“Totally understandable. Especially after yesterday.”
“That was some shit, wasn’t it? I can’t believe that happened. Just when we thought we were safe, Rickie got chopped to pieces by that trap. Shit. I can’t shake that image out of my head.”
Emma grimaced. “It’s stuck in mine too. I had awful nightmares.”
“The worst. Plus, I think I might still be in trouble for crashing that sweet Mustang. That lady who runs the garage keeps giving me the stink eye.”
“It was...a choice to take the car,” Emma said, trying not to straight up tell him it had been a dumb move.
“I know. I panicked. I just wanted to save my people. This is why I like taking orders, not giving them. I panic.”
“We all do at times. It’s normal.”
Lewis shrugged beneath his spotless white t-shirt. It must be new. “I do it all the time. It’s like my default setting.”
“Do you mind me askin’ how you and your people got here?”
His eyes sparked with eagerness, giving the impression he was anxious to speak about his misfortunes. “Nah, it’s cool. I’m fine with sharing. I can tell you it was some crazy ass journey. We started out in a big caravan of cars, but it got bad on the road. Zombies, crazy people, wildfires, tornadoes…we saw some bad shit out there.”
“It sounds bad.”
Leaning his elbows against the railing, Lewis gave her a somber nod. With the flair of a storyteller, he said, “We started out with a hundred. Lots of people gave up when things got rough. They wanted to just find a place to hunker down and wait it out. It was tempting, but hope kept us going. The idea of a cure! It drove us forward through all the bad shit. When we reached Texas, we thought the worst was behind us. We were trying to get here as fast as we could, especially once we got past I-35. That was some serious shit, I tell you. Cars everywhere. Zombies everywhere. We thought once we got past it, we could just haul ass here. Then everything went wrong. Car broke down, ammo ran out, and we barely avoided a fuck-ton of zombies by hiding in a warehouse. Once the zombies cleared the area, we humped it the last few days on foot. Then we get here and the street starts exploding and there’s traps and...” Lewis shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe some of us made it here alive after what went down. When we started out from Atlanta, we thought it would take a few days to get here. Not months.”
“So it is true you were looking for a cure.”
Sagging with sorrow, Lewis nodded. “Yeah. For my cousin.”
“The little boy with the mask?”
Lewis visibly shuddered, his gaze dropping to the ground. “That’s him. Julian got bit by another kid. We were holed up in a high school and these people showed up. A big family. They didn’t tell us that the daughter got bit earlier in the day. Julian was trying to cheer her up by showing her his teddy bear when she turned. She grabbed his arm and bit down. He was wearing long sleeves, so she kept at it like a rabid dog, trying to get to his meat. It was fucked up. Can you believe her family didn’t tell us she was bit?”
“Yeah, I believe it. Sometimes people go into denial when bad shit happens.”
Dark eyes glimmering with tears, Lewis pressed his lips together, composing himself. “Seen it with my auntie when Julian got the bite. It was a small one. We weren’t even sure it broke the skin all the way, but I knew we couldn’t chance it. So I told him we were going to play ball, put the mask on him, and duct-taped it on his head. I told him it was because it was too big for him. Had to make it secure. We were playing and then he said he was dizzy. He laid down on the ground and...and…”
Emma reached out to touch the young man’s arm when he choked on the words. “You don’t have to tell me if it hurts too much. I understand.”
“My auntie wouldn’t let anyone put him down!” The words tore out of Lewis mouth, angry and desperate. Emma got the feeling that he needed to share his story. “We locked him in a janitor’s closet. Ain’t that crazy?”
What if Billy had been with her when he’d been bitten? What would she have done? She didn’t have an answer. “No, no. Not really. It’s hard to know what you’ll do when you’re faced with something that awful.”
“People got so mad at her, but she held her ground. Now she’s out there right now. With Julian. Still hoping for a cure that ain’t here.”
“I want to help her. That’s why I came looking for you. Maybe you can tell me something that would help me convince her to let go of Julian and come inside the walls.”
“Oh, no! There ain’t no convincing my Aunt Macy. I’m telling you right now. I’m stubborn, but she’s way worse. She came here because there is supposed to be a cure and now everyone is saying there’s not. There’s not even a lab! We were told there’s a lab here! It was so much bullshit!”
“Who told you?”
“A voice on the ham radio. A dude telling everyone there was a cure in Ashley Oaks, Texas at a fort run by the government.”
“You told the leaders here about that, right?”
“Oh, yeah. The moment we got inside they were asking us a bunch of questions. I kept hoping they would tell us they did have a cure and we had to pass some tests, but that wasn’t the case.”
“I can’t imagine why someone told you to come here. If any place would have a cure, it’s the CDC. You were in Atlanta, right?”
“We’re from outside of Atlanta. Seventy miles east. It’s not like anyone could just go up to the CDC building and demand a cure. Atlanta was nuked anyway, so it wasn’t an option.”