This Isn't the Zombie Apocalypse

20. And We're Off (Again)

"How did you know they were dead?"

"Hm?" I shifted in the back seat, eyes blind in the utter darkness that wrapped its hand around me. Mentally, I counted the stars that I couldn't see—all the big, fiery angels that were watching over me and Calvin and Ana.

There was a rustling as Calvin turned to face me, and I could imagine how his face looked, all droopy from exhaustion, yet concerned and curious, trying to pry into crap that wasn't his business—that was my business. "How did you know they were dead?"

"You mean the mister and misses that were sleeping for a really long time? I dunno—it wasn't as if Skylar had mentioned seeing them walk among the living for a while. Wait, that's exactly what happened." I scoffed, rolling my eyes. "Couldn't you tell?"

Calvin breathed deeply through his nose, releasing the air for a several seconds by mouth, like he was doing a breathing exercise. It was probably yoga breathing or something. That was an old people thing to do. "Yes, the few facts I gathered certainly pointed to them being... deceased... but, if you had not noticed, around here, people do not die. They simply cannot."

Lying on my back, hands threaded together over my stomach, I asked sarcastically, "Ever watched the news?" It was a strange thing to say, considering I had only watched once, but seeing the world with your own eyes was always better than watching it on TV, even if you tended to be like me and avoided people like the plague.

"No," Calvin answered bitterly, surprising me. "I have been busy lately, working, in the hospital, trying to help people."

I twiddled my thumbs nervously, thinking about how much I sucked at this whole let's-not-piss-anyone-off thing. "Well," I coughed out, "while some places are like here"—I waved around at the general area surrounded the car we were currently lying in—"where no one dies, in other places people do die—just like that." I snapped, the sound sharp and clear in the silence. "No reason. No warning. People just drop dead all of a sudden."

Calvin was quiet for a minute, allowing the words to sink in. "And you know that from the news." It wasn't asked as a question—he said it as a statement—but Calvin somehow made it sound like a false one. Like it was obvious that what I said wasn't the total truth.

"Sort of," I replied, my words clipped.

Calvin let the matter be after that, twisting around to get into a conformable position before he drifted off to sleep, soft snores emanating from his open mouth soon after. I couldn't blame him, because he had been driving all day, practically nonstop except for when we made to do our business and the Payne's house.

Drowsy as I was, sleep did not come. I stayed awake for long, dragging minutes, thinking, which I did a lot for someone who did not like thinking too much. I thought about Life and Death and what could go down with them; the city where everyone lived whether they wanted to or not; all the people who didn't have any idea what was going on but still tried to help, like Calvin; my old home, and how it was a ghost town; Charles, my parents, and all the people who saw me die; and even my drunk neighbor—Big Tommy Junior was what people called him—who shot me, and in a way, set off the whole series of events that was now my life.

Mostly, I thought about Mr. and Mrs. Renee—and not my parents Mr. and Mrs. Renee—Ana's parents. They didn't know where their daughter was, probably thought the worst, and Ana had not even said a goodbye. She left nothing to indicate where she was going for them; just up and left one morning before they woke. And now Ana had been kidnapped—sorry, the correct term is abducted—and they had no idea. They didn't know that their only daughter had a bullet wound through the leg and was being hauled around by a desperate man. They don't know that their daughter was in extreme danger. They didn't know that the only two people attempting to save her was an old doctor who laughed at people's racism during a time that people should be working together and a skinny teenage runner who really only ran to selfishly keep himself alive. If they did happen to know who was going after their daughter, they would know that the odds of her being found were extraordinarily low.