Rachel clenched her hands into fists, let out a frustrated breath. This had been a courtesy call, nothing more. She could’ve disappeared into the night with Will, but she thought she owed the woman who’d saved their lives a goodbye.
“But this could change things,” Rachel said, her voice taking on a pleading quality that embarrassed her a little. “For all of us.”
This earned her nothing but a continued disinterested stare from her employer.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Rachel said.
Millicent struck like a cobra, slapping Rachel hard across the left side of her face, lighting her up with a fresh bolt of pain. Rachel shut her eyes tight as the pain radiated through her, her face feeling like it had been set ablaze. Her stomach flipped and the room snapped off-center; she set her hands flat on the table to steady herself, hopefully prevent a reappearance of her meager dinner.
“Please don’t speak to me that way.”
Rachel remained quiet as she regained her bearings.
“I really cannot believe we’re having this conversation,” Millicent said. “Do you understand anything about loyalty, about keeping a promise?”
Rachel stared at her blankly.
“You needed me a lot more than I needed you,” Millicent said, tenting her fingers together. “Do you remember what you looked like when we found you? What Will looked like?”
“I’m very appreciative of what you’ve done for us, really, I am-”
“Then you should shut your mouth and do what I tell you.”
Millicent sliced off another bite of food, the hard sausage this time, and set the knife back down on the plate. Rachel watched the woman eat without a hint of emotional distress. She didn’t care. She simply did not care about Rachel or Will. She’d been a fool for letting herself think a bond had formed between her and this woman. Rachel was a hole, nothing more, nothing less, a hole to be filled for Millicent’s benefit. A stitch of laughter from the other side of the dining room drew her attention. Will tossed his head back in glee at something Rebekah had said. From where she sat, she could make out Rebekah’s face; a look of contentment, of something real there, something she rarely saw.
It was remarkable, the binary nature of what was happening here. Across from her sat Millicent, the poster child for the way the world was. Behind her, Will and Rebekah, the way the world was supposed to be. That was why she had to go to Colorado, to find out if there existed any hope of a possible future. Because this, the way things were now, was not going to work. They were already dead.
Already dead.
The survivors wandering the ruins of America, they were already dead, whether they knew it or not. They were machines executing a code, a prime directive, nothing more. That wasn’t living. That was existing for the sake of existing, for turning oxygen into carbon dioxide, in a gray world with gray walls and gray skies and gray thoughts, where nothing mattered. Where there was no love or art or music or gentle breezes or watching the sunrise with the love of your life.
Rachel picked up the knife and sliced off a piece of sausage. She chewed it slowly, savoring the smoky, salty tang of the meat on her tongue, the way the flavor popped in her mouth.
Then she leaned across the table and jammed the knife straight into Millicent’s throat.
Desperate hands grasped at the knife’s handle, but it was already too late. Her eyes bulged in shock, and Millicent struggled to take a breath, her mouth snapping open and closed like a fish flopping on a boat deck. Blood cascaded down her hands, down her arms, splashing on the table, running down to the floor. As her body slumped out of the chair, Rachel was on her feet to catch her, to lower her gently to the ground. She glanced back at Will and Rebekah, who appeared oblivious to what had happened.
She tucked the remaining cheese and sausage into her pocket and made a beeline for the bar, her mind blank, focused on a singular goal of getting the hell out of here. Without stopping, she grabbed Will’s hand and pulled him off his barstool.
“Mommy!”
“We need to have a talk, young man,” she said as sternly as she could. He tottered unevenly behind his mother.
“Uh oh,” Rebekah said, “looks like someone’s in trouble.” A smile still draped the lower half of her face, the woman, for the moment, falling for Rachel’s ruse.
They were within ten feet of the door when she heard a shout behind her.
At the door, she paused and took Will by the shoulders long enough to utter four words to him.
“Will, run, or we die.”
His head bounced up and down obediently, his eyes wide with fright. They pushed through the door and out into the hotel parking lot. It was dark, difficult to see, but it would make it easier for them to hide. She’d become familiar with its layout over the past few months. They cut across the parking lot to Main Street and turned north, not running, but not exactly out for a leisurely stroll either.
Two hours later, they made it to the city limits, where the commercial development began thinning out, the promise of the empty plains still ahead of them. Will hadn’t said a word during their flight and she hoped it meant he was starting to understand how the world really worked. She had said it, that their lives were in danger, and he had fallen in line.
They would run with the clothes on their back and the little food she had squirreled away in her pockets. They had full bellies and their muscles were strong. They could make it, they would find food, they would take food. They would stop being the hunted, they would stop being the victim. In this world, you took or you got taken.
For all these months, she had been the latter. For all these years, she had been the latter. Taken by her father’s abandonment, taken by Eddie’s abuse, taken by Millicent’s manipulation. That ended tonight, that ended right now. They would go to Colorado, and they would find Penumbra, God help her, or they would die trying.
24
It felt good, having a purpose again. A moonshot they could devote their lives to now. A goal beyond simple survival, which, standing alone, was a pointless and hollow thing. Survival. All that meant was not dying until you did. And if all you were doing was surviving, then what difference did it make whether you died today or on a Wednesday evening in September twenty years from now?
They cycled along I-80, about a hundred miles due west of Lincoln. Both rode mountain bikes, which made traversing the weedy and potholed highway much simpler. Visibility was good, giving them a clear view of all points of the compass in these flatlands. On their second day, she spotted a search party out of Lincoln, but they had easily outmaneuvered them. Far off in the distance, the ghostly outlines of the Rocky Mountain foothills beckoned them. But that was many days away.
One thing at a time.
She sipped water from the hydration pack strapped to her back. It was a bit uncomfortable, the pack having to share her back with the M4, but a full ration of water was a gift. She cut her eyes toward Will, who seemed to grow taller with each passing day.
It was a cold, cloudy day, the sky threatening rain but never following through on its promise. They’d been on the road since first light and hadn’t stopped since, perhaps their longest ride without a break since fleeing Millicent. Her legs felt a bit rubbery, and she began thinking about a lunch break. The idea of having a lunch break was intoxicating. They had stumbled across a small cache of canned goods two days out of Lincoln, a supply that would last them another two days. The big score had been the HK machine pistol and a few boxes of ammunition, as she’d had to abandon her M4 back in Lincoln.
But today. Today!
Ravioli.
Ravi-fucking-oli.
She felt a thump and the bicycle shimmied underneath her. She had time for a brief yelp, enough to draw Will’s attention before the bike tipped over. The bike clattered to the mossy asphalt beneath her. Her feet hit the ground running, trying to keep her upright. For a flash, she was right there, avoiding a fall, but then she hit another small pothole, her right ankle turning underneath
her. White-hot pain shot up into her leg like magma from a volcano.
“Dammit!” she bellowed, crumpling to the ground as her leg gave out underneath her. She held out her arm to brace her fall, her body hitting the ground awkwardly, the asphalt peeling a layer of skin from her arm. She lay there, catching her breath, waiting for the shock to wear off, for the pain to bleed through the sudden jolt of adrenaline currently protecting her.
Rachel tested the injury, putting as much weight down as she could. Which, as it turned out, was very little. The slightest step injected her foot with liquid fire.
“Mommy, you OK?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Give me a minute.”
She took a deep breath, trying to will away the pain.
It’s not so bad.
A step.
Fire.
Another step.
Fire.
No more.
That was it. Two steps were all she had in her.
Down. She had to sit down.
She lowered herself to the ground, careful not to put any weight on the foot. Being down on her ass was a relief, the knowledge her foot would be spared any additional trauma for now. She untied the laces on her left boot, loosening them as much she could to grease the extraction of foot from shoe. But even with the boot wide open, the slightest movement triggered pulses of pain through her heel, into her calf, up into her kneecap.
She didn’t even have to take the sock off to know how bad it was. The ankle was already swelling, pushing tightly against the thick fabric of the sock. She put the boot back on in the hope it would hold down the swelling.
“You OK?”
“Twisted my ankle,” she said through gritted teeth.
Will rushed to her side and knelt by his mother.
“Is it bad?”
She let out a shaky breath.
“Yeah, I think so. I’m gonna have to stay off it for a while. Any houses or buildings nearby?”
Will stood and swung his head around, scanning the area.
“There’s a farmhouse up the way a bit,” he said.
“Hand me the binoculars,” she said. “In my pack.”
He handed them to her. The building was about a quarter mile off the main road and looked deserted. Two vehicles sat by the side of the house, a rusted pickup and a small school bus, enveloped in a tangle of weeds and vines. There was a small barn off the northwest corner of the house, its roof missing.
“OK,” she said. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home. Better than nothing. Help me up?”
He crouched next to her while she snaked her arm around his neck. Using her good leg for leverage, she pulled herself upright, leaning on her son for support. Only then did she realize he was nearly as tall as she was, virtually eye level with her.
“What about the bikes?”
“Pull them to the side of the road, and you can come back for them after we make sure the place is clear.
She held a flamingo pose while Will saw to the bikes, tucking them in the tall grasses at the road’s edge. As she watched him, it occurred to her she would be depending on him for a while now. The tables had turned. Fear hardened in her belly, whispering to her that she hadn’t done enough, that by trying to protect him from this world for all those years she had done nothing but doom them both.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
#
It took them thirty minutes to cover the distance, Rachel’s arm slung around Will’s back for support. She did her best to put as much weight down as she could because that would mean it wasn’t as bad as she thought. Within fifty feet, however, she had to concede the ankle was a wrecked mishmash of torn ligaments and broken blood vessels. If anything, the pain had worsened and the slightest movement or weight was agony.
“If you can get me to the house, I can use the walls for support.”
“OK.”
“Give you a break.” She smiled and squeezed his arm.
“Sorry about your ankle,” he said.
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“I should have seen that pothole, called it out for you.”
His eyes were wide and glassy, shimmering with tears. The kid was really beating himself up over this.
“It was stupid of me.”
“Hey, Spoon, it was an accident. These things are gonna happen. The important thing is that we don’t let it drag us down, that we figure it out and keep going.”
He nodded, the tears starting to fall.
“Buddy, this a tough world we live in. A tough world. You’ve got to be able to roll with it.”
She chuckled softly, her time at Millicent’s brothel rushing back to her, all the nights she’d spent on her back to keep them alive. After all, that fell squarely within the purview of rolling with it.
“You can’t get hung up on what happened before, on what’s behind us. You do that, you’ll miss what’s coming. And, Spoon, that is not something we can afford to do.”
“It’s so hard,” he said, his body starting to tremble. “Why’s it gotta be so hard?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It’s so hard.”
“You know what grownups used to say to kids when I was your age?”
He shook his head.
“You kids these days, you have it so easy.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t know really,” she said. “Some things were easier. We had technology. You could look up anything you wanted whenever you wanted. You could order any kind of food you liked and it would be delivered to your house in thirty minutes.”
“Wow,” he whispered.
“I know. It sounds ridiculous. Compared to what you’ve been through, we lived in paradise. You got a raw deal.
“But here’s the thing you have to remember,” she said. “It’s going to be hard no matter what. Complaining about it won’t make a bit of difference. All complaining does is take your eye off the ball. And out here, that could get us killed.”
Then, out of the blue:
“Is that why you shot Dad?”
The question staggered her. She stood mute, unsure of how to respond. It had been there all this time now, like the way the sun got in your face no matter which way you turned, annoying you, even blinding you to the full picture. It had to be dealt with.
“I had to keep you safe,” she replied. It was all she could think to say.
He considered her response for a moment, holding her gaze, perhaps trying to decide if she was putting him on or if this was the truth.
“I’m sorry I had to do it,” she said.
More silence.
As she stood there, she hoped for a hug, a tearful absolution for this thing that Eddie had made her do. But there wouldn’t be. Not today. Perhaps not ever. There was no way to know what effect it would have on him. Not even Will knew what effect it would have on him. It wasn’t as if he was standing there hiding a prefabricated response to the death of his father at the hands of his mother.
She felt cold and hard teaching him these lessons. But they were lessons she had to teach him. It was her job, it was her duty to teach him these things. He wiped away the tears, nodding. But she saw a stiffness in his stance, an acceptance, begrudging perhaps, that his mother knew what she was talking about. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Out here, all alone with no one to see, he let her. She pulled him close, hugging him tightly, inhaling his scent, the sweetness of the little boy still there, even under the accumulated sweat and grime. He did not hug her back, but he did not pull away, at least initially. She didn’t know how many more discussions like this one they would have, in which he would listen to her, really listen to her.
He cried for a bit, and she held him until the tears dried up, until his breathing returned to normal, until he was calm again.
“Now we go,” he said, finally pulling away from her. No resolution today.
She gave his cheek a quick rub.
They followed the lo
ng dirt road running toward the main house. It was weedy but not completely overwhelmed, suggesting that it had seen some maintenance in the not-too-distant past. Halfway down the lane, they stopped again for another peek with the binoculars. Still no sign of life around the buildings. No crushed vegetation at their feet, no markers of foot traffic. If there had been a community here, they had packed it in some time ago.
Wide tracts of empty farmland stretched away to the east and west. It still fired her up, watching the earth lay barren year after year. It had to end sometime, right? At some point, the climate would recover and they would grow crops again and they could end this interminable war. She would think about those last days of civilization, when scared men had made bad decisions to launch those nukes, to demand of those who would live on past Medusa one last crushing debt even after they had paid so much.
But that was the hand they had been dealt. All they could do was play the cards.
Another few minutes of staggering and limping brought them to the road’s terminus, where it opened on a circular clearing fronting the main house. Small potholes full of the previous night’s rainwater pocked the ground. The front door of the house stood ajar, and a chill frosted the back of her neck. There it stood, about a third of the way open on this cool, cloudy day, a wedge of darkness lurking beyond.
“There’s no one here,” she whispered to Will, as much for herself as for him. “Nothing to be scared of.”
Oh yeah, if there’s no one here, little missy, then why the hell are you whispering?
She stared straight at the house, not turning toward Will lest he see the terror on her face. Her gaze remained fixed on the door as she wondered whether they should make their way down the road. Certainly, they’d find another place to take shelter soon. But the idea of subjecting her ankle to any more trauma today made her sick to her stomach. All they had to do was check the place out, something they would do anyway.
“Ready?” Will asked.
She nodded.
The house had once been painted white and she could see it in her mind, a bright white gleaming under a cloudless Nebraska sky, the fields flush with corn from one edge of the horizon to the other. She preferred that image to the current reality, a crumbling museum of a world gone by, the paint long since faded, the fields empty.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 75