Ben brushed the powdery layer of snow off his wife's headstone, then ran his fingers along the jagged letters that had been carved out to spell her name. The upturned earth of her grave had settled in the months since her death, becoming no more than a flat patch of dirt blanketed in white, same as everything else. Someone who wasn't wise to the tragedy and heartache that had occurred in these woods wouldn't have known this was a grave at all if not for the boulder that served as her headstone. Without that, Kate was just another nameless victim of the world around them.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For everything. I should have paid more attention. I should have remembered your condition and got the pills sooner. I should've put you first all along."A fresh wave of grief clutched at Ben's throat. He'd never said these thoughts out loud and for the past week, he'd tried his best to ignore them altogether. After taking a moment to compose himself, he continued, "More than anything else, I'm sorry I wasn't here. You died alone and I...I hate to think what you went through, coming back as one of those things."
Ben's breath hitched and he irritably scrubbed the wetness away from his eyes. When she'd written her suicide note, Kate was actually hopeful. Ben could feel from her words that she thought she knew what she wanted, she thought she was going to find peace. Instead, she met the very same fate she'd been trying to save herself from.
"This is goodbye," he said, his strained voice barely above a whisper. "For a while I thought I'd see you soon, but not yet. Since it's what you wanted, I'm gonna keep going. It's all for you."
He pressed his trembling lips to the frosty boulder and echoed the words that were engraved on her wedding band as well as repeated in her suicide note. "Forever and always."
Ben stood and walked away without looking back.
Despite his best efforts to stamp down the emotions that were getting the best of him, a few tears ran down his round, blotchy cheeks. He had half a mind to run back to the cemetery and curl up on Kate's grave, but he knew he'd never be able to pry himself away again, so he balled his fists and stormed onward along the path back to camp.
He was so lost in his own head, memories of Kate flashing through his mind like lightning, that he strayed no more than a foot from the creek and was plunged back to reality when frigid water splashed up and hit his ankle.
Winter had come at last and Ben knew the familiar, bone-deep arctic chill in the air well enough to know that this time, it was there to stay. There was a long, hard, cold road ahead. He had no idea how his group was going to fair for the next three or four months until spring, but one thing was certain: their time at Red Fox Creek had come to an end.
At this point, the possibility of being snowed in and freezing or starving to death, whichever came first, scared Ben a lot more than the walkers he was sure to encounter once they headed out. Even one more day at Red Fox was too much of a gamble for his liking.
Fortunately, any scepticism the others might've had appeared to have vanished in a hurry, all thanks to the walkers that Jerome, Courtney and Brandon had encountered at the stream.
Now that the day was actually upon them, the thought of leaving for good was more exciting than daunting. Sure, there was uncertainty and danger, but Ben had never been one to fear the unknown. He saw their impending departure as a chance to start anew, turn over a new leaf, and hopefully put the horrors he connected to these woods behind him.
Whether or not Anchorage was the answer to everyone's problems, he was confident that together, he and his group could make something out of it. Regardless of the ways they butted heads, one thing that they all wholly believed was that there was still a life worth living out there. For some, that meant finding another refugee center. For others, it meant finding a cure.
But Ben wasn't sure what a life worth living looked like anymore. And that, perhaps, was the most freeing part of all.
By the time he reached camp, the cold wind whipping Ben's face had aided in covering up any signs of mourning - or so he thought. Jerome stood at the back of the Buick, up to his elbows in the trunk as he arranged bags and tubs. He glanced up at Ben as he approached, then did a double take. "Are you okay?" he asked, frowning. "You look weird."
"You're one to talk," Ben retorted. "You and that damn caveman beard you've been growing..."
"And the list of people who have not commented on my facial hair grows shorter," Jerome grumbled lightly. "Besides, I look much more like a lumberjack than a caveman."
Ben snorted dubiously and clapped him on the shoulder as he walked by. "Keep telling yourself that, buddy."
Almost everyone was occupied with some task related to packing up camp. More people were out and about than Ben had seen in weeks. Brandon leaned up against the bus, manning the doors as Courtney and Peggy came from their trailer with overflowing cardboard boxes in their arms. The picnic table was covered in various odds and ends that had turned up, including a single mitten, an empty handgun magazine, a small bundle of rope, and many books.
Marvin was seated on the bench, trying different batteries in a small camping lantern. "Hey," he greeted his son. "I got the last of our stuff packed up, Jerome's gonna take the UTV and haul it in soon."
Ben nodded, trying to ignore the faint yet stabbing sense of loss he felt. Quite a few things near and dear to his heart were being left behind. There was a shoe box back in his trailer that held almost his whole life. His identification, social security card, birth certificate, his and Kate's marriage certificate...they were just pieces of paper now, and neither vehicle could spare the room to take sentimental keepsakes on the road. Things that were once absolutely vital had been replaced in importance by ammunition and batteries.
Ben swallowed around a lump of emotion in his throat, surprised by how much this was getting to him, and fished around in his coat pocket until his fingers found the small, familiar, circular hunk of silver. Kate's wedding band was one thing he could hang onto, and he had every intention of doing so.
He sank onto the bench opposite of Marvin and fiddled with the ring, mindlessly slipping it onto the end of his finger - his digits were so much thicker than Kate's that it wouldn't go past the knuckle.
"You're awfully quiet," Marvin commented, glancing up from the lantern with worried eyes.
"Just thinking." Ben ran his thumb along the twinkling diamonds that lined the ring. "I'm glad we're leaving today, but it's strange to know I'm probably never gonna see Fairbanks again," he said, pressing his lips together solemnly. "You know, this is where I grew up, it's where Kate and I made a life together. At one time I would've said this was home. Now…" He paused, taking in the bustling camp around them. Just like the town he used to know like the back of his hand, Red Fox Creek was almost unrecognizable from what it had been before the outbreak. Everything in Ben's life, everything he'd ever known, was different.
"I guess if nothing else, a change of scenery will be good," he continued, offering a small, uncertain smile.
Marvin was quiet for a long moment, regarding Ben with a look of pensive curiosity. "You really don't believe things are gonna change, do you?"
Ben gave an amused scoff and replied, "Only for the worse. And don't give me that look," he scolded, wagging a finger at his father's disappointed face. "I know you think the same way or you wouldn't have insisted we stay away from Fort McAdams and 'go off the grid' in the first place."
"Well, I'd keep that opinion to myself if I were you," Marvin said, nodding meaningfully towards the bus, where Brandon, Peggy, and Courtney stood chatting leisurely. "Don't forget, some people have pretty high hopes for Anchorage."
Ben muttered, "You're telling me."
Their conversation was cut short as Lauren exited her trailer and came striding over, her face set into a hard, determined frown. She came to stand beside Ben with her hands on her hips. "There you are," she said, sighing heavily. "I've been meaning to talk to you about something."
The clipped coldness of her words made Ben's heart skip a beat.
He had a hunch he knew exactly what she wanted to talk about, and there was a reason he'd gone out of his way to not be alone with her since their last run - he didn't want to talk. If she knew he'd been considering leaving her and Clarence behind, what was he supposed to do? There was no excuse and the last thing he needed to do was give anyone another reason to be pissed at him.
Nonetheless, Ben wouldn't put it past her to call him out in front of the whole group, so he nodded stiffly and motioned for her to lead the way.
Rachel was struck with a strange sense of excitement as she walked across camp, reminding her of the mornings before field trips when she was a kid. There seemed to be something in the air, where for a short while everybody had pushed their worries and fear to the back of their mind and instead were focusing on the fresh start ahead.
At least that was how Rachel felt, anyway. The plastic tub in her arms, filled with her family's clothing, didn't seem so heavy anymore as she thought about finally getting out of Fairbanks.
"Got room in there for our wardrobe?" she asked, joining Jerome at the back of the Buick.
"Oy." Jerome rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his eyes bouncing from the tub to the trunk. "We're about at capacity back here," he said. "I think that's gonna have to go on the bus."
Rachel sighed. The bus was going to be cramped as it was with so many people onboard. She tried to keep in mind the whole journey, as daunting as it seemed, would only last six hours or so total.
"Too bad we didn't have something just for storage, like a cargo trailer," she commented, shaking her head. "We have so little as it is, I don't want to leave things behind just because we don't have the space."
"I know." Jerome flashed her a tiny, sympathetic smile. "Nothing we can do about it, though."
Rachel noddled glumly in agreement. She set the tub down and lingered hesitantly by car, lightly kicking the toe of her boot against the tire. "So...how are you doing?"
Jerome dipped his head. "I know I haven't been the best husband lately," he said, fingers curling tightly around the edge of the Buick's trunk. "I'm too irritable and spacey and...I dunno."
At this admission, Rachel's brows shot up her forehead. She had no idea he was actually aware how unlike himself he'd been.
Jerome swept a hand down his face and went on, "I'm sorry. I want you to know I'm...I'm really gonna try to do better." He lifted his earnest eyes to hold her gaze. "I don't want to let anyone down again, least of all you and Emma."
The remorseful, disheartened expression he wore pulled at Rachel's heart. She knew he'd been trying his best all along. It just wasn't enough. She remained silent for several long moments, debating whether or not she should speak her mind or just applaud his efforts and let it go.
As her lack of reply seemed to become louder and clearer than anything she could've verbally expressed and Jerome's face fell, Rachel could see now wasn't the time to get into it. Even though she knew he'd finally, truly accepted that they had to leave Red Fox only because his delusion that it was safe had been shattered, he was trying.
She forced a smile and lovingly patted his cheek. "I'm sorry, honey, I guess I'm a little spacey too. My mind is just on my sister, you know."
Seemingly taken aback by the sudden shift in their conversation, Jerome tipped his head. "Oh," he said softly. "Yeah...I hope we can find her."
Ben trudged behind Lauren, following her past the half-circle of trailers until they were well within the thick woods. Birds sang their morning tunes in the bare trees above, all too cheerful for the dark sense of foreboding that crept a little further through Ben's chest with every passing silent moment.
When she was apparently satisfied with their distance from camp, Lauren abruptly stopped in front of a leafless, white-barked aspen tree and turned to Ben. "Alright," she said, crossing her arms. "As much as I don't want to do this…I just have to say, last week when we were at that grocery store in Fairbanks...I saw you edging your way towards the bus." She shifted her eyes downward for a moment, then held his gaze, unblinking. "You were gonna leave us behind, weren't you?"
"No," Ben answered immediately. He stared right back at her, wracking his brain for an appropriate response. "Lauren, I…I wouldn't do that. You don't really think I would, do you?" He frowned at her, the sinking feeling in his gut only deepening when she hesitated.
"Oh, Ben," she began, her voice strangely kind, "Don't you think it's odd that everyone not linked to you in some way all agree you don't really give a shit?"
"What?" Shock swept through Ben like an icy, ferocious wave. "That's not true," he said, fervently shaking his head.
"Say what you want, I know what I saw," she said. "You were going to leave us for dead. You've practically done that already with three of our own, haven't you?"
"Holy shit, I am so sick of this," Ben snapped. The shock was quickly being melted away by his rising temper. "They are gone. Dead or alive, we're moving on. I thought you were smart enough to know that's what we have to do, but if you want to write me off as some heartless bastard go ahead." He shrugged, his face twisting into a snide expression of indifference. With a callous laugh, he added, "Why not? Apparently everybody I know thinks I am."
"Except your dad and Jerome," she countered. "They think the sun shines out of your ass and you better be damn glad they do because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't still be waiting around for these great leadership abilities I keep hearing so much about." Lauren matched his laugh with a sarcastic one of her own. "I mean, who gives a shit if you ran a mining crew here? Once we're on the road, you're not gonna have that card to play anymore."
"You wanna talk about my dad? Okay." Ben scoffed. "You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for him. He and Kate were like kids going after stray puppies. They just had to pick up every straggler they saw and they had no idea the responsibilities that came with it." The words came out in a furious tumble, and even as they slipped past his lips, Ben knew he was saying too much. "Newsflash, Lauren," he said, his voice rising to a shout. "I didn't want this job! I don't know what the fuck I'm doing!"
"You don't say," Lauren said, pursing her lips.
Ben continued as if she hadn't spoken, motioning wildly with his hands. "People are disappearing and leaving left and right, every time I turn around somebody else is on my back about something I'm doing wrong, most of you just don't seem to get what we're facing..." He irritably ran his fingers through his hair and pinned Lauren with a withering glare. "Dammit, I'm doing the best I can and if that's not good enough, there's not a soul here that's gonna stop you from going out on your own."
"I get it, okay? We got dumped in your lap and somebody has to be the leader. But I think you really need to ask yourself, is that somebody you?"
The words hit Ben like a punch to the gut. All this time, he'd thought Lauren was one of the few people on his side.
Without so much as a glance in her direction, Ben swiftly turned and started back to camp, storming carelessly through the thick, snowy leaves and shoving aside low branches. Nothing he did ever seemed to be good enough. He'd pulled himself from the throes of grief to stand up for them and offer something besides following Clarence on his suicide mission to Juneau, and what did he get for it? Everyone, including his own father, thinking he was a terrible leader.
And now, Lauren had the gall to pull him aside on the very morning they were set to leave camp - his decision - and question his integrity.
As Ben returned to camp and walked past the half-circle of trailers, he found nearly everyone in the clearing had turned their attention to him. Peggy's mouth was turned downward in a scowl. She locked eyes with Ben for a moment, then shook her head and swept past Courtney and Brandon onto the bus. Marvin looked over his shoulder at him, his eyes wide. Jerome seemed a little too occupied with packing things away now, not looking up from the Buick's trunk for even a second.
Warmth rushed up Ben's neck, pricking at his skin. If they'd heard the things he said to Lauren, things said defensively and in the heat of the moment, they must have totally lost what little faith in him they had left. You just keep digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole, he thought ruefully, and stalked over to the dining trailer with his head down.
He hesitated to go inside once he opened the door and found the trailer in even more disarray than usual. Every inch of the floor and table was covered in everything from clothes, blankets, board games and coloring books, to cooking utensils, pots and pans.
The two warring sides of the trailer, functional and residential, had finally met in what appeared to be a terrible explosion. In the middle of it all, sitting cross-legged in the kitchen, was Rachel. Loose wisps of dark hair clung to her face as she dug through a cabinet, depositing a few cans of food in a half-full plastic tub at her side. She paused as she did so, finally noticing Ben's presence.
"Hey," she greeted, smiling politely.
Ben entered at last, stiffly closing the door behind him. He stepped around the various items covering the carpet as he made his way over to the kitchen and sank down beside the tub. It contained mostly canned beans and vegetables, and there were a few bags of rice and pasta. "Packing up the food, huh?" he asked lamely, examining a can of tuna fish with forced intrigue. She nodded and cut her eye at him curiously, obviously sensing there was more on his mind than food. Ben said, "Um...I've been meaning to talk to you about Anchorage."
"What about it?"
"I still don't have a clue where the hell to go." He paused to clear his throat. "You know the area better than any of us."
"Well, it depends on what you want to look for," Rachel said, pulling another three cans from the cabinet. "I grew up in the northern area and there are two military bases just a few miles apart, so who knows what we could find."
Ben forced his face to remain indifferent despite the alarm bells her words were sending off in his head. Two military bases? The whole populous had probably flooded to northern Anchorage and they would have no choice but to drive through there to reach the rest of the city.
"I hope they have held up better than Fairbanks," he commented. "But if they haven't, do you have any other ideas?"
Rachel shrugged. "It's a big city, Ben. We'll have a lot of options."
"Right." He traced the patterns of the wood on the table with a finger, anxiously chewing at the inside of his cheek. It was hard for him to formulate any sort of plan when he had no idea what his options were.
By mid-morning, everything worth taking out of Red Fox Creek had been packed away and crammed into the bus and car. The odds and ends had been cleared off the picnic table, and in their place laid an assortment of weapons. Ben was content to keep the same old pistol he'd always had, and his father was insistent on keeping his hunting rifle and knife, but it was time the rest of the group took their pick.
Everyone had slowly gathered around in the clearing before the trailers. Some - mostly Peggy and Jerome - seemed reluctant to choose.
Ben said, "I know Clarence had you guys doing things a certain way. Maybe you agreed with him, maybe you didn't, but I have different ideas." He nodded approvingly as Jerome took the nine-millimeter pistol, the gun he was most familiar with. "We've got to look out for each other and we can't do that unless we're armed," Ben went on. "Now I'm begging you, don't make me regret this. No happy trigger-fingers. Only use the firearms when there are too many walkers to handle with your knife."
"You know this isn't our first time ever leaving camp, right?" Rachel asked, flashing him a good-natured smile.
"For some of you, it might as well be." Ben discreetly nodded to Peggy, who was still looking over the table as though it were a deeply complex puzzle. To his surprise, she chose a shotgun. His brows inched up his forehead as he asked, "Sure you can handle that, Peggy?"
Her blazing eyes glared daggers at him. "You know, at one time I probably could've outshot Annie Oakley."
"Well, your hands look like gnarled up old tree roots now," he replied. "How about one of the handguns?"
She gaped at him furiously, then snapped, "No thanks," and stomped off towards the bus.
"I'm guessing Clarence took that AR-15 we had?" Lauren asked, pursing her lips as she scanned the table for her favorite rifle.
"I think so," Jerome answered.
Lauren huffed dramatically. "Damn him."
Courtney approached the table next, and Ben tensed. He trusted her more with a gun than Peggy, but at the end of the day she was still just a kid.
"Just stick to a knife for now, okay?" he said, and she mirrored her grandmother's death-glare perfectly in response.
As Brandon tucked away the revolver he'd chosen, he snorted and said, "The kid's seriously a better shot than any of us, Ben."
"I just don't think it's right," Ben replied. She'd only had a few shooting lessons with the pistols, and letting her tote around a rifle outside of hunting trips was absurd. He just wasn't comfortable handing a sixteen-year-old a firearm to use at her own discretion.
"It's fine," Courtney said, but the rippling muscle of her clenched jaw said she was about to crack a tooth keeping her real thoughts at bay. "I've already got a knife, so…" she shrugged and backed away.
"So," Lauren began, crossing her arms, "Who's going where?"
Ben shrugged. Given their earlier argument, the tension between them could've been cut with a knife, but she was still the only one he currently trusted to be his second in command. Biting back a frustrated sigh, he pulled one of the two remaining walkie talkies from his pocket and tossed it to Lauren.
He said, "You can keep that if you'll drive the car."
The look she cut him was a strange mix of surprise and irritation, and at first Ben thought she wasn't going to agree. Finally, after a few long moments had passed, she nodded.
For a while, the drive through Fairbanks almost felt like nothing more than a good old fashioned road trip. Old grunge music played softly on the stereo, courtesy of some discs Lauren had dug up from Jake's side of the trailer.
Jerome drew shapes on the steamy window and Emma called out her guesses, and when their makeshift game of Pictionary got old, they moved on to I Spy. The two of them seemed to be off in their own little world in the backseat, rarely paying any mind to what was going beyond their temporary safe haven within the Buick.
Rachel wasn't as fortunate to be able to ignore what laid outside, but she was glad to see them laughing and smiling. It was good that Emma was oblivious to the many corpses wrapped in dirty, bloodstained sheets Rachel spotted piled up outside the middle school, and she was especially grateful her daughter hadn't noticed how the number of walkers dotting the sidewalks increased more and more the further they drove.
For a place that had once been dubbed The Golden Heart of Alaska, Fairbanks was now a tarnished shell of what it had been.
Up ahead, the bus slowed to a stop, and Lauren was forced to follow suit. "Man, I hope nothing's wrong," she muttered.
The walkie talkie that had been resting silently on the dashboard since they left camp crackled to life and Ben's voice came through. "Lauren, Lauren, pick up."
"Yeah," Lauren replied, raising the radio to her mouth. She turned the volume knob on the stereo and silenced the music, then asked, "What's up?"
"This is our last chance to add a bit more to our stockpile. What do you think?"
"Hmm…" Lauren craned her head to the side to survey their surroundings. Single story buildings with panelled exteriors lined either side of the street - a laundromat, a cafe, and most notably, a small grocery store. A few walkers were wandering around nearby, but had yet to notice the vehicles. "I guess we should see what we can find," Lauren said hesitantly. "But I don't think we should stick around too long."
"I'm with you on that," Ben said. "I don't want to stop again until we get to Anchorage, so if anyone has business to attend to, now is the time."
"Alright, I'll meet you outside," Lauren said, shoving the radio into her pocket. She thrust the door open, mumbled something under her breath, and stomped towards the bus. Rachel watched her for a moment, briefly wondering what had the normally amiable young woman in such a snit, then turned to face the backseat.
Since she last checked on her family, Emma had unpacked one of her favorite books, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Her eyes scanned quickly across the pages, so absorbed in reading that Rachel had to wonder if she'd even notice they had stopped. She chuckled.
"Come on, Emma," she said, beckoning her daughter to follow with a wave of her hand.
Emma frowned. "I don't have to go."
"Oh, you always say that," Rachel said. "Let's go."
Emma grudgingly handed the book off to her father and joined Rachel at the curb, crossing her thin arms over her chest. Jerome slowly relaxed back against the seat, his fingers curling around the book in a white-knuckle grip.
"Be careful, girls," he said, round eyes tracking Emma's every move.
"Of course. We'll be right back." Rachel eased the door shut before he could say anything else.
Brandon stepped off the bus, leading Adrian by the hand. He spotted Rachel and grinned. "Pee check for you too, huh?"
"Some things never change," she said.
He cheerfully shook his head, then he and Adrian walked around the corner of the nearest building.
A great sense of relief took some of the tension out of Rachel's rigid posture. She'd been trying all day to get a moment alone with her daughter, but as the case always was at Red Fox Creek, privacy had been hard to come by. She wasn't about to let her window of opportunity slip away again.
"Follow me," she whispered, pulling Emma beside her as she hurried down the sidewalk.
Emma's bulky snow boots scuffed against the concrete as she struggled to keep up. "Mom?" she questioned, her voice high with concern. "Is something wrong?"
"Hush!" Rachel hissed. One of the nearest walkers alerted at their voices and departed from its loitering place in front of a travel agency a little farther down the street. Though just the sight of a walker made her uneasy, Rachel knew she couldn't spare the time to deal with it. "Down here," she said, ducking into an alley between two brick buildings.
The crisp air was sour with the stale yet pungent odor of long-rotted food within the various garbage cans, but Rachel was just glad there weren't any walkers.
"Okay," she began, taking Emma by the chin and forcing her to look into her eyes. "I know your father and I have said a lot of things since this all started. About us protecting you, and telling you that you don't need to worry about anything." She paused to swallow nervously. This would never have been an easy conversation, but it was even worse that she had to rush. "We were wrong," she told her. "I want you to forget all of it."
"What?" Emma's mouth fell open incredulously. "But you said - "
"I said forget it," Rachel repeated. "Ten years old or not, there are threats everywhere. I've been thinking this over for a while. That's part of why I let you learn to shoot. But when your Papa came back to camp the other day, after all those walkers were in the woods…" she trailed off and shook her head.
Emma nodded seriously. "He told me to run if I ever saw any."
"Well, you might not always be able to," Rachel said. She reached into her pocket and produced a switchblade, thin but sharp and glinting in the sunlight.
Emma's wide eyes turned to the knife. "Whoa," she whispered. "Does Papa know about this?"
"This is between me and you," Rachel answered carefully. She didn't want to form some alliance against Jerome, but taking steps to make sure their daughter could defend herself was more important than the risk of hurt feelings. Her chance at survival was bigger than everything. She offered the knife to Emma with an encouraging nod.
Just as Emma accepted the weapon, an agonized scream ripped through the silence. Two gunshots rang out, followed by more screaming. Several voices loudly spoke over one another, none of which were clear enough for Rachel to make out. She tore the gun from her hip, took Emma's hand into her own, and hurried out of the alley.
She nearly collided into Jerome as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. His eyes were wide and panicked, but his shoulders slumped in relief at the sight of his wife and daughter.
"What's going on?" Rachel asked, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.
"I don't know." Jerome's brows were furrowed above worried eyes. "Let's go see," he said quietly, leading the way up the sidewalk.
Brandon was on his knees in front of the grocery store, both hands pinned to a blossoming red patch on his ribs. The still form of a walker laid a few feet behind him. Peggy, Courtney, Lauren and Ben all stood circled around Brandon, guns held low. A sobbing Adrian was being restrained by Marvin next to the bus as he tried desperately to reach his father.
"What happened?" Rachel questioned, rushing to Brandon's side.
"I got bit," he answered breathlessly. A knot formed in the pit of Rachel's stomach, cold and hard. There was nothing she could do for him.
Jerome gasped. He tightened his grip on Emma's shoulders. The color had drained from his skin, leaving his face pale. "N-no...how?" he asked, his voice gruff.
"It just came out of nowhere," Brandon said. He moved his hands for Rachel to see, revealing the jagged, gushing hole.
"Help me get him to the bus," Rachel said to no one in particular. "I've got to get this bleeding under control." The best I can do is try to give him more time, she thought darkly, casting a sorrowful glance towards Adrian. He wept hysterically despite Marvin's desperate attempts to calm him down, his small hands clutching at the older man's ratty denim jacket.
All of the undead on the street had been roused by the noise and were lumbering towards the living. Ben eyed the approaching walkers and raised his pistol a little higher. "Make it quick," he said. "We need to get out of here."
Jerome guided Emma over to Marvin and quietly told him, "Take the kids to the car, they don't need to see this."
"That includes you," Peggy said, shooting a stern look at her granddaughter. Courtney grit her teeth but didn't object, and as she reluctantly followed Marvin, Peggy rushed to Brandon.
Together, she and Jerome managed to get him to his feet. Brandon winced and gasped with every movement, the hands clamped over his bite covered in slick, glistening blood that oozed through his fingers.
Rachel dashed ahead of them and leapt up the steps of the bus. She quickly spotted the gray medical supply tub and was down the aisle in three bounds. She grunted as she yanked the tub free, just as Jerome aided Brandon onto the bus. Peggy hung back as Jerome lowered Brandon down to lay on the seat nearest to Rachel.
The coppery smell that filled the bus took Rachel back to the days where she encountered similar wounds regularly in the emergency room, back when she was much more likely to see a gunshot victim than a bitten man. As a nurse, she knew how to put her emotions on the back burner. But this was Brandon. She'd never administered first aid to anyone she knew before, and there had only been a few times where she'd encountered a patient who was going to die no matter she did.
She swallowed thickly around a growing lump of emotion. In the blink of an eye, another member of their group was as good as dead, and he was going to leave behind a five-year-old son.
"What do I do?" Jerome crouched in the aisle, his shaking hands hovering cluelessly above Brandon. He looked pleadingly to Rachel as she dug through her tub of supplies. "Tell me what to do."
"Dude, calm down," Brandon said weakly. His face was screwed up in agony. "I'm fine for now, it just hurts like hell."
"You're not fine," Jerome replied.
Rachel tossed her husband a little orange bottle of pills. "Get out two of those for him, they're for the pain." She then pulled the last three cotton pads from their pack and pressed them against Brandon's wound as he gulped down the pills dry. Within seconds, the white fabric was red through and through. "These are all I have," she said, her brows furrowing.
"Jerome," Brandon said, gritting his teeth as Rachel applied more pressure to the bite. "No matter what happens to me, no matter when it happens...I want you and Rachel to watch after Adrian."
Jerome squeezed his eyes closed and hung his head. "Don't...don't talk like that," he said. "We've just gotta get you to Anchorage. Maybe somebody there can help, maybe…" he took in a deep, shuddering breath and lifted his shining eyes to Rachel. "Do you think we could get there in time to make a difference?"
The bus rocked as something slammed against it, making all three of them jump.
Rachel could see that just below the window, Peggy had pinned a walker against the side of the bus with her shotgun across its chest. The walker's hands curled around Peggy's arms, and for a moment Rachel thought they were about to watch another member of the group bite the dust. Then, Ben appeared seemingly out of nowhere, pressed the barrel of his pistol against the walker's head, and dropped it with a single shot.
Softer gunshots followed from somewhere down the street. Rachel's heart thudded ever faster in her chest, the realization that her daughter was out in the middle of it all without either of her parents rendering her unable to think of anything else.
Jerome, seemingly having the same thought, shot to his feet and was just about to head off the bus when Ben came barreling inside and blocked his path.
"We need to go," Ben said, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. He nodded to Brandon. "Is he good to travel, Rachel?"
Before she could answer, Brandon demanded, "Will you?" He groaned in pain as he tried to prop himself up on his elbows and peer over the seat. His glassy eyes bounced from Rachel to Jerome. "W-will you protect Adrian like he's your own?"
"Yes," Jerome answered firmly. He grit his teeth, as if the word had caused him physical pain, and pushed past Ben to hurry off the bus.
"Of course," Rachel said, taking his hand into her own. "I promise, we'll take care of him."
"No, no…" Ben slowly eased off the gas. The entire road ahead, as far as he could see, was one long traffic jam of abandoned, snow covered vehicles.
There were other roads out of Fairbanks, but this was the main highway. It would stand to reason that if the main road had gotten jammed up during the city's chaotic downfall, then the alternate ways out were probably blocked too.
Ben deflated against the high back of his seat as though the air had been let out of him. They were so close. He sighed, "Son of a bitch."
Marvin ran his fingers through his gray, thinning hair. "Well, don't give up yet," he said. "Why don't we see how far this goes?"
"A long damn way, dad." Ben threw his arm outwards to indicate the exit. "There's no end in sight from where I'm sitting."
Peggy stood from her seat and stomped up the aisle, wanting to see the source of the holdup for herself. "Yeah, that's not good," she commented, bending over to peer through the windshield. Echoing Ben's thoughts, she asked, "What if all the other roads out are the same?"
"We could be trapped here," Rachel said. Her eyes rounded with the stark realization of her own words. Everything that might've been in Anchorage was just one more baseless, desperate dream if they couldn't even get out of Fairbanks. All of the preparation, Brandon getting bit...it could all have been for nothing.
Marvin huffed irritably, glaring at the three of them in turn. "Would you all get a grip? The rest of this city is a disaster, did you think we were gonna drive all the way to Anchorage on clear roads?" He paused, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a swift poke of his finger. "It's one traffic jam. We can deal with this."
His father's scolding tone sent a wave of shame through Ben, reminding him all too much of when he was a teenager. Some of the pressure gradually lifted from his chest. "You're right," he said quietly.
"Let's go see how far this goes," Marvin repeated. He stood and clapped Ben on the shoulder. "One step at a time."
All heads turned towards the back of the bus as Brandon let out a wet, hacking cough. Rachel leapt into action and gently guided him into a sitting position, dabbing a cloth to his mouth with her free hand. When she stepped back, the cloth was speckled with fresh blood. Brandon groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.
His voice hoarse and weak, he said, "If...if we're gonna be stopped for a minute, can someone get Adrian up here?"
"I'll get him," Ben said, hurrying outside to get the boy out of the Buick.
Adrian walked alongside Ben in silence.
His wide, brown eyes darted from side to side, searching for more monsters like the one that sprang out of nowhere and attacked his father. As they neared the bus, Adrian wrung his hands together and glanced at Ben.
"Is...is what happened to Dean what's happening to Daddy?"
Ben's mouth fell open and he halted. "Well, uh...you just talk to him about that." He guided Adrian by the shoulders up the steps.
Adrian watched him hurry away, back to where Marvin stood waiting on the sidewalk, then turned his attention to the cluttered aisle of the bus. Peggy sat on one side, scribbling with a pen into a bright book.
On the other side, his father's legs were splayed out beyond the seat, half concealed by a quilt. Light brown and red splotches covered the elaborately patterned material.
"Daddy?" Adrian called in a small voice, hesitantly starting forward.
"Come here, buddy," Brandon said, extending a shaky hand to his son once he was close enough. "How are you doing, little dude?" When Adrian only stared back at him in response, Brandon sighed and briefly closed his eyes. "What happened must've really scared you, huh?"
He nodded. "A monster got you. And made you sick."
"Yeah. Yeah, it did." Brandon pulled him a little closer. "And there are no doctors to make me better." He coughed a few times into his elbow, then softly asked, "Do you know what that means?"
Adrian frowned and took several long moments to answer. "You're gonna go away? Like Dean did?"
Tears sprang to Brandon's eyes. He tried to blink them away, to no avail. "Yes," he finally choked out. He pulled Adrian into a one-armed hug against his chest, cautiously protecting his wound with his free hand. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.
"Daddy, I don't want you to go." Adrian whimpered pitifully and clung to his father.
"I d-don't want to go either." Brandon coughed again, and it took everything he had to not cry out when Adrian's elbow grazed his side. "But there's nothing anyone can do to help me, so you have to be strong, okay? And smart. Smarter than me." He gently pried Adrian from his chest so their tear-filled gazes could meet. "Rachel and Jerome are going to take care of you. They'll protect you, my sweet boy."
Adrian only cried harder and buried his face back against Brandon.
The bus halted at a four-way-stop across from a road cluttered with vehicles and Lauren was forced to hit the brakes. "Not again," she groaned. Before Ben had the chance to radio her this time, she snatched the walkie off the dash and said, "Do you see a way around this one?"
"Not from here. Why don't you go see how bad it is? I didn't want to waste the time but we can push the cars off the road if we really have to. We can't keep turning around."
"I'll take a look," Lauren said. She clipped the radio on her belt and cut the engine.
"I'll come too," Jerome said. When Lauren paused, one eyebrow raised quizzically, he explained, "A buddy system seems right."
She shrugged. "Okay. You check out how far the block goes and I'll keep an eye out for walkers."
Every bit of levity that had been with them on the first leg of their travels had vanished when Brandon got bit. Hardly a word had been uttered within the quiet confines of the Buick since.
Jerome still had trouble wrapping his mind around how much things had changed in all of ten minutes. It wasn't fair how good people could be struck with a death sentence seemingly at random. It wasn't right that Adrian, an innocent five-year-old, was going to lose his father and be put in the care of people he hardly knew.
If Jerome hated this world before, he loathed it now. Brandon was dying. Adrian was going to be orphaned. And there was absolutely nothing Jerome could do about any of it.
The acid in his near-empty stomach frothed at the thought, and he knew he couldn't afford to dwell on the situation any longer. He shook his head, physically willing his brain to change tracks, and turned to face the backseat where Emma and Courtney were peering curiously out of their frosty windows.
He said, "Don't move from this car for anything, okay? You're safe in here, but you might not be out there." His anxious gaze lingered on his daughter. Leaving her for even five minutes wasn't something he wanted to do, but Jerome felt like he was between a rock and a hard place. He knew he had to start "stepping up" as Ben had put it...but at the expense of Emma's safety?
Just as he was beginning to lose his nerve, Jerome spotted Lauren a few yards from the car, standing in the middle of the intersection with her hands on her hips and an impatient scowl on her face. She stared right back at him and raised her hands expectantly, as though silently asking, "what the hell are you doing?"
"Dammit," Jerome muttered under his breath. There was no going back now, especially not after he volunteered to back Lauren up in the first place; he'd look like a fool. "I'll be right back," he said, sparing Emma one last glance over his shoulder as he left the warm, comfortable safety of the car and stepped out onto the icy street.
The frigid air seeped deep into his bones, making him scrunch down a little more in his jacket.
"It's about time," Lauren commented huffily.
He gave her a meek, apologetic look and then the two of them started towards the exit road in silence. Lauren kept a little ahead of him, her knife raised defensively. Her alert eyes swept across their surroundings, scanning the nearby shops for biters.
Jerome's heart sank as they passed the wide, green sign with white lettering that read, "ANCHORAGE 250" and the traffic jam came into full view. A dozen cars were packed together tightly, facing every which way, their bumpers crumpled and doors dented. The block went on for several yards and then thinned out to the occasional abandoned car left sparsely along the highway.
Jerome ran a hand down his face, eyeing the road with a rising sense of gloom. They could either spend the next hour or more trying to clear the road, or double back and try to find another way out of Fairbanks. Either option would eat up time and fuel they didn't have to spare.
Lauren let out a low growl of frustration and walked over to the leftmost road of the intersection, using her hand to block the sun from her squinted eyes. "It's the same here," she called, beckoning Jerome to join her with a wave of her hand. "Come look."
He jogged over to join her. Most of the street was clear until a few hundred yards down, where another jam plugged it up. All of the roads heading north were similarly blocked, but all of the side streets leading to the main road didn't have so much as a parked car. Something about it seemed weird...unusual...deliberate.
"Shit," Jerome breathed, shaking his head. These 'traffic jams' were too perfect, neatly blocking all of the northbound roads in tight clusters. "I don't like this," he said, and no sooner than the words left his mouth, a black pickup turned off one of the sidestreets and sped towards them.
Jerome and Lauren whirled around at the sound of another rumbling vehicle and found a tan armored truck thundering down the opposite side of the intersection. Jerome took two steps back before the horrible realization that they were already trapped sank in. His wide eyes moved to the Buick, where Emma was looking back at him through the window.
"Get down," he mouthed, motioning subtly with his hand. Emma's innocent gaze continued to stare until Courtney took her by the shoulder, then the two of them disappeared from his sight somewhere on the floor.
Lauren slipped her hands into the large pockets of her oversized coat and turned to Jerome with a face of indifference. "Play it cool," she said. Ben's crackly voice came through the walkie, but she made no move to respond.
"You guys talk to them and see what's up," he said. "We're laying low to back you up just in case."
Just in case? Jerome's breaths began to come in shallow, rapid puffs that made little clouds of steam before his mouth.
The pickup truck screeched to a halt at the stop sign and the doors flew open. Two men in camouflage uniforms hopped out with their rifles raised. "Hands up," the driver ordered. He was a short and plump man, with beady eyes that bounced back and forth between Jerome and Lauren.
Jerome, not needing to be told twice, quickly raised his hands above his head.
"There's no need for this," Lauren said calmly, never moving. "We're just trying to find a way out of town."
"Hands up," said a second, younger man. He walked around the front of the truck to join his colleague, the gun in his thin hands swaying rather carelessly as he walked. A swathe of black, shaggy hair was plastered to his tan forehead.
"It wouldn't be wise of me to just lay down and be totally at your mercy, now would it?" Lauren gave a strained smile. "It's just the two of us and we don't have many supplies."
"Lauren," Jerome hissed, cutting his eye at her as though she'd lost her mind.
She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "So, why don't you just point us to the nearest, clearest road and we can all go our separate ways in peace?"
"This is the last time I'm going to tell you," the first man warned. He directed the barrel of his rifle towards Lauren and spat, "Get your goddamn hands where I can see them, now!"
Lauren tilted her head, seemingly mulling over his request. The tension mounted as the strangers shared an irritated, impatient glance and the heavier of the two took a menacing step forward.
After a few long, nerve-wracking moments had passed, Lauren finally shrugged and said, "Okay."
As she withdrew her hands from her pockets, one was wrapped around a small revolver. She aimed for the man that had done most of the talking and rapidly squeezed the trigger. Three shots boomed out, dinging against the truck's black exterior and nipping a chunk out of the concrete just before the tire. The men hollered in surprise and quickly retreated around to the back side of their truck for cover, bearing down on their rifles as they went and sending a hurricane of gunfire Lauren and Jerome's way.
Bullets whizzed past Jerome's ringing ears as he ducked and wrapped his arms around his head protectively, knowing all the while he was a split-second away from being filled with holes. His heart pounded impossibly fast in his chest. Terror coursed through his veins like liquid fire.
Heat singed his neck as one shot came a little too close, and then he finally had the presence of mind to fight back. He snatched the pistol from his waistband and tried to find their attackers in the sights, but the shaking of his hands wouldn't allow it. He aimed for their general direction and pulled the trigger whenever they poked their heads up, his bullets occasionally skimming the truck's roof.
Lauren was aiming and firing more accurately now that she had both hands on the revolver, and she delivered only two shots before the beady-eyed man yelped and collapsed, disappearing from view behind the truck.
Hardly a second had passed before another shot rang out and Lauren dropped to the asphalt. A red spot bloomed across her denim-clad thigh. "Son of a bitch!" she wailed, cradling her leg.
There was a lull in the shootout as biters began to approach from all sides. Nearly a dozen were staggering out from all of the recesses Jerome hadn't given a second thought to when he got out the car.
The strangers briefly turned their attention to the undead behind them. As much much as Jerome longed to run to his family, he knew he couldn't. He'd be leading these men right to them, and probably the walkers momentarily pressed his eyes closed, bracing himself, then slipped his hands underneath Lauren's shoulders and hoisted her up.
"We've gotta run," he whispered. "Just hang onto me."
She leaned heavily on Jerome, struggling to put any weight on her injured leg, then nodded meaningfully. They charged up the street, feet pounding against the slick, snowy asphalt.
One of the men called, "Where do you think you're going?" and the rapid pop-pop-pops of their rifles were once again directed at Jerome and Lauren.
