“Not sure. Maybe out west, maybe east. It depends on what we find. We might have to wander for a while.”
“Thanks for letting me stay.” He tugged at a string dangling from a loose seam on his shirt.
“You belong here, squirt.”
He nodded before breaking down and slamming into me for a hug. “Promise to come back?”
“I promise. Hey….” I pulled back to look into his huge, tear-filled eyes. My brother, my only sweet love. I felt the tears prickling behind my eyes, too. Oh, how I’d miss him. “I’ll always come back for you.”
His sniffles were muffled in my shirt, and I rubbed his thin back. How had he gotten thinner and taller? Where was that short pudgy kid I’d known not so long ago? I’d missed so much. “Make sure you don’t lie about that,” he said.
“Never, Jeremy. Never.”
Chapter Eighteen
Leaving Las Vegas
I wasn’t sure how it ended up being decided that we should head to the Californian coast, but that was the direction we’d taken after leaving Vida. Elijah insisted on driving the entire way, leaving me to let my mind wander. Watching the city disappear into the rear view mirror left me feeling numb. There was something sad about saying goodbye to the only road I’ve ever been down. The last of the scattered houses at the edge of the desert valley disappeared, and the slow trek through a highway riddled with vegetation, stalled cars and debris made the ride feel like it lasted for eons.
Still, we’d make it to California before dark. We hoped we’d be able to camp outside one of the major cities in an abandoned house somewhere. We wouldn’t have time to scope out possible hiding areas before nightfall to figure out if the cities were infested or not, so it would be safer than trying to shack up within the city limits of Barstow or San Bernardino. So far, there was little sign of life on the road, which suited us just fine.
The memories resurfaced along with each mile of road traveled. I remembered taking this trek many times with my parents, heading to the beach on impromptu fun trips or going to Disneyland, where all your dreams were supposed to come true. I huffed at the thought and ran my fingers through my dark strands. It was cool enough to keep the windows down since we weren’t traveling at high speed, and the fresh desert air was delicious when I breathed it in. Sarah was sitting up front with Elijah now, and I watched as she chatted his ear off. I’d occasionally notice her hand land on his arm, or she’d reach over and poke him playfully on the shoulder when he tuned her out. I didn’t blame him. She could go on and on, and I had already blocked her out myself.
Still, I think her feelings for Elijah ran a lot deeper than she let on. It made me smile, happy my friend had found some sort of distraction in the world after. They’d spent a lot of time together in Vida, and from what Sarah had told me, she’d been his right-hand man… err… woman. It was astonishing to see the transformation of my friend, who’d been such a girly girl as much as I’d been a tom boy. To watch her fight was like watching someone else take over her body, a possession of an intensity that could relate to.
I chuckled and went back to sharpening my large hunting knife. The thing was huge and made me feel like a female Rambo, but it was one of my favorite blades outside my dual machetes. Even the double katanas had nothing on this. I scraped the stone across the surface and relished the sharp noise it made. It was calming and didn’t bother the others, as the wind rushing in through the window hushed the scraping sound down to a distant shuffle.
It was impossible for me to do nothing on this trip. When my weapons were cleaned and sharp enough to slice through the metal of the car, I sat back, one knee up to lean my arm on as I stared out across the horizon. We were going a little faster as the miles stretched on, swerving now and then to avoid debris. There were fewer cars out on the open highway, reminding me of how fast the virus had taken ahold of the cities. Most hadn’t had a chance to escape its clutches the way my family had. Most had died within the city limits, gripped in the chaotic mess of death, blood and sickness. It made me somber to think that so few had tried to escape before the virus had taken its victims. If you hadn’t died from the virus right away, you had to stay behind because you were either taking care of a sick loved one or you had become food for one of the thousands of hungry, soulless creatures that began roaming the streets from dusk until dawn. How we’d survived even a couple nights in our house in Vegas, boarded up within, was beyond me. Randy had been part of it.
As I thought of Randy, I turned to watch his steady breathing. He was all healed up now, with only faint pink flesh in areas betraying the missing pieces he’d had in his previous ruined state. The sun didn’t kill him, and he didn’t burn to ash, but the effects of spending so long as a nocturnal creature meant he felt extreme fatigue during the daylight hours and suffered from extreme sensitivity to the sun. It was bad enough that it burned him to a crisp in no time if he laid out in it. Strange as it was to have him back in my life, it brought the memories flooding back, memories of my mother.
I still didn’t understand her motives in the last moments of her life. Maybe the grip of madness had just been too much for her. It made no sense, though. The woman I’d grown up with, the one who’d kept us alive at the end of all things, wouldn’t have done that to herself. She never would have given in to suicide. The thought kept hounding me, adding to the pile of questions she’d left me asking. I knew Jeremy hadn’t asked the same things I had after her death. His coping mechanism had let him accept her loss long before her death. He’d watched her wither away, like an old person slipping into dementia, a death of the mind before the body. Maybe that was how he’d survived it so much better than I had. He’d accepted her death long before it had come. He was amazing, I had to admit that. An old soul trapped in such a young body.
He’d be fine, even with me no longer at his side. I knew he’d understood the situation before I had even had a chance to explain it to him. Thank goodness he was wiser than I was. Otherwise, my guilt would’ve eaten me alive.
The Jeep slowed to a crawl, and I sat up, peering over toward Elijah to see what was going on. If we didn’t make it to the outskirts of San Bernardino before the sunset, we would spend a night without sleep for certain. “Hey, why are we stopping?”
“I have to take a piss, if you don’t mind,” Elijah grunted. Sarah rolled her eyes and turned around in her chair, smacking the ever-present gum in her mouth. How she’d found so many packages of gum to carry around with her always baffled me. Of course, I didn’t exactly keep an eye out for it.
“Any more gum?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded and dove into her bag. She rummaged around for a minute before tossing me a small rectangle of Hubba-Bubba. Of course she had the good stuff.
I stuffed the huge, rubbery chunk into my mouth and chewed, letting the flood of sugary bubblegum flavor fill my mouth. “Been a long time since I had some of that.”
“Good, right?” She smiled, already hanging off the back of her chair. “Are you excited? I haven’t left Vegas in forever.” Her big toothy grin made me laugh. I had to agree wholeheartedly.
“Yes, I’m actually looking forward to seeing the West Coast again. Been landlocked far too long.”
“I know! I wonder how Hawaii is. My dad took me there for one of his visits to the the Marine Corps base on Kaneohe, Oahu. It was gorgeous! I loved the beaches there. The water was cool, but nice enough to snorkel. He tried to teach me how to surf, but I sucked and kept getting pummeled by the waves over and over again. That wasn’t my idea of fun. I loved the sun though. Sand and sun, best stuff ever.”
I nodded, amused by her story. “I’ve never been to Hawaii. I wonder how the epidemic played out there. You don’t think they were spared, do you?”
She shook her head. “I doubt that all the passengers on the planes were clean when the planes stopped running. I bet it spread there like wildfire, too.”
“What about the islands that don’t have an airport?”
“Could??
?ve been filled with people from the ferries, maybe. Who knows? Maybe there’s a hidden paradise unaffected by this crap.” She slipped back into her chair, snapping the seatbelt back on as Elijah jumped back in.
“All right! Let’s get this show on the road.” He smiled at both of us, wagging his eyebrows over his sunglasses. We both laughed, and I was thankful for the relaxed atmosphere. Randy slept through it all, but it didn’t matter. I was happy for the first time in months.
Even the uncertainty of the future couldn’t have brought me down at that moment. Every mile took me closer to something I knew I was meant for, even if I had to leave my heart behind in Vegas.
“So… L.A. or San Diego?” Elijah questioned as he swerved around yet another wreck. It was an old SUV, burnt and shattered, with twisted metal and glass splayed around it. One look inside found me staring at the charred skeleton of its unfortunate driver. It silenced our group as we made our way around it. I only wished this wasn’t the norm nowadays. All the vehicles had some sort of damage or had been left abandoned, doors open where the passengers had fled into the desert and died from exposure or vampire.
We’d been fortunate that we’d even survived this epidemic at all. It made me even more determined to get the antidote to someone who could use it in the best way. I hoped we found them in California.
“L.A. first. Then, if we don’t find anyone who can help us, San Diego,” I answered. Nothing made me more anxious than thinking about what we’d encounter once we got there. I just hoped we’d find what we were looking for sooner rather than later.
Chapter Nineteen
Ordinary Days in Infinite Ways
“This is going to have to do.” Elijah pulled onto a dirt road leading to a far off house, hidden near the base of one of the smaller mountains before the road entered the pass into San Bernardino. We hoped the pass would be clear enough to get through, but it was getting late, and the slow pace had us running out of time before the night brought the creatures of darkness out.
I peered over Elijah’s shoulder and studied the road before us. There was a small church tucked into the hills nearby. More houses appeared as we went over the hill, but the entire area was deserted. At least, I hoped it was. The shadows were growing with each passing minute, and we would have to gear up for the night’s stay, taking turns on watch.
Glancing over toward Randy, who was miraculously still asleep, I hoped that his inner clock was a good indication of when we could expect the ferals to awaken. Their influence still lived in him, and I wondered just how human he was now. Or was there even enough left of him to overcome the time he’d spent in the virus’s grip? Would the feral ever really be extinguished? He’d been hard to rouse during the day when we’d stopped for lunch. He’d awoken, drowsy and quiet, and even munched on a sandwich I’d handed to him. He’d eaten it silently, avoiding interaction as though he wasn’t all there yet. He’d refused to leave the shade of the gas station overhang we’d taken shelter under to eat and relieve ourselves. He’d donned some sunglasses scavenged from inside the trashed convenience store, and they were still on his face now, blocking the evening dusk as it came rushing at us.
“This one looks sturdier than the other ones and isn’t a trailer. Plus, it has bars on the windows.” Elijah pulled the Jeep into the driveway of a small adobe-style house, reminiscent of the Mexican villa homes I’d seen on a vacation to the south in my youth. I remember walking into some of the houses, transformed into small museums about the culture of each area. It was always cool inside, despite the overbearing heat of the outside and always smelled like the rich, salty earth of the underground. They kept the heat out and they kept it mighty quiet inside, too. I’d enjoyed those places. They were like ghosts in my mind, still haunting me, reminding me of times past.
We shuffled out of the Jeep, even Randy, who stumbled out into the evening, not yet as awake as we would have liked. As soon as we entered the house and swept it for ferals or any non-desirable, he slipped down onto one of the beds to continue his snooze. The sun was a powerful influence on the ferals, and I’d only seen its sedative effects up close on Randy. Pretty soon, the shadows would be long enough for him to walk across the outside of the house without any fear of the sun touching him, and he’d be fully conscious, like his fellow feral creatures. That was precisely when we needed to go on alert.
“Any supplies, take them. We don’t know if we’ll find much in the city.” Elijah pointed toward the pantry, and I nodded as he made his way to the garage.
“Hey, so what are you going to do?” I frowned at the thought of him ordering us around while he didn’t do his part in scavenging.
“I’m putting our Jeep in the garage, backward, for a quick getaway. Any other questions you got while I’m here?” He tapped his foot, glaring at me. I waved him off, shaking my head. He could be such a jerk when he wanted to be, but he was pretty harmless. I sauntered off to join Sarah, who was busy filling trash bags with cans, unopened food boxes and bottles of water.
“Wow, pretty untouched, huh?” I said, opening one of the cabinets in the kitchen island. Inside, I found only cookware and pans, so I moved to another cabinet.
“Yeah. Major jackpot.” She tossed something at me and hit me in the shoulder.
“Ow! What’s that?” I bent over and grabbed the package. It was a box of fruit strips. “No way. Haven’t had one of these in ages.” I ripped it open and took a bite. “Dang, if sugar wasn’t God’s gift to earth, I don’t know what would’ve been.”
Sarah nodded, her own strip stuffed into her mouth as she chewed. That girl found sugary sweets no matter where she went. “I got first watch,” she said, “so I want to be all hyped up to crash later.”
“You’re insane, you know that?” I tossed the rest of the box she had thrown at me into the trash bag and dropped some bags of rice into it as well.
“Yeah, well, we all need our quirks to stay sane nowadays, right?”
“I guess so.”
“So what’s up with you lately, April?”
I paused, shoving back a loose strand of hair as I stared out the window. The sun had touched the bottom of the western mountains and seemed to be bobbing there like an apple about to take a dip.
“What do you mean?”
“You know. You and Rye, that Christian guy. I don’t think the others noticed, but I saw how you looked at both of them. I know you’re mated to that redhead, but man, he gives me the creeps with his weird eyes. Plus, he’s probably dead.”
“They’re just different colors, that’s all.” I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“I know that. Still, I’m sure it’s pretty crazy to be bound to someone like that.” She sighed, tied up one of the bags and pulled out another from the dusty roll. “And what about Rye? The guy is nuts for you, but you beat him off like he has leprosy or something.”
“I do not.”
Sarah stopped what she was doing to put a hand on her hip and glare at me. “Oh, come off it. You treat Rye like crap. You also avoided Christian even though he was nuts about you, but after he went and kidnapped you with Mercer, he’s so not cool in my book, so… what’s wrong with Rye?”
“I don’t know.” I squirmed and opened another cabinet to avoid looking at my friend, even though I felt her eyes on the back of my head. “I never wanted to fall in love. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted.”
“Why not? I’d kill to have two men fawning over me.” She sighed and started dropping more cans into the bag. The pause gave me a moment to choke back the sudden rush of tears threatening to flow from my eyes.
“When there’s so much death around you, love turns into a luxury, a petty indulgence.” My eyes stung, and I sniffed quietly. “Why fall in love when life is not guaranteed? It could be stolen from you in a split second. All love brings is loss.”
Sarah remained silent. My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I turned to find her staring at me, a pathetic, sad and shocked look pasted across
her face.
“Really?” she said as I looked up. “That’s sad, April. You’re so depressing. I get that we can keel over or get attacked by the wildings at any time. And then there’s the crazy hybrid vamps. I get how someone can think love is not worth having and life isn’t worth it since we all die sooner or later anyway. I get that. But how did you become so hopeless? So cold? Where is the April I used to know?”
“She’s dead.”
“Bull.”
“It’s not bull. I’m not that girl anymore. Neither are you, Sarah. Where’s the fashion conscious girly girl who wouldn’t dream of breaking a nail swinging a sword around? Tell me you haven’t changed either, Sarah.”
Sarah’s freckled face turned an obscene red as she practically steamed from the ears. I immediately regretted my outburst, but it was too late.
“I may have to kill things to survive and scavenge for food. I have to get dirty and do things I never would’ve done before, but deep down, I’m the same. I still love having fun, painting my nails, looking nice, and I care about my family and you. I’m still your friend. I’d never give up on you. I’m just concerned that you’re doing this to hurt yourself, this not letting anyone in.” She sucked in a breath. Her eyes focused on me, seemingly close to tears as a sheen of fluid shimmered across them. “I’m not dead inside. You need to really think about what’s going on in your head and all around you and for goodness sake, quit dragging along people if you can’t tolerate them.”
“Who made you the keeper of whoever loves me?”
She groaned and was tugging at her hair when Elijah reentered. His eyes darted between the two of us, amused. “What’s the ruckus about? Come on, we’ve got to make sure all the doors are barred and not waste time chitchatting.”
Leave it to Elijah to knock some sense into us. We followed without looking at each other again. From the way Sarah kept tugging at a loose lock of hair, I could tell she was still irked by our conversation. Hell, I still was. Maybe she was right, though. Maybe I was the one who’d changed so much I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.