The Seventh Day (6 page)

I open the door and creep along the side of
the house again, still listening. Hiking and hunting are the same as this. I
have to believe that.

I hurry, grabbing a fast load of firewood
and knocking at the door. I can’t help but look behind me as the door opens.
Joey looks worried until I am inside and the door is locked again. Furgus
raises his head and scruffy eyebrows at me from his bed in front of the
woodstove. He hasn't even batted an eyelash since we arrived. For him this is a
happy place.

I carry the wood over to the huge potbelly
stove and start the fire the dog is waiting for. “The smell of the burning wood
might draw people here, so we will only burn late in the day to get it warm
inside.”

As the sun sets I can’t help but feel
stressed. I don’t have any idea if we will be okay or not, if my father will
come or not, or if all of this is more serious than I can imagine. And I
already think this is damned serious.

“Can we pray before we sleep?” Lissie asks.

My head snaps around. “What?” I catch my
first glimpse of the cross on her throat. I don’t know how to pray but I smile.
“Sure.”

Joey gives me an eye roll. Lissie puts her
hands out and we stand in the living room holding hands. Her warm hand feels so
small in mine. So does Joey’s.

I close my eyes and spit out the first
words that come to me. “Dear God, uhm . . . me and Lissie and
Joey and Julia are super grateful for the help you’ve given us so far. I mean
,
we got lucky a couple times, so I guess thanks for that.
Please keep our parents safe and uh . . . us. Keep us safe
here and Gus—not sure how you feel about dogs, but can you keep him safe
too? Please make everyone leave us alone, except our parents.” I’m rambling. I
crack an eyelid and see their little faces are covered in tears. I nod.
“Thanks, God.”

“Amen.” Lissie mutters as Joey pulls her
hand away and hugs
herself
. “Can I sleep with you?”
I’m about to say no when all of their little faces turn to me. I sigh. “We can
all sleep together.”

The cabin is warm from the fire. If
anything, it’s too warm, so I open the door to the potbelly wood stove and tamp
down the wood that’s in there. I spread the cinders out, just like my father
used to and close all the drafts. “Check the windows. Make sure everything is
double-locked.”

They each take a room, double-locking the
windows and making sure all the curtains are drawn. The dim candlelight is
perfect. I doubt anyone would even be able to see it from outside with the
curtains drawn.

I place a chair under the only doorknob we
have in the house. “Our aunt keeps a chamber pot in her bedroom. You hover over
it like a toilet. It’s what we use at night, okay?”

They make a face—it’s almost the same
for all three. Julia wrinkles her nose. “What do we do when we finish?”

“Chuck it out a window.”

“What if we step in it the next day?” Lissie
asks.

“Let’s worry about that in the morning.” I
sigh, almost feeling like we are back to normal and Joey and her friends are
pissing me off back home. “Bedtime.”

We all climb the loft stairs, including
Furgus who I know is going to sleep right in the bed with us. When we get to
the top I pull the set of stairs up into the loft. I hated this annoying set of
stairs when I was a kid—flimsy and cheap. Now I thank the gods my dad
never made proper ones.

We crawl into bed, sharing a room with two
double beds. Furgus sleeps with
me and Joey, completely
covering the bottom half of the bed
.

I look at us all snuggled into bed, the
girls with their stuffies, and smile. “We made it here, we made it through a
day. We’re doing better than a lot of people.” I give Joey a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks for bringing Songa.”

She smiles. “You would have been sad
without her.” She passes Furgus his monkey—a stuffed toy he has had since
birth that he never ruined. It’s the only toy he has always treated with kid
gloves. He drags Monkey into his embrace, laying his head on the stuffed
animal’s chest and closes his eyes.

When I blow out the candle, I feel for my
phone in my pocket and switch it on. The signal is gone still. I flip through
the photos.
Mom on the phone, heating up dinner.
Me and Tanya at the concert.
Me and Tanya
on the bus after the concert.
Me and my friend Jamie
at the school dance.
Me and Sasha in a tree.
Me
in front of the new truck Dad bought. Joey and Julia on the couch playing with
their iPads. Dad trying to teach us to fly-fish, what a fail that was. I smile,
even here in the lonely dark, and remember how sucky we were. The next picture
is of me with my cool pale-blue bow and quiver set. I thought I was so
badass
with it—until I shot myself in the foot
anyway . . .

I flick off the phone to preserve battery
life and lie back.

In the dark I can hear the moment the girls
are asleep and I take the couple minutes I think I have before sleep takes me
too and whisper, “God, if you can hear me, I need you. I don’t have a plan. I
don’t know what to do. If you could send me a sign, or help us out in some way,
that would be awesome. I got these girls, and I don’t know what to do.” I
listen to the night around me. “I’m scared. I know I’ve never prayed before,
but they’re little. Can you just help us? My dad is our best bet. Please get
him here. We can’t be alone. We’re kids.”

I close my eyes but my brain is still going
over the details and questions.

Is it
this bad everywhere or only in Laurel?

Is it
the fresh air—the cold fresh air mixing with the virus and making them
last longer than they should?

What
is the head jerk?

Is
the cabin safe? Did I make the right choice coming here? Did I have a choice?
Am I going to get us all killed?

The worst question I have running through
my head is—
what if we are alone?
What if our parents are dead and it’s the four of us?

What
do four little girls know about staying alive?

I clutch Songa and think about the things I
have going for me, instead of against. I am on a possibly deserted mountaintop,
it’s cold here, my cabin is double-locked, and the stairs to the high loft are
up here with me.

I have a feeling I am one of the safest
people within a hundred miles.
Maybe a million miles.

Day Three

The giggles are getting to be more
frequent.

Julia holds up a picture. “See, mine looks
more like him.” The picture is of a tabby cat. Lissie giggles. “No, that looks
like a seal.”

I smile from the pot of Kraft Mac and
Cheese I’m stirring. Joey has her nose wrinkled up as she hurries to finish
hers. She does everything slower than her friends. She has a subtle learning
disability with reading and writing. So school things have always been harder
for her, but in everything else, she is faster. She runs faster, pushes her
body harder, and takes challenges with ease. She smiles wide, still wrinkling
her freckled nose. “Mine is better.”

The other two do something that makes tears
fill my eyes. Her picture is by far the worst but they both nod. “It’s awesome,
Jo.”

She looks at theirs and rolls her blue-gray
eyes. “Whatever. Yours are way better.” She slaps the picture down. The three
of them are like a set of triplets, but look nothing alike. Julia has
soft-brown eyes and dark-brown hair. Lissie has bright-blue eyes and shiny
blonde hair. Joey has gray-blue eyes and reddish-brown hair, like Dad and me.
But they’re all about the same size and height. They all have perfect little
faces and funky ten-year-old teeth that are half baby teeth and half adult.
They are children. I smile through the sickening feeling in my stomach and
spoon the noodles into the bowls. “Here, girls.”

They leave the crayons and paper at the old
coffee table and climb up to the dining room table my mom bought at a garage
sale. They sit silently and eat from the bowls that were ours when we were
little.

I take a bite from the pot, noticing it is
missing that buttery taste that milk and butter add. Lissie gives me a look.
“This isn’t as good as my mom’s.”

“No butter and no milk. I had to add a bit
of water to it. We have to ration the milk.” I sigh. “This is something we’re
going to have to get used to. Everything is going to be plain and boring until
they can make the sick people better and stuff.”

Their
little faces drop and Julia stops eating.

I’m
an idiot.

I sit down at the table. “So, who here was
in Girl Scouts?”

Lissie scowls. “Not me. I’m in ballet.”

It makes me chuckle as I nod at Julia and
Joey. “You two were though. What did you learn there?”

Julia shrugs. “We didn't do anything. We
made marshmallow banana boats and helped old people.”

“Did you learn to make fires or cut
firewood or cook or anything?”

Joey grins. “I can make toast on a fire
like Dad taught us and I can make smoothies in the Magic Bullet.”

Lissie raises her hand. “I can do that
too.”

I eat another bite and laugh harder. “I
don't think we have any of those. Until they fix the sick it’s going to be
fires and eating as little as possible.”

Joey looks at the window. “What about Dad?
Do you think he’s with Mom yet?”

I nod, swallowing the bitter taste that
suddenly fills my mouth. “I do.” I dish Furgus up some of his canned dog food
and nod at the sink of warm water I heated up. “You girls are on dishes.”

Julia cocks an eyebrow. “No dishwasher?”

Joey slaps her hand against her head and
Lissie snickers. “Of course not.”

Julia ducks behind her bowl. “Oh yeah. I
forgot. Man, we
gotta
hand wash like the dark ages.
Remember when we watched that cartoon and they were hand washing the dishes and
he used magic to do it? Why can’t we have magic?”

I sigh and put the pot on the counter.
“That's not the only thing that's like the dark ages. I’m going for firewood so
we can make it warm again tonight.” I grab my handgun and glance out the
windows. There is nothing but a fresh layer of snow on the gravel. I pull the
chair from the door, my stomach instantly feeling the flutterings of anxiety.

I wrap my fingers around the knob and
swallow hard.

When I turn the locks and crack the door,
the cold air rushes in at me. It smells fresh and inviting. What a lie.

My heart is trying to dig its way out of my
chest, but I manage to step out onto the porch without running back inside like
a little girl—like the little girl I am still.

“Lou!”

I jump and look back at the
house,
pressing my back against the door I’ve slammed far
too loud. The girls are all standing there in the doorway. Joey gives me a
hilarious face. “What are you doing? We gotta—go.”

It takes several breaths for me to get my
heart rate back to reasonable. “Let’s not do shouting like that. Everyone speak
calmly so I don't have a heart attack.”

“We gotta go.” They furrow their brows,
making me snort as I get the door open again. My ears perk up, listening for
anything that might have heard us.

I glance at the ramp that leads beside the
house. It’s high for when the snow falls. The whole house is built high. It
should be safe so I nod. “Stay together.” They slip past me, scrambling up the
thin catwalk to the large double-door outhouse. Lissie and Joey go inside. The
wind blows Julia’s dark hair in front of her face. “Lou, you think my mom is
okay?” She pulls the hair back so I can see her brown eyes again.

“Yeah. I do. Our parents are smart people.
Your mom’s an engineer—she’s smart.” I know this because I have always
wanted to be her when I grow up. She let me come to the college where she
taught robotic engineering and take part in the events the classes would have
with building things. I wanted to be a robotic engineer, once upon a time.

This week I want to find my dad. If I find
my dad and the karmic cost is that I have to work at the supermarket the rest
of my life, that’s cool. It’s not like my plans are ever set in stone anyway.
Last week Sasha almost had
me convinced we should take a year
off and backpack Europe
.

Now I’m not so sure Europe is there. My
eyes keep a steady scan of the gravel road and tree line. I don’t know what to
expect, but with the girls outside with me I feel safer. I feel braver.

I truly am a chicken.

I should feel safer with them in the house,
but I hate being alone out here. It’s quiet and creepy. And just when I think I
should be focused on survival, my brain won’t stop thinking about the fact my
friends are down there. I can’t do anything but wonder how they are. Have they
made it somewhere safe?

My bestie from Laurel, Sasha, is out of
town. She texted me the morning before everything went bad. She was on her way
back to Laurel. I doubt she made it back, but her dad is a trainer for the Griz
at the University of Montana, so she’s probably still alive. She only sees him
in Missoula every other weekend or if there’s an important game on. He’s a
beast of a man and there is no way he would let her get hurt. Not to mention,
she can run faster than anyone I know, even Joey, which is saying something.

Sasha is the star of our lacrosse team. She
is a savage, and if any one of my friends is alive, it’s her. Tanya being in
the city makes me nervous.

Loud thumping behind me makes me jump
again. I’m wide-eyed and holding my breath when I see it’s just Joey and Lissie
running down the plank from the outhouse. They’re laughing and smiling. I wish
taking a poop would make me feel that much better.

Joey points. “You wanna go while we’re out
here? We can take a watch.”

My stomach turns a little. I nod. “Scream
if anything even moves and run back inside. Barricade the door.”

“WAIT FOR ME!” Julia screams from the
outhouse.

“They will. It’s okay.” It’s amazing how
fast we all settle back into panic and fear. Nothing has changed, but just the
prospect of being alone in the outhouse makes her almost lose it.

I guess I’m not the only chicken. ‘Course
they’re ten and eleven. I’m seventeen and a senior. They’re in sixth grade.

Julia comes out wiping her hands from the
icy-cold hand sanitizer my aunt keeps up there in huge bottles.

I point at the door. “Stand there and don’t
move. Don’t screw around. Just wait for me and then you can go back inside.” I
walk the plank to the outhouse. When I get inside, the toilet is warm. I would
hate that normally but today it’s nice. It feels a lot less like being alone.

My tummy rumbles and I close my eyes for a
second, just letting myself go for the minute I need.

When we are all back inside I decide I
don't care that it’s daytime; I need the comfort of it, so I get the fire going.
I lie down on the couch and close my eyes. No matter how hard I try to pretend
my parents are here and we’re skiing, all I can see is Mr. Baumgartner’s eyes
looking up at me from the window in the door. My fingers ache from the memory.
A single tear slips down my cheek as that image is accompanied by the memory of
closing my own mother into the bottom of the stairs.

I need my dad.

We’ve
been here two days. Where is he?

“Lou?” I open my eyes to Lissie’s face
right in mine. I back away. “What?” The tone is a little mean—I can tell
by the way she winces. “There’s a noise.” She looks at the window as she says
it.

I look up and see the sky is darker than it
was a minute ago. Did I sleep? No, I couldn’t have. Lissie ducks, even though
the curtains are all closed up, and walks to the window on the side of the
cabin. It faces a cabin next door. It’s through the woods a little. The lots up
here are huge in case people want to put in septic tanks.

Joey and Julia are there in the window,
already on their knees and peeking through the bottom of the curtain. I rub my
eyes and drop to my knees. Joey looks back. “There’s a car next door.”

My guts are burning the minute I hear that.
People ransacking the cabins for food and supplies, no doubt.

I lean into the curtain and look through
the small crack, whispering, “Damn!”

“Are they bad people?”

“I don't know.” I shake my head, squinting
to get a better view. I’m about to make us all go up to the loft when I see
something that instantly makes me feel better. “No.” I take a deep breath.
“It’s the Milsons who own the cabin.” I sigh again, leaning my head against the
window. “Oh my God. I was about to crap my pants.”

The girls snicker. I look back at them.
“Laugh all you want. We don’t have a washing machine up here. You minions are
gonna be taking them to the creek to wash them.”

Joey giggles harder. “You’re embarrassing.”

I wink. “I’m gonna go say hello. You three
stay here and don’t let them in, no matter what. We don't know if they’re
sick.”

“You should stay here too. We can yell out
the window.”

I smile at Joey. “They drove here, Jo.
Those people back down the hill weren’t driving anywhere. The Milsons are fine—trust
me. But we have to be extra careful. If I see anything out of the ordinary I’m
coming right back.”

Taking optimistic breaths, I turn and walk
to the door. I don't feel so scared opening it this time. Like the bad things
out there can’t hurt me with other people there. I know it’s stupid but I don't
want to be alone with three little girls.

I look at Joey one last time before I walk
out into the cold air. “Secret knock only. Don't open it otherwise.”

She looks worried. The problem with having
huge eyes is the emotions they betray. Hers nearly speak whole sentences.

As I walk down the steps to the gravel road
we live on, I smile. I can hear them talking. Mrs. Milson, Betty, is shouting
at Mr. Milson about the crap he brought.

When I get closer I can hear him defending
himself. “Darling, I panicked. You remember what happens when I panic. The
street was filled with the sick. I was scared I’d never see the house again.”

I don't even realize my feet are crunching
on the gravel until she shouts at me, “STAY WHERE YOU ARE! WE’RE ARMED!” I
freeze when I hear her whisper, “Roger, get the gun from the dash.”

I lift my hands, shouting at her as softly
as I can. “Mrs. Milson—it’s me, Lou. Lou Stoddard.”

They don't speak, they run. I can hear the
gravel crunching. I almost pull my gun, but as they round the corner, I cry. I
don't even know why I’m crying. My mother doesn't even like them. We run to
each other with open arms but we all freeze before we get too close. It’s the
strangest
thing,
like my feet won’t go any closer and
theirs seem to be stuck as well. We don’t trust each other, not like we did
before everyone became a biter.

Mr. Milson, a bald and chubby man with the
kindest blue eyes ever seen, gives me a twinkly-eyed smile. I can see the tears
in his eyes. “Where’s your family, Lou?”

I nod back at the house, “Me and Joey and
some other little girls are waiting for Dad to get here. I don't know about
Mom.”

Mrs. Milson sniffles. “How did this all
happen? What did your dad say?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. He told me to
wait at the house for him, but things got bad, so I ran with the little girls
and left him a note saying I was coming here.”