Chapter Sixteen #4
I reach the top of the fort. There’s a teenager in there, two, but they’re already white-eyed and snarling.
I kick one in the face, and it tumbles down the slide on its back, taking the other one with it.
The surly teen zombies land in a pile at the bottom.
As the fort’s newest residents, I collapse onto my ass and scoot quickly to make room for Everett next to me.
Chicken mrreaahs testily as she hops down from Everett’s shoulder and bunches up in the corner, her fur spiked.
One of the horror-children below rams the base of the ladder but is unable to do much else. Everett leans over and squints as the blond child rams the ladder again, making a resonant bong.
“Well, this is going to mess me up for forever,” he says, then leans back in. “Pretty glad I don’t have my glasses to see it, actually.”
“Your glasses! What a disaster.” I rub my temples and sigh. “We’ll look for them tomorrow, as soon as we can leave.”
“Guess we’re spending the night up here,” Everett muses as he gazes through the little plastic window to the packed street beyond. “We do not want to go to this block party.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath in. “Gramps will be so worried when I don’t check in tonight.”
Everett’s face falls, and I realize for the first time since I woke up in Connor’s gym the broader implications of our kidnapping. “Oh, Everett. Your family! The helicopter—we missed them!”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice loaded and heavy. “Not good. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
I look at his lowered face, the tired line of his jaw.
“Well, it’s a good thing I do.”
He glances up at me, tentative. “What?”
“You rescued me back there, which kind of makes me your responsibility, if you think about it.” I smile as I parrot his words back to him. Was it only three days ago that he threw that at me in his living room?
He huffs. “More like you rescued me. Again.”
“Well, then you’re my responsibility, too. I guess our road trip just has to continue.”
“Maisie.” His eyes, so big without his glasses, look at me fondly and with a relief so palpable I could reach out and touch it. “Have I ever told you you’re the best survival partner ever?”
“Not nearly enough, in my opinion.”
He puts his arm around my shoulder and gathers me close.
It’s a light touch, at first. An invitation.
But my body responds to it like a cup of water pouring itself into the ocean, and I melt into him, leaning my head onto his chest, closing all distance between us.
I’m struck all at once with my own relief—that I get to be here with this sweet, soft man who’s teaching me so much more than how our bodies work together.
He’s showing me a different kind of safety, one I’ve never known, one that I feel in my heart.
“You are the best, Maisie.” He whispers the words into my hair. “You make this world feel worth fighting for, and you make me want to fight for it.”
I swallow the feelings pulsing in my throat.
The zombies’ groaning has become a smooth, dull roar that washes warm and oily over this playground in this once-lovely neighborhood.
No screams roughen the surface of its sound, no dissent.
Just the shuffling steps shhh-shhhing down the street, and the occasional thumps of corpses losing their tenuous balance.
Thank god the gross motor skills are the first to go.
The thought of Connor sending patrols out here is absolute madness. A surge of embarrassment for not seeing that sooner makes my empty stomach clench. “I’m—sorry. For not believing you about Connor.”
“But you did.” Everett’s arm tightens around me. “Eventually.”
“I don’t always have a reliable baseline, I think.
For what’s normal.” I bite my lips in, wanting to be honest about this but terrified of being understood.
“Connor’s tactics would’ve made perfect sense to my mother, and so much of my life was spent living within her paradigm of the universe.
I didn’t even notice that I’d slipped back into that way of thinking. ”
Everett considers this for a long moment, and with each passing second, I feel more and more ridiculous, more and more unqualified to lead this survival expedition for two.
Does he sense how lost I am, how unmoored from any one version of reality?
How can he trust my judgment when I couldn’t see danger for what it clearly was?
“I don’t think a reliable baseline exists for anyone anymore,” Everett finally says, “if it ever really did. I think we have to create a new one together.”
I blink, rearing back against this odd and unearned forgiveness. “But you saw Connor for who he really was immediately—”
“So what? If it wasn’t for what your mother taught you, we wouldn’t have made it out of Durham. I bet you’ve got all kinds of fascinating, useful knowledge tucked in there from her.”
“I do know how to make cheese,” I concede.
“See? That’s amazing. Knowing that cheese will live on just made my entire apocalypse better.
” Everett jostles me a little bit closer.
“The fact is, sometimes you’ll be right, and sometimes you’ll be wrong, just like me.
That doesn’t mean we don’t deserve each other’s trust, though.
It just means that through some give-and-take, we’ll find the way forward together.
” His thumb slides comfortingly down my arm. “As a team.”
“A team,” I repeat, turning the word over in my mind as that feeling of safety gathers around my heart again. “A unit of three. Stronger together than apart.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“When I veer cult, and you veer trusting government sheeple—”
“When have I ever—”
“We can steer the other back onto the road in between. The one we create together, and Chicken will lead the way.”
Everett’s brow arches comically. “If you have to put it like that, then I suppose…yes.”
I sigh out a laugh, the white flag of my sadness’s surrender. “You’re right, you know,” I whisper into him. “About my mom? She taught me so much.”
His fingers gently brush against my hair. “Do you miss her?”
Like a part of me that’s gone.
I close my eyes and nod. “It wasn’t all bad with her.
I know that might be hard to believe, when you look at what she did by taking us out of society.
But she was kind, funny, smart—she could figure anything out.
And she loved me so much. Our world was small, but it wasn’t at the same time.
We had each other. We had the land. We had endless books, she always made sure of that.
And sometimes, even knowing what I know now—how sick she was, how wrong about the world—I miss how quiet my life used to be with her.
” I blink against the tears forming in my eyes.
“I wish she was here now. She always knew exactly what to do.”
“I think part of her still is,” Everett says. “In you.”
I glance up at him, finding his eyes already on mine. “Thank you for listening.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
I burrow farther into Everett’s warm side. He shouldn’t smell this good after what we’ve been through, but if I could drag my nose against the skin-warmed layers of his clothing to breathe him in without making it weird, I would.
The boy’s head bongs again from below.
“I guess no lesson tonight, huh,” I whisper into his chest. He laughs softly, letting it peter out into a sigh. I hear the breath enter and exit all the secret places inside him.
“Nothing that requires an erection, I’m afraid.
” Everett tilts his beautiful face shadowed with tawny stubble down at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“We could…kiss, though. If you want the extra practice, partner.” In the cold darkness between these neon plastic walls, his hazel eyes give off their own soft heat.
Bong.
“Yeah?” I breathe, lost in the light he gives off. My star shining brightly in this night.
Bong.
His free hand gently lifts my chin, the pad of his thumb lazing across my jaw before he dips his head, his lips meeting mine in a soft, velvety brush. “Yes, Ms. Shenandoah.”