Andrew

ALL THE KIDS SEEM TO BE PHYSICALLY okay, but they look scared. Which, I mean, yeah, of course they would be. They’ve been on the road for several days, barely resting, and now people with guns show up.

“Both of you, on your knees,” Hickey says.

Sure, Hickey, but let’s see how many innuendos I can make. “Buy us dinner first.” I expect Jamie to scold me, but when I glance over at him he’s smirking as he drops to his knees. I follow his lead and we put our hands up while two men take off our backpacks and grab our guns.

“We’re not going to tie you up,” Hickey says as they check our pockets.

Two.

Jamie snorts beside me because he knows I’ll keep going and, yeah, I can’t wait to say it.

I pretend to be disappointed. “Aw, man, it’s the one thing I was looking forward to during this whole thing.”

Hickey’s jaw tightens as behind him Daphne speaks.

“Andrew. There are children present.” She scolds me like a mom.

“They don’t get the innuendo, Daph.”

“Some of us do,” mutters Taylor, just loud enough for me to hear.

“You’re not a child, Taylor.” When I say that she actually smiles and seems a little proud.

Hickey focuses his gaze on me. “You realize if Fort Caroline showed up for Jamie and we didn’t have him, they’d kill us, right?”

“They’d kill him, too, what’s your point?” I ask.

“What was your plan? Just run?”

“Yes,” says Jamie. “And then hopefully you’d lose us in the vast, empty openness of postapocalyptic America.”

“If we didn’t find you here, we’d find you in Bethesda.” It’s Trevor who says this, and it chills me to the bone. He turns and looks back at Amy. “That’s where you’re heading, after all.”

Jamie shakes his head, playing it off better than I could. “She is going to Bethesda. The rest of us were just trying to find a new place.”

“And if they find you there?” Hickey asks. “We’re going to make an effort to protect you. Demand that you get a fair trial, that a jury made up of both their people and ours hears what really happened.”

“You don’t really believe they’ll do that, right?” I ask. “You can’t be that dumb.”

Hickey just stares at me.

They pull us up, and one of them gives me a light shove toward the others. Daria avoids our gazes; she’s the only one who doesn’t have her rifle pointed at us. I stop as we get closer to the kids, locking eyes with the six people pointing their guns in our direction.

“Can you put the guns away around the kids, please?” I ask.

Hickey considers it for a moment. Then he opens his mouth, but something else catches everyone’s attention. At first it just sounds like the wind blowing through the trees—just a low whoosh. But it’s getting louder.

On the road to our right, several vehicles approach, led by an old-looking beige-and-maroon RV.

Their reinforcements have arrived.

“Christ,” I say. “You really had to send this many people to find us?”

But Hickey looks anxious. He shakes his head. “They aren’t ours.”

Fort Caroline. No, no, no, they can’t be here already. They said it would take weeks. But maybe Hickey radioed ahead and warned them to use a new route that wouldn’t take as long.

Shit. I start to panic, trying to figure out how we can get out of this. How we can escape them again. But my mind is racing so much, thinking about how the last time this happened they shot my boyfriend.

My chest feels like it’s going to cave in, and I can’t breathe.

The RV slows as it reaches us. This can’t be happening again. It isn’t until I look away from the caravan that I notice the others in Hickey’s group look confused. Like they weren’t expecting anyone either.

Then the RV speeds up and the other vehicles follow suit. They pass us, and Hickey shouts for his people to stop them.

What is happening? All I know is the vehicles pass without stopping, and one of Hickey’s men with a rifle runs into the road, pointing after them.

“Don’t shoot!” Hickey yells. “Take one of the trucks. Follow them and see what their story is.”

Three of his men get in the truck and speed after them. Which means there are three fewer people we have to escape from.

For now.

But I have no clue how to protect all the kids, Cara, Daphne, Amy, Rocky Horror, Kelly, and Jamie. We’ve been outnumbered before, but now we have others to worry about.

Sunset comes and goes, but the truck doesn’t come back, so Hickey and his group set three large bonfires in the middle of the road. They have us set up the kids between two of them. The rest surround us on the sides of the road while two keep a lookout for the truck.

They leave us to ourselves, letting us feed the kids and put them to bed. Once they’re all asleep—except for Taylor, who seems determined to be involved in the adult conversation now that I said she wasn’t a child—we talk about our options.

To be honest, they aren’t great.

Either we wait until they fall asleep and make a run for it (with seven kids) or convince them to turn on Hickey and let us go (unrealistic as well). We all agree to sleep for the night and think it over. While Amy, Kelly, Cara, and Rocky Horror get themselves ready for bed, Daphne and I check on the kids.

“How you doing, sweetie?” Daphne asks.

I look over at Daria, who watches us with a sad frown. She really does not seem to want to be here. Maybe that’s something we can use. She might be able to convince the others to let us go.

“Fine,” I say. “Just . . . tired, I think. Tired of all this shit.”

Daphne reaches out and places a light hand on my cheek. When she speaks, her voice is low, barely audible over the crackling fires.

“If the two of you see a way to escape, take it.”

“I can’t leave the rest—”

“You can.” Her eyes crinkle as she smiles. “You both deserve your happy ending. We’ll all be fine, but the two of you are in danger. And the longer you stay, the more that danger grows.”

“What about Amy and Henri-Two? Rocky Horror? They tipped us off. If the Keys find out and tell Fort Caroline . . .” I don’t finish the sentence. Because I can’t even imagine it.

But Daphne shakes her head. “Don’t worry about them. They knew what they were doing when they took that risk. Besides, I’m the Gossip Queen of the Keys.” She laughs that contagious laugh of hers that I can’t help but smile at. “I’ll take the heat. What are they gonna do? Kill me?”

My smile drops. “Yes, Daph, exactly that.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “They won’t. They could try, but I still have plenty of fans down there who will protect me.”

That might be true, but what if Fort Caroline doesn’t care about fans? Especially fans of a smutty romance writer.

“Get some sleep,” she says, patting my hand. Then she leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “But remember, if you see the chance, you take it and get the hell out of here.”

After I set my sleeping bag up next to Jamie’s, he reaches for my hand. I take it and hold it until he falls asleep, then I tuck it into his sleeping bag so he’s warm. But I can’t sleep. With Daphne’s words floating in my mind, I feel wired.

I’m looking for the chance she was talking about. Waiting to see if this could be it, and if Jamie and I could run.

But I don’t know if I can do it. As much as I love Jamie, I don’t know if I can leave all of them, knowing Fort Caroline is coming. I check that everyone around us is sleeping—six of Hickey’s people are still wide awake and watching me like hawks—and then bundle myself back into my own sleeping bag. I stare up at the night sky, the fire popping as it devours the fresh wood.

It wasn’t until the apocalypse that I realized exactly how many stars were out there. With zero light pollution left in the world, it’s pretty awesome. Awesome meaning evoking awe, not plain old cool. That’s a word that should be reclaimed in the apocalypse. Awesome. But only to be used in truly awesome situations.

I close my eyes, just for a second, but then someone screams. A woman.

It’s a chilling, bloodcurdling shriek that raises my hackles instantly. I jolt upright, my sleeping bag unzipping itself. I must’ve dozed off because the sky has changed. Dawn is on the horizon. But somehow I woke from a dreamless sleep into a nightmare.

Someone else screams, this time a man. The kids are up, Daphne, too. I hear them murmuring, and there’s more screaming. Even with dawn coming, I can’t see them in the darkness.

“What’s happening?” Jamie sits up, wide awake. I unzip my sleeping bag the rest of the way and crawl over to the orange embers of our fire. I throw more sticks on, trying to light the darkness that was so beautiful what felt like only moments ago. Cara is there in an instant, adding more to the fire. A gunshot cuts through the night and I hear Hickey’s voice, and Daria’s.

The kids are all awake, asking what’s going on. The Kid is crying. Taylor asks what’s wrong, her voice sounding so much younger than she’s been allowing it to be.

I open my mouth to calm them, but the fire catches, lighting up the road as someone else screams farther away. So many screams. Including Cara, who points over my shoulder, wide-eyed with horror.

Because of the creature smiling at me from the grass on the side of the road. Pitch-black eyes, a long scaly snout, and a mouth full of teeth. A fucking alligator.

It leaps forward, snapping at me.

“Shit!” I fall back as the gator walks closer, snapping again. The guns! But Hickey took our guns. I reach into the firepit and grab the end of a burning branch. I put it in front of the thing’s face, and thank God, it knows what fire is. The gator turns away, snapping at nothing.

Hickey’s people are still screaming everywhere.

Rocky Horror helps me back on my feet, asking if I’m okay. I nod, and he turns to the kids.

“Taylor!” Jamie shouts. He moves quickly around the fire, grabbing a stick covered in leaves and Spanish moss and setting it ablaze. “Kids, all of you, over here.”

“Where’s Amy?” I say. My chest constricts as images of Amy and Henri-Two being mauled by an alligator flash in my mind. People are running, screaming. Dust flies up and gunshots ring out in the dark.

“Amy!” I shout. “Daphne! Kelly!”

“Here.” Amy runs out of the darkness toward us, Henri-Two crying in the sling against her chest.

“Where’s Daphne?” Jamie asks.

She shakes her head. I lunge at the alligator that came toward me, and it crawls off into the high grass at the edge of the clearing. I throw the stick back on the fire, along with every other piece of wood we have.

More gunshots, and someone else screams. A man stumbles forward, clutching his chest. Blood spilling through his fingers. He falls to his knees, then onto his face.

“Jamie, help!” I turn the man over. He’s gasping, and blood bubbles from the bullet wound in his chest. Jamie throws his flaming stick onto the fire and joins me.

“Leave him,” Jamie says, trying to pull me away from him.

I turn to him, my jaw falling open. “We can’t just leave him.” I don’t have enough time to figure out how Jamie could even suggest such a thing—despite these people being here to drag us back to the Keys. Rocky Horror comes over and grabs under his arms.

“Help me get him to the fire.” We drag him closer. The man tries to gasp three more times before he stops breathing. The chest wound releases a few more bubbles, then stops.

Another gun goes off. Then another, and another.

“Kids, get down!” I yell. But they aren’t listening. How can they? It’s chaos.

Beneath my hands the man jerks. He’s alive? But when I glance down at his face, his eyes are wide open and he still isn’t breathing. He jerks again and then I see the alligator at his leg, snapping and pulling.

“No!” I yell at the thing.

Jamie pulls me away. “It’s okay.” The alligator continues snapping down on the dead man’s leg. Someone in the middle of the camp throws a flaming stick at one of the gators, but it goes over them, right into the tall grass at the edge of the road.

The grass catches fire almost immediately. Oh no.

“Where’s the water?” I ask Jamie.

“Here!” Cara runs over to the jug but jumps back, screaming. Jamie spins with the fire, revealing three more alligators.

“Jesus! How many are there?” Amy asks.

And why are they here? Does this usually happen with alligators?

A few feet away the first alligator is still pulling at the dead man’s leg. Jamie takes his flaming branch and runs toward him. The alligator rolls and the man’s body rolls with it before his leg rips off and the alligator takes its prize into the grass.

I try to shield the kids from the view. Taylor is just out of my reach, staring at the man’s body. Her face shines in the firelight.

I move over to hug her close and she lets me. Jamie pushes us all back toward the fires in the road, away from the alligators. The wildfire is spreading. Someone shouts to move the vehicles. With part of the field burning brightly now, I can see all the chaos around us.

Alligators—so many of them. There have to be at least ten.

They attack in bursts from the high grass surrounding us. People are trying to fend them off with fire and baseball bats or other blunt objects, but they keep coming. Those with guns shoot at the ground, but not even the gunfire scares them off.

How hungry are they that they seem to be hunting people in a pack like this?

When one of them tries to get close, Jamie chases it off with fire. Daphne comes out of the darkness covered in blood, and my heart stops in my chest. But then I see the huge knife in her bloody hand.

She holds it up to me. “Took this from someone, nearly got chomped in half.” Then she lowers her voice. “This is the moment. I told you to run.”

“You know I’d never leave you. But I am so damn happy to see you,” I tell her.

She frowns but then shakes her head. “Well, given the circumstances, the feeling is mutual, hon.” She looks down at all the kids. “All right, children? Where’s the Kid?”

I spin to look at them. All six of them. No, there’s supposed to be seven! Fuck! The Kid.

“Oh!” I jump up. “Kid!” I scan the chaos. People still shooting and screaming.

In the middle of it all, on the other side of our fire, the Kid is crying. Still in his sleeping bag.

Thank fucking God he’s—

But then I see the light reflecting off something on the other side of the field. An eye in the moving grass. And teeth.

“No! Kid!”

But he’s not moving. He’s looking over at me with tears in his eyes. Crying loudly, Bobo held tightly against his chest.

I move, not thinking. Jamie screams after me.

The alligator lunges out of the grass, trying to beat me to him—and maybe if we were in water he’d be able to—but fuck you, asshole, this is land.

I leap over the fire and land on the other side. Right on the edge of a small pothole. My ankle twists as the edge of the asphalt breaks under my shoes. I eat it, face down on the road. The Kid is still crying. And he’s still five feet away.

But the alligator is closer to him than I am.

No. No, no, no, no, no. He’s not hurting the Kid.

I scramble across the road, pushing through the pain in my ankle and hands and knees.

The alligator lunges. I’m not going to make it.

But I have to.

So I do the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. This coming from someone who stepped in a bear trap once.

I wrap my right arm around the Kid, pulling him to my side. But I put my left hand out, trying to push the alligator—the thing with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth—away. Instead of pushing it, I get nothing but air.

And the alligator chomps down.

The pain is like . . . well, it’s teeth. It’s fucking teeth. I feel something in my hand snap and the alligator gives a quick head jerk. My shoulder pops, and every muscle burns with agony as I scream. The Kid is behind me now.

Safe.

But the alligator pulls again, dragging me across the asphalt, like it’s trying to rip my arm out of its socket. And if it pulls one more time, it just might—the alligator rolled and ripped that guy’s leg right off.

Oh, Christ, it’s going to do that to me.

It opens its mouth and I try to pull away, but it snaps its jaws shut again and a fresh burst of horrific pain overwhelms every sense I have. Jamie is screaming something, but I don’t know what it is. I see him run at the alligator with the rifle in his hand and even though I know it’s not loaded—and Hickey had taken it—my brain doesn’t even see the image as odd.

Jamie must remember the rifle’s not loaded, too, because he’s beating the ever-loving shit out of the alligator. The thing jerks again, pulling another burst of agony from my chest down to my arm, and I scream and scream and scream.

Only someone else is screaming now.

“Fuck you!” Movement catches my eye, but I barely have a second to register it before Taylor is jumping onto the alligator. Hitting it over and over and over.

No. Not hitting it. She has Daphne’s knife. It’s the size of Taylor’s forearm, but she’s holding it as though it’s weightless. Driving it down into the alligator’s skull over and over and over. The thing is probably dead—maybe it was after Taylor delivered the first blow—but she just keeps stabbing. It’s like a horror movie. Blood flying, speckling her face, mixing with her tears.

Jamie uses the moment to pry open the thing’s jaws and take my arm out. I cradle it in my other arm, crying out in more pain. It feels like it’s been pulled from its socket, and I have no control over its movement.

Blood flows quickly from the ripped-up flesh of my hand and arm. My thumb is gone. My index and middle finger hang from broken, bloody sinew. I try to move them but my pinkie barely twitches. And all I feel is the pain.

Jamie wraps my arm in a shirt he grabbed from one of our packs, and I scream against his chest as the pain overwhelms me again.

“I know,” he whispers. “I know, baby. But it has to be tight.” I nod but still scream as he pulls the shirt as tight as he can, then ties it off. Within seconds it’s darkened with blood. It throbs with pain, and I try to breathe, but each breath burns the muscles in my chest and back. Swollen and useless from my dislocated shoulder.

Taylor sounds like she’s gasping, too. She’s covered in blood, cursing under her breath with every stab into the dead alligator. Jamie cradles me in his lap, watching her. Probably wishing he could do the same.

I know Cara and the others are all watching, too. The fire takes up most of the other side of the road and the trucks and cars are right there, unguarded.

“This is our chance,” I say. But it’s so quiet no one hears me. My throat burns, raw from screaming.

And Taylor keeps stabbing. And stabbing.

Finally she drives the knife deep into what’s left of the alligator’s head. Then pushes herself off it, kicking away as though shocked by her own violence. She’s starting to hyperventilate. I sit up with a groan of pain and hold out my good arm. She leaps into it and lets me give her a side hug as she sobs.

“Thank you,” I say. “You saved my life.”

She doesn’t answer. Just continues to sob. I lie back, my shoulder still out of whack and my arm throbbing in pain.

“Are you okay?” Jamie asks.

I grab his shirt. “Now. We have to go now.” Daphne is there and she locks eyes with me. My voice is hoarse. “You’re right. This is our chance. For all of us.”

She nods and runs to Amy, Kelly, and Cara. In the distance, Hickey and the others are still fighting off gators. Jamie asks me something, but I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s the blood loss, or the lack of adrenaline now that the attack is over. I close my eyes, barely paying attention to the sounds of everyone speaking around me.

They drift farther and farther away.