by Jones, Isla
“Outside.”
Her startled gaze swerved to me. “What? Why?”
“Scouting for survivors and scavenging. They need to start repairs on the solar panels, too.”
Lotan was in the B-Team. He paused on his way out beside Vicki. “Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he mumbled, pink-faced. “Anything you need, I’m your guy.”
Vicki turned her cheek, leaving him to stare at the back of her head.
“Thanks Lotan,” I said with a forced smile.
He tipped his head and left with the rest of his team. A part of me—a tiny smidgen—felt sorry for him. He was infatuated, enamoured. Still, he just had no sense of timing, did he?
Vicki didn’t seem to think so either.
Cradling Cleo, she ate the rest of her breakfast in silence, not a spared word on the soldier.
Castle leaned closer and spoke into my hair, “My shift doesn’t start for another hour—”
Before he could suggest anything, I cut in; “Garden?”
“My mind was on something else,” he said as distantly as he would if speaking about the weather. But the dark shimmer behind his eyes said otherwise. Not sex. He wanted to train me—every day we trained. Every day I felt no closer to mastering combat.
I wasn’t about to let him ruin my light mood that day.
“And my mind is on the garden,” I said.
I challenged his gaze a beat, then he inclined his head. Like I said, he gives into me.
*
Perched on the stone bench, I ran the soles of my bare feet over the grass and shut my eyes.
Castle leaned against the entrance, arms folded, boots crossed. The steady stare of his eyes warmed the back of my head like a simmering fire on a cold night.
“I want to do something,” I said eventually. My eyes stayed shut. “I want a job like everyone else.”
“There is nothing that needs to be done,” he said. “All duties have been assigned already.”
I shrugged. “I’m bored.”
The light sound of his scoff reached me. “Only you would be bored at the end of the world, Winter.”
With a hum, I pushed up from the bench and wandered over to him. “It doesn’t feel like the end of the world anymore. It feels like the start.”
FINAL ENTRY
For a long while, I snubbed you.
Every so often I spared you a glance—the diary on my nightstand. Sometimes, I thought about writing an entry whenever Castle drew me in his book. Two months drifted by and I fiddled with these final pages.
The truth is, if I have no misery I have no will to write. And these days, misery has gone to find other company. So I’ll end this on the brightest day I’ve had in years—since even before the end.
It was the day Castle caved and took me outside.
Not far, not on a mission or run. He took me to the street to help keep watch while Adam cleaned the solar panels on the roof.
The sun beat down on us—a heat against the skin like no other. No fire or heater can kiss the skin the way the bare sun does.
I bathed in those rays; lounged over the trunk of a parked car. Opposite me, Castle reclined against another car, an M4 tucked to his chest, rifle slung over his shoulder.
From the corner of my eye, I checked him out. The honey hues of his sun-touched hair, the glassy glint of his sharp eyes, the way his black t-shirt clung to his chest.
He caught me staring.
I showed no remorse—a habit picked up from him. “You’re filling out.”
Castle arched his brow. “Is that a complaint?”
A crooked smile took my face. “Definitely not.”
Castle responded with something that flipped my stomach and fluttered my heart. A smile. Small, fleeting, but a true and rare treasure on his lips.
Surprisingly, he didn’t look away after the smile had faded. He held my gaze with a silent force so strong that my entire being was captured.
“What’re you thinking?” I asked.
That did it. Castle bowed his head, his eyes touching the scorched road. It’s hard for him, even now, to tell me his raw truths.
I sighed a soft sound of peace and looked up at the blue sky. “Do you think we’ll ever find survivors?”
Castle’s boots thudded against the road as he wandered towards me. “Maybe one day,” he said. “Without repairing the comms, our chances of finding others are slim.”
We don’t repair the comms. It was a group decision—the deltas, me and Vicki all voted the same. With the comms working, the other CDCs could contact us, learn of the takeover.
And that was a battle for another day.
Resting my forearm over my eyes, I said, “I don’t mind if we never find any survivors. I like our group.”
Castle stopped beside me. The mere closeness of him tickled my skin. “Are you happy?”
It was easier for him if I kept my eyes covered, so that’s what I did. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m happy.”
Affection is a concept Castle doesn’t bond with. So when he lowered, crouched over me, to brush a kiss against my cheek, a tingle ran through me.
He didn’t draw away. “I was thinking …”
Castle paused, his rough voice broken by a nervous swallow. I stayed still like a statue, sprawled out on the trunk.
“I was thinking of how much I love you,” he said quietly.
I just smiled.
Castle has loved me for a while now, but outside, under the warm rays of the sun and the embrace of fresh air, he said those words for the first time.
I slipped my arm away from my eyes and squinted up at his profile. He couldn’t face me with those words dancing between us.
I gave him a slice of mercy; “I’d say it back if you weren’t blocking my sun.”
The ripple of relief ran down him like water down a drain; he took a step back. Amused, I watched him slip on his stony mask and look up and down the street, back to his delta-self.
“Have you given any thought to where you’ll leave your diary once it’s finished?”
I studied him a moment before I voiced a theory I’d had for some time. “Might as well just give it to you.”
Frowning, Castle squinted down at me.
I smirked. “With everything I write about you, the deltas, your mission—there’s no chance you’d let me leave a book of your secrets out there.”
Castle nodded once and turned his gaze to Adam on the roof. “When did you figure it out?”
“I didn’t really. I was just a thought I had one day. What did you do with my second diary?”
He couldn’t have taken the first one. I’d thrown it off a cliff. But the second would’ve been all too easy for him to pocket.
“I kept it,” he said after a pause. “It’s locked in the safe.”
Before then, I’d assumed the safe in our room had stored paperwork and files for his eyes only. My curiosity hadn’t been stirred by the safe … Was I beginning to get too comfortable? Let my guard down?
“Did you read it?” I asked.
“Almost, once or twice.”
“Why didn’t you? I went through your book.”
Castle didn’t answer. His silence said it all. He was afraid of what he would find in those pages, words written about Leo, things I’d felt for him.
For all his fierce bravery, Castle’s fears burned just as bright.
“When I finish this diary, I’ll give it to you,” I said. “It’s your choice whether you read it or not. But only if you make it worth my while.”
At his stoic expression, a grin swept over my face.
“You have to share your dessert ration with me tonight.”
Castle scoffed softly. “Deal.”
My grin faded to a content smile. “Score.”
*
There is no survivor out there reading this. Even so, I have to write it.
No cure is coming, no vaccine or help. You’re on your own, and so are we. But we have a better chance. I’m sorry.
The other CDCs will be found. I’ve never said it wasn’t my problem, just that it was a problem for another day. Sometime in the future. My future. Maybe generations ahead of mine. Whenever it is, they will be found and we won’t let them get away with what they’ve done. To us, to you, to our world.
Rotters will die out. They’ll starve, so I hope you survive long enough to see that day. I hope you survive…
My name is Winter Miles.
And I say my final good-bye.
end of THE PLAGUE series
note from the author
Thank you all so very much for joining Winter’s journey with me! I hope it meant as much to you as it did to me.
If you’re interested in more survival stories from Isla Jones, check out ENDANGERED, a fast-paced invasion story, fuelled by heartbreak, betrayal and poisonous parasites.
For dark fantasy, follow Isla’s second pen-name, KLARISSA KING. If you can handle it…
–Isla