red hill - jamie mcguire

disturbing, and a flood of emotions came over me. What had the girls been doing the day before and
all night Irrational feelings like the fear that they wouldn’t survive if I hadn’t worried about them
every minute of every hour crept into my mind.
Unable to process any more, I rolled Leah into her grave, and grabbed the shovel to fill the hole.
As I covered her with dirt, my hands began to burn and complain from the digging the day before.
Leah lay face down, slowly disappearing beneath the soil. Once I filled one hole, I began to dig
another. I was sure to make Dr. Hayes’s hole a little wider, and a little deeper. I dug until the clay
was too difficult, and then I rolled him into his hole, too. His leg managed to prop, so I had to bend it
so he would lie right.
By noon, I had said a few words about my friends, made myself a sandwich, and found rope,
twine, and Leah’s stash of recycled cans. The plan was to line the perimeter with the cans so if any
shufflers crossed the cans, the noise would be a warning. Not foolproof, but it kept me busy.
Two days passed before I saw the first shuffler. He was only wearing a robe, stumbling down the
road unaccompanied. The barrel of my gun followed him until he was out of sight. Shooting him
crossed my mind, but because I’d seen the shufflers react to the car alarm in Shallot, I was afraid the
noise would attract more. I let him pass, praying my cowardice wasn’t freeing him to attack someone
else down the road.
Every day I watched the road for the girls. To pass the time I cleaned, rearranged, reorganized,
and wrote down how the food and water should be rationed. The girls were coming, and I had to
make sure there were plenty of supplies for them when they arrived, especially the mac and cheese
for Halle, and the double butter popcorn for Jenna.
Day four was depressing. A part of me wanted to believe the girls would come straight to the
ranch, but with each passing day it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t sure why
they hadn’t come. Refusing to entertain the worst scenario, I told myself Andrew was taking his time
to keep our children safe. Still, the waiting was agonizing. Before the outbreak, there was never
enough time. Now, the days dragged on, and I felt more and more alone, wondering if I was the only
person left alive. That led to more uneasy thoughts: If Christy leaving early had helped her and her
daughter Kate find someplace safe, if David and his family were okay, if David had made it out of the
hospital at all. If he was working Mrs. Sisney’s code and she was attacking people outside . . . I
shuddered, shaking the likely scene from my mind, only to think of other, less settling things. My
mother was home alone, and so was my neighbor, Mrs. Chebesky. I wanted to call them to see if they
were all right. I’d tried the doctor’s landline the first evening and every day after, but an automated
response turned into weird, incessant beeps, and then there was no dial tone at all.
The next day, I saw another shuffler. Part of me wanted to use her for target practice, but again I
was afraid the noise would attract others. I hid inside the house and she passed, across the
neighboring field, without event.
A sense of pride swelled inside of me that my theory had been right. The doctor’s ranch was the
perfect place to survive the end of the world. But it wasn’t surviving unless my girls were there with
me. So I watched the road, sometimes looking so hard I could almost see them.
But on Thursday morning, it wasn’t on the road that I saw someone. It was over the hill.