I dropped my ax.
Slowly I lifted my arms, my bare hands above my head, even though I hadn’t been told to do so.
“What’s the name of this town?” the officer asked. “It doesn’t appear on my charts. What is it, a new looter camp?”
My tongue felt frozen. “Hearth,” I managed to say.
“What’s that? Speak up, kid.”
“It’s called Hearth. It’s not a looter camp.”
The officer nodded. He gestured at his soldiers, and they moved in closer, forming a tight ring around me as if I might try to run away. Not that I could possibly get far pushing my way through the snow.
They marched me back into town, shuffling along on their snowshoes to keep pace with my trudging. There was no one in the sniper nests at the gate—there hadn’t been in a long time. I led them up to the municipal building and inside, where it was at least a little warmer. Kylie was there waiting for me to return. When she saw the soldiers, her eyes went very wide.
“Uh, hello,” she said as the soldiers spread out to cover the entrance hall. Others went deeper into the building, their rifles up and ready to shoot anyone who gave them any trouble. “I, uh—welcome to Hearth,” Kylie said. “I’m afraid we don’t have much to offer except water, but it’s clean.”
“You in charge here, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“Well, no, that’s—that’s Finnegan.”
I nodded. I was still waiting for my tongue to thaw out.
The officer gave me an appraising glance. He didn’t seem to like what he saw. “I’m Colonel Parkhurst. I’m here to recruit new soldiers, that’s all. If you have anyone hiding nearby looking to shoot us, I’d advise you to tell them to stand down.”
“No, nobody—nothing like that,” I stammered out.
The colonel was the first new person I’d seen since coming to Hearth. I barely knew how to react to him. I was glad to know he wasn’t here to round us all up and take us back to Ohio, but beyond that I was pretty terrified. “Recruiting? You’re looking for soldiers?”
“We need every man who can stand up and carry a rifle.” He looked me over again. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
“It’s been a long winter,” I said.
“That must explain why your secretary looks like she’s made out of a bag of sticks,” he said. I could tell he’d already judged me and decided I wasn’t a threat. I was happy to maintain that analysis.
“She’s not my—oh, never mind,” I said. “I’m afraid you won’t find many volunteers here, Colonel.”
“I didn’t say I was looking for volunteers,” he told me. He looked around at the varnished wood of the entry hall. “Why isn’t this place on my chart?”
“We’re . . . new,” I said. “We just got here at the beginning of the winter.”
He stared at me as if I’d said we flew to Hearth on a magic carpet. “You built all this?”
“The town was already here. We made it defensible. Set up homes. We’ve got big plans for this place.”
“They’ll have to wait. Hold on—you started up a new town? All the way out here? I didn’t here about any reclamation efforts this far west. What unit cleared this place out for you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The army didn’t set you up here?” the colonel asked. My silence was enough of an answer. “Jesus Christ, son. You’re rebuilding? In the middle of a crisis? On your own nickel? You must have some stones on you.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said.
“Man alive. That’s something. That’s really something.” The colonel favored me with a smile. “Maybe we are having an effect, after all. You spend your whole career thinking you’re just sitting on the lid of the garbage can. But if puny little folk like you can start to rebuild, with nothing but spit and gumption—well, hell. That’s encouraging. It’s a shame you won’t have a chance to keep it going, see how it all turns out.”
“What? What are you saying?” I demanded.
“Sit down already, son. If you pass out on me, I’ll have to find somebody else to make my speech to. I’m going to take every male you’ve got, including yourself. The army needs you. Your government needs you. There’s a war out west, a particularly nasty tin god out there who needs killing, and we’ve passed the point where we can be choosy about who we take.”
I was starting to overheat, so I removed my coat and my top shirt. No one shot me, so I guess they knew somehow I wasn’t reaching for a concealed weapon.
“You’re talking about Anubis?” I asked. “The skeleton cult?”
“You’ll be briefed later. But, yes,” the colonel said. “You’re going to help save civilization, son. That’s something to be proud of.”
I unwrapped the cloths I’d wound around my hands in lieu of proper gloves and dropped them by the side of my chair. “I’ve already got something to be proud of,” I told him. “This town.” I left out the fact that it would probably disappear before the snow melted, that we would all be dead. That didn’t matter, right then. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but I can’t let you take my people away.” Even if most of them would probably jump at the chance—the army had food, after all. “This place is too important. To me, to Kylie, to all of us. We can’t just let you—”
“There’s no ‘letting me’ take your people, son. Anyone who refuses to serve is going to get shot. Are you really going to be a problem for me?”
And that could have been it. That could have been the end of Hearth, there and then. If I hadn’t taken the wrappings off my hands.
“I’ve got the authority of Washington, D.C., on my side, boy,” the colonel pronounced, standing up a little straighter, looking at me down the side of his nose. “I have legal sanction to shoot deserters, and as of now—”
“Sir,” one of the soldiers said, “begging your pardon, sir!”
The colonel stared at the soldier. Then he raised one eyebrow.
“His hand, sir. His left hand.”
I looked down and saw my plus sign tattoo.
The colonel took a step back, away from me. It was enough to make me smile. “This?” I asked and lifted it to show them. “I’m a positive. So is Kylie. And everyone in this town. That’s why we had to come and make our own place. Nobody wanted us. Not the places we came from. Not your government.”
It was the colonel’s turn to trip over his words. “Positives. A . . . town of positives.” If I’d just announced I was suffering from the bubonic plague, he couldn’t have looked more frightened. He was one of the first generation, after all. What to me had become a sign of honor—the tattoo on my hand—was for him the mark of utter and imminent death.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry, but do you have any food with you?”
CHAPTER 117
Colonel Parkhurst tried very hard not to show it, but I could see how uncomfortable we made him. I think he expected the lot of us to zombie out on the spot, to rush his men in one big wave of red-eyed madness. When we didn’t, he relaxed a bit . . . but only a bit.
Enough to show pity on us, anyway. We must have looked so emaciated they couldn’t believe we were still alive. The colonel’s men came among us and handed out the MREs they’d brought with them. There weren’t enough to go around, of course. He only had thirty men with him, and they’d only brought enough food for themselves for a few days. Still, hungry as we were, even a scant mouthful of reconstituted pasta or a spoon of beef gravy was enough to revive us a little. He’d brought other things, too, other gifts I didn’t care so much about. A few old guns that they didn’t need anymore. A hand-cranked two-way radio that would have been nice if I knew anybody else who had one, anyone I could talk to.
“You’re all positives. This, uh, changes things, of course,” the colonel said.
“Of course,” I said. “You c
an’t have positives in your ranks.”
“It’s . . . regulations, you see. The men have to be kept safe.”
“I understand,” I told him. I was just glad he wasn’t going to scoop up half my population and send them off to die in a battle somewhere out west.
“It’s a shame, too. We really do need everyone we can get.” He leaned in close—as close as he dared—and whispered it. “This maniac we’re fighting—he’s just not like anything we’ve seen before. Anubis took Chicago last year. Turned a whole city against us. They handed over all their weapons and half their population for his armies. Made a deal with him. They would help him knock over Indianapolis, and he would let the rest of them live.”
My blood chilled a little when I thought of what I’d seen, the fountains full of burned skeletons. The city wall blown open like it was made of tinfoil.
“Still. Nothing to worry you, son,” Parkhurst said. He visibly straightened himself up in his chair, recovering some of his lost composure. “We’re massing troops in Denver, even now, and by summer we’ll drive up into Montana, hit him where he lives. We’ll have him marched down New Pennsylvania Avenue in chains before you know it. I have to tell you, it does my heart some good. You’re too young to remember what war was like before the crisis. But this is real blood and thunder stuff. Roman Empire reborn.” The light in his eyes was alarming—but only because I’d seen it before. I’d seen it in Ike’s eyes when he looked on what had been done to Indianapolis. I’d seen it in Red Kate’s eyes, most of the time.
A certain kind of mad joy. A desperate need to live in a world on fire. A realization, never to be spoken aloud, that the end of the world was a glorious thing. A chance to live life as grand, heartbreaking, showstopping theater.
It was exactly what I’d built Hearth to contradict.
I was not sad when he announced he had to be going, just as he was happy to get away from the town full of zombies-in-training. He left us with a promise to return if he could, to bring us supplies and support and communications from Washington. To make us, as he put it, a “real town,” which apparently meant getting our name on his maps and the right to vote in meaningless congressional elections.
I held out my hand and wished him well. He stared at my outstretched hand for a very long time before he shook it. Before he’d even let go, we both looked up because we’d heard a clattering in the hallway.
Some of the soldiers reached for their weapons, but before they could raise them, Ike had come staggering into the room. He looked bad. He was pale and thin, and I could see by the way he swayed back and forth that he was dizzy with malnutrition.
But he found the strength to stand up straight and tall and raise one hand to his brow in a proper salute.
“Colonel, sir, begging your pardon,” he said.
Colonel Parkhurst returned the salute. “Go ahead and speak, son. You don’t need to call me ‘sir,’ either.”
Ike shook his head. “If you’ll pardon me, sir, I do. I was a private first class in the army a while back. Never officially discharged. I was cut off from my unit and fell in with this bunch. But I’d like to return to duty, sir, if I may.”
I stared at Ike, dumbfounded. I’d never heard him talk like that before. Never seen him act like a real soldier.
I also couldn’t believe what was happening. Even though he’d warned me the time would come. He was leaving us. A rat jumping off a sinking ship.
The colonel made a big deal of checking Ike’s left hand. There was no tattoo on it, of course—Ike had never been a positive. He was almost certainly an infected, considering how much of my mom’s blood he’d gotten on himself. I could have said as much, right then and there, and I’m sure Colonel Parkhurst would have had Ike shot on the spot. Or I could have claimed Ike was a positive who just never got a tattoo. Then, at least, he would have been forced to stay in Hearth. With me.
I met Ike’s eye for just a second. Just long enough to see the look there. He looked sorry. Very, very sorry. But his mind was made up.
If I didn’t let him go, I think he would have run away the next chance he got. He’d never understood my dream for Hearth. He’d never shared it. He’d stuck around only because he was my friend. And now something better had come along.
So I let him go.
He flew away with the colonel in a big troop transport. Just one more helicopter, heading to the front.
I had no idea what was happening out in Denver, out where the army was fighting Anubis. Where Ike had gone. We saw fewer and fewer helicopters pass overhead as winter went on. That was all I knew. By the time spring came we saw none at all.
CHAPTER 118
I made a mark on my office wall for every day that passed, trying to keep a calendar so I would know how long the winter had to go. The snow kept falling all through February. March came, as best I could count the days, but with no relief in sight—the wind kept howling down from the north, from that far-off, polar land called Canada that I saw on all my maps. The lack of food claimed many of us, and then disease swept through Hearth and took many more.
By the time the snow started to thaw, out of the original five hundred of us, no more than three hundred remained—and many of those were at death’s door. We’d all lost so much weight we looked like something the skeleton cult would worship. Kylie’s spine looked like a snowy mountain range when I saw her dress in the morning. My muscles withered until it was all I could do to break through the ice on the stream when it was my turn to fetch water.
Even when the snow did begin to recede, when the longer days brought breezes that didn’t cut to the bone, it was like a cruel joke. So the grass showed up again, yellow and furrowed like an unmade bed—still there was no game. Tiny flowers appeared among the bases of the trees, but you couldn’t eat flowers.
I went whole days without seeing another human being other than Kylie. Without speaking, even to her. When I did encounter my people, carrying water or gathering firewood, they wouldn’t meet my eye. They’d given up hope. They’d even given up on being angry at me. They were just waiting to die.
This—this futility, this waiting—it was what I’d turned my back on. The idea, so prevalent among the first generation, that the world was done with humanity and we were just holding on by our fingernails before the inevitable, all-too-welcome plummet into the abyss, haunted me. I’d wanted to make a promise, a vow, to live, to really live, and I’d brought us all to the brink of death.
Even Kylie had stopped believing. “One good thing about starving to death,” she said one night, her voice as flat as it had been when I met her. “I don’t get my period anymore. My body doesn’t have enough blood left to spare.”
I tried to join in, to make a joke of it, based on something I’d read in the township library. “Just before the crisis, there was an obesity epidemic,” I said. “They were all so worried about being too fat, about ruining their health because they couldn’t stop eating. The old magazines are full of stories about it.”
“So the zombie apocalypse was just a fad diet?” she asked.
I started to laugh, but she stopped me.
“Finn, don’t bury me here,” she said.
“I . . . what?”
Her face was scrunched up with apology and guilt and sorrow and worry. She looked nothing at all now like the girl who had taught me how to loot houses back in New Jersey. She looked more like a ghost—pale and insubstantial, her eyes bloodshot and furtive. “I don’t want to go to sleep where I was hungry and scared. Take me back to the road. To the place we made love the first time. That’s where I was happy, for a while.”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t handle the thought of her dying at all. I couldn’t stop thinking about my hands sinking into the hard, frozen ground, my nails scratching away at the dirt to dig her grave. I couldn’t stop seeing the first handful of black earth scattere
d across her closed eyes, her scarred face.
In the morning I went back to the forest, to get wood, to make a fire for her. I smashed the ice on the stream, so thin and brittle now, and brought water back, so she would not be thirsty.
It took me most of the day.
The next morning I went back and did it again. Too stupid to give up.
And the next.
There came a day when the stream had no ice, even at its edges. No snow on the ground around me. I stared down into the clear running water and saw a death’s-head staring back. A gaunt, hollow face, my face, eyes the color of old faded newsprint, dark shadows underneath.
And another face, too.
A face with tusks and bristles and a snout.
I startled, jumping back, looking up. Just in time to see the wild pig, the pig that had come down to the water to drink, running off into a stand of new undergrowth.
The pigs were back.
CHAPTER 119
The positives came out of the houses one or two at a time, drifting out like ghosts. None of them could seem to figure out what to do with their hands. Their clothes hung on them like shrouds. Their hair was lank and long, as if they had all zombied out during the winter, changed into something horrible.
But their eyes weren’t red.
And when they smelled the smoke, they began to smile and shout and run.
Before dawn I’d taken a hunting party out into the woods with the best weapons we had. We had expected to find one or two pigs that would run as soon as they saw us, run so fast we couldn’t catch them.
We found a herd. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
I think they had migrated south for the winter, headed for places the snow couldn’t reach, where the plants hadn’t died off. I could only imagine such balmy and pleasant lands. Maybe the pigs had eaten everything down there, leaving the ground stripped and bare. Maybe they had come back north just to mate. It didn’t matter. They filled clearings in the forest. They stood out on yellow ground beyond the farthest trees. More of them than I could count.
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