Survivors, Part 3: Every Move You Make

Lina watches the stranger in the front seat for a while. Something nags her, unsettles her about Van. Long after she turned off the flashlight, Lina's still awake, ears alert for sounds of ambush. None comes. There's no midnight betrayal.

There's nothing, except her and her sister's breathing. Nothing.

Because the stranger isn't breathing.

When Lina finally realizes this, her half-dozing mind snaps back to full alert. She doesn't react outwardly, except to pause her own breathing for just a few seconds, just to be sure she only hears one set of lungs in the car with her.

The stranger must've been infected. Hiding a bite somewhere, or drank some tainted water. That's why they were so willing to share everything. They won't need it for long.

Lina slowly feels under the blankets for her knife. Any moment now, the dead traveler will start to move again, as a zombie this time. She tells herself, "Any moment now," for a lot of moments in a row until she loses track of time, and finds herself waking up who-knows-how-long later. Still the front seat is silent. She wishes she could see, but the interior of the car is perfectly pitch black.

But Van never moves. Lina mentally runs through other possibilities: Van died, and that's it. No virus here. Just dead. But nobody just dies and stays dead. Not anymore.

Lina's tense waiting ends when she falls asleep again. This time she sleeps through to morning, waking up to cold white daylight peeking in around the edges of the towels. The car's empty. She panics, jumps out the door, and sees Kira cooking one of their cans of beans over a fire.

"What happened?" Lina snaps.

"Van went to forage," Kira says.

Lina stops short. "What?"

"What?"

"But... They weren't..."

Kira stares at her.

"Nevermind. I was just imagining things," Lina mutters.

She settles down with the new sewing supplies to patch up holes in their clothes, stops to have breakfast, then goes back right on task. There's always something to do, and if it ever looks like there isn't, she just isn't looking hard enough.

Van comes back with two fresh trout, held by the tails in one bare fist, and something bulging in both pockets of the stranger's gray hoodie.

"Uh... here. Fish and crawfish." And they unceremoniously dump the catch next to the fire. It's a nice pile of crawfish, Lina has to admit.

She takes the opportunity to study Van in the daylight. It's dim in the covered bridge, but enough pale light still pours in from both ends, over their partial barriers on the road.

Van is thin, borderline gaunt, not uncommon to see in survivors. Not pale, but ashy. There's no flush from being out in the cold without a face covering, and as Lina watches, she sees there's no cloud of breath in front of Van's face either. They have their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and long black hair in braid thrown forward from inside their hood. Some old jeans, scuffed-up Doc Martens with mismatched shoelaces, black leather gloves, which Van only bothers to put back on just now.

Van catches Lina staring. "What?"

"Nothing. Good job," Lina says flatly. "Do you know how to prep them?"

"Yeah."

"Then get on it."

Van shrugs, takes the haul back outside. Lina goes to the log-and-stick barrier to peek around the wall of the bridge. The stranger sits next to the riverbank to gut the fish, tossing the innards downstream.

She goes back to the fire, feeling unsettled and irritated by this person who's just... slightly... off.

"Something's wrong with them," Lina says quietly.

"What?" Kira says.

"They're not breathing. They're never breathing. Something is wrong."

"Like, th- sh- infected?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

Lina knows it doesn't make sense. There's no such thing as halfway infected -- either you're alive, you're dead, or you're undead. And if you're not alive, you're not talking and using fine motor skills. Even the freshest zombie is too far gone for that. Kira's doubtful expression shows she knows it, too.

"Look, I'm not imagining things. I'm not stupid!" Lina says with a glare.

"I didn't say --"

"I'm not just some Hollywood airhead. You remember how things went with Mike? I have good intuition, okay? And my gut's telling me something is wrong."

"Yeah. I remember," Kira says darkly, looking away.

"Just be careful around this -- Just be careful."

They continue their chores in silence.