Broken World (13 page)

15

WHEN
WE GET BACK TO THE NISSAN, I buckle Emily securely into her booster in the
second row. Joshua is on the other side of her and Angus is in the driver’s
seat, leaving the passenger seat for Axl.

Joshua stares at Emily out of the corner
of his eye like he isn’t sure what to do with her. “So what’s the plan now?”

“Need to get some supplies,” Angus says,
doing a U-turn.

“There’s a Walmart not too far from
here,” I say.

Angus grunts and concentrates on
maneuvering the enormous car. He barely misses a truck parked on the side of
the road. “Sounds like a plan.”

“And then we can head to San Francisco,”
I say, biting my lip while I prepare myself for the argument that’s sure to
come.

Angus scoffs. “Hell no, we ain’t goin’
to the city. We gotta find an abandoned farmhouse and get us a generator and
provisions. One with animals would be best.”

I wait for Axl to pipe in, but he
doesn’t. His back is to me and his shoulders are as stiff as a board.

“We need to go to San Francisco,” I say.
“I set up a meeting place with Trey and Parvarti, just in case things aren’t
good for them at home. That way they can meet up with us.”

I jolt forward when Angus slams on the
brakes. He turns to face me and his face is bright red. “I ain’t drivin’ all
the way to the city for some ni—”

“We can’t abandon them!” I don’t want to
hear it. I heard it all my life, from my dad and his disgusting friends, and I
don’t want to listen to it anymore. It makes me sick. “Tell him, Axl!”

Axl turns and looks at me. His face is
blank. “Angus is right. It’d be dumb to go to the city.”

I jerk back, like I’ve been slapped. My
lungs are empty. It’s like the wind has been knocked out of me. Axl looks me
right in the eye, calmly, totally unashamed of his betrayal.

It takes me a few seconds to find my
voice, but when I do I say, “Fine. I’ll go without you. I won’t abandon them.”

Angus laughs and raises and eyebrow.
“You wanna drive there by yourself with a little girl? Be my guest.”

“She won’t be alone,” Joshua says. “I’ll
go. She’s right, we can’t abandon them.”

I give Joshua a grateful look. Putting
himself on the line like this can’t be easy, and getting on Angus’s bad side is
going to suck.

Axl slams his hand on the dashboard.
“Dammit!”

“Let ‘em go,” Angus says, giving me a
cold stare.

Axl looks at me and shakes his head,
then curses again. “They ain’t goin’ alone.”

Angus turns on his brother and his face
gets redder than ever. That little vein on his forehead pulsates. “What the
hell are you talkin’ ‘bout? We ain’t goin’ into the city. That’s the last place
we need to be.”

“I ain’t lettin’ them wander off alone,”
Axl says. “You can come or not, but I’m goin’.”

Angus lets out a string of profanities so
colorful that I actually cover Emily’s ears. She’s going to learn all kinds of
new vocabulary being around him. But I’m so thankful I’m not going alone that
I’m not even pissed. I wouldn’t have abandoned Trey and Parvarti, but going to
San Francisco by myself wouldn’t have been ideal.

Angus starts driving again. He grips the
wheel like he’s ready to rip it off. His eyes stay straight ahead. “Tell me how
to get to Walmart.”

I give him directions to the store. We
don’t pass a single car or person on the way, and I pray it’s because it’s so
late at night. Not because the whole world is dead.

The store parking lot is empty except
for a few stray cars, and the front door is wide open. The electricity is out,
but emergency lights are on inside the building, giving off a soft bluish glow
that illuminates the registers and racks through the window. Angus parks in
front, and we sit in silence for a few minutes while we check things out.

“Joshua, will you stay in the car with
Emily?” I don’t want to take her in, but I need to grab some things.

“I was going to check out the pharmacy,”
he says. “Get some antibiotics and other things, just in case.”

I bite my lip and look at the little
girl I gave birth to. It’s hard to think of her as my daughter, it’s just so
surreal. But there she is, staring up at me with my eyes, big and round.
Frightened.

“We should all go in,” Axl says.

I sigh and try to smile at Emily. It’s
shaky. “You want to do a little shopping?”

She doesn’t respond. She hasn’t said
much since we found her. Maybe she’s in shock.

“So what’s the plan?” Joshua asks.

“Angus is gonna go back and check out
the huntin’ gear. They don’t carry much, but it’s worth a shot,” Axl says. “I’m
gonna get a cart and fill it up with food. The bread’s gonna go bad soon, I
wanna take advantage of it while we can.”

“I’ll go with Joshua,” I say. “I wanted
to get some things for Emily anyway.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Angus says.

“You two stay together, and keep your
eyes open. Never know when you’re gonna run into another crazy person like
before.” Axl opens the door and jumps out.

We follow suit and head into Walmart. I
carry Emily. She clings tightly to me, laying her head on my shoulder and
crushing me in her grip. She’s heavy, though. There’s no way I’ll be able to
carry her through the whole store, so I grab a cart and put her in it.

Joshua and I head over to the pharmacy
area without saying anything to the brothers. As soon as we’re away from them I
say, “Thanks for agreeing to come with me. I knew Angus wouldn’t be a fan of
the idea.”

“That’s because it’s stupid,” Joshua
says. I start to argue, but he holds his hand up to stop me. “I agree we
shouldn’t abandon them. I wouldn’t want to be alone either. But going into the
city is a bad idea. We should have chosen a different place to meet.”

I bite back the urge to tell him to go screw
himself and walk for a few seconds in silence. It doesn’t take long for me to
acknowledge he’s right, though. Somewhere else would have been better.

“You’re right,” I finally say with a
sigh. “I just didn’t have time to really plan. I was trying to set it up before
Dumb or Dumber got wind of what we were planning.”

Joshua gives me a wry smile. “It would
have been nice to have a discussion about it, but we all know how that would
have turned out.” He exhales and runs his hand through his hair. “Like these
guys or not, I think being with them is our best bet of surviving until all
this gets sorted out.
If
it gets sorted out, that is.”

“You’re telling me.”

We get to the pharmacy and Joshua heads
back to dig through the drugs. There’s something I want to look for, plus I
don’t want to wander around the store alone, so I get Emily out and carry her
behind the counter with me. It’s dark back here. The emergency lights aren’t
quite enough to make it possible to read the labels on the bottles, so I dig a
flashlight out of my purse and search the counters.

“What are you looking for?” I ask him.

“Ampicillin, Keflex, Zithromax. Any
antibiotic, really. I also wanted to grab some painkillers in case we had an
issue, although I think we should keep that between us. I have a strange
feeling Angus would think they were for recreational use.”

I snort. “Nothing would surprise me.”

“Are you looking for something?”

I bite my lip and try to decide what to
tell him. He is a doctor, and I guess he’s
my
doctor now since I don’t
have any other options. “Nuvaring.”

Joshua steps over to where I’m standing.
He tilts his head to the side and his eyes narrow on my face. “You planning a
romance?”

My cheeks get hot, but I roll my eyes
and try to play it off. No way to do I want him to think Axl has anything to do
with this, because he doesn’t. Not even a little. “Yeah, right.”

“I saw how cozy you and Axl were acting
when you were sick.”

Joshua may have been on to something
yesterday, but I’m not feeling very cuddly after Axl’s betrayal. “Yeah, let me
know where that guy disappeared to.”

“His moods are pretty much all over the
place, aren’t they?”

“No. I know exactly where his moods are.
When Angus is around he’s an ass, when Angus is gone he’s actually decides to
be a decent person.”

Joshua shakes his head. “Whatever.
Nuvaring isn’t going to work for you. It has to be refrigerated.”

“Dammit.” He’s right. It’s been a few
years since I was on it and I’d forgotten that part. “I remembered you could
use one after the other and not have a period. I thought it would be
convenient. You know, no running water, being on the road, not knowing where
we’re going to end up.”

“Okay.” Joshua walks away and I grab
Emily so I can follow him. “This one may work then. You can take it every day
and have no periods at all, at least until you run out of pills. They only have
five packs here.”

“Thanks.” That’s one worry out of a
thousand off my mind, at least.

“Remember, it’s not effective as birth
control for thirty days…” He raises his eyebrows and shrugs.

“Please.” I shove them in my purse. He
has to be joking. Sure, I can’t deny I’m drawn to Axl when he’s being sweet,
but that doesn’t happen very often. And Angus seems pretty determined to make
sure Axl and I do not end up together.

We continue to raid the pharmacy. Joshua
has our cart almost full, and he gets everything from antibiotics to Ace
bandages and even some crutches. I keep joking that he’s opening his own
clinic, but he just says he wants to be prepared.

Axl and Angus show up before long, both
with their own carts full to the top.

“What the hell are you two doin’ over
here?” Angus growls.

“Getting supplies,” Joshua says without
even glancing his way.

“What’s takin’ so long?” Axl’s voice is
just as tense and annoyed as his brother’s.

I give him a cold look, but he just
returns it. He doesn’t even bat an eye. Jerk.

“It takes a bit longer sorting through
drugs than it does grabbing some food off the shelves,” Joshua says. “You want
to do this?”

Neither one of the brothers says a
thing, and Joshua goes back to the pharmacy. I’m actually impressed with how
he’s handling himself. He seems to have pulled his act together. I guess Axl’s
little lecture helped.

I lean against the counter. Emily is
asleep in my arms and she’s getting heavy.

Angus walks over to a shelf and grabs a
couple boxes. He tosses them into his cart with a smug look on his face. I
glance down and roll my eyes. Condoms.

“We might need to repopulate the Earth,”
he says, grinning like a chimpanzee.

“Yeah, and condoms are the way to go.”

Axl actually cracks a smile, but Angus
just glares.

“All done,” Joshua announces, tossing a
few more things into the cart. “Let’s head out.”

* * *

The drive to San Francisco is a quiet
one. I sit in the passenger seat next to Axl, looking behind me every couple
minutes to make sure Emily is okay. Angus snores his head off in the third row,
and Joshua leans up against the wall next to the booster seat, not snoring but
out cold.

“She seems to be takin’ all this pretty
well,” Axl says.

“I don’t think reality has hit her quite
yet.”

“Ain’t sure it has for any of us,” he
mutters.

“True, but hopefully we’re all better
equipped to deal with it than a four-year-old. Although, I’ve had my doubts
about Joshua a couple of times. Not sure if he’s really up for this
end-of-the-world shit.”

“Yeah, the Doc is havin’ a rough time.”
He looks at me and clears his throat. “You can stop being pissed. I didn’t take
Angus’s side just for the fun. I think this idea is dumb as shit.”

I shrug and look away. I have no
interest in discussing this with him, I agree but I also don’t agree. We should
do whatever it takes to make sure Trey and Parvarti are okay; it’s the right
thing to do.

We only see one other car driving on the
road, and it’s headed in the opposite direction. Other than that we pass a few
abandoned vehicles, but no people. When we reach the tollbooths just outside
the city, they’re deserted and the gates are down. Axl doesn’t hesitate. He
drives right through, breaking the wooden board in half and waking up everyone
else in the car.

“What the hell?” Angus growls from the
back.

Emily whimpers. Joshua starts to comfort
her. I turn around and join in, whispering soothing words and telling her it’s
okay.

“Mommy.” Her eyes are barely open. I’m
not sure if she’s dreaming, but her cries make my heart ache. I can’t think of
a single thing to say that will make her feel better.