With how close Jonas was to us, you know, being the Three Musketeers and all, his daughters also felt like my own, and now they were most likely gone too.
The snow knew nothing of mercy.
I worked four, sometimes five days a week. On the days I didn’t work, Ell was working in the hospital, which sucked, but we still got to sleep a few hours together. The time we spent awake consisted of us complaining to each other about our jobs. Ell’s, like mine, was pretty boring.
“No action besides a few people with headaches coming in for some ibuprofen,” she said as we lay in bed.
She was cuddled up next to me with one hand resting on my chest. I ran my fingers over the bare flesh of her arm, feeling the ridges of her goosebumps. It was probably sixty degrees inside the barracks, but we had a space heater going right next to our bed. Its buzzing always helped put me to sleep.
“I crack open the bottle, shake out a couple of pills into the little paper cups, and hand it over with a glass of water.”
“I’m sorry.”
She laughed. “Don’t be sorry. It’s great…but I just don’t think I’m cut out for that job. I’m afraid of messing up when things actually get bad.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“What? I’m serious.” Her eyes bore into me, beautiful eyes that could cut you with their intensity. “When Mia was in labor and bleeding all over the theater floor, I froze up. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Anyone would’ve, given our unique circumstances. And she wasn’t really bleeding. It was the wraiths messing with our heads.”
She harped on that for a while but never replied. Pretty soon, her breathing grew deep and steady. She was asleep.
I turned to my left and blew out the small candle on our nightstand, and then I prayed to whomever was listening for things not to get bad ever again.
If there was someone listening, they were ignoring me.
2
Acclimation
Stone didn’t much like the job either.
“I’d pass out if I was by myself,” he said. We were sitting in the cafeteria, gobbling down Cajun fries made special by Debbie, and by golly were they good! Chewy sat beneath our table, begging silently. Surprisingly, most people didn’t care about a dog in the cafeteria. He was so well-behaved, however, that I sometimes forgot Chewy was a dog at all. I mean, the way he grinned and expressed happiness was eerily humanlike.
“Which is precisely why we aren’t alone,” I told Stone.
“Yeah, I could do worse in the partner department. Lee is pretty cool. So is Ayden. Dude knows his stuff. They’re definitely way cooler than you, bro.”
“I bet.”
Stone’s eyes rose and looked behind my shoulder.
“What—?” I began, turning around. A woman was standing there. I hadn’t noticed her before. In fact, I had never seen this woman at all. Despite there only being seventy-odd people here, it was easier to keep yourself under the radar in a place like the City.
She moved lithely. She was young, thin, and pretty. Her hair shined a platinum blonde. It looked natural, but it was such an odd color, I doubted that was the case. Then I really focused on her face. Still pretty, but suffering in a way that went beyond living during the end of the world. Her eyes drooped and purple-blue rings were tattooed beneath them over pale cheeks.
“Are you Grady?” she asked.
“I am.” I stuck my hand out. She took it, barely gripping hard enough for me to feel it. “And you are?”
“I’m Liz. Liz Cobb.”
At the time, the name failed to ring any bells, but I knew it was significant.
Stone cleared his throat. “Ramsey’s wife, yeah?”
Cobb, of course. How could I forget Ramsey’s last name? He had saved our skin just outside of the City by taking us into his theater shelter (albeit, he did shoot at us first, but he can’t be blamed for that).
Liz’s lips puckered. The skin around her mouth looked like an old balloon. “Far as I’m concerned, I’m his ex-wife. Unfortunately, I can’t go down to the courthouse and file for divorce right now. But in my eyes, as soon as he slept—” She waved her hands. “Never mind, forget it. None of y’all’s business, anyway.”
I squinted, unsure of why she would come over here in the first place. Eleanor always said I didn’t have a clue, and maybe she was right.
The conversation appeared to be dead. Stone and I exchanged a glance at one another across the table and then our eyes drifted up to the woman. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned deeper, believe it or not. I could tell she was struggling to say something. She was a prideful woman, and if she said whatever nagged at the back of her mind it would surely damage that pride.
Unable to watch any longer, I said, “Yeah, he’s fine. He’s holed up in a movie theater not far from here. He’s got a whole trailer full of batteries that can power about a million lights.”
“Plus, you know, he’s kinda badass,” Stone added. “I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”
The relief on Liz Cobb’s face was evident enough, however her expression betrayed what she said next. “Whatever.” She spun around, leaving.
Before she got out of earshot, I called her name.
She turned back and sneered at me. “What?”
“He saved our lives, you know.”
“Almost killed us first…” Stone mumbled, but Liz hadn’t heard, and I did what I did best when it came to Stone’s catty remarks—I ignored him.
“He saved our lives, and without him, my friend Mia and her baby would’ve died. Hell, we all would’ve died. We never would’ve gotten here; we would’ve either froze to death or been killed by the monsters.”
“Geez, Grady, I think she gets the picture,” Stone said.
But did she? I wasn’t defending Ramsey’s actions. What he'd done was pretty shitty, but
