Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After (13 page)

The Lexers wander over to the truck. Dan rolls thirty feet past and lowers the window. “Adrian!” he calls. “Adrian!”

The Lexers follow, and he reverses, paying no mind to the thumps when he collides with them. He calls again, but there’s no answer.

“He ran southeast,” I say. “Maybe he came out on the other road.”

Dan puts the truck into drive. “Wait!” I say.

I search for a white shirt and exhale when I see only the browns of the forest and the Lexers’ clothes. I catch Dan’s eye in the rearview and nod for him to go.

***

The roads are empty. We might have missed him. He could be moving through the forest. Maybe he’s at the farm already. I press my knees together to stop the tremors that run through me in waves. At the gate, I promise the universe that I’ll do anything, anything at all, if only Adrian is on the other side. Caleb slides the gate open, looking so much like Marcus that for a moment I’m bewildered, then hopeful, then crushed again. Adrian isn’t here. Caleb thrusts his head through the window and scans our faces. He stops at me and his mouth gapes.

“Where’s my brother?” he finally asks.

I don’t want to tell him from inside the truck, although his trembling chin tells me he already suspects. I open the door and face him on wobbly legs. “We went into a ditch and had to run. They caught—he couldn’t get away.”

He runs his knuckles up his cheek. “Is he dead? Tell me he’s not one of them.”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

“Fuck!” he screams. He kicks the side of the truck hard enough to leave a dent. Then he kicks it again. “Fuck!”

We watch while Caleb beats the shit out of the pickup, until the side is full of tiny dents from his steel-toe boot. Finally, he crosses his arms over his face and howls. We stand helplessly, unwilling spectators to his private moment of anguish, until they trail off into silence.

“Where’s Adrian?” It’s muffled, but I can make out his words.

“I don’t know. He went the other way.”

“Probably dead,” Caleb says.

Those two words slam me back against the truck. He’s right. Adrian’s probably dead. I might never know for sure.

Caleb drops his arms and digs his fingers into my shoulder. “I meant Marcus! Cass, I meant my brother.”

I hold my hand to my mouth and stare at him. He may have meant Marcus, but it doesn’t matter. Adrian’s dead, I can feel it. He might be walking through the woods right now, but he isn’t alive.

“Please,” Penny says, “will you come and clean up?”

I stare at the gate. The day has become dusk, and I’ve been in this chair since we returned. I’m not leaving until I know for sure. He’ll come here, or I’ll go out looking for him. Either way, I’m going to find out. I won’t have another loose end.

“You look—”

I know how I must look. My forehead and cheek crackle with dried blood whenever I speak, which hasn’t been often, since my throat feels as though someone’s taken a sander to it. I don’t care that the blood in my hair is infected. If it finds a point of entry, so be it.

“Bits wants to see you.” Penny twists her hands together. “She’s scared. And she’ll be even more afraid.”

My hands tighten on the arms of the chair. She’s afraid I’m going to lose it, but she’s managed to say the one thing that could make me get up.

“I’ll get you,” Caleb says from the chair next to mine.

“Promise?” I don’t trust anyone else will. They’ll want to protect me, but Caleb understands.

“Promise.”

Penny trails me to the second floor of the farmhouse, where I falter to a stop outside my bedroom door. I don’t want to go in and see our stuff how we left it this morning, sure that we’d be back soon.

“I’ll get clothes,” Penny says softly. “Do you want anything else?”

I shake my head and shut myself in the bathroom. My buns are cemented with Lexer blood, so I step into the warm water and let it work its way through. It takes three lathers before what runs down the drain is clear. Penny’s laid out my clothes, and I emerge from the bathroom to find her slumped over the banister. She brushes my shoulder as I pass her down the stairs. “He could be okay.”

I want to scream at her to shut up, but then I
will
lose it. Right now I’m in a holding pattern. Something bad is coming, but I can’t think of anything except what I’ll have to do when I see him. I should do it; it’s only right. We’re supposed to take care of our own. I walk out the door and back to my chair.

The others arrive in the dark and make their way to me. At my request, Ben radioed them to stay at Whitefield until morning, when it would be safer to travel, but I wouldn’t have listened either. I fall out of John’s rough embrace and into my chair before I dissolve into tears. I won’t cry until I know for sure.

Nelly crouches and takes my hand. “What happened?”

“The van went into a ditch. We had to run. He ran the other way and called them so I could escape.”

The tone of my voice is eerily similar to Christine’s. We should have run together. And if we were going to die, die together. He knew I never would’ve agreed to split up, which is why he didn’t even say goodbye.

“Maybe—” Ana begins.

“No,” I say. It’s loud in the quiet.

Ana looks away. I’m relieved when her eyes stay dry. She drops her bag, pulls a chair over on my other side and sits. Nelly lowers himself to the dirt, clutching my hand in his.

“Bits is with Penny,” I say to Peter. I’ve sent Penny and Bits to bed. All Bits knows is that Adrian’s in the woods—which upset her enough.

He’s been waiting behind the others, and now he bends over me. “I’m sure she’s okay. I’ll stay.”

I look up when I hear the thickness in his voice. He presses his lips to my forehead before he moves to Ana’s other side. He takes up her hand, and we wait.

***

Dan brought a tent for me and Caleb, but every noise snaps us out of sleep. Every radio call makes us jump. I know he’ll come, and not because I think he’ll come back to me or something similarly idiotic. We’re plowing the fields and the noise draws them from the surrounding woods. That pod has been making its way here, and it’s only a matter of time.

Nights are quieter, since the farm is quiet. On the second night I lie in the tent next to Caleb, who unzips his sleeping bag and wraps his fingers around my wrist. “Cassie?”

He sounds so young, and I remember that he’s only nineteen. Or he’s twenty now—we were coming back for his birthday. I squeeze his hand as he continues. “What will you do when…”

“I don’t know.” My voice is back to normal. “You?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Someone will. Don’t worry.”

“Okay.”

We lie in silence until his hand relaxes in my grip, but I don’t let go until I drift into sleep at dawn.

I’m walking back from the bathroom when I hear Caleb yell from the east fence. My hands grow cold, and I stumble over the gravel path. I thought I’d run when I heard, but it’s a struggle to make myself move toward the noise. The rattle of the fence is punctuated by more shouts. Nelly emerges from the trees that stand between the restaurant’s rear lot and the east fence. He directs people back into the building and speaks into Jeff’s ear. Jeff nods and plants his feet apart, arms crossed like a sentry.

Nelly’s blotchy face and rounded shoulders tell me all I need to know. He closes the distance between us, but I back away when he tries to touch me. “Don’t,” he says. “You don’t want to see.”

It takes every bit of determination I have to take the next step. I shake off Nelly’s hand, ignore his pleading and put the other foot forward. I do it again and again, forcing myself not to think about where I’m heading. I have to know. I’ve always needed to see the wound, inspect the stitches, pick at the scab. Sometimes imagining is worse than reality. Most of the time, actually. So I keep walking.

***

It comes to me in flashes, each one forcing the air from my lungs until it feels as though they’ve collapsed. His shredded white t-shirt, now a dried-blood brown and covered with the mulch that lines the forest floor. His filthy, gray fingers threaded through the links of the fence. The flesh that’s been torn out of his arms.

But it’s his face that makes a groan rise from somewhere under my stomach. His olive skin is sallow and his eyes rimmed with brown. Something black drips from a hole in his temple. He looks at us sideways and pushes his mouth against the fence. It looks like it hurts. I want to tell him to stop.

I plod forward with Nelly at my elbow. The others stand in a group ten feet away from the fence line and part at my advance. Barnaby, silent for once, lifts a paw and drops it, as though trying to figure out why this Adrian is on the other side. Dan holds Caleb back from where Marcus stands with one cheek missing, head cocked and teeth bared.

“Caleb,” John’s voice carries forward. “Let one of us—”

Caleb screams something unintelligible and rips from Dan’s grip. He races toward the fence, knife raised, and rams the blade through the links. He follows Marcus down, every jab linked to a shriek so shrill and piercing that my ears ring, and then he sinks against the fence. He reaches a finger through to touch where Marcus lies on the ground. There are other, freshly killed Lexers outside the fence. They didn’t touch Marcus and Adrian, like we asked.

When I’m a few feet away, I stop. Adrian’s eyes are a dead silvery green. His teeth grate on the metal when he tries to connect with the hand I hold up. I’d thought maybe I’d say something to him, but I’d rather talk to his lifeless body than this creature. This isn’t him—it’s a germ, a virus, a fucking parasite.

Without lowering my eyes, I fumble in the bucket for a spike and wrap my fist around the handle. Another step and I’m close enough to do it. I raise it to my ear, but I can’t make that initial thrust, can’t find the power that I’ll need to crush it through bone, especially the tougher bone of someone so recently turned. I’ve held these spikes hundreds of times, pushed them through the fence into eye sockets, the backs of throats and the bases of skulls, but I can’t do it to him. I could if he were coming at me, if there wasn’t a fence between us, if there were no one here but me. I can’t do it this way, though, not if I ever want to sleep again. I don’t want to be a coward. I thought I was stronger than this.

“Cass.” Nelly’s hand closes over the spike. “Don’t.”

Adrian rattles the fence. I can smell him. I’ve always loved his scent, and this smell of spoiled meat and shit makes my stomach twist. His teeth are still white, which means he hasn’t found anything to eat. That was his worst nightmare.

I let the spike fall into Nelly’s hand. John catches my waist when I stumble backward and turn away. I won’t look again, because I was wrong. I can imagine terrible things—awful, scary things—but nothing could be worse than the reality of Adrian at the fence. Ana’s eyes are as soft as Penny’s when she passes to help Nelly. I close my eyes to wait for the crunch, and when it comes I can’t hold back the helpless sound that escapes.

John murmurs something I don’t hear. I push out of his arms. I’m no longer in a holding pattern; the flight has landed. It doesn’t seem real, but it is. This is real. It’s real.

Peter grips my elbow when I trip to a stop and heave until what little is in my stomach comes up. He gathers my hair and holds it at the nape of my neck. “It’s all right,” he says. “It’s all right.”

I don’t see how it will ever be all right.

Adrian and Marcus have been brought to the orchard, while the other bodies have gone down to the field where we stack or bury them. They’ve set him under a tree, but I don’t go until they’ve laid a sheet over top and moved away. I hate how scared I am, how disgusted I am by the body of the person I love so much.

The apple trees are in bloom and petals drift through the air to land on his makeshift shroud. The trees on this side of the orchard are gnarled and old, straight out of a fairy tale, and the air sweet and clean, until I get close. I force myself to breathe through my mouth when I kneel beside him.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I say, and realize how furious I am when I hear my clipped tone. I don’t want to be angry with him; I want to say goodbye.

I’ve put on my gloves, and I move the sheet enough to find his hand. His fingernails are crescents of dirt, and the skin is puckered and pale. He’s less decomposed than if he had died in an ordinary way three days ago, but the fact that I can’t touch him—won’t touch him—without gloves makes me angrier. I’d already touched him for the last time; I just didn’t know I had.

My stomach threatens to send up its contents again. I try to think of something good, but all I see is his face grinding against the fence. I can’t see his smile or his dimple or the warmth in his eyes. I have to see him. I ease the sheet back, chest tight, to find they’ve closed his eyes. He looks enough like Adrian that I can breathe. The snarl is gone, replaced by a soft jaw, like when he’s asleep.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”

The
scritch-thump
noise of the shovels stops. We have to put him in the ground. I want him in the ground, safe under the soil. After they died, my parents were taken straight to cremation from the morgue. I said goodbye to their ashes, not their bodies. Since then, I’ve wondered how someone lets go of a loved one’s hand that last time. How they finally, irrevocably let go. But now I know—it must be when holding on to the alternative would be even more terrible.

“What am I supposed to do?” I whisper.

The thought leaves me empty, like there’s a great, yawning chasm that starts here and ends when I die, too. I want to tell him that I love him until the end of the world and after, but he already knows, and I don’t think I can say it aloud.

His jeans are stiff with dried blood and torn where a mouth or hand might have found an artery. I don’t want to know for sure, to relive his final moments with any accuracy. His knife still hangs on his belt. It was a gift to him from my dad, who always said a good knife was worth its weight in gold. When I unclasp the knife from its bloody sheath, a silvery glint beneath catches my eye; the band of my engagement ring has worked itself halfway out of his pocket.