Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After by Sarah Lyons Fleming Page B

bodies. The blond hair that she pulls into a silky ponytail sticks out like straw, and her plain but pleasant farm-girl face is screwed up in agony.
    “Go,” I say to Nelly, who scans the crowd, and point to where Adam loads bodies.
    Nelly nods and strides off in his direction. I hear him shout over the roar of a generator, and Adam moves toward him eagerly. Nelly knew he was okay because John asked via radio.
    Ana’s eyes flicker from the bullet holes in the main hangar’s window to the blackened remains of the barn, then to the blood that runs along the concrete. Her lips tighten and her neck moves when she swallows. Ana hardly ever cries; she gets pissed and flies off the handle instead. Zeke and Kyle step through the door of the main hangar.
    “Thanks for coming, y’all,” Zeke says. “Jesus Christ, can you believe this?” He surveys the airport and twists his beard.
    “What the hell happened, Zeke?” Adrian asks.
    “The fences are solid, man,” Zeke drawls, his Southern accent deepening. “Only thing I can think is we had four new people come in yesterday evening. They seemed well enough, but we didn’t check them—I asked one of the guards who was on and he said they didn’t. Maybe one of the arrivals was too scared to admit he’d gotten the virus.”
    I don’t know how you could do that, knowing you’d kill other people. I’d blow my head off before I’d let that happen.
    “Best I can tell is it started in the men’s barrack while we were sleeping. Someone must’ve opened the door, and then they got out. No alarms, nothing. I was in my office last night and didn’t hear a goddamned thing. Not until it was—” He sweeps a hand in the air at the devastation. “We got it under control pretty quickly, once we figured out what was happening, but they’d gotten into the main hangar and the soldiers’ barrack. I think people opened doors to see what was going on. None of us thought of Lexers.”
    “You know I sleep in the family barrack,” Kyle says. He has a four year-old daughter, Nicole. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”
    Kyle, who shaves his head bald, rubs his hand along the gleaming brown skin as if for luck. He was from a different unit of the National Guard, although he came to Whitefield with the 157th.
    “Almost everyone in the men’s barrack was infected,” Zeke says. “The families are okay. A lamp must have burst in the soldiers’ barrack during the fighting. They became fucking human torches. The chicken coop and barn burned. Half the food was in the soldiers’ barrack and over another quarter in the barn. It’s all gone. We won’t make it on what we have until the summer crops.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” Adrian says. “We’ll bring you everything we can spare. There’s always North Conway. Will was talking about making a trip there.”
    “Almost all the patrollers are gone,” Zeke says. “We’ve got me and Kyle. We’re all that’s left.”
    “We’ll come,” Ana says.
    Kyle crosses his arms and assesses the survivors. “We’ll need you. We’ve got to train some people—if we can find them.”
    We have the same problem at Kingdom Come. People don’t want to risk their lives. They’re scared, and rightfully so. Last fall, a patrol went out and never returned. Thirty people left for Moose River, Maine, after that, along with the people at the farms we’d helped to fortify. They thought it’d be safer, since it’s the largest and most remote Safe Zone in the northeast. It made the winter easier in terms of food and fuel, but there’s strength in numbers, and ours have dwindled.
    We don’t have enough ammo to teach people how to use guns, although a blade of some type is sufficient. But a blade requires the nerve to jam it into a head, and I’ve been surprised to find that not everyone will do that unless they absolutely have to. Even on someone who’s already dead. They had to do it on the way to the farm, maybe, but now they avoid