Please Remain Calm by Courtney Summers Read Free Book Online

there?”
    “Yeah, I think so.”
    “We’re headed that way. We’re not going to Rayford, but we’ll be sharing the same path for a bit.” He pauses. “Nobody’d make it through Fairfield in one piece on luck alone. We were talking while you were out. You can travel with us until you hit Riverside and then we’ll separate. The closer we get to that town the more infected there’s gonna be. Safety in numbers.”
    But he’s not offering out of the goodness of his heart. I think he wants a body if he needs one. That’s okay, because I think I want one too.
    “Who’s we?” I ask.
    He sizes me up again, or maybe he never stopped. Runs his tongue over his teeth and then he says, “Lisa.” There’s movement inside the tent. After a moment, a woman steps out and she’s got long brown hair past her shoulders that makes me think
Sloane
, even though it couldn’t possibly be her
.
My heart gets right in my throat. This woman is in her thirties, younger than the man. She’s fair-skinned with brown eyes. She’s wearing khaki pants and a black vest over a long-sleeve shirt.
    She’s got a kid in her arms.
    It’s a girl, maybe four. The girl’s hair is a mess of brown curls, fat little body in an outfit that mirrors her mother’s. Her head rests in the crook of Lisa’s neck and she stares at me with the palest blue eyes. I have never seen a more desperate symbol of hope since the world ended and I’ve never felt the world more desperate to make a mockery of it.
    The only thing I’ve got inside me for this is horror.
    They have a kid.
    These poor fucking saps.
    “This is my wife, Lisa, and our daughter, Ainsley.”
    Lisa sets Ainsley on the ground, but Ainsley clings close to Lisa’s leg. Her eyes widen as she takes in my face. I remember how beat up I am and it probably gives me all the makings of a monster to someone as small as her. Part of me hopes I’m the only monster she’s met so far.
    “Hi, Rhys,” Lisa says.
    “Hi,” I say and then, to Ainsley. “Hi, there.”
    Ainsley presses her head into Lisa’s thigh.
    “I’m Jess,” the man says.
    Jess.
    They dismantle their campsite, fit it in two bags. Ridiculously efficient. Jess throws me an energy bar and calls it breakfast and tells me I better keep up. I’m more than ready to go. Lisa gets Ainsley ready, tying impossibly tiny shoelaces on impossibly tiny shoes on impossibly tiny feet. The kid is quiet in a way no kid should ever be quiet. She’s already learned.
    “How long you been out here?” Jess asks, hefting his pack onto his shoulders. “There any place she might go back to, if she survived?”
    “A few days,” I say. “And I don’t think so. We were just running.”
    “You’ve only been out in this for a few days?”
    “I told you. We were in a school like from a week after it started.”
    “So you found shelter,” he says. “You have food there? Water?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And you left. Why the hell would you do that?”
    “Just stupid, I guess,” I mutter, feeling it. “What, you been camping this whole time?”
    He laughs a little. “Sure.”
    “And how’s that better than leaving a school?”
    “We’re headed somewhere safe,” he says, looking a little too proud. Or maybe I’m just jealous. “But unlike you, we’re not going to leave when we get there.”
    “We should go,” Lisa says abruptly. “We’ve been here long enough.”
    “Right,” Jess says. “I just want to make a few things clear to our add-on here.” I bite back the urge to ask him if he’s sure he’s not the one joining me. “I lead. Once we get moving, we’re quiet. Don’t speak unless you have to. You see infected, don’t make a fucking sound. This isn’t a Romero movie. We don’t fight unless we have to. We don’t engage. They’re too fast. We find a different way around. The only time you get close is when you’ve got no choice.”
    “Got it.”
    “Good.”
    “Give him something,” Lisa says.
    Jess looks at her. “We