“Why would my father send me here? This feels like a joke. A cruel, awful, horrible joke.”
“We haven’t really been looking for a message…maybe that’s what we need to do. Go back and see if there’s a message here for you.”
“Grant—” Lucy started and she could hear the whining in her voice, the admission of defeat, and the worry that all of this would be nothing more than a dead end. Which was worse? Facing her father and her fears? Or realizing their entire trip had been for nothing? She threw her hands up when she saw Grant’s glower; he had such an intolerance for her moodiness.
“We’re here, Lucy. We’re in Brixton! And we’ve been here for less than an hour…so, maybe hold off on the defeatist attitude until after we’re sure there’s nothing to find. Okay?” Then he smiled and raised his eyebrows—a ta-da—an invitation to make it a challenge; he would match her step by step. He never just let her stew and sulk, and it simultaneously irritated and impressed her.
Lucy paused and glared at him; she crossed her arms over her body and dug her heels into the dirt.
“Come on,” he said and rolled his eyes.
“I’m not going to fight with you,” she stated and raised her chin.
“Perfect. I’m not going to fight with you either. You know I’m right. Don’t do that thing.”
“What thing?”
“That thing…where you make up your mind that something is going to be one way and then throw a fit when it turns out to be another way…and then five minutes later realize that it’s not the—” he stopped and frowned.
“You were going to say the end of the world, weren’t you?”
Grant made a face.
Lucy smiled despite herself. “Anyway,” she continued. “It’s not being defeatist if we are, indeed, defeated, you know?” She wanted to explain her desire for a quick exit. But even as the words left her mouth she realized that even she didn’t sound convinced.
Grant walked over to her and put two hands on her shoulders: she tilted her head to look up at him as he towered over her. “Same conversation as before. It’s always the same.”
“It’s just…you’re right…I guess, it’s not what I expected,” she admitted. “That’s all.”
“Yes, because all of this would have been so easy to expect. Please, Lucy. This is an easy fix. Abandon expectations.”
Lucy waited a second and then nodded.
He dug her hand out from her crossed arms and gave it a squeeze, then spun Lucy around and began pulling her back toward Main Street.
“Library. Then houses. No stone unturned.”
“We have maybe an hour or so before sunset.” She nodded toward the sky.
“Then we camp.”
She shivered. “I don’t want to stay here, no way. It just doesn’t feel right.”
“We’ve stayed with dead bodies before,” Grant offered. “The dead can’t hurt us.”
Shrugging, she let him pull her up the small steps to the library. “Feels different, I guess.” Then Lucy paused. She tightened her arm as Grant continued forward, and then she yanked him back. He complained, rubbed his shoulder with his free hand, and then looked at her.
“What?” He dropped her hand and met her on the second-to-last step.
“Did you hear that?” Lucy’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. She left the stairs and took two big strides back into the middle of Main Street, her head spinning from left to right.
“Hear what?” Grant asked, confused and worried.
She heard it again.
A bark.
Distinct and crisp as anything.
She spun to Grant and raised her eyebrows expectantly and Grant nodded.
“Shared auditory hallucination?” he said to her, his voice cracking.
“What direction was it coming from?” Lucy did a half-jog away from the library and listened again, cupping her hand around her ears—hoping that her grandmother’s old trick of amplifying sound would help her detect from what direction this animal was coming from.
Closer now. A bark. A real bark. It was getting closer and closer. Grant migrated back toward the church and then she heard him call out.
“Lula! Look! God Almighty…”
Running full-speed toward Grant and Lucy was a black lab.
They watched as it rushed forward, the dust flying up on his heels. It grew nearer and nearer until it pounced up on Grant playfully when it reached him, licking his hand and jumping up and barking. A leash was still attached to a collar around its neck. Grabbing the leash, Lucy tugged the dog over to her and scratched behind its ears. The dog nuzzled her hand.
They heaped love and affection upon that dog like they were men in the desert who just found water. Squatting down into the street, Grant let the dog lick his entire face. And Lucy giggled as the dog jumped and leapt around them with obvious excitement. It was the first living thing they had seen since they left Oregon and they couldn’t help but think the dog was a miracle.
“Maybe the virus didn’t make it here,” Grant said.
“So the dogs weren’t affected in Nebraska?”
“Yeah, but—”
Lucy understood the question before he asked it. This dog wasn’t emaciated from two years of neglect; it was sleek and well-groomed. Its bright red collar looked brand-new and it reacted to humans with trust and comfort. This was someone’s pet.
And it was alive.
Looking down at the collar, Lucy palmed the silver paw print and ran her finger over the inscription. Then she let out a puzzled hum.
“What?” Grant leaned down.
“This dog’s name is Frank.”
At the sound it his name, Frank licked Lucy and barked once.
“And?”
“Well…Frank lives at…Floor A. Pod 6. Room F.”
Grant didn’t answer. He just looked down and gave Frank a scratch on his rump, a goofy-grin plastered on his face.
“Frank! Fra-ank!”
They jumped and Frank’s ears perked up at the sound of his name. He joyfully barked again and Lucy and Grant paused.
“Oh no,” Lucy whispered. “A person,” she said as a sigh.
Exposed and without cover, they could only freeze, Frank’s leash in hand, and wait.
“Gun?” Lucy asked as she shot a quick glance at Grant.
“Car,” he answered. Grant frowned. “I wasn’t thinking—I—”
Around the corner of the library, a woman materialized. She was young, but older than them, and tall and dressed for a jog in shorts and a tight tank top. She had earphones in each ear, she was still bouncing along to a song they couldn’t hear, and her eyes scanned the street; she hadn’t spotted them yet. Frank barked and pulled on the leash in response to seeing her.
And the woman saw Frank before she saw them.
When her eyes traveled from her dog to the person holding his leash, she paused. Her eyes narrowed. She tugged her earphones out of her ears and even from over twenty yards away, they could see the fear in her eyes. She assessed the distance between them and then in a flash took off running—the dirt kicking up behind her, the street full of the sound of her sneakers hitting the cement and then the unpaved road in quick bursts. She was fast, just a blur, and then she scrambled up the steps to the library and slammed the door behind her. Frank broke away from Lucy’s grasp and trailed after her, barking at the closed door.
Grant and Lucy could only stare.
She was there. And then she wasn’t. Fast as lightening across the empty Main Street and into the only place downtown they hadn’t entered.
“Well?” Grant asked.
Lucy’s heart was pumping wildly and she looked at her friend wide-eyed. “Well, what?”
“Should we follow her?”
“Are you crazy?”
“She was just as surprised to see us as we were to see her,” Grant offered. “You know what it means though…” he smiled.
Lu
cy stared at the closed door and the poor confused dog calling for his owner. She replayed the image of the woman’s face seeing them and the quickness with which she fled the scene.
Brixton, Nebraska was not a dead-end after all.
“Gun first. Library second,” Lucy commanded with an authoritative nod. And Grant clapped her on the back.
“That’s my girl.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ethan’s eyes opened. He blinked and tried to move, but his body felt heavy, like he was attempting to pull his arms through maple syrup. He was in his own room, in his own bed. Everything was the way it had been before: there was his desk, still littered with homework from his college classes; and there, on his dresser, was a picture of him and Anna on the mountain, holding snowboards and each other, smiling under thick goggles. His laundry basket overflowed with the clothes he wore several weeks ago, those pants and shirts forever relegated to an unwashed pile.
His blinds were shut tight, but light slipped between the slats. Ethan tried to raise his hand, but it barely moved. Nothing was working right—his body defied every command and Ethan groaned. Then he felt wetness across his abdomen and he turned his head to see the girl—the curly haired one, with the long legs, the high forehead, and the aquiline nose—bathing him, section by section, with a tub of baby wipes. The girl, Ainsley, he remembered, but only barely, lifted his left arm and ran a wipe down under his armpit and across his side; he emitted some noise of disapproval and tried to pull away from her, but his limbs were beyond his control.
She set his arm back down and paused, looking at him, her head turned, without saying a word.
“How’s your pain level?” Ainsley asked clinically when the silence had become too oppressive. No greetings, no small-talk.
The mention of pain sent Ethan’s nerves tingling and his leg began to ache on command. Deep, throbbing, shooting waves of pain emanated from his upper thigh and traveled down to his toes.
“My leg hurts,” he replied.
“On a scale from one to ten?” the girl asked.
He hated that question. His pain could not be quantified in numbers. It was excruciating, his leg throbbing; he was unable to think of anything else besides the pain. However, if he said ten, then there was nowhere to go—if the pain got worse, could he just add a number to the scale? And what if he said eight, but they assumed an eight was manageable? This was not manageable.
“It just really fu—freaking hurts,” he snapped at her. But Ainsley didn’t flinch or blink or seemed disturbed by his outburst. She just stared at him, her big brown eyes locked onto his, and then she nodded once—a mechanical action, without warmth or objection. She picked the heavy blanket off of Ethan and folded it over her arm, and then she bent down over Ethan’s leg and inspected his stump.
It was the first time Ethan had seen his leg after surgery. He had forgotten.
He could feel his toes. His calf hurt. A sharp shooting pain traveled from his absent knee down to his aching ankles. But there was nothing there—he felt pain in places that didn’t exist. Ethan felt weak and light-headed. He had forgotten. And now he remembered. His right leg was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Ainsley said and Ethan didn’t know if she was sorry for his amputation or sorry for showing him the swollen, puckered remnants of his leg.
“I need…something,” Ethan said to her, his mouth dry, the words barely forming on his tongue. He closed his eyes and Ainsley placed the blanket back over his legs, shielding the grotesqueness from the world, hiding it away.
“My mom will be up soon to administer your medication.”
“Are you what, like, my nurse?” Ethan asked and he tried to smile, but it came off like a grimace. Ainsley didn’t seem to notice.
“I was going to be a nurse. Before.” She moved the wipes to the side and stood by the side of his bed, her arms dangling down at her sides, unmoving. She didn’t continue, didn’t launch into the history of her life. She just looked at him, blinking.
“Not a doctor? Didn’t want to follow in your mom’s footsteps?” Ethan asked. He had no interest in keeping the conversation going, but Ainsley didn’t look like she was leaving and he hated awkward silences. He didn’t know much about the doctor and her daughter. They appeared in a blur, their initial introductions now lost in a drug and fever-induced haze, but he did remember snapshots.
After Lucy and Grant left, his pain increased and he began to show signs of infection; he slipped further away from consciousness—and by the time the doctor arrived, he was sleeping most of the day; everything passing by in hazy dream. He wondered if he’d ever get his memories back from the past week. It seemed unlikely.
“Because they are both related to medicine? Also, that presupposes that I like my mom and admire her choice in occupation,” Ainsley replied.
Ethan stared at her. He wished she would leave, but she made no movement toward the door. “Right. Good point. Okay,” he said. “So, then why not a teacher, social worker? Car wash operator?”
“I was kidding,” she added straight-faced. “I both like my mom and admire her choice in occupation.”
He blinked. And shook his head. Who was this girl? Trying to shift, Ethan winced; Ainsley put a warm hand against his bare shoulder and eased him into a sitting position. She fluffed up pillows and tucked them behind him, adjusting until Ethan nodded and motioned for her to stop. Then she handed him a juice box, the straw already inserted and bent for him, like he was a child. He recognized the box, with its popular cartoon character mascot, as the twins’ favorite post-school drink. Before taking a sip, he closed his eyes and tried to picture their faces.
“So,” Ethan continued, “You’re a nurse and a comedian?”
“Comedian? You think I’m funny?”
“That…it was…my own…look, I was just trying to make a joke.”
Ainsley cocked her head, the edges of her mouth twitched. “That was your attempt at a joke? Then you should leave the funny to me.”
Ethan smiled.
They heard a knock on the door and their heads turned in unison. Ethan was expecting the doctor, but it was Joey who stuck his head inside. He looked around and saw Ainsley; he mumbled something and then moved to leave, but Ainsley motioned for him to come inside.
“It’s fine, Joey,” Ainsley said and she moved around the edge of the bed and then flung Ethan’s door open wide. “Don’t lurk.”
“I wanted to see if he was okay. I brought a, um…I brought a…” he took a step inside and waved a homemade card and a small bouquet of picked flowers in the air. He looked to Ainsley and then to Ethan, and then lowered his head. “Just, um, a small get well gift. But…”
“It’s sweet,” Ainsley said and reached to take the flowers from Joey’s hand. He gave them to her and shrugged, then shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor, rubbing his sock against the bedroom carpet. “Did you need anything?” she asked him.
Ethan looked at the girl—how she stood with her hands on her hips, the flowers sticking out from her sides, her eyebrows raised expectantly. She took the role of his guardian and nurse with severe seriousness. When Joey didn’t answer right away, Ainsley spun away from the visitor and tucked the flowers on Ethan’s desk, then she handed him the get well card—crafted from some of his mother Maxine’s scrapbook paper and colored pencils. Ethan might have appreciated the sentiment more if he had any real memories of Joey. To Ethan, Joey was like a long-lost relative: somewhat familiar, but difficult to place in the current realm. All he knew was that Joey was the connection between Spencer and the doctor: a Raider by trade. Beyond that, Ethan didn’t know anything about him.
Joey was skinny and baby-faced. He could have been eighteen or thirty-five, it was hard to tell; he had dark brown eyes and mop of wavy brown hair, a strong, square jaw, and a long neck. He squinted when he smiled, and he had a contagious laugh—a high-pitched giggle that belied the ruthless Raider persona.
That w
as the thing about the end of the world: you could never predict an individual’s behavior. When the danger became apparent and everything crumbled, people had a way of surprising you.
There was nothing about Joey that pigeonholed him as the type to capitalize on other people’s death for profit. Perhaps that was part of his cunning; it was easy to trust his honest face, his genuine laugh, his sheepish smile. Combined with his bumbling monologues that displayed questionable intelligence, Joey was likeable enough.
Maybe under different circumstances, Ethan and Joey would be pals. But with the pain in his leg escalating, it was difficult to focus. Ethan just wanted Joey to leave.
“Spencer—” Joey mumbled and then his eyes shifted to Ethan; he blubbered out a small laugh, his hands still in his front pockets, he shrugged—which Ethan understood as some sort of apologetic action, designed to endear himself. “Hey,” Joey said to Ethan, derailing his own conversation by officially acknowledging Ethan’s presence. Then he shifted his attention back to Ainsley. “Spencer wants to meet with us when you have a second. Your mom wanted me to make sure you were there for it. Something about…” he looked at Ethan again—then looked away, “a plan? In case—”
Ainsley turned toward Ethan and muttered a barely audible apology for Joey’s interruption, but Ethan mustered his energy to wave his hand dismissively. “Don’t mind me,” he said with a twinge of annoyance, and turned his head away from them.
Ainsley motioned for Joey to move back out into the hallway. Even though she shut the door, he could still hear their hushed and hurried conversation—Joey’s voice rising and falling, with Ainsley replying in quick, short staccato bursts. After a moment he heard steps tromping away and then Ainsley slipped back inside his room.
She sighed and looked at him—assessing the damage done. “Sorry. That was…”
“No, I definitely get it,” Ethan replied. “One little surgery and I don’t get to be included in house meetings.” He closed his eyes; her silence was the answer he needed, but when he rolled his head over to look at her, Ainsley was just standing there—her expression blank and unrevealing.
The System (Virulent Book 2) Page 6