“You love me.”
My stomach does a little flip and my mouth goes dry. Completely oblivious to the reaction he just got out of me, Andrew walks past to greet more people from Fort Caroline. I try to do the same. But I can’t help glancing over at him through the crowd. Every time I do it’s like he feels my eyes on him and he looks right at me, smiles, and winks.
We pass through a toll booth where a woman with an AR15 waves to the driver—Grover Denton—and we continue our ride into Fort Caroline.
“No wonder it’s called a fort,” Andrew whispers.
Grover looks back at us in the rearview mirror, the dashboard lights casting his face in green. “There was an old fort back in the 1500s, but it’s not there anymore. They just kept the name.”
“Who was Caroline?”
“The wife of one of the original settlers. Rosewood is related to them, actually.”
Andrew gives a condescending “uh-huh” and I shoot him a warning glance. He shrugs and I look back into the rearview mirror to see Grover Denton’s furrowed brow relax. We’re all quiet as we pull off the highway.
The streets are empty. The caravan of cars following us—and two school buses full of people—veer off as we drive through what looks like downtown Fort Caroline. The shops are all in one piece; no broken glass, no fires. There are lights at every intersection. They’re the types of lights I used to see at nighttime road work zones, two bright lamps atop a movable pole, pointed down at the road. Each light is powered by what looks like a gas generator, chugging along in the silent town.
“Was that everyone we saw back in the clearing?” I ask.
“No way.” Grover sounds happy about this. “That’s just the people who are on second shift tomorrow.”
I glance at Andrew to see if he knows what second shift means, but he gives me a quick shake of his head.
“You’ll see,” Grover adds.
He pulls into the parking lot of an old two-story motel. The whole building is dark except for the office on the first floor, which is lit only in candlelight.
Grover kills the truck and we step out, grabbing our packs from the bed and following him into the office.
There’s no one there. The candle flickers alone on top of the desk.
“Cara?” Grover calls out.
A tall, pale young woman with long brown hair emerges from the dark back room. She looks like a ghost in this candlelight. She glances at Grover, but locks her eyes on Andrew and me like she’s wary of us.
“We have new guests. Can you set them up?”
She nods and begins to look more comfortable as she reaches for two clipboards and puts them on the desk, facing us. Barely above a whisper, she says, “I need you to fill this out, and you can go to room 2C.”
Her eyes dart up to me as she takes a metal key attached to an orange tag and slides it across the desk toward me. Not a plastic card, an honest-to-God metal key.
“It’s on the second floor. Go right out this door and up the stairs, the second door on the right. It says 2C on it.”
I take the key and the clipboard, glancing at the form. It’s a questionnaire, asking for our names, date of birth, place of birth. Normal at first, but then I notice at the bottom the questions change to ask who in your family survived the superflu, who died, how old they were. There are four pages in the questionnaire but I don’t pay much attention to them because Cara’s talking to Andrew now and sliding him a different key.
“And you can have 2D. It’s on the second floor. Go right out this door and up the stairs, the third door on the right. It says 2D on it.”
I can’t tell if she’s trolling us or if she’s serious, but Andrew smiles. “Thanks, but we can share a room. I mean, he farts a lot in his sleep, but I’m used to it by now.” He nudges me playfully.
My face burns and I see Cara’s turn red in the candlelight as well. Before I can scold Andrew, Grover speaks.
“Don’t worry about it, there’s no one else coming and I think there’s only two other rooms taken right now. We have the space.”
The idea of Andrew being that far away makes me nervous. It was different in the cabin. He was in his own room, but it was still the same house. An adjacent hotel room somehow feels farther. Maybe because we’ve slept right next to each other for two months now.
“I’ll come check on you tomorrow,” Grover says. “Be good, Cara.”
He waves and she glances up and gives him a silent nod, then stares down at her hands. She’s frail and quiet and I find myself wondering how she even survived this long.
