Chapter Forty-Five
I’VE NEVER BEEN ON A motorcycle before, nor have I ever had the desire.
Driver’s ed turned me off. After retching at gruesome images of men with squashed heads, guts flung all over the asphalt, I was happy to share the Honda Accord with West. Not that he was happy to share it with me.
God forbid I borrow it to drive to swim practice when his girlfriend needed a lift to the nail salon.
The blood-soaked Wendy’s napkin, fastened around my fingernail, flies off and lands somewhere on the abandoned road behind me.
Hands wrapped around Jasper’s midsection, I press my cheek against his back and hold on tighter.
My heart flutters, both with the closeness to Jasper and the fact that I’m riding pretty on a death mobile.
As Jasper slows to pass through the Macoby gates, I keep my face hidden in case the guards notice me; our last run-in could not have left a good impression. Last thing I want is to be hassled. Or shot.
Soon as they flag us through, Jasper hits the gas. “Dude!” I yell, squeezing his waist tighter.
Jasper shouts back, “Sorry,” but doesn’t slow down.
Men.
Wind whips through my hair behind me, strands waving like a flag on a blustery day. I grip my left wrist so tight I might rip off my entire hand.
Better that than flying off this motorcycle.
We must be going seventy, but I can’t see the odometer over Jasper’s shoulder. Don’t know that I really want to know.
I shift my gaze to the right, where patches of life and rubble zoom by in a blur of colors: burnt orange and mustard, smoky gray and bruised purple. Countryside and carnage.
I settle into the ride and eventually enjoy the wind racing through my hair.
Release control, Mom would say. Let the wind carry you forward.
After looping up a mountain, we arrive in a desecrated parking lot, the asphalt battered, bent pipes twisting out of the cracks like rusty vines. Sharp gray rocks and shards are strewn haphazardly throughout the lot, almost as if they’d rained down from the sky.
Jasper parks the motorcycle on what’s left of a curb. I imagine the sunken pit to its left was once a sidewalk, but now it looks like the entrance to hell.
I hesitate before hopping off the motorcycle, because one wrong step means I tumble down the rabbit hole. Also, zombies. Gotta check for them.
The bright sun blinds me, piercing through thin wisps of clouds as if it seeks vengeance on my eyeballs.
The clouds look like snakes, Bunny would say.
I see a banana bunch, I’d respond.
You’re both wrong, West would argue. They’re bunny ears.
I cup my hands over my eyes and do a quick scan around the desecrated lot.
No zombies in sight. Just ruins. And—what’s that?
My sun-blotted gaze lands on a rickety building, partially hidden by a patch of dead woods. The building looks like it’s resting on stilts, the foundation jutting out for the world to see. Black zombie ivy—zomivy?—climbs up either side, wrapping around the walls and strangling the wood framing.
A chilling creak echoes through the lot. The wind knocks the building off-kilter, and it settles at least a foot.
Thud.
Jasper walks up beside me, his hand brushing mine as he says, “We gotta go.”
“Because of the noise?”
He shakes his head. “I come up here a lot. Cleared the area of zombies a while ago. There’s nothing around for a mile radius, at least.”
“Okay, so, where are we going?”
He lifts a finger and points. His face is too close to mine. The building settles another foot. “Over there.”
“Toward the building that’s about to collapse?”
Jasper takes my hand in his. Zing. “So many questions.”
Without another word, he pulls me forward. He notices my limp before I do. “Shit.” He stops dead in his tracks, then scoops me into his arms. “Your leg.”
Ah, yes. The fresh claw marks on my calf. The throbs slowly climbing up my leg. Right. Those. Though the adrenaline from riding on the motorcycle has numbed the wound, relief sets in as soon as my feet lift off the ground.
“Thank you,” I say.
Jasper’s grip tightens around me as he cradles my body in his arms.
I close my eyes and focus on the rhythmic thumps of Jasper’s steps. “You’ve got heavy feet,” I say. “When I first saw you across the lot—the day you stole our Quaker bars—you were so graceful. You moved like a ballerina.”
“Thank you,” he returns with a laugh. The rumble comes deep from inside his chest, a soft purr against my skin.
“But now you’ve got the gait of a troll,” I finish. “What happened?”
“Should I set you down, then?”
“Mmm, no, I’m quite cozy up here.”
“You know,” Jasper says, “you were quite graceful yourself, shoving handfuls of bars into your sweatshirt.”
“Shut up.” I nudge his chest with my forehead. “I was docile back then. Weak.”
“You were never weak,” he says, setting me down on a patch of dirt. “You just didn’t know what you were capable of.”
Jasper’s eyes hold mine for what feels like an eternity. He gazes at me like he’d fight a war to keep me safe. No, it’s more than that. He looks at me like I could win a war with my own two hands, but he would fight for me, anyway.
I crane my head toward the building so he can’t see my cherry-red cheeks.
It’s somehow shabbier up close: shingles fall from the sides, a majority of the roof has been blown off, and the front awning hangs at a ninety-degree slant.
A small metal board, however, remains nailed into the unhinged front door, the etched lettering still visible. Coffee and Breakfast, it states.
Jasper crosses his arms and admires the building. “I used to come here before hikes. This place made a mean bacon and egg sandwich.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had eggs.”
“Sling and Bama had a chicken coop in their yard for a while. Did you know that?” I shake my head no. “They thought they’d struck gold, stumbling on those two chickens—free eggs and all.”
“What happened?”
“Soon enough, they had two zombie chickens on their hands. Nearly pecked Clara to death.”
I slap a hand over my mouth to stop a laugh from bubbling over.
It’s not funny.
“Oh my god. That’s where her scar came from?”
“Yep.” Jasper laughs, too. No, a child getting pecked by a zombie chicken isn’t funny, but it is absurd.
And it’s that absurdity of it all that sends me into a fit of giggles.
“And after Sling wrangled the chicken off Clara, it popped out a midnight black egg. When he cracked it open, a slimy black thing like an oyster slid out of the shell.”
“Dead on arrival.”
“The yolk’s still preserved in a jar at their house, if you want a taste.”
I shudder. “Thanks for the offer. How do you think that happened? How’d the zombie chicken carry the egg?”
“One of the many questions we’ve yet to figure out.”
“Do you think we’ll ever—” A gust of wind cuts off my words. The air kicks up a swirling heap of dirt and blows it into my eyes. As I blink the soot from my lids, the warped structure before us creaks.
Jasper turns to the building, wind howling through its blown-out windows. “Come around back,” he says.
He takes my hand and guides us through some bushes and brambles on the side of the building. Soon enough, we stand on the edge of a cliff.
“What the hell?” I say, more to myself than Jasper.
The cliff slices straight down, big slabs of rock layered atop one another like books on a shelf.
The building teeters over the edge, but I now realize it hasn’t fallen because of its position.
The building leans precariously against an old, obscenely tall tree, its spindly roots splaying down the mountain.
The house won’t fall until the tree does—or until it turns into a zomtree, rotting from the inside out.
More trees lie diagonal down the mountain, suspended in the air and hanging on by nothing more than slim roots. Others have plunged to their death at the bottom of the valley below.
I grab on to a sturdy-looking trunk as the wind threatens to push me over. One wrong step, one strong gust, and I’m toast.
“What are we doing up here, Jasper?” I ask.
My heart pounds up my chest, into my throat, and finds its final destination in my ears. The pulsating is deafening.
“You’re looking the wrong way,” he says, placing a gentle finger under my chin and lifting my gaze to the expansive landscape beyond. “Look out instead of down.”
Oh. Oh my.
It’s the Split. A bird’s-eye view. Something I’ve never dreamed of seeing.
Surrounded by scrapheap gates, Jocassee Valley is a yellowing abyss.
From up here, the homes and buildings are minuscule, the citizens crawling ants.
In Egal, the buildings are more uniform, the scenery scarce.
In Macoby, there are more homes, more vegetation, more trees, more movement.
The difference is starker than I imagined.
More than ever before, I’m aware of the separation between me and the people I was allegiant to.
For two years, Egal was my home, my family.
But they’ve proven they never considered me family.
Chandler abandoned me at the drop of a hat.
Peter traded me in for Zara. And she—well, she was never my friend to begin with.
But what about the boys who were my friends?
Have they tried to get me back? Have they even asked about me?
Between Jasper, Greeley, Sling, and Bama, there are people in Macoby who care about me. I can have a future here, if I bring Grandma and Bunny. One with real friendship, real family.
I peer down at the Split, the citizens milling about, safe within the gates. They’ve already forgotten about the driver of the doughboys. I wanted the people in Egal to need me, but no. Someone else can drive the damn truck—it doesn’t have to be me. I’m dispensable.
But in Macoby, I have been tasked with a mission that only I can carry out.
I take a step closer toward the edge of the cliff and squint, scouting for Bunny and Grandma.
“Easy there,” Jasper says. He lifts a rock and pulls binoculars out of a hole in the ground. “These will help.”