’t necessary, but the gesture makes me warm all the same. I take his hand and step down off the bench. As I do, the driver honks the horn again. I turn to see what his problem is and miss the edge of the seat. It is Aubrey who catches me and stops me from falling. His arm is around my waist. My hands are resting on his shoulders. Our noses almost touch.
The impatient Wayne honks his horn a third time.
“You’d better go,” Aubrey says.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Are any of us?”
I give Aubrey a quick hug before I hurry over to the UV.
“What is the big deal?” I ask. I plop down on the seat next to the driver.
“LC Allison said you were to report back to HQ,” Wayne says.
“Why? There’s nowhere to go.”
“Just following orders, miss.” He drives the UV across the courtyard to turn it around. Aubrey sits back down on the top of the picnic table. He has fresh ammunition to toss at the pinecones. I give him a small wave and he returns it.
“Do you know anything about my friends?” I ask him.
“Any questions you have should be directed to LC Allison,” he says.
“How long have you been stationed here?”
“Any questions you have should be directed to LC Allison.”
I know how to play the game. I press on, pulling out the digital print of my sister. “Look at this picture,” I say. I hold it out for him to see.
“You want me to kill us both? I’m driving.”
“Stop the jeep and look at it then.”
“It’s called a Humvee,” he says. “Military hasn’t used a jeep since Vietnam.” Both of his hands are on the wheel. “And I’m not stopping.”
I look around the Humvee. There’s a toolbox in the seat behind me. Before he can stop me, I turn around in my seat and grab the toolbox. It’s a little heavier than I counted on, but I can still lift it with one hand. I feel him clamp a hand on my free arm, but I let out the fakest scream I’ve ever conjured and drop the toolbox to the ground. It bounces off the pavement and lands on the soft shoulder.
He stops the Humvee.
“There’s no one else around.”
“There’s always someone around. If not physically, then there are the eyes in the sky, or in this case, the tree limbs.”
“Look, I’ll drop this to the floor. When I get out to get the toolbox, you look and tell me if you ever saw her here.”
“What do you hope to find out? If she was here, so what?”
“Then I’ll know LC Allison wasn’t lying to me.”
“The only truth we have anymore is what we have right now,” he says. “You can’t believe anything they tell you.”
“They who?”
“You met them the night you arrived.” Wayne snaps his head around. He’s a little panicked now. When he faces me again, I can see the fear in his eyes. “Look, there’s more to all of this than you know.”
“You mean the growing friction between the Guard and all of you?”
“Beyond that. Way beyond that.”
“Look, I don’t care about any of that, okay? Right now, all I want to know is what happened to my sister and my niece. So I’m getting out of this Humvee thing and I’m going to get the toolbox you made me drop, and while I’m gone, just look at the picture.”
I do just as I say I’m going to. As I stand up, I drop the picture on the seat, hoping it looks as much like an accident as I can. I don’t look back at the Humvee as I walk the twenty feet back to retrieve the toolbox. The lid has opened and some of the tools have spilled out. As I gather them, I can’t help but notice how quiet the world around me is. I look back at where I last saw Aubrey, but we’re too far away for me to be able to still see him sitting there throwing stones at the pinecones.
The tools are a jumbled mess. I try fitting them back in so the lid will close. I find a small, plastic container that holds replacement blades for a box cutter. Looking up at the trees, I palm the container and close the lid.
When I stand and turn around, the Humvee is empty.
The picture is still on the seat when I get there. I flip it over, but there’s no new writing, no other message than the one Jessica wrote for me. When I slide it into my pocket, I slip the plastic container of blades in with it. Before I ever got mixed up with any of these people, I was surviving on my own. Those instincts are still with me. I only wish Yuki was as well. It saddens me to think she’s out there on her own somewhere.
I’m in a wide-open world. There are trees and rolling hills and bright blue sky that is envious of Aubrey’s eyes. But all of a sudden I feel completely trapped. There are fences separating me from the freedom I had once upon a time with a stray mutt I named Yuki, one of the most beautiful words ever invented. It’s Japanese for snow. During the winter months when we were on the road, when the wind whipped the snow into our faces, or when the bright sun reflected off the snow and blinded us, Yuki stayed with me. At night, she slept against me in the tent and kept me warm. If we crashed an abandoned house, she slept at the foot of the bed to guard me. She was my prote
ctor. She was a reminder that if I could survive that first, lonely winter, I could survive in this bat-house crazy world.
Now she is out there somewhere, on her own. Does she think of me? Does she miss me? Does she need me as much as I need her?
And that’s when I decide to steal the Humvee.
Eighteen
I have no plan.
All I know is that a military utility vehicle is a little more difficult to operate than I counted on. There’s more car there than I was ever used to driving. Honestly, I didn’t have that much experience before I left my parents’ house. Once I got to the city, if I needed to go anywhere, there was the bus system. The Humvee might as well have been a tank.
I get as far as Aubrey’s barracks when I stop. He’s not outside any more. I have no way of knowing which barrack he is in; I had never thought to ask him. I do the only thing I can think to do, and that is to make noise. I honk the horn and yell for Aubrey to come outside. I do this for what seems forever, but I’m sure it is only a few minutes.
A door opens and Aubrey comes out of Barrack J.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Leaving. Come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I just want out of here.”
Aubrey looks uncertain. He checks to see if anyone is chasing me. “You stole a military vehicle?”
“I’m stealing it. Are you coming with me or not?” I gun the motor. Aubrey runs around to the passenger’s side and jumps in. I want to hug him, but all I can do is squeeze his hand. We take off as more of the residents of Barrack J and other barracks near it start filing out to see what is happening.
I’m going too fast. Aubrey braces a stiff arm off the dashboard. I want to ask him about Matt. I just don’t have the luxury of asking Aubrey a bunch of questions. Matt could very well be here, but I’ll never know. All I can concentrate on is getting us out of Camp G.
I pass a sign that says “Main Gate” with an arrow pointing straight ahead. Beneath it is another sign that says “Field Hospital” with an arrow that points to the left. I say a heartbreaking goodbye to Matt in my head and drive as quickly as I feel safe doing. It’s probably still way too fast for the winding road, but I don’t let up on the gas. I want out of Camp G.