Broken World (Book 6): Forgotten World (15 page)

“House or store?” Dax calls, slightly louder than I like.

I look around, waiting for zombies to come charging, but nothing happens. Thank God. I don’t think we have the energy to fight or run from a horde right now.

“Whatever we can find,” Axl mutters, moving faster.

He deposits me beside to his brother and Ginny, then jogs to catch up with Jim, Parvarti, and Dax. Joshua drags himself over to stand with us. Even though I’m shivering, I stay close to Angus with my knife drawn. Freezing or not, we can’t forget the reason we’re on this trip.

“You thinkin’ ‘bout tradin’ up?” Angus asks.

My eyebrows shoot up as I turn to face the man I pretty much consider my brother-in-law at this point. He can’t really think I’d leave Axl. Can he? Especially not for that asshole.

“Excuse me?”

“The Rock over there.” Angus jerks his head toward the building the others just disappeared into.

“Personally, I wouldn’t call that trading up,” I say, rolling my eyes. “But since you’re asking, no.”

“Just checkin’.” Angus purses his lips and nods.

“Would you care?”

“Only ‘cause it’d break my lil’ brother’s heart and I ain’t really itchin’ to kill nobody right now.”

“Right now?” Ginny asks, looking up at Angus.

“There’ve been times when slittin’ somebody’s throat sounded mighty nice. Especially since all this bullshit started.”

Ginny nods like she understands, but Joshua shuffles his feet uncomfortably. Unlike the rest of us, he hasn’t had to kill since this started—unless you count zombies—so I’m sure the idea of taking another person’s life is still foreign to him. For me, though, I totally get what Angus means.

“Well, you don’t need to worry,” I say. “I have no intention of ever being with anyone but Axl.”

Angus nods, and we go back to waiting in silence.

Up ahead, the other four members of our group come out of one building and move to another. Dax and Parvarti head inside while Axl and Jim stay out front to keep watch. We’re too far away to really get a good look at what they’re doing, though.

“Let’s go see what’s going on,” I say, heading down the street.

The others follow, and when we get closer, the building comes into view. It’s a small church. Nothing too fancy, but it looks secure enough.

We’re still six feet away when Dax and Parvarti come back outside.

“Looks good,” Dax is saying as we walk up to meet them. “Will be easy to secure since there’s only this front exit and one in the back. No dead bodies, and by the smell of things, there never were. Best part: looks like they had a food pantry set up for the needy families of this town.”

Angus snorts. “We’re the needy bastards now.”

We head in as a clump, dragging our feet and shivering. Even Parvarti doesn’t look totally devoid of emotion when we step inside and find it several degrees warmer than the chilly night air. I’m not sure what time it is at this point, but it has to be well after midnight. A couple hours of sleep sounds like a dream come true.

But first we have to get some things done.

“Food pantry is over there.” Jim points to the right. His eyes settle on me, and he says, “Check and see if they have clothes. I’d be willing to bet they collected that kind of stuff in addition to canned goods.”

“I’m on it.”

I head toward the food pantry just as Dax says, “We can get a fire going, but first we need to find something to burn and figure out where we’re going to do it. Can’t risk burning the place down no matter how cold and wet we are.”

“If this is anything like the church I grew up in, I’d guess the kitchen will have a large pot,” Ginny says through a fog of exhaustion. “We can burn the hymnals in it.”

“Not as good as wood, but it’s something,” Jim says.

His voice fades away, and I can only assume he’s headed off to check out the kitchen. Which is fine by me. The sooner they find a pot, the sooner we can use the battery Al left us to get a fire going. I only hope the church has blankets and clothes and things like that as well as food.

“Need help?” Parvarti says from behind me.

I look over my shoulder long enough to see her heading after me, and I nod. Mad or not, I won’t turn my nose up at help.

The room this church used as a food pantry isn’t the small closet I expected, but there isn’t a single window to help give the room light. I step through the darkness with my arms out in front of me until my fingers touch a shelf, then feel around. I’m hoping to find something that feels like it could be clothes, but all my fingers brush against are cans and cardboard boxes that I can only assume hold things like cereal and crackers. Despite the shivering in my limbs, my stomach rumbles.

“Oh!” Parvarti gasps.

I turn, ready to run to her side and help, but before I’ve had a chance to take even one step, she has a flashlight flipped on. The beam hits me in the eye and I shield my face, but she only shrugs.

“Wouldn’t kill you to actually care about something,” I mutter as I turn away.

The shelves in front of me are lined with food, just like I thought, and seeing how much is here takes my breath away. We’d be good for a couple months if we got stuck here. That’s something at least.

“I care,” Parvarti whispers behind me, her voice just as devoid of emotion as it always is.

“Could have fooled the rest of us,” I say, moving past the food to inspect the other shelves. Just like Jim thought, they’re lined with clothes. There are even a few blankets that are obviously used but not too worse for wear.

“I still feel,” Parvarti whispers, making me turn. Her voice sounds unbelievably tiny in the small space, and the sound takes me back to the way she was when we first met. The day we picked her up on Route 66—along with Trey. Back before the world had totally disappeared and the idea of zombies was ridiculous. “That’s what makes all this suck so much. No matter how many times I tell myself not to feel, I can’t stop it. Every time something bad happens, every time we lose someone or the little bit of hope that’s been handed to us is ripped away, it feels like Trey getting killed all over again.” She lets out a deep sigh and shakes her head, staring at the ground. “That day I picked the three of you up and saw the bite on Angus, I seriously considered putting a bullet in my head after I finished him off.”

Not only is it the most she’s said in months, but it’s the most emotion she’s shown. I really thought everything inside her had died along with Trey, but now I realize that isn’t true. She’s just not dealing with it. With any of this.

“Is that what you want?” I ask. “For it all to be over.”

“Sometimes, yes.”

I have the urge to cross the room and hug her, but I don’t know the Parvarti standing in front of me, and I’m not sure how this stranger would react. “You’re not the only one who wants it all to end. I’m sure we’ve all had those moments. You aren’t alone, Parv.”

“Feels like I am.”

Axl walks into the room behind us, and Parvarti rips her eyes away from the carpet so she can focus on the shelves. The icy mask slips back onto her face, but this time it doesn’t annoy me. It only makes me feel sorry for her. I wouldn’t be much better off if I were in her shoes.

Axl stares at Parv for a few seconds before turning to me. “We got us a couple pots and a whole stack of hymnals. You find some stuff?”

“There’s a lot in here, actually.” I turn back to face the stacks of clothes and start digging.

There will be time to talk to Parvarti about all this. This isn’t the last day we have on this Earth. Not if we have a say in it.

13

WE MANAGE TO find enough clothes for everyone, meaning we’re able to strip off our wet stuff so we can let them dry. Ginny and I work together to spread the wet clothes across the church pews while Parvarti and Axl use the supplies Al gave us to get a couple fires going. It’s amazingly simple, and within seconds, there are hymnals burning in two pots so large I’m sure they could make enough chili to feed fifty people. Joshua, Jim, and Dax carry canned goods and other food into the sanctuary, while Angus lounges on a pew next to the fire, smoking a cigarette he says he found in the church office.

“Should see if they got any of that communion wine,” Angus calls across the sanctuary to where Axl is pulling hymnals from pews.

“Don’t know where they’d keep it,” his brother says.

I turn to Ginny. “Any ideas?”

I didn’t go to church growing up, and it’s obvious the brothers didn’t either. It’s hard to say with the other four, but Ginny has been open enough about her childhood for me to know she used to have a picture-perfect life. Nice family. Nice house. Church on Sunday mornings and sleepovers with girlfriends on Friday nights. Normal stuff I thought only happened to families who lived inside my TV screen.

“Maybe in the kitchen?” she says. “Not sure.”

“Hollywood was too goody-goody to do something like sneak communion wine.” Angus shoots her a monkey grin, and even though it’s laced with exhaustion and grief, Ginny throws him a weak smile.

“Why do you call her that?” Dax asks as he dumps a handful of cans on the floor. “I get all the other nicknames: Doc, Blondie, Rambo. Obvious. Where’s Hollywood come from, though?”

Angus’s eyebrows fly up, and he glances Ginny’s way. She isn’t looking, though. She’s helping Axl pull hymnals out of the pews.

“Just a name is all.” Angus shrugs as he shoots Dax another grin.

The other man frowns, and it’s immediately obvious that he doesn’t like being on the outside of things. “Yeah, but—”

“Because I’m Hadley Lucas.” Ginny’s voice echoes through the room and everyone freezes except her. She just keeps pulling books out of their slots and stacking them in her arms. “I changed my name so I could start over, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a point in that now. Does there?”

“Shit,” Dax says, looking around the room at the rest of us. “I didn’t make the connection. Not even after you all asked about Hadley Lucas that day in Duncan.”

Ginny dumps her books in a pile next to the pot, staring down at the flames as they flicker across the pages. Smoke trails up and collects above us in the rafters, eventually making its way to the windows Axl propped open.

“Apparently, I don’t deserve a do-over. Maybe none of us do. Maybe this is like the flood. God saw how corrupt the world had become, so he wiped us out, leaving a few of us here so he could have a little fun.”

“That’s not what you think,” Parvarti says, her eyes wide. Almost like Ginny’s pessimism is the scariest thing she’s had to encounter since all this started. Ironic, considering there are zombies walking the earth.

Ginny turns her gaze toward Parv and shrugs. “I don’t know what I think, but I do know that every time things start to look like they’re going to end up okay, God decides to take a little piss on our parade.”

No one says a word or acknowledges that Ginny is absolutely right. We fight and struggle and work, only to have it pulled away. Maybe this is all some game for God. Like the Hunger Games, but instead of President Snow presiding over the event, God and all his angels are watching from their fluffy white clouds, laughing whenever we trip up yet again.

Ginny sniffs once, then turns on her heel, heading out of the room. I know her well enough to know she isn’t running off so she can hide how pissed she is. She’s teetering on the edge.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, hurrying out after her.

By the time I get in the hall, she’s disappeared.

“Ginny,” I whisper.

She doesn’t answer, but her sobs echo through the darkness. I follow the sound, going deeper into the dark abyss of the church until she finally comes into view. Curled up in a corner.

I kneel at her side, and she doesn’t resist when I wrap my arms around her. Ginny had her cry on the bus, then again by the river while Angus held her, but this is the first chance she’s had to grieve away from the threat of the world. Out there, it had to be quick, and she couldn’t give herself to it completely. But here, we’re relatively safe, and she should take full advantage of that.

“This is my fault,” Ginny says between hiccups. “He didn’t want to come. He didn’t think it was a good idea, but I made him. I was scared and I wanted to be in Atlanta, so I didn’t listen to him when he told me it wasn’t safe. If I had, he’d be alive.”

“You can’t think like that,” I say. “Jon wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

I hold her tighter, trying to think of a way to take some of her pain away. I did the same thing back in the Monte Carlo after what that man did to her. I didn’t come up with an answer then, and I know I won’t be able to now either. There’s nothing I can do to make this situation okay for Ginny.

She nods, but her sobs don’t let up. I don’t expect them to. Not for a while at least. So I hold her tighter. Settling in while I wait for her to get it all out. Every shake of her body makes my own throat tighten, and every sniff she lets out goes straight to my chest. Like a bullet. That’s what it feels like. I don’t understand her pain because I still have Axl, but I can imagine what she’s going through.

It takes a while, but eventually her sobs subside and her shoulders relax. Then the sniffles ease, too. When she finally pulls back and wipes her hand across her face, a deep sigh comes out instead of more sobs.

“I’m hungry.”

I stand, taking her with me, and do my best not to groan when my back pops.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I say, pulling her back toward the group.

When we walk back in, the room is totally silent except the occasional crunch of food or crinkle of plastic wrappers. Jim looks up, his eyes following Ginny, and I’m reminded of the conversation I overheard this morning, back in Hope Springs. He promised to keep an eye on her if something were to happen to Jon. That makes me feel better.

No one says anything when Ginny and I sit, and we don’t talk, either. Almost like we’re afraid to disturb the silence. I dig into a can of pears, not even tasting them or caring that they’re grainy and something I would have turned my nose up at before. Across from me, Angus smokes between taking bites of Spam, finishing up one can before moving onto another. Parvarti and Joshua and Jim eat in silence as well, so focused on their food that if I didn’t know any better, I’d think they were eating a delicacy. Axl digs into the can of something I can’t see while Dax crunches on Doritos. It’s odd that he brought them up a few hours ago and here they are. Even more strange that the food pantry had them.

“They had Doritos?” I ask, nodding toward the bag.

Dax smiles through the cheesy goodness. “Found them in the kitchen and couldn’t resist. They used to be my favorite. Sunday football with a cold beer and a bag of Doritos was probably one of my favorite things to do.”

“Sounds nice,” I say, smiling despite the fact that it’s Dax I’m talking to and I don’t like him and I don’t want to be near him.

“What about you?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.

“Me?”

“What do you miss about the world before?”

I shake my head while I think it over, but all the normal answers don’t apply to me. Not having to worry: I don’t know what that feels like. Family: didn’t have any. Friends: pretty much the same. Job: hated it. What did I do for fun? What did I love? The answer is obvious: nothing. There was nothing about my old life that I really, truly loved. In fact, I have more to care about now than I ever had before. The only thing that kept me going through all those years of pain and struggle was the possibility that it
could
get better, which is the same thing keeping me going now.

That and Axl.

“Hope,” I say.

Dax stops chewing mid-crunch, and for once, when his eyes rake over me, it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to do anything other than
see
me.

Axl scoots closer to my side, and I snuggle into him when he pulls my body to his. Dax starts chewing again, eyes still on me, and even though I’ve told Axl a million times not to worry, there’s something in Dax’s look that makes the hair on my scalp prickle uncomfortably.

I push the pears away and shift so my back is to Dax and my face is pressed into Axl’s chest. The donated clothes he’s wearing smell musty, but it doesn’t deter me from closing my eyes.

“You take the first watch,” Axl says, his voice echoing through his chest and vibrating against my ears. By the cold tone in his voice, I can only assume he’s talking to Dax.

His arms tighten around me, and I allow my body to relax until it feels almost weightless. Sleep creeps its way through me, and I seem to float, rising above the others with Axl at my side and darkness closing in.

I wake to the uncomfortable tingle of a full bladder. The room is silent, but the fires still burn in the pots, and when I wiggle out of Axl’s arms I find Dax still awake. Staring at me the same way he was when I last looked at him.

“You okay?” he whispers.

“Have to pee,” I say, pulling myself to my feet.

Sometime during my nap my foot must have fallen asleep, and when I stand, I’m greeted by the feeling of pins and needles. I lift my foot off the ground and wiggle it to get the blood flowing, holding the pew for support. Dax watches every move I make on the other side of the fires, and something about his expression reminds me of that first night I camped on the side of the road with Axl and Angus. Only instead of me wanting to get to know him more the way I did with Axl, his look sends a shudder through my body.

“I’ll be back,” I say, tiptoeing my way through my sleeping companions.

I find the church’s restroom and squat over the toilet even though there’s no water, grateful that the room doesn’t reek of urine. Why no one took refuge in this church is a mystery, but one I’m thankful for. There aren’t a lot of untouched areas anymore. Not like this.

When I’m done, I head back out into the hall and almost bump into Dax, who is standing right outside the door.

“What are you doing?” I ask, stepping back. Suddenly nervous and wishing Axl would wake up and come looking for me. Even if it would most likely lead to Dax getting his ass kicked.

“Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing past him. “The church is clear.”

Dax grabs my arm before I can get far and spins me around to face him. I try to step away but only end up with my back against the wall and Dax towering over me. His blue eyes study mine, sending another shiver down my spine. This look doesn’t remind of the way Axl looked at me when we first met. He looked at me like he could have died happy just listening to me talk. Dax looks like he wants to
own
me.

“You and Axl have been together long?”

“Since this started,” I say as my eyes dart past Dax to the room all my friends are sleeping in. I could scream, but I’m not sure if it’s necessary. I didn’t think Dax was dangerous in
this
way, and I’m still not totally sure. He could just want to talk. Test the waters. See if I’m as committed to Axl as he is to me. “We’re happy. I know you’re attracted to me, but I’m not going to leave Axl. Not for you or anyone else. Not ever.”

Dax frowns, and his eyes hold mine for a few seconds before he says, “Why a redneck like him? I don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t, so there’s no point in trying to explain.”

His words prickle at my nerves, but I refuse to lose my cool. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of Axl. I’m with the right person, and that is what’s important.

“I think I could change your mind,” Dax says, his eyes moving to my lips.

“Don’t.” The warning in my voice is so thick it echoes through the hall.

“You might like it.”

“You think you’re the first man to ever say that? Trust me, if you have to say those words to a woman, one thing is obvious: she isn’t going to like it, and you know it. You’re just too self-absorbed to accept it.”