“Are you all right?” I called to her. The end-stagers turned at the sound but stayed where they were, still eyeing each other carefully.
“Who’s there?”
“My name is Kate. I’m here to help you. What’s your name, honey?”
“I’m Sophie,” the girl said after a moment.
The end-stagers were starting to fidget, my presence disrupting the tension that had been holding them back. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it soon. “How old are you, Sophie?”
“I’m— I’m eleven years old,” she said. “Can you get me down?”
“I will, honey, but first I need you to climb higher up. Can you do that? I need you to climb as high as you can.”
“I’m— I don’t like going high.”
I lowered my rifle slowly, aiming just short of the end-stager nearest to me. “Go as high as you can, Sophie. It’s really important.”
She started to squirm upwards, hugging the thick branches tightly. “Is this high enough?”
“High as you can.” I kept a close eye on the three end-stagers as she rose, watching to see if any of them would make a break for her or for me. When one of them took a step I fired, sending a shot into the ground next to the male. The crack of the rifle made him jump and destroyed the last of his self-restraint: he started to climb up after the girl, now heedless of the other two. They followed him, more intent now on denying him the prize than on getting it for themselves, and I forced myself to breathe slowly as all three of them went up the trunk.
“I can’t go any higher!” Sophie shouted.
The male had almost reached her when I was finally able to line the three of them up: I hit him high in the back, just below his neck, and he toppled backward, knocking into one of the others as he fell and dropping them both to the ground. By the time I had recovered from the recoil I had the next round chambered and was trying to get a bead on the second one. She was clinging to the tree trunk, frozen between rising higher and heading after me, and I forced myself to slow down and take aim.
I usually prefer body shots—a head shot is better if you make it, but there’s too much risk of missing entirely—but she was a difficult target, rail-thin and wearing a ratty brown housecoat that faded into the tree bark, so I had to aim for her white hair. I peered down the rifle sight, took a slow breath in, and then let it out as I squeezed the trigger: a burst of red covered the old woman’s head and she slumped, sliding down the tree trunk.
The third one, the heavy woman, had been chewing on the male that had fallen on her, but the sound of my gunshot made her look my way: a few moments later she was up and heading towards me in a stumbling run. She was faster than I had expected and blurred as she neared me. I peered over my glasses to get her back in focus and then fired: the shot took her in the stomach, a fair bit left of centre, and turned her to the side but didn’t stop her. I chambered another round, squinted and fired again. My aim was better this time and she fell, first to her knees and then onto her face.
I began to cough, fighting to keep a bead on the fallen end-stager as I gagged and finally spat up a mouthful of greasy vomit. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and then looked around, hoping the noise hadn’t drawn any other company.
“Are you okay?” Sophie called from up in the tree. “Can I come down now?”
“Just take a look around first. Can you see anyone else?”
“No,” she said after a few seconds. “There’s just you.”
“Okay, come on down.”
“Okay.” She didn’t move for a minute or so, then started to inch slowly down the trunk. “Are they—are they all dead?”
I took off my glasses and moved toward the tree. The woman I had hit in the head was gone, but the man was still breathing: I slung my rifle over my shoulder, drew my knife, and rolled him over with my foot. He was better dressed than many of them, in heavy green cotton pants and a blue checked shirt instead of a gown or pajamas: I remembered him telling me that before coming to the camp he had lived on his own, rather than in a home. His skin was thin like an onion’s, and white where it wasn’t covered with scratches and bruises. My knees protested as I crouched down and slit his throat.
The girl dropped the last few feet and landed next to me. After a moment she threw her arms around my waist; I reached around her and drew her close, feeling her shake as she sobbed silently. “It’s all right,” I said quietly, and after a few minutes she stepped back, leaving a trail of snot and tears on my oilskin.
She looked from side to side, over her shoulder and then back at me. “Thank you,” she said.
“It’s all right,” I said again. She was dressed in dark blue jeans that showed little wear, a t-shirt, bright red fleece, a yellow plastic windbreaker over that and red sneakers covered in little stickers and doodads. There was some bark and leaf litter stuck to her, but her shoes were mostly clean: she hadn’t been in the woods for long. “How did you get here, honey?”
“I was on the train,” she said. “I was going to live with my uncle and his wife and his kids.” She looked straight at me for a moment, then glanced away. “I was by myself. My grandma . . .”
“So what happened?”
“I was, we were going around a bend and something bumped the train. I got knocked into a door and it just opened. I tried to wave at the train but it was too far away by the time I got up and my phone doesn’t work here.”
“We’re a ways from the tracks.”
“I got lost. I guess I should have stayed by the tracks but I didn’t know how long it was going to be until the next train came, and I thought if I got higher up I could maybe get a signal on my phone. Then those—those people found me and when I knew what they were I went up the tallest tree I could find.” She paused for a breath. “I’d been up there since yesterday.”
“Are you okay to walk?” I asked. “We need to get you someplace safe.””
She nodded. “Where are we going?”
“I’m going to take you to the Ranger station. They have a radio—they can let the next train know to stop for you.”
“How far is it?”
I shrugged. “A bit more than a day.”
I handed her a handful of dry breakfast biscuits. She took a bite of one, chewed it slowly, swallowed and said, “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I said. “I can stock back up when we get to the station.”
“No, I mean—thanks. For what you’re doing. I didn’t—I didn’t think there was anyone, I mean anyone not—you know, anyone not sick out here. “She was silent for a moment. “What—why are you out here? Are you—”
“No,” I said. I ran my hand through my hair, held it out so she could see the grey starting to speckle the black. “Not yet, anyway.”
“So do you—do you, like, hunt them or something?”
I shook my head. “That was—I try not to do that. Unless I have to.”
“Then why are you here?”
I slung my rifle over my shoulder. “I’m a nurse.”
At first they thought the homes were the vector. The affliction had spread all through them by the time anybody noticed it: the upticks in violence and dementia were noted but unremarked upon, hardly unusual in the overcrowded facilities, the larger pattern only visible if you saw what was happening with your own eyes. By that point nearly all the work was automated, done either by social robots or remote workers; few homes had more than the one Nurse of Record the law demanded.
So they emptied the homes, setting up the tent cities in National Park campgrounds across the country. None of us who had worked in the homes had shown any symptoms, but that didn’t matter. Whether or not we were infected, or infectious, we were seen as tainted—and few of us could find many reasons to disagree with that judgment. So we were each given a choice: a comfortable quarantine, or life in the camps with our former patients. I never found out what any of the other nurses chose, b
ut I can’t imagine many of those quarantine apartments were ever occupied.
It wasn’t long after I had moved into my cabin that cases began showing up outside of the homes, and everyone over sixty became a presumed latent and carrier. There was never any word about bringing us back, though, just the intermittent shipments of food and medicine and the trains carrying more and more of the afflicted.
It was maybe an hour before she started talking again: just small talk at first, like what my last name was and where I had come from, and telling me a little bit about her life. When she talked about herself I let her lead: I didn’t know yet whether her past had made her resilient or if she was just riding on shock and adrenaline, and I couldn’t afford to let her crash.
We reached the tracks in good time and followed them east, toward the Ranger station; after an hour or so I stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
I held a finger to my lips, turned around slowly. “Someone’s tracking us,” I said quietly.
“Oh,” she said after a second. “Do you—is it one of the, the end-stagers, do you think?”
I raised my rifle and began to turn slowly from left to right, watching for movement in the trees. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Whoever it is has been following us since you came down from the tree. End-stagers don’t have that kind of attention span.”
Sophie put a hand on my arm: when I glanced at her I saw that she wasn’t looking at me, or in the direction my rifle was pointed, but just to the right. Her grip tightened as I turned.
“Sophie,” I said, “did anyone else fall off that train?”
For a long moment nobody said anything; then there was a rustling in the bushes, right where I was pointing my rifle. I kept my finger near the trigger but waited as I heard Sophie’s breathing get faster and faster. After a few seconds a woman stepped out from behind a tree, dressed in black pants and a jean jacket. Her black hair had hints of white in it, like mine, only hers was white at the roots.
“Don’t,” Sophie said in a tiny voice.
I took a breath, kept her in my sights. “Are you with her?” I asked.
“Yes,” the woman said.
“She’s my grandma,” Sophie said. “You’re right. She was on the train with me.” She pulled harder at my arm. “Please don’t shoot her.”
“I won’t,” I said, though I didn’t lower my rifle. “What’s your name?”
“Peggy. Perkins.” She raised her hands. “I just—I just wanted to make sure Sophie was all right.”
“You shouldn’t have been on that train,” I said. I glanced at Sophie, then back at Peggy. “They found out, didn’t they?”
Peggy nodded. “I couldn’t stop her,” she said. “They were holding me, and then she just jumped off the train. I didn’t want . . .”
There was silence for a moment as she trailed off. I turned to Sophie. “That was a very, very foolish thing to do,” I said. “Your grandma is . . . she can’t come with us.”
“No,” Sophie said. “I couldn’t. I can’t just leave her alone.”
“Your grandma is sick, Sophie,” I said. “She can’t get on the train with you, and they won’t let her into the Ranger station.”
Sophie crossed her arms. “Then I don’t want to go,” she said. She scowled, her jaw quivering, and tears were appearing in the corners of her eyes.
Peggy crouched down to look Sophie in the eyes. “Honey, you have to,” she said, then turned her head to look up at me. “But I’m not sick yet. I can come with you—as far as the Ranger station. To help keep her safe.”
I took a breath. “What’s the last meal you ate on the train?”
Peggy frowned. “I don’t—”
“I need to know how far along you are. Do you remember what the last thing you ate on the train was?”
She stood up and closed her eyes for a moment. “Ham and cheese sandwich,” she said. I watched Sophie’s expression, to see if she remembered the same thing. “Little crackers, but I didn’t eat them; Sophie had mine.”
“All right,” I said. “Give me five words that start with R, fast as you can.”
“Rainbow. Rutabaga. Rooster. Red . . . Red light.”
I nodded, then reached out to tap her on the lips. She drew back but made no other response. “Okay,” I said. “You’re not showing any definite symptoms yet. But this thing can go very, very quickly.”
Peggy’s whole body relaxed as she let out a breath. “I promise, I—if you ever think I’m a danger to her, I’ll just . . . go away, I’ll go into the woods and never come back.”
“If you turn,” I said, “I’ll put you down myself.”
We walked for the rest of the day, mostly in silence. Sophie stayed close to Peggy; I felt an absurd jealousy as she held her grandmother’s hand and cast occasional glances up at her. We got back to the train tracks after another hour or so, and followed them westward until it began to get dark. Before dusk fell I found a suitable tree to sleep in and, after a meagre supper of jerky and biscuits, we made our way into its branches.
When I woke up I was alone: Sophie wasn’t on her branch, though the bungee cord that had held her there lay on the ground. I loosened my own cord and carefully lowered myself to the ground. My knee locked as I touched down: I took a half-dozen deep breaths, straightened my leg and looked around. There was no sign of either of them, nor any sound but the usual noise of the forest in the morning.
“Sophie?” I called quietly. I started back to the tracks, just a few yards away, then stopped when I heard a noise coming from behind me.
“It’s us,” Sophie called. She emerged from the brush with Peggy trailing behind. Sophie was holding her windbreaker in her hands. “We went to get berries. For breakfast.”
“I suppose it wasn’t a very good idea,” Peggy said, “but I made sure she stayed close.”
“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I was just . . .” I reached up to rub my eyes. “Did you find any?”
Sophie held the hood of her windbreaker up to me: it was about half full of tiny wild raspberries and blackberries. “Look,” she said.
“We had a cottage when she was little,” Peggy said. She shrugged. “Back before . . .”
We divided the berries between us, and then the remaining breakfast biscuits; Sophie tucked her last one in the pocket of her windbreaker and then looked at her grandmother, who put on a smile.
“Is there any way I can take some of that?” Peggy asked when I lifted my pack.
I shook my head. “It’s all right.”
“We might go faster.”
“I don’t remember you having to wait for me yesterday,” I said.
“No, I know. I just meant I’d like to, well, carry my weight.”
I looked over at Sophie: she was watching us carefully, an expression of concern on her face. “Sure,” I said. I separated the zipsack from my backpack, reached inside to take out the box of cartridges and then handed the sack to her. She swung it over one shoulder as we headed off, first going back to the train tracks and then following them to the Ranger station. I kept my hand on my rifle and watched the woods.
“Hey, I see smoke,” Sophie said, pointing ahead of us. “Is that the station?”
I could just see the station’s fence and gate, and beyond that a wisp of smoke rising up into the air. “We’re almost there,” I said. “They wouldn’t usually have a fire this time of year, though.”
“Do you think something’s wrong?” Peggy asked.
I held up my hand, then reached into my jacket pocket for my glasses. Once I had them on I could see that the gate across the tracks was open.
“Get off the tracks,” I said, looking back at them. “Come on, now.”
“Is there a train coming?” Peggy asked as she stepped carefully over the rail. “Don’t they blow a, you know, make a noise? So you know they’re coming?”
�
�Yeah, they do,” I said. “But maybe . . .” I waited for a minute, glancing back and forth between the station and the woods. Suddenly my pack felt very, very heavy.
“What are we going to do?” Sophie asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand—they wouldn’t open the gate except to let a train through, but that’s not long enough for . . .” I turned to look at Peggy and Sophie. “You said your train stopped when they threw you off. How long?”
“I don’t know,” Peggy said, frowning. “Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Which way was it going?”
“To San Diego,” she said. “Why does it matter?”
“I think somebody else got on that train when you got off,” I said. I lifted my glasses and rubbed my eyes. “Not on the train, but hanging onto the outside. They must have seen that the trains could get through the fence.”
“So what happened to the Rangers?” Sophie asked. “Do you think they’re all. . . ?”
“I don’t know. I guess they might not bother closing the gate, if the station was already compromised. . . .” I took a breath, folded my glasses and put them back in my jacket pocket. “We have to get to their radio so that we can tell someone about Sophie, get her out of here.”
“Couldn’t we just stay here, wait for the next train?” Peggy asked. “I’m sure if you explained . . .”
I shook my head. “The trains that stop here don’t let people on,” I said. “You’re right about one thing, though. You’re staying here, but she has to come with me.”
“No,” Sophie said. She squeezed Peggy’s hand in hers. “I—I’ll come. I’m not scared, but Grandma has to come too.”
“I’m fine,” Peggy said. “That’s just, my mind is fine. A whistle, the word I was looking for is whistle. There, you see? You just forget things sometimes, at my age. Doesn’t that ever happen to you?”
“What did we have for breakfast, Peggy?” I asked.
“Berries,” she said.
“What kind of berries?”
She rolled her eyes. “It was . . . well, summer berries. What you pick in the summer, in brambles with, with prickers.” She looked away and then back at me: her face was red, her eyes glistening.
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