Positive

by David Wellington

  Kate leaned back. Extricated herself from my window and took a step away from the SUV. “You looking to make a deal, Stones? We could do that.”

  “Yes,” I said, gasping with relief. “Anything. Anything you want, anything we have. Just let us get Addison to help. That’s all I want.”

  “Well,” Kate said. “You know the answer to that riddle. You know what I want, don’t you? The only thing I want?”

  As soon as she said it, I did. I knew exactly.

  I reached for the latch to open my door. I swung it open and put one foot down on the pavement. It was me. I was what Red Kate wanted. She didn’t care at all about the girls. She didn’t want our guns, our food, even our fuel. She just wanted me. I had cut her. I had run away from her. Those were things that could never be forgiven. She wanted to make sure I never got to Ohio.

  There was no question in my mind, at least not in that particular second, that I would agree. I would give myself to her, and in exchange Addison would live. Heather and Mary and Kylie would make it to safety. I didn’t hesitate.

  Kylie had other ideas, though. Without moving any more than necessary, she reached over and grabbed my arm in a viselike grip.

  CHAPTER 54

  Please, Kylie,” I said. “Please let me do this. It’s the only way. Addison is running out of time.”

  “Finnegan,” Heather said. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  I turned to look at her. “The medical camp is in Akron,” I said. Red Kate had slipped up and let me have that piece of information for free. “Follow the road signs if you can or the atlas. Get there as fast as you can. Keep safe.”

  “What are you talking about?” Heather demanded.

  Kylie was still holding on to my arm.

  “If you don’t let me go,” I said, “they’re going to shoot you. They’ll shoot all of us. Let me go, Kylie.”

  Still she held on. But only for a second longer. She didn’t look at me as I climbed out of the SUV. She didn’t look anywhere but the road ahead.

  When I was clear of the vehicle, Red Kate nodded at one of her men. The roadblock of motorcycles was moved away, leaving a clear path for the SUV.

  “Kylie,” I said, because I was sure this was the last time I would ever see her. “Kylie. We were a family. For a while. You and I were—­maybe not married. But we were together. And Addison was like our baby.”

  It was all I could think to say to her.

  She did not respond. Except to put the SUV into drive and to steer her way through the motorcycles. Heather and Mary screamed for me as they drove away, but all I could do was wave good-­bye.

  The SUV shrank as it drove away from me, as it headed off for Ohio without me. Eventually it headed around a curve in the road and it was gone.

  I closed my eyes so I could still see it. So I could see Kylie’s face one last time. Not frozen like it had been. Smiling, the way I’d seen it ever so briefly, ever so infrequently. Lit up with emotion. I thought of how she’d looked, the night she first called us her family. I even thought of the holy rage, the nearly divine indignation and anger she’d shown when she killed Adare. I thought of the scar across her nose, and I thought of the color of her hair.

  “Oh my God,” Red Kate said. “That was adorable.”

  There wasn’t enough fear in me to stop what happened next. I whirled on her, yanking the knife from my belt. The knife with the eagle engraving, the knife I’d taken from her.

  A dozen guns were pointed at me. There was no way I would survive if I just attacked her. I wasn’t sure I even cared, not just then. “Come on,” I said. “Draw yours. Do it! If you’ve got the guts!”

  Red Kate held up one hand to tell her men not to shoot me. “Why?” she asked.

  “Why? Why?” I stared at her with eyes wide. Spit flecked my lips. I couldn’t seem to close my mouth, I was so keyed up. “Because that’s what this was all about! You wanted to kill me. Now’s your chance!”

  “Kill you?” she asked. “Oh, Stones, no. No no no no no. No.” She cocked her head to one side. “Well, maybe. It remains to be seen. But not right now.” She snapped her fingers. One of her men walked her motorcycle over to her and she climbed on.

  “Give me that knife,” she said.

  I didn’t move.

  “Give me that knife or I’ll cut your hand off.”

  It burned to do what she said, even if there was no point disobeying. I handed over the knife. A scabbard was mounted on the side of her bike, and she slid the knife into it with a practiced motion.

  “Now,” she said. She patted the seat of the motorcycle behind her, what I would learn was called the pillion. “You get to ride with me.”

  Clumsily, not really knowing how, I climbed onto the back of her bike.

  “Wrap your arms around me so you don’t fall off,” she told me. And then she twisted the throttle.

  CHAPTER 55

  Racing across Pennsylvania on the back of Red Kate’s motorcycle was an exercise in abject terror. Kate could maneuver around potholes and debris in the road far better than any larger vehicle, so she kept up a constant speed of nearly fifty miles an hour—­faster than I had ever traveled before in my life. Added to the rush of the speed was the fact that I was so exposed, so utterly unprotected. There was no comforting barrier of metal on every side, no windshield to keep the air out of my face. If we had crashed, if Kate had made even the slightest mistake, both of us would have surely been killed, smeared across the asphalt so fast I probably wouldn’t have seen it coming. I could do nothing about it, of course—­I could hardly ask her to slow down. I could only hold on and hope for the best.

  She led her band of cyclists off the turnpike and through a maze of twisting country roads, some of them no more than a single lane wide. We headed under the trees and soon were lost in a green twilight, the light flickering overhead as it cut through the foliage.

  There were no road signs or landmarks, but Kate seemed to know exactly where she was going. She seemed to have memorized every bump and curve in the road she took, even though she couldn’t have been there more than once or twice before. We were far, far away from the lands she knew—­the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, the looter camps around New York—­but she possessed some kind of natural genius for life out there under the trees of Pennsylvania, as if she were an elemental of the road and at home anywhere the ribbon of asphalt stretched away ahead of her.

  For half an hour, maybe longer, we followed her path. It was impossible to talk over the noise of the motorcycle’s engine. Andy Waters, the half-­naked Archie, and the other dozen or so members of her crew kept their distance behind us, so they were often lost around a curve of the road, but they always caught up with us again. I was alone with my thoughts for the whole ride, yet I failed to come up with any kind of plan or stratagem. I couldn’t even imagine where they were taking me, or what they would do to me there, though I assumed some kind of torture would be involved—­physical or mental.

  Eventually we arrived at a small town that huddled under the trees, just a few wooden buildings built tight up against a kink in the road. When my ears stopped ringing, I could hear water rushing nearby, the sound of a waterfall or a long stretch of rapids. Dew misted the leaves that hung down so close to the ground they formed a natural drapery around the place.

  Kate walked her motorcycle over to the front of a building that might have been a general store once. She dropped her kickstand and then sprang from her seat as nimbly as a cat. It took me considerably longer—­my legs were cramped from clutching the machine, and my fingers were sore from holding on to Kate’s waist. I felt like an old man as I edged my way gingerly off the pillion seat.

  Around me the other members of the crew were whooping and joking among themselves, keyed up after their ride. Kate ignored them—­and me—­and headed inside, letting a screen door slam behind her as she disappe
ared into the darkness of the building. I looked around, thinking perhaps this was a chance to run away, but found that her crew members were watching me while pretending to ignore me completely. I had spoken once with Andy Waters, and I tried to get his attention now. He was busy sharing a cigarette with a woman in a short tight dress and an aviator’s helmet. Eventually, though, he jerked his head toward the store building, indicating I should follow Kate.

  There was nothing else to be done. Stealing a motorcycle and making a break for it was out of the question—­even if I’d known how to drive one of the machines, I had no map and no way to even know which way was west, much less how to get to Ohio from here. And I was certain Kate would simply track me again, track me down and this time make sure I didn’t get away. I could run away on foot, but that was sheer suicide—­zombies would be out among those trees, and even if they weren’t, I would starve soon enough, having no idea how to get food from the forest.

  So I headed inside, into the store building. It was dark inside, and it smelled of old spices and mildew. A little light came from a back room, which proved to open out onto a broad wooden porch, screened in against insects. The porch was built out over the lip of a gorge and overlooked a stretch of white water that just fell away into mist and rainbows a few hundred yards downstream. It was, without a doubt, a beautiful thing to see, and I understood why ­people would live here—­or why they had, before the crisis.

  Red Kate had thrown herself into a big wicker chair, one leg draped over one of its arms. She wasn’t looking at me, just at the water beyond the screens.

  My whole body was still thrumming from the ride on her cycle, so I was in no state to confront her just then. Instead, I asked, “What was this place?”

  She shrugged, still not looking at me. “Who knows? Does it matter? Now it’s just four walls we found on our way out here. A place to crash for a night, before the zombies figure out we’re here.” She had her knife out, the long blade with the skulls around its hilt. She started digging into the wooden arm of her chair, not even carving her initials there, just cutting into the wood. She seemed distracted, which did not make her look safe.

  I sat down on a cast-­iron chair as far as I could get from her while still remaining on the porch. I turned a little so I would have a better view of the door, in case one of her crew came rushing in to attack me. I had no idea whatsoever why I’d been brought here, or even why she’d followed me so far.

  “I thought you were a legitimate looter,” I said. “Stopping us, kidnapping me—­that kind of makes you a road pirate, doesn’t it?” Even though when I’d met her she’d just killed a government driver, the other looters—­including Adare—­seemed to think she was one of theirs. Not exactly one of the good guys, but an operator who knew how to go along to get along.

  She sat up and a certain amount of steel entered her voice. “I do what I feel like.” It sounded like a credo. “Stones, just say what you’re thinking.”

  I chewed on my lip for a while before I spoke. I wanted to get the wording right. “I’m nothing to you,” I said.

  “You’re right,” she said. I was actually a little surprised. “At least, just about nothing. You did cut me.” She glanced over at me with a playful smile. As if we’d been lovers once, not enemies. “And I lied before when I said I don’t hold grudges. You might have figured that out by now.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. You didn’t come all this way just to torment me.”

  “Nope.” She jammed her knife hard into the armrest of her chair. “Believe it or not, I came out here to make something of myself.”

  The idea surprised me, though I suppose it shouldn’t have. From what I knew of her, Kate had never lacked for ambition.

  “I started out as a road pirate, killing ­people for gasoline. It was a shit life. Then I came north and started legit looting,” she said. “Turned out that was just a bullshit game. The army gives you just enough to survive. So you can keep bringing them what they want.” She shrugged. “When I heard Adare was dead, I realized it was going to be my turn soon enough.”

  “Everybody dies, eventually.”

  “Yeah, sure. But some ­people die bleeding out in the road, and some ­people die of old age on top of a pile of swag. I always thought I’d gotten about as far up the ladder as I could. Then I met the asshole who carried this.” She flicked her knife with one fingernail so it made a chiming sound, like a little bell. “He came from out west, looking for recruits. He said the army is losing out there.”

  “Losing? Losing what?”

  “Control. It’s a whole new frontier out west, he said. A place where somebody like me can write her own ticket. So I’m going out there to see.”

  “I wish you luck,” I told her.

  She laughed. “Stones, you’re coming with me. When we saw you back there on the road, I couldn’t believe my eyes. You’re exactly what I need for the trip.”

  “I am?”

  She smiled and looked straight at me. “Trade goods,” she said.

  I understood, of course. I understood how things worked out on the road, in the wilderness. But of course, she needed to torment me.

  “Where we’re headed, it’s a ways farther, still. We’re going to need more gas if we’re gonna make it. Which means I need something to trade for said gas.” She pulled her long knife out of the arm of her chair and pointed it at me. “You’re gonna make a great slave, Stones.”

  I fought the urge to jump up and attack her then and there. She would have just cut me, badly enough to make me regret it. Not enough to kill me. My knife was back on her bike. I didn’t stand a chance.

  “It’s nothing personal,” she told me.

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “If you just wanted slaves to sell, you wouldn’t have let the others go.”

  She laughed and held up her hands as if I’d caught her. “Yeah. Fair enough. See,” she said, “I know what you really want. I know you want to go to that camp and get your life back. Well, that’s never gonna happen, Stones. You cut me—­now you never get what you want.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Her ­people came for me then. They spent some time beating me, just for fun, I guess, or to make me understand my place. They took their time with it—­eventually the sun went down.

  When they got tired of their game, they shoved me into the screened-­off porch, which now looked surprisingly like a jail cell. It was bitterly cold out there, and very dark. The door slammed shut behind me, and I heard it lock. Suddenly I was alone. No one was touching me or trying to hurt me.

  I slumped down to the floor and curled up, the pain twisting my muscles into stiff knots. I could hear laughter and music from beyond the door.

  If I could have burned down that house with all of them inside right then, I would have.

  For hours I just lay there, hurting and feeling sorry for myself. Eventually I recovered the strength to check my injuries, to make sure nothing was broken and that I had stopped bleeding. Everything seemed okay, if sore. I guess the crew knew what they were doing and had stopped themselves before things got out of hand.

  What kind of ­people made a study of that? Of learning just how far you could push a human body before it broke?

  Red Kate had said she was a maggot in the corpse of the world. I decided then and there that she was letting herself off too easily. She wasn’t just some harmless insect. She was a devil, and her crew were demons out of hell.

  But they weren’t infallible. They’d made one bad mistake. They’d thought, maybe, that beating me would show me how helpless I was. That I couldn’t resist them. Instead, it had hardened me somehow. Too dumb to quit, right?

  It had made me want to escape.

  I crawled over to the screened walls of the porch and started scratching at the fine metal mesh. I had to get away. If I stayed with Kate and h
er crew one more day, it would only bring new horrors and more pain. Anything was better than that.

  Even being alone, defenseless, out in the wilderness. Out there with the zombies.

  Weak and battered as I was, it took me most of the night to break through the screens without making a lot of noise. I tore at them with rough fingernails, making just a little progress at a time, cutting my fingers badly in the process. But eventually I managed to tear open a little slit in one of the screens, and then its fabric parted easily. It was the work of only a minute more to make a hole I could wriggle through.

  And then I was free. I got painfully to my feet and found I was standing on a narrow rock ledge hanging over the rushing water. I could barely see the rapids, but I felt an almost overwhelming urge to jump into them. To plunge into that cold water and be swept over the falls. My broken body would be washed clean as it was carried away to the distant sea.

  But no. The instinct for survival is surprisingly strong. Even at the worst of times it holds out something, some flicker of hope. Instead of jumping in the water, I edged my way around the building, keeping low so I couldn’t be seen from any of the windows. Eventually I came around to the yard in front where the motorcycles were all parked.

  Motorcycles I had no idea how to drive.

  I went over to Kate’s bike and got my knife back. It was still in the scabbard bolted to the side of her engine. It felt like—­something. Some small measure of security, though nowhere near enough.

  Then I ran out of there. I loped down the gravel path, back toward the slightly wider country road I remembered from the day before. I had no idea how to get back to the turnpike—­I hadn’t paid attention on the ride here. I picked a direction at random and started jogging, figuring that I would eventually find a bigger road, and then a bigger one, until I got back to a highway. There I could hopefully find some nice road pirate who was just wandering by, who would give me a ride in exchange for my pleasant company.