She released a heavy breath and dropped the keys into the cup holder. “Well, we knew it’d come to this eventually.”
Danny unbuckled his seatbelt and twisted around to reach into the back seat with both arms.
“We’ll be fine,” he said with that know-it-all-nothing-can-hurt-me attitude that was characteristic of many young teenagers who thought themselves wiser than the adults in their lives. He wrestled their bugout bags to the front.
Adalynn couldn’t help but smile as Danny passed over her bag, which was heavy with food, water, and essential supplies. He could nail that snotty teenager tone when he wanted to, but she knew that wasn’t her brother. He flopped back down on his seat, settling his bag over his lap.
“Thanks,” she said, shifting her head to scan the woods outside the passenger-side window.
The forest was dense enough to provide some cover as they walked. So long as they kept the main road in sight, they wouldn’t get lost—and they would eventually end up finding a building they could shelter in while Adalynn figured out their next step.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have much time for planning. She didn’t have much time for anything.
They needed to find someplace safe today, someplace secure—preferably before dark—and, sometime in the next week or two, a place for Danny to thrive.
Adalynn checked the mirrors to make sure there was nothing following on the road. She turned her attention to Danny just as he unsheathed one of the biggest knives Adalynn had ever seen.
Her eyes widened. “Danny! Where the hell did you get that?”
He grinned and turned his wrist back and forth, inspecting the blade. “Pretty cool, huh? I found it in one of the trucks at our last gas stop.”
Adalynn held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“What?” he asked, eyebrows falling low as he yanked back the knife. “No way.”
“Daniel Adam Jefferies, you hand that knife over to me right now. You’re way too young to be handling that.”
“Addy, are you serious? Look around us! I need it to help protect you.”
“I should be the one protecting you.”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Addy. What if we hadn’t seen that revenant back there? What if he’d snuck up on us? What would we have used to fight him off, your pocketknife? We should’ve gotten a gun by now!” He frowned and looked away. “We both know you’re sick. Real sick. And I…I need to learn to take care of us, in case, you know…something happens.”
Tears stung Adalynn’s eyes. Twelve years separated her and her brother, and even though he was thirteen now, she’d always see him as that chubby little baby who’d smiled up at her as though she’d hung the moon, as the toddler who’d clutched her hand when he was scared, as the little boy who’d followed her into the deep end of the pool because he wanted to be as brave as his big sister. But he was growing up right before her eyes, and she couldn’t ignore that.
He was right. She was treating him like a little kid, and it would only hurt him in the long run. She’d known for months what kind of world they were living in, even if she couldn’t understand why it was like this. It was a world that chewed up the weak and spat them out as walking corpses. A world where everyone, even children, needed to know how to protect themselves. He needed to learn those skills, but how could she teach him things she didn’t know?
The deeper truth of the situation enhanced the sting of her thoughts—even if she’d possessed those skills, she didn’t have the time to pass them on to Danny.
Adalynn lowered her hand and sighed. “Okay, you can keep it. But just be careful! If you get cut—”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted, shoulders sagging. He’d heard it a thousand times already, but he continued with surprising patience. “If I get a cut it can get infected, and our supply of antibiotics is limited.”
A soft smile touched her lips. “Good. At least we know you’re capable of retaining information other than the names and teams of soccer players or how to emote over someone you just killed in a video game.”
“Uh, it’s called tea bagging, and it’s an art.”
Adalynn laughed and shook her head. “You’re so gross.”
“You’re just a prude.”
Her jaw dropped. “A prude? I am not a prude. And where the hell did you learn that word?”
A slow grin stretched across his lips. “From one of your romance books.” He puckered his lips and made kissing noises. “Oh, he’s so handsome, so strong, so virile. And his co—”
“Okay, that’s enough! New rule: you’re not allowed to read. At all. Ever again.”
“I learned about women in that book too, like—”
“We are not having this discussion. Didn’t Mom and Dad talk to you about sex?”
Danny snorted. “Mom was even more prudish than you and told Dad to do it. I let him stammer on about it for a while and pretended that I hadn’t already learned it all from the internet and other kids at school.”
Adalynn twisted in her seat to look through the back window. “Where’s that revenant? I think I changed my mind. I want it to catch me.”
“But the sex in your romance book was pretty hot. Just sayin’.”
“If you don’t get your much-too-young-to-talk-about-this-stuff ass out of the car right now, I’m taking that knife from you and I will not be held responsible for what I do with it.”
“Okay, okay.” Danny laughed and opened the door. He stepped out of the car, pack in hand, and muttered, “Prude.”
Adalynn couldn’t hold back a chuckle as she exited the vehicle. “I am not! I’m the one that had the book to begin with. I just don’t need to hear my little brother talking about it.”
“I could talk about killing revenants instead,” he said, thrusting the knife forward as though fighting an invisible opponent.
“Daniel,” she warned, glaring at him as she quietly closed the car door.
He froze, staring at her with eyes wide, and lowered the knife. “You sound just like Mom when you say my name like that.”
There wasn’t any humor in his voice now; they’d healed enough to laugh and joke, to remember their parents with happiness and humor, but losing them still hurt. Adalynn knew that as much as it pained her, it was worse for Danny—and he put a lot of effort into hiding that pain.
She sighed softly. Slipping her arms through her bag’s straps, she rounded the car and stopped beside Danny to give him a hug. “Let’s go. We still have time before dark, but I’d rather not get stuck out here.” She pulled away. “We’ll walk in the woods to hide but stay close to the road so we don’t get lost.”
“’Kay.” He sheathed the knife and clipped it to his belt before swinging on his pack. He shuffled away from the road and up the small embankment into the forest.
Adalynn checked the road one last time before following him past the tree line.
They kept close to one another as they walked, striking a balance between speed and quiet that Adalynn was satisfied with. Too slow and they risked being stuck out here at night, when the scariest things in this new world seemed to be most active. Too quick and they risked making enough noise to alert others—both the living and the dead—of their presence.