Please Remain Calm by Courtney Summers Read Free Book Online Page A

just met him and you want to arm him?”
    “Give him something you can shoot out of his hands then.” She rolls her eyes. “You don’t want that to be the difference out here, do you?”
    He has to think about that, thinks about it too long. Makes me impatient. I say, “I just want to find Sloane. That’s all. I’m not going to make trouble for you.”
    “That remains to be seen.” He goes into his pack. “You put any of my family in danger and the dead will be the least of your worries. Understood?”
    “Understood,” I say.
    He hands me a hunting knife.

 
    We walk for hours, through the trees, quietly following the river just beyond them—my eyes seeking but never finding Sloane—when my body starts quitting on me. My first real workout in a long time. Brief moments of running from the dead don’t count. All those weeks in the school sitting on my ass and doing nothing are catching up with me. My feet are blistered. My muscles and my joints burn. My head is killing me. Every battered part of me complains and it’s nauseating. I don’t say anything when my gut starts to revolt, I just end up hunched over beside a birch tree, barfing up the food I was so glad to have.
    “You damned fool,” Jess says over the sound of my retching, and I hope, dimly, that Sloane made it out of the water in better shape than I did, which is quickly followed by the thought she might not have made it out at all, and I heave again. “Say something if you feel like that.”
    I straighten, shaking all over. “You told me we had to be quiet.”
    “Fool,” he repeats and Lisa says,
go easy.
“Fine. Break.”
    “We need one too anyway,” she says and I decide to like Lisa.
    I sit away from my puddle of vomit, and rest my chin in my hands. Jess nudges me a second later, with his canteen. I take it from him and drink. Rub my forehead. I’m sweaty too, and it’s not exactly warm out. I stare down at myself, my shitty post-river clothes and my running shoes that haven’t felt right since I put them on. The only thing that feels sure about me is the knife but I don’t want to get close enough to an infected to test that out. Jess and Lisa, every time I look at them, they make more and less sense. Lisa takes Ainsley a few feet away from us so they can both go to the bathroom. I turn my head. It’s all so close and it can’t be any other way. Jess keeps watch, a rigidness about him that should be about me, but I can’t seem to make it happen.
    “Where were you before?” I ask.
    “Milhaven,” he says.
    Milhaven’s a city. I’m not exactly sure how far it is but I know it’s far, because whenever Milhaven managed to make itself part of any conversation, you could hear its distance in the tone of the person talking about it. Milhaven. Far enough to be a getaway, maybe, if you were desperate for one.
    “You been making your way from Milhaven to wherever on foot?”
    “We’ve been moving since it started. We had a vehicle for a while and then we didn’t,” he says. “Won’t try for one of those again. Staying on roads is trouble. We went deeper into the woods and we run into a lot less of it now.” Lisa and Ainsley come back. “You about ready?”
    “Uh.” I get to my feet slowly. “Yeah …”
    “No, he’s not,” Lisa says. “Look at him. He’s exhausted. We need to fill up on water, anyway, and Ainsley’s getting pretty tired.”
    “You tired?” Jess asks her. Ainsley stares at her father and, after a long moment of thinking about it, nods. That’s the deciding factor. Not the concussed boy, but the toddler who probably doesn’t even really know what she’s been asked. I don’t know. I don’t know shit about kids. Jess turns to Lisa. “You got an hour. We’re not setting up here for the night. We can get a little farther.”
    Lisa nods. “That’s fine.”
    I sit back down and I miss my bed. Jess circles us, checking the area, cocking his head, listening. The river’s still audible, a constant