“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Surprise. Big sister doesn’t know everything.”
Silence.
“Maybe we should go up there.” He points east, toward a distant hill topped by three radio towers.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you want to go places for no reason, just keep following me. You get to be our new leader when you come up with a plan.”
“Maybe there’s people up there. Look at all the houses.”
Nora considers the plateau of palatial Colonials, balconies and roof decks, stunning water views. That must be where all Seattle’s money used to go. Surely those estates have good enough security to keep out a few shambling corpses.
“Okay,” Nora says, shrugging. “Let’s go find Bill Gates’s house.”
“Who’s Bill Gates?”
“A super rich guy.”
“What’s ‘rich’ mean?”
Nora opens her mouth to answer, then chuckles, pondering the vocabulary of future generations.
“Nothing, Addy,” she says. “Nothing much.”
• • •
When they reach the bottom of the highway hill, she looks back to see how far they’ve come and notices two figures in the distance, cresting the peak. They are so far away they’d be invisible except that they are the only things in her entire field of vision that are moving. She can’t make out any details of their faces or features, but one of them is much taller than the other and the short one is limping severely, as if missing a foot, perhaps.
So they travel together on their little murder spree. Boney and Clyde. How cute.
“Those things are following us,” Nora tells Addis as they exit the highway and start heading east, toward the trio of radio towers that tops the hill like a tiara. “We need to find more bullets.”
“I’m really hungry,” Addis says.
“Did you finish your leftovers?”
“Yeah.”
“Check mine.”
He unzips her backpack and digs around in
Nora frowns at it. “Is that all I saved?”
“Yeah.”
“God. What a fatty.”
Addis opens it and squeezes a clump of tofu into his mouth. He offers the bag to her and she starts to take it, then looks at her brother’s face. His cheekbones.
“You have it,” she says. “I’m not hungry.”
Her stomach chooses that moment to growl ferociously.
“Are too,” Addis says.
“Okay I’m lying. But you’re a growing boy and I’m just a lazy old teenager. You eat it.”
“Do you think there’s food in those houses?”
“Probably. Hopefully.”
He relents. He squeezes out another precious helping of tofu and cold margarine and they keep walking.
They pass a small Airstream trailer turned on its side, napkins and plastic forks spewed out into the street. A menu Sharpied onto its steel panels advertises grass-fed burgers on locally baked brioche, but the stench emanating from it advertises maggots.
“Cheeseburgers,” Addis points out.
“Yummy.”
Addis sighs and digs his face into the Ziploc, licking out the last of the tofu.
“We’ll look for food as soon as we get safe,” Nora says. “Bullets before burgers.”
He gives her an accusatory glare that’s somewhat undermined by the globs of margarine in his eyebrows. “Are you gonna kill them next time?”
“I’m at least gonna kill the lady one.”
“Why not the man?”
“I don’t know. I’ll probably kill him too. But he’s a little different.”
“Because he didn’t try to eat us?”
“Maybe.”
“Why didn’t he?”
Nora doesn’t answer right away. She is in good shape, but the hill is steep and stealing her breath. “Remember when we stayed with Auntie Shirley on our way out here?”
He watches the pavement under his feet. “Yes.”
“Remember how when she got bitten, she just stood in the kitchen all day, washing the dishes over and over?”
“Yes.”
“And she didn’t try to eat Mom until three days later?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes when people turn into…‘zombies’ or whatever…it takes a while for them to figure out what they’re supposed to do. Maybe their personalities don’t disappear right away, so at first they’re just confused, and they don’t know who they are or what’s happening to them.”
Addis is quiet for a while, digesting this. “So why is that one following us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ’cause his girlfriend wants to eat us. Or maybe just ’cause I was the last person he saw before he died.”
Addis smiles. “Maybe he likes you.”
“Maybe the girl likes you.”
His smile vanishes.
• • •
By the time they reach the hill’s main thoroughfare, Broadway Ave, the sun is on its way down. Nora realizes they must have slept a lot later than she intended. She can’t remember if they ever actually slept the night before. The days of scheduled meals and bed meway down. times feel like ancient myths. She struggles to remember the color of her mother’s eyes.
They have entered a neighborhood that looks like it was once vibrant. Colorful storefronts with artful graffiti, concert posters smothering every pole, and dozens of stylishly dressed corpses littering the streets, their scooped-out skulls brimming with rainwater.