by Brown, Tara
He chews his bite, "Can you start at what you remember?"
I swallow and nod, "I know my dad moved us around a lot. Then he bought a health food store, my grandparents bought an old house, and we all lived together. My mom died when I was pretty little so it was just us. They hated my uncle for having an affair with my mom. My dad brought it up a lot." It feels weird sharing the tiny details of the world before.
I look at Will as he sits next to Star and starts eating. Taking another bite, I continue, "My dad was always crazy about technology. He didn’t like cell phones or computers much. Granny had them all, but she was pretty basic with them, looking up recipes and stuff. She let me have the technology though, but only for gaming, movies, and books. I wasn’t allowed to interact with people online. We lived in a small area and my dad made me go to survival camps and made me do training on the weekends. He was obsessed with the end of the world. He called it the meltdown. He said the world was going to have a meltdown. We were supposed to go to the family cabin before the meltdown, but Granny and Gramps didn’t believe. They wouldn’t come. He would disappear a lot and I would stay with Gran. Then the sicknesses started and the chaos hit, before we could go to the cabin. He made arrangements for us to stay with his friend in a bunker. We left it too late to get to the bunker, and ended up ditching our car in the roadblocks, and running through the hills to the place where his friend lived. We stayed in the bunker for a while. It was supposed to be short term, until the chaos was over. He figured the sick would die off fast and we could just go to the cabin."
My mouth starts to water. I stop and take a drink from the glass in front of me. It's water. It sparkles in my mouth. I clear my throat and finish the story, "The day we left the bunker was the last time I saw my dad. He and Brian were fighting and I could feel the jeep driving over things, bumpy things on the road. People were still out…walking. Some were sick. Some were little kids who were alone. We drove until we couldn’t, because of an accident. Something happened. The others or the military came and shot someone on the road and took the women. Dad kept saying it was just like the doctor had said it would be. Now I know it was the doctor who saved me in the city. He had warned my dad a few times about the bad stuff coming. Anyway, he and Brian started fighting again and the jeep crashed. Brian was gone and Dad was trapped and hurt. I crawled to his window but he couldn’t move." I hold my empty hand out, "He held his hand out with nothing in it and made me take the nothing from him. Then he screamed at me and told me it was us and them and I was never to stop running. I knew how to get to the cabin, so I ran. I left him there to die in the jeep. I ran and I never looked back. I got to the cabin a few days later." I look at my empty hand and know it's the most I've ever said in my whole life.
I can't look at them all. I don’t want to. I don’t want their pity, I know it'll be there in their eyes.
I take the next bite and swallow, but the lump in my throat makes it hard.
Bernie speaks after a moment, "Lenny must have been the health food store owner and Michael is your uncle?"
I nod and force myself to keep eating. The salt and taste is gone though.
"I was twenty when the world ended. The CIA had scooped me up when I was nineteen. I saw this coming down the pipes. I started preparing immediately. My dad never used this house so I took it over and converted it; took it off the grid completely and started stocking piling." He talks like he's proud. He sips from his glass, "I helped build the new city and stayed in the good books, so I have access to food and things, but I don’t believe the propaganda. The hype that only breeding the healthy will rid the world of the sickly, and forcing the sick to the borderlands, is the way to keep the city clean. The kids like you, they're maniacs. The ones your age aren’t as bad, but the ones about thirteen and younger are insane. You dad is obsessed with perfecting them. He's turned into a monster himself. Too much playing God, if you ask me."
I lift my eyes from my plate, "Can you stop him?"
He nods, "Yup. We have to kill him. I'm sorry, there is no other way."
I shake my head, "Why have you waited until now? Why haven’t you killed him before this?"
His eyes glisten, "He's a genius and very good at talking. I used to believe."
I frown, "What made you stop?"
He laughs and glances at his sister. I don’t need any further explanation. She is oblivious to the fact, he has looked at her. Only Will and I caught it. He clears his throat, "I just stopped. I had heard about the originals—the first generation of babies. It was the early stages of it so very few women were impregnated. They weren’t certain what they were doing, what the results would be. You mom and a handful of women were impregnated under the guise of it being hormone therapy. I know Michael was outraged, his brother took you. He searched high and low for you. Lenny, was apparently a master of living off grid. Michael's parents hated the fact he had betrayed his own brother."
Anna chimes in, "How did Lenny know?"
Words form in my mind. Words I'd heard for years, that only now are making sense. They flash into my mind. "He was sterile," I mutter.
Bernie nods, "He was. He was sterile from a job he had done, when he was a young man in the army."
The words he ranted when he screamed at her, start to make sense, "They went for tests because she wanted a baby. He never told her, he was sterile. She thought it must have been her, but when she found out she was pregnant, he knew she'd had an affair with my uncle." I was under the kitchen table with my ponies and Disney princesses. I was little. I heard him yelling at her. I heard her crying.
He laughs, "She didn’t remember the many times she'd come for treatments and whatnot. She would have thought it was hormone injections and regular doctor appointments. They all thought that."
My heart nearly stops. I look up at him, "They?"
He nods, "They. The other moms. They were all his kids."
The gleam in his eye disturbs me. I think it's respect, but I'm not sure. I feel horror and rage building inside of me.
I get up from the table. I wish I had brought the plate, but I don’t. I just leave. I need to get away.
I run for the room and then the bathroom. I lock the door and sit on the toilet with the lid down.
"They?" I whisper into the darkness of the bathroom. "They?" I've had brothers and sisters all along. How many? I shake my head and try to block it all out. She had believed she'd had an affair, hadn’t she? I remember that. She loved my uncle.
I drop to my knees and lift the lid. My stomach empties. I wipe my mouth and collapse onto the floor. What was happening to me? How had I become so soft and weak? I crawl to the door and open it. He comes in and I close it again. He curls around me. I don't cry. I don't have any tears left. I don’t want to be that girl anymore, anyway. I dig my fingers into his fur and wait for the end of the world to come again. If I close my eyes I'm back home and we're in bed. It's soft and warm and the only thing I have to do tomorrow is laundry for one, find food for one and boil water for one. Leo can get his own.
But I open my eyes, and the world where everything I did for one is over. In its place is a world where I can't see all the faces of the people who need me. They've become a sea of faces, and in the dream that starts to form in my exhausted mind, they all look like me.
Chapter Ten
The hard floor leaves me feeling bruised, when I push myself up. Leo yawns and stretches. I get a whiff of his dog breath and shudder. He doesn’t seem offended by it. He continues to pant in my face. I pull back, shaking my head, "Oh that's bad, Leo. Wow. You need some mint leaves."
I always made him eat them, especially after eating the infected.
The bathroom is quiet. I listen beyond the door but nothing moves. I catch a glimpse of my face. It brings back the haunting dream. My greenish-blue eyes and light brown hair stand out in my mind. I'm not an original—I'm a copy. My mom and uncle never loved each other. He used her, the way he now uses the world around us. She imagined it was love somehow. She was an idi
ot.
The hate in my eyes is cold and meaner than anything I've ever seen before. Leo scratching at the door, brings me out of the bad thoughts filling my head. My stomach grumbles and I swear I'll finish the meal before getting upset and running off again. God knows what else they have to tell me.
When I open the door, I have to jump back as Will falls inside on the floor. He sits up fast, like he's dizzy.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
He looks back, his eyes are tired and puffy. He shakes his head and rubs them, "Sleeping," he says it like I should have known he would be there.
He takes up the entire doorway, waking up and getting his bearings.
"You slept here all night?"
He nods and yawns, "I was going to crawl into the bed, but Anna was there, passed out with Bernie's cat. I tried waking her but the cat hissed at me." He pushes himself up and looks down on me, "You alright?"
I shake my head, "I don’t know. Where's the cat now?" I look past him, hoping it's gone. Leo loves cats in a bad way. A couple times they've come to me for a pet and a snuggle, which always ended badly.
"He ran off," he laughs and leans on the door, blocking me in, "You okay?"
Looking up into his blue eyes is like getting lost watching the water on a lake. I smile my fake pleasant one that I have used on people, who I was about to either rob or trick.
He doesn’t buy what I'm selling, "It's okay if you're upset and want to talk about it."
I laugh, "Okay, you first. Let's share our feelings." It's cheeky and something I might have said a decade ago, when my dad was being a jerk.
Will laughs with me, "Breakfast?"
I nod and shove him through the doorway, "That sounds about right." Leo walks past us and through the door to leave the room. He makes sure he gives me one extra crappy wolf look, like he's telling me he's watching and I better behave. It's the same look Granny gave me, when I was a kid. Lord knows, Leo is probably Granny reincarnated.
We walk down the hall to the stairs, where I catch a glimpse of Anna walking next to Bernie and leaving through the front door. I glance at Will.
He laughs, "Not every guy is a piece of shit looking to get laid, Em."
Leo is at the bottom of the stairs near the door. I run down them and open the front door, calling out to them as they cross the front grass that now resembles a field, "Take Leo! He wants out!"
She looks back at me and grins, patting her legs, "Come on, boy."
He looks up at me and then Will. I tilt my head and raise my eyebrow. He gives me the same look he did upstairs and saunters out the door after Anna. I watch them for a minute, before Jake comes walking over with Star. She's in long pants and a long-sleeve shirt. I have never seen her so covered before. I want to comment about the fact she even owns them, but I have a feeling it might be rude.
"What's crawled up your ass?" Jake asks as he peers out the door after his sister. Star giggles.
I shake my head, frowning and walking back inside. "Good to see you own pants, Star," I mutter and walk down the hall. If they can be rude to me for no reason, then I guess it doesn’t matter, if I am too.
Will chuckles and walks after me, "You know sometimes you are a real bitch."
I look back at him with daggers in my eyes, "No one asked you to come. In fact, I recall not even telling you I was leaving."
The table had food spread across it again. I grab a plate and load up with sandwiches, cheese, meat and apples—real apples. Not applesauce or apple butter or canned fruit. I sit on a very high stool, like the ones that were in the café Granny liked.
Will goes around the counter and piles a plate up extra high, "I know you think you can do everything alone and you don’t need help, but you aren’t alone. Maybe you don’t need us but we're here."
I frown and shove meat into my mouth. I block him out as he rambles. I know if Bernard tries anything on Anna, Leo will eat his ass. I hope that if Star tries anything on Jake, he won't have any issues telling her to take a hike.
"Did you hear me?" he asks.
I shake my head, "I'm hungry and tired and not really in the mood for a lecture. I got plenty when I was a kid."
He takes a bite of a sandwich and shakes his head, "You need to listen to me—we need a plan for the city. If we show up, they're going to grab us and put me in a work camp and you in a breeder farm."
I pick at the meat on my plate and narrow my gaze, "The doctor/nurse angle doesn’t work?"
He shakes his head, "I don’t know."
"Why are you helping me with this?"
He snorts and finishes the bite, "Because I want you, Emma. I want you and me, and that god damned wolf, to go and live and be together. If I have to endure getting bit and shoved to the ground every day for the rest of his life, I will. If I have to walk into the lion's den and help you kill your dad so you can go back to being a hermit, I will."
I don’t trust him, or his words. "That’s a lot of work for some sex. You could probably get yourself a nice girl, who won't make you jump through hoops every time you try to get near her."
He grins wide, like he's about to boast, but he doesn’t say anything. He winks at me and opens a can of something. He takes a drink and makes a face. I can't fight the laugh.
He puts it down and shivers like he's gotta pee. "Oh my—wow. Oh God. That’s shit. Don't drink that." he shudders again.
I snicker and finish my plate of food. I haven’t felt full and relaxed in a long time. It's making me tired.
I get up and leave him in the kitchen. I need a nap in a bed, not on the bathroom floor.
Climbing the stairs, I notice the strangest feeling I have ever felt overwhelming me. I don’t care. I'm tired and beaten down and I don’t care. Anna is going to have to take care of herself. Leo will protect her, but I'm too tired to run out there and monitor her with a thirty-year-old man. Something is wrong with me, but I'm too tired to figure it out or go over the feelings I have.
I climb into the bed Anna and I were going to share, and pass out almost instantly.
When I wake, I feel warmth next to me. I reach out for him to run my hands through his fur. There is no fur and he stirs and clears his throat. I open one eye and frown, "Why are you in here?"
Jake smiles, "I was worried. You've been sleeping for like eight hours and you seem weird. Thought you might want to talk about it all."
I shake my head, "Tired, too tired."
I close my eyes and let the bed take me again. I feel his fingers brush through my hair.
"Em, you don’t have to be so strong. You can let me in."
I open one eye, "There is nothing to let in. I'm a science experiment. My real father is a bowl of mixed ingredients, my mom was an idiot who was tricked easily, and my dad was the only person who ever tried to keep me safe from this all. Well, dad and Granny and Gramps. I still have to stop him, I have to. I need to end this." I close my eyes and nestle into the blankets. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me into him. It feels nice, like the sleep on the couch, when he had a fever and kissed me. I don’t want him to kiss me now though. I want him to hold me and care about me, but I don’t want him to kiss me. It's not like that for me, even if I want it to be.
I drift off again.
My eyes shoot open when I hear a scream. It had blended into my dream at first, but with my eyes open, I know I'm not dreaming. Jake is passed out on the bed. I shake him till he stirs.
"You hear that?"
He shakes his head, "What?" The scream rips through the halls again. It’s a high moan.
"Infected," I whisper.
He moves closer to me. I grab my bow and quiver from the floor and pass him Anna's rifle, "Don't shoot me."
He makes a face, "Funny."
We climb off the bed, moving slowly. The sound comes again, only now I think there are two.
The little hairs on my body are standing on end. Peeking around the corner of the doorframe, I see nothing. I slip into the hall. I can feel the heat from Jake
behind me. I ignore him and focus.
I hear the ragged breathing coming from the bottom of the stairs.
When I reach the end of the hall I see the matted dirty head of the sick. It was once a lady with long, dark hair. She had ripped pants and shirt. Her body is emaciated with backbones showing through the holes in the ripped clothing. Old scabs, running sores, and the ragged breath are the things I focus on. I pull back the arrow I've pulled and let it go at her head. It slices like it would have a watermelon. Jake gags. I ignore him and walk down the stairs past the dead lady. Her stink and rotting flesh bring the fear of the real world into the safe haven we have been enjoying. When I get to the kitchen, I see him. He's shoveling food from the counter into his decayed face. He eats a piece of napkin with cheese on it.
Behind a cupboard to the left, I catch a glimpse of a reflection in the steel fridge. It's Anna. She's holding a knife. I pull the next arrow and hold it steady at him. He looks up from his meal, flashing a milky eye at me. I release the arrow as he screams the high pitch moan.
"Anna?" I whisper.
She slips from behind the cupboards, "They came up the driveway so fast."
My heart starts to panic, "Where Leo?"
She swallows, "Outside still."
I hate the look in her eyes. She's scared of me or scared to tell me something.
I turn and run for the front door. The hot air of the summer day hits me, as I run from the shade of the front porch. I see him, fighting four of them. I pull the arrows fast. I take down the first one closest to me and run closer. I have the second arrow pulled and ready. I watch the head of the monster bob and move. I release the arrow and miss.
"Shit," I mutter.
I pull another and take him down.
Leo takes the third to the ground, but the fourth one jumps on his back. I pull an arrow and hit the large infected in the back. He doesn’t flinch or stop. I pull another but it hits him in the arm and almost hits Leo. I pull another but run at them. I dive onto the pile. As his slimy face turns to face me, I stab the arrow down on his eye. He stops as Leo rips the head off the one he's got. He looks back at me and growls. I get off him and the dead. Looking around, I see we are not alone. They came in a huge group, the biggest I've ever seen. They are a swarm, like in the city.