Lives We Lost,The by Megan Crewe Page B

the driveway: a young woman, slender and delicate-looking in her puffy coat. She blanched when she caught sight of us and hurried over, covering a sneeze with her gloved hand.
“He ran at us,” Gav said as she took the guy’s arm to help him up. “We’re just passing through—we don’t want to hurt anyone. Just don’t want anyone hurting us, either.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt you,” the guy protested. “But you shouldn’t be getting into other people’s trucks. That’s just not right.”
“We were wondering if we could . . . fix it up for him,” I offered, wincing inwardly at the weak lie.
The woman looked at us, tight-lipped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I understand. Matt, you freaked me out, wandering off like that! You don’t even have a coat on. Let’s get back to the house.”
“But there’s people,” Matt said. “We haven’t seen people in ages! I want to talk to them. Gets kind of boring only having you around, you know.”
Even as he talked, I could see the cold seeping through his fever. He shuddered. “Maybe you all could come back to our place and hang out a bit? We’re lucky—got a generator—it’s nice and warm. There’s that bottle of whiskey Jill’s been making me save.”
The woman, who I guessed was Jill, tugged at his arm. “We can go back and get you some dry clothes, and then these kind people will stop by in a few minutes. Right?” She smiled at us, her sad eyes saying the opposite.
“Sure!” I said, a little too brightly.
“We’d be happy to,” Gav added, and then, softly, “You take care.”
She nodded to us thankfully, and Matt sighed and turned to follow her. “Don’t forget!” he called as they reached the street. “We’ve got lots to talk about. I don’t even know your names yet!”
When we heard their door shut, I let out my breath. Tobias jerked forward, grabbing the rope of his sled.
“Let’s get the hell out of here before that guy decides we’ve taken too long and comes back.”
We didn’t bother checking for more cars. We just walked—through town and on into the stand of pine trees beyond the last few houses. The clouds loomed over us now, stretching across half the sky and dimming the sun. The breeze had risen. I zipped up the collar of my coat and pulled my hat down over my ears. My heart was still thumping.
I peeked sideways at Gav. He was striding along beside me as if nothing was different, as if he hadn’t just thrown himself into what could have been a wrestling match with a guy half a foot taller and at least fifty pounds heavier. A guy who was sick.
I watched the trail appearing from under Tessa’s sled in the snow ahead of me, feeling the minutes slip past, unable to speak. My emotions were so churned up I didn’t know how much I was angry or afraid or just plain upset. Maybe we shouldn’t go into the towns at all anymore. But we were never going to make it the whole way to Ottawa on foot, were we?
The wind whistled through the twigs of the trees. Snowflakes drifted down. One landed on my nose and melted there.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said finally. “You ran right up to him—”
“We didn’t know what he was going to do,” Gav said, an edge in his voice. “He could have wrecked the sleds, grabbed our food— broken the vaccine samples! Isn’t that the most important thing?”
I wanted to say no. It wasn’t more important than his life. But I’d been letting him risk his life for the vaccine just by agreeing to have him come out here with me, hadn’t I?
“I’m not saying it was smart,” he went on. “It’s not like I had time to think it through. It happened in a second—I reacted.”
“I know,” I said. “I just wish your natural reaction was safer.”
He laughed, a little shortly. “Hey,” he said, “at least I did something useful. More than I’ve done since we left the island, anyway.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but maybe it was. On the island he’d had the food runs, the