I kicked her, knocking her reeling into a wall and then I lifted the gun again. This time I hit her square on. Her face disappeared into a bloody pulp. Her little body fell to the ground and I fell too, sobbing.
I’d just shot a little girl. A four-year-old. I knew her name. I fed her.
“It wasn’t real,” I sobbed. But it had been. Very real.
It took me forever to get back to my feet. I walked to her and knelt beside her, easing her out of her coat. I found the bite on her arm, a big, nasty thing all purpled and infected.
She’d been bitten and her mother left her behind to die alone. I supposed she couldn’t bring herself to kill her and so she’d just left to let the elements do it for her.
It was cruel. Heartless.
I cried for her anyway, for the choice she’d had to make.
Then I got up and found some blankets to wrap Tina’s body in. I laid her on one of the beds and shut the door.
I couldn’t bury her, so that would have to do.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. My mind warred with itself. “Real. Not real,” it whispered until I wanted to scoop it out with a spoon.
In the morning, after I’d watched outside to make sure none of them had sneaked up on me, I loaded the truck. I wouldn’t get far, not with the snow, but I couldn’t stay there. Couldn’t stay where that poor little girl had lost her life.
Something shifted inside me as I drove away. Fear creeped in. The what ifs threatened to drive me insane. I kept doubting myself as my brain picked over what had happened. Had I done the right thing? Had she really been dead? Had I shot a perfectly healthy kid?
“No, she had a bite.”
Or had I imagined the bite?
I shook my head, wishing I could take something to knock me out for a couple days, something that would erase the memory of the night before from my head. But I couldn’t get rid of it.
It rode me. It rode me hard.
I pushed myself hard too, despite the roads and the snow. I spent three nights in the truck freezing my ass off because I’d gotten stuck. Only a couple days’ worth of sun saved me on that one. I felt myself closing down, closing up, getting more fearful by the moment, until I jumped at every sound.
I was the watch now. If I slept, something could come up on me. If I didn’t sleep, I’d kill myself seeing things that weren’t there.
Only the thought of my boys kept me going. The boys and that ever-dimming hope that I would find Lana at the end of my long journey.
I’d make it home.
I had to.
There was nothing left for me to do.
I’d make it home.
47
Now
They look like a dream. A wonderful dream that can’t be real.
“Is that them?” Alex asks.
“Yes,” I say. Yes. Jackson and Tucker there on the road. They’re running toward the SUV and I get out, almost falling flat on my damned face. It’s all I can do to stay upright and then they are there and then they are in my arms. We’re all sobbing, laughing. My heart feels like it might explode in my chest, a red-hot star gone nuclear. “I never thought I’d see you again,” I cry, but that’s not quite true. There were times when I absolutely knew I’d get here mixed with times I despaired of even surviving another day.
I am here. They are here. We are alive and well. I pull away from them, touch their faces, look into their brilliant eyes. With a voice thick with tears, I ask, “Your mom?”
They exchange glances. Sorrow passes between them, a sorrow I’m not sure how to interpret.
“She made it here, Ma,” Tucker says. “About a month ago. She …” He looks away and I know.
“What happened?” I ask, my ears ringing, their voices sounding a million miles away.
“She, uh. She was bitten,” Jackson says.
I shut my eyes. Tears fall, those perpetual tears. A month. I missed her by a month. One fucking month.
“She stopped to help a guy when she was out scavenging supplies. He had a little kid with him and I guess he was kinda delusional. The kid was a zombie, Ma but he didn’t tell Mom. She got too close and—”
I want to cry. I am proud. I am shattered and broken and lifted up and I don’t even know. She’s gone. My love. My life. The woman I’d shared everything with. Gone. But gone because she was helping someone else. Gone because she was a beautiful soul whose purpose had always been to bring light to others. “I’m so sorry, boys.”
They nod, their faces tight with grief. “We’re sorry too, Ma. She was so sorry you guys split up. Said it was the hardest months of her life getting here without you. She prayed every night she’d find you.”
Tucker squeezes my hand. “She left you a letter. We’ll give it to you later, okay?”
I nod, unable to do much else. “Where is she?”
“We’ll show you. Come on.”
They take me past cabins, several of which have people on the porches. I ignore them for now and walk with my beautiful living, breathing boys to a small clearing beside a little pond. Ducks quack at us and paddle away as we near.
There are three graves in the clearing. My boys lead me to the one with a solid slab of wood at one end, a crude pentagram carved into it and Lana’s name. I cover my mouth as another sob escapes me. The boys’ arms come around me as I gaze down at the spot where they laid her to rest.
A month. “I
