Right now, I can tell he’s hiding something. Then it hits me: thepiece of paper in the book he gave me had an address in Alexandria written on it. So itwasa stop he wanted to make. Alexandria is farther south than Reagan National. But I don’t know why he wouldn’t tell me about it, or what’s there.
I try to think of any number of reasons why he would hide this from me, but none of them seem right. He trusts me—he proved that when he let me torture him to help his leg heal. But I can’t figure out why he doesn’t trust me with this.
For the first time I wonder if I made a mistake in trusting Andrew. The thought makes my stomach hurt.
“Why do you really want to go there so bad? You can tell me, Andrew.” I’m hoping he’ll just take the bait and tell me about Alexandria. I purposefully say “there” instead of DC.
He still avoids my gaze. “I just didn’t look close enough at the map.”
I sit down next to him, tucking my legs under me. He’s still not ready to tell me and I don’t want to sit here making up possibilities. But I trust him, so I feel like I should let him know he can trust me. “I know what this is about.”
He finally looks at me. It’s not true. I know there’s something specific he’s looking for but doesn’t want to tell me about; the most obvious thing it could be is that he wants to find someone. Andrew wants to be optimistic about something, but everything that’s happened in his life doesn’t let him. This is based on the limited understanding I have of his life, preapocalypse. His parents were strict and didn’t necessarily approve of who he was. He didn’t have someone like my mom, who was spiritual, not religious; who believed that what you put out into the universe you got back. Andrew wantshope, but he can’tlethimself hope.
“I understand that you want to find people,” I say. Something changes in his face and it looks like he’s going to interrupt me, so I talk fast. “If you want to go looking for someone, I think we should do it.”
My instincts—that ever-growing pit of fire in my stomach—tell me that going out of our way is wrong. But I do trust him, whether I should or not. So far Andrew has been so forthcoming about everything that he has to have a reason for this. I know it.
I try to give him a friendly smile but he doesn’t smile back. I stand and hold out a hand to help him up. We’ll take his way through Alexandria to find whoever he needs to find and I won’t stand in his way. Maybe it’s my own optimism taking advantage of me, but I think he’ll tell me eventually.
We take 495 around DC and exit onto route 355 into Bethesda. The small town looks worse than Baltimore did from afar. The shops are looted, cars are burned, trash and leaves blow in the hot and humid breeze. The bodies littering the ground are much older than the decapitated one in Mailey. At least none of them outwardly look like they died from acts of violence. If they were flu victims, they were the walking dead kind, the ones who refused to rest and stay indoors, deliriously walking through the streets while fever cooked their brains and mucus drowned them.
The stay-at-home orders came too late—sometime in early September after the vice president was sworn in. Most people didn’t need the stay-at-home order; they had been staying in since July. But there were still a few, like the eight or so bodies in downtown Bethesda, who decided to press their luck. By the time the government triedto institute a full-on lockdown like a few European countries, the National Guard had already lost most of their ranks, so there was no one to uphold it.
Everything had happened either too slowly or too late.
Andrew’s been quiet for too long, which always makes me nervous. I like it better when he talks, even if I just listen. I point to the broken front window of a Banana Republic. “Should we replenish these rags?”
“Come on now, Jamie. You know the last fashions shipped out were for the fall line. Do you want to wear chinos and button-down plaid in a-hundred-and-three-degree heat?”
“Sounds hot. Eh? Get it?”
He rolls his eyes, but I see him smirk. “I think it’s my turn to retch at your bad joke.” He retches.
“Because your jokes are the height of humor.”
“Oh, I know. I mean, you should be paying me, my jokes are so good.” He nudges me and smiles, and something flutters in my chest. I don’t have time to enjoy the fluttering, or even think about what it could mean, because someone speaks from behind us.
“If you two stopped joking around, you could hear an old lady sneak up on you.” We turn and there’s a shotgun pointing at Andrew’s face.
Andrew
JAMIE RAISES HIS GUN AND THE SHOTGUNbarrel moves over to point at him. “Don’t,” the gruff voice says.
The woman holding the shotgun has to be in her late sixties or early seventies. She looks like she could be a cousin to Bea Arthur and sounds like she’s smoked a pack a day since 1967. She’s white and skinny, with short, curly white hair, and she’s wearing a brown vest, a loose white button-down, and jeans.
Jamie puts up his hand and places the rifle on the ground in front of her, and I follow his lead.
“Good boys,” she says, the wrinkles deepening around her eyes as she smiles. She lowers the gun, but not enough for me to stop worrying about where she might shoot us. “Now let’s start with what you’re doing here. I haven’t seen either of you two around town before.”
“We aren’t from here,” Jamie says.
“I already know that part, if you were paying attention. I askedwhatyou were doing here.”
“Just passing through,” I say.
“From where?”
“Philadelphia,” says Jamie.
