The Last Girl (31 page)

But the truck races through the ditch and skids onto the road behind them.

It accelerates, closing the distance.

Ian turns in his seat and calmly points to the weapons bag. “In the bottom, Chelsea. The long, black case, please.” She glances up from her inspection of Merrill’s wound and yanks the bag into Ian’s reach. The old man draws out the case and unbuckles several clasps even as the roar of the truck’s engine begins to rise.

“Ian?” Merrill says.

“Lie down, Merrill,” Ian responds, pulling out the largest rifle Zoey’s ever seen.

It is solid black with a thick, fluted barrel. A magazine juts from its bottom, and a huge scope sits atop it. Chelsea slumps to the side with Merrill in her arms as Ian lays the rifle over the back of the seat.

“Steady now, Tia,” he says.

The truck is a quarter mile back and gaining. There is a muzzle flash from the passenger window and a bullet sings past Zoey’s door.

Everything is movement and sound, but Ian is like a stone beside her. One eye nearly pressed to the scope, finger on the trigger.

The wrinkles in his face smooth to nothing.

The rifle shoves against his shoulder and a split second later Zoey hears the shot.

The windshield in front of the truck’s driver spiderwebs and the wheels whip to the side. It rumbles down a short embankment and collides with a tree in a cataclysm of glass and steel.

Bodies pinwheel in all directions. There is a short bleat of the truck’s horn and then only the wind coursing through the cab as the Suburban cruises onward.

Ian carefully replaces the rifle into the case and stows it away in the weapons bag. Zoey watches the placidity of his face. It is not simply calm, it is devoid of emotion. She stares at him for a long time as Tia brings their speed down to a reasonable rate and Eli climbs back to check on Merrill’s wound. The old man finally glances at her and now there is naked shame in his eyes.

Zoey reaches out and slides her hand into his. The barest of smiles touches his lips, and he squeezes her fingers once.

“Tia, find us a safe place for tonight,” Merrill says. “Get us off this goddamned road.”

33

The house looms above them in haunted splendor.

They had to drive for another hour before Tia was able to find a passable road branching off from the main highway. By then the air had cooled and they were all shivering in their seats. The road split several times leading toward a segmented hill populated with pines. Tia had guided the protesting vehicle up through a crumbling neighborhood full of desolate homes. Garage doors gaped open, windows were shattered and dark, cars sat abandoned, some of their doors still ajar as if their owners were only seconds from returning. At the end of the last street another paved drive cut up into the side of the hill behind a stand of trees. Tia had eased them up the grade that switchbacked several times until they came to an iron gate lying flat in the center of the road. They passed over it, and after another hundred yards the house came into view.

It is three stories, made of cut stones interlocked together, their gray fronts speckled with moss and mildew. Most of the windows are intact, and the ones that aren’t have been boarded over. The solid oak doors in the entrance don’t budge when Eli tries them. He gives them all a look before Merrill nods and motions toward the building.

Eli blasts the doors inward with a kick and goes in low, his rifle out before him. After a drawn minute of waiting he returns and nods once. “Looks empty.”

They move their gear inside, making trip after trip to the Suburban until its rear hold is empty. After they’ve packed everything in the large entryway so it will be ready to go at a moment’s notice, she steps into the main body of the house.

Even without adornments, its grandeur overwhelms her. Everywhere there is marble, both dark and light. The walls are polished stone and the floors are deeply stained wood. While Tia and Eli examine the rest of the house, Zoey walks through the main floor, reaching out to touch filigreed cabinets, an ornate light switch that does nothing, a marble statue, nearly as tall as she is, of a woman in an elegant dress. The closets she checks are bare, as are the cabinets in the kitchen. There is evidence everywhere of possessions removed in haste—long scratches on the floor, a cleaner place on the wall where something once hung, a single sock lying in a corner. She marvels at the idea of taking time to save inanimate objects, of holding belongings so dear it would be unthinkable to leave them behind even in a time of chaos.

She has trouble imagining it.

Zoey moves through a hallway off the kitchen that runs parallel to the biggest room on the main floor. The hall branches, one doorway leading to the high-ceilinged room where a few of the others are talking, one to an empty bedroom with only a heavy steel bed frame left in its center, and the last to a wide room with high windows looking out into the forest behind the house. There is something large in one corner hidden beneath a dark cloth, its shape suggesting a table. She almost doesn’t go to it, but then does, tugging the cover from it.

Zoey stares at the object, not entirely sure what it is. It is like a table, its top a smooth wood as black as night, but the closest side is stepped down, and there are long white and black rectangles set in the lower level. She frowns, placing a fingertip on one.

She jumps back as a solid note rings out from the table’s center. A second later Eli is in the doorway, his characteristic smile firmly in place.

“Look what you found, lady.”

“What did I find?” Zoey asks.

“You don’t know what this is? You’re shittin’ me. It’s a piano, girl. An instrument. Here, watch.” He leans his rifle against the nearest wall and runs his fingers over several keys. A discordant tune peals out from within the piano. “Hmm, ’course I can’t play worth a shit, but you get the idea.”

“So it’s for music?”

“Yep. Suppose you never heard proper music before.”

“No. Just some songs we sung when no one was around. Singing was forbidden.”

Eli’s face hardens, but then he smiles again. “Well, you go right on ahead and sing as much as you want, I’m sure you got a beautiful voice.” As Eli reaches out to pick up his weapon, Zoey spots a dark string of writing on his forearm, barely visible against his ebony skin.

“What’s that on your arm?” she asks.

Eli pauses before slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “A mistake,” he says quietly, and walks away, turning in the hallway and moving out of sight.

She stands looking after him for a moment before glancing at the piano. She touches a key again, liking the sound it makes. She tries putting several different notes together, but after hearing the dissonant tones she draws her hands away. The notes should fit with one another, and she wishes she knew how to do it. Zoey covers the piano with its sheet again before returning to the largest room to find Merrill seated in a wooden chair at its center. He is shirtless and Chelsea kneels by his side, her medical bag open on the floor.

“Is he going to be okay?” Zoey asks, coming even with Chelsea.

“I’ll be fine,” Merrill says without looking up. “Got the best doctor in the world working on me.”

“I’m nowhere near the best, and you know it,” Chelsea says, pulling thread through a hooked needle.

“You might be, now that there’s only a few left. Ouch!” Merrill flinches as Chelsea pokes him gently with the needle. “Real nice, stab the injured guy.”

“Oops,” Chelsea says, shooting Zoey a wicked smile. Zoey begins to smile back, but her eyes land on the oozing wound in Merrill’s lower right side. The hole is ragged and dark, the skin around it coated with dried blood.

“It went right through,” Merrill says, following her gaze. “Don’t worry. Maybe you want to help Tia gather some firewood for tonight. By the time you get back I’ll be right as rain and we can go over the plans again.”

“Okay,” Zoey says. It takes effort to pull her eyes away from the bullet hole. When she manages to do so, she leaves the house through the front door, spotting Tia across the small clearing at the border of the woods.

“How much more do we need?” Zoey asks, seeing that the other woman’s arms are nearly full of sticks.

“If you get an armful, we should be good for the night,” Tia says, motioning with her head toward a broken deadfall on the ground several feet away. “Pick up a few of the bigger ones and we’ll head back.” Zoey is turning to do it when she sees movement on the roof of the house. She’s about to cry out a warning when she notices long gray hair blowing in the wind.

“What’s Ian doing up there?”

“Think he’s figuring out if it’s going to rain or not.”

“How can he do that?”

Tia shrugs. “He’s old as hell.”

Zoey looks to the roof again but he’s disappeared. She turns and begins picking up broken sections of dry wood, stacking them in her arms. She steps over the tree trunk, set on getting one last hunk that looks like it would burn for a long time, when she stops.

The ground beyond the fallen tree is speckled with blue.

It takes her a beat to realize she’s looking at flowers sprouting through the dead leaves and dry grass. They are very much like the ones she saw in her fevered state before collapsing, but much smaller, so delicate she’s sure a strong breeze would tip them over. The blue transfixes her, and it’s only when Tia says her name that she snaps out of her reverie.

“Sorry,” she says, stooping to pick up the piece of wood. When she rises, Newton is standing a few paces away, watching her. As soon as they lock eyes he ducks away, hurrying out of sight down the length of the clearing.

“Why does he run away like that?” Zoey asks Tia as they make their way back to the house.

“He’s afraid. He takes his time with people. It took him almost a year before he would sit beside me at the fire. Don’t worry, he’ll warm up to you.”

Zoey looks for Newton as they enter the house, but the yard is empty.

Inside, Merrill has his shirt back on and is standing over the kitchen counter, one hand on the marble, the other pressed to his side. A wide piece of paper lies beneath his gaze and his eyes burn into it as if he’s attempting to read a different language. Zoey and Tia join him at the counter and a moment later Ian enters along with Chelsea and Eli, who carries a bucket of clear, shimmering water in one hand.

“Found a stream about a quarter mile into the woods,” Eli says. “Should be able to refill our stock before we head out.”

Merrill doesn’t look up from the paper but says, “Good. Thanks, man.” Zoey approaches the counter and studies the document. It’s a strange layout of squares and intersecting lines, and she wouldn’t have recognized it if she hadn’t seen something similar within the NOA textbook.

“That’s a map,” she says, tracing a highway marked “90.”

“You’re right,” Merrill replies. “This is approximately where we are.” His finger drops on a place labeled “Westin.” “And this is where we’re going.”

“Grand Coulee,” Zoey reads. “That’s where the ARC is?”

“Yeah, and I’m guessing it hasn’t been called that in a while,” Merrill says. He glances up at Ian. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s going to rain tomorrow, though I’m not certain it will last into the night.”

“We’ll have to plan like it will.” Merrill searches the map and points to a spot over a squiggly, blue line. “The boating group will launch here into the river. It’s about ten miles downstream from the ARC. This is the relay station where Newton and I will be. If I remember the landscape correctly, there’s some very tall hills surrounding the dam. Am I right, Zoey?”

She thinks back to the night when she escaped, a lifetime ago. The ground zipping past beneath the helicopter, the glimpse of the enormous reservoir beyond the dam, dirt under her fingers as she crawled out from the crash.

“Zoey, are you okay?” Merrill asks. She comes back to herself, swallowing the acidic fear that’s risen in her throat.

“Yeah, sorry. Yes, I remember hills and valleys.”

“Good. We’ll park the Suburban a mile away from the dam if it’s possible, farther if there’s a patrol. Ian, you’ll be our distraction and cover our escape when the time comes. I seem to remember an observation perch above the dam.”

Ian nods. “It’s made out of concrete, as I recall. It should still be standing.” Something passes between the two men, and Zoey sees a flicker of the same look in Ian’s eyes that she’d seen in the vehicle.

“When you’re all clear of the ARC, we’ll lay down cover fire and make sure you get to shore. Then we’ll lose them in the hills on our way back to the Suburban,” Merrill continues. “Tia, you’re going to have to sacrifice your boat, I’m afraid. We’ll need the trailer to haul everyone.”

“Knew that already. But you’re going to buy me another one,” Tia says, crossing her arms.

“Deal.”

“The helicopter will be following us,” Zoey says. “As soon as they know something’s wrong, they’ll be in the air.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got that covered,” Merrill says. He shoots a look at Ian before proceeding. “So we get into position by evening tomorrow night, and we wait. If the storm comes, we’ll move ahead. If it doesn’t, we’ll wait until one arrives. As soon as it’s a go, we’ll communicate by the headsets we got in town.”

“Is that what you stole?” Zoey asks.

A hint of a smile tugs at Merrill’s lips. “No. That was something else.”

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Eli asks Merrill. “You did just get a hole blown through your dumb ass.”

“I’m fine. It was barely a flesh wound. I think it was a ricochet anyways.”

“Yeah, probably shot yourself,” Eli says, snorting laughter. The rest of the group chuckles, and Merrill feints at his friend playfully.

“You’re probably right,” he says. “Okay, any questions?” The room is silent as they look from one to another. Zoey is suddenly overcome with emotion for these people. How strange to have no one, to know that you must rely solely upon yourself, and then abruptly find people to care for. And those that care for you. It nearly overwhelms her.

“Okay,” Merrill says. “Let’s get some food in us and sleep. We’ll need it tomorrow night.”

They start a small fire in the marble fireplace in the great room once night falls in earnest. The food is simple but good, canned meat that Chelsea tells her is venison, and cold peaches that are so sweet Zoey’s teeth tingle.

They are very quiet all through dinner and the feeling in the room is as if everyone is holding their breath. She looks from one face to another. All wear the same thoughtful expression, minds elsewhere as hers has been all evening.

Tomorrow. She will see the ARC again tomorrow.

It feels both so recently and so long ago that she escaped. She imagines climbing the stairs to the so familiar hallways and stepping inside her old room. Would she be there? The old Zoey who had conformed, obeyed, died more and more each day until she couldn’t stand not to think the thoughts that were forbidden?

Because she is someone new now. Someone different.

“Who wants first shift?” Merrill asks from beside the fire.

“I’ll take it,” Tia responds.

“We switch every hour until dawn. Everyone should try to get some sleep.”

Zoey helps Chelsea spread out the sleeping bags they brought from Ian’s and lies down to the right of the fire. Merrill is propped up against the wall, staring across the room at the jittering shadows thrown by the flames.