The Seventh Day (12 page)

“Yeah. She can’t fight it. She’s a grandma at
heart.”

She sighs. “Oh man, I could go for some grub. I’m
hungry.” She says things so crazy. I haven’t heard a Chicago accent in a long
time. I wonder if we sound crazy to her. “Me and Erin have been running for
five straight days. Stealing cars and driving like crazy people. We eat
whatever we can jack from gas stations and shit.”

She swears a lot. My dad always told me it was a way
to judge a person’s upbringing. People who swore a lot were more likely part of
the poverty belt.
But her shoes are Toms and her clothes are
all designer, so I can’t tell if that's true or not.
I don't normally
swear ‘cause of Joey. Since our mom tried to eat us and our dad hasn't come for
us, I guess we’re part of the poverty belt too. Shit. I guess I can swear too.

I notice the chopping has stopped when we get close
to the cabin. I pause, waiting to hear where he is. He made me nervous
yesterday.

“Lou?” His voice comes from the trees but I can’t
see him.

I nod. “Hey, Mr. Milson, this is a friend of mine
from lacrosse—Lee. She’s from out East.”

He walks from behind a tree and crunches up the
driveway, giving Lee and me a confused look. “You know this girl?”

I nod, lying.
Mostly because my
tummy magic tells me to.
“We have competed against each other before in
lacrosse, and I messaged her before the cell phones went down and told her I
would be here if she could make it.”

He sighs. “I wish you had mentioned that. Extra
mouths to feed are not part of the current equation, Lou.” He sounds funny. I
think he’s starting to lose it.
Cabin fever or just the fear
of everything maybe.
Either way, I don't want to be around him. His
sparkly eyes are gone. The twinkle left with the sanity.

“We just need some of that liquid stitch stuff.
Sasha has a cut.”

His eyes narrow.
“I’ll
get it.” He doesn't invite us in, and Mrs. Milson doesn't come to the door. My
insides are crawling. My tummy magic is begging me to just shoot him and be
done with it, but the sane side of my brain argues he’s just quirky from the
traumatic week we’ve faced. It also mentions I couldn't even shoot Danny
Hillman, so Mr. Milson isn’t likely to die by my hand. I don't argue with
myself any further. I’m
right,
I’m a chicken with a
gun. I’m all talk.

“He doesn't seem very sweet,” Lee mutters as he
closes the door.

“He’s been weird lately. His kids were in New York
when this happened.”

She gasped. “New York was hit hard. A wave of
biters moved through the city. It started at night, so people didn't see them
coming. Boston, New York, Chicago, and Detroit were the first cities we lost.”

It makes me wince, thinking about his kids. “He’s
been stressed I think. He used to be really jolly and sweet.”

“Well, I used to be jolly and now I’m just tired. I
mean for a bowl of soup I could muster some jolly as payment.”

I glance at her sideways, fighting the smirk on my
lips. “Used to be jolly? You’re pretty chatty for exhausted.”

“Okay, even tired I’m still pretty chatty.” She
giggles softly. “I talk when I’m nervous too. Really bad trait to have in the
zombie apocalypse where silence is key to survival.”

I chuckle as Mr. Milson comes out of the house,
holding his hand with the liquid stitch out but not moving beyond the stairs.
Against my better judgment, I walk down the driveway to his stairs. He holds it
down, muttering, “Is she really a friend?”

“I swear she is.
Lee and her
sister, Erin.
I’ve known them for years.”

He passes the small bottle, pressing it into my hands
roughly. “We gotta be careful, kid.” He steps back, staring at Lee boldly. “You
never know who’s gonna try to take this place over now that the world has
ended. We have a good gig up here.”

I want to say he’s crazy and that the impact of it
all has made him unstable but I know he’s right. We do have to be careful.
Maybe he isn’t so crazy. I back up, gripping the bottle in my sweaty palms.
“See you later.”

“See ya, Lou.” He nods, folding his arms. He
doesn't invite me in for food or tell me to bring the girls over later. He just
watches me walk away. It’s weird.

I turn and hurry back up to the top. “He knows you
aren’t who I said you are.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “I gathered that. Let’s go.
I’ll be outta your hair by tomorrow, when Erin is fit to travel. Unless you
wanna come.”

We walk along the bushes, still glancing in the
direction of Mr. Milson on his porch. I half expect him to come bursting
through the bushes any second.

“Did you have to kill people?” I ask bluntly.

“Yeah. I hit some with a car and drove over them.”
She goes silent after that
,
even her
breathing slows down
. When I look over, her face is down.

“You don't have to talk about it if you don't want
to. I didn't mean to pry.”

“It’s not prying. It’s reality. The cold, shitty
reality we are facing now.” She shakes her head. “Maybe it’ll make me feel
better to talk about it all. Erin never wants to.” She sighs, making a face
that reveals a bit of the internal struggle going on inside of her. “When we
left in the middle of the night, Erin drove like a madwoman away from the UMA
campus in Bangor to the airport. The tiny-assed little city was dead calm. We
didn't see a thing—it was weird. No cars, no nothing, until we got to the
airport. Frig man, that place was a zoo with cars. They were parked in the
middle of the road and everything. We thought maybe people had come in a panic
for a bunch of early flights, but—“ There was a big 'but' at the end of her
sentence. We both know the direction the story is going. “The way everyone
parked, I assumed people were scrambling to get out. That made me scared.
Seeing all that confusion at the airport. I thought maybe they knew something
we didn't.”

“Finish in a minute,” I say as we climb the stairs
to my place and I open the door, wishing we weren’t back yet because I want to
hear more. I pass Sasha the bottle, looking at the cleaned-up wound on the
tanned girl’s side.

The brunette, Erin, is awake. She turns her dark
head of hair, smiling at Lee behind me. “Found some people, huh Leelee?”

Lee nods. “Other girls. I figured this was the
safest.”

“Seems pretty awesome to me.” Erin sighs, wincing
as Sasha runs the liquid Band-Aid stuff down her wound. “Was I passing out a
lot?”

“Yeah. You were sleeping for like five hours at a
time. So I drove till I saw the sign for this mountain resort. I figured what
better place to avoid the biters than a snowy mountain? But there’s not much
snow up here and all the cabins were locked up tight. I tried to find the ski-patrol
shack. They always have supplies but I smelled the wood smoke and followed it
to here.” Lee sits on the floor and gawks at the wound as Sasha puts on the
liquid bandage. “That stuff works awesome.”

“Doesn't feel so awesome.” Erin snorts.

Sasha cocks an eyebrow. “Sit still.” She licks the
corner of her lips when she concentrates hard. Her flicking tongue makes me
smile and think on Harry Potter and that movie where the one guy licks his lips
nervously. “There.” She sits back, beaming at the wound. “Looks pretty good.”

“Thank you.” Erin nods, smiling. I notice something
I can’t believe I missed right away. Erin’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.
Her dark hair lies in soft curls down the middle of her back. Even in the
apocalypse it looks good. I should hate her. My hair is getting stringy from
not being washed. Her long curled lashes frame her dark-blue eyes that match
her sister’s and look fake—they’re so long. Her olive complexion is
flawless. I actually think I recognize her as a model on TV. No wonder they’ve
been looking for a place without dudes. She’s a liability. Even my dad would do
that thing he does when he talks to really pretty ladies, tilting his chin up
and holding his stomach in so it’s completely flat. Mom doesn't notice it but I
do.

Lee rubs her sister’s forearm. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah, just tired.” She gives me a look. “You think
I could sleep a little?”

“You should eat first. We were talking about lunch
before you got here. I have some cans of soup I can heat up,” I offer.

She shakes her head. “Water and sleep is all I need
right now.”

Joey passes her a bottle of water, staring at her
in a mesmerized way. “Are you an actress?”

Erin laughs. “I get that a lot. No. I used to be a
model but I quit that to go to college.” She narrows her perfectly arched
brows. “Not that it matters much now.”

Sasha scoffs. “It will when the government cleans
this mess up.”

“Right.” Erin’s eyes dart at the little girls. She
nods slowly, taking the cap off her water bottle and drinking. She knows
something we don't.

Joey and the girls take her upstairs to a bedroom
up there. They hang off everything she says. I glance over at Lee, noticing how
different they are. Erin is stunning where Lee is pretty but not the same kind
of pretty. She smiles at me. “I know
,
she’s something
else. The worst part is
,
she’s crazy sweet so it’s
hard to hate her for being so hot. She’s smart and practical. She took judo for
years so she’s a bit handy now.”

I laugh. It’s the first real laugh I’ve done in a
long time. It feels good to let it out. Lee sits down on the couch, running her
hands through her hair. She looks distracted but I want to hear the rest of the
story. “You left off at the airport.”

She looks lost for a half a second. “Right, so we
get to the airport and it’s packed with cars. There’s a big yellow bus parked
in the middle of the street directly in front of the no-parking sign with the
sliding door wide open. I looked around but there were no people. Nothing moved
beyond the flags in front of the airport.”

Sasha sits next to me, leaning forward like we are around
a campfire. “Eerie. Was this in Chicago?”

Lee nods. “No, Maine. So I for sure thought it was end
of days, dude. Revelations. Ya know?”

I lift my finger to correct her and mention it’s
Revelation, not Revelations, but then I recall this is the one reason I
disliked my mother. It’s a trait of hers—always being right and
correcting people, even when you know what they mean.

Lee continues, “But Erin laughed at me and got out
of the car to go inside to see if the flights were booked. I looked at her and
begged her to stay with me. I had a bad feeling. But she just made fun of me
and left anyway. I counted the seconds, feeling my palms start to sweat. She
didn’t come around the corner after three minutes of counting, and I was just
about to run in after her. But when I started to get out of the car, this woman
and a young girl walked across the parking lot. The lady was mid-thirties maybe,
and the girl looked about ten. I felt more normal seeing them walking.
Everything felt better seeing them. Like it was okay, even though a thousand vehicles
jammed the parking lot of the airport.”

“In Maine?” Sasha asks, bewildered.

“Yeah. I didn't even think there were a thousand
cars there.” She sighs, shaking her head. “So I started walking toward them,
but when I was halfway I noticed that the lady looked panicked. She glanced
back a lot and pushed her kid who was walking fast, for a kid. My warm fuzzy
feeling was gone instantly. I stopped right where I was and looked behind her,
seeing nothing. The nothing was driving me crazier than anything else. Suddenly
this man came running. He looked so crazy. He jumped on the kid, not the lady.
She shoved him off, dragging her kid away. He snapped his mouth like he was
trying to bite the kid. She pulled a gun from her bag and shot him in the head,
right in front of me, and the kid. His blood shot out the back of his head. Then
she looked at me, pointing her gun at me. I lifted my hands and she put the gun
back, grabbing her screaming kid and running into the crazy parking lot full of
cars. I turned and ran back to the car. When Erin ran back, she was sneaking in
between the cars, creeping. Just as she got inside of the car, a man stumbled off
the bus with red eyes and blood on his shoulder. We drove out of there so fast.
The airport had been a mess of people attacking other people. So Erin said we
had to drive across the country to get to our dad. He was in Seattle for work.
The last time we had talked to him was the night before. The next four days we
spent driving, gassing up, and eating crap from gas stations. Now we just hope
he’s on the island, and if he’s not, then he’s going there. Everyone I’ve met
along the way is going there.”

“Holy hell.” Sasha purses her lips and nods. “That
sounds like my first day. My dad was bringing me back from the city and we only
made it part way before shit got weird. We were on the freeway and there was an
accident. My dad got out, running to check and see if the people were okay. But
a man bit him. People were biting and attacking, and people were trying to run
away, but the cars made a traffic jam and it was impossible to get past it.”

“Oh God.” Lee wrinkles her nose. “We saw that.”