Positive (20 page)

 

CHAPTER 53

T
here's somebody back there,” Heather said, about half an hour later. I turned in my seat and saw her pointing through the back window. I could just see a tiny, dark dot on the road far behind us. Then the curving road took us around the side of a hill and the dot disappeared.

“That didn't look big enough to be a car,” I said. “It was probably just a deer. Or at worst, a zombie, wandering out into the road.”

Sometimes you say things just because you wish they were true. It doesn't mean you're foolish enough to believe them. Soon enough the dot came back. It was following us, and it was picking up speed. Before long I could see it was a man on a motorcycle.

He was dressed, head to foot, in tan leather.

“Fuck, no,” I said. I'd been raised not to use profanities often—­New York had taught me manners and basic courtesy. But if there'd ever been a right time, this was it. “We don't have time for this,” I said.

The girls were all silent. Mary was wiping Addison's brow for the thousandth time. Heather sat frozen in her seat, immobilized by tension. None of us had really had time to get afraid. Not yet.

Kylie kept her eyes on the road. Her mouth was a perfectly straight line on the front of her face. I wished I could draw composure from her. Siphon off some of her dispassion.

I couldn't, of course.

Especially not when she slammed on the brakes and we all went catapulting forward against our seat belts. I spun around, a fresh curse on my lips—­“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” was the one that came to mind. But then I saw why she had to slow down.

Up ahead of us the road was blocked by a line of motorcycles, parked lengthwise across the turnpike. We could have just plowed through it, run down anyone who got in our way. But the ­people on those motorcycles were all armed, and some of their guns were pointed right at us.

If it comes down to a shootout, so be it,
I thought, as the car rolled to a stop. “Heather,” I said, “get the guns out and—­”

But then a man dressed in camouflage pants and nothing else ran right up to the side of the SUV, to the driver's side. He reached through the broken window and pressed the barrel of a pistol against Kylie's temple. She didn't flinch.

“Don't think,” the man said. “Don't move.”

Behind us, Andy Waters in his tan leathers rolled to a stop, his feet dropping casually to the pavement so his motorcycle didn't fall over. He had a machine pistol in one hand. In the rearview mirror he winked at me.

“What do you want?” I asked. “You can have anything. But we have a sick girl here and we need to get her to help. Just leave us the SUV and enough fuel to get us to Ohio.”

“I'm not the one who makes deals,” the half-­naked man said. His head was shaved but poorly. Patches of stubble stuck up behind one ear, above his left eye. His body was lean and stringy, like he was a bundle of steel cables painted to look human. I had no doubt whatsoever he would shoot Kylie given the slightest provocation.

Up ahead, on the roadblock, a pile of furs on top of one of the motorcycles stirred and rose up as if it had been asleep until just now. It was Red Kate, of course. She had a new streak of dyed blue hair, but I recognized her instantly.

Without hurrying, without the slightest bit of interest, it seemed, she swung one leg over her motorcycle and dropped to the asphalt, then ambled toward the SUV, taking time to say something to one of her crew, something that made him laugh. She came to my side of the SUV, and for a second it looked as if she would walk right past me. As if she hadn't even seen me there. Then she stopped and a smile stretched across her face.

“Oh, Stones, you do know how to run,” she said. “It took us
days
to catch up with you. A bunch of times Andy or one of these other dipshits said you'd gotten away, and I should give up. Just . . . let you go. Shows what they know, huh?” She bent over and touched her toes, then stretched her arms high in the air. She had no guns on her, just the long, swordlike knife with the hand guard made of skulls. It dangled from her belt like a charm on a bracelet. She turned and looked at the SUV, let her eyes roam up and down its length. “You have got to take better care of your vehicle, Stones. That way it will take care of you. Hey there, Kylie,” she said, leaning on my window to wave across me.

“Kate,” I said. “Please—­”

“Quiet, Stones. I'm talking to Kylie. How you doin' in there, K? Looks like you've traded up. Tired of the old ball and chain, so you thought you'd cut yourself off a new piece of tail. I know how that goes. K, if you don't say anything, I'm going to think you're rude.”

Kylie hadn't even turned her head. She wasn't blinking. I couldn't even tell if she was breathing.

“Archie,” Kate said, looking at the half-­naked man on the other side of the SUV, “if she doesn't say something pleasant in three seconds, shoot her. One.”

“No!” I shouted. “You know how she is; she—­”

“Two,” Kate said. “Two and a half.”

“Hello, Red Kate. It is very nice to see you again,” Kylie said. Her eyes didn't move. Nothing about her moved. She merely said the words and went back to being a statue.

“Perfect,” Kate said. “That's pure survival instinct right there. You could learn a little something from her, Stones. But then you wouldn't be as much fun.”

I wanted to put my head in my hands. I wanted to scream in frustration. But at least I knew better than that. “How did you find us?” I asked.

“You told everybody where you were going. Only one good road to Akron.”

I gritted my teeth. Why had I been so foolish? I'd thought if ­people knew I was headed to Ohio, someone might help me get there. Instead I made the dumbest mistake you can make out in the wilderness: giving away your position.

“Once I heard about what happened to Adare, I knew you lot were going to need somebody else to look after you. A mama bear to replace your daddy bear,” Kate said. “Who'd have thought it, huh? Adare! Eaten by zombies! Sure.” She leaned in through the window, leaned in so close her lips were nearly touching my ear. “You must have got him from behind, right?” she whispered. “Shot him in the back? Maybe while he was asleep? I really want to know.”

I shook my head. “Kate, if you're really interested in our welfare—­”

“I
so
am,” she said.

“Addison's sick. She's dying. If we don't get her to the medical camp in the next few hours, she isn't going to make it. If you just let us go—­”

“We both know that isn't going to happen.”

I closed my eyes. “You can save her life, Kate. You can do some good for once. Be a hero. I know you're not just plain evil. I know you don't want Addison to die.” I knew nothing of the sort. But a man could hope.

Kate leaned back. Extricated herself from my window and took a step away from the SUV. “You looking to make a deal, Stones? We could do that.”

“Yes,” I said, gasping with relief. “Anything. Anything you want, anything we have. Just let us get Addison to help. That's all I want.”

“Well,” Kate said. “You know the answer to that riddle. You know what I want, don't you? The only thing I want?”

As soon as she said it, I did. I knew exactly.

I reached for the latch to open my door. I swung it open and put one foot down on the pavement. It was me. I was what Red Kate wanted. She didn't care at all about the girls. She didn't want our guns, our food, even our fuel. She just wanted me. I had cut her. I had run away from her. Those were things that could never be forgiven. She wanted to make sure I never got to Ohio.

There was no question in my mind, at least not in that particular second, that I would agree. I would give myself to her, and in exchange Addison would live. Heather and Mary and Kylie would make it to safety. I didn't hesitate.

Kylie had other ideas, though. Without moving any more than necessary, she reached over and grabbed my arm in a viselike grip.

 

CHAPTER 54

P
lease, Kylie,” I said. “Please let me do this. It's the only way. Addison is running out of time.”

“Finnegan,” Heather said. “What's going on? What are you doing?”

I turned to look at her. “The medical camp is in Akron,” I said. Red Kate had slipped up and let me have that piece of information for free. “Follow the road signs if you can or the atlas. Get there as fast as you can. Keep safe.”

“What are you talking about?” Heather demanded.

Kylie was still holding on to my arm.

“If you don't let me go,” I said, “they're going to shoot you. They'll shoot all of us. Let me go, Kylie.”

Still she held on. But only for a second longer. She didn't look at me as I climbed out of the SUV. She didn't look anywhere but the road ahead.

When I was clear of the vehicle, Red Kate nodded at one of her men. The roadblock of motorcycles was moved away, leaving a clear path for the SUV.

“Kylie,” I said, because I was sure this was the last time I would ever see her. “Kylie. We were a family. For a while. You and I were—­maybe not married. But we were together. And Addison was like our baby.”

It was all I could think to say to her.

She did not respond. Except to put the SUV into drive and to steer her way through the motorcycles. Heather and Mary screamed for me as they drove away, but all I could do was wave good-­bye.

The SUV shrank as it drove away from me, as it headed off for Ohio without me. Eventually it headed around a curve in the road and it was gone.

I closed my eyes so I could still see it. So I could see Kylie's face one last time. Not frozen like it had been. Smiling, the way I'd seen it ever so briefly, ever so infrequently. Lit up with emotion. I thought of how she'd looked, the night she first called us her family. I even thought of the holy rage, the nearly divine indignation and anger she'd shown when she killed Adare. I thought of the scar across her nose, and I thought of the color of her hair.

“Oh my God,” Red Kate said. “That was
adorable
.”

There wasn't enough fear in me to stop what happened next. I whirled on her, yanking the knife from my belt. The knife with the eagle engraving, the knife I'd taken from her.

A dozen guns were pointed at me. There was no way I would survive if I just attacked her. I wasn't sure I even cared, not just then. “Come on,” I said. “Draw yours. Do it! If you've got the guts!”

Red Kate held up one hand to tell her men not to shoot me. “Why?” she asked.

“Why? Why?” I stared at her with eyes wide. Spit flecked my lips. I couldn't seem to close my mouth, I was so keyed up. “Because that's what this was all about! You wanted to kill me. Now's your chance!”

“Kill you?” she asked. “Oh, Stones, no. No no no no no. No.” She cocked her head to one side. “Well, maybe. It remains to be seen. But not right
now
.” She snapped her fingers. One of her men walked her motorcycle over to her and she climbed on.

“Give me that knife,” she said.

I didn't move.

“Give me that knife or I'll cut your hand off.”

It burned to do what she said, even if there was no point disobeying. I handed over the knife. A scabbard was mounted on the side of her bike, and she slid the knife into it with a practiced motion.

“Now,” she said. She patted the seat of the motorcycle behind her, what I would learn was called the pillion. “You get to ride with me.”

Clumsily, not really knowing how, I climbed onto the back of her bike.

“Wrap your arms around me so you don't fall off,” she told me. And then she twisted the throttle.

 

CHAPTER 55

R
acing across Pennsylvania on the back of Red Kate's motorcycle was an exercise in abject terror. Kate could maneuver around potholes and debris in the road far better than any larger vehicle, so she kept up a constant speed of nearly fifty miles an hour—­faster than I had ever traveled before in my life. Added to the rush of the speed was the fact that I was so exposed, so utterly unprotected. There was no comforting barrier of metal on every side, no windshield to keep the air out of my face. If we had crashed, if Kate had made even the slightest mistake, both of us would have surely been killed, smeared across the asphalt so fast I probably wouldn't have seen it coming. I could do nothing about it, of course—­I could hardly ask her to slow down. I could only hold on and hope for the best.

She led her band of cyclists off the turnpike and through a maze of twisting country roads, some of them no more than a single lane wide. We headed under the trees and soon were lost in a green twilight, the light flickering overhead as it cut through the foliage.

There were no road signs or landmarks, but Kate seemed to know exactly where she was going. She seemed to have memorized every bump and curve in the road she took, even though she couldn't have been there more than once or twice before. We were far, far away from the lands she knew—­the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, the looter camps around New York—­but she possessed some kind of natural genius for life out there under the trees of Pennsylvania, as if she were an elemental of the road and at home anywhere the ribbon of asphalt stretched away ahead of her.

For half an hour, maybe longer, we followed her path. It was impossible to talk over the noise of the motorcycle's engine. Andy Waters, the half-­naked Archie, and the other dozen or so members of her crew kept their distance behind us, so they were often lost around a curve of the road, but they always caught up with us again. I was alone with my thoughts for the whole ride, yet I failed to come up with any kind of plan or stratagem. I couldn't even imagine where they were taking me, or what they would do to me there, though I assumed some kind of torture would be involved—­physical or mental.

Eventually we arrived at a small town that huddled under the trees, just a few wooden buildings built tight up against a kink in the road. When my ears stopped ringing, I could hear water rushing nearby, the sound of a waterfall or a long stretch of rapids. Dew misted the leaves that hung down so close to the ground they formed a natural drapery around the place.

Kate walked her motorcycle over to the front of a building that might have been a general store once. She dropped her kickstand and then sprang from her seat as nimbly as a cat. It took me considerably longer—­my legs were cramped from clutching the machine, and my fingers were sore from holding on to Kate's waist. I felt like an old man as I edged my way gingerly off the pillion seat.

Around me the other members of the crew were whooping and joking among themselves, keyed up after their ride. Kate ignored them—­and me—­and headed inside, letting a screen door slam behind her as she disappeared into the darkness of the building. I looked around, thinking perhaps this was a chance to run away, but found that her crew members were watching me while pretending to ignore me completely. I had spoken once with Andy Waters, and I tried to get his attention now. He was busy sharing a cigarette with a woman in a short tight dress and an aviator's helmet. Eventually, though, he jerked his head toward the store building, indicating I should follow Kate.

There was nothing else to be done. Stealing a motorcycle and making a break for it was out of the question—­even if I'd known how to drive one of the machines, I had no map and no way to even know which way was west, much less how to get to Ohio from here. And I was certain Kate would simply track me again, track me down and this time make sure I didn't get away. I could run away on foot, but that was sheer suicide—­zombies would be out among those trees, and even if they weren't, I would starve soon enough, having no idea how to get food from the forest.

So I headed inside, into the store building. It was dark inside, and it smelled of old spices and mildew. A little light came from a back room, which proved to open out onto a broad wooden porch, screened in against insects. The porch was built out over the lip of a gorge and overlooked a stretch of white water that just fell away into mist and rainbows a few hundred yards downstream. It was, without a doubt, a beautiful thing to see, and I understood why ­people would live here—­or why they had, before the crisis.

Red Kate had thrown herself into a big wicker chair, one leg draped over one of its arms. She wasn't looking at me, just at the water beyond the screens.

My whole body was still thrumming from the ride on her cycle, so I was in no state to confront her just then. Instead, I asked, “What was this place?”

She shrugged, still not looking at me. “Who knows? Does it matter? Now it's just four walls we found on our way out here. A place to crash for a night, before the zombies figure out we're here.” She had her knife out, the long blade with the skulls around its hilt. She started digging into the wooden arm of her chair, not even carving her initials there, just cutting into the wood. She seemed distracted, which did not make her look safe.

I sat down on a cast-­iron chair as far as I could get from her while still remaining on the porch. I turned a little so I would have a better view of the door, in case one of her crew came rushing in to attack me. I had no idea whatsoever why I'd been brought here, or even why she'd followed me so far.

“I thought you were a legitimate looter,” I said. “Stopping us, kidnapping me—­that kind of makes you a road pirate, doesn't it?” Even though when I'd met her she'd just killed a government driver, the other looters—­including Adare—­seemed to think she was one of theirs. Not exactly one of the good guys, but an operator who knew how to go along to get along.

She sat up and a certain amount of steel entered her voice. “I do what I feel like.” It sounded like a credo. “Stones, just say what you're thinking.”

I chewed on my lip for a while before I spoke. I wanted to get the wording right. “I'm nothing to you,” I said.

“You're right,” she said. I was actually a little surprised. “At least, just about nothing. You did cut me.” She glanced over at me with a playful smile. As if we'd been lovers once, not enemies. “And I lied before when I said I don't hold grudges. You might have figured that out by now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that doesn't explain what you're doing here. You didn't come all this way just to torment me.”

“Nope.” She jammed her knife hard into the armrest of her chair. “Believe it or not, I came out here to make something of myself.”

The idea surprised me, though I suppose it shouldn't have. From what I knew of her, Kate had never lacked for ambition.

“I started out as a road pirate, killing ­people for gasoline. It was a shit life. Then I came north and started legit looting,” she said. “Turned out that was just a bullshit game. The army gives you just enough to survive. So you can keep bringing them what they want.” She shrugged. “When I heard Adare was dead, I realized it was going to be my turn soon enough.”

“Everybody dies, eventually.”

“Yeah, sure. But some ­people die bleeding out in the road, and some ­people die of old age on top of a pile of swag. I always thought I'd gotten about as far up the ladder as I could. Then I met the asshole who carried this.” She flicked her knife with one fingernail so it made a chiming sound, like a little bell. “He came from out west, looking for recruits. He said the army is losing out there.”

“Losing? Losing what?”

“Control. It's a whole new frontier out west, he said. A place where somebody like me can write her own ticket. So I'm going out there to see.”

“I wish you luck,” I told her.

She laughed. “Stones, you're coming with me. When we saw you back there on the road, I couldn't believe my eyes. You're exactly what I need for the trip.”

“I am?”

She smiled and looked straight at me. “Trade goods,” she said.

I understood, of course. I understood how things worked out on the road, in the wilderness. But of course, she needed to torment me.

“Where we're headed, it's a ways farther, still. We're going to need more gas if we're gonna make it. Which means I need something to trade for said gas.” She pulled her long knife out of the arm of her chair and pointed it at me. “You're gonna make a great slave, Stones.”

I fought the urge to jump up and attack her then and there. She would have just cut me, badly enough to make me regret it. Not enough to kill me. My knife was back on her bike. I didn't stand a chance.

“It's nothing personal,” she told me.

“That's a lie,” I said. “If you just wanted slaves to sell, you wouldn't have let the others go.”

She laughed and held up her hands as if I'd caught her. “Yeah. Fair enough. See,” she said, “I know what you really want. I know you want to go to that camp and get your life back. Well, that's never gonna happen, Stones. You cut me—­now you never get what you want.”