Free Please Remain Calm by Courtney Summers

say.
    “It’s a cabin. It was over a decade in the making. Dead ain’t going to get through it. Reinforced doors and windows. There’s a safe room and a storage room with—well, we got close to five years’ worth of canned and dehydrated and freeze-dried food there, not accounting for any spoilage that might’ve happened since we last did inventory. Medical supplies. It was built to be self-sustaining too. We’ve been working our way to it for the last four weeks. It’s closer to us than you know.”
    My stomach turns. “Where will you be?”
    “Hopefully there with you.”
    “What about Rayford?”
    “Rayford is bullshit,” he says. “Every safe haven I’ve seen from Milhaven to here has fallen. I’m giving you the goddamn golden ticket, Rhys. Don’t be too stupid to take it.”
    “What’s the catch?”
    “If something happens to me, you make sure Ainsley gets there too.”
    Jesus. I think I miss Lisa more than all of them now. I stare at the back of Ainsley’s head, her curls, and try to imagine being responsible for her. Just her and me, out here, trying to get through the woods to the cabin and then after that, what? I’ve been with these people for less than five days and I’m looking at possible guardianship of a four-year-old and everything inside me is telling me to drop my pack and run. Everything. But then I see Jess’s face, and it’s so desperate and broken, I can’t. This guy pulled me out of the river. Saved my life.
    “Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I say.
    He cracks a small smile. “Well, it wasn’t going to before you said that.” And then the smile disappears. “If you have to, you’ll do it. You saved her once and she trusts you. I can tell. You’ll do it.”
    “Yeah,” I say. Christ. “I’ll do it.”
    But every step forward is me thinking how I can take every step back. We walk until the trees start to thin and that makes me uneasy. I can see the river to the left of us and to the right, the ground rises and seems to flatten out.
    “That a road?” I ask.
    “Yeah. Old road. Not maintained,” Jess says. “But that doesn’t mean no one’s been using it or died on it. Riverside’s close enough and that’s why we’re seeing more infected now. That’s why we got to be careful.”
    Another mile, and another. Sweat breaks out all over my body. I shrug the pack farther up my aching shoulders. Ainsley starts lagging and Jess doesn’t seem to notice, but I’m afraid to ask for a break because there’s an energy coming off him that I understand and I don’t want to get in the way of. He’s found some kind of inner balance to keep him moving forward. I bet all his thoughts are lined up neat, one right after the other—get his kid to safety, get there alive—and any interruption could ruin him. If that happens, I won’t know how to pick up the pieces.
    And then Jess says, “Fuck,” and Lisa’s not there to tell him to watch his mouth.
    We stop. There’s an RV crumpled against two trees. The front is smashed, must’ve hit them hard. There’s only a crack in the windshield, though. There are blood streaks on the side of its tan exterior, like someone was hurt and dragged themselves away. The blood stops at the entry door, which hangs open and still, before starting up again. I glimpse a bit of the interior from here.
    “Check it out.” Jess draws his gun. “See if there’s anything worth scavenging. If it’s empty, we could spend the night here.”
    We circle the RV slowly and it and the surrounding area seem safe, for now. No signs of trouble. We’re just about to explore the inside when Ainsley frantically tugs on her father’s hand. She’s got to go to the bathroom. He nods at her.
    “Take a look inside,” he tells me.
    I face the entry, which is too narrow for me to get through with the pack. I set it down on the ground and get my knife out but I don’t think we’ll find anything. Any infected would’ve made themselves known by now. I