He says these names like they’re people he’s always known. He doesn’t have to pause to think or try to remember; he just says the names like he’s always been on a first-name basis with the Fosters.
“George and Jo last spoke to them in October before all the cell signals started dropping. They had been traveling south since then.”
I swallow, despair filling my chest. I remember the sudden lack of graffiti Andrew claimed he had seen before the cabin, how we saw none of it along the way. And how we didn’t run into anyone else on the road. Maybe there is no EU coming. He made it all up as an excuse, because he didn’t want to tell me the truth. Whatever the truth is, I need to know this first.
“June tenth,” I say. “There’s nothing happening on June tenth, is there? You just needed to give me a reason why we were coming here.”
“Their daughter-in-law, Diane, she worked for a German pharmaceutical company. She’s the one who told them the EU was sending help. Apparently viruses as deadly as the bug can mutate rapidly sothey might become less lethal. The EU were waiting until the virus burned itself out in America before they showed up. Last time Joanne talked to Marc and Diane, they said June tenth was the day.”
So he wasn’t lying. But I still don’t understand the secrecy. Maybe he knew the Fosters weren’t going to let me come along. But that thought—that he would ditch me—threatens to rip a hole through my chest, so I push it aside.
“Anyway, they got stuck in Connecticut for a while, like me. As I said, the winter was bad. We got alotof snow.
“I told them about my family and my plan to go south to avoid the winter again. I didn’t tell them I was also looking for other people. I figured I would wait for that. Maybe see if they’d invite me to hang in Germany with them. I went to sleep that night and everything was fine. The fire was blazing and I was warm and comfortable in my sleeping bag.
“When I woke up it was dark and cold. At first I thought maybe they had left and the fire had gone out on its own. But then I heard them. They were whispering and I could hear the sound of their bags rustling. The moon wasn’t full, but it was bright enough that I could see them. They were hunched over their packs. There were little piles of snow around them that hadn’t quite melted. I stayed still, listening. If they were going to leave me, that was fine. I’d let them go. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and I knew I could just go to Reagan alone if I had to.”
He’s telling the story like one of his movies. I don’t know which details are truly remembered and which he’s embellishing. If he really does remember all this, it means he’s been thinking about it nonstop.Torturing himself with every detail for months. My stomach clenches because I know the story can’t possibly end well.
“Then I saw what they were doing,” Andrew continues. “They had taken my pack and were rummaging through it. Taking the food I had brought with me. We were both in thesamemarketand here they were, robbing me while I was asleep. I didn’t get it. I still don’t. Why would they do that?”
I know the question is rhetorical—after all this time it must be—but still I shrug.
“It was this one stupid thing they were doing and it...” His voice breaks and he swallows hard before continuing.
“I jumped up and started yelling at them. That’s when George turned on me. I saw the gun in the light of the moon and I stopped moving. Joanne told him not to shoot me but he didn’t put the gun down. He told me to turn around and walk straight into the woods at the edge of the road. I put my hands up but didn’t move.”
Andrew stops talking, but I feel like I already know where this story is going. It’s like watching a train chugging along to a broken part of track. I know it’s going to derail, that the bad part’s coming, but I can’t do anything about it. It’s already happened to him. He’s already lived through this. I could ask him to stop, tell him he doesn’t have to say any more, but he’s kept this story to himself—held it in—for so long. He needs to let it out.
I reach for his hand and hold it, squeezing tightly. Andrew watches my hand like it’s a strange creature sniffing at him. Then he finally squeezes back. When he continues, his voice has changed. His throat sounds tighter.
“I asked them to hand me my pack and I’d be on my way, but he said it was theirs now. It all happened so fast after that. Joanne said something, I don’t even remember what, but it distracted George and I ran at him. I tackled him and slammed his hand down on the ground, but he wouldn’t let the gun go. He hit me with his free hand, and I heard Joanne screaming at me, and then she was hitting me, too. My lip split open and my nose was bleeding. I don’t even know which one was hitting me, maybe both. I reached out and grabbed the closest thing I could see in the moonlight and hit him with it.
“I don’t know if that one blow killed him or created a bleed or what, but George stopped moving. He let up on the gun and it fell into the snow. When I got off him Joanne was screaming. She kept screaming his name and shaking him to wake him up. I still had it in my hand—the thing I hit him with. It was a can of soup. Not even one I had taken.
“I don’t know when I picked up the gun, but I had it in my hand when Joanne turned and ran at me screaming. I shot her twice. I heard her...”
Andrew stops talking and tears fall from his eyes and he lets out a sob. I put my arm around him and pull him closer to me. The sounds he’s making hurt my heart. His cries are exactly why I’ve been afraid to use the gun. Why even when my own mom asked me, I couldn’t do it. She asked for the pills first, but I hid those, thinking she could get better. Then when the fever got really bad, she started begging me just to take her outside and shoot her. Screaming at me and my absent father and the other people she hallucinated while the superflu cooked her brain.
My own stomach churns with the same fear and anxiety, and I can’t imagine how Andrew has dealt with this for so long.
I open my mouth to try to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but I know he won’t believe me. The guilt has weighed on him for too long. Instead I let him cry and don’t say anything. When he composes himself, he continues. There’s still more.
“I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I just sat there. I hoped I would freeze to death, but I don’t think it ever got cold enough. When the sun came up I finally saw how they looked. They were both blue and dead. It was so much worse than the bug. Probably becauseIwas the one who did it.
“The worst part is, I didn’t take their food. They were trying to take mine. Food they didn’t even need right in that moment. Food they’d had a chance to take twelve hours earlier. I can’t understand why they didn’t just take it from the store. Why take it from me? Then it happened again when Howard’s people came to the cabin and I got so pissed at them. I could at least make sense of that because it wasyourfood they were stealing. But with George and Joanne, why the hell did I care so much? Why didn’t I walk into the woods like they told me to and wait for them to go?”
“You didn’t know if he was going to shoot you when you turned around.”
He lets out a sad chuckle. “He wasn’t going to. I shot Joanne twice.” His face scrunches up in agony and he can’t even look at me when he says, “There were only two bullets in the gun. I think if they got down here and found their kids and grandkids dead...” His voice trails off. I want to make him feel better. I want to tell him about mymom and how she asked for a similar end and I couldn’t even do that, but it’s not helpful. It will just make things worse. I’ll still be the coward I am and Andrew will still be a killer.
“So you came down here to find them,” I say. “Before they left.” It’s June 8. Two days until they would have been gone for good.
He nods. “I looked through their stuff. Joanne still had an old address book, so I tore out the page and put it in the Virginia Woolf book. When I found it on the coffee table the morning after you let me in, I thought I’d dropped it.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out the wrinkled scrap of paper. “Not that I needed it. I looked at it every day up until I met you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“Because I needed you.” He locks eyes with me. “Before, when I was hurt, I needed you. I was afraid that if you realized I was a murderer you wouldn’t trust me and would kick me out. And then, when I got better, I thought I could come clean, but... I... realized even then that I still needed you.”
