“No, I—”
“They’ll give Parker maybe ten minutes to report back, then they’ll send another team. And if we manage to escape that one, they’ll send two teams. And then three. And so on.” He grips the wheel, weaving around potholes or, if there are too many to avoid, driving right over them. “It’s like he said. Axiom doesn’t let go.”
“Why are they so convinced we’re important?” Julie mutters to herself. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“The new Axiom doesn’t require its actions to make sense.”
“Did the old one?” I ask.
He glances in the mirror to remind himself who’s asking. He’s heard fewer than twenty words from me since we met.
“We used to be smart,” he says, turning back to the road. “We were never gentle, we took what we needed from whoever had it, but we were trying to build a safer world and we made strategic decisions toward that goal. Now we’re just eating everything in sight. It can’t last.”
“Didn’t answer Nora’s question,” M says.
“Where are we going?” she repeats. “I let you drive because I thought you had a plan.”
“A plan.” He takes an on-ramp and rockets toward the freeway. “My plan is to get a couple hundred miles from the coast, drop you people off in the ruins of your choice, then take my daughter to my father’s cabin in Montana and wait for Axiom to implode. What’s your plan?”
We finally emerge from the slimy rot of the forest onto the concrete plateau of I-5, and Abram pushes the Porsche to speeds it probably never touched in its pre-apocalyptic lifetime, when fast cars were just expensive badges of potency, brimming with power that could never be used.
It can be used now. The speedometer approaches 100.
“It won’t work,” I say. “Your plan.”
I expect a terse retort, but Abram says nothing.
“You can’t outrun them. They have planes.”
“Not enough to waste them on a manhunt,” he says, but the objection sounds halfhearted.
“They have helicopters.”
He says nothing.
“They’re going to find us. Soon.”
Nothing.
“Abram. You won’t make it to your cabin.”
“I know that!” he snaps, scowling at me in the mirror. “But thank you for explaining it to my six-year-old daughter.”
Sprout is watching me. The ever-present worry in her eyes is nearing the dew point. “They’re gonna catch us?”
“No, baby,” Abram says. “Look how fast we’re going. They’re not gonna catch us.”
“R,” Julie says, looking almost as worried as Sprout, “why are you talking like this?”
I stare ahead, watching the landscape scroll toward us, from forest to plains to ancient industrial ruins. “We need to go somewhere they won’t look.”
Abram’s eyes dart to the mirror every few seconds, checking the flat expanse of freeway behind us. There is a light scattering of vehicles, but ours is the only one in motion. “Like where?”
On the distant horizon, in the pink haze of the sunrise, a blue light blinks on the tip of a radio tower.
“Home,” M says in a low rumble.
“The airport?” Julie says, reading my intent but not quite buying it.
“The airport,” Abram repeats flatly. “You want to hide in the biggest hive on the west coast.”
I close my eyes, steeling myself to the idea. “Axiom won’t follow us.”
He laughs incredulously. “They won’t need to! We’ll be dead before they know where we went.”
“You don’t understand,” Julie says. “It’s safer than you think.”
“Which means it’s safer than they think,” Nora adds.
Abram sighs like he’s suddenly surrounded by children. “Are you talking about the ‘cure’? The uncategorized Dead? Are you about to tell me the Dead in the airport are ‘changing’ and everything’s peaceful now?”
“Not exactly,” Julie says. “It’s . . . complicated.”
“It’s not complicated. Zombies are animated tissue responding to primal feeding impulses. They can’t think, they can’t change, there’s nothing in there to cure.”
“So fucking sure of yourself,” Julie says, scooting forward and scowling at the back of Abram’s head. “If they can’t think, how do they know the difference between human flesh and animal flesh? Why don’t they eat each other? Why do they hunt in groups? How do they know where our brains are?”
Abram’s fingers press into the leather steering wheel. “They have some basic instinctive reasoning, but they’re not conscious. They’re not self-aware.”
“And you can tell this by looking at them? You can see right into their souls?”
Rage flashes in Abram’s eyes. “They don’t have souls! Whoever they were is gone!”
Julie watches him glower for a moment, then asks with surprising gentleness, “Why do you need to believe that so badly?”
Abram doesn’t answer.
“R,” she says. “Show him.”