“Where? Here in Marble Falls or . . . ?”
The arm pressing against his gut moves. I feel Sam tense beside me and I reach out and put my hand over the barrel of his Beretta. “Wait,” I murmur.
“I’m not telling you anything, you infested piece of shit.”
“Okay. Then I’ll tell you: We aren’t infested. Nobody is.” I’m wasting my breath. I might as well tell him that he’s actually a geranium having a very weird dream. “Hang on a second.”
I tug Sam to the opposite end of the aisle and whisper, “This is a problem.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “No, it isn’t. We have to kill him.”
“Nobody’s killing anybody, Sam. That’s done.”
“We can’t leave him here, Zombie. What if he’s lying about his squad? What if he’s faking being hurt? We have to kill him before he kills us.”
His face turned up to me, his eyes shining in the dying light, shining with hate and fear. Kill him before he kills us. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I wonder what Cassie died for. The tiger’s loosed from its cage and there’s no capturing it. How do we rebuild what’s been lost? In an abandoned convenience store, a terrified girl mows down an innocent man because her trust has been shattered. There’s no other way to be sure, no other option to be safe.
You’re safe here. Perfectly safe. That phrase still haunts me. Haunts me because it’s always been a lie. It was a lie before they came and it’s still a lie. You’re never perfectly safe. No human being on Earth ever is or ever was. To live is to risk your life, your heart, everything. Otherwise, you’re just a walking corpse. You’re a zombie.
“He’s no different from us, Sam,” I tell him. “None of this will end until somebody decides to put down the guns.”
I don’t reach for the weapon, though. It should be his decision.
“Zombie . . .”
“What did I tell you about that? My name is Ben.”
Sam lowers the gun.
In the same moment, at the other end of the aisle, another silent battle is lost. The soldier lied; he was armed, and he used the time he had left to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger.
MARIKA
FIRST I TOLD HIM it was a dumb idea. Then, when he insisted, I told him to wait till tomorrow. It was late afternoon and the store was over three miles away. They didn’t have time to get back before dark. He went anyway.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas,” Ben reminded me. “We missed last Christmas and that’s the last Christmas I’m going to miss.”
“What’s the big deal about Christmas?” I asked him.
&nb
sp; “Everything.” And he smiled, like that had any power over me.
“Don’t take Sam.”
“Sam’s the reason I’m going.” He looked over my shoulder at Megan playing by the fireplace. “And her.” Then he added, “And Cassie. Most of all.”
He promised they’d be back soon. I watched them from the porch that overlooked the river as they headed for the bridge, Sam pulling the empty wagon, Ben favoring his bad leg, and the sun cast down their shadows, one long and one short, like the hands of a clock.
The crying came with the dark. It always did. I sat in the rocker, holding her in my lap. She had just fed, so I knew she wasn’t hungry. I cupped her cheek and gently curled into her, discerning her need. Ben. She wanted Ben. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “He’s coming back. He promised.”
Why did he have to go all the way to that store? There had to be dozens of houses on this side of the river with Christmas trees in their attics. But no, he wanted a “new” tree and it had to be artificial. Nothing that will die, he insisted.
I drew the blanket tighter around her. The night was cloudy and the wind was cold off the river. The light from the fireplace flowed through the windows behind me and lay gleaming on the boards.
Evan Walker stepped onto the porch and leaned his rifle against the railing. His eyes followed mine into the dark, across the river, scanning the bridge and the buildings on the other side.
“Still not back?” he asked.