Z Children (Book 2): The Surge (12 page)

“Find
something?” Chris was pushing between the shelves back to me to see what I’d
found.

Fighting
the urge not to hide the cookies behind me like a greedy toddler, I took a deep
breath and responded. “Not useful really, but I’m so hungry.” Holding the
cookies out for Chris to see, I smiled—the gesture was forced. I did
not
want to share the cookies. “Only three, but I can split with JW if you and Gin
want the other two.”

“That’s
sweet of you, Bonnie. Thanks!” Chris took two of the cookies and started backtracking
away from me. My forced smile instantly fell into a very genuine frown.
Sighing, I followed Chris towards the cab, stepped over Gin’s legs that were
stretched across the walkway since she was sitting awkwardly on the floor
behind the passenger seat, and leaned over so I could see JW. Chris was already
seated again—her feet propped up on the dash.

“JW?”

“Yeah,
kid?”

I
didn’t fight with him this time about calling me kid. “Want this cookie? There
are lots more boxes to search, so I’m sure there’s more food, and I don’t
remember the last time you ate anything.”

I
could see that his expression was a battleground of different emotions, but,
after a second, it settled on surprised kindness. “You eat it, kid. If you find
something else, I’ll take it.”

A
crunch from the passenger seat made me flick a glance at Chris who had already
unwrapped her skull cookie and was eating unabashedly, letting crumbs fall all
over her clothing. A small pile was quickly gathering in her lap.

Passing
Gin on my way back to look at more of the boxes, I saw that she had yet to
unwrap the cookie Chris had given her. She caught me looking at her and smiled.
Then she winked, unwrapped her cookie, and snapped it in half. Fighting to lean
forward, Gin softly hit JW on the hip. “You can’t protect us on an empty
stomach and my waistline isn’t a fan of junk food. You get the brain…I hear the
lower half of the skull is less fattening,” she teased.

She’d
argued and fought with him back at the hotel, but now that he’d saved Chris, it
seemed like Gin was more willingly to let JW be the leader. Surprisingly, JW
shifted his body enough to take the half a cookie and eat it quietly as he
continued driving rather than protesting that Gin should eat it. Chris was
oblivious to the exchange—at least, I thought she was until I caught her throw
a quick sideways glance at JW, the skin around her eyes tightening. She quickly
returned to her cookie, though, munching away like her sole focus in life was
to devour every crumb.

I just
wasn’t sure about Chris yet. She seemed cocky and selfish. I could tell she
loved Gin, but that wasn’t enough. She needed to be smart and helpful.

She
is smart, dummy. She’s a doctor. And of course she’s helpful. That’s her entire
life—helping people.
I sighed; softly enough that I didn’t think anyone
else could hear the sound.
When bad things happen, you see what people are
really like. People aren’t the same as they would be living their normal,
everyday lives.

Going
back to reading box labels, I nibbled at the cookie slowly, wanting to savor
the texture and sweetness of the hardened icing. It made one of my upper teeth
ache and I wondered if I had a cavity. What would I even do about that now? No
Dad with crap dental insurance from his convenience store job.
Wait, there
were no more dentist offices to go to anyways. I mean, probably not. So
insurance didn’t matter. Poor and rich, we’d eventually all have crappy teeth.
I
smiled at that thought. I’d always hated not having money. This whole ‘world
gone to hell’ thing was like a great equalizer.

“Hey…now
here is something good.” Chris had shoved into the tight space beside me and
was looking at box labels also. She was smiling, obviously having found
something useful. That irritated me a bit; I’d been looking at the packages for
nearly twenty minutes and all I’d found were a couple of cookies that were gone
too quickly for my liking. “It’s one of those new Norditrac ellipticals. I can
definitely keep up my workout routine with this when we get situated.”

I know
I probably looked ridiculously, standing there with my mouth open staring at
Chris, but what she’d just said… Who in the hell would think an exercise
machine would be a ‘good’ thing to find at the end of the world? It was easy to
tell that she hadn’t gotten a taste of reality outside the hospital situation
yet. There was plenty of cardio involved in staying alive.

“Chris,
don’t be an idiot.” Gin chastised.

“I was
only joking,” Chris murmured, patting her stomach. I knew how it must feel—like
mine felt. The cookie wasn’t enough. The crumbs of it just rolled around in my
empty stomach, teasing me and making me even hungrier.

“It’s
hard enough keeping Bonnie focused. We don’t need you acting up as well.”

I took
offense to that. I was doing my part, diligently reading boxes and pointing out
things that were legitimately useful.

“Just
thought I’d lighten up the mood a bit. Jeez. Not like we’re finding anything
useful rooting through all this crap.”

“We
don’t need the mood lightened. What we need are supplies. So why don’t you come
back up here and let Bonnie do her job.” JW’s voice wasn’t exactly curt, but it
sure as hell wasn’t friendly.

I
fought back a smile. I liked that he told Chris to leave me alone. She was too
close and the space too confining. It was giving me flashbacks to hiding in a
closet and trying not to die.

“I
don’t want to sit back down. My ass hurts.” Chris pouted like a four-year-old,
and I wanted to yell at her—not just for arguing with JW, but for eating a
whole cookie and not even offering to share with anyone.

 “I
wish you two would learn to get along, you sound like a couple of high school
k—” Gin started speaking, but my eyes had just read a label that had me
bouncing with excitement and I cut her off abruptly.

“Look
what I found!” The package was way too large for me to pull out and hoist above
my head for JW to see, so my nails worked their way under the thin film that
held the white packaging list against the brown box. Once it was free, I unfolded
it and waved the long piece of paper in the air.

“What
is it, squirt?” JW asked, ignoring Gin’s peace-keeping efforts and keeping his
eyes on the road ahead. I frowned. One minute he’s telling people to let me do
my job and the next minute, he’s calling me squirt again. Even ‘kid’ was better
than that.

“A
delivery to a Bud’s Gun Shop in Tyler Texas. That’s got to be something useful,
right? And the box is giant!”

“Definitely
could be. Pass the inventory list up, kid.”

I
rolled my eyes. “Come on, JW. Quit it with the squirt and kid stuff.”

Seeing
JW’s smile told me that he was never going to quit it with the squirt and kid
stuff. I found that I wasn’t as upset as I thought I was. It was sort of… sort
of like something a favorite uncle would call me. Which meant he was like
family. I wanted family more than I wanted to be called Bonnie. I looked away before
he could catch me staring.

Handing
Chris the printed package information, I shoved backward towards the rear door
so I wasn’t so close to her, but she was staying right where she was instead of
returning to her seat. She didn’t look comfortable—a large package jutting
against her back. Smart or not, she was also selfish and stubborn. “Pass this
up, Gin?” Chris posed it as a question, but she was already shoving the packing
slip at her fiancé.

“And this
is why we are
rooting through all this crap
,” JW said pointedly, taking
the paper from Gin and tossing a pointed look at Chris over his shoulder. “Says
here,” JW held the paper up at his eye level so his gaze could flit between
print and road, “we have a Marlin 336 30-30 rifle, a Remington 12-gauge
shotgun, not one but two Ruger Vasquero pistols in .45 long colt and a Browning
.22 rifle. Perfect gun for you, squirt.” JW looked at me in the mirror to see
if I’d get irritated again, but I found that I couldn’t help smiling this time
and his eyebrow quirked up, curious at my change in attitude towards the pet
names. “Dig some more. If there are guns, maybe there’s a shipment of ammo
too.”

I
started searching the labels again, keeping my mental fingers crossed. For a
moment, Chris tried to look too, but I made a point of pushing boxes around and
obscuring her focus. Eventually, she tired of the small space and her stubbornness
petered. I was happy when she returned to her seat with a huff. I just didn’t
like her. Not yet.
Maybe not ever
.

It
took me another hour to go through everything. It was worth it, though. The
best stuff, of course, was stashed on top shelves at the back or buried on the
lowest shelf under useless packages containing random things like stuffed
animals and essential oils—I broke one of the small glass bottles. The whole
delivery truck reeks of something called sandalwood now. Chris had made a big
deal about that, saying she should have been in charge of going through for
supplies instead of leaving it to the ‘little kid’.

When
she called me a kid, unlike when JW did, I could tell she meant it meanly. Like
I wasn’t good enough because I wasn’t an old crone with wrinkles and a shit
attitude who had a few degrees.

Still,
by the end of my efforts, even Chris admitted that the haul was pretty good.

Two
winter coats—not that we needed them right now where we were, but who knew
where we’d end up eventually—a tent that was maybe a little too small for three
grownups and me to fit comfortably in, not to mention adding in Ranger, the
guns from the package heading to Tyler and loads of ammo. The ammo was only
kind of helpful—most of it was in a caliber we apparently didn’t have weapons
for. There wasn’t any 5.56…at least I think that’s what JW called the rounds
he’d hoped I’d find in the pile of parcels since most of what we’d salvaged
from the Guard unit vehicles with the M-16s was pretty much gone. He’d grunted
and nodded at six or seven boxes, saying we had weapons to match. Those cartons
had gone straight into his pack in case we had to abandon the delivery truck in
a hurry.

Sometimes,
when I listened to JW talk, it sounded like he was speaking some foreign
language comprised solely of technical jargon, bullet calibers, and rational
tactics. It reminded me of how little I knew. Me. Twelve-year-old Bonnie. I
wanted to learn, though, and I was good at learning, quick and I didn’t forget
things. Maybe I’d never graduate, go to college, live all the wonderful
experiences that I’d secretly longed for, despite being poor and knowing I’d
never have the money to go to Japan or see a show on Broadway.

But
this I could do.

I
could listen to the things JW said, lock them in my memory bank, and I could
survive.

It
seemed so odd that it had only been a matter of days since my life was a normal
routine of waking up, getting Dad ready for work, dealing with Grandma and her
morning mental fuzziness.

I
wouldn’t be alive without JW and Ranger. And I’d pretty much go with them
anywhere now.

I was
pulled from my thoughts when I felt the vehicle slowing. “Hey, why we
stopping?”

Chris
was kneeling backwards in her seat, saying something softly to Gin who rolled
her eyes and grunted something just as unintelligible to my ears. “JW?” I
questioned again.

“Just
thought we’d clear out some of the crap now that you’ve found everything
useful, kid. No need to panic.”

“I
wasn’t panicking.”
Well, maybe I was a little. It was freaking pitch black
out there now.

“Sure
you weren’t.”

The
truck was fully stopped; JW was already opening his door and moving his body
out into the dark evening air. The sun was a memory and the lights from inside
the UPS van lit up a small area of pavement. The beams seemed to arc towards
the ground in a sort of beautiful way that eased my mind a little.

Soon,
the rear vehicle doors were open and JW was unceremoniously dumping packages
onto the road.

When
he was finished, all the ‘unimportant’ junk littered the gray surface of the
highway and looking like shadowed masses in the night, I stared at each of the
bright white labels that were visible by the dim light filtering out of the
truck. I felt sadness creep into my body.

All of
the things inside those boxes were purchased by humans that were probably dead
now. Or undead. Maybe the package from the toy store that I hadn’t bothered to
open was for a little girl’s birthday. Maybe she was my age and still enjoyed
dolls and games since she hadn’t had to grow up too fast and take care of a
flighty father and senile grandmother.

Lives.

Summed
up by the emptiness of discarded things.

JW was
also staring at the ground, at the mess he’d made, but I knew he wasn’t
thinking the same things as me. He was rational, logical.

* * *

THE GROUP

Looking
at the roughed-up brown parcels he’d tossed onto the pavement, JW made a
command decision.

If
there was a “Bud’s Gun shop” in Tyler then that was their next stop. The truck
had started with a full tank, but after over an hour and a half of driving—able
to book it at nearly eighty miles an hour with the roads being amazingly and
mysteriously clear—the fuel gauge needle was hovering well above the
three-quarters mark. In JW’s mind, that gave him another five hours of driving,
so Tyler was doable. He glanced at Virginia and Chris who were standing outside
with him. Chris’s right foot was kicking about a small box on the ground. She
seemed listless and less than thrilled to be where she was.

“Everyone
on board with heading to that gun shop in Tyler?” It wasn’t really a question.
JW was more voicing his plans to the group. He didn’t really care if they
agreed. The end game was Georgia. But they had to expect detours—for supplies,
rest. It was the way you survived.