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

Mikayla bustles over to where she hid the last of the frittata. “You heard right.”

“I tried to lose him, but he followed me like a lost puppy once he heard,” Ben says. He takes off his winter hat to reveal a curly mop of brown hair. Mikayla tousles it and gives him a kiss.

Dan puckers his lips at Mikayla. She grins, hands him a plate and says, “Not gonna happen.”

“Worth a shot,” he says to Ben, who doesn’t look all that amused. Ben’s a very nice person, but he’s unbelievably serious.

Dan inhales his frittata by the sink while Barnaby pants beneath his plate with hungry eyes. Dan’s a carpenter and good-looking in a scruffy, dirty-blond, young-weathered-thirty-something kind of way. He’s never hurting for company, and he’s an incorrigible flirt; he puts Ana to shame.

“Here you go,” he says to Barnaby and drops a bite of frittata on the wood floor. Barnaby scrambles to his feet and wolfs it down.

“Don’t let Mikayla see you do that with real eggs,” I say. “She’ll kill you.”

“I couldn’t resist. Look at that face.”

Barnaby’s tongue lolls out of the side of his mouth while he shifts his gaze between me and Dan. This dog eats anything, barks at everything and manages to get himself filthier than I thought possible. He doesn’t know a single trick.

“That is the dumbest dog ever,” I say, and give him a scratch. I love Barn, but it’s true. “It’s a good thing he’s cute.”

“Well, he’s not fixed. So, if we find a girl who’s not, maybe we’ll get puppies.”

Barnaby horks up something he’s scavenged, and what looks like crumpled paper hits the floor in a pool of dog drool and frittata. I look at Dan. “That’s the future of domesticated dogs? We should just cut our losses and move on.”

Dan laughs and wipes it up with his cloth napkin, which he then throws into the laundry bin. “You’re going on the run with us later, right?”

“Yeah. You’re going? You just got off guard. Don’t you need any sleep?”

He drops his plate in the sink and pats his stomach. “I’m going to get a couple hours right now. I’ll be good to go.”

“Well, that’s dedication.” I’m decent at killing zombies, and one of the few who are willing to do it, but I don’t like it.

He winks. “Nah, I heard you were going and didn’t want to miss out.”

“Must you bother
me
?” I ask. “Aren’t there tons of other girls you could flirt with on this fine morning?”

“Yes,” he says, “but they don’t blush like you do. I can’t help myself.”

I threaten to squirt him with the water nozzle and say, “Go to sleep, you. I’ve got people to feed without you bugging me all morning.”

He salutes me and marches out the door. I leave to retrieve the next round of never-ending dishes. These people can eat.

There are clothes under my clothes, but it’s still freezing on the back of the snowmobile. I grip Adrian’s waist and bury my face in his back to keep out of the wind. We come to a stop fifteen miles from the farm, where a group of Lexers was spotted on one of Dwayne’s flights in the plane.

Dan checks his map and points into the trees. “Right down there.”

Ana shakes out her short, chestnut hair before pulling her cleaver off her shoulder. The cleaver-shaped blade on one end of the shaft is perfect for decapitation, and the dull spike on the other end slides into an eye socket or the soft spot right below the skull. It’s still our favorite weapon, although my Ka-Bar knife is a close second. And my revolver. I love my Smith and Wesson.

“C’mon!” Ana says, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

She heads down the incline without waiting for a reply. Dan races her down the snow-covered slope with his snowmobile partner, Toby, following behind. I take off my mittens and pull on the leather elbow-length gloves that I use to deal with Lexers.

“Go ahead,” I say to Adrian. “I have to get out the rubber gloves and stuff.” He nods and joins the others.

“Why are we here again?” Peter asks from behind me.

He leans against his snowmobile, eyes as dark as his black hat. I finish pulling latex gloves over my leather ones and grab my cleaver.

“To preserve the human race,” I say, only half joking.

“No, I meant
we
as in you and me. We hate this.” He blows into his hands before pulling on his own gloves.

“Well, I certainly don’t love it.” I point to Ana. “Not like your other half. But I think she does it solely for the outfit.”

Peter sniffs in amusement. Ana wears black leather gloves and a black leather jacket. They match the black leather pants she’s tucked into tall, fur-lined boots. She’s not tall, but she’s strong and gorgeous with her small features and dark eyes. We watch as she brings her cleaver forward in a swift, effortless and deadly motion.

“We do it because it needs to be done,” I continue. “I’m not going to sit at the farm, worrying about whether or not people come back, are you?”

There may be nothing worse than not knowing what’s happened to someone you love. This new world is full of stories, of lives, with no ending. People have survived, died, turned—there’s no way to know. My brother, Eric, was supposed to meet us at my parents’ house last summer. He never showed. Everyone has a story like that these days, and I couldn’t bear to have another.

“I know,” Peter says. He frowns in Ana’s direction. “They’re going to thaw soon. You know she’s going to want to be out here all the time.”

Ana is brave to the point of stupidity. Last fall she took on six Lexers by herself. She’s used herself as bait. And, in true Ana fashion, she always escapes unscathed, so she doesn’t see what the problem is.

“We’ll be there, too,” I say. “I’ll keep her under control.”

“You may be the only person who can.”

Ana and I make a good team because we can usually anticipate what the other’s planning. Not only do we keep each other safe, but I can usually deter her from doing asinine things like fighting six Lexers who could be ignored. Unlike her, I don’t have a death wish. She listens to me. Occasionally.

“I’ll do my best. Now, come on, or we’ll be accused of shirking our duties.”

Peter drapes his arm across my shoulders while we walk. It’s not awkward, even with our past. In the past year he’s become one of my closest friends. I can tell him anything, the way I can with Penny and Nelly. Sometimes I tell him more; the Peter who never discussed anything profound is practically a philosopher now.

“Thanks, Cassandra.”

“Welcome, Petey.”

He squeezes my shoulder. Peter’s the only person left in the world who calls me Cassandra, but I’m the only person who has ever called him Petey.

We come face to face with over a hundred frozen and thawing zombies at the base of the hill. Some of the half-thawed ones are dead—really, finally dead. A few are thawed enough to gurgle and twitch, but the below-freezing nights seem to have kept their cores frozen. Dead or undead, they all get a spike in the eye or a knife in the head. I move to where one slumps against a tree like he’s taking a rest on a nature walk. Something black and fuzzy grows on the gray skin of his cheek. “Hey, look at this,” I call out.

Everyone peers at the mossy growth. Adrian scrapes off a patch with his knife, revealing spongy flesh beneath. I hand him a latex glove. “Put some of it in this.”

At the sound of my voice the Lexer’s eyes shift in their sockets. It sees all the potential food and an urgent sound rises from its lipless mouth.

“Oh, shut up,” Ana says. She uses her spike to make a hole in his skull and flashes me perfect white teeth, while Peter flashes me a look that reiterates his concern.

I follow Adrian to where a dozen of them stood before they succumbed to the cold and punch my spike into an eye socket. The crunching sound used to be disturbing. I’m used to it now, which is disturbing in a different way. Killing things has become just another day at the office. I try not to think about who they once were—like Eric.

“Here’s more of that moss,” Adrian says. He crouches for a closer look at a bloated, cracked body half-covered with a sweater of black fuzz. “Maybe this is some kind of decay, finally.”

“Maybe something’s finally going to eat
them
,” I say. “Maybe something’s evolving along with the infection.”

“I hope so.” Adrian looks up, knife in hand and eyes hopeful. “Nothing’s ever grown on them before. It’s got to mean something.”

We spin at Toby’s yell of surprise and race to where a group of fifteen Lexers lay in the snow. Toby had been stepping his way through the bodies, spike in hand, but now he’s on the ground kicking at one that’s managed to sink its mouth into the cloth above his boot. Adrian slams his knife into the base of its skull and pulls Toby to safety.

Toby clutches his calf, and when he finally releases his hands, we gasp at the rip in his cargo pants. He leans back on his elbows and screws his eyes shut. “Did it break the skin? Just shoot me in the head if it did, man. I don’t want to know it’s coming.”

“There’s no blood on your pants.” I kneel down and pull my knife off my belt as the others gather round, their faces pale. “I can’t see the skin. I have to cut it wider.”

Toby nods, eyes still closed. He’s a lot calmer than I would be, although he’s trembling so badly that I have to steady his leg when I slice the cloth. The marks are deep and some are more red than pink, but there’s no opening, no blood. I inspect carefully, and Ana crouches for a second opinion. Even one tiny break in the skin might mean certain death.

“You’re okay,” I say in a rush. I don’t know what I would’ve said had he not been, and I’m relieved I still don’t. “It didn’t break the skin. But don’t move. Let’s wash off any virus in case it does open up.”

Everyone sighs in relief. Toby drops his head to the snow and stares up at the trees. “Holy fucking shit. Holy shit. Douse me in bleach, man, I don’t care.”

I wipe it down with cleaner and ointment while the others finish off the remaining bodies. They’re careful in case more Lexers are thawed through, but there’s only the one which Toby had the misfortune of stepping past with his guard down.

“You are officially alive,” I tell Toby when I’m done. “So live it up.”

He gives me a quick patchouli-scented hug. “You bet your ass I will. Jeff’s gonna be glad he left the tent tonight.”

I can still smell the bodies when we get back to the farm. It sticks on your clothes and in your sinuses. The frozen Lexers don’t splatter the way thawed ones can, but they still stink. We park the snow machines quietly, well aware of how close a call that was. Toby dashes off to begin his celebration of life, quite possibly the least solemn of us all. Now that the Lexers are thawing, it’s only a matter of time until the pods come. They’ll find us eventually. They may not communicate, but they follow each other looking for food. Looking for us.

I haven’t forgotten what the ever-present terror of millions of zombies feels like, but it’s had a chance to fade since the autumn. The winter gave us time to heal from shell-shocked survivors back into the people we once were, barring the visible and invisible scars we all carry. We’ve grown used to not worrying. The rustle of the trees really has been the wind, every snap of a branch heavy snow or ice. We haven’t become complacent, but it’s time to get back into that old mentality—the world has never been more of an eat-or-be-eaten place than it is now.

Adrian kisses me and heads out to whatever’s on his to-do list. Ana and I wash our blades in bleach water, dip our boots in the foot bath and mist each other with a virus-killing spray. I’m not the neatest person, much to Adrian’s chagrin, but when it comes to the virus, I’m all for sterility.

“Let’s go find my sister and see if she’s knocked up,” Ana says when the others are gone.

“That’s my first stop,” I say. “I can’t believe she might be pregnant.”

“I think she is. I would die if it were me. Imagine?”

Ana gives a dramatic shiver as we leave the shed. I bring her to a halt by her arm. “Ana, don’t say that to Penny. Believe me, you won’t be telling her anything she doesn’t already know.”

“Cass, I wouldn’t say that!”

I stare at her until she drops the innocent, doe-eyed expression. “I’ll only say how happy I am,” Ana says. “Promise. I am happy, you know. I’ve always wanted a niece to spoil. It’s a girl, I know it.”

Cows low from the barns on our left, and the goats rest their front legs on the barnyard fence, looking for a handout. We turn right and weave through the large outfitter tents to the grouping of small cabins, where Ana and Peter share a cabin with Penny and James.

“I’m happy for her, too,” I say. I don’t tell Ana I agree with her on the other stuff. Like I said, we all know.

We burst into the cabin’s tiny main room. The golden glow of the wood walls, the woodstove and the shelves stocked with books make the room cozy. Penny looks up from the loveseat that sits under my painting of our old neighborhood in Brooklyn. I try to imagine what it must look like now and wonder if Penny and Ana’s mother, Maria, is still alive. She would love to be a grandma.

Ana raises her hands and shouts, “Well?”

Penny holds up the little plastic stick. “Two lines. Positive.”

Ana and I shriek. After I’ve hugged Penny, I notice James staring into the distance, light brown hair tucked behind his ears and thin face paler than usual. James is nothing if not pragmatic, and I know his mind is traveling down some seriously dark baby-zombie roads right now.

“We’re still trying to wrap our heads around it,” James says when I congratulate him. “But it’s good.”

“It’s great,” I say with what I hope sounds like absolute confidence. “It’s going to be fine.”

He rubs at his forehead before he nods. We both know I could be wrong, but we have to take pleasure in these moments that could otherwise be ruined by what’s outside the fences. If we don’t, we might as well give up. Penny’s face is soft and buoyant, and James reaches for her hand, mirroring her expression. My resolve not to have a baby weakens a tiny bit, but I shore it up with the image of the frozen Lexers today.

I make my way to the farmhouse to change before dinner, planting my feet carefully in the muck at the lowest part of the farm. Today might herald the start of mud season, that time of boot-sucking bogs and dirty floors. I extend my arms to keep from falling when my leg slides out from under me. I should’ve stuck to the graveled path.