I sit with my backpack between my feet and the wall against my back and wait, gun in hand, finger on the trigger. But no one is around. Even the two guards—Rory and the other guy—look half-asleep when they’re not stealing glances in my direction. I shrug my tight shoulders and glance at my watch—2:15 p.m. Bowen said they would be ready to go in three hours. It has been four.
The empty streets are haunted with the memory of people and life, with cars stopped permanently at broken stoplights, and graffiti spray-painted on the sides of dark-windowed buildings, yet the city is utterly lifeless. I wonder how many of the abandoned vehicles belonged to people who died from the bee flu when it was spread from person to person, and how many people died at the hands of beasts—the people who were changed by the bee flu vaccine.
Another hour passes before life fills the vacant streets. Five lives to be exact. I stand and put my backpack on while I watch them approach.
Bowen is wearing the jeans he had on earlier, but he’s traded his fancy shirt for an army-green T-shirt, and he has a backpack and a rifle. Fo has a rifle hanging from her shoulder and a backpack, too. She’s wearing baggy tan pants with a fanny pack around her waist that helps hide the curve of her hips. She has on a white T-shirt that falls flat against her chest and an unzipped brown men’s leather jacket. She’s taken the headband from her hair so her long bangs hide half of her face, and there’s a hint of a shadow on her jaw, like she’s rubbed dirt on her skin, making it look like she needs to shave. She could pass for a boy … if you don’t notice how she glides instead of walks.
Beside Fo is a woman with long, light-brown hair that has been braided crownlike around her head. She smiles at me, and I have the sudden urge to take off my tackle vest and wrap it around her—to cover her up. This woman is pretty. She’s wearing pants that accentuate her hips. Her shirt does nothing to conceal the curve of her breasts. I look at her face and realize I am looking at Fo’s sister, Lissa.
“Hi, Jack,” Lissa says, stopping in front of me.
“She’s not coming, is she?” I ask, looking at Fo.
“No. She and her husband came to say hello to you and good-bye to me and my brother.”
I look at the fourth person and my eyes narrow. Dr. Grayson smiles at me but I don’t smile back. He is Fo’s brother-in-law. He brought Fo’s mom to us when she was kicked out of the wall. He knew there was a chance Mrs. Tarsis was alive, but based on Fo’s earlier reaction, when I told her about her mom, the doctor obviously didn’t tell her.
“How are you, Jack?” he asks.
I fold my arms and glare at him. “Why is it I’m the first person to tell Fo about her mom leaving with my brother, when you’ve known all along?”
Dr. Grayson looks at Lissa, and then at Fo, but he doesn’t get a chance to answer because Fo blurts, “Lissa, You knew? You knew that Mom might be alive? You told me she was kicked out of the city. You made me believe she was dead.”
“I … I couldn’t tell you.” Lissa looks between Bowen and Fo, and tears fill her eyes. “I knew if I did, you two would try and find her, and I’d barely gotten you back. I couldn’t risk losing you again. Not when our brother was on the brink of death.”
With those words, the last person in the group limp-walks out from behind Fo. He is wearing faded jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt—hood pulled over his head—and the biggest backpack I’ve ever seen. He’s tall—would be taller than Bowen if he weren’t slouching. Despite his long-sleeved hoodie, I can tell that lean muscles cord his forearms and biceps and bulge in his shoulders, making the hoodie appear too small. He’s not carrying any weapons, at least none that I can see. But with a body like that, he is a weapon.
My gaze stops on his hands and I gawk—they are covered with fine, pale scars, like he’s wearing delicate lace gloves. My eyes follow his right hand as it slowly moves up to his hood. He has the mark—a black ten-legged tattoo entwined with thread-fine scars. He pulls the hood from his head and I gasp. His head is shaved, with a hint of pale stubble growing from a scarred and bruised scalp. One of the scars on his scalp is surrounded by suture scars, making it look like a long, pink caterpillar is crawling over his skin. The sun-tanned skin on his face is interlaced with intricate white lines, a shroud of white, lacelike scars. I look into his haunted eyes and take an involuntary step back. One eye is a deep, warm brown, the other a pale, colorless gray that’s looking in the wrong direction.
“Jack, you remember my brother, Jonah, right?” Fiona asks, voice little more than a whisper.
I nod, not taking my eyes from him. He lifts his right hand and pulls the hood back over his head. I keep staring at his shadowed face, searching for the boy he used to be, but can’t see any of the old Jonah. If Fo hadn’t told me who he was, I would not have known.
“What happened to you?” I whisper. He looks past me, as if he didn’t hear what I said.
“We need to go,” Bowen says. “There’ll be plenty of time to get reacquainted later.”
Lissa hugs Bowen, then Jonah, and then Fiona. When she’s done hugging them, she turns to me, wraps her arms around me, and squeezes. “So good to see you, Jack,” she whispers. When she lets me go, tears are streaming down her cheeks. “Take care of my sister, Bowen.”
“You know I will.” Bowen turns to the two militiamen. “Hey, Rory. I need you to escort Lissa and Dr. Grayson back to the gate.”
“Sure thing, Bowen.”
“I love you guys,” Lissa says. She dabs at her eyes. The doctor puts his arm around her shoulders and they walk to Rory.
Bowen turns to me. “First of all, we need to find my contact on the outskirts of the city before the sun goes down. We need to hurry.”
“What contact?” I ask, annoyed that Bowen’s already put himself in charge. “I’ve never heard anything about a contact on the outskirts of the city.”
One of his eyebrows lifts, and he looks me up and down. “How many times’ve you been out of your house in the past four years?”
“I leave my house every day,” I snap, thrusting my chin forward.
“And how many times’ve you left your yard?”
I frown and bite the inside of my cheek—a habit my dad has tried to break me of for years. Bowen nods and says, “That’s what I thought. Now, let’s get going.”
We turn north, but instead of walking, Bowen whips his rifle onto his shoulder. On the road in front of us stands the vagabond, looking hungrier than ever. “Don’t shoot!” I blurt, jumping in front of Bowen. “He’s harmless.”
“Do you need something, old man?” Bowen calmly asks, pushing me aside.
I cringe, waiting for the vagabond to ask for food—the one thing you can never have enough of in this world. The one thing I can no longer spare. “Do you have information about the cure?” he asks with a deep, rich voice. I stare at his mouth, wondering if I’m imagining things. His teeth look pearly white, the kind of teeth my dad loves—straight, clean, beautiful. They’ve never looked like that before. Usually they’re brownish-green and so fuzzy they almost look plastic.
The vagabond’s gaze travels from Bowen to Fiona and stops on Jonah, moving down Jonah’s body and freezing on his right hand. He stands a little taller and his eyebrows—so covered with mud and dry grass that I can’t even tell what color they are—crawl halfway up his forehead. “It’s true. There’s a cure,” he whispers.
“Yes,” Fo says, lifting her hand to show him her tattoo. “My brother and I are living proof.”
The man sighs, his breath rustling his crusty beard, and then he laughs, white teeth gleaming, and looks up to the sky. Without another word he turns and wanders down a road that leads east.
A prickling feeling crawls up my spine and makes my buzzed hair stand on end. “That was weird,” I say, my voice unnatural in the silent world. Silently, we start walking north down the vacant street, with the wall at our left blocking the sun and the view of downtown Denver. Jonah shuffles beside me, and whatever is in his bulging backpack sloshes with every step. When he puts weight on his right foot, his left foot folds sideways and drags. I wonder if he’ll be able to run when we have something to run from.
A breeze blows against my face, whistling through the broken windows of abandoned buildings and cars, and I shiver despite the warm September afternoon. I take a look over my shoulder, peering back the way we’ve come, thinking the vagabond might be following us. A tumbleweed blows down the street, but nothing else moves.