by Justin Clay
“Tell you that…I…I…When I first saw you,” he tells me. “Lying there, floating in water…I thought you were dead; and the idea terrified me…You were…I mean, are, you are so pretty…That it didn’t seem right for someone so young and…um, well like you to be dead…But you started coughing; and you woke up for awhile…But you were delirious; I don’t think you remember any of that do you?”
I shake my head adamantly. “No, I don’t…At all.”
“Figured,” he says. “Well, you kept calling out someone’s name…You were calling for your sister over and over; I didn’t know then…But I found her too; she wasn’t too far from you, and she…She wasn’t breathing. I immediately called for my dad, and he was able to clear the water from her lungs and we carried you both home; took a bit of time, but we managed…You walked some of the way, but not much before blacking out again.”
“Oh wow,” I say, not recalling any of that either. Crazy.
“Yeah, well…Anyway…What I’ve been meaning to tell you is that I — ”
Lucas doesn’t get the chance to tell me anything, before we hearing a woman screaming out in horror. “Mom,” Lucas breathes, his eyes intensely staring at his home that’s emerged from the grassy horizon, just ahead. “She’s in trouble.”
Lucas and I break into a frantic run.
“Mom!” Lucas shouts as we clear the corner around his house to where we heard his mother’s cry. “Mom, are you all right?”
We’re both heaving; my lungs are on fire and when I see Mary, accompanied by her husband, who must have come to her aid as well, standing out in the front yard, she seems perfectly fine. There are no Infected around; there seems to be no reason for panic at all, but something’s not right. They’re both looking down; in fact, Mr. Huckle is bending down on one knee and they’re lifting someone — a bearded man, wearing from what I can tell: a dirtied red and blue plaid shirt from the ground. I know that shirt even from a distance…My heart stops.
Not caring about anything else, I lurch myself into a run. Lucas calls after me, but I don’t falter, or look back. I’m sprinting as fast as I can. Mary and Mr. Huckle gaze at me oddly as I rush to meet them. Their faces are just as solemn as they are puzzled, but that’s not what I really pay attention to. Instead, I’m looking at the man, who is clutching at his side drenched in blood, his eyes winced in pain and because of it, he appears semi-conscious. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I would have never seen him again, but the man who is lying between Mary and her husband is none other than Eli.
28
ELI’S STORY
ELI HAD BEEN EXTREMELY lucky that Mary had come across him when she did. His blood loss had been nearly fatal. I just couldn’t get my head around the idea of how he became so badly hurt after just getting out of the dam’s makeshift infirmary; it doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s like he was just asking for death. Maybe, he had been. But I try not to think about that.
It’s been three days since the incident and for two of them Eli had remained past out, his side wrapped up in Mary’s bandages from their medical supplies. Mary had been a nurse at the local clinic in the nearby town of St. Maries. So she had quite the medical paraphernalia, fortunate enough for Eli. Today, however, he seemed to stir awake around noon. I have been watching him for the past hour or so.
He looks at me hesitantly, one eye cracked open. “Where am I?” he groans, rubbing the back of his head.
“You’re in the house of Mary and Hayes Huckle,” I tell him. “Outside the town of St. Maries.”
Eli doesn’t say anything to that and looks up to the ceiling, contemplating. He swallows, licking his lips. “Is there water anywhere around? I sure could use a drink…”
“Yeah, they have a well,” I tell him. “I’ll bring you some.”
Returning from the outside carrying a filled pale, I sit it down in front of Eli, lying on their beige couch and dip a glass into it. I hand them the glass, he takes it and drinks the water savagely in seconds. So, I fill it again. This happens three more times until he’s had enough. Eli thanks me, and I ask him if he remembers anything before…before becoming hurt again, and Mary finding him near dead.
“For the most part,” he says. “Some of it is a little hazy…”
“How did you end up here?”
Eli is quiet for a moment and I tell him I understand if he’s too tired to talk, but he shakes his head. “No, I’ll tell you,” he says. “It’s just might take awhile.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Where’s your sister?”
“She’s on the farm somewhere, with Lucas, I think,” I tell him, and Eli gives me a curious look. “Lucas is the son of the woman who found you.”
“Right then…Well, when I left the dam I had every intension of getting away from Montana as far as possible…Go as far as I could, maybe even travel into what’s left of Canada; they say they’re still going strong…But every night I went to sleep, I kept dreaming of you two…You both have been on mind since then, and I hated it — I’m sorry but I did…I would know what Lena would have said to me…
“She would have told me,” he goes on, staring off, “you’re doing the wrong thing Elijah…You should go back for them; they need you; they need you to protect them…You know you were put in their path for a reason…And I know you have done a great job in doing just that for your sister, but I knew in the deepest part of me the true answer…She would be right; our meeting that day in Boulder wasn’t just by coincidence alone, I don’t think…
“I haven’t told many people about this,” he says, and I can sort of predict what he is about to say, but I remain quiet, “but I once had a nephew, who I was the legal guardian of…His parents, my once sister and her husband died in a car crash when he was only six; and somehow he survived…His name had been Remy; I lost him while leaving a city long ago, and ever since then I have taken the blame for what happened…I didn’t want to have the responsibility taking care of anyone else; I didn’t want to fail them, like I failed Remy.”
“You didn’t fail him, Eli,” I tell him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“You weren’t there, Rian,” he tells me firmly. “You don’t know what happened…But thank you; regardless, I felt like I did…That’s why I really didn’t want you two along to begin with...” His voice trails off.
I shrug. “That was so long ago…It doesn’t matter anymore.”
A line appears in his mouth. “Well, what if June died…Wouldn’t you blame yourself?”
“Yes,” I say, “if it happened like how you say Remy died.”
“I could barely live with myself after that,” he says. “I don’t know how I got on after that…But I did; and the same thing was starting to happen over you two…I couldn’t take it anymore, so I decided to go back for you, follow your trail; I was doing fine, actually I managed to track your trail down a hillside along a river to a waterfall…I was afraid you two couldn’t have survived it…But I guess you both did since you’re here…Well anyway, I was doing fine up until then; I fell…It was the stupidest thing…I fell and hurt my side real badly along a bed of rocks. I didn’t think I would have made it in time…Actually, I wouldn’t have if that lady hadn’t found me when she did; I was dying…I had just got over the wounds from Judas’s camp…I couldn’t take anymore blood loss.”
“Well…For what it’s worth,” I tell Eli, earnestly, “I’m glad you came back…I’m glad you’re here now…So does this mean you’re coming with us to find the Carriers?”
He laughs, a gruff chuckle, but a laugh all the same. “I guess so.”
Abruptly, outside somewhere I hear Mary scream, terrified, her voice thrown by the wind through the open window. I turn my head and just as I do there’s gunfire. Standing upright, I concentrate and I can make out now the moaning of Infected. Oh no. Eli has somehow already got to his feet and he’s limping slightly to the window, peering out of it with a furrowed brow. He turns to me, his eyes burning.
“Rian, find me a weapon,” he tells me. “And quick.”
I would have thought locating a weapon would have been easier than it was, but nevertheless I ended up in the kitchen searching. Returning to Eli, I give him the largest, sharpest meat-cutting cleaver I could find. He says it’ll do. I ask him if it’s a good idea for him to be doing this just have gotten up. Eli apparently ignores the question and goes straight for opening the door. I quickly grab my bow and arrows that are leaning against the wall, slinging the strapped quiver over my head and shoulder.
Stumbling outside, we find the family and my sister becoming encircled by a loping herd of Infected that appeared out of nowhere. Their clothes are grossly tattered, and their skin morbidly yellow, sagging incredibly — the amount of gross detail overwhelming in broad daylight. Mary’s husband is firing his rifle at the fat Frother grasping for her neck — the noise is gratingly loud. The rifle blast cripples the Infected, but another takes over reaching maniacally, its bony, grimy hands nearly making contact.
Eli flies through swinging the cleaver catching the Infected in the face with a crackling crush; there’s a splatter of blood, the Infected woman collapses. Gasping, I realize Eli doesn’t see the Frother about to attack him from behind. I quickly raise my bow and fire, the arrow splitting through the Infected’s head. Their body topple over together, sprawling onto the grassy ground. Eli looks to me briefly, nodding, and we finish off the rest of the Infected rather swiftly.
An eerie silence settles when all of the Infected’s moaning disappears. I watch the Huckle family intently waiting for what will happen next. Mr. Huckle is absolutely stunned, wide-eyed and a bit dazed from the way he’s looking around aimlessly. Mary clutches her chest and does something I least expect. She runs and hugs Eli as he stands there breathing heavily in the middle of the yard, holding the bloodied cleaver and his side. Eli glances my way again and this time it is me who nods.
The faintest of smiles crosses his lips and Eli returns the embrace, patting her on the back. He suggests they go ahead and gather the Infected and begin a fire.
...
Watching the smoke from the fire climb effortlessly into the evening sky, I ask Lucas how he’s doing. He tells me about what happened earlier with the Infected. One moment they hadn’t been there, the next they were. That’s how it always is, I’m afraid. They hadn’t been so keen on killing them immediately because they knew the people who had been Infected. They had lived up the road, but hadn’t seen them in quite some time. They were the Reegan family; there was the skinny middle-aged mother, Lila Reegan, her overweight husband Daniel Reegan and their twenty something year old sons. All four of them. Ralph. Jonathan. Gabe. And Cason.
From the look of their worn out shoes they had traveled a far distance. Why would they come back, here of all places? No one knew and no one said anything about it. Their cremation had been a quiet affair until now.
“So all in all, I guess I’m fine,” Lucas says, shrugging. “As fine as you can be nowadays.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, frowning. “I’m sorry this happened.”
“Me too,” he says. “Me too Rian.”
That night Mary prepares dinner for everyone using the ingredients she had been saving for a night like tonight. A night to celebrate they are still living and to thank Eli. And I can’t argue with her; Eli had saved their lives, but I could tell the act of doing so drained him considerably. I know this from the way he holds himself as he’s eating. His head is too lowered, his movements too stiffened, and the dark rings bagging his eyes tell of how many nights he has gone without sleep.
The oil lanterns Mary had emerged with earlier provide enough light for us to see each other and the dinner she’s readied for us. A meaty vegetable stew with buttered bread, corn, and for dessert chocolate pudding, which reminds me of the dam, is served. The well water tastes wonderful, truly.
After I finish, I thank Mary for the filling meal and say I’m tired and should go to bed. I tell June that she should join me. Lucas gets up, after sitting his plate down on their wooden table and asks me if I like for him to show me his room.
I think it’s a bit odd being asked so suddenly but I go along with it. “Sure,” I say, and he also thanks his mother. She doesn’t ask him to put his emptied plate away, so we go up the stairs to his room that’s across from Rema’s.
“Well, it’s not much, but here it is,” he says, grinning. The light of the candles coming from within his room shadows his face.
His room is nearly the same size as his sister’s, and there’s a curtained window facing his bed that’s overspread with what looks like a dark blue comforter. His chest of drawers and tables are also crowned with multiple trophies most of them being athletic related: football championships and homecomings. Everything that happened before the Fall. He tells me about a few of them casually, but pauses when he picks up one of the homecoming trophies looking at it intensely. I think I can see tears glinting in his eyes but I’m not sure.
“Are you okay, Lucas?” I ask him concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says distantly, as if he’s a thousand miles away. Somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far, far from here.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he confirms, grinning halfheartedly, placing the trophy carefully back where it belonged with the others.
“Who went with you to that one? That homecoming?” I ask.
“Oh…It was my sister,” he says. “I asked her to walk with me…It was only a few years ago but it seems like it was just yesterday. I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“Don’t be,” he says. “She’s in a better place.”
“How do you know? How do you know that Lucas?”
“I don’t,” he says simply. “We don’t know these things for certain, but I want her to be…Anywhere is better than living here in this country.”
“They say other places are just as bad.”
He scoffs. “They say…” his voice trails off. Lucas sits on the edge of the bed, causing this covers to wrinkle and sink. He pats the area beside him, encouraging me to sit there. So I do.
“Did you try and go back to school when all of this happened?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Mother forbid it…She didn’t want us to get hurt, but I guess that didn’t stop the damn Frothers finding us.”
“I wonder if anyone else tried to carry on living like before.”
“I don’t know…I would think it too difficult after such a great change.”
“Yeah, but you all seem to manage just fine.”
“Fine is relative,” he tells me. “I don’t know if we’re fine, but we’ve managed, I suppose.”
“Hardly many have…You’re lucky.”
“Lucky we didn’t suddenly lose our minds and become savages?”
“Yeah, actually,” I say. “I’ve seen too much of that…It’s crazy the lengths people will go when shit like this happens.”
“I don’t know much about that,” he says. “You would know more about me…I haven’t really left the city…Haven’t been anywhere else.”
“Maybe’s that’s a good thing,” I tell him. It could be, depending on how you look at it.
“Maybe, but all I know is I don’t know how we’re going to continue like this…My mom is becoming more and more afraid…I’m scared that one day I’ll wake up and she’ll have killed herself or something else stupid like that…I don’t want that happening.”
“You can’t control things like that,” I tell him. “Try not to worry about it…Your mother wouldn’t do something like to you or your dad. She loves you too much…She has to stay alive for you…That’s what people do for each other.”
“I hope so…Rian…I…”
“Yes Lucas?” I ask him, my head leaning close to his. I can feel the warmth of his breath against my skin, and I can feel my heart begin to race. My hands are becoming sweaty. His lips move closer and closer to mine�
�Maybe, I shouldn’t be doing this. We’re going to be leaving soon, but I don’t listen to the voice…I just want to close that small intimate gap between us, separating our mouths. I swallow, our eyes staring into each others’ for moments that seem to take me from this horrible world, and give me a sense that I’m okay again; I’m safe again and everything will somehow be all right. Until all of that vanishes with a voice that emerges in the darkness:
“Rian?” I hear my sister call, and I blink coming back. Lucas bites his lip and draws away slowly and I turn around.
“Yes?” I ask frustrated. How horrible of timing could she have?
“Can you tell me a story?” she says. “I don’t like being by myself in that room…here.”
How could I resist that face? Those round, begging eyes. Sighing, I get up and say that I will. I tell Lucas that I am sorry and thank him for showing me around.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “They’ll be other times…Good night, Rian.”