Any Sign of Life by Rae Carson

Author:Rae Carson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2021-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

March 27? 28? I’m losing track

I WAKE TO HEAT ON MY FACE AND THE ACRID TANG OF BURNING pine. My neck hurts from being cricked into one position all night, but it feels so good to be warm.

I sit up on the sofa. It’s light outside, but the curtains are drawn, so I have no idea what time it is, and there’s no sound but the crackling fire; I’m all alone in the house. Tanq and Trey must have taken Emmaline outside with them.

My eyelids are still heavy, and it would be the easiest thing to roll over and go back to sleep, but hunger tugs at my belly along with something else, a different kind of emptiness I’m coming to recognize. It’s because the house is so, so quiet, and the smell of decomp is still sharp enough to tug at my nose.

Alone, alone, alone.

I won’t be weak, and I don’t do despair. So I heave myself off the couch and head to the kitchen to find something for breakfast. A peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich sits on the counter, leaking grape jelly through the paper towel it’s wrapped in. Beside it is a sheet of white printer paper, and someone has written in blue ballpoint pen: Eat up. We’re in the barn. T.

“T” could refer to either Tanq or Trey, but somehow I know it’s Trey. His handwriting is neat and spare, beautiful in the way of the simple but perfect furniture in this house.

After shoving down the PB&J, I do my business in the downstairs half-bath, and splash some water on my face. Near the bathroom is a door to the rear yard, and beside it is a small table with a pile of mail. A man’s wallet lies open beside the mail. I grab it, flip to the driver’s license. Kent Williams. Born 1958. Five-foot-ten, one hundred ninety pounds. Brown eyes, gray hair, corrective lenses. “Thanks for putting us up last night, Kent,” I whisper.

I slip the license into Hazel Jenkins’s purse and exit the house via the front door.

Crows line the porch railing, and they barely react to my presence. Cold wind is like a block of ice to my face. Maybe I should go upstairs and face the inevitable corpses—on the chance one of the closets contains a decent coat.

But the barn door is open, and my feet take me forward, toward the comfort of friends.

I’m nearly there when Tanq manifests in the doorway and waves me inside. “We have good news and bad news,” she says.

Emmaline greets me when I enter, trots circles around me while my eyes adjust to the gloom. A squat car stretches before me, like a flat rectangle on wheels. Trey is loading something into the car’s . . . truck bed?

“We have a car,” Tanq says. “It has a full tank and decent tires. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a 1987 Chevy El Camino.”

“Hey!” Trey says. “This car is a classic.”

“A ’69 El Camino is a classic,” Tanq retorts.

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