been over a week made me assume he would be beyond capable. “It’s okay,” I said, snuggling closer to his chest. “I like just being like this, too.”
Bryce took a deep breath and blew it out, making my hair tickle my face. “We’re going to be at your dad’s tomorrow. We may never have sex again. It’s not okay.”
I giggled. “We’ve been sneaky before.”
Bryce wrapped both of his arms around me, and kissed my temple. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, you know. I’m glad it happened this way.”
“Yeah?”
“I might have gone crazy worrying about you otherwise.”
I closed my eyes and listened to Bryce’s breath as he inhaled and exhaled. He fidgeted more than usual, still restless for any number of reasons. I fantasized again about the look on Dad’s face as we pulled up into the drive, and wondered what his reaction would be to Nathan and Zoe. He wouldn’t turn Zoe away, but desperate times made people do weird things.
“Bullshit!” Cooper said from the living room.
Bryce and I stood up quickly and got dressed, both awkwardly reentering the world, feeling like everyone knew what we were supposed to be doing but weren’t. My fingers knotted in my hair as I twisted it up into a messy bun and sat on the floor with my sister. She sat next to Cooper, and Joey was standing by the window, peeking intermittently through the crack.
Joey managed a small, amused smile. “No, I’m completely serious.”
“About what?” I asked, noting that Bryce already wore an unimpressed expression.
Cooper crossed his ankles and leaned back against the couch and Ashley simultaneously. “He’s telling us war stories.”
“It’s classified,” Joey joked.
“Picnic?” I asked, noting the small, empty bags of potato chips on the floor, along with a few empty cans of soda.
“What we need is popcorn,” Ashley said. “Joey is quite the storyteller.”
Joey made an airy sound with his lips in protest, and then glanced out the window.
“Anything out there?” Bryce asked.
Joey nodded. “One crossed the intersection earlier. Probably just turned and is making her way to the highway.”
I shuddered. Whoever she was must have been bitten, otherwise she would have already been on the highway. “I wonder why it’s different.”
“What’s different?” Joey asked.
“How long it takes them to turn. For some it takes days. Some just hours.”
Ashley chewed on her thumbnail. “Jill didn’t die right away after she was attacked, right?”
“But she got really sick,” I pointed out.
“Maybe they . . . reanimate after a certain amount of time after they die,” she said. “How long had Jill been dead?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “What about that woman upstairs? Anabeth? Ana . . . something.”
“Annabelle,” Cooper said, staring at the floor.
“It’s different for everybody,” Joey said, all joking stolen from his tone. “They said on the radio just before they stopped broadcasting that it had to do with the flu vaccine. Those who had it were turning more quickly.”
“What about the girl you were with?” Bryce asked.
“She’s dead,” Joey said, matter-of-fact.
Bryce didn’t push the subject. Instead, he went to the food stash and picked through it until he found what he was looking for. After a few minutes, he brought over twin peanut-butter sandwiches and two lukewarm cans of Sprite.
“I love you,” I said, biting into the sandwich. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until a whiff of peanut butter hit my nose as I was bringing the sandwich to my mouth.
“Enjoy it,” Bryce said between bites. “Who knows if we’ll eat bread again after this loaf is gone.”
“That’s depressing,” Ashley said. “But not as depressing as chocolate.”
Cooper made a face. “Just wait until we run out of toilet paper.”
We all traded glances.
“This sucks,” Ashley said, and we all agreed.
• • •
JOEY AND I SAT IN the middle of the floor, a few feet away from one another. The house we’d been staying in might have been the first one built in Shallot. It was older than the rest, and creaked and moaned like a grandmother complaining about her aging joints. The former occupants were definitely grandparents, easily deduced from nearly every surface and wall space covered in mismatched frames. Protected behind a slate of glass were their loved ones, frozen at each age, still alive and smiling. Some of the photos were decades old, some new. They surrounded us, a bright and cheerful wall holding out the hell outside.
The gold sofa’s arms were worn, matching the rest of the house. The seat cushions were sunk in from years of visits from friends and family. I sat on the floor because it felt wrong to sit on their furniture. The house didn’t belong to me, even if the owners were lumbering aimlessly on the highway, forgetting all about anything that mattered to them before.
I wasn’t sure which old couple in the pictures were the owners of the home, but I liked them. The home they left behind made me feel safe, the love they left behind hopeful. The strangers in the pictures were fighting their own battle to survive like we were, and probably making their way to each other, too. At least that was what I wanted to believe.
The wind picked up, moving the house just enough for the moaning to begin again. It was eerie, like the groans of the dead ones when they noticed prey and got excited about the prospect of feeding. Other than that, the night was quiet. Even Joey’s movements seemed to be absent of sound.
Bryce had fallen asleep downstairs several hours before. I’d tried to relax beside him, but my eyes were wide in the dark as I listened and assessed every sound the old house made. I finally peeled the covers away and climbed the stairs of the basement, joining Joey in the living room.
He had stood dutifully beside his favorite crack in the boards, his eyes straining to see in the dark. I bumped into a side table and gasped, prompting him to ask if I was okay and a subsequent offering of shared light in the middle of the room.
“Sorry,” he said, sitting across from me. “I’m not sure yet if they’re attracted to light.”
I shrugged, even though it was pointless. He probably couldn’t see the gesture. I still didn’t feel the need to voice my answer, possibly from spending so much time with Bryce, who already knew my next thought.
We sat there for some time without speaking, neither one of us uncomfortable with the silence. I was listening for any sounds that might mean trouble, and I assumed he was doing the same.
His hair was just starting to grow out from that weird military buzz cut. The dim light gave me an excuse to study his face; his prominent chin with a faint indentation in the middle, and his upper lip that was a little on the thin side. His eyes were deep set and a little buggy, but it didn’t make him unattractive. I wasn’t sure there was anything about him that was unattractive. It all sort of fit him and made him that much better, kind of the way imperfections give a house character.
The wind hissed through the trees, and a low rumble sounded in the distance.
“Shit. Is that thunder?”
Joey nodded, pointing a few times with his handgun. “It’s going to go south of us, I think.”
I opened a can of cashews and popped one into my mouth. “I can’t stop wondering where my mom is. If she’s okay. I wonder if she’ll ever get back here.”
“Where is she?”
“She and my stepdad went to Belize.”
“Oh.”
“Do you wonder about your parents?”
“Yeah.”
“Your high school friends?”
