The Worlds We Make (24 page)

Leo nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’d like to be home again. Or at least somewhere we can make ‘home.’ Here’s definitely not it.”

“We could all head north together,” I said to Justin. “You could see your mom. Dr. Guzman might be able to find us a vehicle we can use, and we should be able to drive away from here now without the Wardens swarming us.”

But then, if we all left, no one would be around to recover Dad’s notebooks from their hiding place if one group defected.

Before I could even express that worry, Justin solved the problem for me. He straightened up, gripping one of his crutches, and said, “I was thinking.…I don’t know if I’m ready to go back yet. Maybe I could stick around here, help keep an eye on the Wardens. It seems like this place could use someone who knows what they’re all about. And after everything Michael did—I’d like to make sure he stays in line.”

“You’d be okay here?” I said. “Dr. Guzman and that one doctor seem all right, but no one else has been very welcoming.”

He shrugged. “I don’t need them to be friendly. I just want to keep helping. That’s enough to keep me going.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Okay,” I said. “Is there something you’d want me to tell your mom?”

“Tell her the stuff I’ve done so far,” he said. “All of it. Well, all the awesome stuff anyway.”

He cracked a grin, and for the first time in what felt like ages, all three of us started laughing.

Leo and I waited five days, while the first batches of the vaccine were made. Both sides in my forced compromise remained cautious—first they exchanged ten batches, then twenty—but there was no bloodshed or backstabbing. On the fourth day, when the young doctor I’d talked to in the kitchen was getting ready to go out to offer vaccinations to the local survivors, I asked if I could join him.

“I won’t get in the way of anything,” I said. I just wanted to see.

Michael had promised that the Wardens wouldn’t interfere with the CDC’s efforts as long as they didn’t try to hinder his operations. No one stood in our way when we drove out in a military-painted Range Rover, one soldier in the front passenger seat and the other beside me in the back. And I saw plenty. I saw an elderly woman weep when we caught up with her outside one of the vacant stores. I saw a middle-aged man question Ed from behind his porch railing until he was convinced he could trust him, and call his little son outside to be vaccinated too. I saw a young woman peer cautiously from an upstairs window and then slip out the door, her face glowing at the news.

“This is really it?” she asked, over and over, as Ed prepared the needle. “It’ll work?”

“It will,” he replied with a smile.

A few figures lurked in the shadows, marking our movements but never coming within range of the soldiers’ rifles. The Wardens weren’t the only gang around, just the biggest. But apparently Dr. Guzman had taken my words the other day to heart, and passed the sentiment on to her colleagues. “Whenever you’re ready!” Ed called out. “The vaccine’s for everyone.”

Only one of the skulkers emerged: a teenaged boy with tangled hair and a scabbed-over cut along his jaw. His thin shirt barely disguised the bulge of a weapon wedged in the waist of his jeans, and his hand twitched toward it when Ed got out of the car. But he stood still and held out his arm, and when the needle came out his expression was so relieved I thought he might cry.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and bolted back into the alley he’d come from.

“What’ll you do when you run into people who are already sick?” I asked Ed after we’d given out the last dose and were driving back.

“We’ll bring them in, do the best we can for them,” Ed replied. “We may be able to make use of the antibodies produced by people who’ve taken the vaccine. At very least, we can keep them as comfortable as possible.”

So we didn’t have a perfect solution. But it was so much more than I’d dared to imagine a few months ago, while I’d watched the virus tear apart the island.

We pulled back onto the CDC grounds unscathed. I stepped out of the car and looked around, and the knowledge hit me all at once. I’d done it. Maybe only temporarily, maybe not quickly enough to help everyone I’d wanted to, but I’d seen my mission through to the end.

Which meant it was time to move on.

Dr. Guzman provided us with a car—a creaky sedan that had belonged to one of the doctors now listed on the wall—as well as a week’s supply of food and a tube and bucket for siphoning gas. We were going to have to scavenge fuel along the way, but I imagined it’d be a lot easier without murderous pursuers on our tail. We said our good-byes to Justin with hugs and a repeated promise to pass word of his exploits on to his mother. He accepted a note from me explaining where I was going, to pass on to Drew if he got the chance.

I stopped by the memorial corner before I headed out, and touched the four names I’d added. My eyes welled up. But when I got into the car beside Leo, and the soldiers pulled open the gate, all I could think of was Meredith, calling out my name as she raced to welcome me back.

Leo leaned over to kiss me before he started the engine. There was going to be a little weirdness, too, returning to the colony. Tessa had broken up with Leo when she’d decided to stay there, but I didn’t know how she’d feel seeing the two of us together. I couldn’t even be sure, until we reached it, that the colony had stayed safe the last few weeks. But I had enough hope to live with that uncertainty for now. The world outside already felt like a far brighter place than the one I’d left when I first stepped inside these walls.

“I’m happy,” Leo said. “It seems almost wrong, with all the awful things that’ve happened.”

“I don’t think it is,” I said as we eased past the gate and turned north, toward home. “I think that’s how we stay alive.”

I am exceedingly grateful to the following people:

Amanda Coppedge, Saundra Mitchell, Mahtab Narsimhan, and Robin Prehn, for being my first readers for this trilogy and helping steer the early drafts on course.

Jacqueline Houtman, without whose scientific expertise my explanations of viruses and vaccines would make much less sense.

My editor, Catherine Onder, for pushing each book to be as good as I could make it and championing the trilogy from beginning to end.

My agent, Josh Adams, for being the books’ first champion and expertly guiding my career before and after.

The readers here and around the world who’ve let me know the series has found a place in people’s hearts.

My friends and family, for being there when I needed them and not being there when I needed to hole up and write.

And my husband, Chris, for patience, belief, and love I hope I match.

Like many authors,
MEGAN CREWE
finds writing about herself much more difficult than making things up. A few definite facts:
she lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband and three cats (and does on occasion say “eh”); she tutors teens with special needs;
and—thankfully—the worst virus she’s caught so far is the garden-variety flu.
She is the author of
The Way We Fall,
The Lives We Lost,
and
Give Up the Ghost
.
Visit her online at
www.megancrewe.com
.