Along the Winding Road

by Marlee Pagels

  Breathing heavily, he took a half-step back and wavered.

  “I—” He cut off, hugging his elbows and trying to tug his gaze away from her. She was still crying, her shoulders shuddering, and she hadn’t even found the strength to put Blake in a more dignified position. But what else did Arthur expect?

  “Charlotte, I—” he started again, forcing himself another step closer to her—”I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His legs suddenly gave out, and he was barely able to avoid slamming his face against the ground as hard as his knees. “I’m—so—” he choked on a sob—”so sorry.”

  Turning her neck to press her cheek to the mattress, she scanned him and shut her eyes. “Thanks.”

  He gave her an astonished look before he hunched and turned away. “I-I don’t mean, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Although I a-am.” He made a gasping noise. “I mean, I-I’m sorry for—for doing this. For holding you b-back, for—making this happen… like this… I’m sorry. I can’t—I just—I’m sorry! I’m sorry.” Cradling his forehead in his hand, he stared at the floor and quivered.

  Her eyes slipped open, but she didn’t meet his gaze.

  “It’s not your fault,” she muttered, swiping some tears off her nose.

  He stiffened. “What do you mean? Don’t—don’t just say that.”

  She faced her little brother’s corpse again and took a gasping breath. “I don’t—” She shook her head. “Okay, I don’t know if I believe that right now. I don’t know if I believe any of this is happening. I’m s-still—” she sniffed “—trying to figure it out.”

  “Right,” he stammered, drawing back. “I-I didn’t mean to force… I mean… Sorry.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he dipped his head.

  Now he couldn’t see her face, but he could still hear her sobbing. Hadn’t he decided he’d do everything in his power to never hear that again? That plan had worked out smashingly. Much like everything else he had tried to do for her. Yet here he was, on a flimsy strand of hope, trying once again to somehow make things better. What was he even thinking?

  That he couldn’t just let her cry. That he had to do something to assuage her misery before the sound of it rent his heart completely.

  Not breathing and not sure what he was doing, he scooted closer and embraced her from the side, hugging her shoulders tight.

  “I’m sorry.” His whisper was strained. “You haven’t done anything to deserve this. I’m sorry this happened.”

  Unable to look at her, he pressed his forehead to her shivering shoulder and tried not to wail.

  Hiccupping as she tried to catch her breath, she twisted and hugged him around the waist. She buried her face in his chest as she continued to cry.

  Head knocked away from her shoulder by the motion, he glimpsed down. Her back was hunched to a painful degree. While he couldn’t see her face, his shirt was definitely getting wetter. Was the fabric just muffling her, or was she sobbing a bit more quietly? Was this somehow helping?

  That was too much to hope for. But she was embracing him of her own accord, and he couldn’t stop himself from holding her tighter.

  ~*~

  The next day, Charlotte put together a stretcher.

  She glanced at Arthur before turning back towards her final knot. “Get his legs, will you.”

  “Sure,” he mumbled, stepping to the side of Blake’s bunk bed. He looked down at the tall socks—not much whiter than the nearby skin anymore—and let his hands hover above them. A sliding noise caught his attention, but it was only Dalton taking something from a drawer.

  Charlotte tugged at the stretcher’s blanket every which way until all the knots held. She pushed herself off her knees and onto her feet. “All right. Be careful.”

  Her arms gently snaked under her brother’s armpits as she looked to Arthur. Ducking his head to avoid her empty gaze, he gripped Blake’s shins and nodded. With no more sound than a grunt, she pulled up her end. Arthur followed suit, walking sideways until the body hovered over the stretcher. They lowered Blake onto the blanket and let go.

  “The extra handles should help.” She tugged on a small towel she had tied just past the end of the blanket. “Going down the ladder will still be hard, though.” Not yet standing, she watched Dalton open the door. “We could probably do a pulley-something, but this should work fine if we’re careful.”

  She let out a long exhale before gripping her handle and rising. Arthur grabbed the towel on his side and reflected her movement until they both stood, the stretcher suspended between them.

  “I’ll go backwards.” Arthur turned his head away from her. Dalton was waiting at the door.

  “Okay.” Her voice didn’t shake as much as her arms did. She walked to the ladder without trouble regardless, and Arthur managed not to stumble, either. Grasping his handle as hard as he could with his left hand, he stationed himself on the ladder foot by foot.

  “Don’t fall.” After a glance down at Dalton, who’d made it to ground level already, she exhaled and stepped onto a rung. Arthur stretched his arm up so the body wouldn’t slide onto him, and he and Charlotte climbed down.

  “Good, the ground’s still soft,” she commented, dragging her toe through the damp soil. She looked up at the others without making eye contact. “Let’s find a nice spot.”

  She started off, leaving Arthur to scramble after her before he could lose his grip on the stretcher. After meandering around the lake for some time, she came to a stop in a flat area. Tangles of grass and wildflowers stretched for about the size of a house before trees interrupted them. Off to the left, the green gave way to sand, which led to the lake. On the right was a small hill crested with blooming trees; further on, it gave way to steeper, forested hills.

  “This seems pretty enough.”

  She lowered the stretcher until it rested on the ground. Rubbing her arms, she turned, taking in a panoramic. Yeah—it was a nice view.

  She stopped and looked down by her feet. Shoving her heel into the ground dislodged some mud, so she nodded and pulled her foot back.

  “This works.” She looked up at Arthur. “Blake has always been the environmentalist type. All these trees, and hills, and green things—he likes…” She swallowed. “…this kind of stuff.”

  She managed to turn her gaze back to the ground before she started sobbing. Resisting the urge to collapse onto the grass, she lowered herself and put her face in her hands to block out the too-warm sunshine.

  She was about to bury her little brother. She couldn’t have left him to rot in his bed, but treating what was left of him with respect was incomprehensibly difficult. This was the only thing that she could do for him now. So she would, of course—but how could it be so awful?

  Her cheeks were soaked by the time she lowered her hands. After a moment of reorienting herself, she thanked Dalton for bringing the garden spade and took it from him. She took in short gasps as she gripped the handle with both hands and drove the point into the ground.

  How was this all that she could do?

  The roots were too snarled for her to shovel more than a clump of earth out. She stabbed at the spot a few times before trying again.

  She wanted to do so much more for him. She would have carried him all the way home if she’d had to. She would have let herself starve if it could have fed him. She would have taken any bites, bullets, or blades for him that she could have. She didn’t necessarily want to get hurt, but she wanted to make some sort of sacrifice for him. Something beyond the time and travel and expenses. Some way to show him that she loved him very much, even if she had left him by himself for so long.

  But now she had to shoulder pain that wasn’t helping him. Her grief couldn’t drag Blake’s soul back. It wasn’t helping her, it wasn’t helping Arthur, and it wasn’t helping Dalton. But it wouldn’t go away. Sometimes she could swallow it down, but never as long as she would have liked. Maybe it was normal and acceptable to feel like this, but that didn’t make the sorrow any easier to bear.

  “Um,
w-would you like some help?” Arthur’s voice was faint, but it still got her attention.

  She peered up at him, confused, before the burn in her forearms made her look down. She was stabbing the ground like she wanted it to bleed.

  “Sure,” she said, watching him drop to his knees and hold out a hand. Forcing herself to stop attacking the soil, she gave him the trowel and stretched out her aching fingers. Without another word or glance at her, Arthur sucked in a breath and dug.

  And then there was him. Arthur. Where did he fit in this mess? He had journeyed alongside her, saved her a few times, taken her on a nice date or two, and put her trek on hold for much more than a couple of days. How did it all add up? Was she supposed to forget about how much he cared about her, just because he had slowed her progress so much? Was she supposed to blame him, or forgive him, or hold nothing against him in the first place?

  It would be easiest to blame him. He was shouldering the guilt, anyway, and she would have a lot of trouble convincing him to drop it. She wasn’t in the mood to build him up when even the cutest things he had done failed to make her smile. If she sat back and let him bear this, she wouldn’t have to worry about arguing with him, or how much of it was her own fault. He was handling it okay, anyway, right?

  Aside from crashing through trees without caring how much it bruised him and coming back tearstained. And being unable to breathe steadily or look her in the eye for more than a second. And that wasn’t even touching on what he was thinking, which had never been much of anything positive about himself.

  She couldn’t pin Blake’s death on him and let him suffer like that. But… What would she say? What would he believe? How was she supposed to work it all out when she was… just… so tired…?

  She felt herself tilting to the right and gave in, leaning her shoulder against Arthur’s. He stiffened but continued to upturn the grass. After a moment, he scanned over her as if checking for wounds, but his gaze avoided her face. Not looking relieved, he turned back to the ground and resumed sweeping the spade through the mud.

  Once her breathing steadied, she nudged his shoulder with hers until he looked at her. His gaze wouldn’t budge from around her cheekbones, but his eyes were pained enough that she didn’t push him. She couldn’t. Even if all of this was his fault, she couldn’t let him hurt so much.

  “Don’t blame yourself.” She placed her right hand on top of his left and pressed his fingers. “Please.”

  He finally met her gaze, his mouth hanging open, but he faltered, turned his face down again, and kept digging.

  31

  “You should eat that.”

  Arthur looked at the soggy carrot slices on his plate and fingered his fork. At his right, Charlotte waited for an answer, and her empty gaze made him set the fork back down.

  “You can have the rest,” he said hastily, looking at a scratch on the table’s surface. “I’ll go, uh, see if there’s any meat to be shot down today.”

  She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “I’ll hurry, then. We don’t have many cans left by now, eh? Have to restock our supplies eventually.” Uncrossing his legs, he stood and retrieved his bow from its sling.

  She stared back at her plate, which was as full as his. “We can finish when you get back, then.” Her voice was dull as she slid a finger along the smooth edges of the dish.

  He swallowed. “Sure. Or finish without me. I wouldn’t mind.” He stepped to the door. “Anyway. I’ll try to get back soon, but, uh, don’t be too worried if the sun sets before then.”

  She frowned at him, but she hardly looked angry enough to scare him back to the table. Only the slightest variant of that same drained expression was on her face.

  Arthur hurried outside, leaving Dalton to stand watch at the door.

  ~*~

  Sitting on one of the bottom bunks, Charlotte peeked through the blinds. Night had definitely fallen. The sky was still a lighter blue to the west, though. It would be hard for Arthur to see enough to shoot anything, but he had probably walked out pretty far to begin with. He could take some time coming back. There weren’t many infecteds around here, anyway. He’d be fine.

  Exhaling, she let the blinds drop with a faint shing. After a moment of staring at the white slats, she opened them again.

  “Want me to go check on him?” Dalton’s voice made her flinch, and she spun around to face him.

  “Sorry.” He took a step back. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Ah, no.” She rubbed at her eye, which was too puffy for her liking. Although she held her breath, she couldn’t keep the word “sorry” from bouncing around her head. “I think I’ll go check on him myself.”

  Gripping her elbows, she ducked out of the bunk bed and started for the door.

  “Charlotte.” He stepped after her and shook up his flashlight. “How about we stick together?”

  She paused at the threshold to look back at him. “Okay. But I might have to talk to him alone.”

  “Got it.”

  She made it out the door first, although Dalton scurried down the ladder before her. Her feet were on solid ground and a few steps beyond the ladder before she started crying again. She didn’t know why. Then again, the last time she’d been this way, she was going to bury Blake.

  Still unsure of what she was doing, she forged on through the trees.

  ~*~

  Arthur had stopped for breath at the top of a steep hill. While he hadn’t managed to weigh himself down with any deer, his little scrap of a catch was enough to slow his progress. The dove wasn’t heavy by any means, but it was something Charlotte could have eaten. Of course, that would have been difficult for her to do if he ran off with it.

  He couldn’t keep doing this. He had to stop acting like he was allowed to stay if he could help out a wee bit more. Was one little dove—a morsel at best—worth going back? He would only have to pull himself away again, if he still had the heart to leave.

  Flicking at the dove’s wing feathers, he stared at its bloody wound.

  He couldn’t go back. He had done his best the past few days to stay with her, to be of some comfort, but it was no good. Charlotte hadn’t come back. She had starting eating a bit, at least, but she hadn’t grinned, nor giggled, nor called the shots, nor poked fun at him just to have something solid to smile about. He didn’t expect her to be ecstatic at the moment, but she had gone through grim enough circumstances without losing her fight. Now she wasn’t determined to go anywhere or do anything, because of him.

  She’d told him not to blame himself, but that was only out of kindness. At least he hadn’t ripped that part of her out. It wasn’t quite as bad as it could have been.

  Of course, making her sob too hard to deliver an intelligible eulogy for her dead brother was still very bad.

  Attempting to let out a controlled breath, he straightened up. Waving his flaming torch about to give it more oxygen, he resumed his walk.

  “Arthur!”

  He wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.

  Perhaps it wasn’t her, anyway. He heard voices all the time, right?

  He continued to march through the trees, tensing his muscles to the point he couldn’t have looked back if he tried.

  The torch head bumped against a low branch, lighting up a hot pool of blue on the bark. Swearing much more loudly than he had expected himself to, he bashed the side of his forearm against the imminent forest fire. He managed to put it out before he had remembered that he was not wearing long sleeves, nor was his arm guard on that side.

  Choking out another curse, he blew on his burnt skin and tried not to scream. Maybe he could soothe it with water—he still had some in his bottle, right?

  Wait, why hadn’t he just used that to put out the fire?

  “Why am I leaving at night, anyway?” he muttered. “I could at least try to sleep first. Three days in a row entirely awake is pushing it—am I speaking aloud?” Sucking in a breath, he tried to hold the bottom of t
he torch between his feet as he went for his water bottle. His injured arm refused to twist in the least without drawing tears, so he struggled to open up his backpack with one hand.

  A beam of light flashed over his eyes, and he yelped, almost knocking over the torch.

  “What are you doing?” Charlotte’s voice almost betrayed emotion.

  Blinded, he swung his head around a few times and eventually found that Charlotte was, in fact, standing there. Hovering behind her was Dalton, holding the electric torch.

  “Uh—” Arthur tried to blink his eyes dry “—nothing.”

  She stared at him until he squirmed.

  “I’m only—I’m leaving, all right?” He used his left arm to grasp and pick up the torch. The pain from the burn hadn’t subsided much, but there were more pressing matters at hand. “Maybe you don’t see it at the moment, but it’s better for you this way. Um, Dalton, I’d hoped you could help her home. I do know where you live; I’ll visit sometime.” He swallowed. “So if you’ll excuse me—”

  Charlotte grabbed his elbow without a word, and he tripped mid-step.

  Sniffing, she asked, “Do you even understand what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.” Unable to escape, he hunched his shoulders. “I—I meant it, too.”

  Eyes puffy but tears not flowing, she eyed him before she glanced back at Dalton.

  “I’m”—the towhead took a few steps back—”not going to let you run off, either, Arthur.” He clicked off his flashlight, leaving the others to adjust to the flickering firelight.

  “Why?” Arthur attempted to look between the two of them, although Dalton had retreated a bit more. “I mean, it wouldn’t hurt me. I survived more than long enough all alone before, and I—” his voice broke “—can do it again. Um, excuse that.” He coughed. “Something in my throat. Er, I’m a bit thirsty.”

  Charlotte finally released his elbow, although she stepped in front of him. “Aside from the fact that you’re clearly not sure about that…” She took in a shuddering breath. “What makes you think you leaving would be better?” She hugged her arms. “You want me to cut you out of my life? You think that would help me?”