Audrey curled up next to me as I slowly pulled the wad of socks from my mouth.
“We can both use more rest,” she said. “You especially.”
“I need the sleeping bag,” I shivered.
She rolled over, pulled out the sleep sack, and covered me with it.
“You’re not burning up? You have on so many layers.”
“I think it’s the leg.”
Ice moved through my legs and chest. I shook uncontrollably.
“The emergency blanket,” I pointed to the pack. She found the foil blanket and helped me wrap in it. She also covered me with the sleep sack. She hugged me, her chest pressed against my back. She pressed her hands flat on my chest. She didn’t stop the shaking, but she took my mind off the pain.
I WOKE HOURS LATER WITH VOMIT IN MY MOUTH. I rolled over and heaved, but there was nothing to throw up. I shook it off. Audrey sat cross-legged several feet away, staring at the ground and shaking her head. She held the Winchester across her lap.
“How long have you been up?”
She turned to me. Tears ran down her cheeks. They fell quietly to the planks.
“What’s wrong?”
“You have to wait. You have to give me time.”
“Time?”
She choked back a sob. “Please just give me time.”
She rolled up her sleeve, revealing a dark bruise and deep bite marks on her forearm, streaks of dried and oozing blood curling around her elbow. It was impossible to tell how old the wound was.
I crawled toward her, my ankle screaming. “Where did you go?”
“I just went down there,” she pointed down the ladder. I scooted to the edge and looked over. There was a swarm of pale, decaying bodies shuffling around and falling into the stalls.
“I was just looking for—I don’t know. I was just looking. There was one in a stall. I didn’t see it.” Her voice cracked. “I had to beat it with a shovel. That one,” she pointed to a man in plaid pajamas, head snapped back, staring up at us with empty eyes. His neck skin was torn. I looked down into his windpipe.
Audrey collapsed next to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to need the rifle,” I said.
“Please just give me time. Please.”
“I need the rifle.”
Her face was dark red. I could tell she was trying not to beg, not to plead for her life. I took the rifle from her lap. Audrey slouched. In no hurry, I removed the boxes of ammunition from the pack and reloaded the Winchester.
Click. Slide. Click.
Our stalkers went down in twos and threes. I made a game of getting them in clusters. Audrey sank away from me. Ashamed. A slow and steady procession of our limping, bleeding followers slipped through the barn doors.
Click. Slide. Click.
I was the hand of God.
The enlightenment.
My voice was the thunder.
It cracked the barn.
Opened the Earth.
Showed them Hell.
It was their only redemption, having their brains sprayed across the trampled dirt.
There were forty bodies laid out. Audrey cowered. I knew she was waiting to be next.
“Get the pack,” I told her. “Unless you want to run out of bullets and die up here.”
My leg was worse than useless. It was nothing. And it hurt like Hell. I climbed down the ladder. Audrey followed, fumbling with the pack. She was shaking and I couldn’t tell whether it was nerves or—or.
Reckless.
We sloshed through the gray matter. I slipped at the threshold and landed on my hip. My mangled leg jammed against the well pump. The cotton wrapping and splint came loose, a hot flash burned in my face. Audrey began to rewrap the splint.
“Don’t touch it!” I snarled. “Not with your arm like that.”
“If it’s torn, I’ll have to re-stitch it,” she said.
“Hell you will. I’ll do it.”
“What’s your problem?”
I stared up at the ceiling. At the gray clouds. The swirls of snow flew into the barn. “Just don’t touch it,” I said. “Just don’t.”
“Fine. Will you please get up so we can go?”
“Give me a minute. One damn minute.”
“I’m trying to help.”
My head pulsed. It was hard to breathe. “You could have stayed in the loft. That would have helped.”
She covered her arm with the opposite hand. “A lot of things could have happened.”
“I’m sorry I stepped in a goddamn bear trap. I’m sorry you wandered off and got bit.” My head hit the dirt.
“I could have taken you to the compound. They would have taken you, and I would have been fine.”
“I could have shot you in the face the second you showed me that bite.” I sat up and tightly re-wrapped the splint. I struggled to my feet and dragged the Winchester behind me.
Audrey was silent but followed behind, weaving through the mess of bodies. It was a relief not to carry the pack, but I could barely walk because of the nothing leg. And those soulless animals hadn’t disappeared. They appeared on fencerows and tree lines, five or six together, and began their slow, deliberate march toward us. Occasionally, I’d look back at Audrey, the pack mounted awkwardly on her shoulders, her arms crossed.
I realized being shunned was worse than death for her. She couldn’t tell her body to shut up. And I couldn’t make the infection go away. I stopped. I raised the rifle and waited for Audrey to catch up. She approached slowly.
“This is the best time,” I said.
“Don’t make me beg for my life.”
“Just come here and take the rifle.”
“Take it?”
I handed it to her. “You should practice.”
Slowly, she took the Winchester from my hands. I pointed at a nearby pile of stones where a group of eight closed in on us.
I stood behind her, my arms cradling hers. “The safety,” I pushed the button over, slid my index finger on top of hers. “Squeeze, don’t pull.”
She felt the hand of God.
The thunder echoed across the plain.
Two bodies fell in the mud.
Click. Slide. Click.
The casing flew into the dead grass.
Her body jarred with each shot, pressing into mine. I resented the wound on her arm. I hid the lust I’d felt since first looking at her picture. I pushed it out of my head.
“I wish I could take it away,” I told her as we continued across the field.
“Me, too.”
I shouldered the rifle and dropped my hand. It brushed hers and I grabbed it.
We walked across forgotten farmland, hopelessly looking for the main house. But there were only hills. Gray, bare hills with monsters dotting their tops.
On the farthest hill, I spotted a red building. “We’re going up that way,” I said. But she already knew it. There was nowhere else to go.
The red building was a newer barn with a collapsed grain silo behind it. The silo was in the middle of being sectioned. The cut-off saw was still plugged in. It was left in a hurry. A thermos sat open on a tool chest, a frozen foam cup next to it. Everything was covered in a slight layer of snow.
There was a gravel road next to the barn, and across the road a yard and a white house. The house looked like a good shelter. Nicer than the one-person tent.
“Do you think they left anything behind?”
I shook my head. “There’s no telling. But the garage is untouched.”
The front door was wide open. Snow dusted the foyer and the first few stairs. Abandoned in a hurry. Little was touched in the foyer, two drawers in a curio cabinet were open and empty. The bathroom neat and tidy, toiletries gone. Perfume bottles were aligned squarely against the backsplash. Clear, amber, one like obsidian. The bedrooms were stripped of photographs, their nails and hangers still buried in the walls. Dressers were opened and cleared out. Closets, too. On a girl’s dresser, a math textbook was open to the Pythagorean theorem.