Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After (21 page)

“I am so glad I was here for that,” I say, between gasps. “God, this world makes for strange bedfellows, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Dan agrees. “Although maybe it happened this way so that the people who belonged together would find each other.”

“Then Adrian would be here.” He goes silent. I realize I just said Adrian’s name aloud for the first time in two months. “Sorry. Let’s talk about something else.”

“It’s okay to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to. But thanks,” I say. A breeze has risen, and I pull my hands into my sleeves.

“So, I’m thinking your middle name’s not Cold,” Dan says. I look at him blankly. “You said that once, that your middle name was Cold.”

I laugh. “No, it’s Mae. It was my grandma’s name, on my mom’s side. She died when my mom was little.”

“Cassandra Mae.”

“Yep.” I put on an Appalachian accent. “Cassie Mae, nice to meetcha. My mom was from West Virginny.”

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

I let my head fall to the side and groan. “Please tell me you don’t use that line often. It’s terrible.”

“It’s worked once or twice,” he says with a laugh. “I would never try it on you, though.”

“Oh yeah? So, what would work on me?”

I hear the flirty tone in my voice. I’m flirting with Dan. I almost feel guilty, but it’s not like it means anything. It’s nice to feel normal sometimes.

“I’m still trying to figure that out.”

He tilts his head and assesses me. The way he stares makes me warm and prickly, even with the breeze. This was a bad idea. I’ve flirted with Dan before, but that was when Adrian was here. When it
couldn’t
mean anything. My chest tightens, and I busy myself with my water bottle while the silence drags out. The awkward moment passes when Liz appears out of the shadows and takes a seat at the table, once she’s made sure Caleb’s still absent.

“So, Caleb likes you,” I say. “And he’s going to ask if you like him, so you’d better have your answer prepared.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Liz asks. She steeples her fingers and looks at us in desperation. I’ve never seen her flustered.

“Nothing’s wrong with him,” Dan says. “You know, you are a catch.”

Liz snorts.

“What?” he asks. “Not everyone goes for the typical girly type. And he’d do whatever you asked. You could boss him around all you wanted, he’s practically begging for it.”

I crack up when Dan swipes a cougar claw through the air. Liz hides her face and moans.

“All the picking on you suddenly makes sense, you know?” I say. “There’s an age difference, but—”

“I’m thirty-one and he’s nineteen!”

“Twenty! I’m twenty now!” Caleb’s voice rings out. He comes out of the woods looking embarrassed but hell-bent on convincing her.

“Caleb,” Liz says, and looks at him steadily, “we are not talking about this right now.”

Caleb nods obediently. Dan was right; she could have her own manservant if she wanted.

I change the subject. “So, who’s going to Quebec next week?”

All three say they’re going. We’re bringing them seeds, since their tomatoes were hit with early blight this year, plus some electrical stuff James has promised them. In return, they’re giving us some of what they say is a large supply of maple syrup. Then we’re traveling down to Waterbury and Stowe for electrical supplies and whatever food we can find. The crops are doing well, but farming holds no guarantees, and we’re not taking any chances on starving this winter.

Ana and I are in the weapons room of the barn looking for something interesting with which to kill zombies on our way to the lookout. Blades of all sizes and types hang on the walls above bins of spiky implements. The guns are mounted on a wooden frame that Dan built, and the ammo takes up two shelving units. It looks like a lot of ammo, but it’s all we have. Maybe one day we’ll be able to travel down to John’s old house and collect some of the ammo we left behind, if no one’s gotten to it yet.

Ana pulls a medieval axe-looking thing out of a bin. “How about this?”

“That looks like it weighs a ton. Who uses that, anyway? Conan the Barbarian? How about that sword?”

I point to a slim, razor-sharp sword. Ana pulls it from the sheath and slices the air, then grins and sets it by the door. I spot something on a corner shelf that looks like the love child of a pistol and crossbow. It has a slim, rectangular metal box that rises up from where you would normally string the bolt.

“Have you seen this before?” I ask.

“Nope.” She picks one up and makes laser gun noises. I stick my head into the radio room and ask John where they came from.

“Oh, we got those from Whitefield,” he says. “Will had the guys modify a pistol grip crossbow. This box is like a magazine. Holds ten bolts. I’ve been meaning to have you try them out. Why don’t you girls bring them with you? If you do any target practice, try to get the bolts back. There’s extra, but I don’t know when we’ll get more.”

He shows us how to cock the lever in the back to string the next bolt. The bolts are shorter than the average arrow, maybe six inches long, and have wicked-looking steel tips.

“Cool,” Ana says.

John goes back to the radio. We make our way to the vehicles and find Peter leaning against the ambulance, arms crossed.

“Hey,” Ana says. “What are you doing here?”

“Jamie and Liz already left for the lookout.”

“Why?” Ana asks with a frown. “It’s our time.”

He stares her down. I get the feeling we’re in trouble—it’s the same look he gave Bits when she used the f-word one day. “Because I asked them to.”

“And why did you do that?” Ana asks slowly.

“Because you’re doing stupid shit when you go out there, aren’t you? Nelly told me you’re killing Lexers, when all you’re supposed to do is check for pods and come back.”

Ana looks at me, eyes wide. I have a vague recollection of mentioning that to Nelly after too many beers. I make an
I’m sorry
face and step backward a few paces.

“Jesus, Ana,” Peter says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She sets her weapons down and stands with her feet apart, ready for battle. “What’s wrong with me is I want to keep everyone safe. You’re not my fucking father, Peter! You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

I’m very close to escaping through the back door of the restaurant when Peter turns to me. “What about you, Cassandra? You, at least, used to have more sense than this.”

Well, he’s definitely not my father, or my boyfriend, and I glare back. “Ana’s right. You’ve seen Bits. How much more do you think she can handle?”

He looks away first. “You’re right, Ana, I can’t tell you what to do. But I can tell you that I love you and want you safe. Both of you. For whatever that’s worth.”

He pushes off the ambulance and walks past her without looking back. I expect to see her eyes fill, but when she turns to me she’s livid. “I can’t believe him!”

I know Peter’s right, but it doesn’t make me want to go back to sitting behind the fence. It’s us or the Lexers, and I want us to win. I want Bits to win. Maybe she can grow up in a world where she won’t have to be afraid, if we work hard enough.

Liz’s voice squawks out of the radio on Ana’s belt. “There’s a pod, around two hundred of them, nearing the quarry. We’ll be at the gate in three minutes.”

Ana’s eyes flick toward the ambulance. I know what she’s thinking—she wants to give her quarry idea a try. The combination of not wanting Bits to see the pod, wanting to get beyond the gate and wanting to give Peter and Penny something to really be pissed about makes me acquiesce. I hold up a finger. “Okay. But if it doesn’t work, we turn around right away.”

Ana hugs me and grabs the keys. When we get down to the gate, she leans out the window and says, “Going to make sure Liz and Jamie get back okay.”

Toby slides open the gate at the same moment as Liz and Jamie arrive. Ana flies past with a wave, and I watch Toby shrug before closing the gate again.

There aren’t many roads out of Kingdom Come. There’s Trunk Road, which runs east-west, with the turnoff that dead-ends at the farm. Another, smaller dirt road—the one on which we killed the Lexers from the VW’s roof—heads north from Trunk Road after the turnoff. Trunk Road continues east until it meets up with a paved road that runs north-south. But we’re going west, toward route 100 and the roads for the lookout and quarry.

Ana bangs on the steering wheel. “This is gonna be awesome!”

I’ve broken out in a cold sweat and can barely swallow, but it doesn’t deter me. I kind of like the feeling. This is what Ana lives for, and the smile she flashes is slightly crazed, with eyes to match. I feel a moment’s hesitation; I did make a semi-promise to Peter. “Ana, we need to be careful. Peter would be—I know how he’d feel, okay?”

She turns onto the quarry road with a shrug. “Promise. But, you know, I’m not going to live forever, so I might as well take out as many as I can.”

“That wasn’t very convincing. And no one’s going to live forever, Ana.”

“Well, some of us don’t even get to live to be old, you know.” She cups her mouth with her hand and glances at me. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

I ignore her
faux pas
and say, “Don’t start all that going out in a blaze of glory crap. It doesn’t matter how you die, you’re still dead.” It’s not totally true—how you die is important—but you are still dead.

She bounces in her seat. The quarry is on our right, and a large group of Lexers walk in the fields to our left, heading straight for the farm. I imagine them at the fence, the nightmares they’ll cause, and push any second thoughts out of my mind. We’re here to kill these fuckers, and that’s what we’re going to do.

“Okay, here goes,” she says, finger poised at the siren control. “Wait,
now
can we play music?”

The radio has a CD player and a few CDs, but they’re country-western. “I’m not dying to—” I look at one of the CDs, “Shania Twain. Sorry. I could do Patsy Cline or Johnny Cash, but not Shania.”

Ana laughs like a madwoman. The Lexers have noticed us, but they’ve got a field to walk across. Ana hits the lights and sirens and blasts the air conditioner. We’re going to use as much gas as humanly possible in the next ten minutes, I guess. But I angle the vents and drink in the deliciously cool air.

“How did I ever not love air conditioning?” I yell over the siren.

“You didn’t wear leather in the summer!”

She throws her head back and screams in delight. Her excitement at the prospect of death may be foolish, but she’s the only one who understands the drive I feel to rid the world of all of this. I don’t want to hide away. I’m not afraid of dying, not anymore. She turns toward the quarry and waits for the Lexers to join us. When they hit the back of the ambulance, she rumbles to the road that intersects the lakes.

I study the rock road. The edges have crumbled away, but it looks more than wide enough. I give Ana the go-ahead, and she makes a left onto the road. The mob shuffles after us. I look down and decide not to do it again. It’s a vertical drop into deep, cold water. Most of the floaters look dead, or bloated so badly they can’t move, but aside from the useless remnants of a rope ladder, I don’t see any way to climb out without mountaineering equipment.

The ambulance kicks up dust and gravel for twenty feet, and then Ana slams on the brakes. The Lexers won’t fit on the road all at once, but they don’t know that, and the ones in back push forward. I feel a wave of satisfaction at every plop, every splash of the Lexers into the water. They’re killing themselves, and it’s such a beautiful sight that it makes me want to do this all day, every day, until the quarry is full.

“This was a great idea!” I yell.

Ana’s eyes gleam. “I told you!”

She waits until they meet up with the ambulance. Twenty splashes, thirty splashes. We inch forward until we hit where the road splits in two to form a V.

“Left or right?” Ana asks. “Lady’s choice.”

“Right.”

More plummet into the water at the sharp turn, and the seventy-five that are left follow us back onto shore. Ana circles onto the other road and taps her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “They’re so freaking slow.”

Ana brakes and backs up with a swerve when they finally reach us. It serves the purpose of knocking ten more into the water, but it also gives me a heart attack.

“Ana! What the fuck?”

“Just wanted to see if it would work,” she yells.

Ana speeds up and turns left again. More fall in as they round the bend. Forty left. She presses her lips together in concentration and reverses up the first road. A Lexer presses his face to my window. The others pound on the metal.

“Ana, go straight!”

Ana cackles and continues backward. She’s left the real world for Crazytown. I was afraid this might happen. I can’t hear over the siren, but I feel a jolt as the ambulance shifts and the rear driver’s side drops. Ana jams the accelerator. We jump an inch and slide back.

“Shit! It’s crumbling!” Ana says.

The Lexers are closing in, and if the other rear tire goes off the road when they reach us, we’re going for a swim. I don’t panic, though I probably should. I flash back to the helpless feeling of the ditch, of watching Adrian die for me, but I don’t feel helpless now. Maybe this is why I’m still alive, to kill as many of these things as possible. There has to be a reason why I’ve been left here without him.

“Put it in low gear,” I say in a calm voice. “Go slow, or we’ll end up in the water on the other side.”

“What the fuck is low gear?” Ana screams.

She didn’t have a license before Bornavirus. I reach over and slam the gearshift into low. I hope the ambulance is front-wheel drive, and that Ana will go easy on the gas pedal for once.

“If we start to slide, jump out and fight,” I say, hand poised over the door release.

The first of the pack hits. Ana presses the accelerator. We scream at a momentary backward slide, but the tires bite rock and we level out. Ana moves slowly through the Lexers. They slap at the metal in frustration and follow us to solid ground away from the water. I turn off the siren, and then the only sounds are their groans and our rapid breathing. I grab the crossbow, lower my window and line up a head in the sight. The bolt punches through its nasal cavity. I cock it and send out another. The crossbow has a bit of a kick but no worse than a rifle.