Positive (33 page)

 

PART 4

Hearth

 

CHAPTER 95

A
nd so we headed west.

On foot.

There were no cars for us, no SUVs to ride in. We went on foot in a land where that was supposed to be suicide. We walked out of that camp because that was the only way out.

The positives didn't need any rousing speeches. They didn't need to be told why we were doing this. I led, and they followed. There didn't seem to be any question that I was in charge. Even Macky just nodded when I gave him commands. I was the miracle worker, the great liberator.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But I tried not to let on about that.

I'd spent so much mental energy figuring a way to make these ­people's lives better. I'd been willing to sacrifice myself to free them from the horrors of the camp. It turns out that dying in a blaze of glory is surprisingly easy, but living on, after your moment of triumph, is the hardest thing in the world.

Nobody asked me any questions at first. No one asked why I'd taken us west, when the majority of the positives had come from cities in the east. If they had asked, all I could tell them was that I'd seen what Pennsylvania was like now, and there was nothing for us there. Pittsburgh—­any walled city—­would have at best turned us away. A mob of potential zombies, knocking at the gate? Most likely they would have opened fire on us.

West was—­potential. The unknown. Anything could be out there. Red Kate had said the government didn't exert as much control out there, that ­people could be free in the west. Maybe there was a way to make a life out there, a life for positives. Maybe a better life than what we'd left behind.

Maybe.

I started walking. With Kylie and Ike and Luke by my side.

The rest followed. If they had any ideas about where we should go, what we should do, they didn't share them. They seemed to think I must have something great up my sleeve, some secret plan.

I'd given them freedom. I wondered how long that would be enough.

 

CHAPTER 96

I
knew I would never have more goodwill and trust from the positives than I had that first week out of camp. I needed it. I knew a little—­just a little—­about survival in the wilderness, but nothing at all about what five hundred ­people were going to need, or how to procure it.

Luckily I wasn't alone. As we set off on foot, trying to get some distance between ourselves and the camp while we still had the strength, I had plenty of advisers to help me make decisions. I kept being surprised that none of them just pushed me aside and took charge themselves, considering how much more effective they were.

We could have all died in the first few days if a positive I didn't know at all—­just some random woman I'd never met—­hadn't come to me and told me we needed to start boiling our drinking water. There was no shortage of water in ditches along the side of the road, but I'd been afraid to touch it after what happened to Addison. Boiling the water couldn't make it completely safe, but it killed all the germs and parasites—­things I'd barely known existed.

Other advisers, some of whom I knew, some I was just meeting for the first time, had their own great suggestions. But the ones I listened to the most often, the ones I came to count on, were the ­people I already had come to trust with my life.

Ike was the big surprise. He'd never seemed very practical minded to me, but once we were under way he was simply indispensable. That first night, when we found ourselves standing in a mob on the highway, watching the sun go down, it was Ike who said we needed to set up a camp.

“But we don't have any shelters. Or even tents,” I pointed out. I think I had planned on just walking through the night. It was what I would have done on my own. The funny thing about a herd of five hundred ­people, though, is that they move much slower than a single man. Some of them were just too weak to go any farther, and I refused to leave them behind. Some were already griping about blisters and sore legs and wondering what they were supposed to eat.

“A camp is just wherever you sit down,” Ike told me. “But there are a ­couple of things that'll make it a lot more bearable. We need to dig latrine pits. We need to set up some kind of watch system—­if zombies come in the night, we need to know about it in advance. If one of
us
goes zombie, we need to be ready for that. And we need to get ­people organized in groups. We need a head count of how many of us there are, so we know if anybody goes missing.”

I just stared at him. Where had he come up with all this?

He shrugged. “Basic training. It was boring as hell, but they repeated everything until it stuck. Made me memorize stuff I was never going to need at my new job as a soldier. I think most of the time it was just to keep me busy so I didn't wander off.”

So we made camp that first night, with everyone sleeping under the stars, wrapped in whatever clothes or blankets they'd brought from the camp. Ike's system of watches worked well—­watchers had to stay awake for only an hour, since we had plenty of ­people to take their places. No zombies appeared, which surprised me a little—­a group this big made plenty of noise, and I knew how active the zombies got at night. By morning I had figured it out, though. It was the army. The medical camp was one of their important assets, and they'd done a thorough job of clearing the land around it. A sort of invisible perimeter surrounded the camp where there were no zombies at all. Eventually we would walk past that unseen border, but for the moment we had a little grace.

 

CHAPTER 97

I
n the morning, Macky came and told me everyone was accounted for. Ike had wanted an inventory of how many ­people we had, but it had fallen on Macky and the former bosses to compile it. I wasn't crazy about that. I wanted to throw over the old boss system and let ­people make decisions for themselves. But I needed some kind of organization, and the bosses were more than happy to step up. Anything that let them hold on to a little of the power they'd lost when we left the medical camp. Just counting heads was something.

“We can get work crews together, if you tell us what we need to get done,” Macky told me. When he'd bought me from Fedder, he'd seen me as a useful tool, somebody who could help make him stronger. Now he treated me like I was the boss and he was the worker with bright ideas. I knew many of the other bosses—­the ones who had beaten their workers for fun, the ones who'd become bosses by dint of muscles, not brains—­weren't as willing to accept my authority. They respected Macky, though, and it became clear he was going to be my highest-­ranking officer. It was amazing how fast we re-­created old power structures.

I thought about what I could do with five hundred workers. “We need food. We're going to need weapons, and tents, and a million other things. Medical supplies.”

“Okay. How do we do that? Where do we find that stuff?”

I rubbed at my face. “Well,” I said, and paused as if I were thinking. I knew the answer. I didn't like it, but I knew. “Well. We're going to have to start looting.”

I hated the life I'd left behind, the life Adare had taught me about. But it had kept me and the girls alive.

“The first thing we need is a map. We'll find a gas station, and there'll be maps there. Once we know where we are, we can figure out where the loot will be. Can you get together some ­people who are strong and fast who can scout ahead?”

“Sure,” Macky said.

“We're going to need food sooner than that,” Luke said.

Luke had always questioned me—­always pointed out the flaws in my logic. I'm only human, and sometimes it annoyed me to no end. But he was almost always right, and I knew if I listened to him, I could avoid some costly mistakes. Plans that made perfect sense in my head rarely worked out smoothly in the real world, and I needed somebody to keep me on my toes.

“There'll be houses around here somewhere,” I said. I stood up in the road and peered north and south. The land here was so flat I could see for a fair distance. On either side of the highway I saw nothing but overgrown fields, stretching away to the horizon. They could have been great prairies of weed except for the way they were divided into enormous rectangular plots. “This used to be farmland,” I said. “There have to be farmhouses, stores—­something. Macky, I want you to get together two more groups. Pick ­people who are sharp, you know, the kind who'll keep their eyes open. Send one north, one south to look for any sign of houses. There'll be canned food there, stuff we can still eat.” Something caught my eye, and I looked at the fields again. Most of the overgrowth was just green, ragged and dusty and distinctly nonedible. But here and there I saw stands of golden tassels blowing in the wind.

Wheat.

This had been farmland once. The weeds had reclaimed it, but some of the old crops seemed to be making a good show of surviving. They had grown wild and probably wouldn't provide all we needed, but it was something.

“Luke, find me someone who knows how to make flour. And bread.”

“Out of . . . that?” Luke said. “I mean, I know that's what you make flour out of. But we don't have any ovens. Or anything else we need.”

“Somebody might know how to get around that,” I told him. “In the meantime, we need to get everybody else moving. Walking. We can keep the pace slow today, so the scouting parties can catch up with us later. But the farther we get from that camp, the better. I don't think the army really wants us back at this point, but I don't want to give them a reason to come round us all up.”

My advisers all nodded and went about the errands I'd given them. For a second I let myself relax. Maybe this was possible. Maybe I could keep all these ­people alive.

That day we walked no more than seven miles, judging by the mile markers at the side of the highway. The positives weren't used to this kind of active lifestyle, and many of them just refused to go any farther until I personally came over and asked them nicely. I was beginning to see why so many of the powerful ­people I'd known had used threats and violence as motivators. It would have been so much easier if I could have just bullied the ­people into moving.

But that wasn't
right
. It would make me as bad as Adare or Fedder, or the guards back at the camp. And I refused to lead like that. There was another way to motivate ­people—­you could inspire them. If you gave them something to believe in, they would follow you toward that goal.

Now I just needed to think of what that goal would be.

That night the scouting parties came back, with mixed success. I got my map—­a beautiful road atlas, just like the one Adare had annotated. This one was pristine, with no red marks to indicate what we were walking into, but it had a full map of Ohio and I could see we wouldn't be traveling through desolate farmland for long.

The scouts who went out looking for food turned up some canned goods. It looked like a lot when they hauled it back to camp, but once it was divided up, it didn't go nearly far enough. A lot of ­people got nothing. I couldn't do much about that, except give my share to the scrawniest kid I could find. That got me some smiles and pats on the back but did little to appease the hungry ­people who just stared at me.

My idea for harvesting the wild wheat turned out to be a dud. A ­couple of positives turned up who had been gardeners and cooks back before they were exiled from their cities. They took one look at the sheaf of wheat I'd gathered and shook their heads. “It needs to be ground down for flour, and I have no idea how to do that,” one of them, a young woman, said.

The man standing next to her shrugged. “That's not the hard part. The hard part would be collecting enough wheat to make even a pound of flour. It would take days to go through these fields and find a significant amount. On the other hand,” he said, and he showed me a plant he'd found on his own. It had a straight stalk with fingerlike pods hanging from it. Each pod contained a ­couple of small beans. “This is soy.”

“Never heard of it,” I told him.

He nodded in understanding. “I don't think it grows out east. Here it's everywhere—­all over these fields.”

“And you can eat it?” I asked.

“You can boil the beans and eat them right out of the pod. They don't taste like much but they'll fill you up.” He shrugged. “There's supposed to be other things you can do with it, but I don't know how.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. Then I looked at the woman standing next to him. “This is something. This is huge. I want you to look for any other plants we can use as food. You two could be the ones who keep us alive.”

Both of their faces lit up at the sound of that. I could see in their eyes that they wanted it. They wanted to be the ones who fed us. Maybe they just knew that whoever came up with food for this camp was going to get a lot of perks. It didn't matter. They had their goal.

Two done, four hundred and ninety-­eight to go.

My final adviser was Kylie. When she came to me in the camp that night, I had a lot of questions for her. I knew almost nothing about the women we'd liberated, the former residents of the female camp. She'd lived among them, and she knew who could be trusted with various tasks.

She also knew about the special challenges they faced.

“Some of the men are going to be a problem,” I told her. “I don't want to scare you, but the way they used to talk about what they would do if they ever got their hands on a girl—­”

“Finn, I know what sex is. And I know what rape is,” she said.

Right. I'd almost forgotten.

“It's under control,” she said.

Her mask was on. For a brief moment after we left the camp she'd been human. The human woman who had cared about Bonnie and Addison and Heather and mourned for them. Now her armor was back up. She needed to survive out here, and she would do whatever it took.

“Care to tell me how?” I asked.

“You had work crews in your camp. So did we. Our bosses knew what to do. We stay together. We never go anyplace alone. The men who would hurt us are cowards. They'll prey on a woman who's alone and vulnerable. So we'll make a point of never being alone.”

“Good,” I said. “I won't let that happen to my ­people.”

She just watched my face. Like I was something to be studied. Something she'd never seen before.

We sat in silence for a long time, while the camp around us prepared for sleep. The noise of five hundred ­people took a long time to die out, but as night fell and the sky lit up with stars, something like peace came over us.

“Sleep here tonight,” I told her. “Next to me. We can keep each other safe.”

She nodded. Then she laid out her blankets and settled into them. I showed her how to make a bed on the road surface—­I'd already learned that it stayed drier overnight than the softer ground on either side. Then we curled up, back to back.

Eventually, slowly, she turned to face me. She held out her hand, and I pulled it around myself, wrapping her around me like a blanket.

It just felt so right.