Limerence: Book Three of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “Shhh, it’s alright,” I tell the girl. “You’re safe. Can you climb over your daddy to me?”

  “Is he dead?” she asks, and then asks again.

  “No, but I need to get you out, okay? Crawl to me now.”

  I can see the woman – presumably the mother – now helping a very old person out of the back, a second woman who’s at least eighty. She is trembling with the effort of dragging the poor woman free but I don’t have time to help. The child wriggles over her father.

  “Is he dead?” she asks. “Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s alive,” I grunt. I have her in my grasp now, but getting us both out is a feat. I have to use her father’s body as an anchor and drag us both under the hot, sharp metal of the vehicle using only one arm. I manage to dump the girl on the ground outside the car and then turn back for the dad.

  The earth is trembling. I can feel the vibrations of many, many feet drawing near. Where the hell is Luke. Where the hell is Luke. Where the hell is Luke. It’s in my head like a mantra because I don’t want to consciously think about what I’m about to do. About how I’m drawing my knife, but this time it’s not to cut through the tough material of a seatbelt, it’s to cut through the flesh and bone of a man’s ankle.

  At first it’s harder than I thought it would be, but I think that’s because I’m timid. I try to imagine this as a piece of dead meat, one I must chop to survive, and as I think of the flesh like that – like flesh and not a person – I’m able to hack through the ruined leg until I reach the bone that has already sheared in half upon impact. A hideous image enters my mind without warning or explanation. An image of me ducking my head and biting through his leg, tasting his blood and skin and tissue and fat in my mouth.

  What the fuck?

  I shudder in revulsion.

  “What are you doing?” the mother screams at me through the macabre thought. I ignore her and get back to cutting.

  That’s when the man wakes up.

  He gives a mighty roar of pain and lurches upright only to bash his skull on the park brake. Blood trickles into his eyes but it’s the least of his worries. His jerking has lodged my knife deep into the fractured bone of his ankle and I can’t get it out, and I’m sure he’s doing way more damage to the amputation than I am.

  “Stop,” I try. “It’s okay, try to stay calm—”

  “Get off me!” he yells. His fist comes out and takes me in the cheek. It’s a hell of a blow and I feel my head spin nauseatingly.

  “Stop!” I growl through the pain. I meet his agonized, panicked eyes and hold them fiercely. “My knife’s in your ankle. I’m cutting your foot off to get you out of this car because if I don’t you’ll die. Take a deep breath and let me finish.” And then I add, even though it feels awkward to say it, “For your family, let me finish.”

  His jaw clenches and he rallies more courage than I thought possible. With a sharp nod he lets out a mighty sob of pain but he doesn’t move again. He braces himself on the bits of metal he can find and he roars as I cut through the last of his leg. His wife speaks to him in French, a steady stream of words I don’t understand. He comes free weighing less than he did; he comes away smaller than he was.

  The ground is shaking.

  We crawl out of the car into the waiting arms of his family. “Get to the tunnel!” I shout, pointing. “Help your grandmother,” I order the children. They all swarm on the older lady and help her over the distance. Meanwhile the mother has managed to get her husband upright and supports him as he hops his way heroically after the rest of his family.

  It’s time to draw my guns now. I lower myself behind the wreckage and line up the Furies in my sights, using the rubber wheel of the car as a rest. I fire and hit a skull, then a chest. I have finite ammunition, but I just need to slow them until the family reaches the tunnel. Then I can run.

  “Where’s Luke?” I snap.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Teddy wails. “Josi, get out of there! There’s way too many!”

  I shoot again and again, firing through the magazines of both guns.

  “Are the others all clear?”

  “Yes, they’re safe. Get below, Josi.”

  I glance back to see that the father has lost consciousness. Too much lost blood, I guess. The mother and her four children are dragging him over the ground.

  I keep firing. I run out of bullets. I turn and sprint. Blood rushes in my ears. I make it to the family and push a child out of the way so I can haul the man to the tunnel.

  But the Furies are arriving.

  With both my knives I turn to meet the first of the fray, slashing fast and clean. I go for throats and eyes, not bothering with chests, as that won’t slow them enough. I’ve said it before: in moments like these a badass sword would really come in handy. I try to cover the angles, try to block any from getting through. All together there must be a hundred of them. Too many for me. Too many for Luke and me. I don’t know why I thought he’d make the difference. This was always a suicide mission, as it turns out. I’m suddenly very glad he didn’t appear in time to help. At least the Furies haven’t arrived in a group, but in drips and drabs. Some were faster than others and so they come in a steady stream, a couple at a time instead of all at once. It might make the difference between living and dying. It might.

  A single glance tells me that most of the family is in the tunnel now, a glance is all I have time for. And then something terrible happens. Something so terrible that it breaks my heart and mends it and teaches me of the courage of children. Of girls. Of humans.

  The girl I dragged over her father’s body hasn’t climbed into the tunnel with the rest of her family. I can hear her mother screaming her name – Sienn. She has a blade. It’s small. She’s at my side and she means to use it on the Furies. She’s only eleven, maybe twelve, maybe ten.

  I twist and dive. The Fury lunging at her takes my boot in his head. I hit the ground and scrape my side badly but I’m moving, rolling over and shoving the girl at the tunnel. She tumbles toward it but I’m already raising my knife into the thigh of a Fury, wrenching it through its artery. I’m drenched in a waterfall of blood. The creature slips and falls straight onto me. The air leaves me but I can’t stop yet, not yet, because the girl is still above ground, she’s still trying to fight with her little knife and it’s so so brave but I have to get her below.

  I shove the body off me and slash quickly through its neck. There’s a very brief respite in the attacks but there are more Furies coming and coming. Josi, my flickering earpiece weeps, Josi. I drag myself to my feet in time to see Sienn stab her blade into the arm of a Fury I thought I’d already killed. She gives a wild scream of rage as she does it. The monster snarls in pain, bats the weapon away and grabs hold of Sienn’s shoulders. It lunges at her, but I smash my shoulder into its side and send its weight off the girl. Pinning the creature by the balls, I cut its throat, then turn quickly to shove the girl to the tunnel, to where her mother’s waiting hands grab desperately at her.

  “Go!” I scream, meaning to follow, but they’re already upon me. All I have time to do is lunge for the grate and slam it shut over the tunnel mouth before I feel my legs pulled out from under me. I am dragged over the earth and completely overcome. I manage to twist upwards in time to stab through the eye of one Fury and slash another’s cheek, but they have me now. They have me and I can no longer move. They’re all here, blocking out the sky, all of it but for a single scrap of twilight violet blue. Stars have appeared, a veil for the halo of gold sitting atop the earth.

  The voice in my ear fades until I can no longer hear it.

  I stare up at the beauty above and I imagine rising from beneath these hands and mouths and teeth and bodies pressing me down down down. I rise and fly away from it all. From here, from way up here, I think of many things. I think of the people in the tunnels. I think of my father. I think of how I’m dying the same way Hal died, feasted upon by monsters. I think I like that I die fighting. But these th
oughts come in snippets, too fast and scattered to hold to.

  The one thing that doesn’t come in a snippet, the thing I grasp easily and will never let go of, is the thought of Luke. Wherever I go now, I will think always of him. Wherever my spirit travels, whatever is made of my soul. Even if nothing happens, even if my life is extinguished and my body turns to dust, that dust will think of him, and love him. Let my body give life to this earth, let it give rebirth.

  Let my heart love him beyond that life, beyond my death.

  This is the last thought I have before the monsters crowd out the sky.

  Actually, there is one more. It is this:

  Fragile indeed.

  Chapter 14

  December 23rd, 2067

  Josephine

  “Volunteers for the crapper?” Luke hollers into the dining hall as we eat breakfast.

  To dead silence.

  I roll my eyes and raise my hand. I’ve had a three-month sabbatical from toilet duty so it’s probably my turn.

  Luke’s eyebrows arch as if to make sure I actually mean it. Then he throws me the matches with a quick shrug. “Your funeral.”

  “It’s a Christmas miracle!” Pace announces amid the hesitant laughter. “Someone has actually volunteered for the crapper.”

  “She needs a second,” Luke says. “One of you kids can get off your asses and help her.” He’s in a bad mood.

  “Sure as shit isn’t gonna be me,” I hear Lawrence mutter. “No pun intended.”

  “You’ve never done it,” Henrietta points out. “I’ve done it three times already.”

  “I’ve done it five,” Alo is quick to add.

  “I vote the king of the crapper goes with her,” Teddy says and they all look at Coin.

  “I can’t. It’s too gross and I have OCD.”

  “Conveniently.”

  “I’ll go on my own,” I interrupt, not in the mood for their bickering.

  The kids all protest and start to say they’ll go with me but I’m already striding from the room.

  “I’ll help her,” I hear a voice offer. “Since you’re all too piss weak. Pun intended.”

  I glance back to see Zach following. I also see the expressions of the other kids – boy, do they hate him. He rubs everyone the wrong way, and what’s worse is he does it on purpose.

  “Don’t fall in,” Lawrence reminds him sardonically.

  Zach and I head for the stairs in silence. I light the lamp to guide our way, and in the flickering light his scar makes his perpetual snarl even more pronounced.

  “So what are we feeling guilty about, Josephine Luquet?” he asks. He always calls me by my full name and I don’t particularly like it.

  “Nothing, Zachariah Shay.”

  “Bullshit. No pun intended.”

  “Enough with the shit puns, alright? They’re barely even puns.”

  We stop in at the supply room to get the gasoline, then head for the lavatories.

  “Nobody volunteers for the worst job down here unless they’re feeling guilty about something.”

  “You did,” I point out.

  “I’m an anomaly. Too far evolved to feel guilt.”

  My lip quirks. “Oh yeah? What evolutionary purpose would a lack of guilt serve?”

  “Do you know how much time and energy people waste on guilt? Particularly for things they weren’t responsible for?”

  “Sure, but it exists as a way to regulate our behavior and maintain social skills. No guilt, and we’d all just go around doing whatever we want.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Yeah, until any one of the hundred people who hates you decides they’ve had enough of your sneering superiority and offs you with a hatchet in the back.”

  “Oh, shut up already, Josephine Luquet. You’re boring me.”

  I smile properly now, but that disappears as the smell hits. We’ve come to the edge of the upper tunnel. Before us sit the pit toilets in all their foul glory.

  I step out and open them one by one. The stench hits me and I groan, quickly pulling my shirt up over my nose and mouth. I start spraying the gasoline down the holes.

  “Jesus, this is grim,” Zach says.

  “Help me out, would you? Light a match and throw one into each toilet.”

  He looks appalled at the idea of moving any closer, but delicately does as I’ve instructed. He gags badly enough to heave the contents of his stomach up, which thankfully is just a bit of bile.

  “Get a move on.”

  Once the pits are all lit we move to open the smoke flutes and lower them down over the toilets.

  “Whose idea was this, anyway?” Zach asks once we’re standing to the side to monitor the burn-off. He sounds impressed.

  “Your favorite person. One Mr. Luke Townsend. Right after he figured out how to get us clean drinking water, cooking fires and power.”

  Zach rolls his eyes but I can’t help remembering those first awful days in this place, after having blocked off the Furies with a dislodged train carriage. Luke turned that brain of his to understanding how everything down here worked, and to figuring out how we could remain alive in the most unlivable conditions. He explored for weeks on end and discovered an old, closed off coalmine, which he used to build hot, low smoke emission fires. He designed the smoke flutes, and then he set himself to finding a clean source of water. One of the tunnels, he found, was blocking off a running stream, and so he needed an enormous industrial drill. Steal such a thing we did, on a desperate mission that got two people killed, and then Luke used it to crack through the earth until he reached the underground spring. His mother said she probably shouldn’t have spent his childhood stopping him from digging holes because it had turned out to be quite a useful skill.

  “We’re alive because of him,” I tell Zach.

  But he’s not buying it. “No one’s that perfect unless they’re hiding something ugly.”

  “Who says he isn’t?”

  Zach’s eyes alight on me, hungry for ammunition, but I shake my head. Luke’s not perfect, as much as I used to needle him about it. He’s a pathological liar, but then again so am I. Once upon a time we were perfect for each other.

  “Are you really going to stop him from killing the Furies?”

  I nod.

  “Why?”

  This is the question no one else has asked me. Most people have avoided talking to me since my bewildering declaration to protect the Furies, but not Zach. “Would you slaughter a pack of wolves because they aren’t human?”

  “I wouldn’t, but many would.”

  I shake my head. “Not people I want to be around.”

  “Then what are you doing down here?”

  I think it’s meant to be a joke, but it falls flat. The toilets are really burning now, and the smell of the excrement has mixed with the scents of gas and smoke to make up a particularly god-awful stench. My eyes are watering with it.

  “The Furies aren’t wolves,” Zach says.

  “No, they’re more human.”

  “What’s so good about being human?” he asks flatly.

  I look at him properly, feeling a gust of elation. “I have no idea,” I tell him honestly. Our eyes meet; I can see the flicker of my lamp flame reflected in the darkness of his. That sneer of his never goes away, it will be plastered on his face until his flesh turns to dust.

  “Why do you have that scar?” I ask. “Surely Daddy dearest could have managed a proper surgeon for you? I can’t imagine he’d want his work on display.”

  Zach’s lips quirk humorlessly. “You serious? Course he would.”

  This is unnerving. I’m about to let it go when Zach speaks again.

  “He wasn’t happy with my progress. I’d been suturing pig carcasses for months and they weren’t up to scratch. So to teach me a lesson he carved open my face and made me stitch it up myself. I was ten.”

  I stare at him, my arm hairs standing on end.

  “Luke thinks he’s going to kill my father, doesn’t
he?” Zach asks.

  I clear my throat. “He’d like to. I think he’d like to very much.”

  Zach’s gaze is bleak as he searches my face. “He can try. Just let him try, Josephine Luquet. But you and I both know what really has to happen.”

  I nod once and a silent pact is made between us.

  He says, “It was really bad here with you gone.”

  *

  At one of the punching bags I spot a very small girl. It takes me a second to place her face, and then all at once I feel a rush of heat inside my mouth, as if I might vomit. I freeze in the middle of the training session – there are people moving all around me, tackling and grappling with each other, doing push-ups and sit-ups and any number of exercises, lifting weights and generally flurrying with movement. In the corners of my vision they start to seem very wild, very savage, like creatures moving in for an attack. But I can’t look at them straight because my eyes are captured and held by this one little girl who is far too little to be punching a bag but is trying anyway.

  “You okay?” a voice asks at my side.

  I blink and nod.

  “You’re pale,” Luke murmurs, and touches my arm to help. I wrench it away from him and duck from the menagerie of limbs and mouths and eyes. I’m breathing very fast as I rush through this tiny shrinking tunnel, desperate for air, for quiet, for sky. My feet stumble on the rails of the ladder and I nearly fall, but manage to burst up through our covered tunnel hatch and into the grassy hills. I suck a huge breath into my lungs, then another, locking my eyes to the twilight sky.

  I don’t care if there are Blood patrols out here. I don’t care if I’m spotted. I’m too overwhelmed to care, and even though it’s unforgivably reckless I don’t duck for cover. I just stand here, trying not to look at the mighty wall in the distance.

  I haven’t seen Sienn since the day she raised a knife to help me face the monsters. Not since the day her courage made me fall to them.