Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After (12 page)

“You’re a good man,” Liz replies. “Tell your snot-nosed brother we say happy birthday.”

“I will. He’ll be happy to know you’re thinking of him.” Liz snorts in a most unladylike fashion.

“See you in a few days,” I say to Nelly. “Adam, maybe you could come back for a visit.”

“I don’t want to leave the kids, especially now,” Adam says. “But I will soon. Maybe during summer break.”

“Do kids get summer break in the apocalypse?”

“It’s like the old days,” Adam says. “They get to break their backs doing farm work.”

I laugh because it’s true. Poor kids.

“So long, lollipops,” I say to Peter and Ana. It’s what we say with Bits, instead of
So long, suckers
.

Peter smiles, but it’s a tired one. “Safe home.”

Ana makes a murmur of agreement; even she looks worn out. This day has worked itself under everyone’s skin.

I nod before I get in the van. “Of course.”

We’ve seen Lexers on the side of the road and a crowd in the biggest town we passed through, but otherwise the ride to Kingdom Come has been peaceful. Marcus is behind the wheel, singing under his breath, while Adrian and I sit in the seats behind him and figure out what we can spare for Whitefield. I know the kitchen pretty well, since I do inventory with Mikayla. And I know that even with all those people gone, they’re going to be short on food. And now we are, too. I have a feeling many patrols are in our future, and I don’t like the idea at all.

Adrian looks up from the list he scribbles in a notebook. “We’ll search everyone who comes from now on. Maybe even quarantine them for twenty-four hours.”

We haven’t had any new people so far this spring, but I remember when we showed up at the farm last year. They’d asked about Nelly’s wound, but they’d believed us when we told them what it was.

“People might not like that,” Marcus says.

“Well, then they can leave,” Adrian says. “Ask me if I give a shit.”

Marcus howls. Adrian can give the mistaken impression of being docile. He might sing ridiculous songs to kittens and let mangy dogs in our bed, but he never shrinks from a fight.

Adrian holds up a finger. “One. That’s all it took to do that to Whitefield. One fucking Lexer. We’re not taking any chances.”

“I’m in charge of the strip searches,” Marcus calls out.

He turns onto a road that will bring us north and drop us on the main road to the farm. Another three miles and we’ll be home in time for dinner. I’m wondering what’s on the menu when Marcus shouts. Dozens of Lexers are gathered on the right side of the road ahead. There’s room to pass, and when we do I see that they’re bent over a meal. Bloody hands reach into a body cavity I can barely see and come away dripping. My fear fights with the revulsion in my stomach at their blank stares and mindless eating.

Marcus cranes his neck to look behind us. “Could you tell what that was? A deer? I hope it wasn’t someone trying to get—”

Adrian and I call out when the van veers to the right. We hit the shoulder, and the passenger’s side bumps down into the steep ditch. Marcus guns the engine in reverse, but the tires spin and the motor revs, to no avail.

“Stop, stop, you’re digging us in,” Adrian says. He climbs over and rolls down the passenger’s side window. “Maybe we can push it out.”

I spin around, hands clammy, but the road behind us is still empty. The Lexers are just around a bend. They may be busy enough not to have heard the noise of the engine over the sounds of their eating.

Marcus sucks in his cheeks. “Shit. Fuck! I’m sorry.”

“Let’s try the farm.” Adrian calls on the handheld radio, which is all we have in this van, but it’s dead air. “We’re too far, with the trees in the way.”

A flutter of dread beats in my stomach. It’s bad enough we’re in a ditch, with Lexers just behind us. But I thought—no, I
knew
—the radio would get someone here within ten minutes. We could last ten minutes. But no one’s coming.

“They’ll come looking for us,” I say. I can hear the high, hopeful note in my voice that sounds close to panic.

Adrian glances down the empty road and back at me. “At some point. But if they trap us in here…We should at least try to push. If it doesn’t work, we’ll walk and call when we’re closer.”

The thought of walking three miles down a dirt road with Lexers nearby makes my throat close. I’m not walking anywhere. I’m running.

“Marcus and I will push,” Adrian says. He lowers his forehead to mine. Either he’s not panicked, or he’s hiding it well. “You reverse, gently, when I tell you.”

I nod and clench to stop my teeth from chattering. My eyes skitter around for threats while they line the mud under the tires with whatever they can find for traction. Once that’s done, they place their hands on the hood and lower their heads with the effort of pushing, while I lower my foot to the accelerator and pray. The wheels spin in the muddy ditch until Adrian raises a hand for me to stop. His face pales and he elbows Marcus.

I spin in my seat to find that the first few have rounded the bend. We were quiet, but the sound of spinning wheels carries in the forest. Or maybe they were following the van to begin with. It doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is that they’re making a beeline for us. Adrian and Marcus fall in the side door and close it with a soft click. The Lexers are moving quickly, more quickly than they do if they don’t have a destination.

“Down,” Adrian says, just before the first Lexer hits.

There’s a thump and a hiss. I crawl to sit in the aisle next to Adrian, under the cover of the seats. I want to close my eyes, like a little kid who thinks no one can see him if he can’t see them. The Lexers might lose interest if we’re quiet and hidden from sight, and then we can wait it out until help arrives. Someone from the farm will be here before night; they know we’re coming.

Adrian covers where my hand grips the denim of his jeans. He tries to keep his hands steady, but I can feel the tremble. You have to be scared, though. If you’re not scared, then you’re stupid. It’s not a bad thing.

But this is a bad thing. Because they know we’re in here. They must, by the way they hammer on the windows. A streak of black liquid runs down the glass and a forehead leaves a smear along a side window. There are more dragging footsteps, more groans, and then the sound of denting metal on the road side of the van grows more insistent. One of the windows cracks with a sound like a gunshot, but it holds for now.

Marcus clamps a hand over his mouth when we slide farther sideways into the ditch. The van will end up on its side if they push hard enough, and then they’ll be in here. I imagine their arms reaching through broken windows and the way they’ll slither through and land on us, and I bite my tongue so hard that the metallic taste of blood floods my mouth.

“Run?” Marcus asks in a low voice.

Out the door on the forest side may be our only chance. The slope is steep enough that they haven’t come around yet. I nod when Adrian looks to me and then fumble for my cleaver and check my knife and gun.

Marcus raises himself eye level to the window and comes down with a face whiter than before. “They’re in the woods.”

Adrian points up the road. There aren’t that many on the road ahead, and three miles to the farm. I’ve run farther with Ana, and although I’ve hated every minute of it, I could run a marathon if it meant getting home.

The van shifts again. Marcus grabs the door handle, takes a breath and throws it open. I glance at the woods and my breath disappears, not that there was much of it to begin with. Scattered Lexers stumble through the trees, coming for us. We’re in the middle of the largest pod we’ve seen this year.

We stop at the hood of the van when Lexers flood out of the woods on the left side of the road. They’ve cut off our escape. Normally, I can find my calm inner space in the center of the storm, but right now there’s nothing but the certainty that this is how I’m going to die. Marcus points to a path through the trees, where the Lexers are spaced out. We scramble down the incline just as the van lands on its side with a thud and a shattering of glass.

I swing my cleaver at everything that comes our way. I stop for an eye socket when its fingers fasten around Marcus’s coat and a neck when one stands in front of us with its arms out. It’s happening so fast. I can’t look in every direction, so I run alongside Adrian and stare straight ahead. If we barrel through them fast enough, they won’t have time to get a handhold.

Marcus’s foot hits the heel of my boot, and I stumble into a Lexer. The moss that moves up its arm and under the tattered sleeve of its shirt hasn’t affected its strength thus far. I scream when it sinks its teeth into the leather sleeve of my jacket. They couldn’t have gone through, but I drop my cleaver from the pain. I can’t reach my knife with my left hand, and the tips of my fingers have just grazed my pistol when my left arm is yanked from behind. Another Lexer pulls me in the opposite direction like I’m the rope in a game of tug of war.

Adrian tries to come to my aid, but he’s stopped by three Lexers that surround him. He yells something over his shoulder, and the twisted faces of the Lexers snarl, but I can’t hear anything but my grunts and the pounding of my heart. I push them away whenever they get close, my arms growing more exhausted with every shove.

This is how I’m going to die
.

The calm hits just before I’ve reached full-scale panic mode. I need to be mad and scared, not frozen in terror. I need to take them one at a time. That’s how John says to do it—one at a time. I let the first one’s mouth come for me and headbutt him in his chest. There’s a crack when my head sinks into his sternum, and a rush of fluid soaks my scalp. I’m probably more stunned than he is by the blow, but he stumbles back from the force and loses his grip. My right hand free, I pull my knife from my holster to bury it in the eye of the other.

Adrian’s machete goes under the chin and out through the top of the first one’s skull. I snatch my cleaver off the ground and we run. Marcus pulls ahead and disappears into where the ground forms a natural bowl, and seconds later a high-pitched wail echoes and cuts off. We skid to a stop at the edge of the bowl. Marcus lies on the ground, covered with Lexers like flies on a corpse, and the ones not eating begin their approach.

They’re coming from the road, from ahead of us, from the left and right. Adrian glances at the hundreds of bodies circling in with an expression that’s almost vacant. He takes my gloved hand, and I notice his hands are bare; he’d taken his gloves off to make that list and had never put them on again.

He squeezes my hand twice, and then he says, “Run.”

I start in a sprint toward a grouping of trees that might offer some cover. His hand slips from mine, and I spin, terrified I’ll find him on the ground like Marcus. But he’s running in the other direction.

“Adrian!” I scream.

A Lexer with long hair grabs me from behind. I spin to stab my cleaver in her forehead, and by the time I turn to follow he’s too far gone, moving east from the farm. The Lexers are giving him chase now. I press my back against a tree, the adrenaline that had been spurring me on replaced by an icy tingling that has me frozen to the spot.

“Cassie, run!” Adrian calls. “Run! I’ll meet you there!”

He yells it again and again, making noise to attract them, to pull them away. And it’s working; the Lexers are passing me by. But I don’t want to run. I won’t leave him here. Adrian fires his pistol and steps backward through the trees. His jacket has gone missing, and his white t-shirt is bright against the pale, colorless clothes of the Lexers. They’re closing in on him, hundreds of Lexers I could never fight off myself.

I scream his name. He can fight his way back. We can run together. I want to tell him that, but all that comes out is another scream. Something in my throat gives, and the next is nothing but an exhalation of air. I scurry out of reach of a straggler I’ve alerted to my presence and duck behind another tree. A group of five Lexers lumbers toward me with interest. Adrian’s pulled most of them his way, but there are still too many. They’re bound to notice me, no matter how still I am. I have no choice if I want to live. I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive myself, but I run.

I slap at branches and stumble through a thicket to avoid another small group. They’re moving in the direction of the gunshots that reverberate through the trees. Those shots mean Adrian’s still alive. He’ll circle around and meet me at the farm, like he promised. I hold onto that hope while I try to figure out where the farm is. I don’t know these woods, but I’m sure I started in the right direction.

I’ve run a mile, maybe more. I stop to get my bearings and listen for the sounds of someone moving fast, but all I hear is a slow shuffling to my left. A Lexer moves past, unaware of me, and just beyond her is the unbroken stream of sunlight that means road. I leave the safety of the bushes and hit the dirt road just below the turn to Kingdom Come. It’s only another mile; I’ve gone farther than I thought. My feet pound the earth now that nothing stands in my way, but I stop when a truck comes into view. The blue pickup screeches to a halt beside me.

Dan throws the door wide and steadies my shoulders while he looks me over. “We heard the shots. What’s happening? Are you okay?”

“Adrian,” I rasp. It hurts to talk. I point down the road. “Marcus.”

He bustles me into the back and takes off after I tell him where to go. Toby and Liz stare at me with wide eyes. “What happened?” Liz asks.

I want to tell Dan to go faster, but a look at the speedometer tells me he’s going faster than I’d dare.

“The van’s in a ditch,” I whisper. “We had to leave it. Marcus—” I shake my head, very glad that Caleb isn’t in here.

Toby raises a hand to his forehead. “Fuck!”

“Adrian’s in the woods. He ran the other way.”

The underside of the van comes into view. Lexers still stand beside it, but most have left for the woods. For Adrian. I haven’t heard a gunshot in a while. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything; he’d had no reason to make noise once I was gone. He could focus on saving himself.