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So Hughes would take charge of them both, whether they liked it or not. They wouldn’t fight him. Nobody fought Hughes for long.
“Parker won’t be a problem,” he said. “We broke him.”
“He’ll kill us in our sleep if we let him go,” Kyle said.
“And then what? Try to survive by himself? No one can survive by himself anymore. Anyone who tries to be self-sufficient in this world will be killed in their sleep. Look, it’s like this. He just went through the most wrenching experience of his life. We all went through the most wrenching experiences of our lives when the plague struck, but it happened again to Annie and Parker.”
Annie shuddered. Hughes thought she might start crying, but she didn’t. The girl was tough.
“With Annie it was bad luck,” Hughes said. “But we did it to Parker. He’s going to have the mother of all attitude adjustments. He and I are going to have a little talk. And when I’m through with him, he will be in compliance.”
“You’re going to talk to him?” Kyle said. “That’s your big plan? You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think he’ll stop being a lunatic because you talked to him.”
“Kyle,” Hughes said.
“What?”
“I’m going to ask you a question. You don’t need to answer me now. You don’t ever have to answer me. But I want you think long and hard and carefully before you say anything else. I’m going to ask Parker the same question.”
He paused for effect, then continued.
“I’m going up there to talk to Parker right now. I’m taking the biggest kitchen knife I can find with me. I’ll use it to cut his ropes and I’ll use it to get his attention.” Hughes smiled. No one says no to a big scary black man with a butcher knife. “And I’m going to ask him the same question I’m about to ask you.”
Kyle paused before speaking again. “What’s the question?” He sounded slightly more cooperative now. At least he was curious.
Hughes had the man’s full attention. He paused another moment and made Kyle wait for it.
“What kind of man do you want to be?”
Kyle retrieved the rest of the supplies from the boat. He went alone. Everyone said they understood, but they didn’t, and he needed some time to himself.
Hughes had said only Annie and Parker faced the most wrenching experiences of their lives since the plague struck, but that wasn’t true. It had also happened to Kyle. And it had happened to Kyle repeatedly.
No one had ever tried to kill him before. Those things didn’t count. They were no longer people. An actual human being had tried to murder him in cold blood. The others had no idea how that felt, nor did any of them have the decency even to ask. And now Kyle was supposed to be friends with this person? To travel across the damn country with this person?
That was but one of the numerous wrenchings of Kyle Alan Trager.
The second was Annie. He loved her. He could admit that to himself now. It was his blessing and curse, but it was mostly a curse. She’d never love him back. He saw it all over her face. In her posture. Her distance. Her coldness.
And she had turned into one of those things. She’d killed people. Bitten people. Turned people. Even eaten people. For all he knew she had bitten and turned and killed and eaten some of his friends.
She had turned into one of those things, but he loved her anyway. She would always be by his side and forever untouchable.
That was the second of the numerous wrenchings of Kyle Alan Trager.
The worst, though, was the island.
He’d worked everything out. A community of survivors on Orcas, safe and secure in the most luxurious setting for thousands of miles in any direction. They could start over, not only with their own lives but with the story of the human species. They’d live simply, but they would not have to live primitively. All of humanity’s knowledge was stored in books. They could rebuild slowly and sustainably, free of all the detritus and junk of the twenty-first century. Best of all, free of the plague.
But it wasn’t to be.
His dream had shattered, and he suffered alone. The others did not even care. They weren’t interested in the first place. All they had done was come along for the ride. They never saw the potential, the beauty, nor did any one of them thank him for taking them there when it looked like everything would work out.
And now they wanted to give up on all of it and walk into the jaws of a pitiless continent.
Annie moved the rest of her belongings into her room in the guesthouse and shut the door. Wind whistled outside her window as evergreen boughs rose and fell on the other side of the glass. She could see her own breath and thought about putting on a hat and some gloves.
Instead she crawled shivering into bed fully clothed and pulled the cold covers up to her chin.
She shuddered when she thought about Frank.
And Parker. Oh God, poor Parker. He really got run through the wringer. She knew what it was like. She was the only one who knew what it was like.
For all she knew, they were the only two people on earth who knew what it felt like to have everything that makes us human stripped away and replaced with nothing but ashes.
At least now she was freed from her terrible secret.
Parker was not Jesus. He hadn’t died for her sins. He suffered for his own. He suffered something awful, but he suffered for her, in a sense, and relieved her of a terrible burden.
It might turn out that Parker suffered for everyone, even Kyle. If a vaccine could be one day made from her blood, Kyle could get an injection and become immune too. He’d survive if he gets bitten. So would Hughes.
But for now, what on earth was she supposed to do about Kyle? How was she supposed to feel about him? Had he turned into somebody else? Or was he never the man she thought he was in the first place? She had no idea. The man was a stranger. Kyle himself might not know who he was anymore. Earlier she had felt almost certain that she had a future with him, but the road ahead was unmapped and unlit. For now she did not want to touch him, did not want to look at him, did not even enjoy thinking about him.
She closed her eyes, shivered under the covers, and thought about the house she grew up in and how warm her bedroom was in South Carolina, how summer nights were often so hot, she had to sleep on the bed instead of in it.
December hadn’t arrived yet. Charleston was still almost balmy this time of year. Charleston was always balmy compared with the greater Seattle area no matter what time of year. How much colder would the snowy mountains of Idaho be? The high deserts of Wyoming? The windy frozen plains of Nebraska?
She’d shatter in that kind of cold. Of that she was certain. But that was the point. Only healthy humans could survive in those places without technology during the winter. The landscape would be littered with the frozen remains of the infected and those they had desiccated. Until they reached the American South, anyway. Winter was not going to kill all the infected ones there. But if she could make it to Atlanta, she’d make it to Charleston. She’d have to risk everything, and she probably wouldn’t make it, but she found herself smiling and crying because she had finally found a way home.
The others would likely never see home again. Hughes could never visit his family’s graves even if he could manage to find them amid Seattle’s rubble and ashes. Parker would never see his old street, wherever that was. Kyle would never see Portland again or build his little dream town on that island.
Maybe he could find one in the Atlantic. Maybe.
Parker was going to change. He had just passed through an unspeakable transformation, but he wasn’t done yet. Not even close. He had no idea what was coming, that the virus would rewire his mind.
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
She shuddered.
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