After what feels like hours of walking, we pass the last neighborhood and start going up into the foothills at the base of the mountains. I stop and let my exhausted body sag.
Kevin stops a few paces ahead of me. “Do you need a break?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m fine.” It’s a total lie. My bones feel like rubber trying to support lead muscles, but I’m not going to tell him that.
Kevin reaches into his pants pocket. “Here.” He holds something out, and I lift my hand, palm up. He places a small round thing in my hand.
I squeeze and feel a hard lump wrapped in paper. “What is it?”
“Bubblegum.”
I gasp and bring it to my nose, inhaling.
“Unwrap it first!”
I pull the two paper ends and the gum spins out of the wrapper. I pop it into my mouth and a surge of joy mixed with nostalgia fills me as I’m taken back to autumn nights trick-or-treating with my brothers. I love bubblegum. It is as hard as a rock, but after a minute of gnawing on it, the sugar bursts into my mouth and down my throat and seems to zoom into my body.
Reenergized, I take a step forward, and Kevin takes my hand. His hand swallows mine in warmth and he starts gently pulling me uphill. “What are you doing?” I ask, twisting my hand away from him.
“Helping you.” He takes my hand again and pulls me. It feels awkward, having a guy hold my hand, and makes my heart beat a little bit faster than it already is. But I’m too tired to fight it. Our feet snap the twigs and branches that litter the ground—a constant reminder that everything is dead. After a while, the bubblegum loses its sweetness and turns tough in my mouth. I spit it out and keep pressing forward, letting Kevin help pull me uphill.
When the moon has moved over half the sky, Kevin squeezes my hand. “We’re almost there.”
I blink my grainy eyes and look around. I don’t know where there is, but it doesn’t look like we’re almost anywhere. We’re struggling up the side of a shrub- and tree-skeleton-covered slope. Well, I’m struggling. Kevin’s not. Even though he’s wearing my backpack and pulling on my hand, he acts like we’re out on a happy little hike, about to have a picnic.
I stop walking and let my eyes close, and the world seems to spin around me. My jaw softens, my breathing slows, and my brain fills with dark cotton.
“Jack,” Kevin whispers. I peel open my heavy eyelids. He’s standing right in front of me, his face mere inches from mine. I jump and take a step back, pulling my hand from his. “I think you were asleep,” he says. “We’re almost there. I promise. Come on.”
He takes my hand again and pulls me into a dense copse of some kind of dead bushes that scratch my arms and catch on my clothes. If I had long hair, the thorns would be catching in the tangles. No brittle branches snap beneath our feet, and it occurs to me that the ground has been cleared of loose tinder, whether for firewood or to make it silent, I can’t say. But it makes me wonder about this Kevin person I’m blindly following. He’s smart. He’s a survivor. He’s a fast runner. And he could take me down in two seconds, tired or not.
He leads me to a small shrub and bends, pulling it out of the ground. I blink and try to see more clearly what he is doing. No, he’s not uprooting a dead shrub, he’s lifted a perfect square of ground with a dead shrub attached to it, revealing a dark hole a little wider than a car tire. He steps into the hole and disappears, as if the darkness has gobbled him up. I peer into the sphere of black.
“What is this?” I whisper, eyeing the rungs of a ladder that lead into the darkness.
“A fortified structure,” Kevin says, his voice coiling up from the darkness. “It’s quite cozy. In fact, it’s my home.”
I look around. I’m more than halfway up the foothills, in a totally secluded area. What if he’s leading me into a trap? What if there are ten men hiding below, waiting for me? What if Kevin’s a murderer? I clasp my head in my hands and try to silence the what-ifs.
“Jack.” His voice carries right up to me.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
I doubt it.
“Have your gun out if that makes you feel better. I swear you’re going to be safe down here.”
Okay, so he does know what I’m thinking. I study the surrounding terrain again. Fresh sweat breaks out on the bridge of my nose and I feel like I might vomit. Not that there’s anything in my stomach—the oysters are long digested. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. But what other choice do I have?
I take a deep breath, take my gun from my belt, and then step into darkness.