“You look real beautiful, honey.” His heart aches looking at her. “Why don’t you climb under that blanket and go to sleep? You need a rest.”
Outside, the Infected pace and grunt. Ray looks out the window and sees their eyes gleaming in the dark. They seem to want something from him, but he cannot guess what it is. He takes another swig from the bottle and belches. He is well on his way to becoming blissfully drunk.
“Rest in peace, Tyler.”
The Infected rustle in the dark, filling the empty parking lot. They do not scare him anymore. He feels oddly at home with the damned.
“The only hope the rest of you have is if I turn myself in.”
Ray places his hand against the window.
“You’re all my second chance.”
Wendy
They set up the Coleman stove in the abandoned warehouse and heat some of the MREs, or meals ready to eat, the Army provided as part of its supplies for the NLA. Sitting in a circle on the cement floor, they eat in a thoughtful silence, the Bradley crew watching Todd, Todd studying the blue ring of fire on the Coleman. This is fine with Wendy; she just wants to look at him. They all know it is a miracle they found each other again.
He has grown up a lot in the past two months, but at this moment he looks like an exhausted boy on the verge of tears. She is not even sure why she missed him so much. They fought and scavenged in the same group for just two weeks. Once they reached Camp Defiance, they split up with hardly a goodbye.
But they went to hell and back. For those two weeks, they were a tribe, relying on each other with their very lives. Wendy remembers standing in a dark hospital corridor with him, guns readied, waiting for the Infected to attack. She held her Glock against his head after the monster bit him, praying he would not become infected and she would not have to put him down. They escaped while Pittsburgh burned, pursued by the Demon. They made it to Defiance and later fought a horde to save the camp.
The simple fact is she feels safe with him there.
And yet he makes her a little sad, too. He makes her remember Paul and Ethan and how they died on the bridge. Deaths that now seem utterly pointless, seeing as the camp fell anyway.
Wendy tells Todd about their journey to Camp Immunity near Harrisburg, where they told Ethan’s wife about his death on the bridge, and how they joined up with the New Liberty Army, taking the fight to the Infected all over southeastern Ohio.
Todd nods and accepts a cup of coffee from Toby.
“You’re going to be okay, Kid,” Toby tells him. “You got your whole life ahead of you.”
“We’re leaving soon,” Wendy says.
The boy glances at her.
“We’re leaving the war,” she continues. “We’re done.”
Wendy studies him for a while. He watches her intently, waiting.
“Where are you going?” he finally says.
“South. We’re going to find an island. A state park or something, where it’s warm all year around. Make a stand. Live as long as we can.”
She and Toby heard the bombing, saw the smoke, and decided to check it out, which led them straight to Todd. There can be no other reason they found each other like this.
“You should come with us,” she says.
Todd
Wendy’s idea is the same as their original plan back in Pittsburgh, before they learned people were resisting, before the Army came home to wage its impossible war against Infection. They would leave humanity to fend for itself, and find a place for themselves. Find sanctuary with people you could trust to watch your back, and survive as long as possible. Not just survive, but
Sarge said he has his whole life ahead of him. At seventeen, it is hard for Todd to understand what that means. It is the kind of thing someone who has been alive a long time would say. He remembers Anne saying she does not get to come back.
And yet finding a remote place that is defendable and self-sustaining is possibly the one rational course left. People like Sarge and Wendy are best equipped to survive not just today, but what is coming. In just a year, civilization could finally collapse, Todd believes, at least in the North. Everywhere he has traveled, people were using up what they had while producing nothing, and nobody seems to be planning ahead for the lean times coming in the winter. Salvage is not enough to keep the nation going. Winter, hunger and disease may finish it.
In the first days of the epidemic, he saw a small band of exhausted police fight until a mob of Infected overran them. They shot at the Infected, and when they ran out of bullets, they clubbed at them with the butts of their guns. They knew the entire time their fight was futile, and yet they did not submit to the inevitable. They fought back, tooth and nail, to the final second.
The one logical alternative to going down with the ship is to find a good place, dig in and hold onto it for as long as possible. Fortify it, make it self-sufficient, and defend it with people you can trust with your life. If there is one thing Paul’s death taught Todd, it is people don’t matter, only certain people do. If there is one thing Erin’s death taught him, it is to take whatever happiness you can get for as long as you can get it.
Wendy is right. They should go. Todd wants to join them.
One hope still exists, however. One major hope for the human race.
And for this reason, it is not time to leave just yet. He has one more thing to do.
He still wants his revenge on Infection.
“Ray Young is alive,” he tells them.
Cool Rod
