The Worlds We Make by Megan Crewe Read Free Book Online

useful. But let’s get the gas first—that’s what’s most important.”
    “And we don’t know when the homeowner might show up,” Tobias put in.
    “If he doesn’t appreciate the cause, I guess we’ll just have to convince him,” Justin said, waggling the wrench.
    “You and your violent solutions,” Anika said as they hefted a couple of the gas cans.
    “Hey, I know when to back off,” Justin protested. “I haven’t gotten us into any trouble since we left the city. But sometimes you’ve got no choice, right?”
    “I suppose sometimes it’s good to have a man of action around,” Anika said drily, but she aimed a crooked little smile at him that looked almost sincere. When he glanced back at her, his cheeks faintly flushed in the hazy light, the smile vanished so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it, and then she was hurrying out to the SUV.
    Leo picked up a couple cans too. Tobias backed away from the door as we passed. His gaze followed Anika for a moment before he turned back toward the yard.
    We emptied cans into the SUV’s tank until it was full. Then we stacked the extra cans in the trunk. When we were almost done, Justin went to have a look at the garage—to see if he could “crack the code,” he said—and Leo and I made one last trip to the shed.
    Only three cans remained by the wall. The space looked horribly empty. Without meaning to, I imagined the owner coming back from his hunting trip and finding his stash gone. The anger and panic he’d feel. I tensed.
    “Hey,” Leo said, lowering his flashlight. “We can always leave the last few.”
    I didn’t mean to say what I was thinking, but the words slipped out. “Gav would have.”
    “Yeah,” Leo said. “I bet he would.”
    “They’ll get us that much closer to Atlanta,” I said. And wherever we might have to go after, if it turned out the CDC was a dead end. “Maybe this guy’s got an even bigger stash in the garage. He’d probably take everything we have if our positions were reversed.”
    “That doesn’t mean we have to,” Leo said. “It’s your decision, Kaelyn. We’re with you either way.”
    I knew he meant it. But at the same time, there was a rawness in his voice that took me back to the time a couple weeks ago when he’d confessed how he’d stolen from and abandoned friends, people who’d tried to help him, to make it back to the island alive. When he’d admitted he no longer believed he was a good person, and how much that horrified him.
    Back then, I’d told him I still thought most people would do the right thing, if they were given a real chance. I’d wanted him to believe that, to believe in me. Remembering that made a sickly heat rise in my chest. Maybe before, I’d have left a few cans for a person I didn’t know.
    Maybe if I’d been a little more callous before, a little less naive, Gav would still be alive.
    Good and bad didn’t apply here. It was about surviving or ending up dead.
    “We take all of it,” I said firmly. In that instant, Leo’s gaze flickered, in a way that sent an anxious twinge through my chest. But he nodded and reached for the remaining cans.
    He understood, I told myself as I grabbed the last one. He had to.
    On our newly filled tank, we wove through the back roads until the brownish haze of the dawn lit the horizon. Time to hole up for the day. I picked the house: a three-story Victorian positioned like a fort on a small hill. The thought of the view from the windows, overlooking the road and the fields and forestland beyond its long backyard, made me feel a little more secure.
    As before, we didn’t park at our chosen hideout, but a few homes down. We crossed the backyard there, tramped to the house on the hill through the forest where our path would be hard to spot, and then set up camp in the Victorian’s living room. After our hurried dinner, I stepped out to repack the cold box with snow. My scooping mittens uncovered tufts of yellow grass.
    The snow was starting