by Jones, Isla
Vicki cried a strange, brief sound and fell back against the wall. “I’m late,” she whispered. “Two weeks.”
“Shit.”
That one word spat from me. It said everything it needed to.
Shit.
Not in this world. Not now. Not here, with rotters, on the road—or even safe in the CDC. Not that…
“You know,” she said, and I suspected she was part-speaking to herself. “I’ve known about the cargo since we were separated at the farmhouse. Mac told me. Do you what I said? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Vicki reached down to between her feet and scratched Cleo.
“After the auto-shop, I had to dress some of his wounds,” she said. “What if he’d bitten me? What if he bites me and I’m pregnant? Does it all still…work?”
I pressed my cheek against the door and faced myself in the mirror. Gaunt, pale, chapped lips. Nothing much has changed.
“You’d miscarry,” I told her. It seemed obvious. Her fears were overthrowing her logical mind. “And you don’t know if you’re pregnant or not. Periods can be late just out of stress. Hormones shift all the time. Keep those worries until after you’ve taken a test.”
“Then what?” Her hands spread, her eyes desperate. “If it’s positive, then what do I do?”
“You do whatever you choose.” I shrugged. “Either way, I’ll help you. I won’t let you face this on your own. This is probably the one thing I can actually help you with.”
Vicki frowned at me, and I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking the same.
We’re not really friends.
Allies, acquaintances, two people stuck together in a pressure cooker. But friends?
Not quite.
I’ve said it before. Not a lot of people like me, I’ve never had many friends—male or female—and I’m as weird as I seem, which is off-putting to most.
Still, in that bathroom, crammed together, we shared something only the two of us (and maybe Lisa) could understand. We started something in that bathroom; we started our friendship.
“You would help?” Tension shook her voice, the hope strained against her misbelief.
I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t offer for nothing. Just tell me what you need, and we’ll go from there.”
Vicki nodded, not to me, to herself.
Footsteps came up the hall. Towards us.
I recognised the sound, and before Leo could knock on the door, I pulled it open. My prison guard stood on the other side, suspicion narrowing his eyes. He swept his gaze around the bathroom, then gestured for me to come out.
I did, Cleo trotting at my feet.
Leo led the way to the lounge-kitchen area. “What is it with women and going to the bathroom together? You’d think at the end of the world, those customs would stop.”
I climbed, carefully, onto the sofa-bed. “You’d think at the end of the world, men would stop worrying about what women do in the bathroom at all.”
Leo hummed, then tossed a pile of new pillows and blankets at the foot of the sofa-bed. I eyed them darkly.
“In case you hadn’t figured it out yet,” said Leo smartly, “you’re sharing from now on.”
Shock slackened my face, but it quickly crumbled to horror. I gaped at him.
Sharing? With who? Adam? Leo?
Castle?
I would have chosen Adam over any of them. I hated him the least.
“Fine,” I gritted out through bared teeth. Then I gestured to the big square pillow, and he handed it to me. “This is my side.”
Amused, Leo watched as I prepped my corner of the bed. It was next to the only windowsill—where I put my mugs and water bottles—and on the other side of the couch’s arm stood a small table, where I kept my bag and books.
It was my side, and I would fight to the bone for it. Metaphorically, because … you know, that would be ridiculous.
Satisfied, I leaned back on my mountain of pillows and glowered at Leo.
He played ball—and stared right back at me with marbles for eyes. “I hope you remember our chat, Winter.”
I waved him off. “You should get one of those ancient voice recorders with the batteries—you know the ones.” I gestured with my hands. “Journalists used them in those old movies from like … the nineties.”
Leo’s lips bit inwards, caging in a laugh. This might not have been my best insult or comeback. Still, I couldn’t stop, I was too deep in.
“You could just record yourself saying the same dumb stuff you always say, then anytime I move, or breathe, you could just play the recording, and have the pleasure of hearing your voice over and over again.”
Leo’s grin broke out and he leaned back against the sink. “Original and witty,” he said. “You’re one of a kind, Winter Miles.”
He meant to insult, obviously.
I shot him a sneer, then pulled Cleo closer to me. She growled a little, so I stopped.
Cleo is no stranger to cranky bites. Maybe she’d been around the deltas too long.
Leo’s grin faded after a moment and he watched me pick at a loose thread in my jumper—Castle’s old sweater, to be honest, but it was comfy, and I’d claimed it before the breakup.
The sweater held Leo’s full attention. And when he spoke, his eyes never strayed from the black wool that lumped around me. “Don’t let your time with him fool you into any delusions of what he feels for you. Castle would hunt you down, and he wouldn’t be kind about it either. To him, you’re a means to an end.”
My jaw set, my eyes flamed. “Are you talking about him, or yourself?”
There was something in his eyes that caught me, but before I could start to decipher it, he turned his back on me. The kettle flicked on; filled with melted snow from all around us.
With his back to me, he wiped his favourite mug—one with a ceramic pocket on the side to hold biscuits…not that we had any biscuits.
“Tea?” he asked.
I sneered and turned away.
4.
A groan tightened my squeaky voice; “I might be sick. Oh, God, oh…Is it meant to look like that?”
Vicki shot me a stern glare. It silenced me instantly.
In my tank top, I lay flat on the mattress as she cleaned my bullet wound. I curved my neck, chin pressed to my collarbone, and watched. Did that make me a masochist?
I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t stand to look. And I had no way to distract myself.
Vicki huffed and pulled back. “I can’t do much with you squirming like that. Give it a rest. It’s just a clean.”
Lips pinched, I stared up at the ceiling and wiggled my sock-wrapped feet.
We’d driven off the highway the night before and parked at a rest stop. Dawn had barely broken before everyone dived into their morning chores. Outside, the three deltas worked to push blockades off the road—otherwise, we faced turning back around to the exit we’d come from—and the shops lined ahead were being looted by Oscar and Lisa. Their job was to scavenge whatever they could to help us survive the next few days. Our food supplies had plummeted, we were almost out of batteries and matches, and the medical kits were lower than ever.
If the blockades were moved, and the looters got enough for us to eat, our chances looked brighter. There hadn’t been many challenges after the auto-shop, other than the cold, the injuries, and hunger. We were lucky. We saw no other groups, no nests or rotters, or wild animals. The East coast was entirely silent—dead.
It made sense that everything—survivors and rotters—had moved to warmer places. But it didn’t make sense that all of them were gone. We couldn’t be that lucky.
“There.” Vicki fiddled around in a metal first-aid tin. “Almost finished.”
“Almost?” A breathy choke stuck to my voice. I groaned. “Can’t we just wrap it back up and leave it as it is? It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”
Vicki scoffed. “It doesn’t hurt? So if I were to poke the bruise around it, you wouldn’t feel it?”
I bit do
wn on my cheeks and glowered at the ceiling.
“That’s what I thought,” she muttered.
The door opened. I didn’t have to look to know it was Castle. His footsteps come quieter, subtle—like a panther. Whereas Leo moved like a bear. Both lethal, best to be avoided, but totally different from each other.
Castle paused near the sofa-bed. Vicki’s body blocked most of him from my line of sight, but I caught his face when I craned my neck to the side. He fixed his eyes on my stomach—bruised from belly-button to side, yellowed and purpled skin, and a gross puckered hole clamped shut with metal staples. I’m certain he was overcome with desire at the sight.
Vicki stole his view; she flattened stick-on bandages to my stomach.
Torn from a daze, Castle lifted his stare to mine. Unspoken words swarmed behind his eyes, but I was too weary of him to translate.
He strode up the RV and went into the bathroom.
I flinched; Vicki yanked down my tank-top, eyes alert. She’d been waiting—but for what?
Vicki pulled me upright to sit. “You’re stubborn,” she whispered, an urgency tightening her tone. “We all know it. They expect it of you, all this lone-wolf stuff you do, disobeying everyone, doing whatever you want without a thought spared to the consequences—”
“Does this end on a high note?” My brows lowered. “Because right now I just feel attacked.”
Vicki tutted and drew closer. “Let’s pretend a moment… Pretend that they told you to stay in the RV. So, naturally, you being you…” She fixed me with a meaningful look, as if she wanted me to finish her sentence for her.
Then, she shifted her look to the window above the fridge—the window that showed a snow-dusted, rusty row of shops.
“You want me to piss them off by running out there? For what? Chocolate?”
I shook my head in disbelief. I’d thought she was smarter than that, and honestly, if I had to force down another chocolate bar, I might’ve thrown up all over the mattress.
“Or,” she said, gesturing her hands wildly.
“Spit it out, Vicki,” I hissed. “I don’t know what the hell you’re going on about.”
“There’s a pharmacy,” she snapped under her breath. “Right over there.”
It clicked, and with the realisation came a fierce blush on my freckled cheeks. Vicki officially knew how slow I could be.
“Ok,” I said, my voice a hush. Still, my lips rubbed together, the way they did when I lathered them in chap-stick, and a worried crease wrinkled my forehead.
Vicki pushed my jumper—Castle’s jumper—into my hands. “I would do it if I could, Winter. But I can’t leave Mac for that long, not with the state he’s in and … They would question me, what I looted and … They won’t do that with you.”
They—Castle and Leo—would be too busy hollering at me to ask what I took. If I grabbed some gum or something, they would think that’s what I ran in there for. A mere treat.
“If you hide the tests up your top,” she added, “they won’t know.”
“I said ok.” Maybe I was a little too snappish. “Hand me the parka.”
Vicki helped me into warmer clothes, but all that nurse-care of hers had vanished. She tugged down my sweater, yanked on the parka, and zipped it up fast. She couldn’t risk Castle coming out of the bathroom before I left.
I’d promised Vicki I would help. This was how I fulfilled that promised.
Yet, I hesitated as she laced up my boots. I knew that, while I wouldn’t be questioned, I’d be in for a round of threats, shouts and Castle’s wretched words. Vicki sensed my hesitation.
She stood in front of me, took my hands in hers, and said softly, “I’m scared, Winter. I don’t want anyone to know. Please, keep this between us. I can’t…” Her cheek turned to me, and I saw it all etched into the hard lines of her face. That particular sort of help we’d discussed—that’s what she was asking for.
When I spoke, my voice was so quiet it could’ve been snatched away in the ice-cold breeze outside; “If I do this, I need to do it now.” I jerked my head to the bathroom. “Without the pair of them watching me like a rotter, I have a better shot at making it there. But you’ll have to stall for me, ok?”
Vicki swallowed, but the slight nod she gave was enough to assure me. It wasn’t in her nature to go against them, that’s why she needed me—somehow, it came naturally to me. But now, she didn’t have a choice. She had to delay Castle realising that I was gone.
If I moved fast enough, they mightn’t even notice at all.
Vicki helped me over to the door. Relief had untangled the tension in her muscles, but worry still wrinkled the corners of her eyes and lips.
“It’ll be ok,” I said as she handed me my gun from my bag. I tucked it into my parka pocket. “Wish me luck.”
In answer, she smiled tightly and scooped up Cleo.
I pushed open the door and slipped through the gap. Before I ran out, I peeked around the edge and saw Leo, his back to me, pushing one of the last blocks with Adam.
Quietly, I shut the door, and paused a moment to curse myself.
This. This is what Leo meant with his warnings about my stupid choices. This is what throws me into Castle’s warpath.
I really am stupid.
5.
With my back against the RV, I chanced a glance at the shops ahead. All clear. Though, I could see a flashlight move along the window from the inside of the diner.
I looked back at the blockades. Adam and Leo still had their backs to me, pushing a block to the side of the road. Not the stone ones. The crappier ones that the government sent to the small towns not worth saving all those months ago.
Still, they were heavy enough to keep Leo’s back to me.
I pushed myself from the RV and—froze.
My boot had crunched in the snow, up to my ankle. It was loud. My whole body cringed, and I slid my wary gaze back to the deltas. They hadn’t heard—they carried on pushing and cursing.
Leo likely thought I wouldn’t try anything while Castle was in the RV. It almost made me scoff. I at least thought they knew me a bit better than that.
Face pinched, I chanced another step. Then another.
I tried not to grin when those old, cheesy cartoons came to mind. But the urge to grin faded once the bud of pain appeared at my gut, and spread into the embers of a fire.
I sucked in a breath and closed the distance to a petrol pump.
My gaze found Leo in the reflection of the diner. I ducked.
Leo stopped what he was doing and looked over his shoulder at the RV. I couldn’t make out his expression on the window, but he ran his fingers through his hair, glanced around a bit, then turned back to the blockade.
My heart jumped up to my throat.
The toilet flushed in the RV.
I held my breath and pushed upright; I hobbled fast across the lot. I didn’t know how much time Vicki would—or could—buy me. But once Castle noticed I was gone, all hell would break loose. And I would be its aim.
Beneath me, the snow-packed ground had melted in parts to murky slush. Browned and slippery. If I fell, my wound would rip open and I won’t lie—I would pass out from that pain. I’m certain I’m as out of lives as we’re out of antibiotics.
I stumbled onto the pavement just as the door to my left opened.
Oscar pushed through the door, a crate tucked under his arm.
He did a double-take when he spotted me. Then, his pink eyebrow raised.
I blinked, breath held, fingers tingling. The RV door would open any second. Leo could look over at the shopfronts any second. Oscar could destroy me on that pavement.
But he just smirked and shook his head, amused, and not in the least bit surprised.
From the crate of loot, he handed me a flashlight.
Without thanks, I snatched it and shoved into the pharmacy.
Darkness sucked me in, whole.
The windows were so smeared in grime and snow that mere faint wedges of the ou
tside’s cloudy light whispered into the shop. I used the sleeve of my parka to wipe a smudge—clear enough to see the RV—and squinted through.
Castle stood at the RV door. He shouted something across to the barricades and swept his gaze around. Leo threw something to the ground and drew back.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Winter!”
I grimaced at Leo’s thunderous voice and sank back into the shop. Hands on the flashlight, I turned to face the aisles and peered through the blanket darkness. The flashlight would’ve given me away if I switched it on, so I held it close and slipped deeper into the aisles. Supplements, snacks, hair products—feminine products, tucked in the far corner of the shop.
I raced to the shelves.
I should’ve brought my bag—most of the shelves were full. But the nearing shouts from outside spurred urgency through me, and I scurried to the pregnancy tests. I’m not certain how many I grabbed, but after I crammed them into my parka, it was packed so tight that the corners of the boxes poked into my skin and stayed firm between me and my jacket.
Castle shouted my name—his voice roared through the lot and into the pharmacy, and I was surprised the glass window didn’t shatter from the force of it. I faced one hell of a lecture after they found me. And they would.
Hand on the wall, I hobbled over to the bench. Just as I ducked under it and hid behind the counter, the front door kicked open. I stilled and clenched my teeth to trap a whisper of pain; the hole in my stomach stretched and carved out into a tunnel, torn apart from side to side. I cupped the throbbing wound and tensed so hard that even through the pain, my muscles wouldn’t move an inch.
The pale glow of flashlights swept above the bench and ran over the shelves. Prescription shelves.
I peeled my hand from my stomach. Blood shimmered up at me, smeared from finger to finger. My staples had popped out. I took a shaky breath and shifted onto my knees. Biting back a cry of pain, I crawled into the shelves ahead. I had to leave the flashlight behind. It would give me away, and I couldn’t carry the extra weight. Leo and Castle were too near. They stormed through the aisles, gaining closer, fast.
Panicked, I crawled through the aisles until I spotted the one labelled ‘J—N’.