Untaken (33 page)

“Just the stuff on Jake. And we’re taking the computer. The asshole owes me a new computer. We’ll take the flash drives, too. I bet all this other stuff is on there anyway.”

The computer was a good one. Much better than my poor old tablet. Brandon fretted and fussed over which wires to unplug, so I set to work unhooking the computer, while he carried the pieces out to the car.

It was pitch dark outside, and the light from the open door made the crust of the deep snow glitter. The SUV stood in its own little pool of warm yellow light, like an old friend. Jake peered out the back window, his small face pale and anxious. His mouth fluttered into a smile when he saw me, the first smile he’d ever directed at me.

He’s not a real little boy.

Like hell.

I flung open the door and pulled Jake into a tight hug and, for once, he hugged me back. The dog was pleased to see me, too, taking swipes at my face with its tongue and barking like a crazy thing. I shoved it off and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Take it slow,” said Brandon, slamming the passenger door shut. “The chains will help, but driving in this stuff is real tricky, I bet.”

“I’ll take it slow.”

The snow-covered army truck still blocked the road, so I carefully steered the big car in a circle and we headed back into town to find a different road out. Jake and the dog were curled up together under a blanket in the back seat, with identical looks of contentment on their faces.

“I guess we have a dog now?”

“I tried persuading Jake to leave the mutt behind,” said Brandon. “But I think it was love at first sight.”

The snow had started to fall again, which would make figuring out where the roads were tougher, but at least it would cover up our tracks some.

“So tell me what happened?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” said Brandon. “Take this curve real slow.”

I glared at him. “I know how to drive, Brandon. I mean, first off, where did you get that stuff? That drug?”

“There’s a drug store in town. Someone had already broken into the back, but there was enough Tramadol left for what I needed to do. The liquor was tougher, but there was a stash in the manager’s office. I knew they were a bad combo. My Dad….”

“Why did you change your mind about them? I thought you trusted them.”

“I did what you said,” said Brandon, looking out the window, so I couldn’t see his face. “I walked into town and I thought about the stuff you told me to think about. I didn’t want to, but my mind kept coming back to it. And by the time I got into town, I realized you were right. They probably weren’t much different than those guys at the Center. Whether you were right or wrong, when I thought about that place…” He shivered. “I guess we’re on our own now, aren’t we?”

Gracie

watched the snow fall through the dirty window, and thought about all of the things it used to mean. A snow day, when it was heavy like this. Back when the normal routine of school and work was something you worked to escape rather than recapture. When the snow stopped falling, everyone would come out of their houses, and the grown-ups would shovel while the kids played right in the roads that were too thick with snow for cars. Mr. Novak would haul out his snow blower and do half the block. People would lean on their shovels and thank him, and Mr. Novak would smile, pleased with his sudden celebrity. At night, the plows would come, and we’d be woken by the clatter and scrape of them and their “
beep” “beep” “beep”
as they backed up to take another run at a stubborn drift.

There was no one to plow now. We’d shoveled out a path between the cabin door and the SUV, but we hadn’t bothered plowing the stretch from the main road to Brandon’s Uncle’s cabin. So what if our road was clear, when it didn’t lead to anything but more snow?

The drive from Doc and Terry’s house to the cabin had been four, long, almost-sleepless days wallowing through snow drifts and skidding over black ice. The weather had been better for a spell, but now it was worse than before. One minute the thought of all that deadly whiteness covering our tracks and barricading our hiding place made me relax, at other times it made my chest tight. We were truly alone now, and any mistakes we made could very well kill us. People had died up in these woods back before the world ended.

I shivered. “We should have gone South,” I told Brandon, as he walked through the door, stomping snow off his boots.

“So you keep telling me,” he said. “Got it clear, but we’ll have to check up on it through the night.”

The generator. If the vents got blocked, we’d gas ourselves to death. Sometimes it seemed to me like that would be easier; at least dead guys don’t feel the cold. We had fuel for the generator stored in one of the unused bedrooms. There wasn’t much of it. The sun went down brutally early now, and the nights were so long. We had candles, but not many of them, and a gas lamp which also needed fuel. I didn’t care so much about the lack of candles. Those small flickering flames made the night seem darker than ever. You could barely even read by them, and who wanted to sit up at night just staring into Jake and Brandon’s worried faces?

Brandon stood at my shoulder, smelling of snow and damp wool and dirty clothes. In Spring, the first thing I was going to do was wash everything I owned that was fit to wash, and burn the rest.

“Come on in the kitchen where it’s warm,” he said.

“In a minute.”

“Won’t stop falling just because you’re giving it the stink-eye,” said Brandon.

It would be warm in the kitchen, but Brandon would start in on worrying about the roof, which was piled high with snow and had started to groan ominously. Jake would stare at us both with his big questioning eyes. Dog would whine at the door to go out, then whine some more to come back in. And there was no escape from any of it.

“I’m going up to my room,” I told him.

“Okay, but don’t be turning the heat on. Need to make that fuel last.”

“I know that,” I snapped.

When we first got to the cabin a couple of weeks back, it had seemed like we’d never run out of wood. We chopped for days, piling the logs up out back until they just about reached the roof, but it was amazing how quickly we were nearing the bottom of the stack. Same with the food. We’d raided every grocery store around here, and the basement was piled high with cans, but every day, the pile grew a little smaller.

Lately, I’d been looking at the gun again. During our journey across New Hampshire, we’d seen squirrels everywhere, deer too, but the squirrels had gone to sleep for the winter, and if there were deer, they were hiding out in some other part of the woods.

The storm hadn’t blown itself out by nightfall. We ate canned stew, sitting round the kitchen table, the electric light painting our faces yellow, while the wind howled around the house, making it creak like a ship at sea. Usually, we didn’t keep the lamp on past sunset, but neither of us had suggested turning it off yet. The dark brought the great howling woods inside somehow, and I was glad to have the lamp that night, small comfort though it was. Jake chattered away, to me and Brandon at first, then, after getting no reply, to Dog, who gazed up into his face and wagged her tail.

“Want to play a game?” asked Brandon, finally.

“No,” I said.

“Come on. I’ll play one of the boring games you like. I’ll even play Scrabble.”

“Whatever. If you want.”

Brandon got up to fetch the board, and the lights flickered out.

“Dammit!” said Brandon.

“Why did the lights go?” Jake asked. The dark didn’t seem to faze Jake much, but he would get anxious if we did, so I tried my best to keep my voice level.

“Just the generator, Jake.”

“Yeah, we’ll have it fixed in no time.”

Of course Brandon wanted to go out there alone.

“If you get turned around, you could freeze to death,” I told him.

“If we both get turned around, we’ll both freeze,” he pointed out.

“I won’t get turned around. Who even cares if we do? We’re freezing in here anyway.”

“Fine.” Brandon threw up his hands. “I guess I could use the help,” said Brandon.

My mouth fell open. I’d expected him to start raving about how he didn’t need help from a girl, but instead he started bundling into his coat. His face was gaunt and there was stubble along his jaw.

In that moment I could see him as I would have a stranger. He looked different from the scowling, blustering kid I’d met at The Center. He was thinner and a little taller, but what stood out to me the most was that there was something different about his eyes, his way of talking. Instead of his ceaseless anger, there was sometimes quietness there now. Whole days passed recently without him yelling at me or at Jake. The thing I’d suspected ever since we arrived at the cabin was true—what had happened with the army guys had changed him. I didn’t know if it was a good change or a bad change. Brandon had been angry for so long, it made me wonder what would keep him going as the winter wore on.

Forget the winter, there were possibly
years
ahead of us.

The wind snatched the back door out of my hands and threw it against the cabin. I squinted against the wall of snowflakes. They stung my eyes, and when I breathed them in they pricked at my throat, making me splutter. The flashlight only added to the confusion of the whirling flakes. Brandon’s hand landed on my back, steadying me, and my flailing arm found the rough wood of the cabin wall.

The track we’d shoveled around the cabin earlier was covered over again, and my legs sank up to my thighs into the fresh snow, so I was half-walking, half-swimming through the drift.

Brandon held the flashlight, while I checked the generator with hands so numb I could have been watching someone else’s fingers at work.

We cleared the vents, checked the fuel line, and finally, the stupid thing coughed into life again, all on its own. I hated when it did that. I’d rather have known what the problem was so we’d know how to fix it next time. There was so much we didn’t know.

Then, of course, we had to fight the wind again all the way back to the cabin door.

When I got inside, my legs shook and my skin smarted where it wasn’t numb. I knew I should go into the kitchen, try to get warm, but it seemed like too much effort.

“At least give me your coat,” said Brandon. “We’ll need to dry it off before you can go out again.” I shrugged off the coat and passed it to him. He seemed like he had more to say, but I turned away from him. There was something about Brandon these days that confused me. Like there was an empty space between the words we were saying and what was really meant. Most likely it was the same issue I’d been having my whole life. It was fine when we had maps to read or generators to fix, but talking to a kid my own age in a way that didn’t make me seem like a freak of nature was a problem I didn’t seem to have any practical solution to.

I crawled into the icy tunnel of my blankets and lay with my arms wrapped around my knees, staring into the darkness for a long time.

When I awoke the next morning, the room was filled with cold daylight. It was tempting to stay right where I was, try to sleep through ‘til Spring like the squirrels were, but sleeping the day away seemed like it might be a dangerous habit to get into, too close to giving up.