Page 66

No running commentary anymore, no slide of Pearl’s nails.

“She’ll be okay,” Ava said. “She’s strong. Her parents are alive. It all went to plan, which is saying something at the moment.”

Was she trying to convince me or herself? I wasn’t worried about Kirby. I’d just never expected to be hit so hard by the absence of her loud laugh and foul mouth.

“I know,” I said. “It’s just—”

“You miss her. I do, too.” She sent me a small smile, then stared out the side window. “At least she’s in the same city—and it could have been worse. What if we’d made it all this way and her mum and dad were… you know.”

“I’m glad that wasn’t the case.”

If the worst had happened and her parents were shuffling around in their apartment with dead eyes, Kirby would have been inconsolable.

I took a left at the next T-intersection, the tyres crunching over the debris scattered across the road.

What if that was Ava’s reality? How likely was it that two people could come back to healthy loved ones after a year away?

Her eyes darted to the navigation screen again.

Eleven kilometres to go. It could be double that with the detours, but still. Almost there.

“Whatever happens…” I kept my attention on the road. “You won’t be alone.”

A beat of silence passed, then she dragged in a breath. “I know.”

To the left, a young guy poked his head around the corner of a townhouse, checking the street before he stepped out of the shadows with a couple of women. They all carried makeshift weapons that were once used for playing sports, and one of the women pushed a shopping trolley filled with whatever they’d been able to scavenge. The man spared us a glance as we kept driving.

“You live around here too, right?” I said to Ava. “Do you want to go to your place before we head to Sadie’s?”

A car with belongings strapped to the roof passed by, the family inside throwing guarded looks in our direction.

“No, it’s okay,” she said, watching them over her shoulder. “Lunch with Kirby took a while. I don’t want to wait any longer.”

We’d stayed at the restaurant for almost two hours, but she hadn’t seemed in too much of a hurry once we got settled in. Now that we were back on the road, her mood had shifted. “Let me know if you want to go later. We can pick up anything you need.”

“Thanks.” Her features relaxed, and a smile came. “Sorry, I just can’t think about anything else right now. I need to see Sadie.”

I took another turn and gave an infected woman a wide berth. “I get it.”

Ava shifted in her seat and stretched her legs. “I’m wondering who else is still there, too. She had these neighbours, Tim and Varesh. I only met them a couple of times, but they were nice.” Her expression turned tense, and she nibbled on her lower lip. “I wouldn’t be sad to find out Dustin moved on, though.”

“Who’s Dustin, and why do I already hate him?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear and sent me a quick smile. “The building manager. Sadie wanted him gone long before everything went downhill.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Not really. He wasn’t dangerous,” she said, sounding less than convinced. “She just got tired of him showing up every time she left her apartment.”

A scream tore through the air, but neither of us mentioned it. We approached a busier section where another traffic jam had gone wrong, leaving blood and shattered glass behind. A line of plastic barriers blocked the road ahead of the vehicles, and a couple of forgotten police cars were angled to prevent access.

I was considering a U-turn when Ava pointed to an opening on the left. Someone had forced the barrier back just enough to get a car through, but we’d have to mount the curb and squeeze between a tree and a telephone pole. “I’ll try. If it’s too risky, we’ll go around.”

She lowered her window as the tyres crunched over broken plastic, leaning out and checking the ground. “You’re about to run over some jagged metal,” she said. “If you’ve got room, swing out thirty centimetres on your side.”

I moved over as far as I could, bumping up onto the curb and keeping the mirror clear of the telephone pole. “Still good?”

“Yep.” She swayed toward me, steadying herself with a hand on the console.