Last, I remove the old milk jug full of gasoline. “This is for you too,” I say. “For your family.” I see movement in an upstairs window and feel a quick jolt of alarm. But it’s only a dirty towel, strung up like a curtain, fluttering in the wind.
Suddenly she darts forward and snatches the bottle from my hands.
“Be careful,” I say. “It’s gasoline. It’s very dangerous. I thought you could use it for burning things,” I finish lamely.
Grace doesn’t say anything. She’s trying to stuff her arms with all the food I’ve brought. When I crouch down and try and help her, she grabs the pack of cookies and presses it protectively to her chest.
“Easy,” I say. “I’m just trying to help.”
She sniffs, but allows me to help her stack and gather up the cans of vegetables and soup. We’re just a few inches apart, so close I can smell her breath, sour and hungry. There is dirt under her fingernails, streaks of grass on her knees. I’ve never been this close to Grace before, and I find myself searching her face for a resemblance to Lena. Grace’s nose is sharper, like Jenny’s, but she has Lena’s big brown eyes and dark hair.
I feel a quick pulse of something: a squeeze deep in my stomach, an echo from another time, feelings that should have been quieted forever by now.
No one can know, or even suspect.
“I have more to give you,” I tell Grace quickly as she stands up, holding a teetering pile of packages and bags in her arms, along with the plastic bottle. “I’ll come back. I can only bring a little bit at a time.”
She just stands there, staring at me with Lena’s eyes.
“If you’re not here, I’ll leave the food for you somewhere safe. Somewhere it won’t get—damaged.” I stop myself at the last second from saying stolen. “Do you know a good hiding place?”
She turns abruptly and darts around the side of the gray house, through a patch of overgrown grass and high weeds. I’m not sure whether she intends for me to follow her, but I do. The paint is peeling; one of the shutters hangs crookedly from a window on the second floor, tapping lightly in the wind.
At the back of the house, Grace waits for me by a large wooden door set in the ground, which must lead to a cellar. She sets down the pile of food carefully in the grass, then grabs the rusted metal handle of the trapdoor and heaves. Underneath the door is a gaping mouth of darkness, and a set of wooden stairs descending into a small, packed-dirt space. The room is empty except for several crooked wooden shelves, which contain a flashlight, two bottles of water, and some batteries.
“This is perfect,” I say. For just a second, a smile flits across Grace’s face.
I help her carry the food down into the cellar and stock it on the shelves. I place the bottle of gasoline against one wall. She keeps the package of cookies hugged to her chest, though, and refuses to let it go. The room smells bad, like Grace’s breath: sour and earthy. I’m glad when we emerge back into the sunshine. The morning has left a heavy feeling in my chest that refuses to dissolve.
“I’ll be back,” I say to Grace.
I’ve nearly rounded the corner when she speaks.
“I remember you,” she says, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. I spin around, surprised. But she is already darting away into the trees, and disappears before I have a chance to reply.
Lena
The dawn is double: a twin smoky glow at the horizon and behind us, above the trees, where the fire continues to smolder. The clouds and the drifts of black smoke are almost indistinguishable.
In the dark, and the confusion, we didn’t realize we were missing two members of our group: Pike and Henley. Dani wants to go back and look for their bodies, but the fire makes it impossible. We can’t even go back to forage for cans that will not have burned, and supplies that have made it through the flames.
Instead, as soon as the sky is light, we push forward.
We walk in silence, in a straight line, our eyes trained on the ground. We must get to the camp at Waterbury as soon as possible—no detours, no resting, no explorations of the ruins of old towns, picked clean of useful supplies long ago. The air is charged with anxiety.
We can count ourselves lucky for one thing: that Raven’s map was with Julian and Tack and have not been destroyed with the rest of our supplies.
Tack and Julian walk together at the front of the line, occasionally stopping to consult notations they’ve made on the map. Despite everything that has happened, it gives me a rush of pride to watch Tack consulting Julian, and a different kind of pleasure too—vindication, because I know Alex will also have noticed.
Alex, of course, takes up the rear with Coral.
It’s a warm day—so warm I have removed my jacket and rolled my long-sleeved shirt to the elbows—and the sun is splashed liberally over the ground. It’s almost impossible to believe that only hours ago we were attacked, except that Pike’s and Henley’s voices are missing from the murmured conversation.