“Yeah, that should do it.”
She nods and then heads back down the road.
“Let’s see, you need to learn some rules before we start fighting, Jesus…let’s call them Button Eyes. How’s that?”
“Elepunts and buttons?”
I grin. “Yep.”
She nods and continues walking.
“First Rule, don’t shoot me,” I say, laughing.
For a split second, she glances back over her shoulder, like a girl much older. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Don’t look at me like that. If my eyes go black, then you can shoot me, otherwise, I’d rather you not.”
She sighs. “Fine, I won’t shoot you, for now.”
I feel like I should warn her about the motorcycle guy, but I’m afraid it will scare her too much. Dealing with me is punishment enough. I feel like shit either way.
“Keep an eye out, okay?” I say, skirting the issue.
“For what?”
“For anything, anything weird.”
She stops, looks down at her .22, and then back to me. “I’m seven.”
“Yeah, weirder than that.”
§§§§§
We keep to the side of the road for much of the day; it’s faster and the level pavement is easier to walk on. But the woods keep pace, growing increasingly dense. Anyone could be following us through that darkness and we’d never see them, but it’s the risk we have to take — we need to close the distance between us and Freemont.
I’ve had enough of woods for a while. I’ll be glad when we get to Illinois or Oklahoma or Kansas, yeah, fucking Kansas — miles and miles of wheat fields, I think that’s what they grow out there, and not a goddamned tree in sight.
I can’t wait to get to Freemont either, to see everyone, to hold Sam again.
Pixie runs by us and then disappears into the forest, exploring I guess, but she’s never out of sight for long. It’s not like I can do anything about it.
“Let’s go over the rules again,” I say.
“Again?” Jem pouts.
“It passes the time. Once more, First Rule?”
She sighs. “Don’t shoot you, unless you go Button Eye, then I get to kill you.”
“Then you have to kill me.”
“Okay, okay — bang, bang.”
She’s lost the emotional baggage, for now. Hopefully, she’ll lose the rest of it if I keep at this, at least long enough to act.
“When we go into a house or something?” I ask.
“You go high and I go low.”
“What do we aim for?”
“The face.”
“Reloads?”
“Keep them close.”
“Second Rule?”
“Don’t get bit.”
“Third Rule?”
She looks back at me and tilts her head, like she’s examining my face. “Don’t hesitate; be ready to…kill…” She flexes her fingers, taking a tighter hold on her pistol.
Pixie pounces back onto the highway, barking and chasing her tail, and then suddenly stops, looks up at me, and raises her nose as if smelling me again for the first time. She takes a step closer, and then changes her mind, whimpering as she crawls backward, and then…and then she begins to growl.
“Jem, what’s wrong?” I ask, as she backs away too.
The pain drops me to my knees.
I double over; convulsions driving me into the asphalt.
“Jem!” I try to scream, but I’m not sure what comes out.
This is it.
I feel like I’m being filleted, one layer at a time — it burns, it fucking burns so much.
I feel my muscles twitch and spasm, contracting, curling me up into a fetal ball.
And then I see little boots walk up to me, fidget and then stop. Jem kneels, throwing a shadow over me, and then shoves one of my eyelids open with her thumb. She stares at it, watching and studying, ignoring my seizure.
She picks up the .45 that I dropped and flicks the safety off.
Her eyes are glassy, but she’s not crying this time, not yet.
That’s my girl.
Her jaw is set; she bites her lip and then grimaces.
You can do this.
You’re already so amazing.
She stands up, eclipsing the afternoon sun. The light glows around her as she takes my .45 in both hands.
“I love you, Sam, I’m so sorry, you don’t know how sorry I am, and Emily, please stay close to Sam, she’ll take care of you. Cam, you better not break your word, please God, don’t break your word.”
I’m truly lost.
“Bye-bye, Lane,” Jem says quietly.
I’m not under the window anymore, I no longer have a choice — I’m inside the kitchen this time, dying with the rest of them.
“Goodbye punkin’. Goodbye Samantha. Goodbye Jem, you’re the toughest kid I ever met.”
My eyes begin to burn, it’s like I can feel them turning black — I can feel the rage building — the heat…
Jem, wait…
My back arches involuntarily as a new pain wrenches my body, pulsating in waves, so deep it’s like having my soul ripped out — it leaves me cold.
Please, shoot me, just shoot me.
I feel my muscles twitching and jerking, slamming my hands and feet into the highway over and over.
Make it stop.
Please, God, make it stop.
I can barely see Jem; everything is a blur, fading, spiraling away.
The gun goes off.
§§§§§
…you promised, like me, you promised, like me, like me…
Jesus!
I jerk awake and sit up.
The light is soft, like sunset or sunrise — dark around the edges.
A blanket slides off my shoulders.
I’m sitting on asphalt, on a highway...
We were following a highway…we were…
“Jem?” I call out.
Pixie leaps into my lap and begins to lick my chin.
“Jem!”
“Shh, they’ll hear,” she whispers from behind me. She sounds older than I remember.
I push Pixie away and spin around, but crawl backward just as quickly.
Lying on his back a few feet away, under twisted arms and palsied hands is the other motorcycle guy from the caravan.
His gas mask rests loosely over his face, the eye lenses shattered.
He’s dead — at least two shots through the mask and two more in the forehead.
I look up at Jem.
“I couldn’t move him, he’s too heavy,” Jem says matter of factly.
Tough kid doesn’t begin to cover it.
I wipe the sweat off my face as my senses reorient, and I catch up with reality again. It’s morning.
It’s not that cold, but she’s wrapped in her parka, the hood up. She’s keeping her distance, a purposeful hold on her .22 in one hand and my .45 in the other.
“Sorry,” I say, and then crawl to his side.
Jem must have gotten curious and looked behind his mask, but she must not have liked what she saw. I lift it long enough to see the same lipless, tattooed monster underneath.
Shit.
“How long have I been out?”
“Since yesterday.”
I roll out from under the blankets and stand up, stretching. I feel like shit. Everything hurts, like I got hit by a truck.
“What happened?” I ask.
She steps closer and I get a good look at her. She’s got a long healing scar running across her face from cheek to cheek. Her face is bruised, like she’s been worked over pretty good. Her parka is ripped and bloody.
I glance back at Pixie and she’s got new blood in her fur as well.
“What happened?” I ask again more firmly.
“We killed it,” she says, pointing to the Cart Guy with her .22.
“Yeah, so you did. Are you okay?” I ask.
She nods, and now I see the red-rimmed eyes, the fear and the exh
austion.
“Did it hurt you?”
She nods.
“Bad?”
She nods again.
Fuck me.
“Bite you?”
She shakes her head this time.
Relief washes over me and I sit back on my heels.
“Okay, good, good, so what happened to me?” I ask.
“I didn’t shoot you, that’s what happened,” she says.
“What happened to me?” I ask again.
“Your eyes changed.”
“Are they black? If they’re black you need to…”
“No, they’re not black, silly, I didn’t shoot you, remember? They’re blue — pretty blue, like the sky.”
“Blue?”
“Yeah, like Pixie’s.”
I glance at the puppy and she whimpers in response, rolling over onto her back as she paws at the air — her blue-white eyes never leaving mine.
I have to take Jem’s word for it, but if my eyes are blue, this must be Pixie’s magic.
Did she keep me from turning?
I kneel down over the dead motorcycle guy, checking him out, but everything’s the same as the guy Cam shot back on the State Highway. His jacket’s been ripped and tattered, it’s bloody — Pixie’s work I’m guessing.
She might be small, but she’s still pretty good in a fight. If she grows to be as big as those two wolf-dogs we saw the night we found Jem, she’s going to be scary as fuck.
I glance back to Jem’s face. The cut is almost healed, just a thin line, like war paint.
Pixie’s magic is still working.
“So that makes two, right?” I ask.
“Two what?”
“Two bad guys you’ve killed. I think that puts you ahead of Emily.”
Jem grins for the first time. “I told you, I got this shit.”
This is the fourth day. We have one left to get to Freemont.
“Are you up to walking today?” I ask.
“Yes, please.”
Now it’s my turn to grin.
“Can I have a hug?” I ask.
Jem’s little face crumbles to tears and she throws her arms around me.
I hold her close.
I can’t imagine what her fight with this guy was like, but I know she didn’t panic, she didn’t give up — she fought like a badass.
I stuff the blanket Jem covered me with back into my pack and pull out a smoke.
I thump it off the heel of my hand, packing the tobacco, staring down the road.
Jem pops a Zippo and sparks it up.
I laugh and lean over as she lights my cigarette.
I stretch again, and then she hands me my .45 back.
“Ready?” I ask, checking the weapon. It’s fully loaded.
“Yep,” she says and then salutes me.
I grin as I shoulder my packs, and then look around the scene once more.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
“Which way is Freemont?” I ask Jem.
“This way,” she says, pointing and then shoves her hood back as sunlight filters through the trees, lighting up the morning.
Her freckled face is now surrounded by bushy, long white hair, and her eyes, they’re not brown anymore — they’re blue-white.
Pixie’s more magical than I could ever have imagined.
“Your…”
“My hair? I know, cool, huh?” She smiles.
“Yeah, yeah, it is. Lead on, Ninja-Jem, lead on.”
§§§§§
It’s still midmorning when we begin to see cars standing dead in the road, soon to be rusting relics from that first day. Most have smashed windows; many are missing their wheels, frames flat on the pavement.
Others have either rolled into the ditches or were pushed there. A large truck looks to have slammed into a power pole. The truck is twisted and crumpled, the upper half of the power pole is floating over the road now, suspended by hanging power lines.
Right after the truck and pole, the refuse begins. The trash and waste left by thousands of refugees passing through, leaving the stench of civilization and death behind. Most of the bodies along the roadway, between the scavenger critters and decomposition, don’t stink as bad as I’m sure they once did.
“Ick,” Jem says, and holds her nose.
“It might get worse as we get closer to Freemont. It just depends on how many people came through here when everything fell apart,” I say.
“Okay.” She looks at me for a second, and then covers her nose again. “Ick!”
We grin at each other.
We keep close to the side of the road, avoiding the worst of the wreckage.
The forest becomes less threatening as the trees begin to space out, the underbrush disappears, replaced with tall weeds and grass. It’s more like a park now.
Off to the right are patches of bright color.
Primary blues and yellows and reds peek through the forest leaves.
“This way,” I say to Jem.
A chain link fence stops us from entering the school yard or the suburban neighborhood beyond. There’s plenty of places for bad guys to hide, but it’s still safer than the main streets.
I motion for Jem to follow me, and walk past the playground to a section of fence that’s been flattened near the parking lot.
We get a good look at the school for the first time. It’s a lot like the farm house from a couple of days ago, looking for all of the world like it’s just closed for Thanksgiving, except for the bodies that is, Cart People still strapped into their gas masks and regular folks all mixed together, all dead, and as we get close enough to tell — all head shots.
Lots of black-eyed fever, Button Eyes.
The fighting was fierce, hand to hand — turned the ugly inside out for sure.
I wonder if this is where the kids were being kept all this time.
Did someone stumble across them and play hero?
Did we get lucky in finding them after all, or is this a completely different adventure, another batch of tortured kids?
I kneel down over a middle-aged woman wearing New Balance sneakers, khakis and an Aeropostale sweatshirt. Besides the small hole in her forehead, her face is calm, pleasant even, but the matching hole in her chest is still oozing, the blood glistening in the morning light.
She looks familiar, but then most of the dead look familiar these days.
I look around the parking lot for movement, but apart from the circling crows, it’s calm, quiet.
“Jem, pay attention, this just happened. There may still be bad guys around.”
“Run, hide or shoot,” she softly chants behind me. “Don’t think too long.” I see her shadow place both hands on her .22.
I stand back up and trace the trail of bodies, past the decorative shrubs, up the steps and under the orange and blue canopy of Rupert B. Collingsworth Elementary School, home of the Fighting Falcons.
“What do we do?” I ask Jem.
“Stay close, but not too close.”
“And?”
“Shoot low, you go high.”
“What do we aim for?”
“Faces.”
“Good girl. Keep your reloads handy. And, Pixie?”
Pixie pounces onto the chest of the woman at the top of the pile and looks up at me, her tail wagging, her eyes anxious.
“Do what you do,” I finish and shrug.
I glance at Jem and she laughs.
A breeze has picked up and it’s blowing her white hair.
Jesus, shit is getting weirder and weirder.
We slowly walk beside the fresh carnage, scooping up ammunition as we go. I pry a pewter .38 from a young man, and rifle through his coat for more ammunition. I reload the pistol, spin the cylinder and then hand it to Jem.
“Stick the .22 in your po
cket, and take this. It’s got more kick, so be sure to hold it with both hands. It’s going to jump on you, remember to bring it all the way back down before your next shot. Understand?”
“I may be seven, but I’m still not stupid,” she whispers irritably.
“Just be careful…what’s First Rule?”
“Don’t shoot you,” she says, grinning like she always does when she answers this question.
“That’s right, don’t fucking shoot me,” I whisper, more to myself than her.
We reach the steps and I still don’t hear anything from inside.
The sun is bright and the day is getting unusually warm, it’s going to start stinking out here pretty soon.
The doors are open, blocked by more bodies. It looks like someone was trying to keep the Cart Guys out, before they were trying to keep the Button Eyes out.
“There’s probably Buttons around…”
“Stay frosty,” she says softly.
I push against the camouflaged, fatigue-wearing guy in the doorway, and then step on him. I motion for Jem to follow me inside.
Rays of sunshine beam through the windows near the ceiling, lighting up the blue cinderblock hallway like it’s outside. There are fewer bodies in here, but more of them are regular folks, except lots of them have been worked over pretty bad, they have black eyes too.
They got in.
Many of them look familiar too, I don’t know why, but it’s freaking me out.
I can’t believe they’re all dead.
Where are the winners?
The glass-walled school office is behind the front doors. Trophy cases line the walls. I guess the Falcons were pretty good at sports, unless the trophies were all for participation.
I laugh.
Everyone gets to participate now, whether they want to or not, and if you’re lucky, first place gets you another day of food and water, and maybe a mattress to sleep on.
We creep along the office wall, ever deeper into the school. I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. A pair of metal and glass doors is set into the wall behind the office before the sea of orange lockers begin.
I peek through the wire glass.
Fuck me.
It’s a bunch of kids.
Is it our kids?
I pick Jem up and let her look through.