Lives We Lost,The (6 page)

Our first day on the road, we passed homes and warehouses and off-ramps leading into towns, but we only stopped twice, by stretches of vacant land, to pour all our extra gasoline into the tank and to switch drivers. Now and then I caught a glimpse of what looked like chimney smoke in the distance, but that was the only sign of anyone still living. The truck’s tires hissed endlessly over the snow-covered freeway.

For the first time, the gravity of what Leo had told us about the mainland completely sank in. The rest of the country hadn’t been callously ignoring our island’s plight. They’d been so overwhelmed they couldn’t even save themselves.

In the middle of the second morning, Tobias wiggled a finger toward the dashboard and said, “We should stop at the next town with a clear enough exit ramp. Gas is getting low.”

He’d been sounding more confident since he’d taken the wheel the day before. Guilt pinched me. I’d snuck Tessa and Leo into the harbor office before I gave them their doses of the vaccine, to avoid any argument. I wasn’t going to offer something so precious to someone I hardly knew who was only helping us out of obligation. Who might run like he did from the army base if things got tough. But it was harder to think that way with Tobias sitting next to me, drumming his fingers on the wheel in time with a tune he was humming.

I shifted Meredith on my lap and peered at the map book. We’d passed the signs announcing we were entering New Brunswick just a few hours before we’d stopped last night. It looked like we could make it to Ottawa in three days, as long as the snow didn’t get much deeper.

As long as we
could
find gas.
“That exit looks good,” Gav said from the backseat. He pointed to a lane where the wind had left the snow shallow, and Tobias nodded.
“Do you think there’s any chance some places still have electricity, Leo?” I asked.
His coat rasped against Tessa’s as he shifted behind me. “There were a few power stations still running, the last I heard,” he said. “But most of them had broken down. And that was more than a month ago.”
“If we can find a station that has power, Kaelyn and I should be able to get the pumps running,” Gav said, squeezing my shoulder. “We’ve had some practice.”
My stomach twinged as we passed a frost-crusted McDonalds sign at the edge of the town. I didn’t even like burgers that much, but I’d have all but killed for one now. A little taste of our old, normal world.
“Here we go,” Tobias said, turning the wheel.
He pulled up beside a row of pumps that claimed to have full service, though the shop across from them was dark. The hoses lay in a tangle beside the pumps. I eased Meredith off my lap and stepped outside into the January chill, shaking the feeling back into my travel-numbed legs.
“What should I do?” Meredith asked, her eyes wide.
“Just wait here, okay?” I said. Gav hopped out, and we hurried to the station shop together.
The inside had been ransacked: shelves toppled, papers and boxes crushed underfoot. I picked up a newspaper to check the date. November 16. That was two weeks after we’d lost all contact with the mainland on the island.
The paper felt strangely thin, and as I paged through I realized it was missing most of the usual sections. No sports, no entertainment. I wondered if the government had canceled those events to prevent people from mingling in public places, or if the organizers had stopped out of their own fear. After a glance over the headlines—
US president pleads for calm in face of global pandemic. Utilities failure imminent
—I dropped it onto the counter. I knew those stories. I’d seen them for myself on the island; could see them now in the desolation of yet another town.
Gav flicked the light switch on and off, getting no response. We squeezed behind the counter and peered at the various controls. He sighed.
“Doesn’t look good.”
“I guess it would have been too easy if we could have filled up the usual way,” I said. “We’ve got the siphon tube.” Leo had brought it with the rest of our supplies from the SUV.
We scanned the area as we came out, but there were no vehicles in the station’s lot or outside the big discount store on the other side of the street.
“No luck,” Gav said to the others. “We’ll have to go farther into town and find cars to siphon from.”
As Tobias reached to turn the key in the ignition, Leo grasped the back of his seat. “Wait,” he said. He peered through the window toward the town. “If there are any people around, showing up in an army vehicle . . . it might startle them. Give them the wrong idea.”
“You don’t figure we’re safer in this than walking around?” Tobias said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Leo said, his voice tight. “A lot of people are upset with the military right now. I’ve seen people jump a guy who wasn’t even a soldier, just for wearing a camouflage jacket. Okay? If you’ve got weapons, let’s carry them in case we need to defend ourselves, but I’d rather leave the truck.”
“Sounds all right to me,” Gav said. “Keep a low profile, get in, get out, maybe no one will even notice us.”
He shot a dark look at Tobias, who lowered his gaze. At least, I noted, Tobias’s parka was plain gray, with nothing clearly army about it. “Fine,” he said. “But let’s make it fast.”
I grabbed the bucket and the now-empty jugs from the back of the truck, handing some off to Tessa and Meredith. When we came back around, Tobias was showing Leo a red plastic-looking gun.
“A flare gun won’t do major damage, but it’ll at least scare a person,” he was saying. “Makes a pretty loud noise, though, so don’t use it unless you have to. Anyone who doesn’t already know we’re here, they will as soon as you fire it.”
Tobias must have had a weapon on him too. Probably one that fired actual bullets. I remembered the woman I’d seen gunned down by a gang member in the street, weeks ago but still vivid in my mind.
“We’re not going to shoot anyone,” I said. “Not unless it’s that or get shot ourselves.”
“I don’t want to use it,” Leo said, tucking the flare gun into his coat. His stance was tense.
Gav joined us, holding a branch he must have found, as thick as his arm and nearly as long. “Better to be prepared than not,” he said, taking the last couple jugs in his other hand.
Tobias circled the truck, making sure all the doors were secure. “Our food’s safe in there?” Tessa asked.
Tobias gave her a thin smile. “It’s an army vehicle,” he said, patting the side of the truck. “No one’s getting in without a bazooka.”
We tramped down the road, past the fast food restaurants and a one-story motel, toward the more tightly clustered buildings in what looked to be the center of town. A layer of ice crusted the snow, and our boots crunched through it as we walked. The sound seemed horribly loud in the silence around us.
We passed a couple of nicer restaurants, a liquor store, and a jewelry shop. All the windows were shadowed. Meredith had paused to look longingly at a few beads scattered in the jewelry shop window, when three dogs trotted onto the road in front of us.
We all froze. The largest dog, what looked like a German Shepherd–mix, woofed quietly and continued on. The others, a bull terrier and a brown-spotted mutt, followed without a backward glance. All three still wore collars. Their tags jingled long after they slipped out of sight.
“Must be an awful lot of ownerless dogs in the world now,” Tobias murmured. “Maybe they’d be better off if the virus got ’em too.”
“There could be more,” Gav said. “You think a flare gun would work on wild dogs?”
“They’re not really wild,” I said. “And they didn’t seem interested in us.”
“We don’t know what else is around, though. Or how hungry they might be.”
“Well, we either keep walking or we go back for the truck and announce to the whole town we’re here,” Leo said mildly.
“I’m all for the truck,” Tobias said.
“There were just three,” Tessa said. “And we’re already here.”
“Exactly,” I said, breaking from the group to stride on down the road. “Let’s just get some gas and go.”
A few blocks up ahead, I spotted a couple of mounds of snow that looked vaguely car-shaped. I headed toward them, hearing the others catching up behind me. We were just a few storefronts away when movement up ahead made my legs lock.
A couple of figures in heavy coats were sauntering out onto the street from around a corner just beyond the second car. We waited as they approached. From the corner of my eye, I saw Leo’s hand slip into the pocket that held the flare gun. My pulse started skittering.
“Hey there,” one of the figures said when they were about ten feet away. His pale eyes glowered at us. “What’re you all doing?”
“We’re not trying to make trouble,” Gav said. He held the branch low by his side but clearly visible. “Just need some gas for our car.”
“This is our town,” the man said, but he didn’t move any closer. I wondered if it was just the two of them—there was no way they could fight all six of us, if it came down to that. “We don’t care for strangers coming in and taking what they want.”
“But we need it!” Meredith said. I reached for her, but she shifted away from my grasp. “It’s really important. We have to get to Ottawa, to give them the vaccine, so we can stop the virus.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “Vaccine? There’s never been no vaccine for the friendly flu.”
I didn’t see much point in lying about it now.
“We have a new prototype,” I said. “My dad was a scientist—he made it. We’re trying to get to the city to find someone who can make more. We just need a little help getting there.”
The man studied us for a moment.
“Well,” he said to his companion, “maybe we should just let them be for the moment, don’t you think?”
Without another word to us, they turned and ambled back the way they’d come. A prickle crept up the back of my neck. I was glad they were leaving us alone, and he seemed to be saying we could take what we needed after all, but something about his manner felt threatening.
“They weren’t so unreasonable,” Tessa said after the two had turned out of view. I tore my eyes away and hurried on to the nearest car.
The gas cap resisted my tugging fingers. Gav tried the door, grimaced, and raised the branch to smash in the driver’s-side window. Leaning inside, he popped the cap. I unscrewed the seal and fed the tube down into the tank. Then I brought the other end to my mouth, bracing myself for the taste of gasoline I was going to get if I wasn’t fast enough, and sucked in. Meredith hovered by the bucket.
All that came up was air. I wiggled the tube around, trying to get it deeper, and sucked again. Nothing.
“It’s dry,” I said.
“Let me see.” Gav knelt down beside me, but he had no more success.
“Someone else probably had the same idea,” Leo said.
The second car proved to be as empty as the first. We walked a little farther, trying a pickup truck that appeared to have stalled in the middle of the road and a van half a block down one of the side streets, but neither gave us so much as a drop.
“Someone’s drained them all already,” I said. The man who’d tried to warn us off? “Let’s get back to the truck. We can drive to the other side of town. Maybe whoever got the gas here only bothered with the main road.”
“No argument from me,” Tobias said, and Gav nodded.
“Meredith,” Leo said as we trudged toward the gas station, “from now on, you shouldn’t talk about the vaccine with strangers. I know you were trying to help, but people are afraid of getting sick, and some of them might not care that we need the samples to make more. They’d just want to get some for themselves.”
Meredith lowered her head. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I told her. “Just remember.” Hopefully there wouldn’t be a next time.
There was no sign of anyone nearby when we reached the station. If they had come and gone, their footprints were lost amid the ones we’d made when we arrived. The truck’s windows were undamaged and the doors secure. I started to relax as Tobias unlocked them. He hopped into the driver’s seat while we chucked the bucket and jugs in the back.
A shrill squealing split the air, so piercing my hands leapt to my ears. Just as abruptly, it cut off. Tobias twisted the key in the ignition again, but the engine was silent.
“What in hell?” he muttered, pushing open the door. He marched over to the hood and yanked it up, just as I reached him. For a second, we both stared down, motionless.
Every lid that could have been twisted off was gone. Every tube was snapped, every wire cut.
Gav hurried around and stopped with a hiss of breath.
“Can we fix it?” I said, even though I was already pretty sure of the answer.
Tobias’s shoulders slumped.
“Not unless you’ve got a magic wand,” he said. “The truck’s dead.”

“The guys in town,” Gav said. “You think they did this to get back at us?”
I hugged myself. “Or to take what we have. They couldn’t overpower us all at once. And they couldn’t get into the truck. So they stopped us from leaving while they decide what to do next.” Like they were predators and we were the prey. They’d wounded us, and they were just waiting for the best opportunity to strike a killing blow.
Tobias started to pace. “We shouldn’t have left it,” he said. “What the hell do I do now?”
“What do
we
do, you mean,” Tessa said quietly.
“We walk,” Leo said. He jerked his hand toward the truck. “There’s a tent in there, we’ve got the camping stove and food and warm clothing. We’ll manage. But I say we get out of here before whoever’s after us comes back with help.”
“We’re going to walk all the way to
Ottawa
?” Meredith said, her mouth twisting as if she’d tasted something sour.
We were almost halfway there already. I swallowed. “It’d be practically just as far trying to walk back to the island. And the vaccine won’t do anyone any good if we head back. Let’s figure how much we can carry, quickly, and get out of here.”
“We can find another car on the road,” Gav said without blinking an eye. “We’ll only have to walk until then.”
I wished I could be so confident now that our plans had just been turned on their heads. His conviction steadied me. “We could bring more if we had backpacks,” I said.
Tessa pointed to the discount store across the street. “I think I see sleds in the window. Those would carry a lot.”
“If we have time to get them.” Leo scanned the buildings around us and jogged over to the gas-station shop. In a few smooth movements, he hefted himself onto the dumpster by the side wall, leapt up to grasp the edge of the roof with his hands and elbows, and swung his knee up. After a brief scramble, he was standing.
Tobias stared up at him. “You some kind of rock-climbing expert?”
“Dancer,” Leo said. He turned, surveying the town and the freeway beyond. “I don’t see anyone right now. Grab the sleds. I’ll shout if there’s a problem.”
“Hey, are you helping, or are you going to stand around and moan while we get going?” Gav said to Tobias. Tobias’s jaw set. As he clambered after Gav to sort through the supplies, I turned to Meredith.
“Come on, Mere,” I said, as brightly as I could manage. Her body stiffened, but she pressed her lips together and nodded. She, Tessa, and I hurried toward the discount store.
The lock on the door was broken, probably by someone looking for food, but they hadn’t touched the sleds. We pulled down six of the biggest ones that had ropes to pull them by and ran back to the truck. The plastic bottoms rasped over the snow behind us.
Leo gave us the okay gesture from the roof. “So we have to take the tent,” Gav was saying. He started handing boxes and bags out to us. “And those two sleeping bags, and all the blankets. The food. Some of the water. We can refill the bottles.”
“I have some purification tablets,” Tobias said. “Here, we’ll want the first aid kit, and the stove and the extra kerosene. And the radio, of course.”
“I don’t think there are any stations to listen to these days,” Gav said.
“It’s a transceiver,” Tobias said. “Good one. Maybe we can get in touch with these scientists in Ottawa, if they’re there, get them to meet us halfway.”
Gav gave him a skeptical look. “We got room?” he asked me.
“I think so.” I took the bag of blankets and fit it into the sled I was keeping light for Meredith. “There’s space on that one,” I said, pointing to the next sled over.
“We’re bringing it,” Tobias said. “I’ll take that sled if it’s a problem for someone else.”
“You think there are any army bases on the way that could help us?” I asked him. “Lend us a new truck, at least?”
Tobias ducked his head. “No one came to check up on us in weeks,” he said. “We weren’t getting any broadcasts on the usual bandwidths, either. I think it was the same thing everywhere. People got sick, or ran away, or holed up just hoping to get by.”
“There were soldiers at the border,” Leo said. “As soon as a few of them got the virus, most of them deserted.”
I wasn’t surprised, after seeing how the soldiers who’d been supposed to enforce the quarantine had run off, but his words made me colder. We really were alone in this.
“Vaccine,” Gav said, sliding the cold box to me. I placed it carefully in the middle of my sled and then went to the front of the truck to grab the map book.
“There are a bunch of little towns down the road, one every few miles,” I said after I’d flipped to the area we’d stopped in. “Maybe we won’t even need to camp outside.”
“I won’t argue with that,” Gav said. He came around and slid his arm around my waist. “Ready?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” I said, despite the nervous thudding of my heart. He hugged me close, a silent reassurance: We can do this. We will make it. I leaned my head against his shoulder, allowing myself a second’s comfort. Any lingering bits of guilt I’d felt over Leo’s kiss melted away. All that mattered was getting through this, and I was so, so thankful I had Gav with me while we did.
Leo slid down off the roof onto the dumpster, and then to the ground, rejoining us. “Whatever they’re thinking of pulling on us, they’re taking their time,” he said. “Let’s not give them any more.”
We marched up the ramp to the freeway, hauling the sleds. It was a lot harder to pull one that was loaded down. My arm was already starting to ache when we reached the freeway. One side of the road was heaped with snow, the other covered with windswept ice. We kept to the latter, the sleds scraping along behind us, leaving no trail.
After a few minutes, we left behind the last of the town’s buildings, pines and spruces springing up in their place. Leo twisted his sled’s rope one way and another, and finally stepped inside it to let his waist take the weight. Before long, the rest of us had followed suit. It took some time to get used to, but after a while I was pulling the sled along like I’d been doing it my whole life.
Meredith strode beside me, her lighter sled veering a little to bump into mine, her chin tipped up and her face set in the most incredible expression of determination. As if she’d decided she was going to walk all the way to Ottawa in one go. The twin braids I’d twisted her hair into the night before swayed where they poked from beneath her tasseled hat.
Beyond the road, I couldn’t make out a single building now. If not for the freeway and the occasional mile marker, we could have been explorers lost in some vast wilderness. The breeze licked under the back of my scarf, and I shivered.
Before the epidemic, I used to imagine wandering off the beaten track with nothing but some camping gear and a few notebooks, to watch the wildlife away from human activity. But it had never felt this lonely in my imagination. Maybe because back then, I’d always have known there was a town with running water and electricity and people who’d actually be happy to see me no more than a few days hike away.
If squirrels and raccoons could manage to survive weather like this every year, we could too, I told myself.
“You made it most of the way back to the island on foot, right?” Gav said to Leo, after we’d been on the road about an hour. Leo nodded.
“After the border,” he said. “There was hardly any snow then, but it still wasn’t a lot of fun. I didn’t have camping gear or a good stash of food like we do, though.”
Meredith peered at him with open curiosity. “How did you do it, then?” she asked.
“Mere,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Leo said. He laughed awkwardly. “I guess it was luck. And all those hunting trips my dad dragged me on—I knew how to make a fire, catch things to eat. And just not giving up.”
“Look,” Tessa said, breaking in. “I think there’s a car.”
There was: a gray minivan stranded in a drift of snow by the shoulder of the freeway, the glint of its side-view mirror catching the sunlight. Gav reached it first. The driver’s-side door opened when he tried it, and he leaned inside. When he reemerged, he was frowning.
“The owners must have taken the key with them,” he said. “I guess they figured they’d be coming back for it later.”
“The cars along here are probably all lost causes,” Tobias said. “They’d only be left on the freeway if they were out of gas or broke down, right? We’d have a better chance in a town. If there’s one parked in a driveway, the keys might still be in the house somewhere.”
“And maybe the people it belongs to, too,” I said. Alive, or dead.
Tobias looked away. “I’d say it’s worth trying. There’ll be people who just died at home, didn’t want to bother with a hospital—they don’t need a car anymore. I know my step-dad would have said screw you if anyone told him to stay squashed in some room with a bunch of other infected people.”
“Guess it’s a good thing you were off at an army base, then,” Gav remarked.
“Believe me,” Tobias muttered, “I didn’t want to be there, either.”
We tramped on, crossing a bridge over a frozen river. The rope cut into my middle as we climbed the low arch, but after we crested the top, gravity pulled the sleds so they chased us down the opposite side. We all ran, laughing breathlessly by the time we’d reached the bottom.
“I wish the road went down the whole way,” Meredith said, setting off another round of tired laugher.
It was only a few minutes later that Leo halted in mid-stride and motioned for us to do the same.
“You hear that?” he asked.
We hesitated. For a second, I could only hear the breeze ruffling the treetops. Then the faint rumble of an engine reached my ears, getting gradually louder.
“Car coming,” Gav said. “Think we should ask them to give us a ride, if we can all squeeze in?”
“I wouldn’t assume they’re friendly,” Leo said. “I’m not sure we even want them to know we’re here.”
“How are we going to know if we don’t give them a chance?” Tessa asked.
I thought about how easily the guy in the last town had pretended to make peace, and then doubled back to destroy our truck. “I’m okay with not knowing,” I said.
“Let’s go, then,” Tobias said. “Off the road, into the trees.”
“Quickly,” Leo added. “They’re almost here.”
The sound of the engine had grown loud enough that I could hear it even when we were talking. My pulse started to thump in my ears. Gav helped me heft my sled over the ditch, and we scrambled with it through the trees. We slid down a short slope, setting the sled at the bottom. As he hurried back for his, I went to help Meredith. She tripped coming down the slope and plunged forward amid the snow. The end of her sled dropped with a thud, but nothing fell out.
“You okay?” I whispered. She nodded, her face turned away.
As the others crouched beside us, the engine noise rose from a rumble to a roar. Tires thumped coming off the bridge. I froze, peering over the top of the slope through the trees.
A pale green van growled down the freeway. A woman with long flax-blond hair beneath a red hat sat in the driver’s seat. She had one hand on the wheel and the other balancing a thin object that poked out the open window. The tip of a rifle.
I caught a glimpse of at least one other figure in the van, and then it slipped out of sight farther down the road. We waited, silently, as the roar faded back into a grumble. I was just about to speak when it suddenly cut out.
We couldn’t see them, but the breeze carried every sound. The squeak of the door as it opened, the thud as it closed. The clomp of boots on the icy asphalt. A crackle of static. And a hard voice that resonated through the trees, distinctly annoyed.
“You said they were heading for Ottawa?” the woman said. My skin went clammy. They weren’t just dangerous—they were looking for
us
. They’d talked to the guy in town. Maybe this was the help he’d been waiting for.
The static crackled again, around a voice too distorted for me to make out. “Two-way radios,” Tobias murmured. “Smart.”
Whatever the voice on the other end said, the woman didn’t like it. “Well, I can see ten miles of freeway from where I’m standing, and they’re not on it,” she said. “They must have taken some other route, unless you think they grew wings and flew.”
More crackling.
“You’re the one who didn’t hold them up well enough. You’re the one Michael’s going to be pissed at.”
Crackle.
“Yeah, and up yours,” the woman replied. The van door whined open again, and the engine sputtered to life. Tires screeched on the ice. Half a minute later, the van sped past us in the opposite direction, heading back toward the town.
I sank down on the snow, my breath rushing out in a huff, and rubbed the cool surface of my gloves against my face. When I opened my eyes again, I noticed Meredith had hunched against the trunk of one of the trees. A wet shine glinted on her cheeks.
“Hey, Mere,” I said, “it’s okay now. They’re gone.”
She answered with a whimper and stretched out her hand. My heart stopped.
The palm of her mitten was soaked through with blood.