by Amy Miles
“And you trust those two?”
“They mean well.”
I scoff and look away. “Sure. It’s always the nice ones you have to look out for.”
“Says the girl that I just absconded a fork from.”
“I never claimed to be nice.”
“No. You sure didn’t.” Moving away from the bed, I watch Nox as he makes a sweep of the room. He refills my water glass, checks my IV pole despite not having replaced the IV, and closes the curtains once more. Darkness has fallen over the hotel, and from down below, I can hear the steady murmur of voices.
“Who is Zoey?” I ask when he finishes his rounds and glances toward the door.
“She’s a friend that is a bit younger than you and damaged, but I guess that comes with the territory these days. She’s an untrusting person, just like you. I’m sure you will get along just fine.”
Despite knowing it is a childish thing to do, I flip him the bird. “So you’re off the clock then? Ready to go find a girl to shack up with and call it a day while I’m stuck in here?”
“No.” He stands at the end of the bed. “I have rounds. The perimeter won’t secure itself. We work long hours here, sleep when we can, and don’t complain. It’s how we stay safe. With the influx of Flesh Bags in the area, I don’t sleep well anyways.”
“Poor you.”
Nox shakes his head. “Do you ever get tired of it?”
“Of what?” I shift position in bed to relieve some of the stress on my left shoulder. Nox tied the ropes that I have enough room to wiggle but not get comfortable.
“Of hating the world.”
I frown. “It’s not the world that I hate. It’s the people.”
“We aren’t all bad.”
Running my hands over the soft comforter I think about how much nicer this room is than anywhere I’ve stayed in the past few months. I had a bedroom once with my own clothes, my own cell phone, and a laptop. Nothing is mine anymore. It’s all things that I’ve stolen from people long since dead or fled.
Nox calls this place home. I can’t imagine that I will ever have one of those again.
“Why do you think Brian and Iris came to see me?”
Nox shifts his weight to his other foot. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Do they always make house calls to the new guests you bring in?”
“Well,” he tugs at his ear and then shrugs. “No, I suppose they don’t have the time to greet every single guest.”
“Yet they go out of their way to visit me, with your commander in tow. That doesn’t seem odd to you?”
I can see the gears turning over in his mind and feel a glimmer of hope but a sudden knock on the door breaks the moment. He turns and moves to the door, knocks twice, and the door is opened by a heavily armed soldier in the hall.
There is a low murmur of conversation before Nox steps back into the room.
“Try to be nice. Zoey has been through a lot and she volunteered to watch over you while I see to my rounds. I know you don’t like it here, but this place gave her a family to watch over her at a time she really needed it. At least take pity on her and reign in the claws.”
When he steps aside, a waif of a girl squeezes by, but not without pausing to shoot him a smile that instantly tells me that there is something between them. Not a romantic sort of look, although I have zero doubt that the girl would certainly be more than happy to entertain the idea if she were a few years older, but almost like she views him as a big brother.
“Zoey here has been taking the downshifts while I get some rest. She’s good company once she warms up to you, but can be shy at first.” Nox pulls her in for a quick side hug and then shoots me a warning look. “Be nice.”
After the door closes, Zoey slowly turns to face me. Her slender shoulders are hunched forward as she cradles her arms against her chest. Mousy brown hair drapes over the left side of her face, concealing her from sight. She is pale in complexion and I can’t help but wonder when the last time was that she stepped outside. Her gaze darts around the room rapidly and I get the distinct feeling that she is easily set on edge.
“So you’re my guard, huh?” I ask. She bites her lip and nods, slowly moving closer. “How old are you?”
“Old enough.”
I smile and stretch out my hand to motion to the chair. “I’m not going to bite. You might as well sit down since we are going to be here for a while.”
Zoey tugs at a thick strand of hair and twirls the ends around her finger. Instead of sitting, she moves toward the bathroom and disappears. Craning my neck, I try to see her as she moves about. After the faucet turns on and off, I realize that she’s cleaning.
“You don’t have to do that,” I call out but she ignores me.
With a heavy sigh, I lean back into my pillows, hating that I’m tied down. I’ve never been very good with resting or staying in one place for very long. I get antsy, especially these days.
A good half an hour later, Zoey finally emerges and I see a slight flush of heat in her pale fingers. They tremble slightly as she begins running a cloth along the chest of drawers.
“Nox seems nice.”
She nods without turning to look at me and lifts a lamp to dust under it.
“You seem quite taken with him.”
She glances back at me over her shoulder but says nothing. I can see distrust in her eyes, a far cry from the near worship that I saw when she peered up at Nox earlier.
“He seems to think a lot of you,” I say, feeling as if I’m speaking with a brick wall instead of a young girl with ears to hear and a mouth capable of responding. “He thinks you and I might be a lot alike.”
Zoey falls still. I watch as her shoulder rise and fall several times.
“He is wrong,” she whispers. “We are nothing alike.”
SIX
Going to sleep while tied up and with someone pacing at the foot of your bed is hardly an easy task. Doing so while being guarded by a moody teen that shoots eye daggers are you on every turn is pretty much impossible. For a couple of hours, I make an effort to try to rest, if for no other reason than to ease the awkward silence that fell between Zoey and me after her final comment.
Whatever her deal is, she is right. She and I are nothing alike.
I am not a timid mouse. I am not twitchy and I do not need a guy to keep me safe.
As the hours stretch long into the night, I notice a change in Zoey. She becomes more anxious, glancing at the door to my prison with far more repetition.
“Waiting for something to happen?” I ask, finally pushing up into a seated position. The throbbing in my shoulder is enough to remind me that I am far from healed but the instant I see my chance I am out of here. I have overstayed my welcome, and given enough time, I will recover well enough to carry on.
“I don’t like the dark.”
I’m surprised when she actually answers me. “Why?”
She stops pacing and stands at the edge of my bed. Her long hair falls over her face and in the dim light from a candle flickering in the bathroom, she is almost ghostlike. “Bad things happen in the dark.”
Nox had implied that Zoey had a rough go of it, but I’m starting to wonder if there is something more to her behavior than just fear of the Flesh Bags. It also makes me question what sort of condition she must have been in when she was rescued to be like this when she is safe.
“Would you like to light more candles? I don’t mind the extra light. I doubt I’ll be sleeping anymore tonight.”
Zoey looks over at the chest of drawers where a row of candles sits beside a box of matches. “Nox told me you need to rest.”
“Do you always do what he says?”
She nods.
“Why?” Through the curtain of hair, I see her bite down on her lower lip. “Something bad happened to
you, didn’t it? And he took care of you?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Then don’t you think that he would want you to feel safe now? If he knows that you are afraid of the dark, he would want you to light those candles.”
When she glances back at the candles, I can see her indecision.
“It’s okay, Zoey.”
The young girl slowly walks over to the chest of drawers and strikes a match. She holds it out in front of her and watches it flicker before her eyes. As small tendrils of smoke rise from the wooden stick, I realize the hold that it has over her and understand why Nox warned against lighting the candles. It was not for my sake but for hers.
“You like the fire, don’t you?”
“No.” With a flick of her wrist, she extinguishes the flame. Her hands shake slightly as she takes a breath and when she strikes a new match this time does not hesitate to light each candle in turn.
“I’ve always enjoyed watching fire,” I say, looking beyond her to the candles. “The way the flames dance makes you think that the fire is almost alive.”
Zoey whips around and returns to the end of my bed to resume her pacing. I watch as she takes five steps to the right and immediately turns to do the same to the left.
There is something buried in her past and I know now that it involves fire or at least her unusual fixation with it. Maybe she has pyromaniac tendencies? Is it possible that she was being treated for them before the outbreak and since then has been suddenly forced off of them with dramatic ill effects that only Nox can soothe?
The more that I think about their relationship, I realize that I may have misjudged him a bit. Sure, he’s a total ass but I’m starting to suspect that he might have a heart buried under all of that bullshit too.
“Maybe you would feel less agitated if you sat down? This place seems locked down tight and I’m sure there are plenty of soldiers and guns guarding us. I’m pretty sure you don’t have anything to worry about.”
When Zoey rapidly shakes her head, her hair tangles in her eyelashes but she doesn’t try to clear it away. As she curls in on herself, I notice that she rubs her thumbs over her inner arms as she paces in what I assume to be some sort of self-soothing movement.
I am unsure if my talking is adding to her agitation but I can’t just stay quiet while she gives in to her panic.
“Zoey, is there another reason why you don’t feel safe here? Has someone done something to you?”
“No. No. No.” A small whimper rises from her throat. She drops to the floor and draws her knees into her chest, clutching them tightly as she begins to rock. “You don’t care. They told me not to talk to you. You don’t care.”
“Who said not to listen to me?”
Zoey remains silent as she rocks. She grips her knees tightly enough to drain the color from her fingers.
And that is when I see the markings for the first time. Along her wrists and along her inner arm I see the scar tissue. She was a cutter.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “It’s not my place to pry. You have a life here and Nox says that you are happy. I don’t want to ruin that.”
“Not happy.”
“But you make Nox believe that, don’t you?”
A small nod of her head begins to unravel the mystery around the girl. I shouldn’t care. She is nothing to me but a stranger, and yet I know pain when I see it. This girl, as young and fragile as she is, has been hurt, and recently, if I were to wager a guess. Someone here has brought the nightmares back to her reality.
“Has someone hit you?”
I search her bare arms for any sign of bruising, but I know all too well that a skilled abuser is careful not to leave a mark.
Zoey presses her forehead into her raised knees. A long, low moan rises from her throat and I feel helpless to even attempt to comfort her.
I never had a sister or even a mom who cared much, but a sickening ache grows in my chest as I watch the girl. She reminds me so much of Eva, the young girl I tried to help during her labor back in St. Louis. She was taken by soldiers, just as I was. For all I know, she could be dead by now.
Zoey may not be Eva, but I see the same hopelessness when I look into Zoey’s eyes.
“You need to tell Nox. He will protect you.”
Wiping her nose on her arm, she looks up at me. “He can’t. He doesn’t know.”
“Then tell him.”
“No!” She wrings her hands together as she glances back toward the door. “He can’t know. Not ever.”
“Why?” Leaning forward, I put a strain on my shoulder just to be able to see her better.
There are tears in her eyes when she looks up at me. “This place is not good.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
The suspicion in her voice makes me smile. “I’m all tied up and I’ve done nothing wrong. It doesn’t take a genius to see that something isn’t kosher around here.”
Zoey slowly rises to her knees, releasing her death grip as she darts a glance back over her shoulder. Then she moves closer to the bed, this time coming around to the side instead of staying so far back.
“Some people around here call me crazy because I’m a little different, but I’m not. I see things that others don’t. I think they are too busy pretending to be normal to see the truth.”
“And that is why someone hurt you?”
She bites down on the corner of her lip and wraps her arms around her waist, as if needing the extra support to keep herself together.
I don’t want to care about the girl. In fact, I’d rather remain completely immune to her weakness so that I can exploit it when the opportunity arises, but she seems so small and helpless. Like a fawn who has lost her mother to a hunter and is left to fend for herself, but unsure of how to do that.
“Fire makes it all okay,” she whispers. “It always has.”
“And the cutting?”
She looks down at her arms. “It used to. Before the voices started.”
I feel myself cringe at the mention of her hearing voices. That’s never a good way to convince someone that you are mentally sound. “What do they say?”
She worries on her lip for a moment before tentatively looking at me. “They plead for help.”
“Are there many of them?” I pat the bed beside me and she slowly sinks onto the mattress, yet maintains her distance.
“Yes. Sometimes more than others. I hear them mostly at night when the building is quiet.”
“Where do you hear them?”
She releases the hold on her waist and fiddles with a stray bit of thread that has come loose from the hem of her dress. “In the walls.”
I try not to let my doubts show as I look away and reconcile her statements. It is easy to see how people might think she is crazy. She is already skittish and obviously prefers isolation, but when you throw the presence of voices on top, she sounds like someone ready to check into a psych ward.
“You don’t believe me,” she whispers and lowers her head, turning her body away so that she faces the wall instead of me.
“I want to. That’s a start, right?”
When she doesn’t respond, I realize that I may have lost what little trust she was starting to build with me. I need to find a new way to get her to open up.
“Do you want to know what makes me feel better when I am afraid?” I ask, waiting for her to look at me. When she finally does, I see fear in her eyes. Not worry or anxiety but true, genuine fear. “Books.”
Zoey stares back at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“It’s true.” I shift the covers, smoothing them as far out as my rope restraints will allow. “When I was younger, my mom was a pretty crap parent. I think for a while she tried to do right by me, but things just got in the way. I spent a lot of my time outside of the house just to get away fr
om her. I needed space but I was always searching for a place to call home.”
Zoey sits up a little straighter and I know that she’s listening.
“Money was always pretty tight. I never had new clothes and my shoes usually came from some second-hand thrift shop. Any toys that I got were always hand-me-downs, but I didn’t care. When you don’t know any better you take what you’re given.”
I fall silent for a moment then smile when Zoey fidgets. I’m starting to reach her.
“When I hit junior high, I realized that there was only one thing in life that could make me feel like my life didn’t suck so much: books. For a couple of hours, I could sink into someone else’s life and experience their adventures or fall in love. Books made me happy and gave me a sense of hope that at least someone could have a happy ending.”
“But you never did?”
I shrug and wince at the stabbing pain in my shoulder. I wish that I could rub it but my bindings don’t allow that much range of motion. “Did any of us?”
Zoey slowly shakes her head.
“The point is that sometimes letting yourself become someone you’re not can help to fight the fear like I did when I was reading my books. Anytime you feel that fear rising up inside of you, imagine yourself to be someone brave and you will act that way.”
“It’s that easy?”
“Well, no. It takes practice, but the next time you hear the voices or someone tries to hurt you, imagine yourself as someone that you look up to.”
“It’s a nice thought, but it won’t work.”
“Why not”
She looks at me from the corner of her eye. “Because the zombie monsters look just like you and me now.”
“Monsters? I don’t understand. Zoey, what are you—” My question is cut off by the deafening scream of a siren. “What is that?
Zoey clasps her hands over her ears and screams, rocking faster. “No. No. No. They are coming!”
“Who are?”
“The zombies! We are all going to die!”