Until We End (17 page)

We only had each other.

Brooks didn't look at me. His arms were balanced on top of his knees, fingers laced.

“I wish—” he paused to clear his throat, “—I wish I could've buried them.”

“I'm so sorry, Brooks.”

Brooks ran his hands through his hair, tugged on it for a second, let it go. “I knew it was a fucking mistake, taking Briggs. I knew it'd backfire. But, God, there's no arguing with Lu.” He stood slowly, wincing. “Let's go. It's best to stay on the move—”

I started shaking my head. He kept talking, oblivious. “We should get food and find some shelter. Maybe an empty apartment—”

“Brooks
.”

He looked down at me in surprise.

“I still have to go,” I said. “To the shelter.”

“
What?
”

“I hate that last night happened, but it hasn't changed anything. Coby needs me and I can't leave him there alone. I won't.”

He walked forward and squeezed my shoulders. “You won't be doing your brother any favors by going there.
Please
believe me. There's no coming out of these places, and that's assuming they don't already have your picture on file.” I flinched and he saw it. “Cora, it's the truth. Don't do this. Don't
waste
yourself.”

“If I can get Coby out, then it won't have been a waste.”

“But what if you can't? What if they recognize you?”

“I could dye my hair and give the people at the shelter a fake name. I'm not in the system, not my fingerprints or anything. They won't know who I am.”

“It's a bad idea.”

“It's the only option I have.”

“No, it isn't.” He stared at me steadily. He was offering me safety. Offering to keep me safe.

I wanted it. God, I wanted it.

“I have to find him, Brooks.”

“I won't be able to come with you,” he said. His cheeks grew flushed.

Yeah, that'd occurred to me. No way he'd be able to disguise himself. Can't blend in when you're six-foot-five. Can't change your name when there might be someone there who knows you.

Me, on the other hand, I was confident that I'd be able to pass for Betty Boop or Sarah Flurry or whatever the hell I wanted to call myself. If someone I'd known before the virus was at the shelter, they wouldn't recognize me with black hair and black clothes, looking like I do now. Not if I kept my head down.

“I know,” I said. “I'll go alone.”

“They'll hold you in quarantine for two days, at least. Observe you. They'll treat you like an animal.”

They could treat me however they wanted. If it got me to Coby, then I didn't care. “Do you think that Jackson and Lu will have given us away? Told the military our names and descriptions?”

“No.” He swallowed hard. “If they were taken, we all made a pact a long time ago. No matter what kind of people they are, Jackson and Lu wouldn't turn on me. I know that. But it probably doesn't even matter now.”

I nodded. “I believe you. What's the quickest way downtown from here? I have no idea where we are.”

“I can't stop you, can I?” Brooks said.

“No.”

Brooks looked like he wanted to tell me a thousand different things. In the end, he only said, “Follow me.”

We walked out of the pine trees.

It didn't take long to find a convenience store that still had hair dye on the shelves. I guess that wasn't the first thing people grabbed when the world started to end. I picked a box that said “True Black,” took it to the front counter and slammed the box down. The cash register lay smashed to bits on the floor and the glass countertop that used to hold lottery tickets was cracked. Like lottery tickets or money would do you any good post-TEOTWAWKI. People could be so stupid.

“Service here sucks,” I said.

“Come on,” Brooks said, combat boots crunching the shards of glass that littered the floor. The front door of the convenience store had been shattered, along with every single one of the sliding refrigerator doors.

I followed Brooks outside and down the street. Every step that took us closer to the center of the city made me more nervous. But I had to go to the shelter, had to at least
try
, even though I felt like I was Frodo and it was my Mount Doom. Brooks was confident that Jackson and Lu wouldn't rat us out, and that was comforting, but there was still the issue of being used as a guinea pig for medical experiments that might kill me.

A small part of me recoiled at the idea. A chorus of small voices in my head, screaming at me to run. To go with Brooks and live, recreate the greenhouse somewhere or start a farm in the country. To believe what Charlie said about people at the shelters being taken care of and leave Coby there.

I hated myself for thinking it. I could never be happy without Coby, and there was no way could I live with myself if I left him.

Brooks and I stopped at the bottom of a steep hill, where a huge rain puddle from the night before completely flooded the road. Brooks turned to me wearing his stupid, cocky grin. “Ready for a bath?”

I glanced from him to the puddle. “You've gotta be kidding me.”

“Losing your nerve, sweetheart?”

“Never.”

Brooks nodded to the box of True Black hair dye in response. I tore the box open and put on the gloves that had been inside. The instructions said that I'd need to leave the dye in for twenty minutes, at least. Better get started. The sun was getting lower.

I sat on the curb and pulled out the bottle of hair dye that contained my new identity.

“What name will you be going by?” Brooks asked.

I squirted the bottle's contents in my palms and rubbed on my hair. It looked like tar and made my scalp itch. “Betty Boop.”

“Seriously though.”

I turned to him with a stricken expression. “What, you don't like it?”

“Have you given any thought to how you'll get out?”

“I've tried not to think about it, actually.” Because if I did, I'd have to admit that I was going into this with absolutely no plan, escape or otherwise.

He scoffed. “Of course. Just figure out a name and let me know. If something goes wrong, I could try to break in and find out what happened through their records. I might even know a few guards. But I need a name to do that.”

“I don't know. Maybe Sarah Flurry,” I said, naming my favorite romance novel heroine. I glanced at Brooks to see if he'd get the reference, but he just nodded. Maybe after I got Coby back, I could educate him properly and open Savannah's first post-apocalyptic bookshop.

People could pay using tubs of Nutella.

I unzipped my backpack, picking out a ready-to-eat meal. Meatloaf and gravy. “Lunch?” I held up the meal to Brooks.

His nose scrunched. “Instant meatloaf?”

“At least it's not just-add-water,” I said with a shrug. “I'll split it with you.”

It actually wasn't so bad. Or maybe I was just starving. Each pack was supposed to have two thousand calories, enough for a whole day. I split everything evenly and we ate with the plastic utensils that came with it. One thousand calories each, more than what we were used to, more than enough to keep us going.

I stretched my legs out and stared at the sky. Brooks was sitting a careful distance away.

This might be the last time I ever saw him. I memorized his features, the set of his shoulders, how he always sat with his elbows balanced on his knees.

“How are you doing over there?” I asked. After everything that had happened... He'd lost everything in a day. I would've been a wreck. Brooks just seemed to accept it.

“I'm fine.”

“It's not good to bottle up your emotions, you know.”

“You know that saying about the pot and kettle both being black?”

“Yeah?”

“Apply it to this conversation.”

I sighed. “Whatever.”

He didn't say anything for a few minutes. Then, “The raid wasn't exactly unexpected. After talking with Romeo, Jackson and Lu searched Briggs for an implanted tracker chip. They found it.”

“What do you mean they searched him?” My mind flashed to the bloody bandage on Briggs' arm. “Oh my god. You mean they
cut it out of him?
”

Brooks nodded. “They found it and destroyed it. I wanted us to leave right away. The chip had been active for so long, I felt sure that the military would have traced it.”

“So why didn't we leave?”

“Jackson and Lu thought that being underground would have distorted the tracker's signal.” He spread his hands. “It made sense. Briggs had been in the cellar for days and we hadn't been found. Now I think that destroying the chip sent some sort of SOS signal to the base.”

“They found us that night,” I realized.

“Exactly.”

“I'm so sorry, Brooks.” I hadn't cared for Jackson or Lu at all. But they'd been important to him. His family. And I knew what it was like to lose family.

He shrugged. “I'd guessed it might happen. We've all gotta go sometime.”

“God, why be so morbid?”

“Morbid? That's life. Get used to it, Cora, because this is the world we live in now.”

“I'll never accept that the people I love have to die. If I do, then what's the point? Why not just throw myself off the top of Cannon Tower right now?”

“You're missing the point,” Brooks said. “You don't give up on living because everyone's dying. You keep living in spite of it.”

“That sounds horrible,” I said. “It's like Lonnie said. Who knows how much time we have left? Why spend it miserable?”

“Who says I'm miserable?”

“No one has to say it!” I scooted closer to him and threaded my fingers with his. He went rigid. “Brooks. Will you please just hold my hand?”

His fingers tightened around mine immediately, thumb stroking my skin.

“When I get out with Coby,” I said, “we'll find some abandoned house in the country. Maybe I'll raid a bookshop's gardening section so I'm a little less poisonous to plants. It'll be like
Little House on the Prairie
or something.”

“We'd just have to make sure the farmhouse didn't have any dead bodies first,” Brooks said. I smacked him on the shoulder and he smiled.

We didn't talk for the next twenty minutes. There wasn't much else to say. Once I thought my time was up, I dropped my backpack and strode into the puddle until it was about calf-deep. The water smelled like rotten eggs.

“Well,” I said, swallowing hard, “maybe if I look super greasy and gross, that'll make them more sympathetic toward me.”

A grin curved Brooks' beautiful mouth. “Probably it'll just make them scrub you harder in decontamination.”

“Great. Wanna give me a countdown?” I asked, plugging my nose.

He stepped up to the edge. I held my breath and knelt. The water soaked through my pants, greasy and gritty, making me want to gag. I shut my eyes and held my breath.

“One,” Brooks said. “Two...”

I plunged my head under before he got to three, locking my lips tight against the filth, and shook my hair to get the dye out. When I wanted to spring up, I made myself stay under for another minute and shook my head even harder, so hard it made me dizzy.

Brooks grabbed me by the shoulders. Remembering Jackson, how he'd held me under in the bleach, I thrashed, but instead of holding me under Brooks was pulling me up. I broke the surface with a gasp and coughed and coughed and coughed, stumbling out of the water.

I felt like I'd been dipped in dirt, which I basically had. The grit was stuck in my eyelashes and the corners of my mouth, in my ears and under my nails. I'd never been so dirty in my life.

Coughing until I vomited the meatloaf and gravy was not an option. I sucked in air, desperate to have control over this one thing, that I would hold on to my lunch no matter how disgusting it had been. Gradually, the coughing slowed and I opened my eyes.

Brooks stood a few feet away, staring at me. “You don't have to do this, Cora.”

My voice scratched as I spoke. “Yes, I do.”

He dropped his hands. “You don't know what the shelters are like. They treat people like animals.”

“People
are
animals...” I murmured, dropping my gaze to my feet.

He ignored me. “We could leave right now. We could find that little farmhouse, and raid whatever bookshop you wanted, and we'd never have to come back to the city. We'd never have to think about it again.”

“I would always think about Coby.”

“Cora,” Brooks said. “Look at me.”

I raised my eyes to his.

“What if he's not there?” he said.

“What do you mean? He
has
to be there.”

“He might not be anywhere anymore,” Brooks said gently.

“Don't say that to me,” I said, pacing a few feet away. I whirled back to face him. “How could you say that to me? You said you understood, that you know what it's like to lose someone. How could you say that Coby might be
dead
?”

“I'm just trying to tell you the truth.”

“You don't know if that's the truth.” My view of the street blurred; I realized I was crying. “You can't.”

Brooks held my hands in his. “Do you still want to go?”

“I have to.”

He lifted my chin and kissed me softly.

“Okay. Then let's go.”

Broad Central High looked like any other high school ever. A few large buildings with a huge empty parking lot and a football stadium encircled by a track tucked in the back of campus. Brooks was hiding in the woods beyond the school's fence. I could feel his eyes burning into my back as I crossed the parking lot.

He'd camp there with my backpack of supplies for two nights and three days while I was inside the shelter. If I wasn't back by the third night, he'd come after me. I didn't know what he was planning on doing or how he thought he'd get me out. I didn't ask, because it wasn't happening like that. I'd find Coby alive and, somehow, sneak us both out. No breaking and entering required.