Those Who Lived: Fallen World Stories (2 page)

“So far he seems to be,” Leo said. “There was a group, on our way back north, who confronted us—I think they were going to steal our supplies, but one of them recognized us and said Michael had sent out word not to mess with us, so they backed off. We don’t know how long it’ll take before the vaccine makes it up here, though. They hadn’t produced enough to even cover all the survivors still in Atlanta when we left.”

“But eventually…” I said.

“...no one should have to worry about catching the virus, at least,” Kaelyn said, smiling for the first time. “Yeah.”

It was good news, but in a way that didn’t quite penetrate me. We were so isolated here that the friendly flu felt more like an occasional tragedy than a continuing threat. And Kaelyn had already given me a share of the vaccine before we’d left the island.

“So Gav stayed there?” Meredith said. “In Atlanta?”

Kaelyn’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “No, Mere. He— You remember that man who ran at us when we were checking out that truck, who was sick, and Gav stopped him from getting close to the rest of us? It must have been because of him... Gav got sick. When we were in Toronto. There wasn’t anything we could do.” She paused, swallowing audibly. “Tobias too.”

“But... I got better. You helped me get better, with that blood transfusion!” Meredith protested.

“Meredith,” I said quietly.

“We didn’t have any doctors, or medical equipment, or anyone to help,” Kaelyn said. “I tried. Believe me.” She gave a short laugh, so raw it hurt to hear it. Not just for me, it seemed, because Leo stepped in then.

“Justin’s okay,” he said. “
He
decided to stay in Atlanta, to keep an eye on things and pitch in where he could. We should let Hilary know, as soon as possible. Is she around?”

Meredith, abruptly on the opposite end of relating bad news, looked at me, as if I’d make her be the one to say it.

“Hilary passed on,” I said. “A few weeks after you left, an infected woman wandered this way, and Hilary and a couple of the others ran into her in the woods unprepared. They were all exposed. The one guy, Kenneth, he ended up being okay, but Hilary got sick. And...” I spread my hands. They knew how it went. I hadn’t even seen the three of them, other than Kenneth once it was clear he was fine, after they’d shut themselves away in the quarantine cabin. I’d only heard, through conversations passing by me, that Hilary had chosen to end her own life when she knew she was sick. When the other woman had become uncontrollable, the colony leaders had consulted with everyone and decided to “put her to sleep” to spare her further suffering. With the ground too frozen to allow a burial, the bodies had been wrapped up and placed a few miles into the forest.

“Oh,” Kaelyn murmured. “She—she did know where Justin had gone, at least, didn’t she? He said he wrote her a note.”

“She knew he’d followed you. She knew you’d do your best to keep him safe. I think she understood. He’d been getting pretty restless here, she said.” I didn’t want to keep talking about the dead. “What are you going to do now?”

“Yeah,” Meredith said. “Where are we going?”

Because of course they wouldn’t stay here. And of course she’d go with them. I’d known that, but my stomach tightened as Kaelyn motioned vaguely.

“We’re heading back to the island,” she said. “I want to let everyone know we made it—and to see how they’re doing. After that, I’m not sure.”

“The roads are a lot better now,” I said. “You’ll have a faster trip than we did getting here.”

“But you’ll come too, right, Tessa?” Meredith said.

She had to ask. But I don’t think Kaelyn or Leo was surprised when I said, “No. I have the greenhouse to look after here.” And I had nothing there, really, to go back to.

Meredith dragged Kaelyn off to show her the few new things around the colony, and Leo came with me to gather Meredith’s few possessions. They weren’t even going to stay the night—Suzanne was concerned about them leaving the car parked nearby, and there wasn’t anywhere safe to hide it.

“Meredith hasn’t given you much trouble?” Leo asked as we mock-skated across the ice to the cabin. His dancer reflexes made me look as graceful as an elk in comparison.

“No, not at all,” I said. “We were already pretty used to each other, since it was mostly just the two of us before, when Kaelyn was sick and her dad was working at the hospital all the time. And I think she thought being brave about it would somehow help Kaelyn get back.”

“I guess it worked,” Leo said with a rueful smile. “It really was a good thing she stayed here, and didn’t— Some of the situations we got into, I don’t know how we’d have managed to look after her.”

“It was the right decision,” I agreed.

The cabin was the same one Leo and I had shared the couple of nights after we’d first arrived here, though since they were all identical he might not have realized. The pencil crayons one of the artists had offered Meredith were neatly tucked into their box on the desk, but her sketches of tiered ball gowns and intricate necklaces littered its wooden surface. Some included notes about ideal types of fabric or alternate color schemes. I didn’t know if she imagined people might still make and wear clothing like that in our lifetimes. It hadn’t seemed like an appropriate thing to ask.

I retrieved her basket from under the bed, with a few changes of clothes the colony residents had found on their scavenging runs, a folded “book” with a short story one of them had written for her, and a drawing of a coyote she’d saved to show Kaelyn. Leo shuffled the sketches into a stack and set them inside, raising an eyebrow at the top ones. Wondering the same thing I did, I suspected.

“Can she keep these or are they on loan?” he said, picking up the box of pencil crayons.

“I’ll get her to ask.”

I looked around. Most of my things stayed in the greenhouse, so there wasn’t much else in our small room. The empty chair and the bed that was going to be much more spacious with just me in it. Though I’d become pretty comfortable with sleeping leaned against the back wall so Meredith didn’t bump me when she turned over.

“You know,” Leo said, “Kaelyn would have encouraged you to come with us if she didn’t figure you’d say you wanted to if you did. Not because she—or I—wouldn’t want you along.”

As he met my eyes, I couldn’t see any hint of distress. Whatever pain I’d inadvertently caused him when I’d first declared I was staying here, it hadn’t lingered, then. It wouldn’t have been like Leo to hold a grudge, but all the same, my next breath came a little easier.

“I know,” I said. “And she’s right. I really am good here.” Back on the island, all that waited was a vacant house, shattered glass around my little backyard greenhouse, burnt-out buildings, and a gravel pit full of corpses. I doubted even Kaelyn would want to stay long. I’d found a rhythm here. I knew what I could contribute, what was needed of me.

“I’m glad,” Leo said with a crooked smile. “You
should
be someplace where you can feel that way. I know it’s pretty hard to find these days.”

His gaze drifted through the room again, dark eyes thoughtful beneath his smooth black hair, his mouth that used to always be wide with laughter pressing flat. Maybe I’d never expected us to last forever, but I’d been happy, being with him, while it lasted. I’d thought he’d be that sweet high school boyfriend you simply grow apart from and look back on fondly, not the guy you break up with in the middle of a global catastrophe because you needed different things to survive. He should have been off at dance school, wowing audiences and charming a girl who matched him.

Someone got the story wrong
, I thought, amusement and sadness mixing.

He was going to walk out of here with that basket, and I was never going to see any of them again, Kaelyn or Meredith or him. It would be as though they’d never been here.

A jolt of urgency shot through me, the need to ground this moment and make it as real as I could. He knew where we stood; he knew this was a final good-bye, so he couldn’t mistake what I was looking for. It couldn’t hurt.

“Leo,” I said, reaching to touch his cheek and draw him closer. His eyes jerked to me, startled. He stepped back just before my fingers grazed his skin. Taking my hand, he glanced down at it, and then back at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you. Kaelyn and I... we—”

I’d been wrong—it could hurt. “Oh,” I said, cutting him off, my face warming. “
I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.” I should have noticed. When they were sitting together, there must have been signs. Too busy thinking my own thoughts, Dad would have said with a bemused shake of his head.
I haven’t got much else, these days,
I replied to his imaginary voice.

Leo was still trying to explain. “We’d known each other so long, before, and then, after Gav died, it just...”

“It’s okay,” I told him, because it was. “I’m not upset. I’m the one who broke up with you, remember? And I wasn’t trying to suggest we get back together. Come on, let’s bring this stuff to the car.”

The icy breeze whipped inside when I opened the door, but there were no papers left on the desk for it to scatter.

All of this was okay. And anything that wasn’t, I would make it be.

By evening, Kaelyn’s news about the vaccine had spread from the few people she and Leo had talked to through the whole colony. Suzanne had taken on Hilary’s leadership role after Hilary died, and throughout dinner people kept stopping by the table where she sat with the other two residents who were in their fifties, the three of them having a sort of authority in their greater experience. Partway through the meal, Suzanne stood up and called for everyone’s attention.

“I can see we have a lot to talk about,” she said. “Let’s enjoy our food for now, and when we’re finished eating, we’ll have a proper discussion.”

I stayed because I was already there, but once the dishes had been cleared and people started taking turns saying their piece, I was only paying half my attention. The questions brought up were ones even Kaelyn couldn’t have answered, like when the vaccine would make it across the border and how we could find out when it did. My mind wandered back a few hours, to when I’d watched Kaelyn and Leo and Meredith cross the field back to the car—side-by-side, matching Meredith’s shorter strides. They’d looked like a family. I’d felt out of place, waiting there, so I’d gone back to the greenhouse when they were only halfway to the road. But a feeling had crept up over me that Meredith had looked back when they got to the car to wave one last time, and had seen I was gone.

So it was only when Jon joined in that I realized the conversation around me had gotten a little more serious.

“The first threat has always been the flu,” he said, his voice resonating through the room. Hilary had told me that Jon had come to the colony before the epidemic as a playwright, but he’d also been an actor. It was easy to tell. When he brought out his stage presence, he could make a request to pass the salt sound like some-thing Shakespeare had written. Even though he was one of the youngest residents, people listened to him.

“That should be our first priority,” he went on from where he was standing by his table. “We’re not safe here, and we know that. Is there anyone who wants to go through what we did with Hilary and April again?”

April—the woman who’d been infected along with Hilary—had been Suzanne’s daughter. I’d have assumed Jon was playing to Suzanne, but the anguish that leaked into his voice wasn’t an act. He and April had just begun seeing each other, or whatever you could call “dating” in a situation like this, before she’d been quarantined. Of course this mattered to him. But something about the way he said,
We’re not safe here
, made me stiffen.

“We’re safer here than just about anywhere else,” Lauren said from across the room. “Kenneth and I saw what happened in the cities. You think there are fewer sick people wandering around somewhere like Ottawa?”

“You left Ottawa months ago,” someone else piped up. “It’ll be different now. Anyone who’s still there must have been smart enough to avoid getting infected—anyone who wasn’t will be
dead
.”

“From what we’ve heard, the ‘smart’ people are nearly as dangerous as the friendly flu,” another remarked.

“And it could be months longer before the vaccine gets up here,” Kenneth put in. A few heads nodded at that. He’d faced the possibility of infection directly—that gave his opinion an extra weight.

“How long can we keep going here?” Jon said. “Our resources aren’t infinite. We’re better off making our own decision while we have a choice than waffling until we’re backed into a corner.”

My skin chilled as it completely sank in. This was about more than just how to get the vaccine to us, or who would arrange it. What they were really discussing was all of us
leaving
.

Suzanne raised her hand, and everyone fell silent.

“It’s true,” she said. “We may be forced to leave eventually. There will be a point when we have to travel too far to find supplies to justify the effort. Hiding our presence here is going to be much harder in just a couple weeks, once the snow’s fully melted and more outsiders are on the move. That doesn’t mean we should uproot ourselves now, but it is something to consider.”

“So maybe we’ll have to make do with less,” Kenneth said. “At least here we can grow our own food all year round. It’s not as if the grocery stores will be open next winter.”

“We can grow plants indoors anywhere,” Jon said. “All we need are windows.”

“Since when are you a gardener?” Lauren said, and suddenly everyone was looking at me.

“What do you think, Tessa?” Kenneth asked. “How easily could we grow the amount of food we’re producing here somewhere else—in a city?”

A moment ago I’d been watching the conversation from the sidelines. I hadn’t been prepared to be yanked into the middle of it. “I, ah,” I said, gathering my thoughts. And then my mind clamped shut with a hard certainty. I didn’t
want
to be in the middle of this. I didn’t want this conversation to be going on at all. I knew the greenhouse, I knew the tools I had here, I knew I could work with them. That was the job I’d agreed to.