by Tracey Ward
Syd looks from Alissa to me, then avoids both our eyes.
“I’ll be over here,” he mutters.
“Wow,” I say once he’s out of earshot. “He slept with your teacher?”
“Banged her, Jordan. He banged my teacher.”
“That word brings up a much more graphic image of your dad than I can cope with. Can you not keep saying that?”
“Prude.”
“Crude.”
Alissa chuckles.
I’m put on edge by how good it feels just talking to her. Joking around with her. It feels normal and fun, the way it did when we first met and the world fell apart around us. When all we had was each other. I wish I could change it all. Take it all back, every harsh word and tone I’ve used in the last few weeks. But life isn’t like that. You can’t undo what’s already been done. You can only try to do better in the future.
“Ali, I’m sorry,” I say softly.
She shakes her head. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Cause then I have to apologize too and I hate admitting I’m wrong.”
I smile. “What sins do you need to confess?”
“I think the worst one is always making you break your rules for me.” She looks at me earnestly. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. I don’t want you to go in there for my sake, no matter what we promised each other. Dad and I could go in, get my medications, get some rest so I’m me again and then we could find you.”
My smile fades. “Ali, wherever I would go from here without you guys, you wouldn’t be able to find me again. No one would. That’d be the point.”
“Ugh,” she groans, dropping her head against my chest. I drape my arms over her shoulders loosely. “I don’t want you to go in there for me but I don’t want you to go away either.”
“You want me to want to go in there.”
“Yes.”
“Ali?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to go in there.”
“I know.”
“But I don’t want to leave you either.”
I feel her sigh heavily, her shoulders lifting the weight of my arms up and down with her breath.
“So what do we do?”
I sigh as well. I already know what I’m going to do. I can fight it as hard as I like, I can dig my heels in deep and kick and scream till I’m hoarse, I can hate it with my whole heart, but it won’t change anything. It won’t change what I know through and through to my marrow. What I’ve known since the night in the storage aisle when I wrapped her pinky around mine and swore to her that I’d stay with her. No matter what.
“My mom has a gluten allergy,” I tell her.
She lifts her head from my chest, her face confused. “I’m sorry to hear that?”
“She can’t eat anything with gluten in it. Suck thing is, everything on God’s green earth has gluten. It’s really annoying. She hates it but what are you going to do?”
“Not eat gluten?”
“Right, yeah. So that’s what she does. She avoids it. Drives her crazy. My dad hates it too, but that’s what they have to do. They avoid it like the plague.”
“Wait? Your dad has the same allergy?”
“Nope. He avoids it anyway.”
Alissa smiles. “He does it for her.”
I nod. “Because he loves her and he made a promise to her, for better or worse.”
“Gluten or no.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re going in there even though you don’t want to, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I tell her quietly, looking down into her brilliant, bright eyes. “I’m doing it for you. Because I made you a promise.”
Her brow pinches. “But I don’t want you to go just f—“
“This is my gluten, Ali. I don’t want to go in there, I don’t want to give up gluteny goodness, but I’ll do it because I love you.”
She stares at me in shock. My heart has stopped in my chest. I didn’t mean to say those words. It’s not that I don’t mean them, but I definitely didn’t intend to say them.
“So let it go,” I tell her quickly, moving us past this heavy, awkward moment. “I’m doing it. Just know this – I reserve the right to piss and moan about it every step of the way.”
She grins at me, her eyes glistening in the firelight. “You do what you gotta do.”
“Alright.”
“So we’re going?” Syd asks from behind the camper.
“Dad, are you kidding me?” Alissa cries. She rounds the back bumper of the RV to glare at him in the dark. “Have you been listening the entire time?”
“Yes,” he says shamelessly.
“You’re insane.”
“But we’re going. That’s good news. I didn’t have to break any arms.”
When he steps out of the shadows, he’s smiling.
“The saying is ‘Twist any arms’.”
“What saying?”
“Insane,” she repeats.
“Regardless, let’s get some shut eye. I’ll take first watch. We’ll do short 4 hours just for the night.”
“You guys want to do bathroom breaks first?” Alissa asks. She’s still glaring at her dad but she’s also down to business, pulling a roll of TP out of her bag.
“Yeah, we’ll be quick,” I tell her.
Syd and I head out toward our campsite’s designated Business Bushes. We fall into step together in silence, me with my handy hatchet and a roll of TP, him with his gun. He heard what I said but he stays silent on the topic. I’m sure he has all sorts of thoughts and opinions about me, my feelings toward Alissa, her feelings towards me, the physical representations of those feelings. But he doesn’t say a word about any of them. His silence is insanely golden.
I tell Syd where I’m going to go, make my awkward temporary farewell to him and drop anchor behind a row of bushes. I’m crouching down, pants around my ankles, whistling the theme song to SpongeBob (we all have our bathroom rituals, respect mine) when I hear a rustling behind me. It could be a bird, it could be a squirrel, it could be Bambi. Hell, it could be a Deliverance style yokel but odds are firmly in favor that it’s a zombie.
I reach for my hatchet, cursing myself for putting it down in the first place, but my pants weren’t going to unzip themselves. I spin on my heels to face the noise. I have just enough time to see him coming. Just enough heads up to get in position for him to burst through the bushes and launch himself at me. The good news is that I’m low to the ground, crouched into a ball, and most of me isn’t out there for the taking, begging to get bit. He almost flies over me, but he grabs onto me at the last second. We both go tumbling back, landing in the small clearing outside my makeshift commode where my head hits the compact dirt hard. I see stars flare out across my eyes, blotting out the tree tops swaying over the night sky. I blink furiously, the skin of my palm slippery with fear sweat as it holds tight to the hatchet.
“Syd!” I cry out.
I hear his feet immediately pound toward me and I know he’ll be here any second.
He may as well be on the other side of the moon.
The infected has recovered before me because he didn’t hit his head, he isn’t relying on sight in this darkness and he just doesn’t care. Not about anything other than me and my flesh. I hear him scuttle over the sticks and leaves on the forest floor between us, closing the gap that was never big enough. My eyes are adjusting. I’m groaning and trying to rise or run or roll, but it doesn’t matter. He gets ahold of me anyway.
As he grabs my hand, his fever hot skin grinding against mine and his grip like steel shackles on my wrist, I know the score. I know I’m going to die here like this, lying on my back still half blind with my pants pinned to my shins and my junk exposed to the world. It’s not dignified and it’s not right, not by a long shot. I’ve come so far and to go out now like this? What the hell kind of justice is that?
In an instant I’m burning with rage, growing hotter than the infected S
OB drooling on my hand. I know that I’m not dead yet, I’m not done and I will do whatever it takes to keep it that way. I cry out when he sinks his teeth into my hand, but it’s not with pain. It’s anger, pure and simple. I let it take the wheel. My arm, my free arm with my sharpened blade, is already making an arc across my body. I close my eyes and picture Ali by the firelight. Then I do as she told me.
I do what I’ve gotta do.
Chapter Fifteen
“Al! We got a problem! Get out here!”
I hear the door to the RV bang open, feet pounding across the dry earth. My hearing is crystal clear for a moment, my sight spot on and crazy sharp. The stars in the sky are poking through the clouds, shining down right into my eyes. I can feel their heat. I wince against the light. Then it’s fuzzy again. Underwater and weird. The stars go from white to yellow to red. I hear voices but I can’t understand what they’re saying. It sounds like Syd and maybe like Ali, but both of them are in slow motion, their voices too low or strange to make sense.
My body is slammed onto the ground and I open my eyes wide in shock.
“—happened? Is he alright?” Ali asks, her voice becoming high and strained.
“No. He’s been bitten.”
“What?!”
I struggle to look at her, to find her with my eyes to show her I’m okay, but I can’t focus. The second I find her face it blossoms into three and I lose it again.
“No, no, no, no.” She’s chanting nearby but I still can’t see her. I think she’s holding onto my hand. I can feel a tugging on it. It’s too hot. I want to tell her to let go but I can’t find my tongue to make it work.
“Al, look at me,” Syd says sharply. “He’s been bit and he’s in shock. We need to stop the bleeding now.”
Alissa says something that I can’t understand. I start slipping again, the world fading out. There’s silence for a while. It could be a minute. It could be an hour.
“I need you—me the skill—off the fire.”
“Are y—can’t—pain.”
“Now.”
There’s silence again. I begin to float into darkness, which is alright. The heat on my hand is gone and I’m grateful. All I want to do is sleep. I’ll sleep it off and wake up in the morning to try again. Reset. Reboot. Retry.
“Look away, Al,” Syd says loud and clear.
I wonder briefly if he’s talking about me. Are my pants still down?
Then I’m screaming. Whether in my head or in the world I don’t know but the pain is so strong I can’t begin to care. I just need to find a way to escape it. To let it out of me or run away. My hand is burning again, way worse than before. I thrash wildly, trying to pull it away from the heat, but I’m trapped. A weight drapes across me, a sweet smelling, softness that pins me to the ground and lets my body burn into agonizing ash. My breath runs out and the screaming stops though the pain carries on. I’m whimpering, trying to pull in air to scream again but I can’t find it. My throat has closed off and my brain is hitting eject over and over and over. Why am I still conscious?!
“What now?” Alissa asks, her mouth near my face. Her body is still pressed heavily over mine.
If she’s talking to me, I don’t know what to tell her. I’m thinking the sweet release of death wouldn’t be so bad right about now. The pain pulls back for a moment, allowing me to get a breath in. I’m going to ask her what happened, how to stop the pain, but then it rolls back in, slamming against me and destroying my mind. I let my head roll to the side and I vomit, hoping some of the agony goes with it.
Alissa lifts herself off me to roll me to my side. I vomit again, harder this time, but at least I’m not going to choke on it now. I finally feel my mind begin to slip again. I lie perfectly still, willing it to tap out. For the dark to take me.
“Now,” Syd says solemnly, “we wait.”
***
The last thing I knew when I passed out was pain and it’s the first thing I experience when I wake up. I try my hardest to go back under, to pass out again and run away from the hot agony in my hand. It’s no use. The harder I try, the more awake I become and the more pain I feel. As far as I can tell, I’m clenching burning hot embers in my right hand. I start to groan and writhe as I come to. I can tell from the smell and sounds that I’m in the camper. We’re on the move. I find it odd that we’re leaving our spot. It’s something we agreed we wouldn’t do until late the next day. Unless I’m Rip Van Winkle, I haven’t been passed out long enough for it to be that late.
“Jordan?” I hear Alissa call from far off. She must be sitting up front. “Are you awake?”
I try to answer but it comes out garbled and incoherent. My mouth is a barren desert, my tongue sticking to the insides of my cheeks.
“Hey,” Alissa says softly.
I feel the cool skin of the back of her hand drift across my sweating forehead. It’s heaven. I try to open my eyes or form words to tell her how good that feels but nothing is coming easy. As I become more aware of my body, I’m noticing more aches and pains than the fire in my palm. My entire body is clammy and I feel sick to my stomach like I have the flu. I struggle to remember the last thing I ate but I can’t think of it.
“Here. It’s water. Drink it slowly if you can, alright?”
The thin plastic of a straw touches my lips. I peel them apart painfully. They’re chapped and bleeding and when I form them around the straw, I feel them crack. I suck in the lukewarm water and nearly vomit on the spot. I start to cough, the water cascading out of my mouth, spilling down my chin and spraying out in front of me. I probably just drenched Alissa in spit but she’s dabbing up the water off my incompetent face like nothing happened. I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t so worried about dying.
“Wh—“ I try to ask. I lick my lips and taste copper. “What’s wr—“
“What’s wrong?” she supplies, trying to save me the unbearable effort of speaking through my parched throat.
I nod.
“We’re worried you’re forming an infection.”
“Considering the circumstances,” Syd calls quietly from up front, “there’s no way you wouldn’t be.”
My eyes finally manage to open. It’s dark in here. It must still be night outside. I can see Alissa’s outline kneeling beside me on the bench seat. I struggle to make her clear.
“The Fever?” I croak, panic welling in my chest. They need to kill me now. Why am I still with them? They can’t cure this!
“No, not The Fever,” she answers quickly, pressing her hand lightly on my chest. “You were bitten but you don’t have The Fever. I promise you. We waited it out to see if you’d get it but you didn’t.” She smiles at me. It’s beautiful but it’s strained. “You survived, Jordan.”
“How?”
Her smile falters. She casts a glance at Syd. “You don’t remember?”
I shake my head, swallowing hard. “No.”
“Alright.” She takes a shaky break but looks me in the eyes. She’s in focus now, acutely and painfully. I can see every crease of worry. Every pinch of concern. “An infected attacked you in the woods. He bit you on the hand. You—you saved yourself by removing the hand.”
Removing the hand. Like taking off a hat or shedding a coat when it gets too warm. It sounds so simple. So sensible. Logical. It was bitten and infected. Time to take it off.
But unlike a hat or a coat, you can’t put it back on.
I don’t look at it. I already know, I don’t need to see it. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing I need right now. The absolute pure hellfire radiating from that hand, a hand that doesn’t actually exist anymore, is confirmation enough that she’s telling the truth. And why would she lie? No, I know it’s true. I’m starting to remember it now. Bits and pieces, flashes and memories, all of them leading up to a crowning moment that I can’t quite reach. I can’t relive it, not yet. Maybe not ever.
My body begins to tremble uncontrollably.
“I’m so sorry, Jordan,” Alissa says, taki
ng my existing hand in hers.
I nod my head, feeling my throat closing off and my eyes sting with tears. I’ve lost my hand. Now I’m about to lose my dignity because I’m going to start crying. I don’t know if Alissa sees it or senses it, but when I look at her again she’s beat me to it. Tears are falling down her face like rain. A shuddering whimper escapes her lips.
“Ali?”
“I’m so sorry!” she cries. “It’s just so—“
“I know,” I reply, squeezing her hand. Tears fill my eyes, blurring my vision again. “It’ll be worse than before. Without my hand I’ll be nearly useless and—“
“Fuck your hand!”
I blink. “What?”
She throws herself onto me, covering my feverish body with her own. She’s holding onto me so hard it hurts. Her body shudders against mine with each sob.
“You’re alive,” she breathes. “You’re alive. You’re alive. I don’t care if you have one hand or a hundred, Jordan, you’re alive. You’re alive.”
She chants it over and over again as her tears seep into my skin. As her words seep into my mind. Alive. Alive. Alive. My own tears dry in my eyes as she sheds them for me in a different vein than I could have imagined. Joy. She’s joyful and rapturous, pure hope as she holds me. As she kisses me. As she tells me again and again that I’m alive.
“I love you,” she whispers, “and you’re alive. You’re alive.”
And for the first time in a long time, I think I really am.
***
It doesn’t take long to figure out where we’re going. It’s where we were always going, only now we’re heading there a lot faster. I groan as the RV skids to a halt, the motion throwing me forward and cracking my head against the wall. Syd lays on the horn again, three long beeps, then he and Alissa jump out and run to the gate. They’ve left the doors open. I can hear them screaming.
“Help! Help us! Please!”
“We need a doctor! Help!”
It feels like they’re screaming forever. I start to wonder if the good people of Warm Springs are actually as hospitable as they seemed or will they ignore our pleas and leave us out here to die. Then I hear the roar of engines. Headlights flash inside the RV, illuminating it harshly. I hear them skid to a stop as we did. The creaks and bangs of doors opening and closing.