leaning across and planting a kiss right on those curved lips.
He wanted Jackson and he was fairly fucking certain that she wanted him. Sooner or later something would happen between them because it would have to. Equals, neither one jumping first, but together. At some point, certainly not today, probably not even tomorrow, but maybe in a few days or even a few weeks, they would both jump, and fucked-up world or not, what would happen, would happen.
And so he reached out his hand, and she took it, and that was the way they went.
Chapter Sixteen
In places the interstate was impassable, so they had no choice but to try other roads. Those roads were either ridiculously deserted or very messed up. It all depended really on which they took and also how many had taken those same routes before. Not just now, as in the last of the survivors, but before, when there were still thousands—millions—of people all trying to get away.
After two years it was almost impossible for Jackson to imagine that. Both because of the barriers she’d erected and also because the thought of that many people now seemed almost fantastical. Like something out of a dream, or a forgotten story she’d once read a long time ago. To envisage a great surge of people, all of them desperately trying to find a way out of the madness was akin to envisaging a world without the dead—and that was just ridiculous. She knew that there would have been moms and dads and little children. Old people and babies. All of them with jobs and friends and hobbies. Every one of them would have had a story, little tidbits and anecdotes and interesting facts. All of that consumed by the desperate desire to get away.
Jackson understood the mindset, of course she did. When the zombies came, running through the streets at top speed and breaking through the windows, the main impulse of most people was to run, as quickly as possible. They gathered what they had and hit the road. Trouble was, thousands of others did the same, and in those days where there were people there were zombies…it had soon turned into an absolute bloodbath. Thousands of people dying only to awake moments or minutes later and eat anyone else still trying to escape. Like a fucking daisy chain.
Jackson would like to say she’d been smart back then, but in truth she’d just gone with the flow. Her brothers had decided early on that the only way to stay safe was to remain inside and barricade the windows and doors. So she had. It was only when her brothers were gone, the food had run out, and the water had started to turn brown that she’d struck out on her own. By that point all those thousands of fleeing people had pretty much been eaten or infected. All that remained were their smashed-up cars and their scattered belongings. All those stories and experiences held within each person lost forever. Consumed by the waking dead just like their flesh was.
In some ways, as they drove past wreck after wreck on the seventh day, Jackson almost felt like she was following paths set out by those people—and though she tried not to think of them, part of her couldn’t help it. The barriers swayed and undulated in her mind, wanting to be let down for just a little while. She looked around at the devastation surrounding them and the feeling was almost like she was late for the party—that she’d missed it, and was only now saying,
Maybe it was because they were driving rather than walking? It seemed to give everything a new perspective, removing some of the danger and allowing her to view it all from a distance.
“Look,” she said softly. “How quickly it changes.”
Luke followed her gaze to the row of tract houses on the left of them. They were wide open, doors ajar, windows smashed. Already nature was intruding on those homes. Jackson knew if she stepped inside, mildew would be growing anywhere that was moist. Plants creeping along the pathways and paving stones. Vines and branches twisting around the exterior structures. In a few years’ time, sooner perhaps, those plants would get inside the houses and start growing on people’s couches and inside their TVs. Jackson couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take until nature took back everything man had taken from it. Until the huge structures in the cities succumbed to rain and the beating of the sun.
“How quickly it’ll keep changing,” he said grimly, and she frowned.
“Not everything. Think about all those mansions that are closed up. They might last for decades in good condition.”
“That they might,” he agreed. “We should find some and break into them. I bet they’re full of stuff.”
“But then they’ll be open and ruined like everything else,” she said.
“We’d just be speeding the process up.”
Jackson sighed and looked back out the window, the truth of Luke’s words nudging her. It was odd how sometimes their positions shifted. She thought of herself as the bad-ass, the realist, but sometimes it was Luke who was the pragmatic one at heart.
“I’ll keep an eye out for rich-looking zombies,” she said after a moment. “They’ll lead us to the mansions.”
“And a rich zombie would look like...?”
She shrugged, the frown turning into a smile. “Rich.”
Only there were no zombies dressed in designer clothes and dripping in gold. Instead cars sat in long lines, snaking out across the lanes. Glass glinting on the floor, sometimes frosted, marked their route. The ever-present blood and pus splatters decorated the cars and buildings, splashed in arcs, puddles, even in crisscross patterns. The blood was the only sign of the humans that once were. The bones, as always, were gone.
As they passed billboard splattered with what looked like several pints of old dried blood, Jackson turned to Luke. Luke who had indeed found them food inside an abandoned apartment on the fourth day. A veritable feast of canned goods and dried pasta. Luke who insisted she sleep first, rest for longer, eat more, be careful, take her time… Luke who, day by day, macho bullshit aside, was becoming more important to her, healing the hole in her heart where the loss of Tye still ached…
His hand was resting on the side of his seat, just inches from hers, and it seemed perfectly natural for her to reach out and stroke the skin on the back of it. He turned and smiled the moment she did.
“You okay?”
She nodded, her heart thudding a little as his smile widened.
“I was just thinking.”
“About rich zombies?”
She shook her head and trailed her fingers away. “No I was wondering, what do you think they do with the bones?”
Luke pulled a face and maneuvered around a parked truck. “You ask some weird questions, Jack. The bones? Lemme think. Well, I guess they suck the marrow out and then discard them somewhere.”
“Okay, ew with the marrow.”
He grinned. “Makes sense.”
“But discard them where? I’ve never seen any bones anywhere. Do you think they eat the bones too?” It was a question she’d long considered and had been unable to find an answer to.
“It would be hard to see how,” Luke replied. “Bones are tough, and it’s not like they have much in them that would be worth the hassle of chomping them down that couldn’t be sucked out instead.”
Jackson pointed them through a passage that was fairly free of carts and cars, considering the possibilities as she did so. The zombie’s teeth were about the same as a normal person. They didn’t grow or anything once they turned—they were just dead people come back to life, after all. And although there were differences—their limbs were more elongated, more flexible, their skin thinner, and their bodies a little mushier—there were no other biological changes that Jackson had noticed. They still had all their limbs, their eyes, ears, and hair. Only the force they seemed to exude allowed them to rip through muscle and flesh. Luke was right. She couldn’t imagine those teeth, in essence the same as hers, eating through bone.
“Maybe they collect them as trophies or something?”
Luke gunned the accelerator as they hit a clean road, one that many of the other cars and vans hadn’t made it to. She tried not to think about why that was the case, pushing the barriers back up and thinking instead of what it would be like to have a bag of fries on her lap.
