Thicker than Blood (20 page)

I couldn’t lie and say that I was happy, not
with the infected as well as the living an ever-present threat. Not
when there was no way of knowing how or when we were going to get
our next meal, let alone find a safe place to spend the night.

But at the very least, in that singular
moment, I felt better than I could remember feeling in a long time.
Freer, and more like myself than I had been in years.

• • •

Hours later, when the sun was beginning its downward
descent, the trees starting to thin out some, we happened on a
narrow dirt path. Alex bent down on one knee, inspecting the
man-made trail. “It’s not overgrown,” he mused aloud. Standing up,
he looked left and then right, his expression quizzical.

“Do you smell that?” Evelyn asked, lifting
her chin and sniffing the air. I gave her a questioning glance, and
sniffed as well.

“Like…something’s burning?” Alex suggested.
“Or was burning.”

At first I couldn’t smell anything out of
place; the forest smelled like you’d expect—damp, cool and crisp,
hints of moss and pine and the bitter woodsy scent of leaves
beginning to decay. I inhaled harder, sucking in air through my
nostrils and down my throat until I began to sort out the
intermingling smells, finding the one scent that was out of place.
It was something like the aroma of a doused campfire, when the fire
had been put out but the embers were still steaming.

“I can’t be sure,” Alex said, peering down
the path. “But I think it’s traveling with the breeze. We could
head west and check it out, or east and see if this path leads us
to a road.”

He turned to face Evelyn and me, waiting for
our response. How did he know which way was west, I wondered,
without a compass?

“The sun rises in the east,” he said,
answering my unspoken question with a wink. “And sets in the west.
And moss,” he continued, pointing to a large oak. “Supposedly it
only grows on the north side, but I’m not exactly sure how accurate
that is.”

“What did you do before?” I asked, intrigued
and suddenly wanting to know more about him. “Before the
infection?”

He lifted one broad shoulder, then let it
drop nonchalantly. “Nothing really. I was only nineteen when the
infection hit the States. I was in community college, played
football every weekend with my friends, hunted with my dad, still
didn’t know what I wanted to do with myself.” He shrugged again,
more so with his face than his body. “Still don’t.”

“What do you miss the most, Alex?” Evelyn
asked abruptly. “From before?”

He didn’t answer right away, his eyes taking
on a sort of far-off, glazed-over quality. I watched him, wondering
if that was how I looked when I thought about the past.

“Music,” he finally said, refocusing on
me.

Still watching him, I felt my heart thump
painfully inside my chest, my good mood quickly deflating. It
wasn’t what he said, but the way he’d said it. Quiet and full of
longing, but at the same time, sounding resigned. As if he truly
believed that music, along with cold beers and pink fuzzy slipper
boots, had all become extinct, and only in our memories would we
ever have those things again.

Evelyn cleared her throat. “How about we head
west?” she asked. “And see what’s causing that smell? Who knows?
Maybe we’ll find a pair of pink slippers.”

• • •

Ever the protector, Alex was insistent that Evelyn
and I stay behind him as we made our way down the dirt path. We
stayed to the side of the trail, mostly, Alex wanting quick access
into the forest if we happened to need a quick getaway. I kept my
hammer tightly in my grip, though I had no idea that if it came
down to actually using it on an infected, if I would be able to
muster up enough courage.

For at least a half an hour, it didn’t
seem to me that the path was leading us anywhere. I began feeling
like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
, on a long road to nowhere good, with the possible threat
of monsters waiting to jump out at me at every twist and turn. But
for Dorothy, it had all just been a dream.

If only it were really that simple, I
thought, feeling suddenly sullen. To click our heels together and
chant, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
And then, poof, we would wake from this nightmare, safe and sound
in our own warm beds, the monsters gone.

“Dorothy was a lucky bitch,” I muttered under
my breath.

“What did you say? Did you just curse?”
Evelyn asked, watching me curiously. “Who’s a bitch?”

“No one,” I mumbled, feeling silly.

“The smell is getting stronger,” Alex
announced, slowing his pace to a mere crawl. “Look.” He pointed up
ahead and around a small bend. “A driveway.”

I squinted, trying to see better, and found a
gravel-covered path hidden among the trees and up a small
incline.

We continued walking, the three of us on
constant alert for any hint of movement or sound that seemed out of
place, Alex with his rifle held in front of him, and Evelyn
clutching her blade while I kept a firm grip on my hammer. Slowly
and silently, we approached the driveway, and Alex held out an arm,
signaling that Evelyn and I were to stay put while he checked it
out.

I reached out, tugging on his sleeve to get
his attention. As our eyes met, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted
to say, just that I felt I should say something. Every other
second, it seemed, we were walking into some form of danger or
another, and just in case we weren’t able to walk away from what we
were about to walk into this time, I just wanted Alex to know…

Actually, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted
Alex to know, maybe only that I did care about what happened to
him. Yes, I wanted him to know that I cared, so I tried to convey
that emotion by standing up on my tiptoes, lifting my face to his,
and pressing a soft and quick kiss on his lips. Alex’s hand found
my waist, pulling me tightly against him as he deepened what had
only been meant as a small gesture, turning it quickly into
something so much more.

“Be careful,” I murmured, then pulled away.
Déjà vu washed over me, dizzying and powerful, and suddenly it
wasn’t Alex standing in front of me, but Thomas. Together with
Shawn, ready to scour the neighborhood for food and water, standing
in front of me, kissing me good-bye, and me whispering to him, “Be
careful.”

Four hours later he’d returned covered in
bite marks, Shawn half carrying him into the house. The very next
day he’d succumbed to the fever.

I stepped away from Alex, feeling nauseated
and a little breathless, and searched out Evelyn’s comforting hand.
She was there, she was always there, slipping her hand into mine
and gently squeezing.

“I’ll whistle,” Alex said, looking between
the two of us. “Once to come up, and two to run.”

Hand in hand, Evelyn and I stood at the
bottom of the small hill, watching as Alex made his way up it and
out of sight. We waited there for what seemed like an eternity, not
speaking, barely breathing, until we finally heard it—a single
whistle.

Together, Evelyn and I jogged up the
driveway. Alex came into view, first his dark hair, then his broad
back. There were more trees, then a large clearing, and was that a
truck? Yes, it was a truck! And then, as the rest of the scene
revealed itself, we stopped dead in our tracks.

Off to the far left of the clearing sat the
shell of what was once a home. Thick splintered beams reached
toward the sky, blackened and charred, towering eerily over a
foundation of ruins—piles of broken glass, black dust, and burned,
twisted wood.

“Oh my God,” Evelyn breathed. “There are so
many bones…”

My eyes widened, my mouth falling open. What
I had thought were twisted pieces of burned wood were actually
bones. And now that I knew exactly what I was looking at, I could
make out what appeared to be a rib cage, and beside it, a
skull.

“We have company,” Alex said, his voice low
as he gestured toward the truck.

What had once been a man, but was now a
monster, was pressed up against the blood-splattered driver’s side
window. His face was twisted into an unholy snarl, his teeth bared
and chomping on air while his hands pawed at the glass, drawing
dark smears up and down as he struggled.

“He’s newly turned,” Evelyn said, swallowing
hard. “He’ll be faster than the others. Stronger too.”

“That truck looks like it might still work,”
Alex said quietly. “This fire was recent. And look.” He pointed to
the bed of the truck where three gas cans were neatly stacked
inside, and a dark outline of liquid could be seen in all three.
“Fuel.”

The entire scene was devastating. Something
obviously horrible had happened here, and to people just like us,
hidden away and simply trying to survive. There was no way to know
what had actually occurred, but I envisioned a family, maybe some
friends, who’d secreted themselves in a house in the woods only for
one of them to somehow become infected. That one had probably
infected everyone else, even the sole survivor who’d tried
unsuccessfully to escape in his vehicle.

Tearing my eyes away from the ruins, I looked
at Alex. “What should we do?” I asked, my voice thick with
emotion.

It was Evelyn who answered, her sentiment
starkly different from how I was feeling. “We kill it,” she said,
her tone matter-of-fact. “And we take the truck.”

Evelyn

We kill it, and we take the truck.

Of course we do, that was the humane thing to
do, right? And we needed a truck. So why did I feel so guilty? I’d
said it so candidly that I’d even shocked myself. Yes, this new
Evelyn was a much more manic version of me than any other version I
could remember. My violent ups and downs, my unraveling emotions
with oddly thrown-in periods of indifference, it was the part of me
that I’d always been able to keep hidden in the past. But here, in
the great wide open, it seemed as if everything was spilling out of
me, all my secret pain. It made me feel useless, and in turn,
vulnerable. My typical escape from my emotions was gone, impossible
without Jami here to distract me, and now I found myself
questioning every thought I had, and every single action.

Scrubbing his hand across his chin, Alex
scratched thoughtfully at the scruff that covered his once
clean-shaven jaw. “Eve, you go to the passenger side and distract
it. I’ll take the other side and open the door, and when it comes
out, I’ll kill it.”

“What about me?” Leisel asked as she clutched
her hammer a little tighter.

“Stay here,” Alex and I answered
together.

Leisel’s lips flattened, and her gaze fell to
the gravel beneath her feet. I felt a pang of guilt for brushing
her off so carelessly, but the truth was she had no real experience
killing these things, aside from the one at the church. She’d
always been protected from them, and I wouldn’t risk losing her at
the hands of one lone infected. And Alex apparently shared my
feelings.

Watching as she’d looked on in horror at the
smoldering pile of bones had only solidified my fears for her. She
hadn’t cried, but she had been clearly horrified, telling me she
wasn’t ready to take on the world outside the walls on her own, not
just yet.

Nodding at Alex, I stalked toward the
passenger side, my knife raised just in case. You could never trust
these things to do what you wanted or expected; they lived by their
own set of rules, hunger the only thing on their mind.

“You ready?”

Alex stood across from me with the truck
between us. Squaring my shoulders, I brought my blade forward and
nodded.

“Of course,” I said, ensuring that my tone
reflected confidence and strength.

The infected thrashed, throwing its body
against the window in its eagerness to get to Alex, so much so that
I couldn’t imagine him paying me any mind no matter how much noise
I made. Only when I tapped my blade against the passenger window
did its cloudy eyes jerk toward the sound, and it launched across
the bench seat, its obsession with Alex officially over.

When it plastered itself against the window,
the glass audibly bent with its weight, and a slight crack began to
fissure downward. Again, it slammed its face into the window, its
teeth gnashing, its tongue—a dried-up and putrid slab of
meat—glided across the glass, causing my stomach to turn over.

While I had its undivided attention, Alex
produced another blade and opened the door, then took a step back
and lifted the knife. As the scent of fresh human meat wafted into
the cab of the truck, the infected seemed to pause in its
thrashing, its head whipping in the other direction. All at once it
growled and groaned, launching itself in Alex’s direction.

Unaware of the drop between the cab and the
ground, it tumbled headfirst out of the door and promptly fell out
of my sight. His knife still raised, Alex dropped to his knees and
a sickly crunch echoed through the air, followed by a wet slapping
sound.

As I rounded the truck, still holding my
knife in front of me, ready to use it if needed, I found Alex
getting to his feet, his blade in one hand, dripping with red and
black sludge, and in the other a set of keys. The infected lay
facedown in the dirt at his feet, utterly still.

Glancing inside the cab, I looked over the
seat, the entirety of the bench covered in dried blood and
unidentifiable gore. And the smell, the smell was wretched, like a
combination of sewage that had sat out in the sweltering sun, along
with the sickly bitter stench of death all the infected carried
with them. Similar to rotting flesh, but indescribably worse.

“That’s disgusting,” Leisel said, coming to
stand by my side. “I call dibs on the backseat.”

With a snort, I started to laugh. “Be my
guest,” I said, gesturing to the small backseat where what was left
of a human carcass lay in an abnormally contorted heap. It was only
a skeleton, having been picked clean of most of its organs and
entrails, though the slimy gunk that remained was smeared and dried
all over the seat and floor.