Until We End (5 page)

Brooks and Jackson were talking about the pros and cons of some sort of assault rifle, Lord preserve me, when the front garage-style door of the warehouse opened.

A shiny black SUV rolled inside and parked about twenty feet away from us. Two people got out and began unpacking a collection of cardboard boxes. I craned my neck to get a closer look at the new arrivals as Brooks and Jackson went to help them unload it.

A short Asian woman with artificially blond hair was clearly their leader. She held herself in a way that made her presence fill the room and command attention, barking orders at Brooks and his brigade like it was nothing. Just looking at her made me sit up straighter. I thought she'd be pretty if she smiled.

The other man was a total retro-rockabilly. He wore a pair of high-waisted jeans with the bottoms cuffed and a white t-shirt with its short sleeves rolled up. All his clothes were squeaky clean, though how he managed that I had no idea. His slicked-back platinum blond hair barely moved from its carefully coifed style as he lifted the boxes out of the car. I'd never looked that clean and put-together, pre or post-TEOTWAWKI.

But what was up with their hair? They all had the same hair color, more white than blond, and freakishly bright — they could have been quadruplets, except they definitely weren't related. That platinum blond hair was the only trait they had in common. It made them look like Stepfords and gave me the chills.

I tore my gaze away from them and squinted at the stack of boxes, trying to read the labels. Maybe it was food. Except that'd be a lot of food to come across scavenging. From what Dad told me, the grocery store shelves were probably all bare by now. Dad was always right about this stuff.

Maybe it was detergent for the rockabilly's clothes.

Once a stack of boxes sat neatly outside of the SUV, Jackson and the rockabilly started to make their way over back to where I was sitting. Brooks stopped the woman with a hand on her arm. He gestured in my direction and I felt her authoritative gaze rest on me before cutting back to his face.

I glared at my boots as blood rushed to my face in a blush that must've looked beet-red, furious that the woman could embarrass me just by looking at me.

“A good haul today.”

I looked up. The rockabilly had taken a seat right across from me. He was talking to Jackson, who sat on the floral green couch.

“What'd you hit?” Jackson asked.

“A school just outside of the city,” he said, draping his arms over the back of the chair and dangling a leg over its side. “The cafeteria was stocked up with peanut butter and jelly.”

Jackson grunted. “No bread.”

“Maybe one day.” His face lit up in a cartoonishly hopeful expression. “They did have a little nurse's office, so we picked up some first aid.”

My jaw dropped. “That's all
food
and
first aid?
” I burst out, pointing to the boxes. Impossible! Dad told me scavenging would be pointless after a few months — there'd be nothing left. And he was practically never wrong, not about stuff like this.

The rockabilly glanced at me curiously. “Yes. There's not much left in the city anymore, but you can still find some treasures if you know where to look.” He pulled himself out of his sprawl, leaning forward with a friendly smile and putting out a hand.

“I'm Lonnie Smith,” he said. “These guys call me Smith, but you can call me Lonnie.” I stared at him, dumbfounded. I'd been expecting many things: rudeness, unfriendliness, outright hostility. Maybe even some kind of cultish doctrine, judging from their hair. I was not prepared for polite introductions.

I grasped his hand, happy to find he wasn't one those guys who give women a limp-noodle handshake in deference to their supposed femininity. His hand was warm and dry and strong in mine. I decided then that I liked Lonnie very much. “Cora Jane Delaney. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too, Janie,” he said, his smile getting bigger.“To what do we owe this visit? It's not very often we get company these days.”

I dropped his hand. “I don't really want to talk about that right now,” I said, glancing at Brooks. He was still talking to the woman.

“Did Romeo send you over?” Lonnie asked, voice gentle.

Jackson had asked the same thing. I shook my head. “No, I don't know anyone named Romeo.”

“Okay,” Lonnie said. “Then what's your story?”

I crossed my arms over my stomach and wished he would stop asking questions. If he didn't — if I thought about what had brought me here — I was afraid I'd crack and start crying.

“I don't have a story,” I said.

Jackson made a sound that I thought was supposed to be a laugh, but sounded more like a belch. “Doubtful. If you've survived this long, your story is probably a good one.” His gaze dipped to my toes and slowly worked its way back up. The attention made me shift uncomfortably. “Why don't you tell us what exactly you did to survive this long, Cora Jane?”

My cheeks flamed with embarrassment at his innuendo, but I managed to keep a straight face as I said, “I gardened.”

Jackson laughed — a real laugh, this time — and I mentally amended my guess of his age from late to early twenties. I also made a note that I should avoid being caught alone with him.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Brooks, followed by the woman.

“Cora, this is Sergeant Lu,” Brooks said. I stood from my chair and tried to look pleasant, brushing the dirt off my pants, but she just stared at me with a coolness that made the Antarctic seem like a nice summer getaway. She wore black from head to toe. Her glossy blond hair was pulled tight into a ponytail away from a sharp, gaunt face with cheekbones that could rival Tyra Banks.

“Your brother's missing,” Lu said instead of nice-to-meet-you.

It wasn't a question, but I answered anyways. “Yes.”

“The government took him?”

“Brooks thinks so. He says that's strange.”

“Because it
is
strange,” she said, looking at me closely. “We can help you, but it won't be free. It's a trade, goods for services, just like before the virus. But we don't want money. You have food, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“That's our price. We want all of it. Including your various resources. Do you understand?”

I smiled tightly. “Sure thing.”

Over my dead body. I had no doubt those
various resources
meant my greenhouse. My pond. Coby's fish. My filthy freaking chickens and their filthy freaking eggs. Not going to happen.

“When can we leave?” I asked.

“Soon,” she said. “Brooks, do we have time to get to her house and back before dark?”

“Probably not,” Brooks said. “Sun's gonna go down soon, and her house is about a twenty minute drive.”

Lu sighed, looking irritated. I shared in her disappointment completely.

“Fine,” she said. “Jackson, Lonnie, help me get these boxes. McKenzie, watch her.”

The three of them started lifting the boxes, which looked like they weighed fifty pounds each at least, and taking them outside. If they'd gotten so much from one scavenging run, I bet they were sitting on a gold mine of food. A lot of people would've probably killed for what they had, assuming there were more than the five of us alive in Savannah.

“So,” Brooks said, and I started. I'd almost forgotten he was there.

He sat on the edge of the coffee table, leaning close to me. Heat rolled off him in waves, begging me to stretch out a leg and oh-so-casually brush it against his. The memory of what happened in the truck was vivid — his lips on my neck, hands on my hips. I burned from it.

I put a lock-down on my muscles, caught his gaze — milk chocolate with caramel,
God I'd kill for a Hershey's
— and held it. He stared straight back. Not the way Jackson did, not like I was furniture, but still different. Unwavering, like he was trying to assert his dominance. If he thought I'd back down, he was wrong.

“So?” I repeated.

“About what happened between us in your truck,” Brooks said softly. He smiled.

Oh my God.

“What about it?” I asked, proud my voice didn't slip. Blushing furiously.

“Don't mention anything about it to the others, okay?”

My eyes popped open wide as my embarrassment became rage. I barely kept myself from screaming. “Don't
mention
anything? What do you think I'm gonna
do
? Brag about it? Try it again?”

The three of them were coming back. I leaned in until my nose was an inch from his and made my voice softer. “Go screw yourself, Brooks.”

Brooks sat back, looking up as Jackson, Lu and Lonnie joined us.

“You're sleeping in that room back there,” Brooks said to me, pointing to a room partitioned by patchwork quilts in the far corner of the warehouse. “We'll come get you in the morning. Stay there until then.”

I freaking
despised
him.

I shot to my feet, threw my shoulders back, and marched toward it.

Behind the curtain was a bed sitting on box springs high off the ground. Its crisp white sheets were tucked in at the corners nice and neat, like it was awaiting inspection. I snorted. Maybe it was. These were ex-military men, after all.

A cherry wood dresser with a mirror stood against one wall, and a thickly woven red rug warmed the concrete floor. It could have been a completely different space than the industrial coldness of the warehouse. For a second I could almost believe that I was in a real bedroom, in a real home, in a different time.

Then I looked up at the towering metal ceiling and my illusion vanished.

This was definitely someone else's bedroom, but I didn't care. The highs and lows of the day had taken a serious toll on me. Dirty, bone-tired, mind buzzing with thoughts of Coby, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into that neatly made bed and pass out.

But first, maybe they wouldn't mind if I borrowed a change of clothes.

I walked to the dresser and opened its drawers. The clothes I'd put on this morning — was it only this morning? — were threadbare and covered with grime, sticking to my back and armpits with sweat. If I went to sleep in those white sheets, they'd be brown by the time I crawled back out.

I peeled off my clothes and picked out a random shirt and pair of pants. Everything in the dresser was black. Black t-shirts, pants, and socks. Fine with me.

My hands stilled as the smell from the drawer reached my nose. What. The. Hell. The clothes were
clean.
As in, fresh-from-the-Laundromat clean! I buried my face in the fabric and inhaled deeply, reveling in their scent. At home, we never had enough water to spare for laundry. How did they get so much? I almost tripped over my feet in my hurry to put the clothes on, the fabric light and fresh against my skin, no sweat, no dirt, no stains.

I pushed the sheets back and climbed into bed, but as soon as I closed my eyes they sprang back open. My body still hummed with adrenaline, my mind impossible to quiet. I sat up and pressed the heels of my palms against my eyelids, replaying my earlier conversation with Brooks.

I clutched my chest as anxiety squeezed my heart. Dad might have gone to the government, trying to help, if he'd found the hospital abandoned. But if what Brooks said about government custody was true and it was just a big science experiment with the survivors as the guinea pigs, Dad never would have stayed.

And when he left, the army must have intercepted him.

But no, that wasn't right. Brooks told me his orders changed four or five months ago, which was at least two months
after
Dad left us. Then I knew what happened him. The virus.

I pressed my face into the pillow as I pictured him slouched in the driver's seat of his old jeep, wire-rimmed glasses spattered with blood from the rupturing of his sinuses. I rubbed at my eyes at the sting of tears, and buried the image down deep.

It was Coby stuck in my head now. His voice, begging me not to leave him, accompanied by an unshakable, low-grade nausea and tightness in my muscles, as if my heart was pumping a constant flow of adrenaline into my body and just
begging
me to do something with it.

Tomorrow couldn't come fast enough.

The bang of a drawer slamming jolted me awake — it felt like my eyes had been closed for maybe a minute. Brooks stood at the cherry wood dresser, looking at me in the reflection of its mirror.

Some days morning holds a moment of mercy. A small sliver of time when you don't yet remember tragedies of the day before. I didn't experience that. The knowledge of Coby's loss had gnawed at me the entire night. I sat up slowly, rubbing my face, feeling like I hadn't slept at all.

“Those are my clothes,” Brooks said, still staring at me in the mirror.

I looked at the baggy black clothes I was wearing and back up to him. We matched.

Oops.

“Sorry,” I said, not feeling sorry at all.

“It's fine,” Brooks said, turning to leave. “At least you'll smell better now.”

Despised. Him.

I collapsed back into the bed, wishing I could crawl under the blankets and cry. But crying wouldn't solve anything, and it damn sure wouldn't help me get Coby back. So instead, I swung my legs out of bed, hooked my arms through my backpack's straps, twisted my hair into a knot on top of my head and took a deep breath.

The brigade was gathering in the middle of the warehouse. I smiled at Lonnie and ignored everyone else, especially Brooks, but ignoring them got harder once they started munching granola bars.

I straightened my spine, sitting as still and deliberate as if I was balancing a book on my head, despite my grumbling stomach. If they weren't going to offer me breakfast, I sure as hell wasn't about to ask. I had too much pride.

Once they were finished with their granola bars, Lu stood and said, “Load up.”