CHAPTER 26
Maverick trails his finger over the weathered page before nodding to himself. “I think we’re almost there. Give it another two or three days and we should be crossing over into New York at last.”
He folds up his dirt-stained, rumpled map, then shoves it into his pack. I lean back and stretch, yawning as I do so. After a couple of days of monotonous travel and uneventful evenings where I did everything I could not to remember how it felt to be ran down, thendickeddown by Chase, last night was one of the worst we had. I’m exhausted, and there’s still two hours to go until sundown tonight.
We had left the Branch Brook Park where we made camp an hour before sunset this morning. A gaggle of younglings—at least six kids who should’ve been in a first grade classroom instead of circling the three of us, ready to eat—had attacked us. It was my watch, and my gut failed me. I didn’t realize they were there until it was almost too late.
I’m still a badass. In the before times, I wouldn’t brag about burning up three kids. After the Turning, it’s different. They’re not kids. They’re monsters, and I got three of them. Nudging Chase in the shoulder with my boot hard enough to wake him, hecame to quickly, realizing the situation and catching the lighter I tossed him.
Chase is a more reckless hunter, I’ve learned. I’m careful to keep some distance between me and any lurkers, even if that means I have to figure out a way to hunt from further away. I’ve switched my scavenging from searching for glass bottles to snatching up as many hairspray cans as possible. Screw firebombs. Give me a flamethrower any day.
Chase? He’ll go up to a lurker before giving them a chance to attack us—to attackme. I don’t pretend not to notice, though I’ve given up calling him out on it. He has this savior complex-thing going on. He’ll risk himself to save me, and if I’m the last woman at the end of the Earth that needs him to come between me and a lurker, I let him have this.
Even if I went to throttle him every time he takes an unnecessary risk. He’s fast. I’ll give him that. He can dart around a lurker—whether they’re a youngling or a full-grown monster—flick the lighter, catch the brittle cloak on fire, and bolt before he gets caught in the flames.
Does that mean my heart doesn’t catch in my throat whenever he does that? Of course not. It just makes me more determined to kill the bastards so that they can’t get their claws on Chase.
Maverick was on the other side of the fire. Before I could jolt him awake, something else got him up. He traded his gun for a pack of matches, igniting a torn piece of cardboard that he waved like a torch before using it to take out the final youngling creeping up behind him.
The younglings didn’t trigger my senses. I don’t know why, and I can only assume they were new lurkers. Right when I was congratulating us on taking out six more of those freaks, I doubled over as my stomach squirmed so badly, I needed to clench my teeth together to keep from spewing last night’sdinner of cold canned beans and stale Cheez-Its all over the ash-covered ground.
At leasteightmore lurkers were coming. Drawn by the fight or the promise of three human meals, it didn’t matter that the younglings were piles of ash on the grass or that our fire was still burning. They were coming, and I didn’t like our odds.
Neither did Maverick. Though Chase insisted on standing our ground, he refused. The sun would be coming up soon, and if we ran, we could outlast them. Chase tried to argue… until Mav drew attention to how pale I’d gone, and how I was cramping so badly, I’d lost my hairspray and my lighter.
I dropped them.
I dropped the only two tools that could’ve protected me from a lurker.
That was enough to trigger Chase’s protective instincts. While Mav made quick work of packing up our latest campsite, Chase shouldered my pack, then lifted me up, carrying me in a bridal-style hold until the pain subsided enough that I was able make him put me down again so that I could walk on my own power.
It’s the nest. That’s how Maverick explains it. From what he heard during his travels on the Outside, the nest in Manhattan is so large—and the amount of humans still left to feed on in the city so tiny—that it’s spilling over onto this side of the river. Even water doesn’t kill the lurkers. They wade under it, no need to breathe, and emerge in New Jersey, looking to feed.
Two to three days. That’s what Maverick just told us. The amount of lurkers coming for us will only increase—and that’s nothing compared to trying to make a dent in the nest.
Chase doesn’t seem to believe we can. For the last week, they’ve been arguing back and forth, their bickering taking on a sharper edge. He wants to know how we can kill hundreds and hundreds of lurkers with the limited supplies we have. While ourscavenging has proven to be successful lately—and, in addition to his pack, Maverick carries a stolen duffel bag with everything he thinks he needs—I have my doubts, too.
Not Mav. He insists that he’s been planning this for months now, and whether we were there or not, he’d figure it out. He has no intention of dying during this mission, but if we’d rather turn back now…
No. There’s no turning back. There never has been.
So we trudge ahead, the rift between Chase and Maverick growing with every step. Meanwhile, the chasm that stretches between me and my twin’s fiancé? It’s as big as the few inches that separate us as we sleep.
And, if I’m being honest, I think that, more than anything, is why the two men just can’t knock it off.
Is it lingering jealousy? Maybe. I don’t know what happened between Maverick and Veronica. If Mav has any idea what went down with Chase and me, he’s being careful not to mention it.
As for Chase… he’s followed my lead. We don’t talk about the night we slept together, and we certainly don’t bring up how I offered to suck his dick—and then everything that happened after I did. I get the feeling that Chase wants to make sure I offer to let him fuck me the way he likes next time—toconsummateour union—knowing full well that if he pushes me, the chance of that happening is zero. Same thing when it comes to how closely he watches Maverick when we’re traveling. I’ve caught an angry flash on his features when Mav comes too close to me, and if I show the cop any deference since he, you know, has the map and the compass and theplan, Chase gets that same puppy dog look like I kicked him aside.
I want to blame his brooding mood today on getting his night’s sleep cut short, too. I at least got my time. Chase and Maverick’s were cut by an hour each when the lurkers attacked, but you wouldn’t know it by how willing they are to keep moving.
He scowled when Mav stopped long enough to check his map and his compass. Because we’re nowhere near any empty, abandoned houses, he decided to see if we were close enough to the Hackensack River to get some water for our supply. Drinking it straight will give me the runs—at best—but if we boil the impurities out over tonight’s fire, we’ll have something to quench our thirst later.
Now, am I worried about getting dehydrated? It’s the end of the first week of October, fall’s finally made an appearance, and I wear both my jacket and my sweatshirt around the clock now. I barely sweat, but I do get thirsty. Water is a good idea.
There’s more to Chase’s frequent disappearances than that, though, and I don’t mean just his tendency to rub one out real quick. It’s almost like he’s putting some distance between him and Mav, checking to see which of the guys I’ll stick by. Who knows? Maybe he’s delusional enough to think that, if I do go searching for him, we might have a replay of the other night.
No.