Holding the edges of the seats to stay balanced as the bus bangs over potholes, she navigates the center aisle until she finds Gary, huddled against the window with his arms crossed.
“I’m sorry about Jean,” she says.
“How did you know what we did in the art gallery?”
“I found the evidence. It wasn’t hard to piece together.”
“You shouldn’t have judged her,” Gary tells her. “Her one sin was she refused to accept that things have changed. She honestly thought the whole thing would blow over and her life would pick up again almost where she’d left it. I think she thought once we got to Nightingale, she would find a Starbucks with Wi-Fi.”
Anne frowns. “Jean had bigger sins than that.”
“What we did, we did to survive. We were trapped. It was either that or die. But it wasn’t her. It was me. I was the one who did it. I made a choice. You should judge me, not Jean. Jean just ate.”
Anne nods. Her suspicion has been confirmed. “She just ate.”
“That’s right.”
“And that’s why I judge her, Gary. You, I don’t judge.”
Gary stares back at her stricken, on the verge of tears.
“I killed my friend and then we ate him,” he says. “You need to understand this.”
“You survived.”
“If you call living with that surviving.”
“Can you handle a weapon?”
“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” he says. “I killed my friend with a knife.”
“We don’t talk about the past,” she says.
“I killed my friend with a knife,” Gary repeats with a shrill laugh. “It actually feels good to say it out loud. I was selling his paintings in my gallery and then a week later I cut his throat so Jean and I could eat him and live. It was hard work. Once I had him down, I had to lean and put all my weight into it. He hardly struggled. He just looked at me in surprise while I did it. I was pretty surprised too. I mean, I was outside my body, watching myself do it. I should be in jail, but here I am, alive, and he’s dead. Do you see what kind of person I am?”
“Are you willing to kill again to survive? If you had to?”
“I want to live,” Gary says after a pause.
“All right. We’ll give you a nine millimeter. If the Infected get close, you point it, you shoot it. You watch our backs, we watch yours. Think you can do that?”
“I can do it.”
“Good,” says Anne. “If you killed a man to survive, I can’t absolve you. None of us are shining examples of virtue; we’ve all done terrible things or we wouldn’t be here. But it tells me you have what it takes. That’s the only qualification that matters these days.”
“Anne!” Marcus calls from the driver’s seat at the front.
She feels the tug of gravity test her balance. The bus is slowing.
“Thank you,” Gary says, crying.
Anne stands and hurries toward the front.
“We’ve got people waving us down, about a hundred yards up the road,” Marcus says. “Cops having some car trouble, from the looks of it.”
Anne braces her feet with a wide stance and takes a look through her rifle scope. Standing next to a state police car, two large men wearing black T-shirts and load-bearing vests and jeans wave at the bus, flagging it down. The badges on their belts glint in the morning sun.
Something is wrong with their faces.
Anne blinks, thinking: Impossible.
The cops raise their guns, grinning at her across the remaining distance.
“Go, Marcus!” she screams, taking aim. “Keep going!”
Marcus obeys instantly, throwing the bus back into its highest gear and stepping on the gas. The machinery roars in response, lurching as it accelerates. Anne loses her footing and falls hard onto the floor, the rifle clattering away from her.
BANG BANG BANG BANG
Bullet holes pop through the windshield, spraying the interior with bits of glass. The Rangers drop to the floor, wrapping their arms around their heads. Marcus bellows with rage and pain, half out of his seat and driving blind.
BANG BANG BANG BANG
The bullets shatter the windshield and rip through the air, thudding into metal and bursting through the seats, sending bits of stuffing swirling around them. Wind rushes through the open windshield, carrying the faint tang of rotting milk.
Anne feels the hard, dusty floor under her scarred cheek and wonders how many kids stepped on this spot on their daily commute to school. She pictures their little sneakered feet. She closes her eyes and remembers visiting one of the many orphanages at Camp Defiance. She wanted to see children again. Pastor Strickland gave her a tour and showed her the rows of boys and girls drawing on construction paper with crayons—art therapy, he called it, endless scenes of fire and slaughter, Infected mommies attacking crying daddies, children running through the woods, red eyes identifying the Infected, slashes of blue representing the tears of the victims.
Strickland asked about her spiritual health and she told him she was spiritually dead. He said she should return to her faith, which could serve as a source of strength for her as it has for so many others, reminding her there are no atheists in foxholes. Anne answered there are no believers either. There is just you, dying. And that is the true sadness of life.
You’re here, and then you’re not.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
The cops step aside as the bus roars past, emptying their guns at point blank range, the bullets punching holes through the thin metal skin of the vehicle.
The firing stops. Marcus straightens in the driver’s seat, his face flushed with rage. Anne climbs to her feet and looks through the back window to see the two cops standing in the middle of the road, staring at the bus as it zooms away from them.
“Who’s hit?” Anne says. She has to shout to be heard over the rush of wind whistling across the seats.
“Just glass,” says Ramona. “Nothing major.”
“I’m all scratched up,” Marcus says. “I’m all right, but I’m bleeding.”
Evan and Gary tell her they are okay.
“Ramona, get the first aid kit,” Anne says. “Gary, take a look at Marcus and let Ramona know where he’s hurt and how bad. Ramona, patch him up first if you can.”
“Shouldn’t we stop?” Gary says.
“Not after that. Those people who were shooting at us were Infected.”
“How can that be?” Evan says.
“Ray Young,” Anne answers. “Evan, I need you to fetch the machine gun.”
Despite everything that has happened, Evan grins. The M240 is his baby. He hurries into the back, dodging Ramona, and returns with the gun.
“Where do you want it?” he says.
“We’re going to mount it right up there next to Marcus where the windshield used to be.”
“Hot dog,” Evan says. “Here, take the gun. I’ll go get the ammo.”
Their boots crunch broken glass as they lug the twenty-six-pound machine gun to the front of the bus and mount it on the hood, the barrel resting on the integrated bipod.
Marcus glances at them as they set it up for firing. Evan pulls the charging handle, locking the bolt to the rear.
“Give me the ammo,” he says.
Anne opens one of the ammunition boxes and pulls out a long belt of shiny rounds, which he connects to the machine gun, sliding the first round into the firing chamber. Locked and loaded.
“We’re in business,” he grins, the wind ripping through his hair. “It’s set for a cycle of eight hundred fifty rounds per minute. Just keep feeding me the belt.”
“Gary!” Anne calls out. “Sit right there. When I say so, get behind Evan, brace your back against the pole here, and put your hands against his back right about here. Keep him stable, okay?”