"We can camp here for tonight and then make our way back tomorrow."
Anna gasps, "Em, we came all this way and this house is ours."
She has become me in a lot of ways, and somehow, I've become Will. I don’t want to kill the people in the house for it. They got there before us.
Jake shakes his head, "Em is right. We leave for the mansion tomorrow."
Sarah moans, "My feet hurt and I don’t want to go all the way back. I don’t want to sleep outside."
She's tired and whiny. Jake wraps an arm around her, "Sarah, those people got their first, they don’t deserve to die for finding an empty farmhouse."
Sarah moans and sits on a log. I sit beside her and nudge her, "I'm tired too."
In the dim light of the moon, I can see her pouting. It makes me smile. She wrinkles her nose at me and shakes her head.
Anna opens a sack she brought and passes us all some dried meat and apples. We drink the last of our water in silence, wishing we were inside of that house.
I rip off some dried meat for Leo, but I don’t see him. I whistle softly but he's not there.
"Must be hunting or doing his circle," I mutter, but I don’t feel like that’s the case. I feel weird about him not being there.
Jake sits next to me on the log, shifting where it sits suspended. He looks down, "Wanna have a fire?"
I nod, "Yeah. They can't get mad if we have a fire. We aren’t doing anything wrong being here. We aren’t too close to the house."
He sighs and rubs his eyes, "Come help me get wood."
I almost mock him, but I know he's been trying harder. He's trying to not be the grasshopper who played all summer. He gets up and grabs my hand in his. The touch tugs at my heart. He pulls me up and into the woods.
I don’t jerk my hand free; I like the touch. It doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does for him. Anna was right, being around them more has helped me be around them, and not be in love with every guy our age that I see. I'm accustomed to them now.
We crunch through the forest, looking for wood. He looks back, "What do you think about Anna having a baby? Really think?"
"I think it's good. She has a piece of Bernie that's hers. He will be there forever in the form of that baby."
He scoffs, "She's seventeen. She's going to fall in love again. She probably wasn’t in love. She's too young."
"Jake, she loved him. She isn’t a normal seventeen-year old. She's way older and she's seen way more. Bernie loved her too. He hated that she was so young and he hated that he loved her, but he did. I don’t think she'll ever love again. I think she'll be a good mom. Sometimes she's crazy, but she's going to be a good mom."
He breaks the branches as we walk past them, "I guess."
I smile. He still does it, even though we can find our way back easily.
I pick up a piece of wood but he takes it. "Will you ever get over Will?"
I shake my head, "I don’t know. Will you?"
He shakes his head, "No. I get why he became the mean asshole he did. I get the pain and sorrow he'd seen made him who he was."
"I noticed the happy, sweet Jake has been gone. I'm sorry."
He takes the wood from my hands that I grab, "It's not your fault. Will chose saving you over himself. That’s the kind of person he was. Even before, that’s the kind of guy he was."
"Tell me something you remember from before."
His voice breaks ever so slightly, "My mom used to take us out to movies. She loved the air conditioning in the summer. She would drag us to the movie and make us watch whatever crap Anna could watch. Me and Will would complain and complain. So finally one day, we were in the city for the movie and Will convinces her we can go to a show by ourselves. Anna was like three and they were going to see the Smurfs. Will got her to let us go see the newest Paranormal Activity movie. She let us go; scared the heck out of me. I hate scary movies but Will loved it. I pretended to love it too, but he could tell I was scared. So when we got home, he let me crash in his room with him until I wasn’t scared anymore. He slept on the floor and let me sleep on the bed, but never told mom or anyone."
His arms are full from the wood I've stacked in them and we're far from Anna and Sarah, but I don’t want to stop listening to him talk.
He turns around and smiles, "He let me pick next time. I chose the newest Batman."
I smile.
He starts walking back to Anna and Sarah, looking at his broken branches.
My heart stops when I hear screaming. Jake looks at me, "What was that?"
I shake my head, listening better. The scream happens again. It's my name being screamed. I break into a run, leading Jake and me to the farmhouse. I know the way and that’s where the screaming is coming from.
In the firelight across the field, I can see movement but I can't make it out. Jake is keeping up with me, I can hear his footsteps landing hard. I run silently, as always. I slip against the barn, hearing the cries of Sarah and the high moan of Anna. What if they think she's infected. I pull my guns and sneak around the far side of the barn.
I see Sarah and Anna's legs on the ground with a huge man's. Sarah is crying so hard I can barely make it out, but I do. She cries, "WILL!"
I drop to my knees, frozen. My guns clunk to the hard dry ground.
Jake launches himself at the heap of hugging and wrestling people.
My stunned and silent face doesn’t want to react, in case it's wrong. I don’t swallow or breathe or cry. I sit frozen as Will gets off of Anna and Sarah and turns to smile at Jake. Jake lifts him right off the ground, hugging him mid-air.
Leo is jumping up, licking and nipping at Will. I don’t think I've ever seen him so excited, but I have no response. I don’t have excitement or passion. I think I'm angry, maybe at myself or the trickery going on in front of my face.
"Jakey! Jakey!" Will's voice cracks. He doesn’t sound normal but he says Jakey like before. I hate that name.
He puts Will down and slaps him hard on the arm, "How, man? How the hell did you get here?"
He shakes his head; he can't speak. He coughs and turns to face me.
Our eyes meet, and for a second I believe it's him, but I know I touched his dead hand. I shake my head; it must be a trick of my father's.
Will walks to me, silencing the others except for the sniffles and tears.
Will drops to his knees in front of me. He runs a hand across my cheek. I close my eyes and shake my head, "It can't be you."
He leans in, smelling exactly like him and presses his lips against my forehead, "It's me, baby."
Tears stream my cheeks, "I felt you. You were dead."
He shakes his head, "I was awake when you and Bernie came in the room. Whatever he gave me, woke me up. I felt you holding my arm and Bernie sticking me with a huge needle. When they realized I was awake, they sounded the alarms to catch Bernie. They figured he was bad. Some guy with a bullet wound to the chest was brought in on a stretcher, and I was taken to a different area so they could try to work on him. They brought me down a couple floors. I was left with the guards until the lights went out. They left us there, but the medical staff got us out when the fire got bad."
I mutter blankly, "The fire. The lady with the torch."
He looks confused, "I don’t know who that was, but there was a fire and the whole city is burning now. I got away in the chaos. I couldn’t find my way to Bernie's, so I came here. I knew eventually, you would come here." He kisses the side of my face, "You always come back here."
I lift my hands up and drag them over his face. "It's you?" The man on the stretcher wasn’t Will.
He nods and kisses my palm. I collapse into him, wrapping around him completely. "I left you, I'm so sorry I left you. I thought he was you. I'm so sorry."
He coughs funny when I squeeze him and laughs, "Easy, Em. My lung is still weak." He pulls back my head and shakes his, "You made it out of the city. That’s what matters."
I shake my head but Jake slaps him on the back, "I told you, nothing can kill this cantankerous old bastard."
Will laughs and hugs me again.
Instantly, we are surrounded by arms and breath. Anna is wheeze talking so fast none of us can catch it, but we can feel the joy in her shaking body. I close my eyes and hold on. I don’t know if we'll stay this way. I don’t even care. He's alive right now. My heart is angry for believing him dead, for leaving him to die in that building, for kissing the hand of a stranger goodbye and giving up.
I haven’t changed so much. I am still the girl who turns her back on the dying to save her own skin.
Chapter Ten
Me and Leo take the first watch in the barn.
I have the rifle and my bow from the bunker, and the handguns from the gun storage at Bernie's.
In one of the windows of the farmhouse, I see Anna walk across the kitchen. It's dark inside and out; nothing moves except her and the wheat blowing in the field. She slips across the gravel driveway, almost completely silent. I hear the familiar creak of the boards on the stairs.
She creeps across the hay and sits next to me. I don’t look at her. I keep my eye on the fields.
"Is it possible Bernie made it too?"
I close my eyes and recall the way he slumped over the keyboard as he gave out his last breath. I had to expect she would ask it though. I would have asked it. I would have gone back. I never would have taken her word that he was dead.
She must hate me for lying about Will and doubt me about Bernie.
I shake my head, "Anna, if he's alive then my father performed a miracle, because minutes after he was shot twice at point blank, the power went out. About an hour later, a lady lit the building he was in on fire."
She starts to cry quietly, "I can't do it without him."
My lip creeps out as tears slip down my cheeks. I have nothing to offer her. I ran up the stairs and turned my back on him after he saved us all. My cowardice is shameful.