“That’s no surprise,” Naya said, startling him from his thoughts. “I mean, I’ve only been with you a couple days, but it’s enough to know you would have taught her how to be strong.”
He nodded twice then shook his head. “I woulda, that’s for damn sure. Didn’t have the chance, though.” He frowned, his thoughts returning to his time in the CDC. To the small room he’d spent twenty years in, his friends thinking he was dead, his future hopeless. To holding his baby girl and swearing he’d do whatever it took to save her from the same fate. “She was an experiment. Like me. Spent the early years of her life locked away. Poked. Prodded. Used.”
Naya stopped walking, her mouth hanging open like she wasn’t sure how to respond. “What do you mean?”
He looked at her, squinting from the bright sun at her back, which hadn’t yet been swallowed up by the angry gray storm clouds clogging the sky to the west. The ramshackle old town they’d taken cover in the night before was only a short distance away, and he spotted movement between the buildings. A second later, a shaggy, brown dog came into view, pausing in the middle of what had once been the road. It looked around, its tongue lolling from the side of its mouth, and froze when it saw them, baring its teeth. Angus’s hand went to the knife at his waist, but he relaxed a second later when the dog turned and darted away, going back the way it had come and disappearing from sight.
Naya was still staring at him, waiting for a response, but it took a moment for Angus to remember what they’d been talking about. Glitter. His daughter.
“They made her,” he finally said. “The CDC. They wanted somebody else with my immunity and thought my kid would do. See, I wasn’t the only one.”
The revelation made the girl’s eyes grew wider.
“There were others over the years,” he continued, “other people who were immune. They just didn’t make it as long as I did. They’d come in, get poked and experimented on, and they’d die. I was the only one who lasted.”
“How many?” Naya asked, her voice low and unsure, a slightly terrified tremor to the words.
Angus thought back, scratching at a bug bite on his arm as he did, then he shook his head. “Don’t know for sure. Lots. My brother was one, and his girl, too. My girl. We all spent some time in there.”
“I just can’t believe people would—” Naya paused, her frown growing deeper as she turned the situation over. “Things are so awful now. They always have been for me. Whenever we ran into people, we had to assume they were bad. That was what my mom taught me. Strangers can’t be trusted. But I thought, somehow, that things had been different before the virus. That people were decent and caring.” She shook her head slowly, sadly. “The things you’ve told me tell a different story.”
“There was good people,” Angus said. “I knew lots of ’em. Especially after. But there was more bad people, I think.” He paused, thinking it through, and his expression grew somber. “I was one of ’em once.”
Naya’s frown grew more exaggerated, her brows pulling together as she studied him. “I don’t believe it.”
“Well,” he said as he started walking, once again traveling west, “I guess people are gonna believe what they want.”
The statement came out unbidden, but the second it passed his lips, he felt as if he’d heard it before. Where? He thought it through, his mind somehow conjuring up the image of a dark room, Vivian at his side. It was fuzzy around the edges at first, but the more he thought about it, the more it came into view. A cellar. Vivian and Axl. Angus not only facing his mortality for the first time in his life, but also regretting so many of the things he’d done in the past. It had happened right after the first time he was bitten, the day he’d thought for sure would be his last one on this Earth. They’d all thought that. What had Vivian said to him?
“I like to think there’s more to you.”
He remembered thinking she was dumber than her blonde hair made her look. That she was a fool if she really, truly believed he was anything but an asshole through and through, and he’d responded by saying, “Sorry to disappoint, but there ain’t. Was born a bastard and I’ll die a bastard, and there ain’t nothin’ nobody coulda done to change that.”
“I don’t believe you, Angus,” she’d said, to which he’d responded, “Well, people are gonna believe what they want, I guess.”
He smiled at the memory and at the realization that Vivian was still with him even though she was long dead. She’d been a fighter from the beginning. Had been determined to prove to Axl that he was worth more than he thought he was, and later, she’d done the same thing with Angus. God, how he missed her.
“What was so bad about you?” Naya asked.
She was walking at his side again, staring up at him with the frown frozen on her face, the locket once again between her fingers. This time, he was able to make out the delicate flowers etched on the surface.
“Was a hard ass,” he replied, but his brain was only halfway focused on the girl’s question. He was too busy thinking about Vivian and that day all those years ago, slowly unraveling the memory as it came more and more into focus. “I picked fights with everybody. Stole. Hated people for no reason. I didn’t appreciate life back then.”
“What changed?”
The question brought his thoughts and the current conversation to a point where they started to blend together, merging and expanding until he could see the past more clearly. Until he could remember how things had played out, all the little events working together to bring him where he was right then.
“Everything, I suppose,” he began. “First the virus and the end of the world, then the people I was with. We was all different, brought up different, thought different from each other, but we learned to work together.” He pressed his lips together as the various faces of the people he’d lost flipped through his mind. “They’re what really changed me, I guess, only I didn’t exactly realize it. Not ’til I was bit. Thinkin’ you’re gonna die makes you take a good, hard look at your life, at who you are, and I didn’t much like what I saw. Didn’t much like how everybody saw me. After that, after I realized I was immune, I did everything I could to be different. To be better.” The memory of Parv’s face came into focus, and he paused again, allowing the image of his wife to wrap itself around him, then he smiled. “Must have done something right.”
“Well, I think you’re a good person,” Naya said.
Angus gave the girl a tight smile when he found himself too choked up for words.
They walked in silence for a bit after that. It was hard to think of things to say when he’d spent so much time alone, so long in silence, but he didn’t really need the conversation to feel more whole than he had in years. Just the knowledge that she was at his side, that if he wanted to spill his guts about the past or lay his soul bare to another person, he could, made him feel more human.
Naya seemed content with the quiet as well, walking with her hand clutching the strap of her backpack, her gaze constantly moving around. She was so sure of herself, and he found himself comparing her first to Glitter, before turning his thoughts to his nieces. Megan and Margot.
Megan had been like Naya, strong and sure and independent, but Margot was a different story. Like him, she’d been a prisoner in the CDC. They’d freed her when they killed Star, but by then the damage of her incarceration and the experiments had been done, and she’d never fully recovered. She was eighteen years old when she was released, but had acted so much younger—childish, even—and had been known to lapse into long silences as if lost in some world no one else could see. When that happened, her expression had been far-away, confused. Like she couldn’t quite figure out if the people around her were real. If she was real. She’d been like that until the day she died, and while no one had been around to witness what had happened to her, they’d all known the truth.
Axl had been gone around six months, and while the adjustment had been hard for all of them—Vivian and Angus most of all—they’d leaned on ea
ch other for support and were getting through their grief one day at a time. The creatures had been popping up more and more, and most nights their howls rang through the air shortly after sunset, continuing on and off all night. More than once a member of the settlement had been scooped up and dragged away, the creatures coming from out of nowhere, fast and vicious and unrelenting in their attack, and the survivors had finally realized they only came out at night. People no longer went out after dark, but instead retired to their homes as soon as the sun got low, where they shut and locked their doors, pulled their curtains and blinds, and stayed quiet. It had been a terrifying time, but they’d believed that just like the zombie outbreak, they would survive whatever came their way. All they had to do was stay inside and remain quiet, and eventually everything would be okay.
Once again, they’d been naïve.
Living in close quarters the way they had, the nightly lockdown hadn’t really been an issue for Angus’s family. The people who’d moved outside the settlement when they thought the zombies were gone for good had returned to the safety of the walls, and they now had eleven adults—including the mostly absent Margot—and three children crowded into the four-bedroom house. They were used to sharing a small space, though. Used to being on top of each other. In fact, Angus was pretty sure they wouldn’t have known what to do with privacy had they been given the chance.
The night Margot disappeared had been the same as so many before. They’d retired to their house as the sun set, eaten dinner, played some cards, and talked. Dragon had joined them that evening the way he sometimes did—choosing to sleep on the couch so he could spend time with friends—and had also graced them with a bottle of booze. He’d been steadily making the stuff for more than ten years, and the moonshine flowed freely when he was around. That had been the main difference Angus could remember about the night. The alcohol.
Axl hadn’t been much of a drinker, a side effect of an alcoholic mother, but Angus had never had a problem throwing a drink—or ten—back. Having been married to Axl as well as having experience with an alcoholic parent herself, Vivian had gotten in the habit of turning drinks down over the years, but that night, surrounded by friends and still missing her husband, she hadn’t waved Angus off when he’d poured her a glass.
They drank and laughed, had told stories from the past about people who were long gone. About how shocked they’d been when Hadley Lucas—the rich, famous, and gorgeous actress—had come to their rescue back in the Mojave Desert. How she’d stood up to the asshole, Mitchell, who’d tried to leave them all to die, and how Angus had eventually beaten the shit out of the guy. They’d talked about Brady, the little man—he’d been a dwarf—they’d saved from a horde and how he’d led them to the gated community that had sustained them throughout the long, harsh first winter after the outbreak. About Joshua, the doctor, who had been Parv’s husband for a short time and who’d amputated Al’s arm when he’d been bitten, and so many other people who’d touched their lives only to be ripped away. The conversation was sad, but sweet, too, and had been greatly aided by glass after glass of moonshine.
That was what had led to the disaster. Angus should have known. He’d been witness to enough disasters that started with one or two drinks, eventually spiraling out of control and nearly destroying the people involved, that it shouldn’t have taken him by surprise. But it had. Like so many other things back then, the events of that night had nearly knocked him on his ass.
One by one the group had turned in, the two sets of parents and their children first, and the others following in a steady stream as their eyes grew heavy and their yawns increased in frequency. He still wasn’t sure at what point Margot had wandered off, wasn’t even sure if she’d ever made it to the dining room where she and Glitter slept. He just knew she was gone the next day. The back door was open, the yard empty, and Margot was gone, and the only sign that she’d ever stumbled outside was the streak of red on the back steps.
No one ever saw her again except Angus.
He’d thought the loss might kill Vivian. She’d lost a child when she was younger and had even thought for a short time that Margot was dead. The same thing had happened with Axl, but both he and Margot had been brought back, almost like they’d been resurrected, and the family had been given a second chance at life. Not this time, though. This time, there would be no miracle. No hope.
Angus had held Vivian while she sobbed, hating himself, wishing he could go back in time and change the events of the night before. Axl had always been so careful with alcohol, had always warned Angus what it could lead to, but he’d been stubborn and stupid and proud, and as usual, he hadn’t listened. He shouldn’t have been surprised that disaster was the result of his foolishness.
That day, as he held his sobbing sister-in-law, Angus swore he’d never touch the stuff again. And he never had.
As he walked, Naya at his side, Angus’s eyes filled with tears at the memory, and he blinked them away. He hated the raw emotion scraping at his throat, hated the guilt that still clawed at his insides whenever he thought about what had happened. Everyone told him he wasn’t to blame, but he’d never believed them. Angus had made a promise to his dying brother to keep his wife and daughters safe, and he’d failed. And so quickly.
He swiped his hand across his eyes, leaving it raised and poised above his brows like he was looking into the distance. He was, but he also didn’t want Naya to ask why he was crying. He didn’t care about the emotion, he just couldn’t bring himself to talk about one of the biggest failures of his life right then.
The storm was moving faster than he’d thought, and in front of them, the sky had grown darker, the clouds thick and gray and threatening, and the occasional flash of lightning was visible in the distance. The wind, too, had picked up.
“Gonna hafta find a place to take cover,” he said, dropping his hand and turning to look at Naya.
“Could be a bad one.”
“Yeah,” he said, sighing.
There was little worse than trying to find cover from a rainstorm because most of the buildings they came upon these days weren’t in good shape. Even if they still had an intact roof, they usually leaked, and more often than not, other animals—rats, especially—wanted to use them as shelter from a storm. He hated trying to get comfortable when there were rats crawling all over everything in the room.
“Which way?” Naya asked, scanning the distance.
Her guess was as good as his.
They were surrounded by trees upon trees, all of them swaying in the wind as if taunting the two lost humans, but there was something else as well. In the distance and barely peeking out from the tops of the trees. Rock. A mountain, maybe?
Angus had stumbled upon a few caves in his travels, and with the deteriorating condition of buildings, they had often turned out to be a better place to take shelter than many of the houses he’d found. So, even though it was a longshot, he jerked his head in that direction. If nothing else, maybe there’d be a house close by.
“There.”
Naya had to hold her hair back when the wind whipped a few loose strands in into her face, but after a couple seconds of squinting, she nodded. “Okay.”
For some reason, Angus was relieved she didn’t argue and even seemed to think it was a good idea. He didn’t want to have to make all the decisions, even though he was the adult and she was the kid. The thought of being responsible all the time, of possibly making a wrong choice that led to yet another disaster, was something he couldn’t stand thinking about. He had a nagging suspicion he wouldn’t be able to rebound emotionally if he were to fail yet another person. Even more pressing, though, was the knowledge that the girl at his side was his last chance for human interaction. There would be no more stumbling upon other survivors. Not for him.
He and Naya headed into the forest, moving faster than they had been before. The sky had darkened even more, and already the air felt wet, and above their heads, tree branches whipped back and forth with a
violence that felt almost threatening. The storm would be here soon.
Without realizing what he was doing, Angus grabbed Naya’s arm as he picked up the pace. They were about to get rained on, which would inevitably mean being cold all night long—and possibly all day tomorrow as well. The temperature had already dropped a significant amount, and if they couldn’t find shelter any time soon, they would be in real trouble. Even if they did find shelter, however, there were no guarantees they’d be okay. Making a fire when it was raining would be nearly impossible.
Naya stumbled, letting out a little yelp, but Angus jerked her up before she could fall. He glanced the girl’s way long enough to make sure she was okay, then focused on the forest in front of him again. Shoving branches aside and pushing past shrubs, his thoughts on one thing. Finding shelter.
A fat raindrop hit him on the forehead, and he risked a look up. The sky was nearly black now, as if night had fallen or hell had opened up. More drops fell, closer together this time, and before long, his clothes had grown heavy. Lightning struck, igniting the sky and illuminating the forest long enough that Angus was able to catch a glimpse of something ahead of them, but the darkness was back before he could make out what it was. A boom of thunder followed closely on its heels.
Broken World | Novel | Angus Page 14