To keep myself occupied, I pulled the last strip of tea towel from my pocket and dampened it with some water from my bottle. While I directed my gaze out the side window, I scrubbed my cheeks, nose, and forehead, and each time I pulled the cloth away to find deeper stains of red, my revulsion grew.
I had a dead man's blood on my face. I'd slashed him as if his life meant nothing.
Cruz had killed two people.
Maybe three or four if the others didn’t recover from their injuries.
We were only in their car now because he’d had the courage to make the hard decisions.
Even after all this time, I'd never seen one healthy person kill another healthy person. There were so few of us left that I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of choosing violence and death over pulling together and trying to create better lives for ourselves.
One man had expired at my feet while the other lost his life charging at Cruz like a demented freight train. That look in his eye and his laser focus on Cruz had frightened the crap out of me, and I had a feeling I'd be seeing him again in my nightmares.
“I’m stopping here and finding somewhere to stay for the night,” Cruz said, breaking the silence for the first time in a while.
We were approaching an exit sign announcing a new suburb called Hammond Rise that I'd never been to before. This far from the city, there were more trees than houses lining the highway, and the ground was mostly clear save for groups of the infected and belongings littering the roadside. Since we only had around an hour of daylight left, it would be smart to find somewhere safe to sleep before the sun set for the day.
"This place is so new it's not even on the maps I studied." I heard the strained tone in my voice, but the fact that I was speaking at all after what I'd experienced felt like progress.
"You studied that pile of maps?" He sent me a side glance, then returned his attention to the road as we veered off the highway.
There'd been so many dead hours to fill back in my apartment that studying the medical books I'd taken from the abandoned library or the maps I'd collected during the prep stage had kept me entertained. I threw him a smile, even if it felt a little forced. "I wanted to be prepared, just in case I lost them. I never expected to havethismuch trouble hanging onto anything we owned, though."
We both fell silent as Cruz steered the car around a bend and came up to a cross-intersection.
Rather than heading straight for the town centre, he took a right and stuck to the outskirts, driving along the boundary where the houses were spread farther apart and vast expanses of land surrounded partially developed streets. The entire area looked new—or itwouldhave looked new before time weathered the buildings. Houses were half finished; some were at frame stage while others appeared as if they'd almost been ready to move into just before the pandemic hit. Temporary wire fencing surrounded most of the sites, and others were easily accessed.
None of the dead were wandering this far from the main part of town. No humans in sight either, but that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding in one of the houses and watching us drive by. I pulled in a breath and vowed to stop doing that; I shouldn't be frightening myself unnecessarily. We had enough real dangers to worry about that I didn't need to invent reasons to be scared.
Cruz shot me another glance as if he'd heard me gasp, then returned to searching for a place to pull over. He chose the last house at the end of the road, with a neighbour on the right and open paddocks on the left. There were no houses opposite; only earth-moving machines and massive piles of dirt.
He drove straight onto the dry ground next door to the house and parked close to the side fence.
We’d left everything behind when we escaped the city, so when I climbed out, I only needed to grab my backpack.
Cruz locked up and we threw our packs on as we walked toward the front entrance. Neither of us wanted to deal with another confrontation when we'd barely made it through the last one, so we paid close attention to every noise and movement around us. Birds were chattering in a tree, and it sounded like a gate nearby was banging in the breeze. Nothing out of place or alarming.
The house Cruz chose hadn't been around long enough for the owners to landscape the front yard, and we crossed an unruly patch of dirt and weeds as we approached the front door. The blinds covering the windows stopped us from getting a clear view of the interior, but the angle would still allow us to catch moving shadows if anyone occupied the home.
Cruz stepped onto the raised porch and turned the door handle. It was locked. “We’ll try around the back," he said. "If we need to break in, we'll do it there out of sight.”
A side gate led around to a backyard where a crude play area had been set up in an otherwise undeveloped space. A square of synthetic turf hosted a plastic climbing frame that looked to be suited to a toddler, and a matching swing set rocked beside it in the breeze. I immediately shut out the thoughts that tried to crowd my brain, refusing to think about the family that had once lived here, the kids.
The back door had been left unlocked with a well-worn pair of men's workboots outside. The discovery had us sharing a look and removing our knives from our belts. Cruz went inside first, and I followed, stepping into a laundry with a trail of dried paw prints on the tiles. I closed and locked the door behind me, then went through to a clean, neutral-toned kitchen. The place had a musty smell to it as if no one had stirred up the air in a while. No decay or death, but I wouldn’t let myself relax until we’d swept the place for living people.
By unspoken agreement, we stuck together to clear the house, and when we were done checking every room and cupboard, Cruz and I returned to the lounge room and dropped our backpacks on the floor. No one was living here, and it looked like no one had died in here either.
The exhaustion I'd been trying to keep at bay during our trip began seeping in, and I had a feeling if I didn't take a seat now I'd be on the floor in seconds.
I left my knife and sword on the coffee table within easy reach and sank onto the suede couch. There were still tasks waiting for us to complete before we settled in for the night, but we had plenty of time. For now, I just wanted to spend a minute or two doing nothing.
Cruz seemed to share the feeling because he dropped his weapons beside mine and took the spot next to me on the couch. I turned my head in his direction and searched his features, surprised by how comforting it felt just to be somewhere quiet with him again.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He gave me one of those looks he’d sent me many times in the car. Concerned, apprehensive. Like I was made of glass and might shatter at any second. "I should be asking you that question."
I rolled my lower lip between my teeth and considered what we’d been through that afternoon. People had died. Cruz and I had been under threat for different reasons, neither of them any less dangerous than the other. We’d outrun humans and the dead, but we’d made it through without any serious injuries. He had some scrapes; I'd earned a bump on my forehead that still throbbed a little, but we were safe and sitting in a clean, empty house on a deserted street. “I’m handling it the best way I can. I’ve never been through anything like this before. It was... surreal. Frightening.”
