As soon as I laid down with my head near Tarah’s and got comfortable, a soft, familiar hand slipped over onto my shoulder.
I fell asleep holding Tarah’s hand.
The nightmares hit me hard and fast and didn’t take a genius for me to interpret. Everyone in the village had turned into zombies, their skin rotting off them in contagious pieces I couldn’t stand to look at. In my dream I tried to drag Tarah away to safety.
“I can’t leave them,” she whispered.
In the dream, I looked down at her and realized she’d already turned into a zombie too, her once beautiful skin, pale as a moonbeam, now turned a mottled gray with death and decay.
And even then I was tempted to let her touch me, to bite me and turn me into a zombie like her, just so I could stay with her.
Saturday, December 26
Tarah
Hayden woke up with a shout. But I and several others in the house had been awake and watching him long before the noise.
Because he was floating, his body hovering several inches above the couch in the early morning shadows just like that day in the woods when we were kids and I'd learned for the first time that magic was real.
Hayden looked around him then down at himself. I tensed up, worried he would freak out. But he only closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and his body slowly lowered to the couch. As soon as his body made contact with the upholstery, he sat up, swung his legs over the side to the floor, and buried his face in his hands.
I reached for one of those newly blistered hands, wanting to remind him without words that he wasn’t alone. But he pretended not to see the attempt, reaching down to pull on his boots instead. He was probably embarrassed that he had been seen hovering in his sleep.
I touched his shoulder. He slid out from beneath my touch, grabbing his coat on the way out the front door.
I worked to breathe through the pain of the rejection. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. This was about him and his fears, not me.
Then I heard his truck start up a few minutes later, the engine’s rumbling quickly fading as he drove away from the village. An icy sensation rushed over my skin, which I slowly tried to rub away on my arms.
He probably just had to run to town for another tool or something. He would never leave the village permanently without at least saying goodbye to me.
I tried to get on with my day at the infirmary, focusing on one step at a time, never thinking beyond that. But my ears kept listening for the return of that rumbling engine.
The minutes ticked by. An hour passed. Then an hour and a half. Then two.
It was a long and winding drive on the scenic byway back into Spearfish. He must have had to drive extra slow due to the ice and snow on the roads. Maybe there had even been an avalanche or a fallen tree across the road to cause further delays. Maybe he got caught behind a snow plow or something too.
Had he slid off the road? The byway didn’t have a shoulder in most places. If his truck slid, he would either hit the sharply rising mountain face on one side or go down the occasionally steep bank into the river on the other side.
No, don’t think that way, Tarah, I told myself, taking out my anger at myself on the washcloths I was wringing out in the kitchen’s sink instead.
He was fine. He probably just stopped for breakfast in town.
I delivered clean washcloths to the healers, brought each of them fresh mugs of coffee, then took a mug of hot chocolate for myself out onto the steps. It was freezing outside and the cement steps chilled me right through my jeans. But the cold air felt good on my face and in my lungs, clean and pure, a badly needed slap to wake me up and pull me out of the fog of my thoughts.
And then Hayden’s truck came bouncing back up the village road, parking in its usual spot beside his work in progress on the flatbed trailer.
I wanted so badly to get up and go over to him, especially when those long legs unfolded out of the driver side doorway and he looked over at me. He hesitated, staring at me from across the many yards separating us. My leg muscles tensed, eager and ready to take me over to him.
But I stayed where I was. There was nothing I could say to him to change his feelings, and I refused to nag him about it. When he was ready to talk, he would come over.
He turned away, reaching into the back of the truck to pull out a metal ladder, which he set up on the trailer near what looked like the beginnings of wall frames. Then he went back to the truck’s cab to get a plastic bag of stuff I couldn’t make out from this distance. He took what looked like a pocket knife out of his pocket, unfolded it, and began to saw into the packaging of whatever he’d bought this morning.
He never looked my way again, not even when I got up and went back inside the infirmary.
Hayden
At noon, she showed up with two sandwiches and two cans of soda. I didn’t know which I needed more...the food, the caffeine or her company. We ate inside the truck, which I started both to warm us up and to keep the cordless drill’s recharger from draining the truck’s battery.
She was quiet today, fiddling with the stereo till she found a CD she liked from my limited collection. After we finished eating, she surprised me by moving the Christmas tree to the passenger side floorboard, then scooting over to lean back against me.
I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth as the emotions and the sensation of her closeness tried their best to overwhelm me. My hands shook as I stroked her hair and her upper arms hidden beneath the bulk of her thick coat. I tried to memorize the silky feel of her hair against my face, afraid the memory would disappear like a popped soap bubble if I didn’t make a point of memorizing every detail.
I wished I could tell her how I felt, how much she meant to me. I wished I could promise her that everything would be all right. That was how it was supposed to work, right? Once you found someone you loved who loved you back, everything else was supposed to fall into place.
Instead, everything around us was falling apart. And loving her made it all the harder to endure.
“One of our patients died.”
Her words didn’t mean anything to me at first. She spoke so calmly she could have been commenting on the weather, for all my brain registered it.
Then I understood, and my truck’s heater suddenly couldn’t keep up with the inner chill that spread goosebumps racing over my skin.
Death had found our secret village at last.
“Are you ready to leave now?” The words blurted out of me.
She froze, and I knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“We already talked about this.” Her voice was a warning, low, controlled.
But I could be stubborn too. “That was before two people died.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
I waited a beat, trying not to react, but I cared too much not to.
Cursing, I got out of the truck, slamming the door after me, and headed for the edge of the woods, needing some distance from her before I could lose control and start yelling at her.
A few seconds later, she caught up with me. “Hayden, wait. Where are you going?”
Nowhere. There was nowhere to go to escape my feelings for her and this situation.
“You have to stop being afraid and running away,” she said.
I froze, closing my eyes, my control slipping away. “You tell me someone else has died, but I have to stop being afraid.” Could she even hear herself?
She didn’t hesitate to reply, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying! Can’t you have some faith, even just a tiny bit, that the healers will figure this out?”
“When, Tarah? When will they figure it out? Before everyone else gets sick too? Before you do?” Bile rose to burn the back of my throat, and I had to shut up or else throw up.
That was it. Her crazy ambition was going to get her killed. And letting her do it was just as bad as helping her kill herself.
She made a loud gasping oompf as I turned, grabbed her around the waist and tossed her over my shoulder.
>
“Hayden, what are you doing?” she shrieked, slapping my back as I headed for the truck.
“The only thing that makes sense...getting you out of here whether you like it or not.” We were nearly to the truck.
“Oh, so you’re going to just haul me off against my will? Just like Steve would do?”
I stopped, still several feet from the truck. She did not just compare me to that guy. “I’m not like Steve.”
“Oh really?”
I stood there, hating her words, hating the truth behind them. I realized what we must look like to anyone watching. My grandmother and mother would have killed me if they could see me now.
Growling, I set her on her feet again, but I held on to her shoulders, forcing her to stay and talk to me. “Can’t you get it through your head? You’re not a witch! You don’t have any powers. These people are not your people. You don’t owe them any loyalty at all. And you damn sure don’t owe them your life.”
“I know that. But I owe it to myself to see this through. If I leave now, how will I end their story?”
Their story. All of this was about telling some stupid story! Could she even hear herself anymore? “And just when and how do you think you’re going to get that story out if you die? And even if you don't, what publisher would risk even publishing it now that the whole world’s turning against us?”
She sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I have no idea when I’ll be able to share their story. Maybe it’ll be months or even years. But when the time is finally right for us to change public opinion about the Clann, I’m going to be ready to tell their story exactly the way it needs to be told. And once that story is out there for everyone to read, every member of this village will become heroes and martyrs for the cause, and the government will eventually be forced to stop what they’re doing. Don't you see? It’s the only hope we have to end this war! If people out there really knew what was going on, what it was like for the outcasts, sooner or later they would demand justice and equality for the Clann community. It’s history repeating itself, over and over. The Nazis and the Jews, blacks versus whites, equal rights for women, safer working conditions in American factories...change only came when someone was brave enough to write the truth and share it with others.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “So you'll risk it all for the Pulitzer and the fame.”
“It’s not about getting some award or being famous. It's about making all this matter and their struggles and sacrifices and deaths make a difference for others in this stupid world. If we leave, if I don't tell their story, the whole story, it'll be like it never even happened."
I stared off in the distance, feeling the crushing weight of defeat. There was no getting through to her.
"You can’t leave these people any more than I can," she said, her voice softer now. "They’re not just nameless, faceless refugees. I know their names and the dreams they were forced to leave behind and the dreams they can hardly dare to dream now. I could never turn my back on them and walk away any more than you could.” She swept an arm out wide to encompass the entire village. “If even one person in this village survives, then this place will be a success, because that’s one life lived in freedom that otherwise would have been wasted in prison. Don't you want to stay and be a part of that?”
Her words were stirring something dangerous deep inside me, something that wasn't safe for me to think about. So I pushed those chaotic feelings away. “You’re talking about staying here for years if necessary. You’re really prepared to stay here that long until the world is ready to hear about some backwoods trailer park in the middle of nowhere?”
Her lips pressed tight together as she took a deep breath in through her nose, then let it out. “Actually, I'm not sure I was ever planning on leaving here. This place isn’t something that will happen overnight. It may take decades for this village to grow into what it can become, and somebody's got to be here to chronicle it every step of the way so others can follow in our footsteps and start their own havens. You and I both know what it has the potential to be. You described it yourself when we first got here, so don’t lie to me and say you can’t see it too.”
I didn’t answer her because she was right. If these people could survive the disease and the rest of the winter months, this village could be amazing. But the odds were just too high against that ever happening now.
“But it means living the rest of your life here, Tarah. With no internet, no mall, no going to college. What if you can never see your brother or your parents again? Is it really worth devoting your whole life to?”
Her chin rose another inch. “I can’t imagine a more worthy cause.”
And that’s when I knew...I was never going to convince her to leave. This place had become some kind of Holy Grail crusade for her. And even if I dragged her away from this place, the minute she got free she would come running right back.
CHAPTER 22
Monday, December 28th
We didn’t speak to each other for the next few days. Not even after glaring at each other from opposite sides of the village’s first grave as the makeshift coffin was lowered into its cold resting place in the harder than cement earth. The entire settlement, at least the ones who weren’t sick yet, had argued for hours about whether they should burn the body. I’d told them to bury it; everyone was already exposed to the virus, and burning the body would only send up a huge smoke cloud that would forced the already exhausted Mike to do a spell to hide it. It was already a full time job for witches with wind control abilities to keep a breeze blowing over our chimneys strong enough to disperse our small fireplaces’ smoke.
But I hadn’t stuck around for their final vote. I’d only known what everyone had decided to do with the body when two guys had shown up to borrow some power tools to make the coffin with.
No one had said much at the funeral. Probably too afraid or in shock.
I watched Tarah watching me across that hole that had taken several men hours and a lot of spells to chip out, and I wondered what she was thinking. Did she understand that this was only the first of who knew how many deaths to come? Did she care that helping the healers in the infirmary every day only increased her chances of being buried somewhere near this gravesite?
How many graves would it take to convince her to leave?
I wanted to say all of these things to Tarah. But I didn’t. What would be the point? If looking right at the evidence of how dangerous this situation was didn’t scare or convince her, nothing I could say would either.
Thursday, December 31st
In the days after the funeral, we kept to our corners, she at the infirmary, me at the tiny house, which was finally starting to look like a real house. I’d bought LED lanterns so I could work in the dark and gotten the roof on and the exterior siding up. But with every day that passed, I became more aware of how my time was running out to find one last way to protect her. I had no idea how long I had before Tarah’s immune system failed us both. How long could she go on risking the odds with constant, daily exposure to the virus before she was exposed one too many times, breathed in one too many breaths of infected air, handled one too many germ-infected washcloths?
I limited myself to a single meal a day, my dinners dropped off by Tarah in silence and received with only a brief thanks from me. She never stayed to talk or help with the house anymore, leaving me to eat alone in the cold. And yet, every night, whether she realized it or not, her hand continued to slip over and hold mine when I finally gave in to exhaustion and crashed on the couch near her.
That one bit of daily contact with her was enough to keep me hoping that somehow we’d make it through this together.
I took to reading the kit’s instruction manual while I ate, counting the steps left to be completed like a general plotting his next battle strategies for his army. Except there was no army helping me out. Everyone who wasn’t at the infirmary had banded together to use various spells to laboriously chip out holes for septic syste
m tanks and field lines in the hopes that a proper indoor water system would improve the general hygiene and wipe out the disease. Which left me on my own with my limited tools and even more limited knowledge and time.
As the final days of December passed, I grew ever more desperate. I skipped steps, reasoning that I couldn’t glue down the shower stall or flooring in the rest of the house due to the cold preventing the adhesives from holding and drying properly. I couldn’t glue together the plumbing either for the same reason. So I just set everything in place for now.
I built the porch and loft spaces, put in windows and doors, stuffed in rolls of insulation everywhere. It was while I was running the wiring on New Year’s Eve that I heard the shouting.
I opened my house’s new front door, stood on my newly created porch at the end of the trailer furthest from the hitch, and looked outside. It was Steve and Pamela again. Turning around, I went back inside, shut the door and found myself silently wishing Steve good luck with his arguments. I sure as heck couldn’t begrudge the guy for trying to do the exact same thing I wished I could do and get the woman I loved out of here to safety. Maybe I’d even put the spark plug back into the bus for him. The only reason I hadn’t used the bus myself as a temporary home for Tarah and me was because running its engine to keep it warm enough would quickly use up its fuel tanks, and I was pretty sure the gas stations in town would notice if I kept bringing in the same bus to refuel.
Though I tried to ignore their argument, I still couldn’t help but sneak a peek out through the living room window at Pamela. Maybe she and the other healers were finally making some progress in fighting the virus, and she had reason to want to stay?
The slump of her shoulders and dark circles beneath her eyes, visible even from a distance, killed that brief bit of hope.
How could Tarah expect me to be hopeful when even the healers looked defeated and ready to give up?
That evening, I had just squatted down in the living room area, getting ready to tackle the wood burning stove’s installation, when someone knocked on my door.
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