7

Remy

It wasn't until they all agreed to my plan that I realized I had been hoping they would talk me out of it.

Boden held my gaze for a long moment, dark and uncertain, the lines creasing beside his eyes. When he nodded once, I suddenly felt queasy.

"If that's the only way we can get help for Stella, then I think it's a risk that we have to take," he said finally.

"You really think the best thing we can do is leave the lakehouse right now?" Max asked, staring up at me expectantly.

"I do," I said. "It's early August, so the weather is good, and Stella is only going to get more pregnant every day."

Max looked over at Stella, and she looked at him. There was so much tenderness and love in the looks they exchanged, and I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed what was going on under my own roof.

It was so unnerving because what else had I missed?

"Then we'll go," Stella decided with a brave smile that somehow made her appear even younger.

"When do we leave?" Serg asked.

"As soon as we get our supplies together. The sooner, the better with the suspected due date looming" I said, then carefully, I added, "You know, Serg, you don't have to leave if you don't want to. The lakehouse is likely safer."

Serg smirked at me. "Come on, Remy. After all this time? I'm going with you guys."

"I do know that. I just wanted to make sure that we all understand that we have options," I said. "I'm not a dictator telling you what to do."

Both Max and Boden laughed at that.

Everyone went our separate ways to start getting things together, and I took Boden's hand so he'd come with me upstairs to our bedroom. All the way back from the old farmhouse, I'd been steeling myself for a fight, and then everyone had acquiesced so easily, I felt like I was losing my mind.

"Going to Emberwood is a horrible idea. Why can't any of you see that?" I asked him the moment we were alone in our room.

Boden gave an incredulous laugh. " What ? You're the one who suggested it!"

"I know but you were all supposed to argue with me and point out how ridiculous it is for us to leave somewhere that has been a safe harbor for us for so long," I insisted. "That walking that far with a sick, pregnant teenager to an unknown place is borderline fatalistic. We haven't had to seriously fight off zombies in years. We are practically thriving here. How could we leave all of this behind for certain death?"

"I am not arguing with anything you're saying, because those are all valid points," he admitted, but his voice was thick when he said, "Stella had another seizure while you were gone, and I am afraid that if we don't do something, we're going to lose her."

"Fuck," I whispered.

Anger surged through me, and I had to pace to keep from punching a wall. A broken fist wouldn't help anyone now, but I really wanted to break something .

"I kept the kids alive for all these years and…" I scowled because I couldn't even say it aloud. I couldn't even imagine it.

"Remy, you haven't kept them alive," Boden said gently, and I glared over at him. "I know you did your damnedest, but life is so much more than me and you. It's entropy. It's chaos that brought the zombies, it's chaos that brought us together, and it's chaos that's throwing us back in the wilderness again."

He stepped toward me, and when I didn't move, he closed the distance between us. He slipped one hand around my waist, and the other brushed the hair back from my face.

"That doesn't mean that I don't love our life here, or that I'm not sad and scared about leaving the lakehouse," he said. "But it does mean that even if everything goes sideways, it's not your fault or mine or even Stella's or Max's. Life is chaos, the way it always has been, the way it always will be."

I lowered my head and rested my forehead against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me.

"What happened at the farmhouse?" Boden asked.

"Nothing. Nobody had been there since I was last there a couple months ago. So I turned around and came home." I winced at the last word. "Are we crazy for leaving our home behind?"

"No. We'll make a home wherever we land," he promised. "Me and you, Serg, the kids, and the cat."

It took four days for us to be ready to go, much to my chagrin. Only four days to pack up all that we could carry and board up the house, in the hopes that it might still be here if we returned in the future.

Even in the best of situations – we make it to Emberwood and Stella safely delivers a healthy baby – we couldn't travel for months, not with a newborn. Winter came early in Canada, and we wouldn't be trekking through that, newborn or not. I didn't even go to the farmhouse to visit Lazlo during the winter, and that was about half the distance away from the lakehouse.

The soonest we would return would be next spring, and that was assuming that everything turned out right.

"Since we're heading out, do you want to go over it again?" Serg asked as we waited in the driveway while Boden finished boarding the front door shut.

I pulled out the map that Lazlo had sketched for me, using an old atlas as a reference. There he'd marked the path to Emberwood in the north. It seemed simple enough. We'd have to cross through a canyon so we could meet up with the Staulo River and follow that north until hitting a waterfall. Just above that was the settlement of Emberwood.