Ashes (15 page)

“What does that—”

“Shut up and listen. I've lived through firefights you wouldn't believe. You don't know how often I thought I was toast; that I thought,
This is it, I'm going to die
. But I made it home. I made it
here
.” He reached up to cup the back of her neck. “I made it in time to save you and Ellie.”

“That was luck.”

“It was fate. I was
exactly
where I needed to be at
exactly
the right moment. I refuse to believe that we've gone through all this just to die,” he said fiercely. “Now we are alive. We are safe. I am not going to let anything happen to you or Ellie, and that's a promise.”

Fate or not, that's not the kind of promise you can keep. I've got a monster in my head that might have other ideas.
Oh, but she wanted to believe him. She was shaking all over, a deep and visceral shudder so strong she was afraid she would blow apart. “B-but where are we going to g-go? W-we can't go back. Wh-where?”

“We don't have to go anywhere right now. We'll think of something. Come on, I've got you, ease down.” Somehow he'd pulled her from her chair and they were on the floor, and she was clinging to him, every muscle tight as a coiled spring, and then he had clasped her to his chest the way he had Ellie, and they were rocking back and forth. “It's okay, I've got you,” he said, holding her tight. “Ease down. I've got you, Alex, I've got you.”

She wept then: for Jack and Ellie and poor loyal Mina and her own dead parents, lost forever; for her aunt, whom she would never see again. She cried for Tom and especially his little sisters who lived near D.C., which really was nowhere good. She even wept for the astronauts riding a doomed orbit beneath an alien moon.

And Alex wept for fear, too. As bad as things were, she thought things were going to get a lot worse.

Because where there was one Jim, one Ponytail Blonde, one Basketball Boy, there might be others—and no telling if one of
them
might be next.

A week passed, then two, and then three. They rested, inventoried their supplies, and ate well—even the dog. They passed the time reading from the rangers' considerable selection of books, taking short hikes around the station, and throwing a Frisbee for Mina, whose bum leg was clearly on the mend. They didn't power up the generator at all; the noise made them nervous, and the rangers had left hurricane lamps and a lot of candles. After that first night, they'd told Ellie what they knew, and Alex was surprised at how calmly the little girl took in the information. Maybe not having any family to go back to made the world going up in flames a little easier to take. Or, maybe, Ellie figured
they
were a family now, which wasn't far from the truth.

They slept before the fireplace in the front room, with Ellie sandwiched between Alex and Tom, who took turns keeping watch at night. Tom didn't sleep much, though, either because he couldn't or wouldn't. More often than not, Alex would awaken hours into her shift, look over, and see Tom propped on cushions by the front window, still awake, with the dog by his side. Every now and again, the dark silhouette of his head would turn as he looked over at them, his scent steady and sure, and she knew he would keep them safe, no matter what. Yet he sat up often and that made her think of stories she'd heard about guys who went to war and came back with their minds choked by nightmares. She didn't pry. She liked to think that she was only respecting his privacy.

But that was a lie. Once, when Tom and Ellie were outside, she opened her soft-sided black case to stare at the plastic baggies, the Bible, that unopened letter. She had no idea what she was going to do now with all that stuff. At this rate, she might be lugging that case around for the rest of her life, which might not be a whole lot longer. She could tell Tom about the tumor, and probably should. She trusted him, and they depended on each other. She thought that a guy who'd been to war—who'd defused bombs—would understand about nightmares and monsters. Yet every time she considered telling him, she felt that familiar prick of fear. Once people knew about the tumor, they changed. They were awkward, their eyes darted away, and she could feel their relief when they escaped. Worse, she knew exactly what they thought:
Better her than me
.

Fear held her back, but there was something else. True, Tom had been in the right place at the right time, but his family was in Maryland. He had said that he was due to deploy again in December. So why come all the way to Michigan for a camping trip with his team leader? Because Tom hadn't seen him enough in Afghanistan? It didn't make sense. Wouldn't someone heading off to combat again want to spend time with his family?

And why couldn't Tom sleep? Was it because of what he saw when he closed his eyes? She didn't ask, but she sensed from the way he looked at her, how he sometimes took her hand or touched her arm, or how he treated Ellie with such care and patience, that Tom was afraid. Of losing them? Maybe. Or maybe the fear went much deeper, to something he'd already lost. As strong and capable and brave as he was, Tom had his secrets, too.

Still, there were other times: when their eyes met and his scent deepened to a complex spice and then her heart gave this little jump. Sometimes, she let herself think about how his lips might feel against hers. Sometimes, she thought about more—what it might be like to really let herself go—and wondered if he had the same thoughts.

But she did nothing about that. Said nothing. Didn't ask. There was a monster in her head. Not telling wasn't fair or right, but then no guy would want her if he knew, not even Tom.

So she zipped up the case and stowed it away again in her fanny pack and decided not to think about it.

By the end of the first week of November—six weeks after the Zap—they still had not changed, but the weather had. Tom stomped in with an armload of firewood to break the news, which Alex confirmed by simply stepping outside and looking north. The day was gray and the wind was up, so she got a good whiff—that edge of chilled aluminum—and eyed the dense blanket of clouds, potbellied and slate gray.

No need for her special spidey-sense this time. “Snow.”

“Uh-huh. And probably sooner rather than later,” Tom said. “We need to decide.”

“Go or stay.” Beyond the kitchen, she could hear Ellie folding laundry and talking to Mina in the front room. “Tom, I don't know. What if we stayed? No one's bothered us, and we know it's not safe to go to a city yet.”

Every night, she and Tom clustered around the ancient radio atop the lookout tower, trying to glean as much information as they could. More often than not, all they got was static, but from the few broadcasts they'd picked up, they knew that both coasts were virtual dead zones, either burning or radioactive or both. Everywhere else was chaos, and there didn't seem to be much of a government, at least in the U.S. They'd heard enough to understand that Stan hadn't been the only one to drop; a lot of people—tens of millions—had died in those first few moments. They knew something more was going on, too, from the garbled stories of cannibals and crazed zombies and kids going suddenly insane. In fact, kids came up a lot.

“There's plenty of wood,” she said now. “We've got water and food.”

“Yeah, but that's now. We'll need more food come spring.”

“We could hunt. There are a lot of bullets down in the cellar. We've got more guns, and there's the bow.”

“But we'll run out of other supplies eventually. Then we either learn to make candles and soap and toothpaste and clothes, or we leave the station and the park and go find supplies. That could take a very, very long time, and then we have the not-so-little problem of gathering enough and getting it back up here. And what if one

of us gets really sick?”

“What about all your battlefield medicine stuff?”

“That's not the same as being a doctor and you know it. Even if I were, I'd need supplies. So we have to leave. It's just a question of when. Either we hunker down until spring, or leave now while we still can and before other people start showing up to take what we've got.”

“No one's come yet.”

“But they might. People are desperate. They might come walking out of those woods just like we did, and then what do we do? Fight them off? Let them in?”

“Tom, once we leave, there's no telling what might happen. There's no government, no one in charge other than maybe the military—and who knows what they're doing?” She had another thought. “Wait a minute,
you're
in the army. Where's the nearest base?”

“South. Wisconsin. There's Sawyer Air Force Base here in the Yooper, but that closed a while ago and got turned into a tiny airport and a pretty dinky museum. Couple planes on static display, mainly. Most of the original buildings are still standing, but there won't be any soldiers based there now.”

“Maybe we should try to go south then.”

He shook his head. “The military's going to be way more interested in protecting itself than helping us. Trust me on this. They've got a lot of guns, and guys who aren't afraid to use them.”

“You're not making a great case for leaving.”

“I'm not saying that. I'm thinking we
should
go, but I think we should head”—he hesitated—“north.”

“North? Tom, it's going to snow. It's already freezing out there.”

“Yes, that's the point. People will move south and west, not north. They'll go where it's warmer.”

“Tom, the only thing north of us is Superior.”

“Not if we head into Minnesota.”

For a second, she was speechless. “Minnesota? You want to go to
Minnesota
? Tom, that's
hundreds
of miles.”

“According to the ranger maps, it's about five hundred miles to the border.”

“The border. You mean, Canada? That's nuts. You want to go farther north, into Canada, at the beginning of winter?”

“Lot fewer people. More territory for the people who are left to spread out. There'll be fish in the lakes, plenty of game if we stay out of the mountains. Come spring, we can grow things.”

“Tom, you're making a lot of assumptions about what we can and can't do. I don't know anything about farming, and I'll bet you don't either.”

“We're not talking acres of wheat or corn. I'm saying we find ourselves a safe place and then grow enough to live on. We can do that. People do it all the time. My parents always had a garden. Alex, if things are really as bad as what we've heard, it's not like anyone's going to be driving to the local grocery store anymore. That means we learn to fend for ourselves. I'm not saying it'll be easy. I think it will be more difficult than we can imagine. But not facing up to that won't help us.”

“I know that,” she said, a little irritated now. “Okay, say you're right. Even if this was a good idea—and I'm not sure that it is—we've got Ellie to think about. You and I might make it, but you can't expect Ellie to hike that kind of distance, sleep out in the snow. The rangers only left two pairs of snowshoes and cross-country skis, and none fit Ellie. That means we'll have to carry her or figure out some kind of sled. Best case scenario, we wouldn't make it for almost two months—and that's if it doesn't snow. No way we won't run out of food.”

“An awful lot of people are dead, Alex,” he said quietly. “They died weeks ago, in the first few minutes.”

“Assuming you can trust rumors.”

He pushed through her objection. “That means a lot of abandoned houses and plenty of supplies, provided no one's gotten there first.”

“It's still really far. Think of how long it took us to make it
here
.” She saw how his face had changed. “What?”

“We might have wheels.”

Her mouth unhinged. “What?”

“That truck in the garage. It's pretty old. I think it might actually work. I just haven't …” He punctuated with a shrug.

“Oh my God,” she said. “You mean, we could
drive
? Why didn't you say anything?”

“A couple reasons. Once the snow flies and it gets more than eight inches, a foot, we'll be dead in the water, even with chains, and there won't be snowplows. There's also fuel to worry about. We've got some here, but inground tanks work on electric pumps. No electricity, no way to get gas.”

“But there'll be a lot of abandoned trucks and cars, right? We'll siphon off what we need. Tom, in a truck, five hundred miles is almost nothing. We could be there in ten or twelve hours. We could go anywhere.”

“Under normal circumstances. But how much you want to bet that the roads are parking lots? Everything stopped moving, all at once. If what we heard on the radio is right, then a lot of people flat-out died, just like Stan. That means bodies, lots of them. Where there are bodies, there are going to be scavengers, and I'm not just talking wild dogs. There'll be raccoons, opossums, foxes, wolves, maybe bears. All those cars mean we'll be spending half our time just trying to clear the road. Eventually we'll run into something too big to move and then we walk.”

“What if we stay away from major roads?”

“Yeah, but remember that Spielberg movie
War of the Worlds
? Remember what happens when they try driving past all those people without wheels? They nearly get killed, and then they lose the van and end up with nothing. That's how the real world is, Alex; that's what'll happen if we take the truck. There is nothing near what you think of as civilized out there. Everything is different.”

She saw his point, she really did. She had, after all, seen the same movie. “If we're too freaked out to leave, then this isn't any better than a prison.”

He was quiet a few moments. “What if we run into more of
them
?”

She knew what he meant. “Maybe they're all dead by now. It's
cold
. They've probably frozen to death.” Then she thought,
Yeah, but if a brain-zapped ranger
did
set that booby trap, they might be a lot smarter than they look.
This assumed there
were
more brain-zapped kids out there. Panicky radio broadcasts, fueled by rumors, weren't facts. Although they believed everything else. So why not that?

“Jim,” he reminded her, “gave me the slip for more than two days. If there are more of those zapped kids or adults, I wouldn't count them all out.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe we shouldn't count us out either.”

“Maybe not,” he said, “but those radio guys made it sound like the people who survived are scared of kids, of
us.
That means we're the enemy. We're the threat. We'll be lucky they don't shoot us on sight.”

Ellie was not as unhappy as Alex had expected her to be, even when Tom sat the girl down and explained how things might be very different once they ran into other people. To Ellie, Tom was a soldier, as her father had been. Tom had saved them once before and would save them again.

Over the next two days, Alex re-inventoried their supplies, decided what they should bring, and, if it came down to it—if they lost the truck or got bogged down in snow—who would carry what. Tom worked on the truck, and Ellie stuck close, shadowing Tom, handing over tools. When Tom cranked the starter, they were rewarded with a series of heavy metallic clatters and coughs before the truck settled down to a throaty rattle. Tom and Ellie gave each other high fives, and Ellie crowed to Alex, “And now we got wheels!”

That night, after grilled steaks and baked potatoes, Tom asked, “What do you know about hunting, setting traps, that kind of thing?”

She handed him a plate to dry. “Well, I know how to shoot. I've done skeet. I know how to make a deadfall.”