All this time, I've been operating on the assumption that me and the others have survived this apocalypse thanks to our wits, skills, and basic common sense. Ember has just deconstructed that in one fell swoop. The fact that I should have seen it coming is almost the worst part.
Wits and common sense have never made much difference for me. I was the kind of quiet, somber kid who tried hard but still never did well in school; I was average or below in all classes except gym and biology, and I suspect I only kept up in biology because I had a really good teacher. I made it all the way to high school on the benevolence of teachers. Then I scraped through high school by the skin of my teeth. I was never a popular kid. I never won any academic awards. All my report cards came home with the same note, so many times for so many years, I could recite it from memory. Teagan is very cooperative and a delight to have in the class. She may benefit from extra help in order to reach her full potential.
I got that extra help. At lunch hour, after school, some weekends, and often through the summer. That's a privilege my sister and I both had, I guess, not that she needed it; our parents just had enough money to spend on tutors, and they had to make up for me somehow. As for that "full potential," I reached it. I maxed out in the B-grade range on everything from English to calculus, and nearly failed chemistry. It would have been easy to blame an audio processing disorder for that—I don't know how anyone is supposed to discern the difference between ethane, ethene, and ethyne when a teacher rattles them off at the front of a 30-person class—but the truth is, I didn't grasp it even after I saw them written down. Even physics made more sense. At least I could visualize the physics problems.
I'm pretty sure my guidance counselor only recommended a Recreation and Tourism degree because my parents showed consternation at the idea of me taking an apprenticeship or going into trades school. I thought the trades sounded pretty appealing, to be honest. Approachable, under-recognized, and eminently useful. But Recreation and Tourism also sounded cool, so I looked into it and started to get excited about school for the first time in my life. The university's Accessibility Services office was full of wonderful people. My first week went great. Then Red Thursday brought it all down again.
I never even got to see where my grades might land in a program that actually felt like me. There's still a voice in my head telling me they'll all be in the B-range again. I never got to prove it either way.
As for skills, I've always been pretty proud of what I can do outdoors. But that got shaken by the river accident two years ago. When it came down to what mattered in that situation, I didn't make it through on any kind of skills. Just pure, dumb luck. Even the guides who'd been paddling that river for decades agreed.
Now Ember's telling me we've gotten through this apocalypse on something like a miracle, too. I can't even bring myself to feel surprised. And I've had enough practice to hide just how much it still manages to crush me.
"So what have you guys been doing?" says Ember, drawing me back to the run-down office room in the back of a decrepit house in the backwoods of nowhere somewhere west of Cape Morgan. Her skepticism is back, and with it comes a familiar anxiety: the kind that would always kick in as a teacher handed out tests from the front of the class, preparing to judge the intelligence of students by their ability to absorb and retain information. "Do you have a vaccine or something? Something you've been eating? Where have you stayed?"
I answer numbly. There's nothing special about our living situation. Not that I can tell, anyway. We didn't do anything significantly different from the students in the cafeteria, except keeping our group small. This group is bigger, and they're still surviving. Ember's brow furrows as I detail our process for finding safe houses or screening food. How none of us have ever told the others our real names, even in writing. How we deal with Sleepers in the streets, the grocery stores, and the houses we stay in. Ember responds to everything the same way. We were more thorough than the Anport Rescues, but our groups' approaches have otherwise been the same.
"We found a house with a well as soon as we realized it was in the water system," says Ember, explaining how this group wound up here. "This was the area on the map that Ada and Oreo said would be hardest for the rain to get to, and wells were uncommon. This place isn't the prettiest, but it was empty when we found it, and it's gotten us this far."
Vix haunts my mental images. "Most of you."
Something shadows Ember's face. I probably shouldn't have said anything.
"Look," she says. "I can't tell if your crew is immune, but you've been doing something right that we haven't been. Maybe you're just better survivors? I mean, if I could do whatever building-fire-hazard-screening you seem to be about, I'd have gone into Civil Engineering rather than Mechanical. But you've also been doing all that in Chesnet, and pardon my French, but Chesnet's been the devil's asshole of this whole Sleeping Sickness, and you're still alive."
I can't argue with that. So I wrack my brain for anything else we've been doing, and Ember and I spend another half-hour debating the minutiae of water treatment and Sleeper handling, batting theories back and forth like a ping-pong ball. There are a lot of things we've been doing that the Anport Rescues haven't. But ninety percent of those are just because we've moved around from house to house because the Redding keeps chasing us, while they've been installed here since shortly after Red Thursday. Aside from killing off their members, it hasn't come for them yet.
The remaining ten percent of the discrepancies, meanwhile, aren't the kinds of things that have any bearing on our survival against the Redding itself. They're just me being anal about hazards, because I know more than a person should about how human beings can die from fire or electrocution. We've only got so long before the infrastructure around us starts disintegrating. I spotted the aftermath of two fires in Chesnet's north end alone after Calico J and I finally left the university, and that's probably just the start of it.
When the office falls silent again, Ember pinches the crease between her eyebrows. I feel like a failure. I know, logically, that this isn't my fault. It might be the product of an unknown factor, something I already wondered about—we might be resistant to the Redding in a way other people aren't, though why, I have no idea. But we came all this way to exchange information, and the Anport Rescues have nothing. Our group might, but I don't know what it is. And that is my fault, really. I'm the source of most of our survival strategies. If anyone should have noticed or thought of or figured out what we're doing right, it's me.
"Maybe it is just a combination of all those little things," says Ember. Her voice is heavy. "Maybe that's all it is. You guys are just better survivors."
She doesn't sound convinced. I don't say anything.
Ember lifts her head again. "What do you think?"
I don't think my opinion on this is worth anything. We've already compared and contrasted everything I can think of, and she's already come up short. I can't bear to say anything that will let her down again.
When I don't answer, Ember keeps talking. "That's the only thing I can think of. I don't like it; it seems too trivial... God, we've met other people from Chesnet, and you guys aren't usual. Or maybe you just have uncommon survival skills. Lord knows I've got one other person left in this group who's half as competent as you, and we're flying by the seat of our pants here. We could use someone else's help."
I stop fiddling with the hole in the knee of my pants. "Are you asking us to join you?"
Ember puts her head in her hands and groans something about Oreo.
My face heats up. "What was that?"
"Sorry." She lifts her face again. "Oreo would probably kill me for asking when you haven't been screened, but fuck, Meg, we could use someone like you on this team. We can't hold down this fort ourselves forever."
"But you've got so many people?"
"Have you met the kinds of people who survived the name-wave? Basement dwellers. Hermits. Loners. Incels and trolls who only ever go by pseudonyms online and have no social life in person. We had some good ones, but they're all dead now. Ada. Jasper. Vix. Seven." I shock at the name, but Ember doesn't notice. "I'm sure there were other people in this county who had the presence of mind to turn off their phones and hide when the Sleeping Sickness hit, but I'm convinced they all got in their cars and left while they still could. I got stuck here because someone made off with my truck, and Oreo's the only other person I've met besides those ones we've lost who can test potable water, let alone uphold a socially cohesive and semi-functional group situation. If he goes down, I can't lead alone, and vice versa. And I have to drag him from his theories to be useful as often as not."
That's the second time she's mentioned theories. I want to know those theories. Anything we learn here is better than nothing, and if Oreo was the one to figure out at least some of the patterns on this map, I trust his scientific mind. But Ember's whole body language is done with those theories, and if she hasn't explained them yet, they're probably not worth explaining.
"Anyway," she says, and her shoulders slump. "I'm tired. And scared, to be honest. And believe me, I don't say that to many people. You won't believe how happy we were to find another group that survived, and in Chesnet, no less. You guys are doing something right."
I'm not sure we are. I'm not sure we're surviving on anything except pure, dumb luck.
"So would you?" says Ember.
"Would what? Sorry."
"Join us."
I don't process it properly the first time.
"You're doing something right," she repeats. "And we keep losing people. This group will be gone by the end of the month at the rate we've been going. We've tried everything we can think of, and nothing's stopped it from preying on our members like you saw with Vix. This is functionally our last hope. Would you join us? Please?"
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