The Worlds We Make (21 page)

The dogs circled around, and then all five of them rushed at the husky. One sank its teeth into the husky’s shoulder. The husky rolled out of reach, blood spurting over its pale fur, before springing back at them. I looked away as the wolfhound grabbed it by the throat. The husky let out a pained squeal, and then there was the sticky, liquid sound of tearing flesh. Paws drummed the grass as the entire pack fell on its victim.

I turned, my lips clamped tight. “I think we’d better backtrack,” I said. Leo nodded, looking equally sickened.

As we hurried back the way we’d come and took a left at the first intersection, the images of the fight—what I’d seen, what I could easily imagine from what I’d heard—echoed through my head. The pallor of dead limbs, the angry pink of ripped flesh. Fur-clotted blood splashed across the grass. As red as the blood that had streaked Leo’s face after Chay had hit him, as Anika’s blood on her back, on the pavement of the Wardens’ parking lot.

In that moment, I couldn’t see the difference. That was what we’d become: packs of dogs fighting over a world that was already mostly dead. Maybe Michael had forced us to his level, or maybe we could have found a way to rise above it—it didn’t matter now. We’d stolen and threatened and killed, and I hated it. I hated so many things of the things I’d done these last few weeks.

What was the point in being human, in having brains that could develop vaccines and organize people across a continent, if all we did was behave like animals? This world, where all that mattered was being in the strongest, biggest pack—it wasn’t a world I wanted to save.

But that was all we had, wasn’t it?

My legs quivered, and I stopped. Leo and Justin stopped beside me. I closed my eyes, trying to picture us walking through the CDC’s gates and everything turning right again. But the scene felt like something from a movie, overbright and silicon hollow.

I knew what happened today wouldn’t stop Michael from wanting the vaccine. Once the CDC had it, he’d just send his Wardens after them in even greater force. How were the doctors going to get the vaccine to anyone who needed it, with Michael’s people waiting to steal it the moment they left their buildings? It would just keep happening, this spiral of violence and fear, on and on.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked, pulling me back to the present. I looked into his worried eyes, lit now by the rising dawn. We had to keep moving.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, and made myself start walking. As we meandered past another row of ruined houses, I tried to remember when I’d last felt truly hopeful.

In that town near the river, after we’d chased off the bear. We’d helped those people, and they’d helped us. For a few fleeting moments, we’d been able to enjoy the company of strangers. That had been my proof. We didn’t always have to be fighting, even now.

That
was the world I wanted, one where we battled the threats that faced us together. Why wouldn’t Michael prefer a world like that over the one he was creating—for his daughter, if no one else?

Maybe he would. Maybe he just didn’t see how he could get it.

If that was the world I wanted, maybe
I
had to find a way to make it happen.

I almost laughed at the thought, it seemed so ridiculous. Me? Then the weight of the cold box shifted in my hand, and I glanced down at it, and suddenly my heart was pounding.

I was the person who had the vaccine right now—the one vaccine in existence as far as we knew. If that wasn’t power, what was?

A nebulous sense of purpose I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around rose up inside me. We had to talk to Dr. Guzman. If I could talk to her, if I knew exactly what she and the rest of the scientists at the CDC were planning, then I could decide…whatever exactly it was I needed to decide.

At the next intersection, I checked the street signs and started trying the doors of the houses as we headed down the block. The third hung ajar, the doorknob broken. Our quick sweep turned up no sign that anyone had come through recently. From the half-empty closets and the bare tabletops, I guessed the family who’d lived here had grabbed their most valued belongings and run for it.

We set the transceiver on the dining room table. A brief worry flitted through my head, that the Wardens might have stumbled on the CDC’s frequency when we’d broadcasted before. But if Drew was the main radio guy, he’d have known if they’d been listening to us, and he’d have told me. We’d just have to be quick, in case they were scanning the airwaves now.

I switched the radio on and lifted the mic. Every nerve in my body hummed. I didn’t know what I was going to say. Well, I’d have to figure that out as I went.

“Hello?” I said. “I’m attempting to contact Dr. Guzman or anyone else at the CDC. If anyone from the CDC can hear this, please respond.”

We waited, poised around the table. The static fizzed. I repeated the message. A minute passed, and not a single clear sound emerged from the speaker. The nervous anticipation seeped out of me. I set down the mic.

“No one’s there.”

“It’s really early in the morning,” Leo said. “We don’t know how many people are still at the CDC—they probably have to take breaks from monitoring the radio.”

I looked outside, at the pinkish light spreading across the sky, and squashed down the feeling of desperation that had started to claw up through my chest.

“Right,” I said. “We’ll try again in an hour.”

Justin pushed his chair back and limped into the kitchen, where he pawed through the cupboards. Then he stepped back into the dining room, his arms folded in front of him.

“I can’t just sit around here waiting,” he said. “I’ll go check the other houses, see if I can find a map of the city.”

He’d only just finished speaking when he swayed on his feet and had to snatch at the door frame to catch his balance.

“Justin,” I said, “you need to rest. You’ve put enough strain on your leg already. And we don’t know how hard it’s going to be just getting from here to the CDC.”

“I have to
do
something,” he said, his voice ragged. “I’ve been so useless, and I’m not—I can’t—”

He trailed off, looking as if he’d lost the thread of what he wanted to say. Looking just plain lost.

“You are
not
useless,” I said. “You’ve done ten times more than most people could have with both their legs working properly. And I
need
you to be okay so you can keep being useful when we head out. I’m not letting you take some stupid risk when we’re lucky any of us are here at all.”

He ducked his head. “It wasn’t luck. It was Anika. I should have been the one looking after her, and she—It should have been me.”

He swayed again, and Leo caught him.

“It shouldn’t have been anyone,” Leo said. “Anika must have done it because she wanted you to be alive. Let her have what she wanted. If you owe her something, it’d be that.”

Justin glanced from Leo to me, and his jaw tensed.

“Leo’s right,” I said before he could argue more. “And if you don’t go lie down on your own, we’re going to tie you to the couch. You can hardly stand up, Justin. I don’t care how else you spend your time, but I don’t want you moving for the next hour. Got it?”

He glowered at me the way he always did when I refused to let him do something stupid. It occurred to me that it’d been a while since we’d really been at odds. The standoff didn’t last long. He closed his eyes, and a miserable resignation came over his face. Sighing, he pulled away from Leo’s grasp.

“Fine,” he said. He hobbled over and threw himself down on the couch, propping his head against the padded arm. It was only a few seconds before his eyelids drifted shut again.

I set my hands on the table, trying not to look as if I needed them to hold me up, even though I pretty much did. My own head was heavy and my body exhausted, but my mind was whirling. What if no one answered the next time we called the CDC? What if no one answered all day? It had sounded as if they were well protected, but if the Wardens had gotten in, what hope did we have left?

I pushed myself upright, as if I could walk away from those worries. At least there were a few things I could control.

“I’m going to bring the cold box down to the basement,” I said to Leo. “It’ll stay cooler down there.”

He came with me down the stairs that led from the kitchen, into the wide white-walled room below. A few dents in the walls revealed the crumbly drywall under the paint, and the laminate floor gave way under my feet where it had started to warp. Cobwebs clustered around the corners of the small, high windows. A plush futon stood off to one side, in front of an old TV surrounded by floor-to-ceiling particleboard shelves. They were stacked with dozens of DVDs and hundreds of CD cases. As I set the cold box down beside the stairs, Leo wandered over to the shelves. He blew the dust off a boom box sitting beside one stack of CDs and pressed a couple of the buttons.

“Still some juice in the batteries,” he said. “I wonder if they have any decent music.” His fingers skimmed over the cases, sliding some out and then nudging them back into place. I sat down on the arm of the futon, relaxing just fractionally into the soft fabric. For a moment, despite the dust and the cobwebs and the vaccine we couldn’t deliver, I was able to let myself pretend that everything was normal. We were just a couple friends picking the right tunes to chill out to.

“Hey!” Leo said. He opened one of the cases and popped the disc into the boom box.

“What?” I asked, straightening up.

“Listen.”

He skipped through the tracks, turned the volume down, and pressed play. A shimmer of strings soared through the speakers. Then a horn joined in, forming a playful melody that jolted me back eight years in one instant.

It was a waltz. Like the waltz Leo had practiced to for months, with me as his awkward partner, when we were kids. When life had seemed so simple.

I couldn’t imagine being as happy as I’d been back then again.

Leo cleared his throat. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me, his mouth slanted crookedly, his fingers hovering over the controls. “I can turn it off,” he said.

“No,” I said around the lump in my throat. “There are a lot worse things I could be thinking about.”

He let his arm drop. The music drifted through the room.

“Do you remember the steps?” he asked.

I hesitated. “One two three, one two three?”

Moving toward me, he offered his hand. “We can work with that.”

I could see in Leo’s uncertain smile, in the flicker of his eyes, the same sort of desperation I’d heard in Justin’s voice, the same I’d felt in myself when the radio had failed. It wasn’t a dance he was asking for so much as a temporary escape from here and now. An escape we both needed. So I stood up and folded my fingers around his.

He placed his other hand behind my back, and mine rose to his shoulder automatically. Apparently something from all those months of practice had stuck. All at once we were only inches apart. A jittery heat washed over me, and I might have panicked if Leo hadn’t bent his head next to mine at exactly that moment.

“Left foot first,” he said. “Back, side, together.”

I stepped back, staring at Leo’s shoulder, and he followed, his feet matching my pace. After a few stumbles, I started to find the rhythm. We moved faster, Leo turning us as we neared the wall, the patter of our feet almost drowning out the music. He spun us around, and around again, and a laugh jolted out of me. I was following him now, my feet strangely light in my boots, as if I might float right off the ground. My fingers tightened around his. Maybe he could dance us right out of this place, back into the lives we once had.

But then the music faded, and we came to a halt in the middle of the same dreary basement. I inhaled shakily, catching my breath. Another song began, low and soft.

“I definitely don’t know how to dance to this one,” I said.

Leo paused. “There’s always the school-dance shuffle, if you promise never to tell anyone I called that ‘dancing.’”

I rolled my eyes, even as my cheeks flushed. “I’ve got more practice at the waltz than that,” I admitted. “Actually, I don’t have any school-dance practice at all. I kind of avoided them.”

And now I’d probably never have to again. I could hardly see the high schools reopening any time soon.

“Perfect opportunity to learn,” Leo said, his tone light. “I’m a good partner. No groping.”

I laughed, and suddenly my reluctance seemed silly. It was just me and my best friend, and another way to keep our minds off the silent transceiver a little while longer.

“Okay,” I said. “Why not?”

I shifted closer, raising my other arm so my hands met behind Leo’s neck. His slid around my waist. We started to shuffle in time with the music. After a few rotations, I let my head sink down to rest against his shoulder. The warmth of his body encircled me. When the music stopped, for good this time, we stopped too, but I didn’t let him go. I had the urge to sink right into him, to see how far away I could get from everything waiting outside.

Leo eased back, but only slightly, to look down into my eyes. He traced the line of my cheek. My pulse stuttered and my lips parted in an instinctive protest, but he just tipped his face forward so our foreheads touched.

“I believe that things can get better,” he said. “We’ve gone through so much, and we’re still here. But even if they don’t, I’m glad at least I was here with you.”

I wanted to say I was glad to have been with him too, but I’d lost my voice. All I could feel was the thumping of my heart, his skin soft against mine, his shoulders firm beneath my hands. It felt good, being this close to him. It always had, hadn’t it? As my initial nervousness faded, a longing welled up inside me. A longing for him to do what I’d thought he was going to do, to close that last small distance between us and kiss me.

But he didn’t. He stood there, one hand at my back and the other at my cheek, motionless. I could feel his pulse too, drumming against my fingers.

Well, why would he take the chance, when I’d pushed him away so many times already? He was waiting for me. Letting me choose.

So what was
I
waiting for?

I loved him. As a friend, and much more. I knew that. The second I opened my mind to the idea, the truth of it shone through me. I’d put the feeling aside, and then buried it under grief and guilt, but I knew it. And this might be my last chance to do something about it. We had no idea what lay ahead of us. I could lose Leo or he me as easily as we’d lost Anika. In an instant, at the crack of a gunshot.

My thoughts leapt to Gav, and my heart wrenched. I still had his last message in my pocket. The message that had told me to keep going.

Because Gav was gone. He’d known he wouldn’t be around much longer when he wrote that. Would he really have wanted me to spend the rest of my life loving no one but his memory?

No, I didn’t think he would.

I lifted my head. Leo sucked in a little breath as my lips brushed his. He returned the kiss as cautiously as I had offered it. It wasn’t nearly enough.

I slid my fingers into his hair, and pulled our mouths closer together. I wanted, I
needed
, so much I was suddenly dizzy with it, as if he were water and I was parched. A faint groan hummed through him as I kissed him even more deeply, and he drew me in so my body pressed tight against his. We kissed again, and again, until nothing else was real.

I came back to the world only when Leo stepped back, gripping my arms and breathing hard. My hands slipped from behind his head to rest against his chest. His eyes searched mine.

“This isn’t—” he said, and swallowed audibly. “You’re okay with this, right? It’s not just—Everything’s been so crazy, we’ve all been freaked out—”

I touched his mouth to silence him. “Leo,” I said, “I’ve wanted to do this since we were fourteen years old.”

He stared at me for a second. “Okay,” he said, and laughed. “Okay.” His head dipped back down, his lips finding mine again.

And neither of us said anything for quite a while after that.

It was only a temporary respite, of course. We were sitting on the futon, my legs across Leo’s lap, his arms still around me, when the intensity of the moment started to fade. I dropped my head from a kiss to lean against his collarbone, feeling the rise and fall of his breath drift over my hair. As we cuddled there, the rest of reality crept back in. My gaze flicked through the room and caught on the blank face of the digital clock perched on top of the TV.

“Do you think it’s time to try the radio again?” I asked.

Leo kissed my temple. “It can’t hurt,” he said. “Those doctors have slept enough.”

I smiled at his jovial tone. “Pleased with yourself, are you?”

“Of course,” he said. “I always knew dancing was going to get me a girl someday.”

I snorted and swung my legs off him. He followed me to the stairs, grinning. As I reached for the railing, he caught me and tugged me back against him, his lips grazing the back of my ear in a way that sent a tingle down my neck.

“For the record,” he said, “the only girl I really wanted to get was you.”

I turned in his embrace, and we lost another few minutes I was happy to give up. But the nagging uncertainty of what awaited us upstairs didn’t let me go this time.

We made our way back to the dining room. Leo’s good humor dimmed as we checked on Justin, who was fast asleep, a faint snore rasping over his parted lips, his limbs tucked around to his body as if to shield himself.

“Should we wake him up?” Leo asked doubtfully.

“Leave him,” I said. “He needs it.”

I hoped if Justin was dreaming, it wasn’t about last night.

When we sat down at the table and I called out into the transceiver’s microphone, all we heard was the same static as before. I broadcast our message three times, and then turned the radio off again, not wanting to waste the battery.

“We’ll just keep trying,” Leo said.

“Yeah.”

He scooted closer to me. I leaned into him, part of the tension easing out of me. It was funny, and sad, that I’d spent so much time resisting being with him like this, when now that it had happened it felt like the most natural thing in the world.