Free Lives We Lost,The by Megan Crewe Page B

soldiers at the border,” Leo said. “As soon as a few of them got the virus, most of them deserted.”
I wasn’t surprised, after seeing how the soldiers who’d been supposed to enforce the quarantine had run off, but his words made me colder. We really were alone in this.
“Vaccine,” Gav said, sliding the cold box to me. I placed it carefully in the middle of my sled and then went to the front of the truck to grab the map book.
“There are a bunch of little towns down the road, one every few miles,” I said after I’d flipped to the area we’d stopped in. “Maybe we won’t even need to camp outside.”
“I won’t argue with that,” Gav said. He came around and slid his arm around my waist. “Ready?” he asked softly.
“Yeah,” I said, despite the nervous thudding of my heart. He hugged me close, a silent reassurance: We can do this. We will make it. I leaned my head against his shoulder, allowing myself a second’s comfort. Any lingering bits of guilt I’d felt over Leo’s kiss melted away. All that mattered was getting through this, and I was so, so thankful I had Gav with me while we did.
Leo slid down off the roof onto the dumpster, and then to the ground, rejoining us. “Whatever they’re thinking of pulling on us, they’re taking their time,” he said. “Let’s not give them any more.”
We marched up the ramp to the freeway, hauling the sleds. It was a lot harder to pull one that was loaded down. My arm was already starting to ache when we reached the freeway. One side of the road was heaped with snow, the other covered with windswept ice. We kept to the latter, the sleds scraping along behind us, leaving no trail.
After a few minutes, we left behind the last of the town’s buildings, pines and spruces springing up in their place. Leo twisted his sled’s rope one way and another, and finally stepped inside it to let his waist take the weight. Before long, the rest of us had followed suit. It took some time to get used to, but after a while I was pulling the sled along like I’d been doing it my whole life.
Meredith strode beside me, her lighter sled veering a little to bump into mine, her chin tipped up and her face set in the most incredible expression of determination. As if she’d decided she was going to walk all the way to Ottawa in one go. The twin braids I’d twisted her hair into the night before swayed where they poked from beneath her tasseled hat.
Beyond the road, I couldn’t make out a single building now. If not for the freeway and the occasional mile marker, we could have been explorers lost in some vast wilderness. The breeze licked under the back of my scarf, and I shivered.
Before the epidemic, I used to imagine wandering off the beaten track with nothing but some camping gear and a few notebooks, to watch the wildlife away from human activity. But it had never felt this lonely in my imagination. Maybe because back then, I’d always have known there was a town with running water and electricity and people who’d actually be happy to see me no more than a few days hike away.
If squirrels and raccoons could manage to survive weather like this every year, we could too, I told myself.
“You made it most of the way back to the island on foot, right?” Gav said to Leo, after we’d been on the road about an hour. Leo nodded.
“After the border,” he said. “There was hardly any snow then, but it still wasn’t a lot of fun. I didn’t have camping gear or a good stash of food like we do, though.”
Meredith peered at him with open curiosity. “How did you do it, then?” she asked.
“Mere,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Leo said. He laughed awkwardly. “I guess it was luck. And all those hunting trips my dad dragged me on—I knew how to make a fire, catch things to eat. And just not giving up.”
“Look,” Tessa said, breaking in. “I think there’s a car.”
There was: a gray minivan stranded in a drift of snow by the shoulder of the freeway, the glint of its