Please Remain Calm (8 page)

“Those will probably fit.”

I rub my eyes, only aggravating the left one a little and I realize I can see out of it. I turn my head. Ainsley’s not there, so she must be with Jess. I pull on the shirt and jeans. They’re a little loose, but they’re better than the stale, bloodstained clothes I’ve been wearing. They aren’t Jess’s, though, wouldn’t even begin to fit him and I can’t shake the feeling if I knew whose they were, I wouldn’t want to wear them.

I’m taking my time, getting ready to face him, when I hear the tinkling of the bells and then I can’t get outside fast enough. It’s only Jess taking down the trip wires. I’m an idiot. He nods to where Ainsley’s sitting on a blanket, getting cold cereal all down her front. There’s some jerky laid out for me, and next to it, a small selection of first-aid stuff.

“Noticed you limping yesterday,” he says. “Take care of it and I’ll get the tent down.”

I wonder where he’s put Lisa. Not her body—I know where that is. But where he’s put his wife, where he’s tucked her away so he can find the will to do something as simple as feed Ainsley breakfast or take a tent down. I wonder if all hearts are made with the same pockets for fear and pain and sadness. They must not be, or if they are, maybe we all don’t know how to use them. Because otherwise so many of our stories would have ended differently.

Soon, everything’s ready to go. The walking’s easier now that I’ve looked after my heels, go figure. Jess holds Ainsley’s hand, uses the other to carry his gun. He keeps tapping the trigger and then, after a couple of miles, glances at me and says, “I’ve got a map. When we stop, I’m going to show you where I’m headed.”

“Okay,” I say.

“It’s a cabin. It was over a decade in the making. Dead ain’t going to get through it. Reinforced doors and windows. There’s a safe room and a storage room with—well, we got close to five years’ worth of canned and dehydrated and freeze-dried food there, not accounting for any spoilage that might’ve happened since we last did inventory. Medical supplies. It was built to be self-sustaining too. We’ve been working our way to it for the last four weeks. It’s closer to us than you know.”

My stomach turns. “Where will you be?”

“Hopefully there with you.”

“What about Rayford?”

“Rayford is bullshit,” he says. “Every safe haven I’ve seen from Milhaven to here has fallen. I’m giving you the goddamn golden ticket, Rhys. Don’t be too stupid to take it.”

“What’s the catch?”

“If something happens to me, you make sure Ainsley gets there too.”

Jesus. I think I miss Lisa more than all of them now. I stare at the back of Ainsley’s head, her curls, and try to imagine being responsible for her. Just her and me, out here, trying to get through the woods to the cabin and then after that, what? I’ve been with these people for less than five days and I’m looking at possible guardianship of a four-year-old and everything inside me is telling me to drop my pack and run. Everything. But then I see Jess’s face, and it’s so desperate and broken, I can’t. This guy pulled me out of the river. Saved my life.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I say.

He cracks a small smile. “Well, it wasn’t going to before you said that.” And then the smile disappears. “If you have to, you’ll do it. You saved her once and she trusts you. I can tell. You’ll do it.”

“Yeah,” I say. Christ. “I’ll do it.”

But every step forward is me thinking how I can take every step back. We walk until the trees start to thin and that makes me uneasy. I can see the river to the left of us and to the right, the ground rises and seems to flatten out.

“That a road?” I ask.

“Yeah. Old road. Not maintained,” Jess says. “But that doesn’t mean no one’s been using it or died on it. Riverside’s close enough and that’s why we’re seeing more infected now. That’s why we got to be careful.”

Another mile, and another. Sweat breaks out all over my body. I shrug the pack farther up my aching shoulders. Ainsley starts lagging and Jess doesn’t seem to notice, but I’m afraid to ask for a break because there’s an energy coming off him that I understand and I don’t want to get in the way of. He’s found some kind of inner balance to keep him moving forward. I bet all his thoughts are lined up neat, one right after the other—get his kid to safety, get there alive—and any interruption could ruin him. If that happens, I won’t know how to pick up the pieces.

And then Jess says, “Fuck,” and Lisa’s not there to tell him to watch his mouth.

We stop. There’s an RV crumpled against two trees. The front is smashed, must’ve hit them hard. There’s only a crack in the windshield, though. There are blood streaks on the side of its tan exterior, like someone was hurt and dragged themselves away. The blood stops at the entry door, which hangs open and still, before starting up again. I glimpse a bit of the interior from here.

“Check it out.” Jess draws his gun. “See if there’s anything worth scavenging. If it’s empty, we could spend the night here.”

We circle the RV slowly and it and the surrounding area seem safe, for now. No signs of trouble. We’re just about to explore the inside when Ainsley frantically tugs on her father’s hand. She’s got to go to the bathroom. He nods at her.

“Take a look inside,” he tells me.

I face the entry, which is too narrow for me to get through with the pack. I set it down on the ground and get my knife out but I don’t think we’ll find anything. Any infected would’ve made themselves known by now. I take the steps in and a gunshot explodes in my ears. The smell of it in the air, the warmth at my neck, tells me it was close, that it’s not Jess, it’s someone inside. The bullet tears through the driver’s seat just next to me. I cover my face with my hands.

“
Don’t shoot!
I’m not infected!”

“Rhys?”

My heart stops. The voice is so familiar and right that I can’t believe it. I’m afraid to believe it, I’ve wanted it so bad.

I lower my hands.

“Rhys,” she says again.

I don’t understand.

The people I want don’t come back. But past the smell of gunpowder is the smell of sweat and blood, another person. The blinds are drawn and the light in here is so weak, but I would know her silhouette anywhere. I memorized it.

She’s here and every moment without her was a lie.

“Rhys?” Jess shouts. “
Rhys?
”

“It’s okay! I’m okay—it’s okay.”

I stumble over everything that got strewn on the floor when the RV crashed. I trip over cups and forks and clothes and magazines, a vase and its scattered dried-out, disintegrating flowers. She’s at the back of the RV, in the bedroom. She’s on the floor at the foot of the bed, propped up against it. Her face is pale, the bags under her eyes as dark and purple as bruises, or maybe they are bruises. There’s a gash on her forehead, the blood of it fresh and all over and I have to force the next question through my teeth, asking it so quietly no one else will hear.

“Are you bitten?”

She blinks, several times, like she can’t believe any of this, either, and then she shakes her head. Her lips are cracked and bloody.

“No,” she says faintly.

“What happened to you?”

The blood from her forehead stains the side of her face, trails down her neck. It’s soaked into the collar of her shirt. Her legs are sprawled out awkwardly in front of her and the knees of her pants are torn up, and her skin there is crusted with blood. One arm is curled against her stomach and that hand holds the gun she fired at me. Her other arm hangs at her side and—Jesus, it’s dislocated. I recognize that weird separation happening under the skin because it’s the same shoulder she dislocated at the school. She’s dirty, scratched up, and has a few cuts. Jess storms into the RV, I hear him behind me. I bring my hands to her face and it feels good to touch her. Her pupils are blown. One bigger than the other. That’s a concussion. She’s panting, a little, in pain.

“I looked for you,” she manages.

“Me too.” I press my fingers into her skin because I can’t hug her because she’s hurt but all I want to do is put my arms around her. “I looked for you too. God, how’d you get here? Did you see any infected? What happened?”

She frowns, swallows, and it’s all probably too much to throw at her at once. “There weren’t infected at first … but then there were.” Her eyes drift up to Jess, but she doesn’t ask. She turns back to me, losing focus. “I found a hunting—there was a hunting tree stand, it was old, but I got up there and I tried to wait them out, but—”

Her eyes drift shut. I bring my hand to her shoulder and squeeze. It takes her a long minute to open them, like now that she’s around people she can finally turn off. “Hey. Stay with me. But what? What happened after the tree stand?”

“It was rotting and I fell,” she says. “And then I just ran.”

I take the gun out of her hand and tuck it into the back of my jeans and turn to Jess. Ainsley hides behind him. He stares down at the two of us in wonder.

“Sloane,” he says, before I can tell him.

***

“We’re going to have to set that shoulder,” Jess tells her after I’ve hastily introduced them and he’s looked her over. “That’s going to be goddamn unpleasant.” He turns to me. “I can’t give her anything for the pain until we know how bad the concussion is.”

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, meeting my eyes and I just stand there, running my hands through my hair and smiling like an idiot, which feels like asking for it, but I can’t stop. I watch Jess pinch the top of her hand. As soon as he lets go of her skin, it jumps back into place.

“You’re not dehydrated,” he says. “What’ve you been drinking?”

“River water.”

“Well. Not the best thing you could’ve done. Miracle you’re not sick. If you do get sick, I’ve got something I can give you. Can you stand?”

“Yeah.”

She struggles to her feet one-handed and I get stupid and try to help her, but I end up grabbing the wrong parts of her to do it. She yelps and her knees buckle, but between me and Jess, we get her upright. We navigate her through the narrow space, passing a wide-eyed Ainsley, who sits on her knees on the pullout sofa.

Outside, Sloane lays on the ground. Jess digs some of his clothes out of his pack and bundles them up, tucking them into Sloane’s armpit. Cary did it a different way, when we had to do this at the school. Jess sits on the ground next to her, grabs her arm with both hands, and puts his foot against the clothes. He starts to pull her arm toward him. The pain of it startles Sloane, makes her half-rise, her body desperate to get away from this, so they have to reposition and start again. The second time, she clenches her teeth and moans. Sweat dots her forehead and tears leak out of her eyes and then her shoulder
pops
back into place.

Jess pats her face and says, “Good girl …”

He ends up making a sling for her out of a belt, of all things. He hangs it around her neck, makes a figure eight, and puts her wrist through the bottom loop. By then, she’s exhausted, her eyes not tracking anything, but staying stubbornly open.

“Okay, let’s get you up,” Jess says. “You can make use of that bed in there …”

“But—Rayford. We have to—Rhys?”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “We’re okay.”

We get her up. Her face goes a scary shade of white and her eyes roll back. Jess seems to anticipate it, gets her in his arms. Carries her with the ease I imagine he must’ve carried me from the river. I follow him in. He maneuvers his way back and eases Sloane down on the bed. She stirs a little, but curls into the mattress. No one refuses that kind of comfort, not in these kinds of times. There’s a privacy curtain, and he pulls it closed, ushering me out even though what I want to do is be with her, next to her. I want to put my hands on her face again. I want to be sure she’s really there.

Jess sits down on the couch and pulls Ainsley toward him. He looks at me and says, softly, “You lucky son of a bitch.”

Later, I find Jess outside, staring into the woods. It’s chilly. I cross my arms.

“She’s going to be down a couple days,” he tells me. “If she can get moving sooner, then we’ll do that, but for now, she needs rest and food.”

“Yeah, she does,” I say.

“I set the trips. I think we should all stay inside, though, while we’re here. Lay low.” He looks like he’s tracking something in the dark. I squint, but I don’t see anything.

“What is it?”

After a long moment, he turns to me.

“Nothing.”

I look at him and I know how denied he must feel of his own happy ending and I don’t think he hates me all the way for mine, but he must a little.

“Stop staring,” he says.

I flush. “Sorry.”

“So you got a gun now. If she lets you have it.”

“You want the knife back?”

“Keep it. Why don’t you go on in, check on Ainsley? I’ll be there in a little bit.” Then he lies, or at least I think he does. “I just want to be sure it’s safe.”

“Okay.” I hesitate. “Hey, I don’t think I said it—thanks for pulling me out of the river.”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Guess it had to happen.”

I go back inside. Ainsley is still curled up on the couch, but she’s occupied with a coloring book and a pack of crayons we found under the driver’s seat. She was happy about it, but it was one of those sick little discoveries for the rest of us. There were kids here, wherever they are now. Ainsley looks at me. She doesn’t say anything, and it’s so wrong, the absence of questions, of wanting her mother out loud. I tap the page of the coloring book, of the Disney princess’s hair she’s decided to turn blue.

“That’s cool,” I tell her.

On the counter next to the sink, there’s a photo. An eight-by-six in a cheap plastic frame of some house. A home. A nice little bungalow. The sky above it is overcast and moody, some kind of storm on the way. There’s nothing ominous about it, but it’s awful in its nostalgia. I don’t know the place, but I know the time. Before.

After a while, Jess comes in and gets the food ready and I have to wake Sloane for that because she’s got to be starving. She’s half-gone and I have to feed her and I’m glad she’s kind of out of it because I don’t think she could stand it otherwise.