by Jones, Isla
Boxes littered the floor like ants. There was no chance I could crawl through them without giving away my position, and as it was, I only had minutes (if that).
My gaze searched for the letter M on the shelves. And when I found it, my shoulders slumped and I rolled my eyes. Of course, in my luck, it was all the way at the back of the row. I had no choice but to move through the boxes smeared over the floor.
Before I could move, the bench flap creaked open—mere metres from where I knelt.
Leo’s voice followed; “A flashlight. She’s here.”
I scrambled to my feet and ran down to the end of the aisle.
Footsteps thumped behind me, loud and as thunderous as their earlier shouts.
I dove for the spread of boxes and pill-bottles on the floor. My hands raided them faster than my eyes could follow. Blood smeared everywhere—I was bleeding worse than I’d thought.
I grabbed a plain white box and squinted at the label.
My eyes didn’t get the chance to focus.
The footsteps ran up behind me. As I looked over my shoulder, a blur of movement greeted me before hands snatched my shoulders and I was hoisted from the floor. The box fell from my hand; it crunched under Leo’s boot as he shoved me against the shelf.
Pain exploded through me. White burst in my eyes, blinding me, and all I could manage was a tight gasp. I blinked away the searing white from my eyes and tried to focus on the furious face in front of me.
“I told you,” he seethed, fingers curled onto my shoulders, “to stay in the RV. You wanted to know why we treat you like an idiot?” His lip curled and he shook me. “Because you act like one all the fucking time!”
I flinched; he smacked his hand down on the shelf supporting me.
Castle stepped on boxes as he crept closer. He stayed a bit away, almost swallowed up by the darkness. The green gleam of his eyes betrayed his cold anger. He wouldn’t shout, he wasn’t in the mood to berate me—his indifference did enough on its own.
Castle flicked the light of the flashlight up to my parka. The white glow settled on my collarbone, where the boxes stuck out from. The pregnancy tests.
I swallowed and sank back into the shelf; Castle advanced. He kicked boxes out of his way and slinked closer, the way a panther would move in on its prey. Before Castle reached me, Leo snatched a box from my parka.
“Give it back!” I swiped for it, but Leo shoved me back to the shelf and—I could barely breathe. My stomach twisted, as if something clenched my insides in their hands and wrung me out like wet clothes.
My hand found my sore spot and pressed, hard. It was hard to see in the dark, but I was sure my black parka had turned red.
I made to speak, to tell them I needed Vicki, but when I looked up at Leo his expression sucked out any words I had in me. Colour rushed to my face.
I glanced from Leo to the pregnancy test in his hand, then at Castle.
Leo’s fury caved to utter shock. His lips parted. He just gaped at me, horrified.
Castle kept his own stare on the box, and I thought he might faint.
I shifted on the spot, as red as the blood streaming down my leggings. “Um…” I cleared my throat and gestured to the mess on the floor. “I need pills…”
Leo pulled back.
He blinked once at me before he shoved the box into Castle’s hand … and left. He couldn’t have gotten out of there faster, not even if a rotter had been chasing him. The thought brought some bitterness to my face. Leo wouldn’t run from a rotter. He would fight it. But a possibly pregnant me? He didn’t hesitate to bolt.
Not that I’m pregnant, but he doesn’t know that. Though, it wasn’t as if we’d had sex. Leo was far from the box in Castle’s hand, he didn’t have to run, he had nothing to do with it. Unlike Castle.
I looked at him. His hand didn’t tremble around the box. Instead, his fingers pressed down so hard that the box bent and cracked. All colour had drained from his face like water down pipes, and he hadn’t stopped staring at me.
Finally, he swallowed (or gulped) and lowered the light to the floor. “Take what you need and be quick about it.”
That was it. That was all he said to me. And he kept the box in his hand, too.
6.
In the pharmacy, I had the chance to tell them both I wasn’t pregnant, that the tests weren’t for me. It’s what I should have done. But I froze, my mind turned to mush, and the pain in my stomach held my whole being.
And I had the chance as Castle escorted me back to the RV. The blood streamed down my legs and even leaked into my boots. We walked. Neither of us spoke. Yet, there were things I should’ve said.
We saw no sign of Leo on the lot, but I locked eyes with Adam by the blockades. His face was sour, loaded with his exhaustion of me. Oscar piled the loot onto the back of the truck, but stopped when he saw me limping beside Castle. Oscar grinned, and with that one sweeping smile, I realised I was his entertainment in a world without television or radio.
Castle pushed the door open.
At the top of the steps, Vicki hovered, hands bunched at her sides. She stopped pacing. Her focus shifted to my jeans and she blanched.
Before I could make it up the steps, she lunged at me, like a mother to an injured child. “Winter,” she gushed. “What—you’re bleeding!”
Castle answered for me. “Her staples have come out.”
I tried to shrug him off, but Castle kept his arm looped firmly around me until my bum was flattened to the thin mattress. Vicki flocked to the medical kit and when I spotted the stapler in her hand, a shiver ran through me.
Castle peeled my parka from my body—boxes collapsed to the floor in a heap. Vicki stilled, medical kit clutched tight in her bony fingers, and wide eyes on the pregnancy tests piled at Castle’s feet. She brought her gaze to mine. Fear swarmed in her eyes.
I pinched my lips and hit out at Castle. “Give me back my stuff.”
His glare sharpened, but he drew away from me and smacked the two plain white boxes on the kitchenette counter. I hoped Vicki picked up on my hint—I hadn’t told them, her secret was safe in my head and diary.
My body arched off the mattress as a scream tore through me. The pillow I held against my face muffled my cries.
Castle’s hands were firm on my legs as he pinned me down.
Vicki had plucked out the old staples—one had wedged itself into my tender skin—then replaced them with new, very painful staples. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Vicki thought I was an art project.
The final clip! of the stapler pressed against my skin. I didn’t even try to squirm away that time—my body shuddered and a whimper pressed against the pillow.
Castle’s grip on my legs loosened. He didn’t release me, but the lessened weight told me that Vicki was almost finished.
I winced as a cold touch met my wound.
“I’m cleaning the blood,” said Vicki, rather gently. No ridicule or judgement in her tone, like usual.
To say I’m not the easiest patient in the world might be an understatement. And there aren’t that many patients left in the world anymore.
I’ve always been afraid of treatment, whether it be injections at the doctors, the dreaded dentist and their tools of torture, and worst of all … a vet nurse with a staple gun.
Vicki stopped wiping at my skin. I heard a clamour of tin, then the clip of the medical box. “All done.”
Slowly, I dragged the pillow from my face to my chest. Before, the air in the RV seemed stuffy to me, but then as the pillow left my lips, it tasted fresh. I sucked in a deep breath and shut my watery eyes.
“That hurt,” I said, my breathy voice quieter than Vicki’s hum that followed.
Castle still hadn’t let go of my legs. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his hands rested just above my knees; the heat of his fingers burned through my leggings.
Vicki washed her hands in the sink. “She’s not going anywhere. You can go back to the blockades.”
&nbs
p; Castle’s emerald eyes glowed a moment, angered to be dismissed by her. But no explosion came. Castle knew she was right. The blockades had to be moved, and with Leo’s vanishing act, Adam was left to move them on his own.
We had to be on the highway soon, if we wanted to make time.
Castle left, without so much as a glance at me.
When the door shut, Vicki rushed to my side so fast that she almost bumped Cleo at shoulder. “What happened? Did you tell—”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell. But I finally figured out how to stop them from shouting at me all the time. Pretend I’m pregnant.” I met her startled gaze. “They’re too panicked to think of anything else. You should’ve seen Leo. He ran out of there like his ass was on fire.”
Vicki was still. Then, she released a loud breath and slumped over. Her hand found mine. “Thank you,” she said through a choked laugh. “Thank you, Winter. For all of it. Not telling them, getting the tests, and—” Her gaze cut to the boxes by the sink. “—giving me a choice.”
The pain that throbbed at my stomach twisted my smile into something grim. “After the test, take both those pills. You’ll need the biggest pads you can find.”
“Have you done it before?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “It’s like a really bad period.”
She squeezed my hand once, then slid off the mattress to gather the boxes. She packed them into what we called our ‘Bag of Blood Battlers’. Ok, maybe I was the only one to call it that. It was the best goodie bag for that time of the month. Hot water bottles, painkillers, tampons, pads, and even some chocolate bars.
“What will you tell Castle?”
Vicki’s question yanked in my gaze. I studied the back of her hair, black and oily, fastened into a limp bun at the nape of her neck. It took me a moment to realise what she meant.
“The truth, sort of.” I hadn’t given it much thought yet. “I’ll just tell him it was a false alarm. No big deal, right?”
Was I asking to be reassured that I’m not a monster?
I don’t know.
Vicki nodded; the bun flopped against its loose bindings. When she turned to face me, I saw that her normally hardened face had relaxed and I was taken back to when I first met her in the department store.
I smiled. I’d been reassured.
*
Propped up against a pile of cushions, I cupped a mug of hot chocolate in my hands and sniffed the sweet steam wafting up at me.
Oscar had dropped off some of the supplies he’d scavenged, and Vicki had shared her small store of hot chocolate powder with me. After what I’d gone through that day, I didn’t say no. I took it with a greedy lick of the lips.
She’d gone into the bedroom to tend to Mac. Cleo—the traitor—had darted after her. I was left alone in the front of the RV. Not that I minded. But boredom was a common enemy and I couldn’t reach my books behind me.
So I did something terrible and torturous to myself. I watched Castle through the windshield. He sat on a blockade, hunched over, with his face in his hands. For a moment, I almost regretted my choice. It wasn’t fair to let him think anything of the sort.
Yet, he must have known what those pills were—and if not, he was smart. He could guess, easily. Why would he bother working himself up over something that would come to be nothing?
Then, there was the issue of all the lies he’d fed me. Leo’s immunity, the cargo, the truth about what they did to the real deltas, and—most of all—how he’d tricked me into believing he loved me.
Guilt was not a factor as I watched him. In fact, I found a smidge of satisfaction somewhere buried deep in all the anger nested inside of me. Because what he was feeling in that moment didn’t begin to measure up to what he’d put me through.
Castle deserved nothing from me. I’d already given him too much.
7.
The East coast’s winter season brought us earlier nights. After a short day of looting and moving barricades, we’d managed to drive a bit down the highway. But then night came and cut our journey short.
But we were close. If nothing went wrong, by tomorrow afternoon we would be at the CDC’s door.
Impatience clutched the whole RV.
It was a particular sort of urgency, one that reminded me of needing to use the toilet. All is manageable until you actually see the toilet, and suddenly you’re wiggling to stop from peeing yourself. That was our urgency the night on the side of the highway.
The city stood in the distance. Parts were smothered in flames. I thought that maybe the fire was why we hadn’t seen many rotters around. They were all in the city, drawn to the loud, bright flames that consumed skyscrapers and monuments.
I watched the fire burn.
The RV was quiet. Only Adam’s light snores disturbed the silence. At the wheel, Leo played with a deck of cards. The darkness in the RV was so thick that I suspected he couldn’t tell the cards apart and was just keeping his hands busy. He’d been foul since the pharmacy. It’d taken him two hours to come back to the group and he hadn’t said where he’d been. In fact, he hadn’t even spoken to anyone.
Leo stewed in his silence.
Castle was no different. Though, at least he looked at me. Even then, as the flames in the distance captivated me through the window, the cold burn of Castle’s gaze pierced my cheek.
Opposite me on the mattress, he sat with his legs drawn up and arms rested on his knees. All the while, his arctic gaze chilled me and I pretended not to notice.
I’m weak. I’m a coward. That is true now, and it was that night too.
Under his stare, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. Hell, I couldn’t even summon enough courage to feed him another lie that I’d taken the test and it’d all been a mere scare. But all of me—my fingers, arms, legs, elsewhere—ached to peel back the blanket and invite him to lie down beside me. If only to feel the weight of his arms around me again, to feel the brush of his nose against my forehead.
I tried not to. My fingers itched to disobey me, but I balled them into clammy fists and shoved them under the blanket. Then, I did the dumbest thing I could have done.
I let a tear escape.
I swatted it away, fast. As I wiped my hand on the blanket, I glanced up at him. Castle caught my gaze like a rabbit to a snare. The tears stayed trapped where they belonged—unshed for the likes of him. Still, he saw the first one leak.
With a grunt, I shifted onto my side and faced away from him. Pain burned through me as I moved, but it was nowhere close to the pain that gutted me whenever Castle looked at me like that. I stayed on my side all through the night. I doubt that anyone but Adam and Mac got any sleep.
Everything was silent. Really silent. Gone were the purrs of cars, squabbling street cats, taxi doors slamming in the middle of the night, and shouting neighbours. Not even wild animals or birds broke through the quiet.
What chilled me most of all was the silence of the rotters. While it was calm to the ears, it was the opposite to the gut. We had never been so tense.
And tension like that only comes before the biggest storms of all.
*
Adam and Leo helped an unconscious Mac into the padded shopping cart.
Vicki had dosed him up high with the remains of the morphine and pain killers just so he would make it through the streets without howling in pain with every bump on the road.
Grim-faced, Oscar stood by the trolley that the cargo-boy had been crammed into. Now we all knew what the cargo was—there was no hiding it anymore. Yet, the only ones who appeared unaffected by the sight of a dirty, bloodied boy bound to the metal strips in the trolley were the deltas, me and Vicki.
We’d stopped thirty-odd blocks away from the CDC. Debris from a destroyed complex blocked our way and our gas tanks were down to the red lights.
This really was the end of the road for us. We all knew it. And we all hoped that the door at the end would open for us.
The hiss of a zip caught my attention. I turned to s
ee Vicki use my Cleo trick. She tucked Cleo into her jacket, then zipped the jacket up over her to keep her firmly in place.
As we all prepared for the two-hour trek through the streets, I glanced back at the vehicles we would leave behind. They had taken us so far, kept us safe, and kept us together for so long. The blue pick-up truck that held the ghosts of Leo and I in the earlier days, the RV that kept secrets too wretched to be told. The Jeep should’ve been there among them. It was as significant as the other two. Maybe more so.
Castle stepped into my line of sight. He carried my IV stand firm in his grip and planted it beside me in the ankle-deep snow.
With wrinkled eyes, I switched my gaze from his to the make-shift crutch. “I don’t need that anymore.”
“You need support,” he said. “It’s a long walk.”
“Yeah, through the snow—it’ll be too hard to move it with me.”
Castle shoved it into my hands anyway, then stalked off to help Oscar load the second trolley with the loot we were taking with us. Packets of instant noodles, cartons of almond milk—a favourite of mine—bags of assorted nuts, some cans of juice and soda, and a cardboard box full of chips and chocolates. That was our diet. It showed in each of our tired faces and thinning figures.
Vicki lost all the plumpness to her. Leo’s muscles had mostly withered. Castle’s broad shoulders had begun to narrow. And when I sometimes looked down at myself in my underwear, there was a dip between my prominent hip bones and belly.
We were beginning to starve.
What I wouldn’t have done for a hot meal. A real one, not one that came out of a can with a faded label, so you didn’t know if you were eating casserole or dog food.
As Vicki wandered closer, my gaze stayed glued to the food stores and I asked her, “If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?”
Vicki scratched Cleo between the ears and paused a moment. Her thoughts of food caused her to swallow back saliva. I studied her profile, her hollowing cheek, her thinning lips. She looked as hungry as my aching stomach felt.