red hill - jamie mcguire

weren’t cracked open, and none of Halle’s drawings were scattered on the table. They had never
come home. They must have been at the town meeting with the governor when the outbreak happened.
They could be trapped inside a shelter with the governor, or Andrew could have run with them. They
could be anywhere.
“Goddamnit,” I said, louder than I’d spoken in hours. “Goddamnit!” I screamed. I picked up
Andrew’s dining room chair and launched it across the room, and then lost my balance, falling to my
knees. “No,” I cried, crumpling into a ball on the floor. I saw their little faces, innocent and
frightened, wondering where I was and if I was safe, just as I was wondering about them. I couldn’t
do this if I wasn’t with them. I needed to see Jenna roll her eyes at me again, and for Halle to interrupt
me. They needed me to tell them that everything would be okay. We couldn’t survive the end of the
world without each other. I didn’t want to. Sobs built up and released with such ferocity that my
entire body shook. Certainly someone would hear me, my screaming and bawling was probably the
only sound that could be heard in the entire godforsaken town.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, letting the guilt and despair wash over me. I leaned over and let my
forehead and arms rest against the carpet; my hands clasped together above my head. Before long,
extreme exhaustion pulled and tugged on my consciousness like I’d never felt before. The sobbing
quieted, and within moments, I fell into a vast sea of darkness. The depths surrounded me on all sides,
and eventually I was swallowed up by it, warm and calm.
Tornado sirens. Odd. I didn’t remember the meteorologist mentioning a storm that morning. It
wasn’t a test. They tested at noon every Thursday, and today was . . . I wasn’t sure what day it was.
The first thing I noticed when my eyes peeled open was baseboard, and the way the carpet was
newer closer to the wall than farther out where people walked. I used to notice those things when I
was a child, when I spent more time on the floor: playing, watching television, being bored. I spent so
much of my childhood on the floor. As an adult, I couldn’t remember the last time I had this view. But
the carpet between my fingers wasn’t mine.
My eyes burned. Tears had washed all of my mascara in and out of my eyes, leaving them dry and
on fire. The second I remembered why I’d been crying, my head popped up, and I took a quick glance
around the dark room. The tornado sirens were blaring. They could be malfunctioning, or there had
been a breach.
On my hands and knees, I quickly made my way to Andrew’s front door. The streets were still
empty, but the sirens continued to wail. The church in Fairview crossed my mind, and I prayed the
sirens would stop. The noise would draw every shuffler for miles.
I pulled open the wooden door, and pressed the side of my face against the glass of the storm door.
My breath blew moist, visible air in quickly disappearing puffs, clouding my view. When I saw the
first person running down the street, intermittently exposed by the street lamps, the breaths became a
single gasp.
She was older, maybe in her fifties, but she was alive. Even from a block away, I could see the
horror in her eyes. A few seconds later two men—one holding a child—and a woman appeared
before they slipped into darkness again. Then five more, and then a dozen. Men, women, and children.
At least fifty had passed before I spotted the first shuffler. I could only make him out because he