Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After (38 page)

“Ana?” he yells.

I shake my head numbly and search the crowd for Ana and Dan. There’s a chance they’re still okay. Not like John. Peter puts a boot in the window frame and hops to the roof. Something fast pushes through the back of the mob, and Dan runs up the hood of the ambulance to the roof. His jacket is unzipped, and the bottom of his gray shirt is a dark stain. I tell myself he can’t have been bitten, but the way he stands with his head lowered and chest heaving tells me otherwise. He raises his eyes to mine.

“No,” I say, and then say it again, although I know it’s true. He’s alone up there, just like he’d feared. I ache to do something, anything, to make this easier for him. I wish he’d come this way; he shouldn’t have to do this alone. He shouldn’t have to do it at all.

It only takes a few seconds for the thoughts to flit through my mind, a few seconds in which Dan nods and his mouth moves in words I can’t discern. He points a finger my way before raising it to the sky. I don’t know exactly what he means, but I nod anyway. Those are our stars up there.

“Ana!” Peter’s voice is so frantic that I tear my eyes away from Dan.

He jumps off the roof and races toward the Lexers who’ve spotted us and are coming our way. I slide down after him and fire at one who breaks from the pack, then another. Peter doesn’t seem to notice until one gets close and he flings it out of the way.

I scream his name, but he doesn’t answer. We’ve got two minutes before we’re swallowed by the crowd. We have Bits and Hank, and we have to get out of here. If Ana were okay she’d be here by now, I know she would.

And then I spot her, moving more swiftly than the other figures, but nowhere near as fast as she was. Her neck is shredded and shirt soaked with blood. She makes it to the forefront of the crowd, unsteady on her booted feet, and Peter stumbles back like he’s been shoved.

She’s fifteen feet away. The lips that were so expressive—pursed or grinning or saying something completely inappropriate—hang slack. I remember the promise I made on a sunny day, the one I never thought I’d have to keep. My hands shake when I aim my pistol between her dull eyes. I know I have her, though. Head shots might be hard, but I’m good at them. And while she’s close enough that I barely have to try, it’s the hardest shot I’ve ever taken. She hits the ground, and my shaking becomes a full-body shudder. If there were time to run to her, I would, but the rest of the pack is twenty feet away. I shout to knock Peter out of his stupor and drag him by his coat. I can’t do this alone. He walks the first few paces backward, in a trance, and then runs for the driver’s side.

Peter reverses in a wide arc and pulls east. I scramble to the rear window and look to the ambulance. Dan sits on the roof, watching us go; his flask flashes silver in his hand as he raises it to his mouth. I fall to the side when Peter swerves around a few Lexers who have reached the eastern road. By the time I’m up, we’re over the rise and Dan is out of sight.

My hands are filthy. They’re black and brown and rust colored. The brain of the Lexer I killed coats my fingers with slime. I stumble to the sink and lather the soap until my hands are raw. I try not to think about the virus seeping into the cut on my finger. It’s five days old and scabbed up, so I should be safe. I hope.

I try not to think of Ana and John and Dan and Henry, all those people in the bus, whether Whitefield got the call. How to tell Penny that I killed her sister. What to say to Peter, who stares at the road with a look of utter desolation on his face. What to say to Hank. You’d think I would know.

We’ve hit the empty road that will take us north. I dry my hands and turn to where the kids sit on the bench seat. Bits is okay, stunned but not in shock. Hank mashes his lips together and raises his bloodshot eyes to mine. He slides into my lap when I kneel before him and buries his face in my chest. His sobs are so forceful they must hurt, but this isn’t something you hold in; it’ll eat you alive if you do.

“I know, honey,” I say. “I know.”

I know and Bits knows and Peter knows. Everyone knows what it’s like to be an orphan now. Hank’s new to the club. I rock him while tremors pass through his body and whisper that he’ll be all right. We’ll be all right. It might not be true—it likely isn’t—but it’s what he needs to hear.

My voice cracks and the tears I’ve tried to restrain break free. I want to be here for Hank, to be strong, but I’ve just lost a father for the second time. I’ve lost my beautiful and fearsome sister. I don’t know what Dan would’ve been to me, now I never will, but he was a friend and perhaps a future. The day that felt like a new beginning has ended before it ever really began. I hold Hank as tight as he holds me and murmur promises I’m not sure I can keep.

Peter slows when we’re fifteen miles out. He doesn’t say a word after he pulls to a stop, just moves between the seats to Bits. His pain is so raw that I have to force myself not to look away. I take his slack hand in mine, and he lowers himself to the VW’s floor, mouth buried in Bits’s hair, and leans against me.

The Lexers are coming north, but we have time. Not much, but some—if every mile equals an hour of zombie walking. We sit in the silence of the dead world and take a few precious moments that might be better used running. But in order to run fast you have to want to live, and we need this moment in order to go on, I know we do.

Now that we’re a few miles from Quebec, we could raise them on the radio. They’ll ask who’s with us, though, and I don’t know what to say. Peter doesn’t suggest it either, just grips the wheel and stares straight ahead. I sit silent in the back, kids in my arms, and wonder how I’ll find my voice to tell Penny. A man I recognize from our trip this summer runs the gate open. Peter crawls along the main road, partly to avoid boxes, bags and discarded belongings, but also, I suspect, because he doesn’t want to reach Penny any faster than I do.

He pulls into the lot, next to the pickup Shawn was driving. The small school bus has also made it. Penny rises from a picnic table at the sight of our vehicle. I take a breath and step through the door. I hear the kids’ shoes hit the gravel and Peter’s footsteps, but I don’t break eye contact with Penny. Her face crumples when she moves her gaze to the empty road behind us, and she sinks to the bench with an open mouth. James stands with his hand on her shoulder as I walk across the impossibly mown grass and kneel in front of her.

“No.” She shivers and folds her arms. “No.”

“We couldn’t help her,” I whisper desperately. “We couldn’t.”

She inhales sharply, her face wild. “Did she turn? Is she…”

I shake my head so hard that a bun tumbles down my shoulder. “No. I—” I try, but I can’t say it. “I promise.”

Penny’s eyes widen, and she takes my hands in hers without asking more. I’ll tell her if she wants to know, but I don’t ever want to talk about putting a bullet dead center in her sister’s head. She sobs quietly, and I know Penny well enough to know that she wants me here but doesn’t want platitudes. I watch the reflection of the clouds move across the lake. The chairs Dan and I sat in on that first night are still by the shore. I wonder if he’s done it already—how long he waited, if whatever was in that flask made it any easier—and the burn in my throat is worse than when I drank that awful liquor.

“John?” James asks, although he already knows the answer. His face is drawn and eyes wet, but he’s not surprised that we all didn’t make it back. He’s probably surprised any of us did.

“Dan. Henry. Everyone on the bus. We think everyone in front of the bus.”

Bits sits at the table, hair a knotted mess, and watches Hank trace a gouge on the tabletop with his finger. Peter stands alongside us, his gaze on his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a whisper. “I shouldn’t have let her—”

Penny jumps to put her arms around his neck. “You couldn’t have stopped her if you’d tried. I knew it would happen one day. I did.”

Penny may not be a fighter, but she’s one of the strongest people I know. Instead of falling apart, she’ll try to keep us all together. James wraps his arms around Penny’s waist, and she leans into him with her eyes closed.

“We have to leave soon,” he says, like he’s reluctant to bring it up. But no one looks at him askance; we know we have little time to mourn. “We’re just waiting on Whitefield.”

Maureen comes out of the stone house and picks her way across the grass. Her cheeks hang alongside her mouth. She holds us each in turn, like my mother would have, and I sink into her embrace.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Maureen sniffs and hugs me tight, then pulls Hank into her lap. She removes his glasses and wipes his eyes gently. She doesn’t cry, and I rub away my tears. I’m not going to cry anymore. Crying won’t get us fuel or food or drive us the thousands of miles to Alaska. I’m going to concentrate on what comes next, on keeping those who are left safe. I’ll cry when we’re behind fences again.

“Is Whitefield coming?” I ask.

“Gabriel said Whitefield called here when they couldn’t get us,” James says. “Said the pod had reached them and they were leaving.”

Pod isn’t the right word. It’s more like those armies of ants you see on nature shows, the ones that march forward unrelentingly, eating everything in their path. Or the swarms of locusts that used to plague pioneers. Whitefield might be caught in that swarm. I’m not sure I could stand to lose Nelly today, too.

“Quebec’s not going to Alaska,” Maureen says. “They’re heading up to northern Canada somewhere.”

“There’s no Safe Zone,” James adds. “They don’t know what’s up there. Some of the others from Kingdom Come want to go with them.”

“What?” I ask. “Why?”

James shrugs. “It’s closer. I don’t know.”

Gabriel comes down the porch steps with a large box. Clara follows behind with winter parkas. I meet up with them at their van.

“Cassie,” Clara says. “I’m so happy you’re here and all is well. Your friends were very worried.”

I nod. They don’t need to hear what’s happened. “You’re not going to Alaska?”

Gabriel stashes the box and says, “It’s too far. We’re taking the James Bay Road to Radisson. There may be survivors there, and there’s the hydroelectric dam.”

James has followed me over, and now he shakes his head. “But it’s flat. I think mountains would be better.”

“There’s only one road between here and there. And many lakes,” Gabriel says. He looks to Clara, who nods. “We think the water will protect us. We can get there on the fuel we have, rather than finding ourselves out of fuel halfway to Alaska.”

“The western mountains are a better bet,” James says, and looks to me. “There’s a reason John and Will chose it, right? We’ll have the Cascades, the Rockies and the Alaska Range in our path. Alaska’s had a quarter of the Lexers we’ve had.”

My heart stops at the mention of John. I’m not sure we can make it to Alaska without him, but if it’s where he thought best, then he must have been right.

Gabriel sighs. “Yes, as you say, it is probably better. But this is our decision.”

Clara smiles apologetically and turns back toward the house.

“We leave in ten minutes,” Gabriel says. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like, of course. You’ll tell Whitefield they’re welcome to join us?”

James and I walk back to the table, and Gabriel resumes his packing. Two men pull down the rear door of a box truck loaded with food.

“They don’t have enough food for the winter,” James says. “I think we should stick to the plan. We know where we’re headed is safe. They
think
it’s safe up there. By the time they find out it’s not, it’ll be too late to turn around. I want those mountains around me.”

I want them, too. All the pictures I’ve seen of Alaska, where the smallest mountains are the height of the tallest here, flash through my mind. Alaska has food and warmth; they told us to come.

James explains the situation to the others, and Bits pulls Peter’s hand. “I want to go to Alaska.”

“That’s where we’re going, baby girl,” Peter says, and absently runs a hand down her hair.

The other survivors from Kingdom Come walk toward the small school bus. Jamie and Shawn come our way, followed by Barnaby. I kneel to throw my arms around him; I never thought I’d be so happy to see this dumb dog. He spins in a circle and his tail hits me in the eye hard enough to make it water.

Shawn’s normally jovial expression has been replaced by sloping eyes and a downturned mouth. Jamie checks over Bits and Hank. Doc is gone, too; he was on the big bus with Chris. Liz, Mikayla and Ben were in the first vehicles, but I don’t remember which. Maybe a truck got through to the west, and they’re heading for Alaska right now. It’s a slim hope, but it’s a possibility.

“Almost everyone’s going north,” Shawn says. “Mike and Rohan are coming with us. And Mark. That’s it.”

Mark sets his pack on the ground. “If it’s all right with you. I’ve secured the bows in the pickup, just in case.”

“Of course,” James says.

Ashley walks up and throws her pack on the picnic table. “I’m coming to Alaska.”

“Where’s Nancy?” Penny asks.

“We got separated,” Ashley says. She swallows and blinks. “She was on the big bus. I want to come with you.” Her hair is in a bun and she wears a knife on her hip like she’s one of us. She juts out her trembling chin in a tough girl act.

“Of course you’ll come with us, Ash,” I say.

Ashley sighs with relief, all her bravado spent, and glances at the little yellow bus. “Meghan and the others say I should go with them, but I don’t want to.”

We look to where over a dozen of the others stand. Meghan and her closest friends are huddled together, wide-eyed and unarmed. I can’t believe none of them is wearing a gun or knife. Maybe it’s good they’re going their own way. We have enough to worry about. I feel mean as I think it, but I can only protect so many people, and those people need to be able to help themselves if they’re over the age of eighteen.

We jump when Peter curses and strides across the grass, pushing through the remainder of Kingdom Come to where Oliver cowers in the back. He doesn’t say a word, only takes Oliver’s shirt in his left hand and draws back his right. I arrive just as his fist smashes into Oliver’s face. The crowd murmurs in surprise, but, honestly, I can’t believe that somebody else didn’t beat Peter to it.