Chapter One #2
I bring up my knife and strike the soft spot in the zombie’s head. It writhes, black blood gushing out of its head—but the zombie doesn’t fall. Oh, god, did I miss? I did. I’ve missed the brain. I haven’t killed the zombie; I’ve fueled its appetite.
My stomach lurches.
I try to yank the knife out of the zombie’s skull, but it won’t give.
No, no, no.
The zombie hurls itself at me. I brace for the end. This is it. My twenty-one years have led up to this. Eaten by a zombie. Just like—
Blood splatters my face. Warm, wet, salty. Black.
Not my blood.
The sharp sound of metal slices through the air as Peter stabs the thing in the brain. The zombie crumples to the ground and withers like a dying snake, like it has no bones. Like its insides are soft, rotten, poisoned. The zombie is dead. Dead dead.
I gaze at Peter through blood-covered eyelashes, his lips drawn into a thin line as he wipes the knife on his pants.
“It’s a good thing I was here,” he says.
Indy collapses like a house of cards, all six feet of him. Alive, but in shock. He huddles on the ground, shaking, next to the zombie.
“Get up,” Peter tells Indy, kicking him with his boot, unsympathetic.
“Peter,” I say. “Jeez. Give him a moment.”
Sometimes Peter forgets we are more than just warm bodies. I understand, to an extent. We all lost family to the virus, but Peter lost a twin. His same DNA. I have to remind him often that we’re human, that we’ll all die—and probably soon—but it’s okay to care.
Peter clenches his jaw. “Get. Up,” he repeats, directing his words toward Indy, but his venomous stare toward me. He nods toward the truck. “And you, get back to the truck—now.”
“I—” I stop.
Peter balls his fists.
Obediently, I step over the zombie’s body and reach for his hand, but he turns his cheek and aims his glare at Indy, who’s lying curled up and shaking like a child.
“I said, get up.” Peter bends down and hoists Indy up by the collar. He shoves him back before releasing him and getting in his face. “See what happens when you disobey my command, when you go where I tell you not to? You fuck us all. And you put her at risk.”
Peter points at me, his finger a territory marker. Indy meets my eyes, apologetic.
It’s all right, I try to convey with a soft smile.
Can Indy see through my lie?
“Tell Chandler nothing about this,” Peter says to Indy. “Do you understand?”
Indy nods. “I understand,” he whimpers.
Peter grabs Indy’s left hand and, before he has a chance to react, takes his blood-soaked knife and slices through his ring finger.
“Bloody fucking hell!” Indy shrieks. My thoughts exactly. “Why—”
I slap a hand over his mouth and only remove it when I’m sure he understands.
Quiet.
Indy bites hard onto his wobbling lower lip. His face turns bright red as he holds in his breath and his pain. Peter lowers his face and looks into Indy’s tear-filled eyes.
“You tell no one about this. Your finger got caught inside a vending machine in the factory, and I cut it off to free you.”
“Wh-what snack was I reaching for?”
“Fucking Fritos. I don’t care.” Peter rips off a piece of his T-shirt and throws it at Indy. “Wipe the blood off your chin.” He turns toward me. “Get Indy back to the truck and see that he’s bandaged.”
“Okay,” I say, even though it’s not, and because it’s the only word my lips can form.
What the hell did I just witness?
I grab Indy’s arm, and we stumble back toward the truck at half speed. His face pales as I throw open the passenger-side door and help him lumber into the seat. My head turns at a shuffling in the distance. Milo emerges from inside the factory, balancing three stacked boxes in his arms.
“First aid kit’s in the glove compartment,” I tell Indy. “Can you bandage your finger? Need to help in the back.”
“Yeah,” he says, exhaling a shaky breath. “I can.”
“Great.” I pat him on the back. “You’ll be fine.”
His pale face tells me otherwise.
Why Peter cut off his finger, I have no idea.
The zombie didn’t bite him—I saw that clear as day.
Did he realize Indy would be without a ring finger for the rest of his life?
Indy clutches his cleaved-off finger in his fist, but by the time we return to the Split, it’ll be too late to stitch it back on.
Even if we made it back in time to sew him up, we don’t have the personnel or the antiseptic.
The Macs have taken everything good from us. Even our people.
I meet Milo at the back of the truck and jump on the lip.
“What did you get?” I ask, hauling a box into the truck.
I lurch forward as Milo passes up a particularly heavy box.
I struggle to set it quietly on the truck floor, then I turn and ruffle his early-onset gray hair, coated in dirt and muck.
His young face is at war with his salt-and-pepper hairdo, but it suits him.
“Flour.”
“Anything else?”
“Fred’s got some snack bars.”
My ears perk up. “Figgy Newts?”
“Kota”—he shakes his head solemnly—“I have bad news . . .”
“Break it to me gently,” I say, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Pepsi didn’t make Fig Newtons.”
“Goddammit!” I throw my hands up.
“We found Quaker Granola Bars, though? S’mores. Fred’s got them.”
My heart leaps. “That’ll do.” Milo shuts the lid and slides the box into the back of the truck. “Where is Fred, by the way?” I look down at my watch.
“Slow-ass boy’s always down to the wire. You know that, Kota.”
One minute. Fred’s got one minute until Chandler’s rules say we need to lock up the truck and leave. Why’s he always pushing it? We almost leave him behind, stranded, nine times out of ten.
With forty-five seconds left on the clock, I spot him.
Fred, a constantly sweating nineteen-year-old who is just as clumsy as he is skinny, balances two boxes atop each other and struggles his way over to us.
Milo runs to Fred and grabs a box.
I don’t know why Chandler won’t reassign Fred. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so sluggish. But who am I to judge? Only reason I got the job as driver was because Peter vouched for me.
Last driver died because he wasn’t able to make a split-second decision, he said to Chandler. Kota’s willing to leave a doughboy behind if it comes down to it. She killed her brother the minute he turned.
Peter knows the truth. It wasn’t me who shoved a knife into West’s skull. The lie doesn’t bother me, though. It lets me spend more time with Peter, which is what he wanted, and means I don’t have a boring job. Like stitching. Or building. Or scrubbing the piss smell out of the latrine.
I jump out of the truck and look down at my watch. At this point, we’re past the ten-minute loading window, but we only have one more box to load up . . . and Peter hasn’t said anything about breaking code, so we’ll keep the truck door open until he says otherwise.
Just as I’m wondering where the hell Peter went, he walks up beside me and throws a hand on my hip. He watches the boys work with a concentration that tells me his mind is elsewhere. And I know better than to ask what he’s thinking about.
Milo makes it back and loads up his box. Fred’s not far behind him, but stumbles as he reaches the truck—trips over a damn shoelace. Not rubble, not a piece of tire or a pole or broken asphalt, nope. One of his own shoelaces.
Oh, Fred.
The bottom of the cardboard box flies out of his hands and rips open. Hundreds of Quaker bars spill out. Peter’s grip on my hip tightens.
“Pick them up,” Peter tells the boys. “All of them.”
“We should just go,” I whisper in his ear.
We’re losing sunlight.
Peter looks at me, his eyes narrowing.
No, I think. I’m not the asshole. You are.
But I can’t tell him that. Peter must be treated like Grandma’s fragile china.
I lean into him and say, “C’mon, babe.”
“We can’t afford to leave them. We’re behind quota.” He turns back to Milo. “Go help him. Pick up every single one.”
Milo nods, grabs an empty box, and jogs over to where Fred kneels by a rusted, overturned sedan. He hastily picks up bars, one by one, and throws them in.
As Milo reaches Fred, someone emerges from a loading bay.
My eyes widen. It’s not a zombie. Worse: It’s a human. One that I don’t recognize . . . which means he came from the other side of the Split. He’s a Mac.
Too busy tossing bars back into the box, Milo and Fred don’t notice him.
The man doesn’t seem to notice them either, though, as he strides toward our truck.
He walks with a power inherent in every tall, muscular man I know.
Though the shadows of dusk mask his face, his energy is tangible, buzzing in the air like a warning.
What I would give for that confidence. What I would give for the strength of a man, for the assurance that I could protect myself against anyone.
There’s only so much training I can do, only so much strength I can build as a five-foot-one woman. I can work all day and night, but a man will overtake me in hand-to-hand combat every time. This new world has made our differences all too pronounced.
That’s why Grandma taught me to get scrappy with this balisong.
“Peter,” I whisper, tugging his sleeve. “Do you recognize him?”
“No,” he says, dropping his hand from my hip. His warm breath tickles as his lips brush my ear. “Close the truck. And get in the front with Indy. Lock the doors.”
I reach for the door handle but pause. “What’s your plan?” Assuming you have one.
Peter doesn’t answer.
Across the lot, Fred and Milo finally spot the guy.
Fred hoists up the box and won’t let up when Milo tries to take it from him.
The two play the stupidest game of tug-of-war I’ve ever seen before the contents fly out.
The morons leave all those sweet, crunchy Quaker bars behind in their attempt to make it back to the truck before the mystery Mac man.
“Kota,” Peter says. “Truck.”
And it’s these two words, this simple command, that renew my determination.
I am not a doormat. Not anymore.
I pounce across the parking lot, hurling myself over totaled cars and disembodied wheels.
I won’t survive another day without a taste of pre-packaged garbage.
Give me snack bars or give me death.
I crouch down and stuff bars into the kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt. I’ve crammed maybe a dozen into the space when two faded work boots step onto the edge of a wrapper, careful not to crush the oat bar.
I look up. It’s the Mac. In his hands, he holds the one weapon that we’re banned from using: a gun. With a gravelly voice, he says, “Craving something sweet?”
The polished metal glistens in the last bits of sun as he aims it at my head. For the second time today, I prepare to die.