Nova was like a machine, throwing items and things into the cab of her truck. She grabbed guns from the ground, prying them from cold, dead fingers without so much as a pained look. “I’m cool with it,” she replied blankly, her voice washed clean of any and all emotion.
But I could tell from the sad look on her face that she wasn’t cool with it, but I also knew that she would be fine no matter what, that she’d deal with it all regardless. She was a survivor, like me, and survivors picked themselves up and got on with the job. I felt exhausted from my meltdown, from the ache of losing Emily, but I felt stronger for releasing all the pent-up anxiety that had been building inside of me for weeks.
So I did what I always did, what I’ll
always
do: I got up and dusted myself off, and I got ready to fight again. To survive again. And to make it through another day. Because that’s all you could do, all you could really hope for in this life.
Just one more day.
THIRTY-TWO.
“Nova, can I take our truck? I don’t want to drive theirs.” I pointed to the other men’s truck, and Nova shrugged.
“Sure, whatever,” she said while trying to scrape something that resembled a piece of brain off the side of her boot.
“Joan, are you riding with Nova?” I added quickly.
Nova abruptly looked up, but before she could shut me down, Joan leaned over and hugged her.
“We can sing songs!” She smiled happily as she skipped past me, and I patted her shoulder.
“You owe me,” Nova groaned, and walked away to her newly acquired truck.
I smirked at how Joan would fit into the little group that was now on its way to the mall. I thought of Michael, and what a dick he was, and then I thought of how much Joan was going to piss him off and it brought me a small amount of sickly satisfaction.
“Will you be okay driving on your own?” Mikey asked, interrupting my thoughts. His posture was rigid, and I quirked an eyebrow as he hurried to correct himself. “What I meant was—” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I just don’t want you anywhere but next to me, as ridiculous and chauvinistic as that sounds.” He shrugged and took my hand in his. “It feels like I only just got you back.”
I smiled the best I could, forcing my cheeks to rise and warmth to fill my eyes, even though I felt sad and empty. Because I did know what he meant, and now with Emily gone, it made him even more important to me. As if he was now under a microscope and all my attention was solely focused on him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered to him, giving him my words, the ones I knew he desperately wanted to hear. The ones I meant from the bottom of my heart. “But don’t start with all that male crap. I am perfectly capable of handling myself. You are not G.I. Joe, and I am in no way Barbie. So quit it.”
He nodded before opening his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before the words even left him, because I knew exactly what was coming next.
“Maybe not perfectly capable, but I get by well enough.”
Mikey grinned and nodded again. “Sorry.”
“Well, I’m leaving, so make up or break up,” Nova said, and climbed into her truck. She slammed her door and started the engine, and I watched as she turned to scowl at Joan, who must have started up her latest rendition of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” or some other equally annoying song.
“She’s right,” Mikey said. “We need to get out of here. There’s a huge horde somewhere around here.” At his words, a chill ran the full length of my spine.
It was never-ending, the constant running from someone or something. It was exhausting, and the pressure that I had finally released only half an hour ago was slowly beginning to fill back up—like an ever-dripping tap that you couldn’t quite shut off all the way.
“Let’s get going,” I agreed on a heavy sigh, and started to walk to my truck. I turned back to ask Mikey where he had parked, only to find him less than a step behind me, and we almost head-butted each other from my sudden stopping. “Whoa, this is my dance space, Mikey, that’s yours.” I laughed and took a step back.
“Sorry, wasn’t expecting you to suddenly stop walking like that.” He laughed nervously. “I’m just around the bend. I’d stopped to piss when I heard all the talking and snuck up on you and those other dudes and found the Mexican standoff thing going on.”
He grinned, and I realized how freaking lucky we were that he’d stopped to piss where he had. What would have happened if he would have decided to hold his bladder for a little longer? I had a feeling that things would have turned out a whole lot different.
“Can I grab a lift?” he asked.
“Sure.” I climbed in the truck. “I guess I couldn’t really make you walk could I after you helped us out with these guys, could I?” I smirked.
“Helped out? I saved your life.”
I snorted out a dry laugh. “Don’t be so dramatic, Mikey. We had them right where we wanted them.”
He climbed in with a frown and I started the truck as he shut the door, choosing to ignore his pout. Up in the truck, I got a full view of the destruction—the bodies and blood, the death that seemed to follow me wherever I went. It looked worse from up high, the rivers of red and black blood mixing and coating the road like some crazy, messed-up abstract painting.
“God, will it ever end?” I asked, more to myself than to Mikey.
I started to drive, listening to the sickening crunch as bodies were driven over and bones were crushed under the heavy truck. It didn’t get any less disturbing the more I had to do this sort of thing, and my stomach churned with the need to vomit. How does anyone get used to this—become so accepting of the way the world was now? I didn’t think I would ever get to the point in my life of accepting it. It would be like giving up on life.
“Toast, potato chips, cookies,” I muttered to myself to keep my mind off what I was really driving over. “Gravel, wood chips, autumn leaves.” I gagged at a popping sound that was more than likely a skull cracking opening like a coconut.
“Teeth, skulls, limbs and backs,” Mikey muttered back in amusement.
“Asshole!” I snapped back.
“That’s me.” He grinned.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and bit back my next nasty remark. See, I was really trying not to be a bitch anymore. I decided to ask the other question that I really didn’t want to ask, but needed to know.
“Do you know what happened to her?”
He was silent for a long minute and I glanced sideways at him, seeing his face looking pale, and I know that it must have been bad, that he must have been feeling as sick and as sad as I was. I shook my head, deciding that I didn’t want to know anymore. His expression alone summed up my very real fear for her. I’d rather remember her the way she was: working in the makeshift hospital and learning to heal people. I chose to remember her smiling and feeling loved and cared for by Alek, and by me. Whatever way she’d died, it wouldn’t be the death that she deserved; to silently slip away painlessly in her sleep. No, almost none of us get that luxury now.
“Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” I smudged away a stray tear that had escaped. “And Alek? Please tell me he went out with a fight.” I really hoped that he hadn’t turned into a deader. He had told me one night that it was his biggest fear. Of course, that was everyone’s darkest fear, but still, I couldn’t forget the horror in his eyes at the thought of becoming one of
them
.
“I promised him he would safe. I told him if he helped me get you and Emily out of there that we’d all be okay.” Mikey shook his head, his shoulders slumping. “I’m a damn liar, Nina, because now he’s dead.”
Now I really felt shitty. I also didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t Mikey’s fault that Alek had died, not any more than Emily’s death could be on my conscience, yet her death would and always would be. So I knew that my words would be useless to him. What could I say—
no, it’s not your fault
? He wouldn’t believe that, and no amount of convincing from me would make him believe it. Not right then, not while his guilt was still so fresh and thick. So I kept quiet. Sometimes words are better left unsaid. Instead I reached over, finding his hand and interlocking our fingers, squeezing tightly to let him know that I felt his pain, and I understood it.
His truck came into view, and I pulled up behind it, knowing that Nova was just behind me in the other truck. Mikey unexpectedly reached over and gripped my face in his hands before pressing his mouth to mine. I took it, the brutality of his kiss, the force behind it, the feeling of love and anger that he put into it, and the feeling of sadness and guilt that he was trying to wash away. I took it, and I loved it. I embraced it, needing to take it as much as I needed to give it back. He finally pulled out of the kiss and stared at me for a long moment. I felt shaky and breathless, despite knowing that I really needed to get a grip because I was being ridiculously lame and girly just then.
“Not to be a sexist asshole, but do you think you could stay behind me?” he asked. “I’ll take the lead on this.”
I rolled my eyes, my mouth filling with a thousand reasons on why he was a sexist asshole and I how could manage perfectly well on my own without any of his overprotective bullshit, but instead of speaking it, I shrugged. Because I was beginning to understand that sometimes to show your true strength you had to let people take care of you. Even if that meant letting them be a sexist pig.
“Whatever,” I mumbled.
He smiled, showing me his dimple, and climbed out of the truck. I watched as he walked to his own vehicle and climbed in. The roar of his engine started, and as a mini convoy we began to drive toward the mall, toward what was left of our small family. From where we were it should take around two days, and that was if we made it past the stupid road with all the assholes on it that like to play Whack-A-Human with our trucks.
I grimaced at the thought of what they might do this time. Last time they threw a women in front of the truck to get us to stop, and Rachael hadn’t even batted an eyelid at it.
Could I do that?
I wondered.
Could I run down another person without remorse?
That poor woman had looked scared as she’d stood there waiting to die, and clearly she hadn’t wanted to do it, but she was clearly coerced into doing it. Could I really kill someone in cold blood like that? Because surely that woman was an innocent as much as I was. I grinned and shook my head. Okay, so maybe not like me.
I decided not to think about that at the moment, and focus on the road in front. Since Mikey was driving lead, I guessed he’d be the one to take the brunt of whatever they did this time. Unless he knew another way around.
The hours ticked by as we drove, the wintery scenery passing by in a blur. It was the same everywhere: vehicles abandoned, deaders roaming the roads, and skeletal bodies littering the blacktop. Same images, different town. I was used to this being my life now, that all I saw at every turn was death and destruction, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t miss the old days when I had a job to go to, and simple things like housework. When a phone call to my mother used to make me roll my eyes because I knew I’d be on the phone for the next two hours, and my evening of soaking in a nice hot bath with a face mask on was not going to happen. God, I would do anything to hear my mother’s voice one last time.
I knew it was stupid to think like that, to dream of my old life—but it was also good for the soul in some ways, to think about the past, to remember the people that I’d loved. I normally steered clear of thoughts like this, and point-blank refused to discuss my old life with anyone. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was pissing on the graves of my family’s and friends’ by refusing to acknowledge their loss—their very existence, even.
So I thought about them.
I thought about my mother and father and the way they still held hands after thirty years of marriage. The way my father still called me his little bean even though I was a grown woman. I thought about Ben, my dead husband. How he had loved jogging and hated DIY. I remember the feel of his kisses and the touch of his hands on my body. I thought about my old work friends, and I wondered if they had made it out alive and if any of them were still alive somewhere in this shithole of a world, surviving day to day like I was.
By the time night was falling and Mikey was pulling to a stop by the side of a small lake, I had tears streaming down my face. But they weren’t just sad tears, they were happy tears, because for the first time in so long, the memory of those people didn’t hurt anymore. It was bittersweet. My heart ached for them, ached over their loss, but it had felt good as well. I’d thought of the funny times we had shared, the sad times, the mad times, and the bad times. I pulled the truck to a stop and wiped my face on my sweater, trying to remove all signs of emotion from my face.
Mikey came to my door and tugged it open before climbing inside. He shut it, and the light dimmed and went out, and we both sat there in silence, staring at the tranquil lake. His hand found mine and squeezed, much like I had done to him earlier.
“We’ll survive this,” he said, his words filled with truth.
“I know we will,” I replied.
Because we would. We had to. Because I refused to let the memory of my friends and family die. They had to live on no matter what the cost to me. I carefully stored Emily-Rose’s beautiful face in the vault in my heart, mentally placing it next to Ben, where I knew she would be forever safe.
I said my goodbyes to her, the guilt still heavy inside me. She was happy now, living it up somewhere much better than here, and I was happy for her. Even though I would always miss her.