by Tanya Lisle
“Matt!” Penny cried, rushing back to his side.
Esther let out a sigh and the resolved look on her face told Indira more than she wanted to know. She jumped forward and grabbed Penny, pulling her down to the ground. She took the hit solidly in the back. They fell to the ground in a pile, Matt managing to create a small wall to hide behind as the hazmat suits they trapped in the walls started pulling themselves free.
Indira watched on in horror as Penny rolled out from under Esther, grabbing her by the shoulder and trying to shake her awake. Esther looked up with half lidded eyes and a hole in her back that she couldn’t have survived. It was the largest of her gaping wounds, but Indira saw for the first time just how many times she had been shot or hit over the course of this. Penny’s hands came away covered in blood, none of it her own.
“Oh god,” Penny said quietly, looking down at Esther, then to Matt, who was bleeding out and struggling to maintain consciousness next to her. She tried desperately to bring Esther around, shaking her and pleading with her through the tears, but Esther wouldn’t wake up. Indira hadn’t been able to save her, and there was nothing Penny could do to fix that now.
Help me.
Penny turned desperately back to Matt, who let out another groan as he moved from his seated position to pull Penny back down and out of the way. He landed on top of her, half conscious and gripping his bloody side as she stared on in horror. He was fading away, but he looked up and pushed back to his feet as something else came down the hall at the pair of them. It wasn’t another hazmat suit, but beyond that, Indira couldn’t tell what it was.
“Get out of here, Pen,” he said weakly. He was unsteady on his feet and looked like he was about to fall over, but he wasn’t about to let her go. “They don’t have to get both of us.”
“No,” Penny said, tears streaming down her face as she got to her feet. “They don’t.”
Matt vanished, Penny stepping over Esther’s body and letting her grief overwhelm her. Indira had never felt so much force pushing on her and she tried desperately to get out of there, but Iris still held onto her. Iris was losing her hold as whatever Penny was doing started to work, Penny screaming into the white around them as she unleashed so much force that whole place should have crumbled.
And then Penny was on the ground. A single shot had put her there, Penny looking around bewildered until her eyes settled on Indira. It was like she hadn’t noticed her standing there before. A question passed over her eyes, then the realization of what she had done. There was an apology there as the life started to fade from her eyes, and a dark shadow came down the hall to meet her. Penny didn’t notice him, instead waving with what strength she had left at Indira with a single word on her lips.
“Run.”
Chapter 23
Survivors
She was free of the white, but Indira wasn’t sure how to feel about that yet. After everything that had happened, she didn’t know what she was meant to do next. After thinking everything had gone so well, she had now managed to get two of her friends killed. Maybe three. They went back after she left, and now they were dead.
She should have never done this. She should have stayed out of it. Uncle Ness - he could have gotten out on his own. He didn’t need her. And now three people were dead.
Out there somewhere was her body and she knew she should get back to it. She couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel the familiar patterns of her brushing her long hair. She had been pulled away before she had gotten back to that, and now she was… somewhere. It was dark and there weren’t many people around to use to help find her way back. There were no landmarks. There was just nothing anywhere.
Someone was calling her name. Someone was worried out there. She could feel something on her, something touching her body. Maybe someone was grabbing her or checking for something, she couldn’t tell. It was enough for her to figure out where she had left it, though. She could use it to go back.
But there was something so comforting about the dark nothingness right now. She wasn’t even sure how long she’d been here, but she was happy here. There was nothing bad here. No one was dead. She wouldn’t have to go back to school on Monday worried that no one remembered Penny or Matt or Esther. She wouldn’t have to face Brittany and admit that she’d been right. That she hadn’t managed to keep any of them alive.
And yet. Indira knew that she had to go back, no matter how much she didn’t want to. She couldn’t just hide in nothingness forever. But her body, it was so cold and there was too much reality waiting for her there. Even if she knew she had to, she didn’t want to head back and deal with any of it. People got hurt. People had died. There was a chance no one would even remember them.
But she had to.
The first thing that came back was her nose. It tingled and it felt just a little wet. She was already back in her body, it seemed, and just didn’t realize how close it was. There was a hand on her neck and it shook as it checked for a pulse. There was a voice above her, saying her name quietly, over and over like a prayer. They were so worried that they weren’t sure what to do. Their mind hummed with anxiety and fear.
“Raz?” she asked softly as her eyes finally started to work. She knew the voice and she was happy to have him be the one to bring her around. Her brother was a good kid. He wanted to help and he was worried about her. That was good. She wasn’t quite there yet, but he was relieved at hearing her speak. He seemed happier already, though she didn’t know why he was so upset. She was the one who felt like she’d been torn apart.
“Come on Indi,” he said gently, coaxing her fully awake. She noticed for the first time that she was shaking. She hadn’t felt it through the numbness, but her whole body appeared to be moving without her trying to do anything. She couldn’t quite take control of it either, unable to raise her hand, though it didn’t matter for the moment. She could keep shaking. Shaking was fine right now. She didn’t need to be still if the rest of her didn’t want to.
“Hey,” she said, blinking and looking up at him. Her mouth felt terrible and had a taste of vomit left in it. The side of her face felt damp, but she seemed to be lying on Shiraz’s knees for the moment. He was shaking too, his hands not sure what to do as he looked down at her. “I don’t think I can move.”
“I’ll call Mom,” he said immediately.
“No,” Indira said softly. She didn’t want him to leave just yet. His presence was anchoring. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“God no, Indi, you’re not okay,” he said. He sounded desperate, like he was about to start crying. “What were you even doing? What…”
Indira looked slowly up at him. He looked so worried. Slowly, it dawned on her why. “Was I dying?” she asked quietly.
He nodded, though managed to keep the tears in his eyes from spilling over. Indira didn’t say anything. He was just worried and she was going to die. That was a perfectly reasonable response to being that worried about someone dying.
So she was about to die too. None of them were meant to leave there.
“Oh good, she’s awake,” another voice said. Indira didn’t move her head, but Ronnie was nice enough to come over and look at her so she didn’t need to. “I got Matt to the hospital. I can take you next if you need to go. You don’t look so good.”
“Matt?” she asked.
“He was lying next to you when we got up here,” Ronnie offered, Shiraz clearly not trusting himself to speak right now. “We were watching a movie and then came up for a snack and we just found you passed out on the ground. I turn around for a minute and Matt’s next to you and bleeding all over the place and barely conscious. Shiraz said not to move you, so I just took Matt to the hospital for now. Can we even move her with her shaking like that?”
Indira blinked slowly, looking back up at Shiraz. “Is he…?”
Shiraz took a deep breath and shook his head. “He’ll be okay,” he said, his voice sounding a little stronger now. He still looked fragile, but he was getting better as Indi
ra got stronger. That was good. She didn’t want him worrying about her if she could help it. “We’re going to get you to the couch, okay?”
“Yeah,” Indira said. The couch would be much more comfortable than the hard floor. She was still trembling and weak as both of them came up on either side to get her upright. The world spun around her as they got her upright, and she couldn’t even hope to get her feet planted on the ground for how much her legs and arms kept shaking. Luckily, both of them were strong enough to move her, though with some trouble as her shaking form was not easy to keep hold of.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Indira said as she was put back down. The world spun around her and she pitched over, but Shiraz caught her and kept her upright. “At least I saved Ronnie.”
No one else had made it, though. Matt was going to survive, but that was through no fault of her own. She had cleared out Penny’s side of things and had barely touched Matt. And now Penny was dead. Esther was dead. Matt was in the hospital and who knew how long it was going to take him to get out.
She watched as Ronnie went to work cleaning up the mess in the foyer. Indira had thrown up again from the look of it, and Matt had left a rather large stain of blood on their floor. At least it wasn’t carpet, but Ronnie looked uncomfortable about cleaning it up.
“What about the other ones?” Shiraz asked softly.
Indira could move her neck slightly and shook her head. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes from it, but she could do nothing to stop them in her present state. They were dead and she could barely move. The trembling was slowly giving way to pins and needles that were painfully forming over her entire body. “No,” she told him. “No one made it.”
Shiraz looked sympathetic, but at least he didn’t say that he warned her. He had told her right away and he was already grateful for her saving his friend in all of this. He was sorry that he couldn’t have done more. And he knew that there was little that would make that okay. He looked like he wanted to give her a hug, but with Ronnie there he wouldn’t. Instead, he turned away so she didn’t have to deal with him watching her start to cry.
There was nothing she could have done, she realized. She’d done what she could, but that white room had done something to them. The thing on their minds, it stuck to them and did something to them. It made them different and difficult. And leaving Esther on her own to deal with them was a mistake. She needed backup. Someone else to help her when they got out of hand.
“Actually, they’re not all gone,” Ronnie offered as he wrung the bloody cloth out in the sink. He wouldn’t look at her, carefully avoiding her eyes as he spoke. “Matt wasn’t all the way unconscious when I dropped him off. He said that Penny wasn’t dead. He was very clear about that. He was going to try and go back for her before they took him in and sedated him.”
“Still alive,” Indira muttered. She shook her head. Shiraz had said there was something other than dead that might be happening, but she wasn’t about to hold out hope for that. Even if she was hoping for some way to get her and Uncle Ness back, after Esther’s death, Indira wasn’t willing to risk them again. “This isn’t happening again. We are never doing this again.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tanya Lisle is a novelist from Vancouver, British Columbia. Publishing several novels annually, she writes in a variety of genres from young adult urban fantasy to post-apocalyptic science fiction. When she isn't writing, she is either working as a web developer or working on a variety of game projects.