What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose)

by Beaumont, Delany

  I wonder what it’s like, the first symptoms. You can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t hold anything down. Only want to sleep. That much I know. But the first time it touches a person, what’s that like? I imagine a hollowness inside, a scooped out feeling like someone’s just opened you up and is removing your insides. Like you’ve been put under and are being operated on without your approval.

  For the first time, I hope my father’s experiment turns out to be a failure. The notion that I might be cut off from Larkin forever makes my heart hurt. I can’t make myself accept what’s just happened. There isn’t time to understand, to adjust to it. How do I go on from here? I look at my rifle leaning against the windowsill as if it holds a clue.

  It can’t be true that the vaccine was effective. If my father’s lab had created a miracle serum capable of saving thousands of people, of allowing their bodies to fight off the plague infecting their blood, there would be healthy people out there right now. They would have found us. They would be organized, hard at work at the task of cleaning up the world.

  But there aren’t healthy people out there. There’s only a few stragglers, a few kids with the disease lurking within them, biding its time. A ticking time bomb flowing through their veins and arteries.

  I want Larkin to have survived and I want him to contact us, as changed as he is. I want to see him again, touch his skin—his white, dry, altered skin. I won’t care about any of that, just that he’s alive. I know I won’t care that he’s changed.

  Larkin.

  Part Two

  The Black Riders

  One

  The city to the North announces itself with a small green sign. It’s a battered sign, peppered with bullet holes and hanging loose from one steel post along the edge of the highway.

  Entering Raintree.

  I mouth the words to myself. CJ and Terry, the two youngest, say the words out loud like it’s a magical incantation.

  We have reached the outskirts of Raintree after weeks of hard roads and cold floors and no one is thrilled. True to the city’s name, a thin drizzle keeps us damp. We’re hungry and exhausted. The worst thing is that everything looks just the same—the same endless ribbon of blacktop in front of us, the same car dealerships and strip malls along the frontage road to either side. We’ve still got miles to go before we reach the city’s center.

  As long as Larkin was with us, I never really cared if we reached the city or not. It felt right as long as we were together and kept uncovering safe places to stay. I had the same thought over and over. Maybe it won’t happen to him. Maybe Larkin will be spared. Time has passed—maybe the disease has magically worked its way out of his system.

  Without him, I’ve tried to keep our family of foundlings together. Tried to keep them motivated, working toward a common goal.

  Raintree is that goal.

  It will be so much better there, I tell them. We won’t be hungry. We’ll have comfortable beds to lie in, thick secure walls to keep the night creatures out. There will be endless blocks of multi-storied buildings to explore. Sights they’ve never seen, never imagined.

  I have no idea if even a fraction of what I tell them is true.

  Larkin has never tried to contact us. I’m certain that he wasn’t able to. Perhaps he was lying somewhere near us in Oxbow Ferry, in another home or abandoned business, dying and I never knew. We never found him, never saw any sign. But often when a dog’s howl wakes me in the night, I think, he could be out there, alive, making his way north, like we are.

  If Larkin is still out there somewhere, then he is one of the very few survivors of the plague. The closer we’ve come to Raintree, the more I’ve come to believe in the notion of survivors. I think it’s them I’ve heard rooting around near us at night, combing through buildings and cars, looking for something—I’m not sure what. But when the weak winter daylight breaks and we prepare to start trudging down the road again, it’s easy to convince myself that the whole idea of survivors is foolish. They’re just bogeymen, haunting the dreams of children.

  “Where do we go now?” CJ says, looking in every direction. “Where is everybody?”

  Emily eyes me warily. I can see that she’s wondering what I’m going to tell the younger kids now.

  “We’ll find them.” CJ’s nose is running and I take out a shirt from my pack and use it to wipe his face clean. I kneel next to him on the damp asphalt and give him a big hug. His body is so thin it makes me ache inside. I get back up. “Don’t worry, all of you. This is just the beginning. It’s a big, big city and that’s why we’ll find what we need there. Everybody who’s still okay, like we are, must have made their way to this place.”

  I have no idea how convinced they are by this speech but the sign, dangling forlornly amid all the wrecks and abandoned vehicles that litter the interstate, has given them a little hope, a smidgen of courage. It’s a miracle we’ve made it this far. “Now let’s get off the road,” I say. “And find a place for the night.”

  Two

  We’ve found a clean room, dry and secure. Another miracle.

  It’s in a two-story motel, exactly like so many we’ve spent a cold night in, wrapped in dirty blankets, huddled on a mildewed sofa. This one was no more or less welcoming than any of the others when we rounded a bend in the highway and saw the shape of it like a large white box tipped on its side about half a mile up the road. But it was what we needed.

  As we drew nearer and from the outside, the motel was like most every place we’ve come across—windows shattered, the black charring of fire damage blighting one end, the parking lot littered with mattresses, abandoned cars and the gray glass and electronic innards of smashed television sets.

  But on the top floor we’ve found the best room I’ve seen since leaving Oxbow Ferry. Two large beds with sheets and blankets, all of it clean and dry. A sofa, two chairs and a table, all intact. The windows on either side of the room are unbroken, not even cracked. Every other room in the motel has been damaged, most badly, but this one is strangely preserved, like someone makes it up and keeps it waiting on the offhand chance a weary traveler might find it.

  Despite the unbelievable luck of finding this place, no one is happy. CJ and Terry are fighting. CJ is only eight years old. Terry is eleven and they’re brothers. Larkin and I found them hiding in a house a few months after we found each other. Their older sister had succumbed to the fever a week before, had disappeared. The brothers were small and helpless and terrified. It took weeks before it felt like they trusted us. They told us almost nothing about their sister. She got sick. She changed. She wouldn’t let us go near her and then she was gone.

  With our family intact—with Larkin—they were happy. If we ran low on food for a few days, they waited. They walked for hours without complaint. Now they complain, they whine. I hear their constant bickering all day long and it’s wearing me down. I wonder how long I’ll be able to stay calm, to keep the tone of my voice even, reassuring.

  At times I just want to run away, leave them all behind. Disappear in the middle of the night, like Larkin. It’s too much. We’re not a family anymore and I’m no one’s mother.

  Stace follows me like a zombie, saying little, keeping herself walled off from the rest of us. She’s small and fragile, her greasy hair in pigtails, although she’s not much younger than Emily. I have the feeling that she would drift off from us like an untethered balloon if I didn’t watch her closely. I’m turning around constantly, looking over my shoulder, just to see if she’s still there.

  What’s happened to Emily is the worst. Although even she must know it’s not true, she blames me for Larkin’s disappearance. I’m sure she knows I had no control over what happened but she’s scared, both by the fact that he’s gone and by the thought that what happened to him could happen to me. It could happen to her in another year or two.

  She argues with me about everything.

  I’m standing in the bathroom trying to brush my teeth with a few sips of our bottled water
when she barges in. My teeth feel filmy and look gray. I brush and brush but can’t get them feeling smooth and clean like they used to, before the disease started to spread.

  I would give my left arm for some running water. I fantasize about turning on the taps, letting clean water fill the sink. Hot, steaming water. Splashing it against my face again and again. Letting the dirt that cakes my hands wash away. The thought of a hot bath for each of us makes my head spin.

  We’re filthy but we’ve had to get used to it, how each of us smells, the way the dirt pulls our skin tight. It flakes off when we sleep, tossing and turning, leaving a residue of soil behind on the cushions and mattresses in the shape of our sleeping bodies.

  I have the bathroom door almost completely shut and flinch when Emily slams it open, causing me to jam the toothbrush against the roof of my mouth. I glance at my rifle, propped against the empty bathtub and wonder if it’s an emergency or if she’s just being pissy with me again.

  Emily’s changed so much. She looks older now. I can’t be sure if it’s mostly the dirt or if her face really is becoming deeply lined, like she’s changing from a young girl, barely grown, into an old lady. She wears a perpetual sneer, always ready to roll her eyes and make a face if I say anything she disagrees with. “Are we going to stay here all day?” she says. It’s not what she says but the tone of her voice, like a little yapping dog, that makes my shoulders tense, my fingers clench.

  Ignoring her, I take my time spitting out the last of the toothpaste, swish a little water around my mouth and spit again. She’s watching me, kicking at the floor with one foot. I grab my rifle. She’s blocking the doorway, trying to provoke me, but I shove her aside. She follows me into the main part of the motel room. Pointing at the rifle, she says, “You’ve always got to take that with you, everywhere you go. You can’t even go into the bathroom without it. Do you think we’re going to start shooting each other while you’re making yourself beautiful?”

  I look around. CJ and Terry are lying on one of the beds, playing quietly with some plastic soldiers. I’m grateful that they’re getting along for the moment. I don’t see Stace anywhere in the room. “Where did Stace go?” I ask Emily.

  She shrugs. “She’s probably playing in another room. Maybe outside.”

  “You’re supposed to help keep an eye on her.”

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon. What’s going to happen to her?”

  I’m finding it hard to control my anger, to keep myself from shouting. “We’re in the city. We’re right off the highway. We don’t know what’s around here.” I hiss the words at her.

  “The city.” She shakes her head sadly, laughs through her nose, making a sound like the honk of a sarcastic goose.

  “Yeah, the city.”

  Emily walks over to the window facing the back lot, stamping her feet, folding her arms and staring outside. There’s a nice view of a burned out water heater and plumbing supply store just across the way. Pipes lie twisted in the middle of what was the showroom floor like giant strands of metallic spaghetti. “We don’t need to be watched like babies,” she says, not turning around. “We can do things on our own. God!”

  I follow after her, pausing just long enough to lean the rifle against the sofa. CJ and Terry have stopped playing and watch us, their eyes wide. “Emmy, what’s your problem?” She says nothing so I grab her shoulder and jerk her toward me. She spins around, fists like tight little balls, looking like she’s about to hit me. She tries to stare me down, her red face pinched and sour and she’s trembling uncontrollably.

  “We finally got here,” she says. “We walked miles and miles and there’s nothing. That’s my problem. You said everything was going to be different.” She starts pacing back and forth like a caged panther. Behind her I see Stace’s face appear in the doorway of the room like a little red-haired, freckled ghost.

  “Can I help it? Did you really think there was going to be a welcoming committee? A banquet laid out for us?” I look around at all of them, my four adopted children. “Nothing’s going to be like it was. All of that’s gone. We can only hope we find someone who can help us. But who that is, where they are, I don’t know.”

  Emily suddenly deflates. She plops down on the edge of the bed where CJ and Terry are lying quietly, listening. “I know that,” she says. “Don’t you think I know that?” She slaps her palm hard on the edge of the bed. “Damn it. Why couldn’t we stay in Oxbow Ferry?”

  I sit next to her. “With Larkin? I wanted us to stay there with him, Emmy. I wish we could have.” She starts to sob—hard, convulsing sobs like something damned up inside her has finally broken free. She lets me put my arm around her and I start to rock her gently to and fro.

  “Are we going to get sick?” Terry asks softly from over my shoulder. “Like Larkin?”

  “I don’t know. You’re not old enough to worry about it.”

  Emily’s sobs subside enough for her to say, “But you are, aren’t you?”

  I look at her. Her face is calm and open now. The tears have left deep grooves that score the dirt on her cheeks. I look at her greasy, straw-colored hair, long and unruly and in tangled clumps.

  Maybe she’ll let me try to comb it.

  I haven’t seen her like this since Larkin left us. She looks younger, vulnerable, needy.

  She trusted us. She was abandoned, left to die alone, and she found me, then Larkin. She believed we would always be together.

  “I can’t lie to you. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” My voice is shaky. I want to speak encouraging words, I want to inspire them, but my mind is blank. Stace has wandered into the room and takes a seat on the bed with the rest of us. “Just stay with me a little longer, all of you.” It’s the only thing I can come up with. I close my eyes and then I feel Emily’s arms around my shoulders, hugging me tight.

  Three

  In a grocery store not far off the highway I hear voices. I’m by myself, foraging for food. The store is nearly barren. Glass litters the floor. The entire place smells rotten. I try to stay as far as I can from the meat and fish counters, from the dairy aisle.

  Here on the outskirts of Raintree, everything has been ransacked, everything good, everything useful taken. I think about the sickened people fleeing, trying to grab what they could even though they must have known they only had a short time to live.

  I’ve left Emily in charge back at the motel. We’ve stayed there for two nights now. I wanted to leave sooner but Stace is sick, her nose running and forehead hot to the touch. CJ and Terry continue to pick on each other. They’re shoving each other around one minute, then playing quietly with their plastic soldiers the next. This store was too far away to have brought them with me, on the opposite side of the highway. I’ve left them unprotected.

  We’re hungry, constantly, unbearably hungry. The packages of convenience store food we’ve found are mostly candy or frosted pastry. The cakes and bars and bite-sized pieces are stale and mushy, furry with mold. After scraping the worst of it off, the edible bits are delicious for a few moments of luxurious chewing but soon make our empty stomachs clench, then heave. It’s hard to keep anything down. The sugar we absorb makes us shake.

  There she is.

  It’s a whisper, followed by the crunch of glass on the linoleum floor. I whip around and see a shape flit past the end of the aisle I’m standing in. I have a broken jar of peanut butter in my hand, some of which looks good enough to eat. I’m so hungry that I’ve been staring at it, hypnotized, fighting the desire to pick out the shards of glass, scrape off the pale green fuzz coating the top of the jar and stick my fingers deep inside the rest of it, filling my mouth with the creamy paste. But I know I should bring it back to the others.

  The voice. There she is. Someone else nearby.

  I stand frozen like a deer, listening. There’s no other sound, no indication of movement. It’s not until I’ve taken the time to set the jar of peanut butter carefully back on the barren steel shelving that I bot
her to look down to where I expect to see my rifle. That’s when I realize I’ve left it behind somewhere. I’ve gotten careless.

  I don’t feel panicked or scared. The situation feels oddly dreamlike, like I have little control over anything that is going to happen no matter what I try to do. I hurry to the end of the aisle opposite to where I heard the voice, toward the back of the store, trying to avoid crunching anything, making any noise, although I’m sure someone’s watching me.

  At the back, leaning against an empty bread rack, I find the rifle just where I left it. I grab it and retrace my steps, easing my way to the front of the store, less concerned about making noise now. I kick the lid of a jar unintentionally and hear it clang off the base of the steel shelves.

  At the end of the aisle, I peek out around the corner. I feel like a soldier and the store looks like a war zone. Jagged spears of glass dangle like icicles from the edges of the open windows that face the parking lot. Cash registers have been overturned, their drawers thrown about. Shopping carts are jammed into all the checkout lanes, snarled together like the remains of a demolition derby.

  Outside the clouds have lifted and patches of sunlight reflect off the hoods of cars scattered crazily across the parking lot. I edge my way out of the store, hunched, scuttling like a crab from one concealed spot to another, from an overturned cart to a car lying on its side.

  I keep expecting to see another shape dart past out of the corner of my eye but he or she could be anywhere, still lurking in the dark interior of the store I’ve left behind. I keep turning in every direction, feeling exposed. Do they want to hurt me? Or just talk to me? Maybe there was no one. Maybe, while foolishly entranced by that cracked jar of peanut butter, I began to hallucinate. I do feel weak, lightheaded.

  At the edge of the parking lot, I start running. I cross the frontage road and beyond it thread my way under a torn patch of chain link fencing. I jump down a small embankment and heave myself up the other side, onto the shoulder of the highway. I have to stop for a moment. My head spins. It’s hard to see past a mass of black dots swarming in front of my eyes. My heart is thudding against the wall of my chest so hard it feels like it could burst through.