Chapter 3
Stella
Out of the horrors that existed in this world, I was ashamed to admit that the thing I struggled to stomach the most was the scent.
Decay and death that vacillated between nauseatingly sweet and overpoweringly rancid, and underneath all of that was the musty odor of abandonment.
Sometimes, if I ventured into the wrong areas, the stench became nearly palpable, like a dense fog hanging over everything.
Even with the pit of burnt corpses, the Tarik Copper Mine wasn’t anywhere near the worst as far as apocalyptic nightmare scents went, but that didn’t mean it was pleasant.
We chose a shed down the driveway to camp out.
Back when the mine had been working, it had likely been storage for tools and equipment, but most of that had been picked clean by the time we found it.
Boden liked it because it was relatively small and empty, with only a few dusty shelves and random tools strewn about, so it was easy to secure.
There was enough space for us to lay out our bedrolls, and we left the door cracked so we could set up our travel stove. The travel stove was basically a metal box that we fed twigs into, but it was easy enough to heat up our food and provide some light and warmth for the nights.
After we ate and settled in, I worked on the scrapbook I had been making for Rafaella. I wanted to show her as much of the world as I could, so I collected things as we walked and pressed them between pages of a blank journal I’d found.
The pink blossoms of the Nootka Rose (Rosa nutkana) and the vibrant Scarlet Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata) next to a wing from a lemon-yellow Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio canadensis) and an iridescent indigo feather dropped from a Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor).
Back at the Lakehouse, I’d been fortunate enough to have access to a rather substantial library that included a full set of encyclopedias and books covering topics from fishing and kayaking to foraging and hiking.
Because books weighed so much, we weren’t able to take nearly as many as I would’ve liked, but we’d made room for a Farmer’s Almanac and an atlas as well as a few other of my favorites, including a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit for Fae.
Still, I hated that she would be growing up with so much less information than I had, and I was trying to recreate as much as I could for her while I still remembered it.
Sleeping on the road never came easy, despite the exhaustion of walking as much as my body would allow.
Laying down on the hard ground, my arms propped under my thin pillow with the days’ dirt and the ashy stench of death clinging to me, for once it wasn’t the hunger but the longing in my chest that got to me.
It was a genuine pain, a twisted knot right in the center of my very being, so I couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I lay.
“Are you doing okay?” Boden asked after I’d been tossing and turning.
“Yeah. Sorry. Hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, it’s hard to sleep on the road. I get it.”
“I haven’t been away from Fae like this before, not since she was a baby.” My words came out thick, as if the sadness had filled my mouth with cotton, and tears welled in my eyes.
“We can go back, if you’re not up for it,” he offered gently. “There’s no shame in staying back to take care of your family.”
“No, I’ll be okay. I know she’s safe with Edie and Harlow on the boat,” I insisted despite the desperate urge inside me to do the contrary. “I can’t … I don’t understand how Remy could just… leave… us all.”
Boden was quiet for a long minute, breathing heavily as he stared up at the shadows of the cobwebbed ceiling above us. “I suppose it’s the same as it is for you. She knew that we’d be safe without her, and she thought… she must’ve thought her reasons were worth it.”
“Do you think she’s at the Lakehouse?” I asked.
“I don’t know where else she would go. If she were running off to die, she wouldn’t have brought Ripley or the mule along to die with her.”
When I finally managed to drift off, my sleep wasn’t exactly restful.
Most nights, I dreamt of Max and of my hunger, but tonight they were filled with zombies.
In my nightmares, I stood at the edge of the pit, watching the burnt corpses reanimate and climb up the edges.
Their fingers of blackened bones outstretched toward me.
And in the center of it all, unharmed and unmoving, was the child Chosen, but he wasn’t alone.
Beside him, Fae stood and held his hand.
They both stared at me with wide eyes glowing in the flames.
I screamed for them, promising that I would save them, but even as I did, the zombies escaped the pit and grabbed onto me.
“Stella!” Boden’s frantic yelling woke me.
I sat up, half-asleep and disoriented as I tried to make sense of my surroundings. The shed we camped in was completely dark, other than the very early morning dull blue glow that came in through the cracked door.
Shelves clattered to the floor behind me, and Boden let out a frustrated grunt. The death rattle of the zombie – their wheezing breath and ravenous groans – was silenced by the sound of a machete blade slicing through rotten flesh and gelatinous bone.
I scrambled to my feet and threw open the door, letting in as much of the dim light as I could. It also gave the zombies an obvious way to escape.
“Alright, time to go!” I shouted and clapped my hands together. In my mind, I focused all my thoughts on simple directives: Go. Get away. Leave.
“I think it’s just me now,” Boden replied, sounding winded. He stepped over the fresh bodies on the floor, and he came into the light, so I could see the blood splattered across his shirt and arms. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. None of this is my blood.”
“You didn’t have to kill them. I could’ve taken care of them,” I said, meaning I could’ve sent them away.
“Then they would’ve been somebody else’s problem later on,” he reasoned and turned his back to me. He crouched down over his bedroll and got his lantern going, dousing the room in an amber glow, then he pulled out an old towel to clean himself off as best as he could.
“Besides, there wasn’t any time,” he went on. “I woke up to the two of them creeping in through the door, and I took care of them before anybody else got hurt.”
Whenever possible, I tried to repel the zombies instead of killing them. If I was on land, I kept the thoughts “Stay away, stay back, keep moving” running in the back of my head. I don’t know how it worked exactly, but as the command coursed through my body, a powerful scent would emanate from me.
Well, it seemed powerful to me and the zombies, anyway, but no one else around ever noticed it.
The scent would vary based on the command or the intensity of my thoughts, but the one that always stilled nearby zombies was a musty, earthy cloud.
It smelled of dirt under my fingernails and burnt garlic, and it tasted like cotton in my mouth.
I took a slow breath, trying to shake off the adrenaline and fear. The amber glow from the lantern cast long, wavering shadows across the shed’s battered walls, making everything feel fragile.
Despite everything, we’d survived another night, and dawn would come soon enough. Boden and I started packing up, so we would move on, leaving behind the mine and its haunted shadows.