The Last City Page 5

  Roy leaned forward in his chair and looked intently at Hughes. “You get what I’m saying?”

  “Sure, Roy,” Hughes said. “People think they’d like to live forever, but they actually don’t. That’s why you’re not going to the Caribbean.”

  “That’s part of it,” Roy said.

  “You have a death wish,” Hughes said.

  “We all do,” Roy said.

  “You’re world-weary,” Hughes said.

  “It’s not so much that I am,” Roy said. “The universe is. Thanks to us, the universe has been self-aware for a hundred thousand years, and it wants to go to sleep now.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Annie said and turned away from Roy in disgust.

  “That’s why all this is happening,” Roy said. “The infection is a suicide pill.”

  Hughes stared at Roy. Guy was crazy. Like a schizoid who needed industrial-grade medication. But he’d been to Atlanta. “I hear you, man,” Hughes said. “It’s an interesting theory.”

  “An interesting theory,” Roy said. “That’s what everyone says. But they still don’t get it. You don’t get it.”

  “What don’t we get?” Annie said. Her voice reeked of contempt.

  Roy turned his attention to her the way a snake looks at a mouse. “There is no hope,” he said. “And deep down, you don’t want there to be.”

  Annie flared her nostrils. Hughes shushed her with his eyes, then turned to Roy and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He’d heard enough of this crap. “How’s Atlanta?”

  “What’s in Atlanta?” Roy said.

  “Annie has family there,” Hughes said.

  Annie and Parker shot Hughes a look. He ignored them.

  “Walled off,” Lucas said.

  Hughes felt a rush. Annie sat bolt upright in her seat.

  “Walled off,” Hughes said.

  Roy laughed and shook his head. “They don’t get it any more than you folks do.”

  “Who doesn’t get it?” Hughes said.

  “The government,” Roy said.

  “The government walled off Atlanta?” Hughes said.

  Annie crossed her arms over her chest, but for the first time in a long time, Parker’s face seemed to shine. Kyle clasped his hands together under his chin as if he were praying.

  “They’re still hoping they can find an antidote to the suicide pill,” Roy said.

  “The CDC is in Atlanta,” Parker said.

  “That’s why they walled it off,” Lucas said.

  “Walled off a whole section of town,” Roy said, “including the CDC.”

  “How?” Hughes said.

  “Same way they walled off parts of Washington, DC,” Roy said and shrugged. “With a wall. No point going there, though. They won’t let you in. They won’t let anyone in.”

  “You’ve been there?” Hughes said.

  “Not inside the wall,” Lucas said, “but yeah. We been everywhere.”

  “How did you get here from there?” Hughes said.

  “We drove,” Lucas said, like Hughes was an asshole for asking.

  “I mean,” Hughes said, “we’ve had a bit of trouble in this area.” He didn’t want to tell these people any more than he had to, but he had to tell them something to get them to talk.

  “Trouble everywhere,” Lucas said.

  “Not out West,” Hughes said, which wasn’t strictly true, but it was sort of true. One could still roam mostly free in the western United States. “Most roads out there are open and clear.”

  Lucas turned to look at Roy and Roy squinted at him. “Maybe we should head that way,” he said in a low voice, as if it were a private comment meant only for Roy. He then sat up straight and leaned forward toward Hughes. “Tell us about it.”

  Hughes told Lucas and Roy about their journey from Seattle to Iowa, how the only roadblock they encountered that forced them to detour was in the eastern Oregon desert. He made no mention of their adventure in Lander, Wyoming, except to warn them about drinking unboiled tap water.

  “Now tell us what you’ve seen on the roads east of here,” Hughes said.

  “Completely different story east of here,” Lucas said, as if they were having a perfectly normal conversation and the previous weirdness never happened. “Everything’s carved up into checkerboards, some parts controlled by militias, some crawling with bandits, and other places overrun with infected. Other sections are quiet and basically dead.”

  Hughes wondered if they’d draw him a map if he asked. “How’d you get through?”

  “Wasn’t easy,” Roy said and widened his eyes.

  “How can we get to Atlanta?”

  “Impossible to give directions,” Roy said.

  “You know the way, though,” Hughes said.

  “Sure,” Roy said. “But like I said, impossible to give directions. And like I said, no point. They won’t let anyone in.”

  Hughes said nothing for a moment and weighed his options. He saw Annie staring at him in his peripheral vision, but he did not meet her eyes. She seemed to know what he was thinking, though, and she proved it by standing up and storming out of the diner.

  Annie was almost certain that Hughes would follow her outside into the cold Iowa morning, and he’d better. She knew exactly what he was thinking, and she would have none of it. She waited for him with her hands on her hips, eyeballing the dead infected in the road and resisting the urge to walk up and kick it. The Suburban and Roy’s creepy RV seemed ludicrously out of place among the abandoned houses.

  Hughes came out a few moments later, shotgun in hand, the diner’s door banging shut behind him.

  “Don’t you dare,” Annie said.

  “Don’t I dare what?” Hughes said.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “Is it?”

  “You want to tell them.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you’re going to anyway.”

  “You heard what they said. The CDC is still up and running. They were just there two weeks ago.”

  “They weren’t at the CDC.”

  “They were in Atlanta. They know the geography, the roads. They know how to get there.”

  Annie crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. “Why do you think they’re even sitting there with us?”

  Hughes looked at her and said nothing.

  “You think they’d be all chatty and friendly if I wasn’t here?” she said. “If it was just the three of you guys?”

  “Look,” Hughes said.

  “No, you look,” Annie said. “I don’t even want to do this, okay?”

  “You’ve made that abundantly clear for the past three days,” Hughes said.

  Annie darted her eyes at Hughes for a moment but couldn’t stand a long look at him.

  “You said you doubted the CDC was even still there,” Hughes said. “Now you know that it is.”

  Annie glowered at the RV and fantasized about setting it on fire with a Molotov Cocktail. “You seriously believe that it’s worth it.” She sucked down her guilt and faced him.

  Hughes threw his hands into the air. “Christ, Annie, sometimes you sound like those two in there with their universe-is-killing-itself nonsense.”

  “Maybe God’s doing it,” Annie said. “Like a second flood. Maybe God has a point.”

  She didn’t actually believe God was doing this, but she’d understand if he were.

  “Those two in there?” she said. “They want to kill you and drive off with me in their rapey RV. That’s what they’re doing, you know. Driving around and looking for women.”

  “You don’t know what they’re doing,” Hughes said.

  “Women know these things.”

  “They touch you, they lose a hand.”

  “They’ll kill you first,” Annie said. “They’ll poison your food or shoot you in the head while you sleep.”

  Hughes just looked at her. She was right, and he knew it.
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  “Annie—”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “This whole thing was your idea,” he said.

  She shook her head, but he was right. The whole let’s-go-to-Atlanta-and-save-the-world thing really was her idea. It made sense back on the San Juan Islands, which seemed like a lifetime ago now. Get to the CDC. Help out the doctors. Make the world like it was again.

  She’d been in denial. There was no making the world like it was. Not anymore. It took her months and thousands of miles before she could accept it, but it was obvious now. The world was dead, and most people still left alive deserved to die with it.

  “You heard what they said,” Hughes said. “Atlanta is holding on. Washington, DC, is holding on. Puerto Rico is holding on.”

  Annie closed her eyes, but she could not close her ears.

  “That’s more than we dared to hope,” Hughes said.

  Annie felt a glimmer of something. Just the tiniest twinge in her belly. She wasn’t sure what it was. Not hope, surely, but something. It was drowned out, though, by images of herself in the RV with Roy on top of her and Lucas grinning over his shoulder, two nihilists getting in some last kicks before the world finished shutting itself down completely.

  “You have to get there, Annie,” Hughes said. “The world can heal itself if there’s a cure and everyone left alive knows it. You think Roy and Lucas would be out here trolling for women if they knew there was a cure? You think they’d be spouting off about the universe committing suicide if there was a cure?”

  Annie didn’t know what to say.

  “You think they’d still want to haul you off if they knew who you really are?”

  Annie considered that. She had to admit that it was an interesting question. Because of her immunity to the virus, Parker had once called her the most precious person alive. Everyone should want to protect her. Nobody should want to rape her.

  The diner’s door opened, and Roy emerged. “You two okay?” he said.

  “Fine,” Annie said dismissively.

  “Let’s go in, Annie,” Hughes said. “Okay? Can we do that?”

  “Give us a minute, Roy,” Annie said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling like they were old friends, and went back inside.

  Annie waited a moment before saying anything else. “You want to ask him to guide us.”

  “I do.”

  “He might not agree.”

  “He might not.”

  “They might make their move right here.”

  “Already factored that in. There are four of us and two of them, and we’re armed. What are they going to do?”

  They’ll come at me in the night, Annie thought. On the road. When we’re all asleep.

  “We’re not going with them in their RV,” Annie said.

  “Of course not,” Hughes said.

  “We sleep in shifts.”

  “No question.”

  “They will not be in charge.”

  “Guides only.”

  “If they even agree.”

  “If they even agree.”

  She took a deep breath and held it for a moment. “We sleep in shifts even if they say no. In case they try to follow us.”

  “In this part of the country, we have to sleep in shifts anyway.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Okay then. Let’s go inside and see what he says.”

  4

  Hughes and Annie returned to the diner. Roy and Lucas sat at one of the tables as Parker fished around behind the counter for something.

  “Where’s Kyle?” Annie said.

  “Commode,” Roy said and jabbed a sidewise hitchhiker thumb toward the bathroom.

  Hughes sat at his old table and placed the shotgun on the floor next to him. He had this under control. He didn’t trust Roy any more than Annie did, and he agreed with her assessment of what Lucas and Roy probably wanted, but he didn’t sweat it. If Roy said yes and agreed to lead the way to Atlanta, Hughes, Annie, Parker, and Kyle would take their own vehicle. If Lucas or Roy pulled a weapon, they’d be down within seconds.

  Hughes heard a toilet flush somewhere in back. So, the plumbing still worked.

  Kyle emerged and sat back down next to Annie and Hughes. Parker joined them.

  “You two okay?” Kyle said, looking at Annie.

  Annie nodded.

  “We have a proposition for you,” Hughes said to Roy and Lucas.

  Kyle squinted. Parker snapped his head back a little.

  “A proposition,” Roy said.

  “Yep,” Hughes said.

  “What you two were talking about outside?” Roy said.

  “Yep,” Hughes said.

  Kyle leaned forward and flicked his eyes back and forth between Annie and Hughes. Parker clenched his jaw. Hughes ignored both of them.

  “We’re on a mission,” Hughes said.

  Kyle’s mouth went slack. “Wait.”

  “Just—” Hughes said.

  “Now hang on,” Parker said.

  “Y’all need a minute?” Roy said.

  Hughes sighed. He was in a bit of a bind here. He could pull Parker and Kyle outside, but he wanted eyes on Lucas and Roy at all times, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to leave them alone with Annie. That wasn’t the right way to play this anyway.

  So he stared at Parker and willed the man to understand the situation and figure it out by himself. “Do we?” he said to Parker. “Need a minute?”

  Parker leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and stared at a point in space. Hughes gave Parker a moment to weigh the options and the pros and cons in his mind. Come on, man, Hughes thought. They were like blind rats in a maze in this landscape with no idea how to get where they were going. Parker finally nodded to himself. “Okay.”

  “Kyle?” Hughes said.

  Kyle fidgeted in his chair, glanced around at everyone else, then nodded a little and cleared his throat. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Alright,” Hughes said. He loosened his shoulders and tried to take up as much space as possible at the table. “Annie here is immune.” He paused. “She’s immune to the virus.”

  He stopped to let that sink in.

  Roy and Lucas looked at each other, no real expressions on their faces.

  “She was bit,” Hughes said. “A couple of months ago. And she recovered.”

  Roy rubbed his chin and his mouth. Lucas tilted his head to one side and looked at Annie as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  “You saw this happen?” Lucas said.

  “No,” Hughes said. “But we transferred her immunity to Parker. He was bit too. We watched him turn. And we watched him recover.”

  Roy stood up so fast that he knocked his chair back. His eyes moved from Annie to Hughes, then to Parker and Kyle. “Are all of you immune?”

  Hughes shook his head.

  “Just me and Annie,” Parker said.

  “Why just you?” Roy said, suspicion in his voice, his legs far apart.

  “Because I share her blood type,” Parker said.

  “We injected him with Annie’s blood,” Hughes said. “Now both of them are immune. Both of them recovered.”

  Roy looked dizzy. He sat back down in his chair, presumably to process what he was hearing.

  Hughes thought he should give them a couple of moments. The ramifications were obvious, but they wouldn’t sink in all at once.

  Roy figured out one of those ramifications and snapped his head toward Hughes. “You’re going to Atlanta,” he said. “That’s why you drove all the way out here from Seattle. You’re on your way to Atlanta.”

  Hughes nodded. “To the CDC.”

  Roy and Lucas looked at each other, shock on both of their faces.

  “Can we step outside for a minute?” Lucas said to Roy.

  Roy nodded. “Give us a minute please, folks.” He and Lucas headed out into the cold, and the diner’s door banged shut behind them.

  “The fuck did you tell them that
for without consulting Kyle and me first?” Parker said.

  “I could have taken you two outside,” Hughes said, “but I couldn’t leave Annie in here alone with them, and I didn’t want to leave them alone by themselves either.”

  “You could have taken us aside individually,” Parker said.

  “Nope,” Hughes said.

  “Why not?” Parker said.

  “Think about it, man,” Hughes said. “How would that have looked?”

  Parker shrugged and shook his head.

  “Pretend you’re them,” Hughes said. “How would it have looked if I had a private conversation with all three of you before springing a bombshell on them?”

  Parker said nothing.

  “They’d think we were up to something,” Hughes said, “but now they know that we’re not.”

  “How do they know that?” Kyle said.

  “Because we each told them a part of the story,” Hughes said, “and you guys put on a great show of being upset and nervous about it. Only it wasn’t a show. You weren’t acting. It was your genuine no-bullshit reaction.”

  “They’re outside talking about us right now,” Annie said.

  “I’ve got my eye on them,” Hughes said. And he did. They were a safe enough distance away from the RV and whatever weaponry they had inside. They weren’t going for any weapons, though.

  “Aren’t you suspicious about what they’re talking about?” Parker said.

  “Course I am,” Hughes said. “I know what they’re saying, though. I know what they’re debating, anyway.”

  “What’s that?” Kyle said.

  “We scrambled their plan,” Hughes said.

  “What was their plan?” Kyle said.

  Parker looked at Annie.

  “Me,” Annie said.

  Kyle froze for a moment, then frowned.

  Hughes watched Lucas and Roy nod to each other and head back toward the diner.

  “They’re coming back,” Hughes said. “Nobody ask them what they were talking about. Like everything’s fine.”

  Lucas held the door open, and Roy entered first.

  “We were discussing,” Roy said, “whether or not we should believe you.”