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She helped him load the wagon, and Justin surprised her with how organized he was about it. He stacked the supplies they weren’t going to use right away—such as the antibiotics and the ammo that didn’t fit their guns—on the bottom.
The night before, Justin sat at the kitchen counter and had taken apart some of the guns. He used a small, metal file on some part inside the scary-looking black rifles. Carly had watched with interest. “What are you doing?”
“Turning them from semi-auto to full auto.” Justin handed the reassembled rifle to Carly, who turned to carry it into the spare room.
“Something else you picked up at Gymboree?”
“Yep. You know, you look kinda hot carrying that.”
Carly blushed and kept her face turned away from him as she headed for the spare room. Was he teasing her, or was he actually flirting with her? Carly didn’t know. She wished men came with an instruction manual.
That morning, Justin had told her she needed to decide what she was taking, but he cautioned her to remember they didn’t have much space, and weight was an important consideration. “I know you’d rather leave your things here than have to abandon them alongside the trail.”
Carly had ended up taking the string of pearls her father had given her mother for their tenth anniversary and her father’s ring—the one with his unit symbol. She tucked the Lord of the Rings DVD into her bag when Justin wasn’t looking. She knew she’d probably never be able to watch it again, but it was her last happy memory with her father before everything had gone to hell.
She took just a few changes of clothes, as he had suggested. She chose two pairs of cotton yoga pants and a small selection of short- and long-sleeve T-shirts that could be layered. A handful of sports bras, boy shorts-style underpants and several pairs of socks completed her packing. Justin looked over her selections with approval, suggesting only that she add a pair of jeans and a sweater for cooler weather.
Sam’s bag of dog food went into the wagon, along with his soft pallet bed and a few favorite toys. Carly insisted if they had sleeping bags, Sam should have a comfortable place to sleep, too. Justin rigged up a water bowl on the back of the wagon so Sam would always be able to get a drink when he was thirsty. Carly thought that was sweet and considerate of him.
And then it was time to go. Somehow, even with all the preparations and packing, the reality of it hadn’t sunk in. She cried herself to sleep the night before, and in the morning she made a slow circuit around her apartment saying good-bye to her things. Her dad had bought her the recliner, joking Carly would never get herself a man unless she had a soft, comfortable recliner for football-watching. Her mom had bought all of Carly’s infrequently used pots and pans, proud when her daughter had set out on her own, even if on her own was just two floors above her parents’ place. Her grandmother Sally had made the quilt that lay over her bed, which Carly had smoothed into place with gentle hands when she got out of her bed for the last time. Carly knew, without asking, it was too heavy and bulky to take with them, but leaving it behind hurt just the same.
She chose a handful of pictures from her refrigerator door. Her favorite photo of her parents at their anniversary party the year before. Her aunt Laura with her twin sons, laughing when the boys had smeared their birthday cake all over their chubby little cheeks. Grandma Sally, with a group of distant family at one of the reunions they used to have every few years, and a picture of Grandpa Mike in his uniform, before he’d been killed in the Vietnam War.
Carly was leaving behind everything she had ever known. Though they were gone, it was still hard to leave behind the place where her family, her friends, her security...everything had been. It wasn’t easy for her, but Justin didn’t tease her for her tears, and she was very grateful for that.
Carly locked the door for the last time, and put the key on the long chain around her neck with her father’s ring. “I’m never coming back, am I?”
“It’s not very likely,” Justin said, his eyes full of sympathy.
Carly nodded and took a deep breath before she followed Justin down the stairs. When they reached the ground floor, she went down the hall to her parents’ apartment and laid her hand against the door for a moment. She fought back tears as she slipped a note she’d written to them beneath it.
It was a bright and sunny morning. They wheeled their bicycles outside, and Justin hooked his bike to the wagon. Sam bounced around with glee, excited to go on another walk with his humans.
Carly looked back one last time as they mounted the bikes, and then they set off for the short ride to the harbor. Justin had already selected a sailboat, and they found they had to unload the wagon before they could lift it inside. Repacking it took some time, and Carly grew irritable with the process knowing they’d have to do it all over again once they reached their destination.
Sam wasn’t sure about riding in a boat and didn’t want to jump on board even when Carly called to him and tried to coax him aboard. Justin wound up having to pick him up and plunk him down in the boat beside Carly. She felt Sam tremble a little, so she sat down on the deck beside him after strapping a child-sized life jacket around his torso.
It was nearly one hundred miles to Haines, so Carly opened up one of the paperbacks she’d taken with her as Justin pulled ropes and rigged the sails. She wished she could have brought her e-reader, which had contained thousands of books, but she doubted she’d have been able to charge it. Like her other things, she would rather leave it in her home than have to abandon it later.
Justin glanced down at her. “Whatcha reading?”
“Thomas Pynchon’s Mason-Dixon.”
Justin whistled. “I could never get into Pynchon. Too dense for me.”
“He takes some getting used to,” Carly said with a nod, and from there, they launched into a pleasant chat about their favorite books and authors. He confessed a love for Wuthering Heights, and Carly admitted a weakness for Dean Koontz. It was a fun conversation until the thought hit her there wouldn’t be any more Dean Koontz novels. No more books, no more movies, no more music. All of it was gone, and she still didn’t know why this awful thing had happened.
“Justin, did you ever hear anything from your sources about what caused the Infection?”
“No. As far as I know, no one ever knew. If the government knew anything about it, they weren’t talking. I suppose we were just... due.”
“What do you mean?”
“Humanity hasn’t had a widespread plague since 1918. Before that, before the CDC, we used to have them with relative regularity. The Black Death, yellow fever, smallpox, typhoid, cholera... Things you don’t see in developed nations any longer because of our hygiene, inoculations, and the swift response of the CDC and the WHO when outbreaks occurred. But this one was so insidious. The incubation period was so long... People infected hundreds of others before they even knew they were sick. This was no ordinary virus. The lethality rate alone tells me it wasn’t something natural.”
“What else could it be?”
“Something weaponized.” Justin’s expression was grim.
