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“But you saw the horde of zombies surrounding the BCQZ!” Riva countered.
“I heard them,” Bâo corrected her. “But I didn’t see much of anything since it was pitch black and I was huddled in the back of the truck when we left in the middle of the night.”
“Well, I did see them, and there were hundreds,” Riva retorted. “It is not safe there.”
“It isn’t safe anywhere!” Bâo yelled in exasperation.
“Hey, let’s all calm down and talk this through.” I held up my hands and stepped further in the middle of the room, trying to put myself in between Bâo and Riva.
“I am calm,” Riva insisted and lowered her voice slightly. “Okay. Let’s discuss Vân’s theory. The zombies aren’t actually affected by the cold at all but are merely a product of the populations around them. What does that change? The northern parts of Canada are the least populated areas in North America. How many people lived in the United States before the virus?” She glanced over at the men leaning against the counter. “Drew, you were a teacher, do you know?”
For a moment, Drew looked like a deer in headlights, but he finally answered with an uncertain, “Just over three-hundred million, I think.”
“Does anybody have any wild guesses about how many of those people are zombies now?” Riva asked, and now she looked between us all. “A hundred million? Two-hundred-fifty million?”
Bâo shook her head. “Not that many. A lot of people died before they even became infected, and so many zombies have been killed, too.”
“Fine. We’ll go with the lower number,” Riva contended. “There are at least a hundred million zombies hunting an increasingly shrinking food supply.”
“And you don’t think they’ll move north, looking for food?” Bâo countered dubiously. “I’m not saying that the zombies won’t be a threat if we go south – I am saying that they will be a threat anywhere we go. So we might as well live somewhere where we aren’t fighting the climate in addition to the undead.”
Riva scoffed and shook her head in disbelief. “That’s absurd. You wouldn’t go live in a lion’s den because it’s raining out.”
“I can fight or outrun a lion. I can’t do that against hypothermia or starvation,” Bâo reasoned.
“I don’t know about that. Lions are a lot faster than you think,” I said.
“We don’t all have to go the same direction, you know,” Calvin interjected quietly. “In fact, it might even be better for us all if we travel in smaller groups.”
Bâo glanced back at her sister, then stood up straighter and announced, “We’re going south, and anyone who wants to join us can.”
“I’m going north, and anyone who wants to join me can,” Riva said, then she looked around to see where the rest of us would land.
Calvin was the first to raise his hand. “I’m with Riva.” Which was basically a given since he was her boyfriend.
“I’ll go north,” I said.
Honestly, I was going north even if nobody else was. I didn’t know if it was safer or not. Bâo was likely right about nowhere being safe, but I had made a date with Remy in the future. Even though I knew that she was safer without me, I needed to be where I said I’d be if she ever came looking for me.
Drew seemed to hesitate a moment before finally deciding, “I’d like to take the kids and go south with Bâo and Vân, if we won’t be too much trouble.”
“No, we’ll be happy to have you,” Bâo reassured him with a smile.
“Well, it’s decided then, so we should get out of here before the zombies get any closer,” Riva said.
By mid-morning, we had all packed our things, loading up our bags with the scant few supplies we’d managed to find here, and we’d filled our water canteens. Before we left, we all took turns drinking as much water as we could, except for Bâo, who insisted that there was no reason for it.
The eight of us decided to leave together, even though we were going separate ways, and we walked down the long gravel driveway to the main highway that ran by.
Once we reached the asphalt was when we split up. Bâo, Vân, Drew, and the two kids heading one way while Riva, Calvin, and I went the other.
I paused once, looking back over my shoulder at their retreating figures. I hadn’t been particularly close to any of them, despite their proximity as of late, and I couldn’t say that I’d exactly miss them.
But I hoped that they had a kind journey ahead of them, with someplace soft for them to rest their head. That was the most I could hope for anyone anymore.
I turned away and didn’t look back after that. No matter what I left behind, I had to keep moving forward. There was no other way to survive in this world.
7
