Chapter Seven
Maisie
Half an hour later, Everett exits his house with a duffel, a backpack, and a small carrier stuffed with Chicken (the cat) and locks the door.
I don’t ask him what the point of locking up is, because I get that, too.
I did the same thing when I left Mom’s house ten years ago.
For all I know, it’s still standing there in the middle of nowhere on unincorporated county land, an abandoned museum of our past. I locked it up as much as I was locking it away, forcing myself into the future the only way I knew how—by leaving.
Judging by the downward tilt of Everett’s crow’s-feet as he leaves his old life behind, maybe he feels the same way.
We’re quiet as we roll onto the country highway, each giving the other the space to say goodbye to Durham. These quiet, heavy thoughts are soon replaced, however, by the weird new reality of the zombie apocalypse.
“Maybe honk your horn?” Everett frowns at the zombies clustered in the middle of the road, standing there as dumbly unconcerned as a herd of cattle and completely blocking our way.
Judging by their hospital gowns, they seem to have escaped from the small medical center to our right.
He checks his door, then the back seat, too, making sure once again that we’re locked in tight.
“I don’t want to draw more,” I say, whispering for some reason. I roll forward a few more feet toward the crowd, and nothing. They don’t even look at us. With a deep breath, I tap the horn. Just a toot.
And…nothing.
“They’re so docile right now,” Everett says as one teeters past his window. “Not at night, though.”
“Look how dull their eyes are. I think they’re dormant during the daytime.”
“Gemma thinks that sunlight might degrade the power of the pathogen.”
“Your sister’s a scientist?” I take my foot off the brakes and let the SUV gently bump into a few, prodding them out of the way. Something crunches loudly under my left tire, and we both grimace.
“Yes, she was a toxicologist for the FDA for several years, studying additives, preservatives, and other kinds of chemicals for food safety until, well.” He rolls his eyes. “Recently.”
“What happened?”
“They fired her for insubordination. Her bosses wouldn’t do anything with the results of her research.
Dangerous chemicals were green-lit for public consumption, so she decided to start her own secret newsletter where she published her findings.
After a few years, they finally caught on and fired her. ”
I turn to face him. “Watch Your Mouth?”
“You know it?” He regards me, curious.
“I’ve been a subscriber for ages.” I blink. “Your sister is the Doctor Mouth?”
His lips turn up into a soft smile, and heat coalesces at the base of my neck.
Man, he has a nice smile. I flip back to face the road, bumping through zombies while they sway like kelp around us, and try to push down the thought.
“Also known as Dr. Gemma Greer, one and the same.” His voice sobers.
“She started the newsletter after my wife, Louise, died of colon cancer. Rates have skyrocketed in recent years, and there’s a lot of research linking it to diets of highly processed foods.
I think Gemma felt—responsible, somehow. Louise’s death hit her hard.”
“Ah.” My shoulders tighten at the mention of his dead wife.
Knowing his sister was close to her, too.
He’s only seven years older than me, but he’s already had this full life that he built and lived and lost. “That’s, um.
Sad.” The words feel flat in my mouth, and yet, I don’t know how else to respond.
I wish I was better at this—this communicating.
Mom was completely erratic. Loving and attentive and the best teacher imaginable one minute, then closed off and distant, lost in one of her delusions the next.
But over time, I learned how to talk to her.
How to navigate her moods, how to bring her back as gently as I could when her fears had grabbed control of her.
I was an expert on Mom. But the more people I meet in the real world, the more I realize how different she was from all of them.
And it’s not like Gramps has been much practice for talking to normies like Everett—he’s just as strange as I am.
I clear my throat. “I’ve been taking Doctor Mouth’s recommendations for years.”
“Me, too. It was either that or suffer Gemma’s wrath.
” His eyes crinkle at the corners when he talks about his little sister, as though remembering her through the glaze of a thousand memories that have compounded into an incomprehensible fondness.
A powerful wish steals over me that someone would ever, could ever, love me like that.
We finally make it through the thickest part of the lifeless zombie horde, and I’m able to pick up speed a bit.
On a normal day, it would only take three and a half hours to drive from Durham to the southernmost entrance of Shenandoah National Park, my first planned stop, but this isn’t a normal day.
I check the clock, then the miles remaining, and groan.
“At this rate, we won’t reach the campsite until three.” I grimace. “I hope that’s enough time to set up for the night.”
“Campsite?” Everett spins in his seat to stare at me as I knock stray zombies down like bowling pins. “We’re camping, outside?”
“Yep.” I sniff, already not liking where this is going. “My car, my route, my rules. You got a problem with that, Professor?”
“It’s the zombie apocalypse, and you want to sleep outside.” He pauses to jerk an overly dramatic thumb at the guy slobbering against his window. “With them?!”
I roll my eyes and accelerate, the thud-thud-thud of zombie roadblocks like hail battering against a tin roof.
“Look, the first step of survival planning is to figure out what you need and the best way to get it. Right now, we need good sunlight to recharge my car’s solar batteries, an electric vehicle plug-in, and miles between us and any former humans.
What’s better than a campsite at a national park on top of a mountain ridge, ergo, excellent sunlight, that’s still closed for icy conditions and snow, and thus, deserted?
” I look at him patiently, waiting for him to rebut that.
“It’s closed?!”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say more emphatically and expect that to make your point for you?”
“Look, camping never goes well in horror movies. Take Zombie Graveyard, for example, or Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse!”
“Again, those are fictional stories, and we are living in reality,” I explain as calmly as I can.
Everett lets out his own frustrated groan.
“I didn’t pack any real outdoorsy winter gear!
If there’s snow and ice on the ground, I’ll freeze out there, putting aside the fact that I would much prefer staying inside four walls with functioning heat and a door that’ll lock these monsters out when they wake up all vicious and terrifying tonight. ”
“Wait. What do you mean, you didn’t pack any winter gear?” I jab my own dramatic thumb at the window. “It’s March! It’s still winter out there for most of the damn country!”
“I didn’t know we’d be camping outside!”
I force myself to breathe in for a count of four, and exhale for a count of six. “Everett,” I say carefully, not even bothering to dodge the zombies in our path anymore as I tear down the highway. “What, exactly, did you pack?”
His exasperated expression dissolves into something that looks suspiciously like guilt. He waits a full beat before answering. “Stuff.”
I grip the wheel tighter, not saying a word, until he finally cracks.
“My laptop, iPad, three external hard drives, vitamins, a few changes of clothes, Chicken’s food, and some other…memorabilia.”
“What does that mean?!”
“Whatever, you packed a plant!”
“That’s Walter!”
Chicken yowls from the back.
“Listen, Everett—this is a GI virus that went fatal overnight! Almost everyone died at home. Do you think that means there’s just an abundance of empty houses lying around that we can break into without coming into contact with sick people, dead people, or undead people?”
Everett raises both his hands. “Okay, you’re getting a little scary right now, and I think the important thing is that I will die from exposure tonight, so camping is out.”
I curse and turn the wheel so suddenly that Everett’s head bangs into the window and Chicken hisses from her carrier.
We careen into the parking lot of a strip mall, where I come to a screeching halt outside the REI store and park right up on its sidewalk, because who’s going to stop me?
I grab my machete, then thrust a baseball bat at Everett’s shocked face.
“Come on. We’re going shopping.”
“In there?” His eyes fill with alarm.
“Public places will be safer than residential areas right now, since everyone sick died at home on the toilet.”
“Not everyone! Not retail workers. Remember COVID and how our country forced the lowest-paid workers to accept the highest risk just so pandemic deniers could still shop at Target?”
I tilt my chin to the side. He has a point.
“Fine. If there’s anyone in there, I’ll take care of it. You get what you need, and we’ll be in and out.” I raise both eyebrows. “Or you can freeze tonight. Your choice.”
Everett looks like he’s about to puke, but after several deep breaths, he unlocks the car door and follows me in.
The REI is empty except for a string of drooling, white-eyed zombies standing at the front cash registers.
Like the zombies outside, the light from the cashiers’ eyes is dull.
A flat, filmy coating instead of the burning headlamps I saw last night.
They don’t even move as we step into the store, our weapons raised high.
“Are you sure about this?” Everett whispers, his knuckles blanched white around the bat’s handle.
“They’re completely lifeless right now. See?” I tap my machete against a metal sign proclaiming fifteen percent off. The loud clang reverberates through the store, but the only one who jumps is Everett.