Craig and his traveling companions now reside in the spare rooms of our row, and there’s always someone hanging out. Not that I don’t like them all, but I appreciated Rose moving a few chairs into a corner and calling it the quiet area. She’s reading in one now, feet on Craig’s lap in the chair opposite.
“This book is awesome,” she says, holding up one of the books we took from the museum. “I just learned how to raise a posse when you have to take the law into your own hands, and now I’m reading about how to make pemmican.”
I stop on the way to my room. “Remind me what that is again?”
“A mixture of dried meat and rendered fat, sometimes with dried berries. They say it lasts close to forever.” Rose drops the book onto her chest as though exhausted. “It’s a fuckload of work, though. Between that and posse-raisin’, I’m plumb tuckered just readin’ ‘bout it.”
Her exaggerated cowgirl voice makes me laugh, and then she grins in a way that makes me hyper-aware of my heartbeat. “They just finished getting everyone inside the gates,” I say. “The pack is past Cottage Grove.”
Rose closes her eyes and takes a breath, opening them on the exhale. “So this is it.”
“This is it.”
The zombies are less than twenty miles away. They’ll be here—or they won’t—in the next day. We’ll be safe only after the entire pack has gone by, assuming it doesn’t turn around.
“What are you doing now?” she asks.
“Waiting, I guess.”
“Come wait with us.” Rose pats the chair beside her. “You can put your feet on Cherry. I’m thinking of swapping his trail name for Ottoman.”
Craig sets down his book. “I only allow one set of stinky feet on me at a time. No offense, Tom.”
“None taken, believe me,” I say, sinking onto the chair.
Rose pokes Craig’s leg with her socked foot. “Offense taken here. Do they really stink?”
“Let’s just say they don’t exactly smell like roses. But they do have me craving Fritos, so thanks for that.”
She tosses her head back and laughs uproariously. I like to see it. In our hall, she’s her normal self. Outside, she’s quiet and on edge, likely because Ethan could crop up at any minute. Thankfully, the gossip has died down with the advance of a quarter-million zombies.
I pull my eyes from Rose. Craig watches intently, as though evaluating me, before his lips curve upward. He gives a faint nod, then squeezes Rose’s foot and picks up his book. At first, I thought there was something between them, until Clara explained there is something—friendship and deep love. I like Craig, which has nothing to do with the tacit approval I’ve just received, though that doesn’t hurt any.
“Guess what Craig and I found today on our way back from car-moving?” Rose asks me, wiggling in her chair.
“I have no idea.”
“Guess!”
“An antelope.”
She eyes me like I’m insane. “Where the hell did you get antelope? Why would that be the first thing you thought of?”
“I have no idea.” Her laughter is contagious, and I give in. “Why are you asking me to guess random things?”
“I’m glad I did. There has to be a reason you went straight to antelope, but we’ll get to the bottom of that later. No, unsurprisingly, it was not an antelope. We found two acoustic guitars.”
“That’s good news, but I’m not sure it’s practical with zombies on the way.”
“That’s what I said,” Craig murmurs, eyes on his book. “But try telling her that.”
I’ve omitted the fact that I’m nervous. If I had a place to practice first—a quiet spot without people or zombies—I might feel different. Playing for the first time in years is something one should do alone. I wish I hadn’t stopped, wish I hadn’t done a lot of things, but even with my nerves tingling the way they are, I itch to play.
Rose’s hand brushes my arm. “You can’t hear it outside the museum—we checked—and yours is waiting for you in the Model-T. Jess tuned it.”
Somehow, she knows. No, it isn’t somehow—it’s Rose, who anticipates things like this, who does her best to put people at ease. I curl my fingers, wondering if they’ll work the way they used to. “Thanks.”
She squeezes my arm lightly, then sets her hand in her lap. “Now we just have to wait for the zombies to pass, and we’ll have us a regular hoe-down.”
Voices come from the corridor, and then Craig’s friends round the corner in mid-conversation with Sam and Mitch. Jesse, Clara, and Holly trail behind, talking with the two young guys, Lance and Gabe.
“…don’t know about this,” Troy says to Sam. “But they do have an arsenal if we need one.”
Lana breaks from the group and heads for Rose, where Willa has inserted herself beside Rose’s thigh for a nap. “I brought Willa a treat,” she says.
Willa lifts her head, tail thumping, then stretches before she hops to the floor and dances over to Lana. It doesn’t take Willa long to figure out who her treat dealers are, and she acts accordingly, showering them with attention. Lana laughs when Willa licks her face. “I love doggy kisses,” she says in a sing-song voice. “Thank you.”
She dumps the contents of her plastic cup into Willa’s dog bowl: leftover dinner, which was an unappealing mass of goop purported to contain meat and vegetables. Lana sets her cup on the table against the wall—another new piece of furniture that holds our brand-new sanitizing station.
To save on dishes, everyone in the fairgrounds has a drinking cup or bottle that they bring to meals and fill and wash themselves. We’re supposed to use filtered water for washing, but I’ve seen more than one person rinsing theirs in the bathroom sinks. I haven’t, and as of yesterday I use the station Rose set up with Gabe, who’s possibly more obsessed than Rose with the purity of our drinking water. He flipped out over her Kelly Kettle, and she promised him one of his own if we return to Always Ready.
The gang spreads out on the couches and chairs. Mitch turns to the quiet area. “Lockdown has begun.”
“We heard,” Rose says. I was impressed with her composed acknowledgment of that fact, but now her hands tremble, and she sticks them under her thighs.
“We need to agree on a place to go,” I say to the room. Our plan is still to meet up at the house, but if we can’t get there, we need to nail down an alternate spot.
“North or east,” Sam replies with a nod. “Any suggestions?”
“Timberline Lodge?” Rose asks. “I know it’s far, but isn’t there a Safe Zone there?”
“A Safe Zone they haven’t heard from,” Mitch says. “And a hundred-fifty miles is a lot to travel.”
Craig nods. “But doable. Even if the Safe Zone is gone, there shouldn’t be many Lexers that high.”
Timberline Lodge is aptly named, as it sits six thousand feet high at Mount Hood’s timberline—the altitude above which no trees grow. Whether or not we can reach the lodge is another story, but whether or not we can reach anywhere is anybody’s guess.
Francis plunks a beat-up road atlas onto a coffee table. “Maybe we should see where we’re going.”
Craig, Rose, and I stand by the couches while they flip the pages. I have the same atlas in my truck, but I’ve never inspected it this way. I’ve never had to. Now that I have, I’ll be sure to retrieve it before setting off anywhere. Every road, every trail, every track is on the map. Driving through Oregon, you get the sense there aren’t many routes of travel, but if you’re on foot and desperate, there are plenty.
“I have this same atlas,” Sam says. “It’s gotten me out of a tight spot a few times. I wonder if we can find any in the cars here. A spare or two wouldn’t hurt.”
“They have a copier in the museum office,” Rose says. “We can make copies of the important parts.”
Rose traces a line from the fairgrounds to her house. Francis marks it with a pen, then entreats his friends to commit the route to memory before we study the pages north and east. Traveling I-5 is not an opt
ion, for obvious reasons. Belknap Hot Springs sits about sixty miles east, and we agree it’s our alternate meeting point, even if there are likely people there.
“Barry,” Rose says suddenly. “He has a house with views of the Cascades. It’s somewhere east of here, though I’m not sure where.”
“Do you think he’d let us use it?” Francis asks.
She screws her lips to the side. “I don’t know him well enough to ask. But I could try telling him what we’re thinking and see if he wants to come.”
“Great,” Mitch mutters from her couch.
Rose bonks her friend’s head with the flat of her hand. “Really? You’d rather be eaten by zombies?”
“Yes.”
Rose rolls her eyes. “Anyway, I can ask him now.”
“He’s outside on night watch,” Jesse says, “but he’ll be back early in the morning.”
“I’ll ask him at breakfast, then. Assuming we haven’t been eaten.”
“Can I tell Marquez and Nora? They don’t have a place to go.”
Rose smiles at Jesse. “Of course.”
We have nowhere near enough food at the house to sustain our original group for long, much less these new people and those kids, too. But it’s the same answer I would’ve given, and no one else raises the point either.
“I’m telling Dad we’re meeting at home,” Holly says. “It’s his house, too, you know.”
“It is,” Rose says evenly. “I already told him he’s welcome to come if we leave. You can tell him about the new plan if you’d like.”
Holly deflates, seeming almost disappointed Rose didn’t argue, then stamps from the hall. Rose closes her eyes while she rubs at her forehead, but not before I see the sheen of tears. Maybe if Holly saw how her mother is hurting, she’d ease up a little.
Mitch stands and puts an arm around Rose’s shoulders. “When is it too late to eat your young? Have we passed that point yet?”
Rose laughs with everyone else, though I see the strain in the way she stands, shoulders curled inward. I like to think I know Holly well, and this isn’t her. My parenting style was Yell First, Ask Questions Never, and I admire Rose’s ability to keep her cool when faced with a kid who’s declared mutiny.
After more discussion of routes, we close the atlas for the time being. “Y’all have your BOBs ready to go?” Troy asks.
Mitch cocks her head. “Our what?”
“Bug-out bags,” Craig explains.
“What’s with the apocalypse and acronyms?” Clara whispers to Jesse, who snickers.
“You should have enough food and water for three days in there,” Troy says. “Along with clothes, emergency supplies, and extra weapons.”
“We had some stuff ready,” I say. “We were calling them Go Bags.”
I wish we had more. As it is, we’ve used the clothes and toiletries in our packs, but maybe I can sneak some spare supplies out of the Auditorium on my next inventory shift. If Barry gets on board with the plan, maybe I won’t have to sneak. “There’s more at the house,” I add. “Lanterns, non-perishable food, and things like that.”
“Good. Do y’all have any guns?”
“Two,” Sam says. “In our packs. Three, with Jesse’s. And a shotgun hidden at the house.”
Jesse wears his pistol openly like the other soldiers now. He’s fired it, too, on a trip to find food, and Barry told me he did extremely well. “I might be able to take a few and some ammo when no one’s looking,” Jesse says. “They don’t keep count.”
“Don’t get in trouble,” Rose says, and frowns when Jesse shrugs.
“Don’t get yourself court-martialed or anything, but you should get them if you can.” Troy leans back on his couch, shaking his head. “It’s bullshit they haven’t armed everyone. I guarantee you everyone in Texas has a gun right now. More than one.”
“Guns call more zombies,” Mitch says. “Besides, you’re not in Texas anymore, pardner.”
Instead of taking offense, Troy belts out a laugh. “I get the feeling you and Lana will be good friends.” He lifts his chin at Craig. “You weren’t kidding when you said she didn’t take any shit.”
Mitch punches Craig’s arm as the conversation splits into smaller discussions. I take a break from company to straighten up my room—things get out of hand in such a small space if you don’t stay on top of them—and then return to the living area. Rose is in her chair again, book on her lap, though she watches the others talk instead of reading.
I sit beside her, content to do the same. “Holly will come around,” I say.
“I’m hoping.” Rose taps her fingers on the book’s cover, then faces me. “With all the hoopla, I never did get my first self-defense lesson.”
“Name a time.”
I can barely stand when she looks at me this way—the hint of a smile on her lips, her blue eyes warm with a touch of playfulness behind them. I’m in deep, and that realization is confusing and guilt-ridden and thrilling all at once. It isn’t as though a decision has to be made now, though I suspect it’s already been made and is waiting until the right time to announce itself.
“Same as before?” Rose asks. “In the museum after breakfast?”
“I’ll be there.”
We sit until the daylight fades and the lights come on. I picture the zombies making their way up the highway, searching for something, anything, to eat. Closing in. Maybe homing in on the people sitting in the middle of town, one lonely rectangle of humanity in what Craig and the others say is five hundred miles of near-total destruction.
We’ll know soon enough if our plan has to be put to the test. Not just our plan—us—and I hope I’m up to the challenge. I watch Clara talk with Jesse and the others, her face pensive with the knowledge of what might come. She catches my eye and smiles. I smile back, full of love for my girl whose kindness and humor and compassion I almost missed out on.
Fuck hope. I’ll make damn sure I’m up to the challenge.
74
Rose
Breakfast shift is almost over. It’s been a silent affair in the food trucks, even if the zombies blocks away aren’t likely to hear the clang of a pot. I’m not taking any chances when we’re surrounded. They think most of the zombies continued north, but enough came off the highway to fill the streets near the fairgrounds.
All meals are inside, as are all people unless moving between buildings or guarding a gate. Gabrielle nods when I mime bringing in the last of the Vienna sausages, and then she murmurs that she’ll finish the cleaning in return. I lift the chafing dish and move across the lot to the Events Center doors.
Nora is there, keeping an eye on the lot and making sure silence is observed. She opens the door and waves me through. “Thanks,” I say in a hushed tone. “Want a sausage? You’re too skinny.”
Nora plucks one out. “Thank you. Is this the last dish?”
“Yeah. We’re done until dinner.”
Nora chews her sausage gravely. She does most things with a serious air, as though she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. It must feel that way at times, especially with her family gone and while wearing a uniform that promises to protect others. I know what it’s like to be motherless, but not everyone-less. It’s my greatest fear, the one that paralyzes me until I push it away. Some things are too awful to imagine.
I stop inside, wanting to say something that might make Nora feel a little less alone. “You’re doing a great job, Nora. We appreciate it.”
Nora has a cute nose with a smattering of freckles, and it crinkles when she smiles. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. You should hang out in our hall more often. You’re always welcome.”
“Jesse says that.” Nora ducks her head shyly. “Okay, I will.”
I continue to the Performance Hall and deposit my dish on one of the serving tables set against the wall. The full room is quieter than usual. With zombies in the streets, everyone eats in their buildings until further notice, and with all of my friends eating acro
ss the fairgrounds, this room seems full of strangers.
A laugh carries over the hush, drawing my attention to Ethan and Eva at a table with other diners. They face away from me, but a few of their tablemates shoot unsympathetic glances in my direction. Eva looks over her shoulder and then shakes her head, resting her arm on the back of Ethan’s chair in an easy and intimate way.
It hurts. I have zero regrets, but it still hurts in a way that makes my next breath a struggle. I leave the room, cheeks fiery with humiliation. This is how it’s going to be—me as the bad guy, Ethan as the injured party. I can only imagine what explanation he gave. Well, I’ll let him have his lies. I have my freedom, which is far more valuable, and everyone who matters knows the truth.
Barry walks down the corridor, the sunlight through the glass entryways accentuating every tired line on his face. “Morning,” he says.
“How does it look out there?” I’m pleased my voice sounds solid. Strong. I’ve been weak for too long, but no longer.
“Not so great. We haven’t heard from the soldiers we sent out. I think we’ll be okay, though. Don’t worry.”
I almost laugh at the impossibility of that suggestion. “I have a question for you. It’s kind of a lot, and you can say no. No hard feelings at all.”
“I’m intrigued.”
Now that he’s in front of me, it seems a colossal request. I wipe my hands on my pants and force myself to speak. “We have a plan in case we have to leave quickly. We meet at my house, where we have some food, and then find somewhere to go by the mountains. We were thinking Belknap, maybe Breitenbush or Timberline Lodge, but if there are people there, they might not want more. I had the idea of looking at listings in my office for empty houses east of here that could work, if we can make it to the office, but—”
“My house,” Barry says. His expression gives nothing away.
I nod, my cheeks hotter than before. “It would only be for a little while, until we saw what it was like over there and could figure something else out. We thought that maybe you—”
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 71