Page 49 of What Remains

Seth followed his gaze upward but said nothing. He didn't need to. The cold had settled into his body weeks ago, blending with fatigue and grief into something he carried everywhere now, something that never quite let go.

Then Jay's eyes landed on the corpse.

The infected lay exactly where Seth had dropped it the night before, half-frozen, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles, one hand still reaching upward.

Seth forced himself to hold his gaze on it. Someone had laced the shoes—double-knotted, the way you'd do for a child or a long walk—and that small, careful act was the thing he couldn't get past. A tremor slid through him; he couldn't say whether the cold caused it.

Josie and Layla remained inside the SUV. Josie hadn't allowed the little girl to step outside this morning, not with the corpse so close, and she'd pulled the sunshade down so Layla wouldn't accidentally glimpse it. The girl sat tucked beneath a blanket with her crayons and notebook, blissfully unaware of what lay twenty feet from her window.

Good call, Seth thought. Layla didn't need new nightmares. God knew she carried enough old ones.

"She doing alright?" Jay asked, his voice low as he nodded toward the SUV.

Seth gave a noncommittal gesture, though his jaw tightened. "Josie said she's fine. Didn't see anything." He exhaled slowly, watching his breath dissolve into the gray air. "Doesn't mean she's okay."

Jay just nodded, his own gaze drifting toward the SUV.

Cara emerged from the second SUV, zipping her jacket against the wind, her bow slung across her shoulder. She glanced at the corpse and grimaced. "We leaving it there?"

"Not worth the risk," Jay said. "We don't know how long the virus stays active after death."

Seth cleared his throat, the memory of last night pressing forward. "When I shot it... it didn't seem infected at first. It moved slowly, confused. Almost like it had already started dying on its own."

Cara tilted her head. "Then why was it still moving?"

Seth turned the thought over as he spoke. "Or different stages of infection. Some stay upright longer, some don't."

Jay frowned, working through it. "Maybe the ones who turn fast burn out fast."

"And maybe the ones who linger have bodies fighting a losing battle," Seth added. "Compromised, but not gone."

The theories hung in the frigid air, unsubstantiated and useless—words thrown at a problem they couldn't see, a search for patterns in the chaos.

A gust of frigid wind whipped through the clearing, rattling the bare branches and making the corpse's sleeve flutter. Inside the SUV, Layla laughed at something on her notepad, and Seth found himself staring at her through the windshield for a moment too long.

"We should move," he finally said. "If the snow hits before we're on the highway, we'll lose half a day."

Jay nodded. “Lets Break camp."

Cara headed for her SUV while Jay rounded the front of the lead vehicle to warm the engine. Seth lingered, his gaze fixed on the double-knotted shoelaces. That small, human detail offered no answers, only a quiet, unnerving silence.

Behind him, the SUV door opened. Josie climbed out, pulling her coat tight against the wind. Her eyes flicked immediately to Seth, then to the corpse, then back to him again.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he answered—a reflexive lie, worn smooth from use.

She didn't press. She simply stood beside him for a quiet moment, close enough that he could hear her breathing, both of them watching the gray sky lower itself over the world.

"Let's get moving," she said at last.

He nodded and started toward the vehicles. Behind them, the dead thing lay motionless in the frost, its clouded eyes fixed on a sky that no longer held any meaning for it, while the storm rolled steadily closer.

They pulled back onto the highway with Jay and Cara leading in the first SUV, their taillights glowing faintly through the gray morning. The lights occasionally vanished behind curtains of blowing snow before flickering back into view. The storm hadn't quite reached them, but the wind carried its promise in every gust.

Inside the second SUV, silence settled between Seth and Josie—not uncomfortable, just unfinished. The tires rumbled over cracked pavement while Layla sat in the backseat, coloring with the fierce concentration only children seemed capable of summoning.

Seth kept one hand loose on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.