by Tosca Lee
“Preston, tell everyone to hang tight till we get back. Okay?”
“That’s going to be hard. People are afraid of getting sick. None of us locked ourselves underground for six months just to catch the disease the day after the door opened.”
“Where are they going to go?”
“A few of them are talking about setting up camp on the river, where they can at least put out throw lines for fish, or Lake McConaughy. Others want to go north, to Canada.”
“They have a much better chance of getting sick anywhere there’s people,” I say. “And of getting shot by Canadian border patrol.”
“I’m just telling you what’s being said.”
“Well tell them what I said!”
“I will. But I can’t guarantee none of them will leave after we finish burying Piper and Jax. You want us to put your name on one of the markers? I don’t know if it would help, but we can. Chase, too. After all, there’s two bodies, male and female.”
I shudder.
“What I want is to know who’s going to stay with the girls till we get back!” I yell. “It can’t be Rima. She’s been around Ezra.” I feel bad saying it but can’t afford to be diplomatic.
“Rima quarantined herself just in case. They’re with Sabine right now, keeping Evie occupied so she can pack.”
“What if Sabine leaves before I’m back?” I say, on the verge of hysteria.
“How long do you think you’ll be?”
Four and a half hours. An hour to find gas. We have no other option. “We should be back tonight. By morning at the latest.”
“Worst-case scenario we don’t find any fuel and have to get creative,” Chase says.
“So, what—two days, tops?” Preston says.
If we’re not back in two days Julie will be dead and this will have all been pointless.
“Two days, tops.”
“Okay, I’m sorry to ask this, but if you’re not back by then and everyone’s leaving . . . do you want the girls to stay behind and wait for you? Because Nelise and Irwin said they’d be willing to take them.”
My first reaction is to say no. No way.
But what if something does happen to us?
Truly’s six and Lauren doesn’t know how to defend herself, let alone another person. Nelise knows how to handle a weapon and make anything grow, and Irwin can make anything run.
I feel ill.
I would’ve wanted them to be with Rima and Karam, but she won’t even know in two days if she’s infected or not.
“Where are they going?” I ask, throat dry.
“They were talking about heading south. That’s all I know.”
They could disappear with the girls and I might never see either one of them again.
I cover my face. Draw a shaky breath.
“If we’re not back by this time in two days . . . tell them to take the girls and go.”
“Okay,” Preston says. “I’ll relay the—”
Static on the other end.
“Hello? Preston?”
No answer.
“Delaney?” I wonder if she leaned up against something and pressed her button, inadvertently taking over the channel. I reach back to check the unit on my belt, in case it’s me.
“Chase, can you check that you’re not pushing your button?”
“It’s not the button,” he says, reaching back to unhook the unit. He lays it on the weathered console followed by his headset.
“Delaney! Preston. Hello?”
“Wynter, we’re out of range.”
I panic. “I didn’t get to say good-bye! Chase, turn around. I didn’t say good-bye to Truly or Lauren.”
He pulls into the next crossover and makes a U-turn. And then we’re accelerating back toward Sidney. The wrong way.
“Hello?” I say. I wait a few seconds. There—I recognize those grain bins in the distance, had been staring at them as Preston said he’d relay the message.
“Preston. Delaney.”
Chase glances at me in the rearview mirror.
“What?”
“We can’t afford to burn any more gas if we want to get there. Or time if we want to get back.”
I close my eyes.
“If you can hear me,” I say softly, touching the button. “Tell the girls I love them.”
• • •
I DOZE OFF recalculating gas mileage. For thirty-one miles per gallon. Thirty-eight. Forty. Until the numbers run together, the answer is always the same:
Not enough.
7 P.M.
* * *
I wake to Otto jabbing a finger into my knee.
“What?” I say. It takes physical effort to form the word. Hurts to be conscious.
“We’re ten miles out,” Chase says. He rubs his face, his fingers scratching against stubble. He looks rough, and I feel guilty for sleeping. Especially as I recall Otto shattering the silence with one of his strange cries earlier, and Chase thanking him. Otto patting him on the shoulder.
I glance out the window, eyes burning from fatigue. Count five vehicles askew on the median, three on the shoulder. More on the horizon, one of them sprawled across the right lane against the haze of distant fires. It’s how I remember this stretch of highway, except the cars no longer look abandoned so much as returned to the earth, debris on their hoods and roofs, a shrub growing up through the open engine compartment of a faded blue Mercedes.
“Did we go by Lake McConaughy?” I ask. I’ve heard Sha’Neal and Rudy talk about it enough that I’d hoped to see it, if only because they said its white sand and blue water looked like the ocean—a thing I’ve longed to see my whole life but have only viewed in pictures. But also because I was curious to know if people were living there in houseboats as they thought, grilling fish and drinking water out of filtration straws like the one Karam gave me.
“Yes,” Chase says. “You can’t see it from the highway. But, Wynter?”
“Yeah?” I take the headset from my ear, having kept it on just in case someone managed to get through. I unclip the unit and tuck it into my backpack.
“Let’s do that one day.”
“What, go to Lake McConaughy?”
“No. See the ocean.”
I pause and then glance up to find him studying me in the rearview mirror. Waiting for an answer.
“We’re going to have to find a lot more fuel,” I say at last.
“I’ll make it my mission,” he says, his expression as soft as I’ve seen it in months, gaze lingering on mine.
Otto leans between the seats, right into my line of sight. He looks excited, like someone one letter away from winning Bingo. He points to himself.
“Of course you can come with,” I say with a smile.
“Hold up,” Chase says. “Who said you were invited?”
Otto pokes him in the shoulder. Points to Chase’s eyes and then the road.
“So bossy,” Chase mutters, but he’s smiling.
We pass a Burger King billboard advertising free Wi-Fi. The billboard beside it is collapsed on top of a jackknifed tractor-trailer, the back end crumpled like a box, the grass grown up around it.
“Which exit?” Chase says, glancing at the fuel gauge. The needle’s in the red.
“We can’t be out of fuel already!” I cry.
“I didn’t have time to dump it all in,” Chase says.
I fall back against the seat in relief.
Otto points to an approaching blue sign:
HOSPITAL
EXIT 177
“Have you been here before, Otto?” I ask.
He nods, points to the sign.
I want to know if it was for the thing that caused his muteness. Or if it had to do with his mother, wherever she is. I make a mental note to pack the bin of pencils when we get back to the silo. To ask him, when Julie’s healthy and we’re someplace safe, if he’ll write out his story. It only seems fair that someone who sees others so well be seen—and heard—himself.
I glance a
t the clock. Forty-six hours.
Chase takes the exit and slows to navigate a gauntlet of cars strewn along the curve. Their windowless, burned-out shells so mottled and so many that it looks like we’ve mistakenly pulled into a junkyard, or wherever it is that cars go to die.
“What happened here?” Chase says, pulling onto the shoulder around a rusted-out minivan perfectly angled across the road. “It’s almost like someone purposely—”
He hits the brake, and I catch myself against the back of Otto’s seat.
And then I see them:
Five figures emerging from a blockade of trucks ahead. Obscured from the highway by the rise of the bypass.
And carrying assault rifles.
“This isn’t good,” Chase murmurs.
My first thought is that Dr. Banerjee reported me. That he figured out who I was and these men are here to bring in a fugitive.
Until I observe the T-shirts and camouflage. “I take it that’s not the military,” I say.
My next thought is that they’re here for a bounty on my head.
“Get down,” Chase says, throwing the car in reverse.
I shove Otto’s head down in front of me as Chase backs onto the shoulder, accelerating around the minivan. Glance back just in time to see a truck pull onto the road behind us, blocking the narrow corridor through the maze of cars.
Chase slams on the brake with a curse.
I slide my pistol from the holster. Thumb the safety off.
“No,” Chase says, hands gripping the steering wheel. “Put it away.”
We loop our masks on as the men come toward the car, weapons raised, and fan out around it. And all I can think is: It can’t end like this. Not with Truly and Lauren thinking I abandoned them. With their not knowing what happened to me.
In a flash it occurs to me that all those months in the silo I spent waiting for our lives to start over, I should have been living—right then—with the people I love.
But that moment is gone. And this is the only one that exists. Staring down the barrel of a rifle pointed at my head.
I wonder if it hurts. If you feel anything at all.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” Chase says low.
The man closest to the driver’s side door shouts: “You! Get out of the car!” He’s wearing sunglasses and a dust mask, a plastic exhalation valve over his mouth like a poor man’s Darth Vader. An American flag on his hat.
Chase reaches slowly for the door.
And all I can think is we haven’t seen the ocean yet.
Chase opens the door and steps out, hands in the air.
“We’re just trying to get to town,” he says.
The man beside him slings his rifle over his shoulder and shoves Chase against the hood.
“You two, hands where I can see them!” the first man says as his companion removes Chase’s pistol.
I grasp the back of the passenger headrest as Otto’s hands go to the front of his head, shaking so hard they flutter against his brow.
“You got any other weapons in the vehicle?” the second man says, patting Chase down.
“My girlfriend does,” he says.
I see Otto turn his head slightly, glance at me from the corner of his eye. And I can practically hear the wry comment being shelved for later.
The first man up-nods over the hood of the Honda and a rifle taps my window. Its owner crooks a finger at me to get out.
I do, slowly. Not looking directly at his face or camouflage bandanna, the helmet-clad skull tattooed on his arm. The name tag on his vest that says BUCKEYE.
“Hands on the hood,” he says.
He slips the pistol from my holster as he pats me down. I close my eyes when his hands loiter at my breasts. Tamp down the knee-jerk reaction to whip my head back and break his nose.
“You military?” I hear the first man say and open my eyes to find him regarding Chase. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone ask him that, though with his hair grown out I’m a little surprised.
“He’s good,” the man behind Chase says, stepping back.
“Yes, sir,” Chase says, straightening, his hands up by his shoulders.
“Lemme guess,” the first man says, looking him up and down. “Navy.”
“Good eye,” Chase says, looking impressed.
The one who patted him down peers inside the car.
“Tank’s on E.”
“Buckeye” slaps my butt as though to signal that he’s finished. Jerks me back from the car.
“Over there, by your man,” he says before turning to Otto. “You. Out.”
I move around the back of the car, aware of the rifle tracking me from the man stationed twenty feet behind the car. Of the sixth man watching from inside the truck.
“Hey, darlin’,” the first man says, pulling me toward him when Buckeye’s finished. A ring of keys jangles at his belt as he drapes an arm around my shoulders. The patch on his chest has no name. It reads only: THE WARDEN.
He smells like BO and alcohol.
“So tell me, what’s your business in town?” he says, looking from me to Chase, as though we’re all good friends.
“We don’t want trouble,” Chase says.
“Now, see?” the Warden says. “We both don’t want the same thing. But what I asked was what your business here was. How ’bout we let the lady answer this one.”
“Our friend’s sick. Blood poisoning. She needs medicine,” I say, eyes fixed on the ground.
“I’m real sorry to hear that,” he says somberly, shaking his head. “Where are you fine folks from?”
“We’ve been holed up in a friend’s bug-out cabin north of Lake McConaughy,” I say, trying to avoid a repeat of what happened with Dr. Banerjee.
“The Ogallala hospital didn’t have what you need.” It isn’t really a question.
I didn’t know Ogallala had a hospital. “We didn’t even try. Were hoping if we got to a big enough city you might have vaccines—or at least know where to get them.” They had to have had hundreds, if not thousands, of people through here already looking for the same thing.
“Well, it just so happens we’ve got all those things,” he says. “Right on Leota Street across the highway. There’s a fine emergency room you can walk right into and they’ll get you all fixed up.”
“Thank you,” I say, knowing that can’t possibly be true.
Can it?
“This one’s good,” Buckeye says, stepping back from Otto. “But he smells like rotten meat.”
Otto clasps his hands in front of him, gaze fixed on the ground as Buckeye shoves him around the front of the car.
“Well then,” Chase says, “if we’re all done here—”
“Thing is, amenities like ours take resources in already short supply away from local residents,” the Warden says, looking at Chase. “So me and the boys volunteer our time to serve in part as welcoming committee and tour guides, but also to make sure those from out of town don’t take advantage of all that our fair city has to offer by collecting donations.”
I glance tensely from the Warden to the others, who almost look bored, their postures relaxed. I wonder how many people they’ve done this to.
I take a mental inventory of everything with us. But only one thing matters: the gas can in the trunk. Everything else, I will gladly hand over.
“Fair enough,” Chase says, rubbing his chin.
The man with Chase’s gun pulls our packs from the backseat. Unzips Chase’s, and upends it, sending ammo, tools, two flashlights, two water bottles, some clothes, and MREs tumbling to the ground.
“And that’s just it. I wanna be fair. Thing is, vaccines and medicine don’t come free,” the Warden says as my backpack gets opened next.
The man sorts the MREs into a pile, opens and then peers down the water filtration straw, checks the flashlight, dumps out my extra clothes, and then twirls a pair of my underwear around his finger, shimmying his shoulders and fondling his own chest till the Warden d
rops his head and shakes it with a chuckle.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” he says. “Jenner’s a virgin and . . . easily excited.”
My cheeks go hot as the others laugh. I can see Chase’s mask ticking with his jaw as Otto’s gaze flits around like a nervous sparrow.
Jenner digs Otto’s pencil from the bottom of my pack before checking the pockets, pulling out the cash and Julie’s credit cards, and then untangling the headset plugged into the walkie-talkie.
“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” the Warden says, after Jenner retrieves Chase’s from the front console, along with Otto’s bell. “His and her walkie-talkies. Though they do say communication is key to a good relationship. Hey, man,” he says to Otto, arm still draped over my shoulder. “Where’s yours?”
Otto gives a small shrug, his eyes darting to Jenner as he pulls his sketchbook from the backseat and flips through it. Tosses it back in the car.
The Warden finally lets me go to amble over and peer at the inventory, hands on his hips, and then glances up at Buckeye and Jenner. “Are we forgetting something?”
Not the trunk.
Buckeye starts, and then comes around the back of the car and hands over my pistol as Jenner quickly pulls Chase’s from his waistband and does the same. The Warden studies mine for a moment, so intently that I wonder if he recognizes it—after all, we took it off a dead man.
“That’s a nice piece,” he says, as though to himself. “I might just have a hard time letting go of this one.” He releases the magazine from Chase’s pistol, pockets it, and hands the gun to Jenner. He turns, standing in front of our things. “So, I’m thinking that we might need to take your packs. We’ve all got mouths to feed.”
Chase works his jaw a moment before saying, “All right.”
“I think we’ve got some needy folks who could use your water and clothes, too.” He pauses. “Anyone check the trunk?”
No.
The others look around at one another and the Warden shakes his head. “Have I taught you nothing? There are plenty of people who’d gladly volunteer to serve their community, no matter how long the hours. Do I need to get someone else?”
Buckeye slings his rifle over his shoulder and goes around to the trunk. Fumbles for a latch until Jenner looks inside the car and finds the release button. The Warden shakes his head.