Jamison

A COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER LEAVING FARAWAY, Niki and I have to stop for the afternoon. It’s raining nonstop and our shoes are soaked through. We light a fire in the fireplace of an empty house and raid what’s left of their pantry—there’s not much, but it’s enough to feed us for the night. The following day is clear, so we set out early, looking for a place in town that might have food.

We check a few houses first and come up with five cans—black beans, corn, pears, and vegetarian refried beans—and a tin of sardines. Still not much.

“Maybe the others came through and cleaned out most of it,” Niki says.

I nod. “Andrew would absolutely leave the sardines.”

We check a few more places—gas stations, churches, a dentist office kitchenette—but find nothing substantial.

I go into a discount grocery store while Niki watches the front and double-checks the map. I find a few more cans, but wherever we stop for the night, we’ll have to go looking for more food before we leave in the morning.

“Jamie!” Niki’s voice sounds full of fear, so I sprint through the messy aisles out the broken door. She has her rifle pointed toward the parking lot. I reach back for my gun but stop.

There’s a dog sitting halfway between a light pole and us. Just sitting, their mouth open in a pant and eyes squinting. They’re a big dog, but skinny. Large satellite-dish ears are splayed out on either side of their head and their white, brown, and black-speckled fur is thick and matted.

“It’s okay,” I say, putting my hand on her rifle and pushing it slowly down. “I don’t think they’re going to hurt us.”

“Have you met the postapocalyptic dogs? The ones who survived are feral again.”

“Does this one look feral to you?”

“Yes!”

Almost as if to prove a point, the dog yawns and returns to panting. I take a step forward.

“Hey, uh . . .” I check, just to be polite. “Guy. You hungry?”

“We don’t really have food for us,” Niki mumbles.

“We have enough.” I take another step forward and hold out my hand. The dog stands and takes a few strides over to me, keeping his head down. He smells my hand, gives a light lick, then presses his face into it. I scratch behind his ears, and he starts kicking his hind leg.

Teeny fleas jump off onto my hands. My flesh crawls and I step back, shaking them off. The dog sits down hard and continues scratching behind his ears with his hind leg.

“He’s covered in fleas,” I say. Probably ticks, too. Poor guy. “Wait here.”

I go back into the store as Niki calls out after me. There’s a pet aisle, but I doubt they have flea and tick treatment in a discount store. They do have a brush and a small, bristled metal comb specifically for combing out fleas.

I grab both, then a bottle above them catches my eye. Flea and tick shampoo. What do you know. I check the back to make sure it’s going to get rid of the fleas, not just make him smell like lavender. But the bottle says it’s unscented and kills fleas and ticks on contact. Perfect.

“Jamie, hurry up!”

“Coming!”

I head back to the front but stop myself, turning back and grabbing a hard plastic chew toy that says it’s supposed to be good for dogs’ teeth and a soft plush hedgehog. I give it a squeeze, and instead of a squeak it makes a huff sound.

Outside, Niki yelps and glass crunches at the front of the store. The dog stands in the doorway, his head quirked to the side and one ear up.

“You heard that, huh?” I ask him. I squeeze it again and his thick, fluffy tail sways back and forth. “You gotta follow us if you want it.”

I probably should get a leash and collar, but it’s not like he’s my dog. And he’s been surviving on his own well enough, it seems, so I decide to just let him come with us as long as he wants and leave when he wants.

He jumps up for the hedgehog toy and I pull it out of his reach. He sits down and lets out a little whine.

“Don’t torture him,” Niki says. She seems to be coming around now that he hasn’t decided to attack us.

“Okay, go get it?” I toss the hedgehog into the parking lot, and he bolts after it, scooping it up, giving it a shake and making it huff before trotting back and placing it at our feet. I pick it up and throw it for him, only this time when he launches after it, Niki and I follow. When the dog realizes we’re coming with him, he runs ahead a bit, then turns back and circles around us, chomping down on the hedgehog.

Huff. Huff. Huff.

We both laugh as he circles us with his new toy. I don’t think either of us has laughed or even smiled in weeks. It feels odd. And it reminds me of when I first met Andrew, how he tried to make me laugh, but it didn’t feel appropriate after everything that had happened. The thought only makes me smile more, and this time it’s a little easier.

Niki points us in the direction of a housing development near a river. While she settles into a house, I head to the river with our bottles and a bucket I found in the house’s linen closet. The dog follows me, probably not realizing what I’m grabbing the bucket for. I fill up our bottles and the bucket and head back to the house, where Niki has already set a fire in the fireplace.

She joins me on the back deck because we’ve already decided the dog isn’t coming inside until he’s cleaned off. And given how cold the water I splashed on my leg is, he’s probably going to decide against sticking with us anyway.

“I put an empty pot by the fire,” Niki says, closing the sliding glass door behind her.

“I’ll refill the bottles when we’re finished cleaning him,” I say. “Then we can boil it to drink.”

I try to wrestle the hedgehog away from him, but he latches on tightly, shaking his head.

“What should we call him?” Niki asks.

“I don’t . . . know. Drop it!”

He drops it.

“I don’t think ‘Drop It’ is a very good name,” she says, snorting.

I tell him to sit, and he does but then promptly stands back up when I set the hedgehog on the railing. “Where are we again?”

I take off my shoes and socks and roll up the bottoms of my jeans. It’s probably about forty degrees out, but I’d rather be cold for a bit than cold and wet. I take off my jacket and shirt and gently take the dog by the scruff of his neck. He doesn’t pull away, just keeps his eyes on the hedgehog.

Meanwhile, Niki has the road atlas in her hands and is skimming pages, trying to find where we are.

“Newton, North Carolina,” she finally says.

“Oh, Newton is a cute name.”

“Newt. I like it.”

I turn the dog’s head so he’s looking at me. “What about you? You like the name Newt?” He pants, his tongue sticking out of his mouth, which is probably as much confirmation as we’re going to get. “Newt it is. Now that we have a name for you, I have to say sorry for what I’m about to do, Newt.”

I let go of him and pour a bit of water from the bucket over his hindquarters. He lets out a whine and immediately starts trembling.

“I know, buddy,” I whisper. “But it will make you feel better, I promise.” I cup a little of the cold water in my hands and pour it over his head, then start shampooing.

Newt trembles, shakes, pants, and whines the whole time, but he stays put. And after I have a nice lather worked up around his ears, he seems to enjoy it a little. At least until I rinse him off with the rest of the water. When I’m done, I tell Niki to back up as he does a big shake and water goes flying everywhere. I can see flecks of dead fleas in the suds on the wooden deck, so the shampoo seems to have done its job.

“I’ll go get more water,” Niki says. “You go inside and warm up.”

I thank her and grab the hedgehog, and Newt follows me inside. I throw it close to the fire, where Newt runs after it. There are still towels in the linen closet, so I grab a stack, dry myself off, then go back to find Newt working hard at ripping the noisemaker from the hedgehog.

“You’re going to be very disappointed when that isn’t making sounds anymore,” I tell him. He ignores me and keeps gnawing at the stuffy while I rub him with a towel. Once he’s a little drier, I set about combing out the mats and dead fleas—and a few ticks, which I throw into the fire.

When Niki returns, we boil the water and open a few cans of food. We give Newt the tin of sardines, which he laps up in seconds, then stares at both of us, trying to get us to share our food with him.

After it’s clear we won’t, he decides to punish us by jumping onto the couch across the room and curling up, burying his nose under his tail and watching us resentfully.

“What are you and Andrew going to do when we get to Bethesda?” Niki asks me after dinner. The fire is crackling, and outside, rain patters the windows again.

“I don’t know.”

I’m not even sure if Andrew will be happy to see me when I get there. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t kill Rosewood. I left Andrew with the idea that I would, and Rosewood’s still dead and Fort Caroline has fallen, and even though I didn’t cause either of those things, he might still see me differently.

I kind of see myself differently. Maybe it was just temporary insanity, but I couldn’t go on trying to survive in this world knowing someone might show up at any moment looking for revenge. I kept imagining them tracking Amy and Henri-Two to Bethesda. Or finding Taylor and the others at Faraway. Finding the Kid. I could never live with that constant fear.

But even with all that behind us, I don’t know where that leaves Andrew and me.

And I’m scared to find out.

“Faraway seemed nice,” she says. “Maybe we can all go back. I’m sure they’d love to have us.”

I nod. “Yeah. It was nice. We’ll do that.”

Andrew wanted a community in the Keys. If he wants to stay in Faraway, that would be good for everyone. But if he doesn’t want to see me, I think I’ll just keep going. Back up to my cabin. I know how lonely I was up there before Andrew came, but I don’t think I could stand to live in the same place with him if he hated me. It was bad enough when we were fighting in the Keys.

Plus, the settlement that robbed us is still up there, and they did say they were just trying to scare us into joining. Maybe that’s what I’ll do if Andrew and I are over. He can go back to Faraway with the others. I’ll go back home.

Then everyone will be happy.

“Jamie.”

Niki whispers my name two more times before my eyes snap open. I turn to my right and she’s smiling, holding a finger to her mouth. It’s early morning and the fire has burned down to crackling embers. The rain also seems to have stopped.

Niki points down between our sleeping bags.

Newt has splayed himself out on his back between us, one paw sticking straight up and the other bent at the wrist. I smother a laugh as Niki does the same.

“I think we might be stuck with him,” she says.

“I think you’re right.”

I reach out and rub his belly as he stretches out a little more.

“Newt! Leave it!” I yell. It’s a fun game he has us playing. I have no idea how many things he’s eaten that he shouldn’t have throughout his postapocalyptic journey to us, but I’m trying to keep it to a minimum now. He spends most of his time sniffing things on the side of the road, licking things he probably shouldn’t—my chest aches at the thought of how Andrew would make a joke here—and often we catch him chewing something, but “drop it!” is not a command he is willing to listen to when it comes to food. And “leave it” doesn’t seem to be working either.

“What is it this time?” Niki asks.

“I don’t know.” I jog ahead and push him away from whatever it is he’s sniffing. But it isn’t food; it’s a thick, waterlogged paperback book.

On the front cover, bigger than the title, is the name Daphne De Silva.

My heart feels like it fills my chest to almost bursting, and I reach down for it. I turn the book over, examining every inch. On the back page is a black-and-white picture of Daphne that makes me laugh. She looks like she did in life—like she had the juiciest gossip and just couldn’t wait to share it with you. I can even hear her warm laugh.

“Oh my . . .” Niki says, coming up behind me.

The pages are all stuck together, so I carefully hold the book before flipping to the front cover again. But something catches my eye. Purple stains on one of the front pages. I open the book to see someone’s handwriting.

Daphne De Silva, still with us on our journey.

Started: Rocky Mount, NC 12/27

Finished: Cushman, NC 12/28

Stillwith us on our journey. Still! It has to be Andrew and the others. It’s not Andrew’s or Cara’s handwriting. It must be Taylor’s. Because of course she’d think of something like this.

I hug the book to my chest, tears welling in my eyes, then look back at the writing.

December 28.

Shit, that was a week ago.

“We passed through Rocky Mount,” Niki says.

That was days ago, but they got here in only a day. “They must be driving.”

We won’t be able to catch up to them, but we know where they’re going, and we’ll get there eventually. And now we have Daphne on our side, too.

I squeeze as much moisture as I can from the book and put it in my pack. I’ll leave it out to dry whenever I can. I just hope it doesn’t get moldy. But for now, I feel rejuvenated. Even my sore feet aren’t enough to slow me down.

Newt is looking up at me, his tail brushing the wet leaves and weeds on the road.

“All right,” I tell him. “You did good.” I take the hedgehog out of the pack and throw it ahead for him.

We’ll see everyone soon. And though the thought of seeing Andrew again still scares me, finding this book makes me feel like I can handle it. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll be as happy to see me as I will be to see him.