Chapter Fifty-Six #2
Please don’t let it collapse.
As I run toward the fallen wall, Chandler’s shrill scream fills my ears. “Good luck trying to escape, Dakota!”
Thank you. I need all the luck I can get.
My first mistake? I turn around. Chandler runs toward me, a gun in hand. My second mistake—I’m too confident in my aim. I stop in my tracks and shoot in her direction, bang, bang, bang, but I don’t make contact.
I’ve got one more round.
I shoot. It hits Chandler in the calf. She shrieks and falls to the ground.
I run toward her and pull my knife out of my pocket. I must finish this.
Chandler’s blood spouts onto the earth and forms a red puddle around her. I think it matches her hair quite nicely. As she pushes herself up and reaches for her gun, I kick it away and snatch it for myself. She stands, limping on one leg, her eyes full of venom and fury.
“Fan of guns now, are you, Chandler?”
“You forced my hand.”
I aim the gun at her face. Screams and cries echo in the distance.
“And what about the extra food in the rectory?” I ask. “Why were you hoarding it?”
Chandler’s lips curl into a wicked smile. “Scarcity makes people easier to control.”
“We were starving. Egals suffered because of you, Chandler.” Both Egals and Macs clamber over the fallen wall, trying to kill each other and escape the hordes of zombies that crawl over our once-protected towns.
“I thought you were trying to rebuild the world. I thought you were good. And I thought that—”
“What? You thought I cared about you? You thought there was hope?”
I don’t answer.
“That’s what makes you weak. That’s how I know that—even if I die right here, right now—you don’t stand a chance in this world. You hoped there was a way to save humanity without losing a life or two. Not only does that make you stupid, but it makes you weak.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. “There is a way to stop the virus. And it won’t involve lying or cheating or torturing innocent humans.”
“It will involve all of those things, you stupid girl. And you know why? Because that’s what I did. I figured out how to slow the process. Did you?” She laughs. “That’s what I thought. Go ahead, kill me. But you need me alive. You need my help. The choice is yours, Kota.”
My third mistake: I hesitate.
Chandler screams and lunges for me, knocking the gun out of my hand.
We fall to the earth, wrestling and kicking and each trying to gain power.
My strength wanes. Fluid oozes from unhealed cuts on my legs.
Blood spews from my nose as her fists pound my face.
My head and bones throb, but I will not let her win. I can’t.
She swings a leg over my hips so her body is positioned over mine. Her hands find my throat. She peeks at the gun lying at my left, but if she reaches for it, she knows I can scramble out of the way. She must let me suffocate first.
She squeezes harder.
My throat closes. My vision glosses over. My chest pounds.
“Weak,” Chandler says. “You’re weak.”
“She isn’t weak.”
Chandler’s head whips to the right, and her grip loosens on me ever so slightly.
I take advantage of her moment of distraction and roll out from beneath her.
Jasper stands above us, pointing a gun at his sister’s heart.
Blood drips from her mouth as she scowls at him.
Though his hand shakes, his aim doesn’t waver.
“I’m sorry, sister.” Jasper’s eyes swell with dread. He wrinkles his nose, fighting back tears.
“Jasper,” I whisper, barely able to speak through the pain in my throat. “Don’t.”
“He won’t.” Chandler sneers, chest heaving.
“You were always too much of an optimist, little brother. You want to save me, don’t you?
You think you can change me to suit your misguided idea of good.
You can’t. I am what this world needs, and I will win—because you can’t kill me. Hope has made you weak, just like her.”
Jasper cocks his gun.
“Jasper, no!” I scream. I throw myself in front of the gun. Jasper’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. Through aching coughs, I say, “We . . . need her . . . alive. The virus . . . She knows how to . . . slow it down.”
Jasper lowers his gun. Chandler’s chest bubbles with laughter as she falls backward to the ground. On feeble legs, I push to a stand and trudge toward Jasper.
“How?” His face blanches. “How did you—”
“My turn!” Greeley jumps from the broken wall and lands gently on all fours like a cat. She sprints toward us with a harpoon in her hand. “I know you hate guns, Chandler, so I brought something more to your taste.”
“Greeley,” I say. “Please don’t.”
With her free hand, she cups her ear. “Did you say please?”
“NO—”
Greeley ignores me. She harpoons Chandler right between the eyes. Jasper falls to his knees, staring blankly at his sister’s corpse. I stand frozen in shock.
Greeley says, “God, that was delicious,” but her eyes tell a different story. She looks flustered. Regretful, even, as she takes in Jasper’s shuddering shoulders.
A moment later, Greeley’s white truck rams through whatever’s left of the wall. Through the dirt-tinged windshield, two black pigtails sprout up from the steering wheel.
Clara plows over carnage with a maniacal expression plastered on her face.
An ear-splitting crunch sounds through the air as she zooms over a loose femur.
She pulls up right beside Chandler’s body.
Clara’s all white teeth and dimples as she rolls down the window.
It’s not that her scar isn’t beautiful—it is—but she looks like the Joker.
“Where are your parents?” I ask, rubbing my raw throat. At least I’m able to speak now. I turn toward Greeley. “How’d she get your truck?”
Greeley ignores me, eyes stuck on Jasper. He picks up Chandler’s hand and squeezes once before standing. He turns toward me, cheeks wet but expression steely. He’s not ready to move on, but he must. My stomach twists. I know the feeling.
Clara’s chipper voice breaks the somber mood, answering for Greeley.
“Mom and Dad are packing up the meat. Didn’t want to lose all the deer and bunny we’d been dehydrating.
” Clara cranes out of the car door toward Greeley.
“To answer your second question, I promised Greeley I’d get your sister out of the Split if she let me borrow the truck. ”
“She—what?” Greeley traded her truck for my sister?
Why would she do that—unless she cared about me?
Greeley shrugs, but I barely register it, because it dawns on me.
“Where is she? Where is my sister?” I try to yank open the passenger-side door, but it’s locked.
I nearly dislocate the handle from its socket while Clara just sits there, rolling her eyes.
As Clara tells me to hold my horses, she unlocks the door, and I wrench it open. Bunny sits on the ground, covered in mud, tiny knees pulled into her chest. She convulses, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes stare underneath the seat into some void.
Gunshots and screams sound in the distance. Zombies roar.
“Bunny,” I breathe. “You made it through the tunnel. How?”
“I’m really fast, Kotie.”
I laugh, tears pouring from my eyes. She must have been moving at two, three times my speed.
It shouldn’t be possible, and yet . . . here she is.
Despite all odds, my sister made it. She’s alive.
I place a hand on her cheek and wipe away soot.
“Clara’s going to get you out of here. I know she looks young like you, but she’ll take you to—where are you going? ”
“Top of the hill,” she says. “Breakfast shop.”
The breakfast shop. That means several hills, twists, and turns.
I glance at Jasper.
He says, “She is a surprisingly good driver for an eight-year-old . . .”
I turn back to Bunny and cradle her face.
Force her to look at me. “I’ll meet you there.
At the breakfast shop. There are a few things I have to finish down here.
” I meet Jasper’s eyes, and he understands what we have to do—we have to go to the source.
Find anything about the cure that Chandler documented.
Honor the lives she took. Maybe even prevent more deaths.
We have to go back to the rectory and into her office. “I love you so much, Bunny.”
Her voice is a whisper as she says, “I love you, too.”
I turn toward Greeley. “There’s no chance you’d drive to the breakfast shop with them, is there?”
“Yeah fucking right,” she says. “I’m having way too much fun down here.” A sly smile slithers across her face as she thumbs at Clara and Bunny. “They’ll be fine. Taught that one how to drive before she could say ‘goddammit.’ ”
“She’s eight. She shouldn’t be saying goddammit. Or driving!”
“It is what it is,” Greeley says. And with that, she runs off into Egal.
I flip to Jasper. “Ready to dive back into hell?” He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. My shoulders slump. I open my mouth to console him about Chandler’s death, but he places a finger over my lips.
“It’s okay, Kota.”
I shake my head, because it’s not okay, but drop it. We’ll talk when he’s ready. I clear my throat, and Jasper lowers his finger. “So, you with me on this?”
“I’m always with you, Kota. Always.”