Until the End of the World (Book 1) (43 page)

I fly out of the cabin and stand at the top of the hill. My chest heaves. I feel like I’m drowning. I know that if I give into this sadness, I’ll never make it back, so I focus on my anger. I blow on that coal of rage and fan it into flames. I hear footsteps behind me and pray it’s not John. I’ve no space for apologies right now. But it’s Ana, with her pack and weapons. Her face is set and serious.

“No one else is dying,” she says. Her eyes are hard and her lips thin into a grim line. “Not if we can help it. Let’s go.”

We start down the dirt road to the trail. Nelly’s bike is way too tall, but I manage the bumpy, rough miles to town. I don’t even think about falling and don’t close my eyes once.

We find a phone book at a gas station on the outskirts of town that lists an urgent care. A tourist map says it’s only a half mile away. Ana and I sit on the counter and eat Snickers bars that have melted and hardened and re-melted in the heat, but they’re still tasty.

Ana wears black pants, black leather hiking boots and a black tank top. With her cleaver and her gloves she looks like some sort of hiking ninja. I tell her this and she smiles.

“Thanks for coming with me,” I say.

“And miss this?” She laughs, but her smile fades quickly. “We have to try something. If we could have helped—”

She stares out the window at the gas pumps, blinking rapidly. I don’t know how many times I’ve replayed those moments in my head, trying to think of something else we could have done.

I jump off the counter and face her. “I’m so sorry, Ana. It’s—”

“It’s stupid. I think maybe I loved him. I think he liked me a lot.”

“No,” I say. “He loved you.” I’m not sure if it’ll make it worse, but she should know. “I saw him look at you. He loved you, Ana. Believe that, okay?”

I put my hand on her knee so she’ll look at me and see that I’m telling the truth. She nods and wipes her tears away.

“Okay. Thanks, Cass.” She jumps off the counter and changes the subject, so she doesn’t cry again. “Ready?”

“Ready, ninja-girl.”

The road into town is full of abandoned cars and littered with empty bottles, plastic bags and cans, the detritus of fleeing humans. The streets are lined with beautiful old houses under an even older canopy of trees. It seems like any minute a Fourth of July parade might come marching past. It’s a storybook street, except for the battered screen doors ripped from their hinges and the windows with jagged black holes. Rotted bodies lie on overgrown lawns, so fully consumed by Lexers that they didn’t turn. The lucky ones.

We’re careful when we park our bikes at Green Mountain Urgent Care, since a lot of sick people went to the hospital at the end. And some might still be there, buzzing against the windows and doors like trapped houseflies.

We step into the stale air and gag at the smell. Beyond the intake desk is a hallway lined with doors. Two are closed and something bumps around in them.

“Thank God they’re too stupid to open a door,” Ana whispers. “Can you imagine if they were smart, too?”

I shudder. We’d have been dead long ago. We creep past and pause when we hear a whispery slithering sound, but nothing rounds the corner at the nurses’ station ahead. Another closed door reads Pharmacy. Ana raises her cleaver as I pull out a pistol and fling it open. The room is empty, except for shelves of medicine bottles, and my legs grow weak with relief. I feared the room would be stripped bare.

We check the bottles by flashlight. I find the names of several antibiotics I’ve never heard of in a medication book on the counter and locate them on the shelves.

“Get some liquid ones,” Ana suggests. She shines her light on some tiny bottles and pockets them. “They might work faster.”

She stuffs a handful of needles in her bag before we step into the hall. Clipboards fall to the floor by the nurses’ station as three Lexers stumble toward us. They’re desiccated like mummies from the heat of being trapped inside for so long. The swishing sound of their stick legs rubbing together follows us as we rush out the door. We mount our bikes and watch them press against the glass with gnarled hands and gaping mouths.

“Fuck you, assholes,” Ana mutters. I know exactly how she feels.

We’re almost out of town when we run into a small pack gathered in the only open part of the street, between the abandoned cars. We can’t get past.

“We can take them,” Ana calls.

Our only other option is to find another way out, but we’re likely to run into an even larger group. Our bikes clatter to the ground, and we draw our cleavers from behind our backs, afraid guns will attract more.

We stand shoulder to shoulder and let them come to us. The first to reach me is a gray-haired woman wearing a skirt and silk blouse. Her glasses still hang around her neck on a gold chain, and her jaw bone is exposed. The tendons that connect it to her skull contract as she snaps her teeth together.

I am not getting killed by a fucking librarian
.

I ram the flat blade into her neck. Her head severs from her shoulders easily, a testament to John’s weapon-making skills. The next one, a young guy still in his tight biking outfit, separates from his head too. There’s no blood, just a sick splatter of gore. A growl escapes my lips. I hate them. It might not be their fault—they were just people once who wanted to live as badly as I do—but they’re making my life a living hell.

I flip my blade and back up to wait for the next two: teenage girls with dirty, sparkly t-shirts. Out of the corner of my eye I see Ana kick a short man to the ground and take the heads off two more before spinning her blade one-handed and stabbing the one on the ground through the eye.

The girls are close enough to each other that they could be whispering secrets in the school hallway. I puncture one of their eye sockets, then the other—two wet crunches in quick succession. Ana grunts as she shoves her blade home on the final Lexer and he drops to the pavement.

We stand with our cleavers at the ready, but nothing else surfaces. I walk to my bike and grab my water bottle. I’m out of breath from fear and exertion. Ana looks past me and raises her cleaver again. Her hair glimmers as she spins and sticks it under the chin of a teenage boy wearing a Nascar T-shirt, who has come out from behind a crashed minivan.

I huff my thanks and take a swig of warm water. “You really are a ninja,” I say. She’s hardly broken a sweat.

Ana laughs. “We make a good team.”

I’m amazed at how easily we dispatched them. Our practice has paid off.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I say, and we mount our bikes and move on.

My thighs burn with the uphill effort of the way back, but I ignore the pain. Every turn of the pedals brings me closer to Nelly, who may not have much time. A little voice whispers that he may already be out of time, but I ignore that too. The shadows are lengthening when we get back to the cabin, where a VW bus sits out front. Inside, James and Penny sit near Nelly, while Bits and John open a can of pilfered soup.

“We ran out of gas,” Penny explains after she hugs us. “We had to walk, but we finally found some old hippie’s house. That’s where we got the car and stuff.” She points to a pile of sleeping bags, lanterns and food. It’s a good haul, but she doesn’t look happy. “There was no medicine. We stopped at every house we could. The town was too infected. I’m so sorry, guys.”

“We got it,” Ana says. She slings off her bag. “We found some.”

“Any problems?” John asks.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle. Even the infected knew not to mess with Cassie today.”

I smile grimly and take up my post near Nelly. He looks worse. His wound is a deep purple, and it smells. That voice whispers that it smells just like the Lexers do, but I tell it to go to hell. His skin is dry; he’s sweated out every ounce of liquid. Ana empties out her bag, and I begin to crush some pills when she stops me.

She holds up a needle. “We should inject them.”

“I’m afraid it won’t help if we do it wrong.”

“I’ll do it,” she replies, her face determined. “I know how.”

She picks up a bottle and uncaps the needle. “Mama took me to the classes she taught when I was little. I watched the nurses learn to inject and draw blood.” She sticks the needle in and sucks up a syringe full of the clear medicine.

“Some of them fainted, but I was fascinated, even though I knew there was no way I’d ever be a nurse.” She squeezes the plunger to remove the air. “But I remember the steps: Find the vein.”

John clamps his hands around Nelly’s good arm until the veins are more prominent.

Ana nods. “Okay, just about at this angle, push it in.” Her hand is steady as she slips the needle in. A curl of Nelly’s blood swirls in the neck of the syringe. “Got it. Now inject.”

She pushes the plunger slowly. When she withdraws the needle, I press a wad of napkins onto the bead of blood. I hold Nelly’s hand and jump whenever a tremor passes through him. I keep my holster on because I know I’m grasping at straws. I have to be realistic.

John suggests we move Nelly into the other room so we don’t disturb him, but I know the real reason: if Nelly turns we’ll be able to stop him before he does much damage. I wonder how long it takes. Do you die first and then turn hours later, or is it instantaneous?

Everyone takes turns sitting with me and Nelly. We wipe his head with a cool cloth. Penny hands me a cup of soup, which I ignore after one bite. I stare at Nelly and will his chest to rise. Ana gives Nelly another dose of antibiotics and takes Bits to bed. Penny gives Nelly’s forehead a kiss and whispers something only he can hear. Then she kisses my head and leaves.

John lowers himself next to me. “I’ll take first watch of Nelly.”

“Wake me if—” I stop when he nods. “I just—I know it won’t really be him, but he deserves someone… there, you know?”

“I will, I promise.”

John lays a hand on my shoulder. He’s so kind that I remember to feel guilty. “I’m sorry about earlier, John. I wish I could have unshakable faith in something like you do.”

He shakes his head. “Oh, hon, this has tested my faith. But when I believe, when I trust in something bigger than me, I can handle whatever comes my way. That’s how I made it through when Caroline passed. Someone told me a long time ago that there are many paths to heaven. I believe that.”

“I can’t believe in any one thing that way.” Right now, though, I really wish I could.

“You don’t have to hold to any one belief. I don’t think God minds. What you did today? Risking your life for a friend? You can’t get much more Christian than that.

“ ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ John 15:13.” He means me and Ana, but I know we’re both thinking of Peter. “Lie down, hon. I’ve got it.”

I kiss him on the cheek and get in my sleeping bag. And before I close my eyes, I hedge my bets by apologizing to God, too. Just in case.

I wake with a start in murky light and see Nelly lying on his pallet. John sleeps upright against the wall at Nelly’s head. He’s fallen asleep on watch; he’s never done that. Nelly is pale, his face slack. I watch for the rise of his chest, but there’s nothing.

I stifle a sob and inch closer. I draw my pistol with a trembling hand. I can’t be sure how long he’s been dead, how long it will take him to turn, if he does. We’re going to have to take care of him.

It’s not really Nelly
.
It’s not really him.

I stick out my foot and gently prod him. An eye flutters. He’s turning. I hold out my gun, trigger finger ready.

It’s not him, not him, not him
.

“Cassie.” John’s voice is soft as he tries not to startle me. “Put down the gun. He’s okay. Nel’s okay.”

I hear what he’s saying, but it doesn’t compute. My fingers are tight on the pistol grip. “What?”

Then I see Nelly’s chest rise. It does it again. It’s barely moving, but he’s breathing. He opens his eyes and turns his absolutely alive, beautiful, pale face to me.

“God: zero. Cassie: one,” he croaks, and his cracked lips turn up.

I sit dumbfounded for a moment and then throw myself on him. I knock his arm when I kiss him on his hot, but no longer fiery, forehead, and he winces.

“Sorry, sorry!” I say. My grinning face is inches from his. I kiss his forehead again, just to be sure.

“Thirsty.”

I hold the bottle and he drinks greedily. Penny, Ana and Bits rush into the room. The sight of Nelly stops them like it did me, and then they move forward. James stands in the main doorway and grins.

“I saw a few hours after the second dose of antibiotics that he was getting better,” John says. “I knew he was okay when he said a few words and drank a little. James agreed when I woke him for watch. I didn’t want to wake you. You both needed sleep.”

Nelly lets me inspect his arm. It still looks terrible, but the red streaks are receding. I feel like I’ve won the lottery. It really worked.

“Thanks, Half-pint,” Nelly whispers. He looks like he might cry, and it’s enough to start me off.

“How’s that for an early birthday present?” I ask with a sob. “Kick-ass enough?” He gives a weak laugh. “Ana’s the one who shot you up. She did a great job.”

Nelly blows her a kiss and she blows one back. “But Cassie’s the reason we went to find medicine,” she says.

“I heard.” Nelly looks at me with shining eyes. They’re back to their normal shade of blue, and it makes me want to leap on him again, but I content myself with giving his hand a kiss. “I think everyone in a two mile radius heard. She doesn’t get pissed that often, but when she does, not even God is going to defy her.”

“Sorry about that,” I say, embarrassed.

I stretch out my other hand and pull Bits into my lap. She still has half the bag of Reese’s Pieces she’s been saving for Nelly crumpled in her hand.

I hug her tight. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Bits. I don’t know what came over me.”

She shakes her head like it’s okay.

The first rays of sunlight stream through the filthy window, illuminating dirt and cobwebs and stains I don’t even want to know about, but every decrepit bit of it looks beautiful. Nelly’s alive. He closes his eyes, but I don’t worry this time. I know he’ll open them again.