Chapter 3 — She Should Have Turned

We reached the transfer station with less than a quarter tank of fuel.

Tess killed the engine before the van rolled fully into view.

Ahead of us, four loading bays faced an empty parking lot. A delivery truck sat crooked beside the pumps. Beyond it stood a warehouse with boarded windows and a sign promising refrigerated storage.

The refrigeration had been dead for years.

Fresh tire marks crossed the gravel.

I pointed them out.

Tess nodded.

“Could be a supply crew.”

“Could be Graham’s friends.”

From the back seat, Eli adjusted the radio antenna.

“I’ll listen.”

His fever had eased enough for him to hold a conversation without losing track of it. That was an improvement.

It wasn’t enough to make this safe.

I checked the loading bays through binoculars.

No movement.

Two exits. A service lane behind the warehouse. A fence with a broken section large enough for the van.

I showed Tess the route.

“If something happens, take the rear lane.”

“If something happens, you’re getting in first.”

We left Eli with the keys and walked toward the fuel pumps.

A woman called from behind the delivery truck.

“Help me.”

I stopped.

She sat against a wheel with one hand pressed to her stomach. Dark glasses hid her eyes. Her jacket was torn, but I couldn’t see a wound beneath it.

“Stay there,” I said.

“I can’t walk.”

“Take off the glasses.”

Her mouth trembled.

“Please. They left me.”

Tess kept her pistol low.

“Who left you?”

The woman shifted.

A metal object scraped behind the wheel.

I took one step sideways.

Something moved beneath the truck.

“Back,” I told Tess.

The woman lunged.

She was much faster than she had pretended to be.

Tess fired. The shot tore through the woman’s shoulder, but she kept coming.

I caught Tess’s jacket and pulled.

A second infected person crawled from beneath the truck and grabbed her boot.

She fell.

I shot him through the head.

The woman landed on Tess before I could fire again.

Tess shoved her pistol between their bodies. The gun went off, loud enough to make my ears ring.

The woman collapsed across her.

We dragged the body away together.

Then Tess looked down.

Her sleeve was wet.

She rolled it up.

Two curved rows of punctures marked the inside of her forearm.

For a moment, the parking lot seemed completely still.

Even the echo of the gunshots had gone.

Tess pressed her hand over the wound.

“Well,” she said.

I couldn’t answer.

Eli opened the van door.

“Was that you shooting?”

“Stay inside.”

He saw her arm.

“No.”

Tess looked at him.

“Get back in.”

“No.”

“Eli.”

He stumbled toward us, and I caught him before his injured leg folded.

We stood there holding one another while the fuel pump clicked softly in the wind.

Then something banged inside the warehouse.

Three quick strikes.

A pause.

Three more.

I raised my rifle.

Tess caught my wrist.

“Don’t shoot at a sound.”

“I’m not.”

“Because I’m still me, and that was terrible advice when Graham gave it.”

The banging came again.

A boy’s voice followed it.

“Please don’t leave.”

I looked at Tess.

She swallowed.

“We check.”

We approached the warehouse along its wall, keeping clear of the boarded windows. The noise came from a narrow maintenance door secured with a chain.

“Step away from it,” I called.

“We can’t. It’s small.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Show me your hands through the gap.”

Four hands appeared beneath the door.

Dirty. Shaking. Human.

I cut the chain with the bolt cutters from the van.

A boy and a younger girl crouched inside an equipment closet.

The boy held a sharpened screwdriver.

The girl held an empty water bottle with both hands.

“Eyes,” I said.

They looked up.

Their pupils narrowed in the light.

The boy saw Tess’s arm.

“You need to wrap that.”

“We know.”

“No. Cover it before the trucks come.”

Tess and I looked at each other.

“What trucks?” I asked.

“The white ones.”

The girl began crying silently.

I knelt at a distance from them.

“What’s your name?”

“Ben.”

“And hers?”

“June.”

“Who locked you in?”

“People from the trucks. We hid when they came back, and they chained it shut.”

He looked toward the loading bays.

“They said somebody would collect us.”

We brought them to the van.

June drank too quickly and coughed. Eli held the bottle for her until she could manage smaller sips.

Tess sat on the curb while I cleaned and covered her bite.

She watched my hands.

“How long?”

I knew what she meant.

The reports varied, but nobody we had seen remained unchanged for long after a deep bite. Fever usually came first. Confusion followed. Sometimes the whole thing happened before you finished arguing about what to do.

“We watch,” I said.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“I know.”

She looked away.

I tied the bandage.

Then we moved the van behind the warehouse, out of sight from the highway.

Tess insisted on checking the leaking fuel line.

“You’re bleeding,” I told her.

“The van’s bleeding, too.”

She worked one-handed while I watched the road.

By noon, we had siphoned fuel from the delivery truck and found enough sealed water to replace what the children had used.

Tess still had no fever.

She counted the sockets in her tool kit, named them, and threw the ten-millimeter one at me when I asked her to do it again.

By evening, she was hungry.

I stared while she ate half a protein bar.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Rowan.”

“You should be sick.”

“I’m aware.”

Ben sat beside Eli inside the van.

“That’s why they take people,” he said.

I turned.

“What?”

“The ones who don’t change.”

He described a woman at the station who had been bitten on her calf. She had stayed awake for two days. The men with the white trucks had argued over her, then loaded her into the back instead of letting her leave.

“One man said she was worth more alive.”

June pressed her face into her brother’s shoulder.

“Where did they take her?” I asked.

Ben shook his head.

But Eli was already looking at the speaker box.

“The trucks,” he said quietly. “Did they have a picture on the side?”

I turned the box so Ben could see the ridge and rising sun.

His expression changed.

“Yes.”

Night settled over the station.

I made Tess sleep on a separate blanket near the van, close enough to speak to us, far enough that we could move if something happened.

She understood.

That hurt worse than if she had argued.

At dawn, she woke before me.

“Hey.”

I sat up immediately.

Her voice was clear.

Her skin felt cool.

The wound was swollen and ugly, but her eyes reacted to the flashlight. She knew where we were. She remembered the woman, the truck, the children.

Almost twenty-four hours had passed.

Tess looked at my face.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look relieved yet.”

Eli climbed carefully out of the van.

He saw her standing.

For the first time since we left the bunker, he smiled.

Then his radio crackled.

He froze.

An engine sounded on the highway.

Another followed it.

I climbed onto a concrete barrier and looked over the warehouse roof.

Three white trucks were turning toward the station.

“Tess,” I whispered. “Get the van started.”

She ran.

I helped Ben and June into the back seat. Eli cranked the radio volume down, but the voice cut through the static before he could switch it off.

“Tess Navarro.”

My hand stopped on the door.

The voice was calm, amplified now from the lead truck.

“Tess Navarro, we know you’re here.”

Tess looked at me through the windshield.

Then the loudspeaker spoke again.

“You’ve survived the bite. Come out, and the others can go.”