They get halfway around the lake by Peter’s estimation when they see the first dead things they’ve seen in ten miles. The vacant-eyed monsters turn their way and the chorus starts up. “Help us!” “Please?” “I need Mommy.” One of them is signing My Little Buttercup and Dee gets chills down her spine. The jolly tune sung in a broken baritone is horror-movie material. She wonders, not for the first time, why they sing. Maybe it’s one of the few things they remember how to do. Folks with Alzheimers forget many things, but music isn’t one of them. Is that why they can sing?
A little boy with a teddy clutched to his chest watches them pass, his big eyes washed out from the sun … and death. Part of his face is missing, a flap of skin dangling from his chin. Dee turns her head away, but it’s too late. The image of him calling out to her, his face a ruin, will be burned into her memory forever.
Or until the next awful thing.
When will the awful things stop coming?
She wants to think everything will be different in Eatonville, but she knows that’s a lie. Things will be better once she hugs her boys, but they’ll still be a few survivors in the middle of a sea of biting, killing things. Everyone wants to believe they’ll survive whatever life, nature, or the gods throw their way. That little boy or the woman behind him, her hands outstretched as she stumbled after them, probably thought they’d survive.
Gloria lets out a sob, quickly stifled by her own jacket as she buries her face in it to keep from falling apart.
It never gets less horrifying. Even now, the sight of them makes her knees weak, makes her want to run and run and run.
They bump over dried mud and then they’re on the road again. Whoever made the barrier hadn’t come out to see who they were or to confront them, or even ask them for news or help. Dee supposes they’re dead, the cars the only thing left of their bid to survive.
It’s not comforting.
She drives on.
Ten miles now.
Five.
They drive into the parking lot of the living history museum. Her hands feel like ice though the heat is on in the cab and she grips the wheel tight as she pulls into a spot. It’s quiet. No sign anyone is living here, though perhaps that’s the point. No use alerting them to your presence, is there?
She turns off the engine and they sit and watch.
Waiting.
Looking for signs that someone lives here, that her boys live here.
What if they moved on? What if this time she doesn’t find a note? What if she finds their bodies here? Or what if they were killed and they roamed away? What if they never made it and they passed their wandering corpses miles back?
So many questions and no answers. There were so few answers in the fucking apocalypse.
“Dee?”
She turns her head on a neck made of creaky muscles. “Yeah?” she croaks, her mouth dry as a bone.
“Look,” Alex says.
She does.
46
Then
I managed to get into Montana before the snow started again and it wasn’t heavy enough to stop me. At least for now. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dan and Owen, how they’d hugged for such a long time. I wanted that, damn it. Jealousy burned through every pore even though I was glad for them. I was. I was happy Owen had his father again. Wasn’t I?
Of course I was. They’d both gone through so much.
But so have I, that small, rotten part of me howled. The selfish part, the unkind part. I wanted to hold Lana again. I wanted to kiss my boys. I wanted to see them all again.
It wasn’t fair I was out here alone. I’d tried keeping them all together, but one by one they’d fallen away like dead leaves.
Not dead, one part whispered.
Definitely dead, the other part hissed.
I popped in a CD and turned up the volume, trying to drown out the doubts and horrors from everything that had happened. Trying to forget that I was alone now, alone and with hundreds of miles and cities full of them between me and the boys.
I didn’t want to die out here, didn’t want to die alone.
“Please don’t let me die alone,” I whispered.
There was no answer, of course, except for the wail of the singer on the radio. I turned it up a bit louder and started looking for a place to hole up for the night. The thought of breaking into a place and checking it for them by myself made me sick to my stomach. I contemplated staying in the truck, but who knew how cold it would get or if it would keep snowing until I was trapped.
I had to stop.
I was on the edge of a tiny little town and saw a likely house on the far end. It reminded me of the house we took refuge in near Mullen, and hoped I’d find a nice old couple hiding out inside ready to feed me a hot meal and tuck me into bed.
Instead, I sat way too long in the truck watching for them. I had to force myself to get out, had to force myself to knock on the door and then wait, shivering, for something to answer.
It was quiet.
“Too quiet,” I said, then giggled almost hysterically. I used a crowbar to break in the way Dan had showed me, then crept inside, every part of me shaking in fear. The shadows were thick despite the time of day and the way the flashlight bobbed in time with my terror didn’t help things—it caused those same shadows to move as if they were alive.
I made it to the back bedroom without incident.
A door creaked. I screamed and swung around. A little girl stood
