8

Stella

I know that I was born somewhere else, somewhere south of here and warmer, to a woman I couldn't remember. But the only place I ever really recalled living was the house on Tremblay Lake and the surrounding forests.

Boden and Remy walked in front of us, leading the way, but I was content to trail behind and admire all the things I hadn't seen before.

Before we'd left the lakehouse, Serg had made me a walking stick from a twisting branch of whitebark pine ( Pinus albicaulis ). It was already going to be difficult for me to walk long distances because of my pregnancy-induced lethargy, and of course, the infant themselves, floating above my pelvis and growing stronger everyday as they kicked my internal organs.

When the pain got bad, I would recite the common name and scientific name in my head of everything I saw. It was something I had been doing since I was little whenever I was sick or too scared. It helped distract me from the fear and pain.

The hike started good, but by mid-day, when we met the dilapidated old highway, everything hurt, and I was struggling to keep my grimaces to myself.

The green forests that I was most familiar with gave way to a dramatic change in landscape. The towering rocky spires and sand dunes looked more like they belonged in a desert than the Canadian wilderness. I had read about them in my books back at the lakehouse, where they described how they were formed by water and glaciers, and I'd even seen a few pictures.

None of that had prepared me for seeing them in real life. It had only been trees and the lake for so long that it was literally like stepping into another world.

A canyon cut between the spires and dunes, and that was easiest for me to handle with my walking stick, so Max, Boden, and I stuck to it. Remy and Serg headed to a higher, trickier path on the top of the outcroppings so they could have a better view of the area as we passed through.

On the walls of the sand dunes, pictographs were etched in faded black and red. Some were handprints, with long fingers stretched out, and others were animals. An angry bear was gnashing sharp fangs at a cervid with antlers, like a deer or an elk.

"Did the zombies draw these?" Max asked.

"No," Boden answered with an amused smile. "These were here long before that, likely by the humans that first lived here."

"I read about these in a book. They're thought to be a thousand years old," I said. I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach their handprints, and I put mine on top of it. Mine seemed so tiny in comparison.

Something about it made me think back to Avalyn's room and the crayon drawings she'd hidden on the walls of her closet. Just little marks letting the world know what she had seen or felt. A reminder that she had been there.

"So people lived here for a thousand years, and then the zombies drove them out," Max mused.

"No, we're still here," Boden countered.

Ripley had been sitting behind me, licking her oversized paws, but she suddenly began to growl. I looked back over my shoulder, and she'd gotten to her feet and moved closer to me, with her gazed fixed on the trail to our right that cut through the dunes.

She chuffed as a group of people rounded the corner, only a couple meters away from us.