Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley

Author:Robin Wasley [Wasley, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2024-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

They have electricity.

Ian follows my gaze to the rows of fluorescent lighting along the hallway ceiling.

“Mike charged the generator,” he says. A rosy-cheeked blond man, who removed his ski mask upon entering the building, raises his hand to display sparking fingertips connected by a flickering current. I take a couple obvious steps away.

While a guard remains by the door—a slender woman in her twenties who wears dog tags around her neck—Ian beckons us to follow him down the hall. Mike walks beside him. A precaution.

Children’s drawings decorate the walls. Paper mobiles hang from the ceiling, spinning slowly above our heads. Most of the classrooms are empty, but a few are filled with backpacks and clothes, sleeping bags and blankets. And people. A number of people, young and old, sit in circles on the floor, or in the hallway against cubbies and lockers. Some smile as we pass. Yet terror haunts every face.

In the back of one of the rooms we pass, all the furniture—beanbags, bookcases, easels, and tiny desks—has been pushed against the wall, but a pile of winter coats, gloves, and hats sits in the center.

Ian answers before I can ask. “It’s snowing in the south of town where we lived. We wouldn’t have been able to survive there without heat.”

I glance back at Shandy, absorbing our newest obstacle. Matty’s apartment is in the south of town—would he be there?

“Andrew triggered the forest currently overtaking the entire north side,” Ian continues. “Lillian can’t turn off the snow. People panicked. They didn’t know they had powers to control. A lot of people still don’t.”

Hyacinth focuses her gaze on the ground.

But Ian shrugs, indicating the powers are the least of his worries. “We’ve mostly been concerned with finding survivors and keeping them alive. There were a few creatures—zombies—who made their way south, but the cold saved us. It froze them.”

“How did you come to be here?” Shandy asks.

“The first day, we sent a small group farther south to the border, but they couldn’t get out.” Ian pauses, watching our faces, lingering too long on mine, as though I’m the weak link. “We couldn’t stay in the south without heat, so we went door-to-door, gathering any survivors who wanted to leave and as many supplies as we could. We would have searched more neighborhoods, but a truck came through carrying men with guns. They questioned us, asked us where we were going, suggested we wait for their leader. I have no doubt if we hadn’t outnumbered them, it might not have been a suggestion.”

None of us say a word, staring at Ian, not daring to look at one another, even as I feel Angel’s tension, his eyes boring holes into each of us in turn. Ford’s men let Ian and the other survivors go, but they know where they are. More than that, the men were headed south. We’ll be walking into a trap.

There’s no mistaking our ominous silence, but Ian continues. “It took a day and half to get here, and people have been trickling in from other areas.

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