Free Madelyn's Nephew by Ike Hamill Page A

and then vanished.”
    “So they got her? The Roamers?”
    Jacob shrugged again. “I wasn’t there, but some people said no. There was no hair left behind. She was just gone.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “I know.”
    “So your sister went to talk to the Civi, and when she came out she had Desperation?”
    “That’s one explanation.”
    “But not the one you believe.”
    Jacob shook his head. “No. I think that whatever she found out in there was so disturbing that she knew we all had to disperse. Dad was clear when he instructed her. He said, ‘Come back no matter what. If there’s danger, you give me the nod and I’ll evacuate.’ So the only reason she would have turned away is because time was critical. That’s what I told my dad.”
    “You guys left immediately.”
    “Yeah. We were all packed up and we ran to try to catch up with Abigail. One of the bachelors from Four—a guy named Christian—was attacking people. He was trying to cut their legs with his machete. Dad tried to stay to fight him, but I made him go for Abigail. It turned out that it didn’t matter. We never found any sign of her.”
    “You got away.”
    “Yeah. Probably because of Christian. A lot of people who escaped from our base were limping and bleeding. They drew the most attention. Dad and I circled the Civi and searched. There was no way to track her. We went the same direction she had turned, but there was no way of telling where she went.”  
    Jacob looked down at his feet.
    “When the limping people started to catch up, we couldn’t search anymore. They were closing on us so fast. We would have been taken. Our best hope was that she had already crossed the bridge. When we didn’t find any sign of her on the other side, we knew we couldn’t go back. Nobody survived on the other side of the bridge.”
    “I’m so sorry,” Madelyn said. She reached out to touch his arm. He pulled away.
    “We stayed for a few days. We tried to help anyone who made it across the bridge. There were a couple of stragglers, but they didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Everything was gone so quickly. The whole society collapsed and we didn’t even know why. In our base, it was just panic.”
    “You never met anyone from one of the other bases?”
    “There was one old man. Dad said he was crazy.”
    “What did he say?” Madelyn asked.
    Jacob changed the subject. “We went north, into the summer. We walked on the sea trails to the Jan Mayen ridge. We moved fast through the old cities of the micro continent. They’re filled with crazies. They worship the volcano, and they’ll throw you in if they catch you. After we walked the Green Ice Valley, we turned north again and went right towards the sun. There are less of them up there, but you can’t live there. It’s too hot, and there’s almost no way to get water. I wanted to try going south to see if the infestation had abated. Dad said we should come here. He said that even if his grandmother’s place was uninhabitable, it would be a fine place to die.”
    Madelyn nodded and smiled. “That’s the last thing I said to him before I came.”
    Jacob smiled back.
    “I still don’t understand how you survived,” Madelyn said. “You walked halfway around the world.”
    “Walking is easy,” Jacob said. “We traveled under the sun. Eventually, you get used to it. Until we came back up into the scrub, I had almost forgotten about them. I mean, they’re always in the back of your head, but they didn’t seem like that much of a threat. Even then, they only really seemed to care about groups anymore.”
    “You said that before. Did you see them go after a group?”
    “Yeah. South of Beaufort there is a town called Deadhorse. They had a festival. I guess they’ve been doing it for years.”
    “A festival? That’s bold.”
    “They’ve always had it, they said. They had it before everything.”
    “And they kept it going?”
    “They said it’s how they