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  He woke a few hours later to sounds from the kitchen. He heard Phil talking to Brewer in a quiet voice.

  “Gonna miss you, boy,” Phil said. “You gonna miss me?”

  Luke climbed out of bed and found Phil in the kitchen putting supplies into a rucksack. Brewer sat at his feet, tail wagging.

  “What are you doing?” Luke asked.

  “I’ve had some time to think,” Phil told him. “I’m putting you in danger being here. I don’t know how far they’ll go to find me. It’s not fair to you, or Sam and Lindy. So I’m taking off.”

  Alarm shot through him. “What? You can’t. We need you here.”

  “You’ll do just fine without me.”

  Luke squared his shoulders. “Then Brew and I are going with you.”

  Phil looked at him sadly. “I can’t be responsible for you, Luke. If I’m putting you in danger by being here, how is it any different if you go with me?”

  “Because you need somebody who’ll have your back. Two are better than one. Brew’s a good first alert. You know that. Sam and Lindy, they can run the farm. And if we get to a point where things settle down, and we feel safe again, we have a place to come back to.” He hesitated a beat. “And I’ve been thinking. I want to find my father. I want to give him a decent burial.”

  Phil kept his eyes on his task, his brow drawn tight over his eyes. “This is your home,” he said as he finished packing. “You shouldn’t leave it. And your father…is in a better place.”

  “It’s the people who make it a home. Mine are gone. Home is where you hang your hat. My dad always said that… And it’s my birthday.”

  Phil looked up, surprise on his face. “Your birthday?”

  “Yeah. And this is what I wish for. To go with you. And to bury my father.”

  Phil blew out a long breath. “You know it won’t be easy.”

  “I know,” Luke said with a nod.

  “You’ll need to carry your own weight.”

  “I will.”

  Phil held Luke’s gaze for a long moment. “All right, then. Let’s go have a talk with Sam and Lindy.”

  Learn more about Harlow C. Fallon

  They’d been tracking a black plume of smoke all afternoon. A shift in the wind sent it swirling around them, and death came with it. Chad recognized the smell now. The acrid mix of hot metal, burning rubber, and gasoline had twined around burning flesh and the smell of bodies already bloating under the hot New Mexico sun.

  It had only been three days since the Fever hit Albuquerque. Before they went off the air, the news had said the disease was man-made. Someone knew their job. The virus didn’t take its time. The second wave of dead had fallen as first responders died, too, and the summer heat magnified the odor of corpses in cars. It was thick in his nostrils. His nose and eyes ran.

  Is it the smell, Chad? Or is it the sickness?

  He killed the engine of the dirt bike. The bike teetered for a moment as a wet, painful cough shook him. He didn’t know if the smoke was affecting Annee and Elena the same. He’d be damned if he’d look back at Elena, his little sister’s androgynous tag-along. He was still furious with her for what she’d cost them—the bunker, the guns—though honestly he knew he should be just as angry at Annee.

  And what about you? You’re the one who left the gear behind, aren’t you?

  Chad gritted his teeth against his own taunting thoughts. He’d left the majority of the guns and ammo behind in the fight to keep Elena and her sick brother out of the bunker. He’d lost that fight. He’d lost the gear, too. He’d been too afraid to go back up after it. What if they figured out how to cycle the locks and kept him from getting back in? By the time he'd made the decision to get Annee out of there and go look for help, a stinking thief had marched in through the unlocked front door and taken the guns.

  He shifted the strap holding the guitar case across his back and made sure he still had access to the shoulder holster and the .45 in it. He wiped at his face with his forearm, glancing down to check the color of the fluid on his skin with a dart of fear. Only watery mucus ran from his eyes and nose. It was the smoke, not the virus.

  Behind him, the other dirt bike engine sputtered and died. The harsh choking sound of his sister’s vomiting filled the silence.

  She’s getting sicker. He swallowed away the acid burn of bile.

  “I can’t, Chad.” The words were lost to another round of coughing that became violent heaving. When they came again, they were breathy. Weak. “I can’t. It’s the eyes. All their eyes. We need to go the way Dad planned.”

  The eyes of the dead stared at them from within cars and from the road around them as they wove through the gaps between them. The eyes—all of them—were red. Elena’s older brother’s eyes had been the same soon after he died. Hemorrhaging capillaries gave Abel a maddened, almost-zombie appearance, even if it was still him behind the violent red. Had it been just that morning that they’d covered his face and those empty red eyes with a blanket?

  It was why his little sister couldn’t handle the staring eyes. He didn’t blame her. At fifteen, four years younger than him, she was the sweet one, the good girl who had dedicated her life to dance. And disaster prepping, of course. Chad was the one who’d rejected their father’s fixation.

  “Annee, we’ve been through this.” He still didn’t look at her. He knew how much her chest hurt. He was getting better, and his chest still ached. He couldn’t bear to see whether or not she was vomiting blood yet. At the end, the blood had poured from Abel, over Chad’s hands as he held Elena’s brother up so he wouldn’t choke on the bright bubbles foaming in his nostrils and throat.

  Chad pulled his thoughts back to where they belonged with a ragged breath. Stay in the moment. Focus on getting through right now.

  “We need to get to the motel as quickly as possible and using the freeway is the way to do that.” It didn’t matter anymore that the only thing Dad had cared about was his online family of PrepforDoom.com believers. It didn’t matter that the only thing he’d given hours of his attention to every day was his big plan. Dad was two thousand miles away. He might as well be dead.

  His plan was dead, too. It was the first decision Chad made after Abel died. Yeah, they’d go…so he could find help for Annee. But stay off the freeway? The freeway was the fastest way out of the city, and his only concern was getting Annee out and to help.

  Getting Annee help…and finding Wendy. Something in his chest squeezed into a hard ball. Why hadn’t she answered his calls?

  “Not if it means we never make it to the rendezvous.”

  Chad’s gaze snapped to his sister at the answering steel in her words.

  There was a wet smear across her lips and cheek where she’d scrubbed away the bile after she’d been sick. Her eyes made his stomach twist. Her light brown eyes, so like his own and so familiar, were huge in her pale face. And they were filled with angry fear.

  Like Abel’s had been down in the bunker.

  After their mother had died, Dad’s distraction from those last, long months had turned to obsession. He’d spent her life insurance, and most of the trust she’d left behind, digging a bunker out back. He’d told Chad it was to keep them safe, no matter what happened to the rest of the world. What a load of crap. If he’d given a damn about them, he’d have been the one driving Annee to dance and attending her performances, buying the groceries and making the meals. He’d have been the one holding their family together.

  But Chad handled it all while Dad was off playing helicopter hot shot with the Guard or locked in his prepper’s dungeon waiting for the end. When it came, he was too far away to help them. And the bunker hadn’t saved them, either. When Chad got Dad’s email telling them to get in the bunker and stay there, Chad scrambled to unload the guns and ammo from the locked cabinet to take down with them. Annee had her own list of tasks, but instead she’d taken off in the car to get Elena, and look how that had turned out. They’d fought him, and he’d given in to the chaos and
fear. Some tough prepper he was. Dad would flip.

  Except making Dad proud didn’t matter anymore. He was in New York and for all Chad knew he was dead, too. The whole world was dying. But not Chad. He’d beat the virus. Annee would, too. He’d keep his focus where it belonged—his sister, and his decision to leave the contaminated bunker and get her to the meet-up where there’d be people who could help.

  When he didn’t respond, she insisted, “If we’re going to make the rendezvous, we have to go the back way.”

  He swallowed and looked away from her challenging eyes.

  “There was a reason Dad planned the route the way he did,” she said, “which you’d know if you’d bothered to pay attention. And I don’t have time right now to rehash all of his lessons with you. Not if you want to have a chance of getting to Wendy first.”

  She knew? Of course she did. They spent so much time together, in the car as he took her to and from lessons, in the kitchen as she studied and he cooked. She’d met Wendy, seen the two of them together. Though Chad didn’t share much with anyone else, he’d told his sister about the ring he was saving for.

  And now she was using his feelings to get her way.

  Why won’t you answer your phone, Wendy? His thoughts skittered away. He couldn’t go there. Not his green-eyed girl, too. His head turned almost against his will and he stared southeast. He wished he’d told her about the bunker. Maybe she would have come to him. He hadn’t heard from her since the world had gone crazy. He knew the bunker was a dead zone for cell signal, but before they’d gone down, why hadn’t she answered his calls? Were the lines that overwhelmed?

  You know why. The truth of it dropped his chin to his chest. What was it the TV said? More than 80% dead or dying? Chad gritted his teeth. He’d taken the freeway because it got them to help for Annee as fast as possible. It got him to Wendy even faster. Tijeras Canyon was along the way. He’d detour and go find his girlfriend.

  Except first they had to get past the twisted wreckage choking both sides of I-25 South ahead. It was the quickest way to I-40 and the meeting point. If it weren't for all the cars jamming the way ahead, if it weren’t for the burning wreckage smoldering with dangerous fumes, they’d already be there. The delay ate at him. Was Annee right?

  Elena lifted a bottle of water to her mouth and sipped as she straddled the dirt bike that Annee must have dived off to throw up a few feet away. The wind shoving the smoke at them didn’t even stir her dark boy-short buzz cut. “Maybe if someone had told his little girlfriend about the bunker, told her to come up there, instead of assuming it was all crap that he’d never be using, we wouldn’t have to come up with extra time to make a detour.” Her words were low, but not so low that Chad wouldn’t hear them. “Maybe we wouldn’t have to be in such a hurry.”

  He flicked a hostile glance at her. Did Elena really have no idea why he was in such a hurry?

  “I’m not just hurrying to get to Wendy. The faster we get there, the faster we get Annee help before…” He stopped and swallowed the words, glaring at her.

  Before she dies, too?

  He spoke again, quickly, and made sure his words were deliberately provocative to cover his fear from his sister. “Maybe if someone hadn’t insisted on bringing her sick brother along to contaminate our bunker, you guys could've waited for me there while I got Wendy on my own.” It was the truth. The minute Elena had dragged Abel with her, she’d put Chad and Annee at risk. “Your family, including your brother, treated you like crap, but that’s okay, let’s bring him along and get Annee sick, too.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think—”

  “Stop it!” Annee’s chest rose and fell in short, shallow breaths. “Just stop, both of you. You’re exactly the same. And you’re going to need each other before this is all done. You’re going to need each other when I’m done, so just—just stop.”

  “You’re gonna make it, Annee, just like Chad. You’re gonna get better.” Elena’s voice was firm, but her face was pale. Maybe she was remembering her own brother.

  “I’ve been sick longer than he was. He didn’t—”

  “But you’re not coughing as bad as I did.” Chad shook his head and thinned his lips, talking over her when she tried to tell him how tired she was. “You’re going to make it.”

  “You have to,” Elena added. She threw Chad a glance from the corner of one of her wide, up-slanted eyes. “You can’t leave me with the tall, skinny, white boy. Without you, we’ll kill each other in a day.”

  He thought she meant it as a joke—maybe—though privately he agreed. But Annee closed her eyes, and the expression on her face told him that the words pained her. Her lips moved in a silent prayer.

  His gaze swerved away, as it always did when people prayed around him. Wendy did it, too, sometimes. Oh, she liked to complain about having to go to early services with her mom, and she had questions, too. But when push came to shove, she closed her eyes and started praying when she needed comfort.

  It wasn’t that it bothered him, exactly. And it wasn’t that he didn’t believe, either. He did.

  He was almost sure he did.

  He just had a hard time with faith in general—how did you ever really know if you believed in something you couldn’t see? When the world was falling apart, how did you hold on to believing in anything?

  Chad didn’t know. And seeing his sister in prayer was like a little needle stick to remind him of that failure. Apparently, Elena felt something of the same awkwardness. When he self-consciously darted a glance at her, she was fiddling uncomfortably with a gauge in front of her. Who’d have thought that’s what the two of them would have in common?

  “Okay, look, fine, have it your way.” The capitulation wasn’t to give Annee what she wanted, but to get her to come back to reality. It would be easier if they could all be on the same page. “We’ll head back to go up Tramway. Okay?”

  Dad’s plan used the road that went up and skirted the northeast edge of Albuquerque. Chad didn’t see how heading up a road that accessed so many residential areas would cut back on time, but at this point, he didn’t care. Anything that got him to Tijeras was better than standing here on I-25 and fighting about it.

  After a moment, Annee let a long sigh escape. She opened her eyes, and gave him a peaceful smile. “Okay,” she said simply and crossed to perch on the back of Elena’s bike again.

  He thought she’d let it go at that, but just before he started his bike, she tapped Elena on the shoulder with a mischievous grin. “And you said prayer doesn’t work.”

  He could barely hear the soft words. He exchanged a look with Elena. His fear was reflected back at him in her eyes. Look at us, bonding over my dying sister.

  “We should go.” Elena’s face was scared—angry, too, but not at him this time. At the universe.

  His engine roared to life. The three of them turned back, just as Annee wanted, and headed for the Tramway exit.

  What should have been an hour’s trip took them almost three. The road wasn’t bad heading up the mountain, but the downslope heading down toward I-40 was backed up with the corpse-filled cars of people who’d been fleeing the city. Not as bad as the freeway, but it slowed their progress enough that the sun was lowering toward the horizon behind them as they exited I-40 and made their way through Tijeras to Wendy’s neighborhood.

  The town was deserted. They’d seen people at a distance in Albuquerque—singletons and small groups. And later in the afternoon, they’d heard the distant sound of gunshots. They weren’t the only survivors moving around in the city. And not all of them just wanted to get out. Tijeras was silent. The buzz of the bikes echoed off the walls of the buildings.

  He didn’t bother with the driveway at Wendy’s house. He drove the dirt bike right up to the front door, cut the engine, and dumped it on its side as he took two quick steps up the walk. He pounded on the door twice, even as he twisted the doorknob and flung the door open.

  “Wendy!” He stood in the entry, twis
ting his head to glance into the little living room and the kitchen. Both were empty. “Mrs. Mitchell?”

  It took about fifteen seconds for him to get over the oddness of just charging into his girlfriend’s home. Those fifteen seconds of silence made his skin crawl. He took the stairs two at a time, bellowing Wendy’s name.

  He flew back down the stairs, his heart pounding in his chest. Elena and Annee stood in the doorway. Elena supported Annee’s weight.

  “She’s not here!” Despair made his shout to them end in a choking noise. He twisted away and headed down the hall to the sunroom. “She’s not…”

  Except someone was there. Someone would never be leaving.

  A pink-striped comforter was draped over the couch in the sunroom. Splotches of brown soaked through from beneath it.

  A roaring filled his ears. His hand shook as it hovered over the comforter, just above the dark stains. He made himself grip the edge and pull it back.

  A bloody multi-colored quilt covered the body. With an explosive gasp for air, Chad snatched it back, too.

  It was too much. The small, pale face and blonde hair, the formerly green eyes, now ravaged red and staring blankly. Chad felt his belly hollow, the air sucked from him as his body curled down.

  “Chad?” Annee’s faint voice behind him brought him back.

  “It’s not her,” he gasped. “It’s not—it’s her sister. Wendy and her mom aren’t here.”

  Elena had lost her big brother. Wendy had lost her little sister.

  He turned to his own sister, then. Elena half-carried Annee.

  “Her fever’s raging.” Elena’s report was grim. “She’s been trying so hard to keep it together for us. But she’s just not—she’s not doing well. She needs to stop now.”

  “It’s thirty minutes up the road now.” His voice sounded empty, even to himself.

  “She can’t. She won’t make it tonight.”

  Chad stared at his sister’s friend. He nodded understanding and crossed the room to help Elena, taking his sister’s slight weight and carrying her upstairs to Wendy’s mom’s room.