by Tracey Ward
Suddenly the pyre is lit. It bursts into angry red, yellow and orange, reaching into the sky and hungrily devouring the air around us. It burns bright and fierce for a minute before dying down to a steady blaze. Across the flames and smoke, through the blur of the heat rising into the air, I see Gabrielle. She’s standing tall and straight, her hair down in long curls. Her face is hard, her jaw set squarely as she glares at the flames in front of her. She looks pissed off, pure and simple. Like she would take issue with God Himself if he showed his face right now. I watch her image dancing in the flames. I see her face take on a sheen, sparkling like glass, and I realize she’s crying silently. Stoically.
It makes me glad for Kyle in ways I can’t explain. In the same way I take comfort in knowing Alissa would weep for me. There’s a strange sense of pride in it. In the man you must have been to earn that level of devotion from a woman that strong. We should all be that lucky. We should all be that man.
Chapter Twenty Five
I stand outside the door to the radio room, my stomach in knots. I need to do this. I’ve put if off for too long as it is. Syd was right; my parents need to know. They deserve to know. And Beth deserves to be put to rest.
I push the door open slowly. I was hoping before that it’d be someone I know, someone like Gabrielle, but now I’m not so sure. Now I’m praying for anonymity. For this moment to be smaller than it feels, to pass unnoticed through someone else’s world so it won’t feel so huge in mine. When I look inside, I get my wish.
The guy sitting at the desk is someone I’ve seen around but I’ve never actually met. I don’t know how well he knew Kyle, but his manner is reserved when I enter. Solemn.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Not much,” I answer reflexively. I offer him my hand. “I’m Jordan.”
He shakes it firmly. “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen you around. What can I do for you?”
I take a deep breath, praying I won’t lose my shit. “I need to add my name to the list. The survivor list.”
“You haven’t done that yet?” he asks, sounding surprised. “How long have you been here?”
“Weeks.”
“Wow, okay, yeah. Let’s get your name on there.” He begins sifting through the papers sitting on the desk, searching for a pen. “You got family that will be looking for you?”
“Yeah, my parents.”
“They’ll be thrilled, man.”
“Maybe.”
He chuckles lightly, pulling out a pen from a low drawer. “No maybe about it. Who wouldn’t be thrilled to know their kid is alive?”
“I need to add another name too.”
“Another survivor? Is it that girl you came here with? She’s not on the list yet either. I don’t have a last name for her,” he says absently, opening a large ledger and flipping through the pages.
“No, it’s my sister.” I cough, clearing my throat. This room is starting to feel small. “I need to add her to the other list,” I blurt out, the words falling out of my mouth in a dizzying chaos I can feel inside my stomach.
The guy stops, his hand freezing on the pages. He turns to look at me with saddened eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s happened to all of us, right? Doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No,” I agree tightly.
He turns back to the book, finding the page he wants. His pen hovers over the empty slot.
“What was her name?”
“Beth. Beth Bishop.”
I watch his hand scrawl the words across the page. It’s just letters. Just a jumbling of the alphabet and nothing more. I remind myself to breathe, to keep my cool because it’s already done. She’s already gone and telling my parents doesn’t make it any better or any worse. It doesn’t kill her all over again any more than keeping it from them kept her alive. It simply is what it is. That’s all.
“You’re Bishop too? Same last name?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, you’re both accounted for. I’ll send the message immediately. Your parents should know by the morning.”
I nod my head, mutter a thanks and bolt for the door.
“Hey, wait!” he calls after me. I pause with the door already open, one foot outside. “The girl, Alissa. I’m gonna add her to the Living List with you.”
“Good,” I mutter, wondering why he thinks I need to know that.
“What’s her last name?”
I frown, turning to face him. “What?”
“I only put in full names. I added her dad to the… the other list tonight, but I didn’t know if they shared a last name. Do they?”
“I don’t know.”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll leave her in limbo then.”
“No,” I say sharply, stepping back into the room. “Don’t do that. Add her to the Living List. She deserves to be on it.”
“But what name do I give her?”
“Mine,” I tell him. “You give her mine.”
***
I make sure to shower before I go back to Alissa’s room. I spend a long time under the scalding hot water, double washing my hair to make sure the smoky scent is out of it completely.
I push the second bed in the room right up beside hers, but I keep to it, leaving her on her bed alone with plenty of space. She hasn’t moved since I left. Her back is still to the door and I don’t look to see if her eyes are open or closed. I’m hoping for closed but I’m scared to find them open and vacant. It will haunt me all night and I need to sleep. What’s coming next, I can’t be sure of, but you can bet it will be tough.
“Goodnight, Ali,” I breathe.
I close my eyes, feeling exhausted. I know I’ll sleep immediately, despite my hibernation earlier. I think—
“Goodnight, Jordan.”
My eyes snap open, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I didn’t expect a response and I nearly pissed the bed when I got one. This woman lives to scare me. To surprise me.
She reaches her hand back behind her blindly. I take it in mine, weaving my fingers through hers as she pulls me closer. She guides me, tugging on my arm and rolling me over until I’m lying with my back up against hers, our hands still laced together. This is how we slept in the stock aisle of the store. Back to back, hands clasped.
The nightmares will still come for us. They always do. There’s nothing either of us can ever do to make them stop. But at least we know we won’t face them alone.
***
It takes weeks, but we get there. Ali gets there. She falls hard when her dad dies, but she never sinks so far under the surface that we can’t reach her. There are time where I’m terrified for her, though. When she stares at one point on the wall for too long or she stops listening to you for no reason, like she’s distracted by something else. Something I can’t hear. But she deals with it because she’s a fighter. Because she doesn’t know how to quit. I know this was an effort for her, something she struggled with every second of every day, and I’m proud of her. She’s still off her medications, though, which makes me a little crazy inside. But it’s her body, her mind and her decision. I’m with her, no matter what.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I’m sitting beside her in her room (technically our room) at the hospital, watching the most boring TV show I’ve ever seen. Two girls who sell cupcakes and keep running out of money because their vapid whores. That’s all I’ve gotten from it so far.
Ali looks over at me slowly, cautiously. “About what exactly?”
“About the baby.”
“Oh, that,” she says with false levity.
“Yeah. That. Can we talk about it?”
She grins slightly. “Jordan, we can talk about anything. Communication is very important.”
“Are you trying to shrink me again?”
“Maybe.”
I lean forward, resting my arms on my thighs. “I think you’re evading the question.”
“Ooh, who’s shrinking who now?”
“Are you scared to talk about this?”
&nb
sp; “Question with a question. You get bonus points for that one.”
“Ali,” I say firmly.
The second I say her name that way, I realize I sound like Syd. She must hear it too because her entire demeanor changes instantly.
“Yes, I’m scared,” she says quietly. She moves to sit with her legs crisscrossed on the bed, her fingers playing nervously with the edge of the blanket in her lap. “Of course I’m scared. What if I end up like my mom? How can I do that to a child?”
“We need to find out for sure. There’s no sense in worrying about something if it isn’t even an issue.”
“I know for sure,” she whispers.
I sit back, shocked. “You’ve taken the test already?”
She nods.
“And it came back positive?”
“Not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
She looks at me with pure resign. “I mean that I know, Jordan. I know I’m pregnant. I let Leah take the blood sample to send to the base two days ago but it doesn’t matter because I already know.”
I swallow hard. “You could be wrong.”
“But I’m not.”
I go to rub my right hand over the back of my neck the way I always do when I’m nervous, but it’s not there. That missing part of me leaves me feeling disoriented. Lost. Empty.
“But you have an IED,” I insist.
Alissa grins. “I have an IUD.”
I frown. “What’d I say?”
“IED. Like a terrorist.”
“God, I’m sorry,” I tell her, feeling like an overwhelmed idiot.
“It’s okay.”
“What’s the failure rate on one of those, though? 5%? 4?”
“1.”
I curse under my breath as I lower my head into my good hand. “How much does the universe hate us?” I groan.
Alissa doesn’t answer. I look up to find her watching me calmly.
“Ali, look, I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t mean that a baby would be a punishment.” I grimace. “Not exactly.”
She waves away my apology. “No, it’s fine. Between your hand and everything else we’re going through, me getting pregnant at a time like this makes that a pretty valid question.”
“No offense to your intuition, but I’m going to wait for the test results to come back before I completely freak out.”
She raises her eyebrows. “This is not you freaking out?”
“Oh no,” I tell her, falling back into my seat. “This is a warm up for my complete and utter meltdown.”
“What’s that going to look like?” she asks, sitting back as well, looking for more at ease than she did just minutes ago.
“Do you remember when Britney Spears had her meltdown?”
“Whoa, is that what I’ve got to look forward to? You’re going to shave your head? Get married for 10 hours in Vegas?”
“No, no. I’m thinking of the guy who went online with a video of himself crying uncontrollably, screaming, ‘Leave Britney Alone!’”
Alissa scrunches up her nose. “I think I’d rather you shaved your head.”
I shrug. “You can’t pick and choose your crazy. You’ve gotta roll with the one you’ve got.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” she mutters, turning back to the TV.
We watch the show for awhile, both of us lost in our own heads. I glance over at her at one point to find her dozing off. She looks calm, peaceful. Beautiful. Despite the series of axes always hanging over our heads, the sight of her like this puts me at ease.
“Alissa! Jordan!” Leah calls from down the hall.
Ali jumps up straight in the bed as I leap to my feet.
Leah appears in the doorway, her face flushed pink and a smile stretched wide across her face. She’s absolutely beaming.
“They found it,” she breathes.
Alissa and I glance at each other, confused.
“The baby?” Alissa asks. “Are you talking about the results for my test?”
“No, I haven’t heard back about that. They’ve been too crazy. Too busy. Everyone is going insane because they found it.”
“Found what?”
She laughs in disbelief. “A cure.”
I shake my head, still not understanding. “There is no cure. You can’t cure this.”
“They’ve made a vaccine that’s resistant to the virus. Once you’re inoculated, even if you’re bitten, you won’t get The Fever. They took the virus, mutated it and made a cure.”
“What does this mean?” Alissa asks.
“It means we’re getting out of here!” Leah exclaims, her smile growing impossibly bigger. “They’re going to start vaccinating us immediately and evacuating people not long after. We’re not going to die in this place, that’s what it means.”
“Leah!” a voice calls from down the hall.
“I’m coming!” she calls back. “I have a drink, a real alcoholic drink, waiting for me. I gotta go. You guys let this sink in, wipe the confused, sad looks off your faces and come out here to celebrate with us.”
“Leah, wait!” Alissa cries. “The vaccine. What about the baby? Can I…”
Leah pauses, her face falling serious. “No, hon. We’ll wait for the results to make that decision, but if you are pregnant, you won’t be able to take the vaccine. Not until the baby is born.”
“Leah!” more impatient voices cry out.
“I’m coming,” she calls softly, her eyes still on Alissa. She opens her mouth to say something, but thinks better of it. Instead, she slaps her hand on the doorframe once lightly, then disappears out into the hall.
I look down at Ali sitting on the bed, stunned. Her eyes are wide with shock, her mouth slightly open and her hand is pressed firmly on her flat stomach. There’s still a chance that she’s not pregnant. That we’ll take the vaccine together and walk out of this place side by side, out into the world waiting for us to rejoin it with horror stories and battle scars. I want to hold out for that the way I know Alissa would, ever the optimist despite the horrifying hand she’s been dealt. But I don’t think that’s how it works, not for me. I think hope is a fickle, fragile thing, like blown glass. It’s beautiful in theory but a bitch to maintain. I’ll hold onto it as best I can, but in the end I know I’ll need her to help me keep it alive.
I lay my hand on top of hers, leaning over to kiss the top of her head lightly. She looks up at me with a small smile, hesitant but strong. I thread our fingers together and enjoy the warmth of her skin under mine. The solid, sturdy feel of her hand. It’s unflinching and brave, more loyal than a man deserves, and as I look down at her, I can imagine it building a world around a tiny spark of brilliance and light with my eyes and her hair. A world that will never fall, never fail and be all the things that we’ve lost that were ever truly worth a damn.
If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review!
You can also find more books by Tracey Ward here:
Writing on the Wall (Survival Series, #1)
Sleepless (Bird of Stone, #1)
About the Author
I was born in Eugene, Oregon and studied English Literature at the University of Oregon (Go Ducks!) It was there that I discovered why Latin is a dead language and that being an English teacher was not actually what I wanted to do with my life.
My husband, my son and my 80lbs pitbull who thinks he's a lapdog are my world.
Visit my website for more information on upcoming releases! Tracey Ward
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five