by Cross, Amy
"That's right," I say quietly.
"Where were you?" Henry asks, eying me with suspicion. He's got his rifle slung over his shoulder; I swear, he even sleeps with that thing these days. I never thought an inanimate object could give someone such an immediate boost of confidence, but the rifle has transformed Henry from a lazy teen to a tense, over-confident little soldier.
"I was up on the roof," I reply. "Reading."
"And what's that you've got in your hand?" Bob asks, still smiling as he cranes his stumpy neck to see the book.
"Something about viruses," I say, holding it up for him to see. "I found it in our apartment, so I figured I'd give it a read. I just figured, you never know when it might be useful to know something."
"That's not from our apartment," Henry spits at me.
"Yes it is, dumbass," I reply.
"Where?"
"It was in Mom and Dad's room."
"Where in Mon and Dad's room?"
"In the closet."
"Where in the closet? Mom and Dad didn't keep books in the closet."
"Well they kept this one in there," I say, failing to hide my annoyance at his constant stream of questions.
Henry frowns. He clearly doesn't believe me.
"Come on, you two," Bob says, grinning as if he finds us amusing. "Let's not descend into an all-out family squabble here. Henry, your sister's got a right to read a book, okay? Might even come in useful if one of us knows about that kind of thing. And Elizabeth, it'd be courteous if you could perhaps let other people know where you've been, so as to avoid the need for everyone to get worried. I'm sure you'll understand why we were slightly concerned, especially given recent developments."
"Huh," I say, turning and looking over at the door that leads through to the back of the building. "How's it going with the girl?"
"Not bad," Bob replies. "We're still not at the point where I'm comfortable releasing her, but we're making progress in getting her to trust us. Why, we even managed to find out her name. Mallory."
"Mallory?" I take a deep breath, feeling a growing sense of unease. Ever since Henry and Bob captured that girl, they've been acting strange, as if their conspiratorial relationship has been taken to a whole new level. Bob's convinced that this Mallory girl is a spy sent by some other survivors to find out what supplies we're hoarding, and it's pretty clear that the process of interrogating Mallory is giving both Bob and my brother a real kick. It's tempting to think that they're actually enjoying the whole thing, although I shudder to think that my little brother might actually be involved in something so dark. Ever since Bob gave him the rifle, though, Henry has been a little different. He seems so easily seduced by the semblance of power and responsibility.
"You wanna come and see her?" Bob asks. "Maybe a woman's touch might help."
I pause for a moment. Although I want to go and see if the girl's okay, I can't bring myself to go through and see how she's doing. "It's okay," I say. "Maybe later." Pausing for a moment, I realize that I'm too scared to go and see this Mallory girl. After all, I'm still slightly worried about what Bob and Henry might be doing to her, but I'd rather not confront that particular problem head-on. Not now, at least. I guess I'm a coward.
"Well," Bob says, slowly rising from his chair and wincing a little as his bones creak, "I guess I'm gonna get back in there. I think we're really getting close to the truth. Just need to keep the pressure on, and she's gonna tell us the truth about why she's here. In the meantime, I was hoping you two could go down to that little convenience store on the corner and see if they're got any painkillers. My old hip's playing up." He limps over to the doorway, before turning back to us. "Could you do that for me?"
"Yes, Sir," Henry says, with military seriousness.
"Actually," I say, looking down at the book, "I was planning to -"
"It's fine," Henry says firmly. "I can go alone." As if to prove the point, he takes the rifle from over his shoulder and starts loading it with a couple of cartridges.
"No," I say, "it's okay. I'll come with you."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"That's the spirit," Bob says, still grinning. "Brother and sister, working together. Just keep an eye out for any sign that we're being watched. I still think there's a danger Mallory was sent to keep an eye on us, and the last thing we need is for some slick bastards to give us the jump. If you two aren't back in an hour, I'm gonna start worrying, okay?" He pauses for a moment. "No detours. No excursions or adventures. Just get down there, find anything that's useful, and then get back. We'll go on a more exhaustive trip later." With that, he turns and limps away to the back of the building, where I guess he''s going to continue with his amateur-hour interrogation of that poor girl.
"You coming, or what?" Henry asks, holding his rifle as if he expects to use it at any moment.
"Sure," I reply, following him through to the lobby.
"Where'd you really get that book?" he asks as we make our way to the front door.
"I told you, Mom and -"
"Bullshit," he says. Pushing the door open, he leads me out onto the sidewalk. It's still so strange to be out here: the ground is covered in a fine white powder from the thick debris cloud that erupted when the plane crashed a few blocks away, while the deserted streets looking completely unnatural. New York's a city that was built to be noisy and fast and full of people; to see it like this is one of the strangest things I can imagine.
"Stay close to me," Henry says, making a big show of looking both ways to see that we're alone. He's like a kid who's been given a gun and told to go and play like a soldier, except the gun is real and I'm pretty sure he's long past the point where he understood that he should be careful. "Come on," he continues after a moment, making his way along the sidewalk.
"Is this really necessary?" I ask, glancing over my shoulder to see the empty street behind us. "There's no-one around."
"You don't know that for sure."
Stopping suddenly, Henry turns to me. "It's so easy for you, isn't it?" he says with a slight sneer. "You can just stand back and make stupid little comments, while the rest of us have to do all the hard work. Like with Mallory. Do you think Bob and I want to have her tied up while we find out why she's here? Of course not, but we have to do it, so that we all stay safe." He pauses for a moment, staring straight into my eyes with an expression that seems to border on contempt. "Me and Bob," he continues eventually, "we'd love to stand back and make sarcastic comments while someone else does the nasty work, but we just can't afford to let that happen. We're the ones who have to do the dirty stuff, the hard stuff, the painful stuff. You get to stand back and pretend you're still a nice person. That's real lucky of you, Elizabeth. I hope you're grateful."
I swallow hard. While I guess Henry has a point, none of that little speech sounded like it came from him directly. In fact, it sounded like something Bob would say.
"See?" Henry continues, turning and walking toward the convenience store.
"See what?" I ask, hurrying after him.
"You haven't got an answer," he replies. "You know I'm right. People like you, with your morals and stuff, need people like us to do the dirty work."
"People like me?" I ask, shocked at how suddenly Henry seems to have developed this very definite, very rigid view of the world. "People like you? Henry, what are you talking about? It's me! It's Elizabeth!" I wait for him to reply, but he just keeps on walking. "Okay," I continue eventually, "let's just cool it. Let's just agree to disagree, and try to get things back to how they were before, yeah? Don't you remember what things used to be like, when we actually didn't hate each other?"
"It's like with Mallory," he continues. "You let me and Bob do all the hard work, so you don't have to get your hands dirty."
"What hard work?" I ask, starting to get worried. "You haven't hurt her, have you? You're feeding her and stuff, right?"
"Of course we are," he spits back at me. "We're not monsters. We're just two men, d
oing what has to be done."
As we reach the convenience store, Henry stops and peers through the broken window. He and Bob have been here before, but there's still plenty of stock left on the shelves.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Just making sure we're alone," Henry replies, staring into the gloomy store.
"So we can go back to how things were?" I ask. "At least between us. Right?"
He pauses for a moment. "I didn't like how things were," he says eventually, stepping carefully through the broken window. "Some things are better now."
"Some things are -" I start to say, shocked that he could even think such a thing.
"You need to wait here," he says, interrupting me. "If you see or hear anything, come and find me, okay? This place has two floors, so I might have to go up. The best thing is for you to stand right here and watch out, to make sure no-one comes alone and ambushes us. But if you get the slightest hint of trouble, you need to come and find me."
I stare at him for a moment. "Sure," I say eventually, feeling as if there's no point even trying to reason with him. Somehow, it's as if my little brother has vanished, replaced by this wannabe soldier who gets his orders direct from Bob. Even if the whole world went back to normal tomorrow, I feel as if Henry would never be the same again. Something's changed deep inside his heart.
"I won't be long," he replies, making his way through to the back of the store.
Once I'm alone, I take a deep breath and look up at the dull gray sky. Ever since the power went off, the weather's been kind of like this, especially while the fire from the crashed plane was still burning. This morning, the plume of black smoke seems much thinner, as if the wreckage is finally starting to burn out. In a sick, twisted kind of way, I actually get a little comfort from the thought that at least one of the fires is coming to an end. Sighing, I realize how rapidly my perspective has changed over the past few days. I guess it's inevitable that people grow up when they're thrown into a situation like this. I just wish Henry had a better role model; I wish there was someone around, other than Bob, to show my brother how to be a man.
Lost in thought, I almost don't notice the distant banging sound. Eventually I look across the street, as I realize I can hear a noise far away, almost as if someone is banging on metal. Taking a few steps over to the street corner, I spot a dust-covered red car parked slightly askew about two hundred meters away, and to my surprise I realize there's a hint of movement behind the windshield. Seconds later, there's more movement, and the occupant of the car starts banging furiously on the inside of the windshield. It's almost as if someone's trapped in there, and calling for me to go and help.
Chapter Two
Oklahoma
"You're drunk," I say, looking down at Joe as he frowns up at me from the ground. With an empty bottle of whiskey just a couple of feet away, it's not exactly hard to see what happened last night. It's not surprising, either: Joe's always taken the easy way out of every situation, and he's doing it again. Right now, he can't even focus on me properly; I guess his world's spinning after another night on the liquor.
"Am I?" he mutters.
"You can't drive like this."
"Sure I can." He tries to get up, but the process is clearly way too difficult; instead, he ends up staring around at the grass, looking a little confused. "Is there a really quiet earthquake?" he asks after a moment.
"I'll drive," I say.
He shakes his head. "Just 'cause I can't walk, don't mean I can't drive." He hiccups. "It's two completely different skill-sets, bonehead. You'll just have to help me to the truck, that's all. Come on, let's get this show on the road." After a few seconds, he curls over onto his side. "I'll wait for you here," he murmurs. "Come and get me when you're ready. I'll just be resting here, ready for the journey."
Without saying anything, I turn and walk away, making my way around the barn until I come to the house. I haven't been back inside since last night, since that final conversation with my mother. Sleeping in the barn, I heard nothing all night except light rainfall on the roof, but now it's morning and I'm faced with the task of checking to see whether my mother survived the night. I'd give anything to not have to go inside and face the truth, but there's no way I can just drive off to Scottsville and leave her here. The worst thing is that, deep down, I think there's a part of me that actually wants her to be dead, not only so that her pain is over, but also so that I don't have to be there when she finally passes.
"Mom?" I call out as I step through the front door. The house is eerily quiet, and I feel like I can kind of tell already that she's dead. As long as I can remember, I've never known my mother to be totally quiet: she's always been busy in the kitchen, or busy with the laundry, or she has the radio on, or some other kind of activity. It's almost like she's scared of silence. Right now, however, the house is silence.
Getting no reply, I walk slowly through to the kitchen, and that's when I see her. Sitting at the kitchen table, fully dressed and with a pen in her hand, as if she's writing in her notebook, she's staring at the door, with her eyes wide open. I stare back at her, and for a moment I actually start to think that she might be alive. It's only a few seconds later that I realize there's a glassy, vacant quality to her expression. When I move over to one side of the room, she doesn't acknowledge me at all.
She's dead.
Taking a deep breath, I force myself to stay calm. On the table in front of her, the notebook is covered in blood. I guess she continued to cough her guts up during the night, and eventually she stopped caring enough to wipe it away. Her skin is a kind of yellow-gray color, just like Lydia's when she died, and there's a trace of blood in the corner of her mouth. With no idea what I should do, I just stand and stare at her, waiting for something to happen. The kitchen seems so still and so quiet, it almost seems sacrilegious to move to to make even the tiniest noise, but eventually I make my way a little further around the table, and that's when I realize that there's something wrong with her stomach.
She's bloated.
More than bloated, actually: her stomach is distended so much, it almost looks as if she's pregnant. I guess it's the same thing that happened to Lydia, and even the slightest pressure would probably made her explode in the same way. Realizing that there's no way I can risk something like that, I decide that the best thing to do would be just to get what I need, and then get out of here. Hurrying over to the fridge, I grab the last few bottles of water and a few items of food, and then I take some pain-killers and a box of matches from the cupboard. Heading back over to the door, I stop for a moment and look back at my mother one final time. I'd love to see what she was writing in her notebook, but I can't take the risk of disturbing her, so instead I head back outside.
I make my way quickly over to the truck, where I start checking through the provisions we've got stashed, ready for our journey to Scottsville. Although I'm still fighting back tears, I find that keeping busy is a good way to keep from breaking down. Instead of thinking about my mother, I fill my mind with more practical matters about the journey that Joe and I are going to take. I focus on stowing everything securely in the back of the truck and making sure that there's no danger of us losing anything; I fixate on the tiniest details, using all this unnecessary fuss to force other thoughts out of my mind. It works, too, and eventually I realize I've managed to keep myself busy for almost an hour. Finally, pausing for a moment, I lose my focus and all the negative thoughts rush back into my mind. In the space of just a few days, I've lost both my parents, and I've seen a stranger die, and I've seen a plane come down in the woods a few miles away. I swear to God, if I actually sit down and think about all of this, I'm going to go crazy. Better to keep busy, I guess; better to focus on what needs doing.
I turn and look at the house.
We can't just leave her there. We have to bury her. Or something. We have to do something.
Heading back around to the other side of the barn, I find that Joe has managed to go back to sleep. Sn
oring loudly, he's clearly in that vague zone between being drunk and being hungover; either way, there's no chance of getting any sensible ideas out of him. It's pretty clear that if I wait for Joe to be useful today, I'm gonna be waiting a long time. There's no use even waking him up to tell him about our mother, since he'd probably just forget and I'd have to tell him all over again once he sobered up. Instead of disturbing him, therefore, I head over to his little alcohol stash and, one by one, I open the bottles and pour their contents out onto the ground. It's kind of satisfying, seeing the amber liquid spilling out of the bottles, and thinking about how mad Joe's gonna be when he finds out.
Stopping for a moment, I turn and look over at the house. With a heavy heart, I realize there's still one final job that I need to do before Joe and I leave.
Chapter Three
Manhattan
"If this is more of your bullshit," Henry says angrily as I lead him out of the convenience store and over to the street corner, "I swear to God, I'm gonna -" He stops speaking as he sees the figure moving around inside the car. To be honest, I'm slightly relieved by his reaction, since I'd started to wonder whether I was going mad. I half-expected Henry to tell me I was imagining the whole thing.
"See?" I reply. "There's someone in there."
"Fuck," he mutters quietly.
"What do we do?" I ask.
"It might be a trap," Henry says, turning and looking back the other way. "It's got to be a trap."
"It's someone who needs help," I point out.
"How do you know that?" Henry asks. "Seriously, you wanna just go walking over there and open that door? How the hell do you know that there's not a bunch of men with guns hiding behind that car? How do you know there's not snipers hiding in windows, waiting to pick us off?"
Sighing, I turn to him. "Because I'm not riddled with paranoia," I reply. "Think about it, Henry. If there were snipers, they could just as easily shoot us now, rather than wait for us to go over there. If there are men with guns, they could just jump us while we're standing here. And anyway, when the hell did you start assuming that everyone's like that? People aren't just gonna turn into a bunch of murderers, just because things changed."