I look out over my classmates, the ones that have made it to the party and am shocked to find every one of them listening, eyes glued to me on my makeshift podium. I have their attention better now than I ever would in a crowded auditorium. Matt has a small smile on his face. Olivia looks like she’s about to break down and cry. Their hands are linked. Good.
I continue
, “Maybe though, for once the speech is right. Maybe we are the class that will make a difference. The generation that will change things. Maybe we will be the only ones left—the ones on the cusp of it all. The old life and the new. The before and the after. Those who succumb to the end of the world and those who survive it.
Maybe we will be the ones who will rebuild society in a better way. A way without greed and desperation or sexual exploitation and religious persecution. “
I take a deep breath because my last line is a lie. At least I tell myself it is.
“Or maybe, we’re the group without one single fuck left to give and the world figured it out just in time.”
Chapter Seventeen
~Now~
Half a day later Wyatt and I stop at a small convenience store at the corner of Nowhere and Nowhere Else, North Carolina. We’re nearing the
reservoir, so this one is a bit more like a bait shack than anything else. Combing through the tiny aisles with the truck parked outside feels incredibly exposed but the area seems safe enough.
I spot the bathroom door, well two, behind the drink machine. The men’s room has an “Out of Order” sign taped to the front. Quietly—matching the obscene silence of the shop, I say, “I’m gonna see if they’ve got any clean water in the faucet.”
Wyatt nods, shoving stuff in his pack. It’s already clear he’s not a huge talker. That works for me. I’ve already promised myself not to connect to anyone else out here. It seems like the smart thing to do.
I tap on the bathroom door before opening it but hear nothing inside. I swing it open and to my surprise it’s not that bad. I close the door and test the faucet. Water gushes out, clear and clean. I fill my bottles and then run my hands under the water, splashing some over my face.
The mirror over the sink is one of those metal, wavy kinds that make my face look distorted, like a funhouse mirror. I find my hairbrush and drag it through the matted tangles before bunching it into two pigtails.
I glance down and almost cry when I see toilet paper hanging from the roll. No I do cry. I sit down and cry but it isn’t over the toilet paper or the water. It’s my mom and the image of her back in that barn. The way the gun recoiled, vibrating down my arm. I should have buried her. No, I should have saved her. I should have never left her alone.
I allow myself to cry it out in the tiny moment of privacy I’ve had since it happened. Then I wash my face off again, eyes visibly red and puffy even in the crappy mirror.
Whatever
, I tell myself. No really. What.Ever. I killed my mom. I deserve a momentary breakdown.
Back in the shop, I join Wyatt, who is rummaging through the tiny auto parts section. Smart since we have the truck.
I feel his eyes on me. Quick glances. I swallow and fill my hands with aspirin packets and soap.
“How long were you and your mom on the road alone?”
“Long enough. You?”
“Since they locked down the borders. I packed a bag and headed to the mountains. Decided I would camp until it was over. No reason to hang around waiting to get sick.”
“So you just camped?”
“Yeah and hiked. There are a lot of people out there. Up on the trails. More were coming when I left.”
I thought about that. People, infected people, would run and try to hide, but it wasn’t possible. The only way out of this was surviving or a cure.
“What brought you back to civilization?”
“I had some stuff to check on.” He shrugs. “People. And the mountains were getting a little crowded. I can go back if I need to.”
“Where did you live before you left?” I ask breaking my boundary rules right off. Truth: I’m nosy as hell.
“Durham.”
“You’re a student?”
“Am. Was. Whatever.”
We shift to different parts of the store. Wyatt keeps a vigilant eye on the door and windows.
“I was going to Duke—this fall. Pre-med.”
“Ah, a smarty-pants, eh?”
I shrug.
“School sucks. You’re not missing anything. Life experience is way better. I mean, after all this who needs an education?”
Neither of us reacts to his lame attempt at a joke.
Wyatt takes his turn in the women’s room and I hear the water running through the hollow door. I wait near the counter with my hatchet ready, thinking we’ve spent long enough here. We should probably move on. He comes out, face damp but clean. He inhaled and said, “I’m thinking once we get to the reservoir we may want to split up.”
“Split up?”
“The gas is going to run out in a few hours and I’m not sure I want to try to scrounge up some more. I’m an experienced hiker. I can do ten miles easily in one day. I don’t want to get held up.”
I narrow my eyes. What brought this on?
“No offense. You seem like an okay girl but I’ve done pretty well the whole time on my own. I don’t want to jinx that.”
He gives me a once over—eyes lingering on my thin arms and the hatchet. He thinks I’m weak—a liability.
“You’d rather be on your own?”
He shrugs his broad shoulders. His eyes are blank. Emotionless. Didn’t I think the same thing earlier? How I shouldn’t get attached to anyone. He’s right, I know this, but it’s also nice to have someone watch your back while you wash your face and cry in the bathroom.
Shit. He heard me cry.
We stare at one another and I’m trying to decide if I’m pissed or relieved. Neither matter as a noise sounds from behind Wyatt, a familiar low moan, followed by a howl of rage.
Wyatt’s composed stance comes alive, turning just in time to see an Eater crashing from behind the “Out of Order” sign, smashing the door to splinters.
Besides his drooling mouth, I see the black-spidery veins in his eye.
Wyatt pumps his gun, loading the cartridge.
“Duck!” I scream, tossing the hatchet, full force. It spins past Wyatt’s ear, forcing him to drop fast to his knees. The Eater face splits in two, blood oozing from the wound. He starts to fall forward, arms stretched toward Wyatt. Before the Eater lands, Wyatt kicks him hard, pushing him back into the bathroom. He’s dead—for real this time, blood oozing from the wound.
“Holy shit, Alex.” His voice trembles, out of fear or awe I’m not sure.
I walk over and retrieve the hatchet, pulling it out of the Eater’s decimated face with a loud, nauseating suctioning sound
.
Gross.
I spare Wyatt a glance and grab my bag, daring him to challenge my strength. I bite back the desire to tell him to “fuck off.” I don’t need to. The dead Eater says everything. Even so, with my hand on the front door I can’t help but say, “Sure you want to split up?”
Chapter Eighteen
~Before~
7 Weeks Ago
The graduation party is truly the end of the world as we know it. I make it home unnoticed by pressing flat against a tree in the woods, hiding from the helicopter search lights that comb our neighborhood looking for anything out of the ordinary. I use the spare key to get in the back door of the house. I hug my friends, all three drunk and unsteady on our feet, and I close the door quietly.
I sneak past my mother. She’s fallen asleep in front of the news, flour streaked on her face. The “news” is now more of a continuous loop than anything else. Under the covers of my bed I relive my speech. The way it felt. The way my classmates embraced it—and me. It may have been better than the real thing in some sort of John Hughes version of the apocalypse.
In the morning, with a pounding punch-fueled headache, the text I sent to Liza told me shit has hit the fan at her house.
Busted.
One word. I wait for more but nothing comes.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, finding her in the kitchen. She’s at the counter next to the pantry with a sheet of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other. I walk to the refrigerator, looking for milk and find barely half a cup. “Is there any more milk?”
“No, honey,” she says with a heavy sigh.
I close the refrigerator door, empty handed. “What are you doing?”
“Inventorying our food. Seeing how much we have—the news says the grocery stores are pretty wiped out, but I’m not sure how long we can feasibly go.”
I guess I should be glad she’s snapped out of denial baking but the worry lines on her face are deeper and her hands tremble when she makes a note on her paper. She’s panicking and that makes me uneasy. My mother isn’t one to overreact. If anything she likes to pretend everything is fine and normal. Whatever is easiest. Inventorying our house isn’t easy.
“Mom, when is Dad coming home?” I haven’t brought it up in days. It’s beyond clear now that he’s knee-deep trying to cure the E-TR virus. It’s even clearer that at some point he involved me in the testing. The thought makes me realize it’s Thursday. Shot day. Dad hasn’t been home since my last injection.
“I don’t know. I hope today. Maybe tomorrow. They’re getting close to a breakthrough, I think.” She clutches my arm. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”
“I won’t. Who would I tell?” I laugh. The sound falls flat.
“Help me sort these canned goods and pull out anything else we have. I want to have a good idea of what we have and how to ration it.”
“You think it will go that far?” I ask taking two cans of beans from her and a bag of rice.
She turns and places her hand on my cheek, her blue eyes meeting mine. “It already has.”
Chapter Nineteen
~Now~
We head to the reservoir, passing a handful of other travelers and one convoy of military vehicles. We spot the army green trucks barreling down the hill and Wyatt pulls the truck quickly to the edge of the road under a grove of shade trees.
“Why are you hiding?” I ask. It isn’t that I disapprove, I’m just curious about his motives. He doesn’t know what I’ve seen.
“Last I heard the military is hoping to round everyone up to the evacuation centers. That’s not really a detour I’m planning to make.” He tilts his head in my direction. “You have a problem with that?”
“Nope.” I don’t explain further.
The convoy passes and we wait a few minutes just to be safe. Wyatt revs the truck to life and eases back onto the road. We’re on one of the lesser traveled highways—sort of off the beaten path. Before we lost the news it was clear the main highways were a mess. Typical apocalypse stuff: traffic jams, wrecks, an overturned tractor-trailer. Sometimes the movies do get something right. The back roads are easier. Encounter a stalled out car? Drive around it and keep going. The problem is the never ending trailers and houses that line the two-lane highways. God knows if they’re empty, filled with survivors or just a breeding ground for Eaters. We agreed early on to avoid them.
“Have you been to the reservoir before?” I ask.
“No, but I have a map.”
“Well, I have been there—a bunch of times. What are we looking for? A place to camp over night?”
“Yeah, we’ve got to find gas and I need some sleep.”
“My aunt had a cabin here. I can show you the way.”
He cuts me a look. “Was this information you were planning on sharing, Sunshine?”
“No.”
The reservoir doesn’t have a lot of housing—it was created for fresh water and run by the Army Corp of Engineers but there are a few cabins scattered here and there on property grandfathered in. Or at least that’s what my mom told me. This had been our destination all along. Get to the cabin. Get to south. One step at a time.
“We’re looking for a dirt road,” I say glancing around.
“You’ll need to be more specific.” The irritation of me not telling him about the cabin is clear from his tone.
“Well if I remember right, there are two other dirt driveways around the same area. It’s pretty hard to find even when you know what you’re looking for.”
We drive back and forth down the road a couple of times. We’re about to make our third pass when I grab his arm. “Stop! I think that’s it. That tree looks familiar.”
He tugs on his ear. “You said that before with the stump.”
I ignore him and point to the almost invisible path. “Follow that.”
Wyatt takes the truck down the road. Being late summer the foliage is thick. We’re almost at the cabin before we see it. Dark wood planks and a tin roof. Three rooms total. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/living room.
“There’s a small carport to the side.”
He parks and we get out, listening for a moment. It’s quiet. The good kind. I walk to the back of the house and move the fake rock. The key is inside. Just like my mom said.
Wyatt follows me to the tiny front porch. I can see the reflection of the lake below. Looks smooth as glass. He stops me before I open the door. “Why didn’t you tell me about this place?”
I catch his eye and to my surprise they softened just a little—betraying more emotion. Right now it’s curiosity. “I wasn’t sure I trusted you.”
“And you do now?”
I shrug. “Not really. I don’t know? In the last thirty-six hours I’ve had to kill my mother, run over Eaters with a truck and split one of their faces in half. I had to save your ass. I am capable, despite my size and age. I’m exhausted, and I’m too tired to deal with the semantics of trust.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means if you give me a reason not to trust you I have no problem handling that.”
He nods like this makes sense (which I have no idea if it does or not. Seriously, I’m exhausted). I open the door with the key and we step inside the dark, musty cabin. The sound of scurrying feet race across the floor—just mice, hopefully. I flip the light switch. Nothing.
“What happened to your aunt?” Wyatt asks, dropping his pack on the floor and crossing the room with his shotgun. He passes through the tiny kitchenette and nudges open the two other doors.
“My mom’s aunt, actually. She lives in Charlotte. She’s pretty old.”
Translation: I don’t know. Probably dead.
“So she hasn’t been here recently?” He finally laid his gun on the small wooden table in the center of the room. I lean against the door.
“No. I doubt anyone has been here for years. That’s why we decided to head this way. Get out of the city—go somewhere safe.”
He seems satisfied—and tired. I offer to take the first watch and he agrees heading straight for the creaky dusty couch. “There’s a bed back there,” I say. “At least there used to be.”
“You can have the bed. This is fine.” He pulls a sweatshirt out of his bag and makes pillow. He’s asleep in minutes.
I sit at the hard wooden chair at the table and fish out a granola bar. I eat it slowly, watching Wyatt sleep. He snores lightly, deeply, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to turn it on and off like he does. Shut down when it’s time—turn it on when I need to. Sure, I’m playing a good game. I killed that Eater today. I found the cabin. I’m useful—but what I really want is for the pain to stop. For the memories to disappear. I want the blank eyed look and game face that Wyatt seems to have mastered.
Maybe, if anything, that’s something I can learn from him before we go our separate ways.