Alex Read Free Page A

there, together, always—that was gone completely. Poof. Just some sheet metal and the concrete rubble of the foundation.
    Maybe I should have known. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign.
    But I didn’t. “Don’t move.”
    There was a gun against my back before I knew it. I was strong again, but my reflexes were weak. I hadn’t even heard the guy coming.
    â€œI’m a friend,” I said.
    â€œProve it.”
    I pivoted slowly, hands up. A guy was standing there, crazy skinny and crazy tall, like a human grasshopper, with the squinty look of someone who needs glasses but can’t get them in the Wilds. His lips were chapped, and he kept licking them. His eyes flicked to the fake procedural scar on my neck.
    â€œLook,” I said, and drew up my sleeve, where they’d tattooed my intake number at the Crypts.
    He relaxed then, and lowered the gun. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought the others would be back by now. I was worried. . . .” Then his eyes lit up, as if he had just registered what he said. “It worked,” he said. “It worked. The bombs . . . ?”
    â€œWent off,” I said.
    â€œHow many got out?”
    I shook my head.
    He licked his lips again. “I’m Rogers,” he said. “Come on. Sit. I got a fire going.”
    He told me about what had happened while I’d been inside: a big sweep on the homesteads, extending from Portland all the way down to Boston and into New Hampshire. There’d been planes, bombs, the works, a big show of military might for the people in Zombieland who’d started to believe that the invalids were real, and out there, and growing.
    â€œWhat happened to the homesteaders?” I asked. I was thinking of Lena. Of course. I was always thinking of Lena. “Did they get out?”
    â€œNot everyone.” Rogers was twitchy. Always moving, standing up and sitting down, tapping his foot. “A lot of them did, though. At least, that’s what I heard. They went south, started doing work for the R down there.”
    We talked for hours, Rogers and me. Eventually, others came: prisoners who’d made it across the border into the Wilds, and two of the freedom fighters who’d launched the operation. As the darkness drew tighter they materialized through the trees, drawn to the campfire, appearing suddenly from the shadows, white-faced, as if stepping into this world from another. And they were, in a way.
    Kyle, constant-wedgie-boy, never made it back. And then I felt bad, really bad.
    I never even thanked him.
    We had to move. There would be retribution for what we’d done. There would be air strikes, or attacks from the ground. Rogers told me the Wilds weren’t safe anymore, not like they used to be.
    We agreed to catch a few hours of sleep and then take off. I suggested south. That’s where everyone had gone—that’s where Lena, if she had survived, would be. I had no idea where. But I would find her.
    We were a small, sad group: a bunch of skinny, dirty convicts, a handful of trained fighters, a woman who’d been on the mental ward and wandered off soon after she joined us. We lost two people, actually. One guy, Greg, had been on Ward Six since he was fifteen years old and had been caught by the police distributing dangerous materials: posters for a free underground concert. He must have been forty by then, skinny as a rail and insect-eyed, with hair growing all the way down his back.
    He wanted to know when the guards would come by to bring us food and water. He wanted to know when we were allowed to bathe, and when we could sleep, and when the lights would come on. In the morning, when I woke up, he was already gone. He must have gone back to the Crypts. He’d gotten used to it there.
    Rogers shook us all awake before dawn. We’d made camp in one of the remaining trailers. It was decently sheltered from the wind, even though it was missing