by T. S. Welti
I throw my arms around Eve just before she collapses. When I look up Isaac is running into the forest after Vic.
“Get her inside,” I tell Mary.
Mary takes Eve off my hands and I dart into the forest after Isaac. The darkness of the trees surrounds me and I realize how vulnerable I am without weapons.
“Isaac!” I shout. “Get back here!”
But he turns left and disappears into the forest near the east side of the house. A shot blasts off and a scream rings in my ears as my feet pummel the snow beneath me. Shadows move on all sides of me as I race through the trees.
The screams are getting further away. I’m running in the wrong direction.
I turn around and another gunshot explodes through the bitter air followed by several curse words. I can barely glimpse the warm light of the cabin through the trees. They must be behind the cabin.
I hurdle ferns and tree roots until I arrive at the rear of the cabin. Isaac is standing just beyond the tree line. I can see the legs of someone resting on the ground behind the tree next to him. He bends over and offers his hand.
“Isaac!” I shout.
He turns to me and the moonlight reflects on the blood gushing down his face. The person behind the tree takes Isaac’s hand and Isaac pulls him up.
It’s Daedric.
Isaac throws his arm around Daedric’s waist and helps him limp toward the cabin. Daedric’s face is contorted with agony. I race toward them to help.
“No. I’m fine,” he grumbles, as I attempt to wrap my arm around his waist.
Blood oozes from his foot leaving behind crisp red stains that saturate the snow.
“You are obviously not fine,” I reply. “Where’s Vic?”
“Passed out in Eve’s trap,” Isaac replies. “He won’t be getting out unless we let him out.”
Isaac and I help Daedric onto the sofa inside the cabin. Qiana lies frozen on the wooden floor beyond the sofa. Eve is awake and crouching next to Qiana with a glass of water and a rag in hand. Mary is sitting on the kitchen counter with her back to us.
“Where’s Elysia?” Daedric mutters.
“She’s in the bedroom,” Eve whispers.
Isaac drifts toward Qiana and crouches next to Eve as she dips the rag in the glass of water and wipes the blood off Qiana’s face. Isaac takes the glass and the rag from Eve and finishes while Eve and I look on in silence. He scoops her up in his arms and carries her outside.
“Come with me,” he says to me.
“Wrap his foot,” I say to Eve as I point at Daedric.
I follow Isaac outside toward the forest. He carries Qiana to the trap in front of the cabin and sets her on the snow.
“I’m going to lower you into the trap then you help me lower her in there,” he says.
Thirty minutes later, Isaac pulls me out of the pit where I’ve laid Qiana and we both toss snow over her body. When Qiana’s body is completely buried, we trudge back to the cabin in silence.
CHAPTER 18
“We can’t just leave him out there to die of hypothermia,” I say to Isaac. “What’s your plan?”
As Daedric and Elysia sleep in the bedroom, the rest of us sit around the kitchen table contemplating Vic’s fate.
“I don’t see why we can’t leave him out there,” Mary replies. “What are we supposed to do, invite him in to share a can of beans? Let him rot.”
“It’s one thing to kill someone in self-defense. It’s another thing to purposely leave someone in a ditch so they can freeze to death,” Isaac replies. “He’s out of bullets.”
“How exactly did he get down there?” I ask.
“Daedric tackled him,” he replies. “He shot Daedric in the foot when they were struggling for the gun. I pulled him off Daedric and pushed him into the trap. He tried to shoot me in the face when he was falling in. The first shot grazed me, but the second shot was an empty click.”
The gash where the bullet grazed Isaac’s forehead has stopped oozing, unlike my wary thoughts. I can’t stop wondering how Daedric got here just in time.
“What do you think, Eve?” I ask. “What should we do with Vic?”
Eve stares at her hands, which are clasped tightly on top of the table. Her black hair hangs around her face casting shadows across her fair skin.
She shrugs. “I think I agree with Mary,” she says. “He doesn’t deserve to be saved.”
“See,” Mary says.
I want to ask Eve what Vic and the other Guardians did to them before we arrived, but I’m too afraid she’ll tell me something that will make me storm outside and tear out his eyeballs. As much as I want this war with Vic to end here… as easy as it is to fool my mind into believing I have no choice but to leave him in that ditch… I can’t. And no matter how intensely Mary glares at me from across the table, I know if she lets Vic freeze to death the guilt will eat away at her until she works up the courage to take it out on herself.
“We have to leave this cabin,” I say, and no one responds.
This truth is too depressing to acknowledge. Our perfect little hideaway has been compromised, unless we compromise our integrity and let Vic die.
“We’ll set him free,” Isaac says, as he stands from the table. “Then we’re ditching this place in two weeks.”
“Why two weeks?” I ask. “You and Daedric need time to heal. It’ll take at least six weeks for Vic to make it back here.”
Isaac glances at each of our faces before he responds. “We don’t want to run into them on the way to Umbra.”
BURIED ALIVE
Book Three of the No Shelter Trilogy
CHAPTER 1
“Why would I want to live in a place that forces people who don’t even know each other to get married?” I shout at Isaac.
“Nada, they only arrange marriages for single people with no family,” Isaac replies. “You don’t have to worry about that. You have me.”
He flashes me a smooth smile and his gray eyes practically sparkle with the thought of all the things we’ll be able to do once we’re living in the comfort of the last city in America—no more hunting for food or hoarding barrels of water—nothing to do but be with each other… just Isaac and I… living underground… forever.
“That’s great for you two, but what about us,” Mary says, pointing at Eve and herself. “Are we supposed to allow ourselves to be sold to the highest bidder or fixed up with some fat, bald guy just so you two can live happily ever after?”
“You two can live with us,” Isaac replies, as he stands behind the chair I’m sitting in and rubs my shoulders. “Right, Nada?”
I’m silent at this suggestion. The idea of spending the rest of my life in Umbra with Isaac and Mary is frightening. The fact that Isaac could suggest this combined with the motion of him rubbing my shoulders makes my stomach swell with nausea.
I stand from the dining table. “Can we just set Vic free and we’ll talk about this later?” I say.
I leave the kitchen and enter the living room. My heart jumps when I glimpse the bloodstain on the floor where Qiana lay moments ago—before Isaac and I buried her body under the snow. I break into a run as sweat sprouts all over my body. I step outside the cabin in time to vomit foamy yellow bile on the snow.
Qiana is the reason we’re all here. Qiana escaped Umbra months ago, right before she met Isaac in the marketplace. She didn’t like the idea of arranged marriages either. She shared all her information about Umbra with Isaac, among other things. If she had never told Isaac about the secret entrance into Umbra, Vic and the Guardians may never have followed us four hundred miles from the Salton Sea to the cabin.
Now that our sanctuary in the mountains has been compromised, we have no choice but to leave. The only problem is that Vic is lying in a ditch behind the cabin. If we leave him there he’ll freeze to death, but the Guardians won’t bother us anymore. If we set him free, we’ll have two weeks to decide whether we want to hike three thousand miles from California all the way to Washington D.
C.—to Umbra.
Isaac steps outside and stares at the yellow spot in the snow as I’m wiping my mouth. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I’m not okay. I’m freezing because I left my coat in the cabin and I’d puke up my stomach if I had the strength. But I don’t have the energy. I haven’t eaten since the morning and it’s probably midnight. I just killed a man by ramming the butt of my hand into his nose then I buried a girl in a ditch. I am definitely not okay.
“I’m fine,” I reply.
Isaac doesn’t look convinced. He wraps his arms around me and I bury my face in his chest. Fresh tears sting the corners of my eyes and I press my fingers into my eyelids as I try not to fall apart.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I say, my voice muffled by Isaac’s army-green coat. “I don’t want to go to Umbra. I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to go back to the cave… I don’t want any of it.”
Isaac kisses the top of my head and strokes my hair. “We can’t keep running from Vic forever,” Isaac whispers. “We can’t survive in the Northern Sector. And, I don’t know about you, but I suck at accents… Umbra is our only shot.”
The Northern Sector of the continent from Canada all the way down through Utah and the entire former Midwest is almost completely frozen over. The climate is so harsh that the North is the only sector where they accept you no matter where you’re from—unless you’re a Guardian. The Northern Sector is the only climate harsh enough to keep out the Guardians.
The Guardians protect the Western, Eastern, and Southern sectors. If you’re caught outside your sector, everyone has the right to kill you or turn you into the Guardians—who will probably kill you anyway unless you have something they want.
Technically, there is no reliable way to know what sector someone is from. The only way to distinguish a westerner from an easterner or a southerner is their accents and mannerisms. Westerners speak lazily, using soft Ts instead of hard Ts at the end of certain words like it and don’t. Southerners like Mary have a tendency to drop their Gs at the end of a word and turn hard Is into soft As. Easterners like Daedric are the worst. They have so many accents, but they can mostly be distinguished by their poor grammar and pronunciation of are as ah.
Mary and Daedric have almost completely adapted to the Western accent, though Mary does sometimes fall back on her Southern pronunciations when she’s upset. Daedric’s accent was horrific when he showed up four months ago. Now his new Western accent matches his tanned skin and shaggy blonde hair.
I’ve always wondered if I would be able to adopt a new accent. My little sister Lara and I used to think it was hilarious to imitate a Southern accent. Looking back, it was only funny because we both were terrible at it. That was at least five years ago—before Lara was murdered and the world as we knew it ended.
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to be honest,” I say to Isaac, though I’m staring at the buttons on his jacket as I speak. “I want to be with Lara.”
Isaac’s arms drop to his sides and I finally look up. His disheveled brown hair falls around the sharp corners of his face like the jagged fingers of midnight closing in on the sun. His brow is knitted with worry and I suddenly wish I could take back my words.
“I never told you what happened to Jack,” he whispers.
Jack. Though I’ve never heard this name before I know who Isaac is speaking of: his older brother who died in the storm.
“He was studying at USC just before they shut down the campus,” Isaac continues. “My dad… my dad loved him more than me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
Isaac shakes his head. “You didn’t know my dad, Nada. My dad went to SC, my brother went to SC, and I was failing out of high school. As much as I wanted to get in good with my dad, I just couldn’t bring myself to care enough to try. I was a major disappointment. And I thought I had it worse than Jack.”
“You were a kid.”
“I was sixteen years old and my only goal in life was to make Jack’s life as uncomfortable as possible,” he replies. “When he came home after they shut down the campus, I went through his stuff and found one of his journals.”
He takes a long pause and I fight the urge to look away.
“He’d been having suicidal thoughts for months—since he found out he had to come back home. The last entry in the journal said he was going to… to do it soon,” Isaac whispers the last four words as if his father is somewhere nearby in the woods watching us. “I never told anyone and I found him hanging from a tree in our backyard the next morning. I could have saved my brother.”
“You didn’t know he was serious,” I say.
“Yes, I did,” he replies. “The weeks after that are a blur. I don’t even remember the funeral, but I remember the exact words he wrote in that last journal entry. And I remember what I was thinking when I slipped the journal back into his backpack exactly the way I found it.”
“What were you thinking?” I ask.
He stares me in the eye as he answers. “How much my dad was going to miss him.”
Another wave of nausea swells through me, but this time I run inside and barely reach the bathroom in time to spit more foam into the sink. I don’t bother turning on the bathroom light before I run the water to rinse the basin. I don’t want to see my face in the mirror. I turn on the tap and toss some water into my mouth to flush the bitter taste then I take a seat on the edge of the bathtub.
Why did Isaac tell me this? Does he really regret what he did or is he just trying to stop me from doing what his brother did?
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I’m certain I can’t spend the rest of my life with Isaac. This side of him, this intense instinct for self-preservation no matter whom he hurts, is disgusting.
The bathroom door squeaks open and I expect to find Isaac coming in to check on me. It’s Daedric. He limps into the bathroom, but he doesn’t see me through the darkness and the haze of sleep. He reaches for his zipper before I finally speak up.
“Daedric?”
He turns to me and quickly zips up his pants. “Nada?” he replies, his voice hoarse with thirst.
I stand from the tub. “I’ll get out of your way.”
I slither past him, but he hooks his arm around my arm before I reach the door. “What are you doing in the dark?”
I wish I knew the answer to this question. I wish Daedric had taken the time to ask me this before he ditched Isaac and I in the middle of the snowy desert last week. Maybe then I wouldn’t have given myself to Isaac. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so disappointed in myself.
“I wasn’t feeling well,” I whisper.
Even in the vague light shining through the crack in the bathroom door, Daedric’s green eyes gleam with understanding.
“I’m sorry I left you last week,” he says. “There was something I had to do and I didn’t want to drag you into it.”
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to leave,” I reply.
He smiles and opens his arms. I stare at him for a moment unsure if I want to travel down the path of indecision again.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I shake my head and he leans forward to embrace me. He leans a little too far over and takes a step to correct his balance. He lands on his bad foot and a stream of curse words spills from his lips. I catch him around the waist before he topples onto the floor and he quickly gets his weight back onto his good foot.
“You okay?” I ask.
His face is so close I can feel his breath on my eyelids. His hands glide over my shoulders and come to rest on each side of my face. He leans in to kiss me and I turn away as the bathroom door flings open.
CHAPTER 2
The light illuminates every corner of white tile and momentarily blinds me. I release my grip on Daedric and blink furiously as my eyes adjust to the glare.
“Everything okay in here?” Isaac asks.
My stomach lurches as I catch sight of the g
lare in his eyes. “No,” I reply. “I need food.”
I shove my way past Isaac and march toward the kitchen. I am starving, but the thought of chewing real food makes my skin prickle.
I charge through the living room where Eve is positioning the floor rug over the bloodstain on the wooden floor. In the kitchen Mary sits cross-legged on the dining chair with her hands flat on the table and her eyes closed. I’ve never seen Mary meditate. My dad used to meditate before he abandoned Lara and me. I don’t say anything because if there’s anyone in this house who needs to relax it’s Mary.
I walk right past her and quietly open the cupboard above the kitchen counter. I grab a can of cocktail sausages and pull the tab to open the can. The smell of cured meat is both revolting and mouthwatering at the same time. I drain the gelatinous liquid out of the can into the sink and pop a pinky-sized sausage into my mouth.
The sausage is slimy and salty and I immediately spit it out into the sink. I need something to get rid of the metallic taste in my mouth. I spot a box of saltine crackers on the top shelf of the cupboard. I climb onto the counter and reach for the box.
“What are you doing?” Isaac says, as he enters the kitchen.
I grab the box and jump down from the counter. “Just trying not to starve to death,” I reply.
“Don’t eat too many of those,” Mary chimes in. “Wouldn’t want you getting chunky.”
“You worry about the size of your ass and I’ll worry about mine,” I reply, as I throw Isaac a pack of crackers. “Eat something.”
He tosses the crackers onto the counter. “I’m not hungry,” he says. “We need to get Vic out of that ditch before he goes hypothermic and we’re stuck with him.”
I wolf down a few crackers and toss the pack onto the counter. “All right, let’s go.”
Mary and I follow Isaac outside to the back of the cabin. Isaac picks a discarded shotgun off the snow. I spot the gaping ditch beyond the tree line and make my way toward it. The moonlight glimmers on the snowy edges of the hole like a magical portal to another world—a better world.