Shadows Have Gone (3 page)

The roads themselves would be gone soon, Carly noted. In places, the pavement had already crumbled into gravel, and the grass pushing up through the cracks was helping the disintegration along. Vegetation flowed over the edges, creeping inward more every month. It wouldn’t be long before most of the traces of the old world were gone and nature fully took it all back within her grasp.

The only sounds around them were the singing of the birds and the chirping of insects. No motors, no radios, no televisions blaring through windows. The bright blue sky above had only clouds, no straight white trails to mark the path of jets. Occasionally in the night sky, with no light pollution to obscure their view of the heavens, they were able to see satellites. Justin had craned his head back to stare up at the bright little light as it arced by.

“They’ll circulate up there for a few hundred years before they fall out of orbit. What do you think our descendants will make of them? By then, do you think they’ll still have legends of people who went to the moon and rockets that lifted transponders into space?”

“They’ll still have our books,” Carly said. “They could learn all about the history of NASA and the space missions.”

“Who says they’ll read them? Think of how much English has changed in the last two hundred years. Some of that Victorian stuff was nearly incomprehensible to modern kids. With the way languages shift, in a couple of hundred years, people might not even be able to understand the language our books are printed in.”

“Do you really think language will change that much?” Carly knew that slang and new terminology could creep into a language and replace words, but she had a hard time imagining English itself being forgotten.

Justin nodded. “Regional dialects will emerge, especially without television to be a common norm. I’ve visited places in the world where dialects are so different from one region to the next that it’s almost like another language. In the future, people in Los Angeles could be speaking a completely different language than those in, say, Philadelphia.”

“Reading itself might be forgotten,” Carly said. It worried her that the kids in town weren’t getting a formal education, and she recommitted to finding a way to make that happen. It was too important. If they didn’t teach their own kids diligently, thousands of years of knowledge could be lost. The human race could plunge back into the Dark Ages.

“Literacy just won’t seem as important,” Justin said. “Not when there’s so much else that kids need to learn just to survive. Sorting through all the information they can’t use to find something they can . . . I imagine they’ll find our books as uninteresting and unrelatable to their lives as tomes on Victorian teatime etiquette. It will probably be a specialized thing with people like librarians being the only ones who are literate.”

“The rise of a new priestly caste.” Carly shook her head. “I don’t like the direction this is going.”

“There’s not much you can do about it,” Justin said. “Society will change as it sees fit.”

They passed a crossroads where one of Justin’s signs lay in splinters in the ditch, warning travelers to stay away from Clayton. He had tried to range farther out each time he put one up, but Marcus’s men always found his signs and destroyed them before long. They could only hope they’d been effective in warning some people away before they could fall into the trap. No travelers had come to Colby in months. Carly could only hope it was because they had been warned off, not preyed upon.

This route, which they wouldn’t be able to take with the wagon, shortened their travel time by hours. It was midday when they reached Colby.

They were sweaty and tired as they trudged down the road toward the bridge that would lead them into town. Nearly a dozen alligators of various sizes lay on the banks, sunning themselves on the narrow dirt bank. Their pitiless eyes watched as the travelers approached.

“Shit,” Austin said. His eyes widened, and he took an involuntary step back with a small shake of his head.

“It’s okay,” Carly said. “I’ve only seen them try to charge a traveler once, and it didn’t end well for the gators. I think they may have learned from it.”

“Come on.” Justin nudged him forward, and Austin pressed closer to their group, his eyes darting from gator to gator.

“They look hungry,” Austin said.

“They probably are.” Carly kept her hand on her gun, just in case. “The small mammals were mostly killed off buy the Infection, just like people. We think they’ve been living on fish and birds in the swamp, but those stocks have to be getting low.”

“Marcus brought home some alligator meat one night,” Austin said. “They didn’t share any with me, but they seemed to think it was pretty good.”

Mindy gave Austin a glance. “They didn’t treat you very well, did they?”

“They didn’t like me.” Austin’s voice was low.

Carly didn’t have time to respond to that because they had reached the gate. A cheer went up from those on the Wall, a cheer tinged with relief. “They’re here! They’re back!”

There would be questions, she knew. Everyone would want to have the battle recounted. All she wanted was to go get her baby and hole up in their house for about a week until her nerves didn’t burn with electric tension anymore.

Grady pulled on the chain to draw up the garage door that served as a gate between the stacked shipping containers that formed the Wall. Their little group stepped through and was immediately surrounded. Carly felt hands pat her shoulders as more people crowded around, brought by the noise of the cheering. Smiling faces, some sparkling with relieved tears. Faint shouts and pounding feet as others ran up.

“Did we . . . did we win?” Grady asked.

“Yeah, we won,” Justin said with a brief smile. “As Carly predicted, Marcus’s gang wasn’t expecting a town of farmers to take the offensive against a threat. They’re gone.”

Beside her, Mindy explained that Stan and Pearl had stayed behind. Veronica ran up and threw her arms around Stacy. She was saying something to Stacy, but Carly couldn’t make it out because Veronica was sobbing as she spoke, sobbing even as a huge grin stretched her face. She tried to hug Stacy and hop at the same time, nearly jiggling Stacy right off her feet. Stacy laughed and kissed the top of her head.

Carly saw her freeze and followed the line of Stacy’s gaze to see Mark lingering near the edge of the crowd. His hand was on Michael’s shoulder. He raised the other in a small wave and then spoke to the boy. They both turned around and headed back toward their house. Stacy looked away, back down at Veronica, and smiled as the her adopted daughter squeezed her again.

Kaden ran up to throw his arms around first Justin and then Carly with an almost bruising force.

“Mom,” he whispered against her hair, and she smiled at the name. “You’re back! You’re
back.
”

Kaden’s body trembled as he hugged Carly again. He had been understandably terrified to lose his new parents after all the other crushing losses in his young life.

Kaden scanned their group. “Wait, where’s Kross?”

“I’m sorry, Kaden,” Justin said. He put his hands on Kaden’s shoulders. His gaze was steady and compassionate as he waited for his words to sink in.

“He . . .” Kaden stared at him. He seemed to be waiting for Justin to amend the statement to make it less final or to reveal it was some sort of cruel joke.

“He was killed in the battle.” Carly wished she had words that could lessen the pain, but sometimes, words just weren’t enough. Sometimes, words could devastate but were small and frail things when it came to giving comfort.

Kaden didn’t reply. His face was as blank as paper.

“We’re going to go back for him,” Justin said. “But we wanted to come home first, so everyone knew . . . knew how it turned out. We’ll go back, to give him the respect he deserves, but we didn’t want to delay the news.”

Kaden stepped away and slowly exhaled. He bent over for a moment, his arms braced on his knees. Carly started forward, but Justin laid a hand on her waist, and she knew without him speaking that he was telling her to let Kaden digest it in his own way. After a moment, Kaden straightened and glanced around their group.

“Who’s that?”

“You wanna introduce yourself, kid?” Justin asked.

“Hi. I’m Austin.” The kid’s voice was so soft, Justin had to ask him to repeat his introduction.

“Did you find him in Clayton?” Kaden’s eyes narrowed, and Carly saw the muscles of his jaw clench.

“He wasn’t with them in that way,” Justin said, and Carly let go of the breath she’d been holding.

“A prisoner?”

“Something like that.” Justin put an arm around Kaden’s shoulders and murmured close to his ear. “Just give him a chance, okay? I have a feeling he’s a good kid who just found himself in some really shitty circumstances. If I’m wrong, we’ll kick him to the curb, but I think we should give him a shot.”

Kaden glanced over at Austin, who stared at the toes of his tennis shoes. He had the look of a person who wished he was invisible. Carly didn’t blame him. It had to be an unnerving situation. He had been mistreated by his previous group, and now he had been taken in by the people who had eliminated them. He probably didn’t expect to fare much better here.

“Okay,” Kaden said. Carly wanted to hug him again.

The questions were coming thick and fast, and the crowd around them was growing. “Please, everyone . . .” Carly said, holding up her hands. “We’ll have a meeting at sundown tomorrow and tell you the story, but right now I just want to go see my baby.”

They seemed to understand that, although there was disappointment on some of the faces. The crowd parted to let her through, but poor Mindy was still being peppered with questions so faster than she could answer them. Carly walked over and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Mindy, you go on home and get some rest.”

“Sure. Are you going home after you see Dagny?”

“Just for a bit. I’ll take a shower and change clothes, grab a few things. Watch after Austin, please. We’ll find him somewhere he can stay when we return, but if you could watch over him until we come back, I’d appreciate it.”

“How closely do I need to watch?” Mindy glanced toward the kid, who stood at the edge of the crowd and studied his shoes, ignoring the curious glances shot his way.

Justin gave a small shrug. “I don’t think he’ll cause you any trouble. You have that empty room upstairs. Pop him in there and give him some magazines or something. I’ll bet you don’t hear a peep out of him all evening. But he’s an unknown factor. I know you’ll be able to handle anything, if it becomes necessary.”

Mindy nodded. “Come home soon.” She walked over to Austin and led him across the common toward her house.

Carly took Justin’s hand and headed for the Reverend’s house. Stepping onto its shady porch, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. A pair of birds twittered in the large bush by the edge of the porch, and a soft breeze rustled the leaves of the trees nearby. Sweet quiet and calm. An illusion, yes, but one she would savor for a moment.

Colby was safe again. Carly couldn’t help but wonder for how long. She thought of that army truck, and a wave of exhaustion washed over her. Silly Carly, imagining that defeating Marcus would be the happy ending for their story. It would never end. The price for having this gem of safety and normalcy for her child was having to eternally defend it from those who wanted to take its supplies and walls for themselves.

She tapped on the door. Mrs. Davis opened it, and for a moment, Carly saw the raw anxiety she had hidden beneath her serene exterior. It shattered, and relief washed over her features. She swayed for a moment as she closed her eyes and whispered a swift prayer of thanksgiving.
 

Mrs. Davis barely let them get through the door before she seized Carly in a hard hug. “There aren’t words for how glad I am to see you.”

“Thank God,” the Reverend murmured. He put a hand on Justin’s shoulder, then grabbed him into a hug. Justin detangled himself when he could and came over to Carly to crouch beside the sofa where Dagny lay, face down and fast asleep, clutching a plush rabbit by one foot, as though afraid it might escape during her nap.

Carly was glad she was asleep. It probably would have upset Dagny to see her mother and father for only a brief moment before they left again, but Carly couldn’t fight the compulsion to see her. This is what she was fighting for, after all.

She ran a hand over the baby’s whisper-soft hair and leaned down to press a kiss to her temple. Dagny didn’t stir.

She looked up at Mrs. Davis. The Reverend stood behind his wife, his hands on her arms. They had married because the Reverend thought it was improper for him to travel with a woman otherwise, but Carly could see strong bonds of affection between them now. She could see love in the way Mrs. Davis laid a softly wrinkled hand over her husband’s and turned to glance up at him with a smile.

Carly stood. “Thank you so much for taking such good care of her,” she whispered. “I should be home soon. I just . . . we have a few more things to take care of.”

The Reverend nodded and laid a hand on Carly’s shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Carly gave him a smile she didn’t mean, and he squeezed her shoulder. His eyes were so warm with sympathy that she had to look away. She didn’t deserve sympathy.