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KATE
Thirty-six hours after the alpha attack, music plays softly from an iPod in the Creekside kitchen. In the center of the living room is the small shrine Jesus had built for St. Roch. It’s nothing more than a plastic storage tub spray painted red. Inside is a candle, a vase of plastic flowers, and a picture of St. Roch Jesus had drawn with colored pencils. It wasn’t a work of art, but it wasn’t bad.
In front of the shrine are two rocks Jenna painted. One bears Lila’s name, the other Jesus’s name. Both rocks are covered with pictures of flowers.
In front of the shrine are things that belonged to our lost friends.
Jesus’s leather jacket. Lila’s jar of cannabis salve. The gold St. Roch medallion. A picture of Lila and her family.
These are all we have left of our friends. We couldn’t bring back their bodies. We’d buried them in the rubble at the foot of the statue in the quad.
Near the shrine to our lost friends is a cardboard box filled with a collection of beer and liquor I’d squirreled away. After losing Lila and Jesus, no one seems to care we’re well on our way to blowing through half our stash in one night.
“I’ve never been much of a drinker.” I finish this sentence by downing a shot of something brown. It tastes like shit and burns all the way down, but I don’t care.
“Could have fooled me.” Across the table, Ben takes a shot. His eyes are bloodshot.
“My husband was a recovering alcoholic.” I reach for the bottle and pour myself another shot. “I never drank much, you know? To support him.” As I throw back another shot, Kyle’s face swims before me.
I said my goodbye to Kyle on my journey to Arcata. Most days, memories of him bring me happiness. Tonight, I wish he was here to hug me. I miss having someone to hold me.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Kyle was here with me and Carter. Sometimes I’m glad he didn’t live to see this fucked up world.
“You got married young,” Ben says.
“What?” I blink at him, eyes watering from the shot. God, that stuff burns.
“You must have gotten married young.”
“Why do you say that?” I grasp the bottle of amber liquid, weighing the wisdom of taking another shot.
“You don’t look old enough to have a college student for a son.”
Yes, I definitely need another shot. “I got pregnant in college. I was nineteen.” I glance across the room to where Carter sits on the floor, Jenna between his legs. They share a bottle of warm beer between them. “Best thing that ever happened to me. I got Carter and Kyle in one fell swoop.”
I throw back the next shot. My stomach roils. I close my eyes, hunching over the table as I struggle to steady myself against the nausea.
Beside me, a chair scrapes against the floor. Eric sits down next to me. His eyes are red and puffy. The smell of marijuana clings to him. He lets out a long exhalation.
The sight of him makes something inside me crumple. “Eric—” I break off, rendered speechless by the devastation on his face.
Eric leans sideways, head resting on my shoulder. He begins to cry. My heart breaks all over again. I put an arm around him and rest my cheek against his head.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“Me, too,” he whispers back. His speech is slurred, telling me just how stoned and drunk he is.
I can’t hold back the tears. They gush from my eyes. I don’t try to stop them.
Ben looks away and pours himself another shot. He looks as miserable as the rest of us.
“You know,” Eric says, sniffling, “I’m pretty sure my parents and brother are dead. Even if they aren’t dead, I’ll never see them again. I know that. I’ve never once cried about it. I feel sad sometimes, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as seeing someone—as seeing Lila—” He makes a choking sound.
I cinch my arm around him more tightly, wishing I could hug his pain away. Wishing I could turn back the clock and never tell Lila to go outside.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. It’s not enough, but it’s all I have.
“I should have been paying attention,” he replies. “It all happened so fast.”
I suck in a breath, willing myself to tell him the truth. “It was my fault, Eric. I’d been encouraging her to go outside. If I had just kept my mouth shut—”
“It’s not your fault, Kate,” Ben says. “That was just plain bad luck. Nothing else.”
Eric points a finger at Ben. “What the old guy says. He’s right.”
I close my eyes, touched by their words. Even when the evidence says otherwise, they insist I’m blameless. Do they really believe that, or are they just being nice?
“Hey, guys.” Jenna puts her arms around me and Eric. “Come on. We’re all going to share a memory of Jesus and Lila.”
My head swims as I push to my feet. Eric and I steady each other, leaning together. Ben appears on my other side. I get the feeling he’s there in case I topple over.
“I’m not that drunk,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he replies, but he doesn’t budge from my side.
“I have a rule,” Eric tells me as we shuffle into the living room. “I never drink and smoke pot at the same time. I sort of broke that rule tonight.”
“That’s okay.” I give him a squeeze. “I normally don’t get drunk. Just seems stupid in the apocalypse, you know? Like I need to keep my guard up at all times. In case we all die. But tonight I think it’s okay to break rules.”
Ben gives me a look when I say this. I can’t be certain, but if I wasn’t drunk, I would say he looks sorrowful.
Eric and I lower ourselves into the lopsided circle on the stained carpet. Everyone else is there, all of us in various states of drunkenness.
Jenna makes her way into the center of our would-be circle, resting the tips of her fingers on the jar of cannabis salve Lila made.
“Lila,” she says, “you were the best damned botanist I ever knew. Rest in peace.”
I look down and realize I have a bottle of clear liquor in one hand. I didn’t realize I’d carried it away from the table. I take a swig then pass the bottle to Eric.
“You were one crazy chick.” Johnny raises a beer bottle in salute to the shrine. “I’ll miss you stinking up the kitchen with your concoctions.”
“I’ll miss you telling us we’re stupid for going to the track to run,” I say. “Thanks for saving my life today.”
“I’ll miss your cooking,” Reed says. When several people turn incredulous stares in his direction, he wrinkles his nose. “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but you sort of sucked at cooking.” This sends a ripple of laughter around the room. “But you were really good at heating up cans. And dammit, it was sweet of you to try and find protein sources for us.” Reed’s eyes water.
“I loved your cooking,” Ben says. “You could have given any army cook a run for his money.”
“She brought me a bag of clothes last night,” Susan says. “And I know it might seem stupid that I would even care about clothes when my husband is unconscious from blood loss after a shark attack. But last night, it seemed like the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.”
“Lila never complained about sharing a room with me and Jenna at the start of the apocalypse,” Carter says. “She always knew when we needed privacy and gave it to us.”
We go around the room, all of us sharing memories of Lila. It feels good to remember happy times with Lila. But it also compounds her loss, sinking me deeper into sadness—and into the bottle in my hands.
After we share stories about Lila, Reed stands. A fresh joint is in his hand. “Jesus was my brother,” he slurs. “We sold drugs together. We partied together. We stole shit from the mini mart together. We went through the Taco Bell drive-through every Thursday night to get seven-layer burritos with extra sour cream.” He raises the joint in salute. In his other hand is a half-empty bottle of vodka. “I’ll miss you, brother.”
“He was a damn good shot,” Ash says. “I never told him, but I admired him for that. And it was nice to speak Spanish with him.”
Caleb, red-eyed and gloomy next to Ash, hunches his shoulders and tightens his knuckles around the clear bottle in his hand. His competition for Ash might be gone, but he’s as miserable as the rest of us. Instead of adding a tribute to Jesus, he takes another long drink.
“He never complained,” I say. “It didn’t matter how long I made him run, or how much work we did. He just did whatever had to be done.” My throat tightens. “He saved our lives today. He never hesitated. He saw the danger and acted. We all owe him our lives.”
Ben speaks up next. “He wore that dent on his forehead like a fucking badge of honor. He was loyal. That’s a rare quality.”
A rare quality. Ben is right. Jesus had a lot of rare qualities.
And now he’s gone. Him and Lila.
Their loss hits me like a baseball bat. To keep myself from breaking down in front of everyone, I lock my lips around the bottle and take a long drink. The liquid burns all the way down.
“Woah there, Kate.” Ben pries the bottle away from me.
Anger flashes through me. “Get your own bottle.” I snatch it back.
His eyes weigh me. He doesn’t try to take back the bottle. I feel two inches tall. I wish he would stop looking at me like he knows what I’m going through. I’m raw and wretched inside. I don’t want anyone knowing how I feel right now.
I turn away from him and take another drink.