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Varesh pulled a knife from his pocket and slashed the shrink wrap on the closest pallet. “How long do you think it’s going to take?” he asked, picking up a flattened moving box.

I approached the pallet beside his and held my hand out for the knife. “For the road to clear?”

He passed it over and nodded.

I cut the plastic on a stack of removal blankets and handed it back to him. “I think we’re here for the night, given the way it’s looking out there.”

Varesh hummed thoughtfully. “That was my worry, too.”

The blankets were thin, so I pulled more than we might need from the stack.

“At least Theo’s dad’s property will be worth the wait,” he went on, “especially if you like olives.”

With a smile, I took the blankets over to the door and left them with the water.

“I don’t,” I said, “like olives, that is—but I’m about to sleep on a moving box, so sometimes you just take what you can get.”

Varesh tucked his knife into his pocket, eyes gleaming behind his glasses. “Between the four of us, we’ll make it tolerable.”

“Oh, I’m sure your husband will provide ample entertainment.”

He smiled, his gaze warm with affection. “Like Marilyn Monroe entertaining the troops.”

I laughed at the image.

We finished loading our arms with cardboard and blankets, and when we were done, I grabbed the bottled water and reached for the door.

Twenty-Nine

ava

Footsteps thudded deeper in the building, then a door closed, leaving us with the patter of rain on the glass and the screams outside.

I stood at the window, worrying my lower lip, thoughts splitting in too many directions.

Nothing had improved out on the street. Cars were still stuck where they’d stopped, and doors were left wide open after panicked people fled. A lone infected stumbled between bumpers, slowing and dragging its face across a driver’s window before continuing on its path.

More bodies lay on the ground, half under cars or draped over bonnets. Lifeless for now, but maybe not for long.

This morning, they were trying to escape, heading somewhere they hoped would be safer. Now the industrial estate had become a cemetery.

“What are you looking at out there?” Tim asked.

“Nothing much.” I relaxed my features as I turned to him. “Just staring and thinking.”

“Overthinking?” He’d commandeered the leather executive chair and draped his arm over the backrest, keeping his other shoulder still.

“You’d know something about that,” I said with a smile. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’m conserving my charm.”

“Your charm’s limitless, Timothy.”

He grinned. The first proper smile I’d seen from him since we left his apartment building. “If only you’d been with us through lockdown,” he said. “We could have made so much trouble together.”

I smiled, picturing the past year with Sadie and her friends instead of alone on the other side of the world. “It would have been easier than moving from one place to another while I waited for my flight home.”

The uncertainty had been the worst part, along with the underlying fear that I’d never make it back at all.