by Tara Brown
I was lost. “I don’t understand.”
Lyle frowned. “My grandfather stole the Bible from the library at The Last City?”
Philip nodded. “It wasn’t stealing though. The Good Book belongs to not one man, but all.” He pointed. “Let’s eat and I can tell you all about the kingdom, and the ways we have preserved the best of men and forced out the worst.”
We walked up to a great hall. I walked behind the two of them as they chatted and laughed. I was lost again. The hall was huge. There were tables all along it. A great feast was being laid out on the tables. Breads, meats, vegetables, plates of fruits, and potatoes. My mouth watered. We had eaten mostly fish for over a month. The smell was enough to drive me mad. I was seated next to Lyle but he chatted on about God and things we didn’t know about. The hunger pains got to be too much. I noticed no one was taking food. I started to reach for just one steaming roll from the basket, but a woman made eye contact with me. She shook her head subtly. I stopped my hand. It shook mid air. Lyle grabbed it with his and pulled it down. The man seated next to me took my other hand and the room went silent. The king started to speak boldly, “Thank you, Lord, for the bounty we are about to receive. Thank you for bringing my kin safely to me and helping these strangers to find sanctuary here amongst us. Thank you, dearest and most-loving God, for the safety we have enjoyed this week and the hunt that is about to feed us. We are grateful and pious in your honor. Blessed be we who walk in the shadow of the Lord and may we walk another week in your shadow of safety and goodness. Amen.”
The whole room spoke the last word, “Amen.”
I lifted my face to see hands reaching for food. I grabbed a bun and bit a chunk off. I chewed, nearly moaning into the food. My hands shook and my stomach ached, but I ate beyond my capacity. The food was good. There was salt and flavor and sauce. Everything was too much. I drank a huge gulp of the glass of red wine before me.
I sighed and leaned into Lyle, feeling sleepy again. I closed my eyes and just listened. The room was full of joy, peace, and happiness. There was enough—more than enough food and wine and kindness. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were right in it all. But something picked at my brain. Something in the back of my mind whispered to me.
I assumed it was left over from the betrayal I had seen at every turn.
I pushed it away for the time being and just savored the best of humanity that I had yet to witness.
Epilogue
The mask bugged my whip mark. I didn’t know how he had done it, but he had. His green eyes watched me from the far corner of the room. He smiled and nodded at me. I gave the blue eyes behind the mask in front of me a nod. “I’m going to the bathroom.”
He smirked. “Don’t let him maul you. I don’t want to have to kill him.”
“You’re funny.” I kissed him quickly and slipped out of the crowd of writhing teenagers. The girl with the dark hair was singing loudly, kicking her long black boot to the beat. I slipped down the hallway to where he stood.
He smiled at me. “Long time no see.”
“How have you been?”
He pressed my back against the wall and lowered his mask into my neck. “Busy, maybe not as busy as you though.”
I shook my head. “We need to get to the library. Can you shut down the security and then get us in?”
He shook his head. “I can do better than that.”
He pulled something from his pocket and slipped it into my hand. It was plastic around something hard. I frowned and whispered into his neck, “What is it?”
He chuckled. “Lisabeth’s thumb. It’ll get you anywhere you need to go.” He looked behind us at the blue eyes watching us from the partying people. He sighed. “You chose him without giving me a chance?”
I nodded. “He’s your best friend in the whole world. Be happy for us. I chose him because I wanted to. It hasn’t got anything to do with you, Bran.”
He nodded. “I want my chance, Gwyn.”
I gripped the severed thumb in the plastic wrap and shook my head. “We need to focus.”
He kissed my neck softly. “I thought I was.”
I grinned. “We leave the city tonight?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’ll meet you at the pier at 2 am.”
I swallowed. “Okay. Are you bringing Elena?”
He shook his head. “No. She is one of them, through and through.”
I kissed him on the side of the neck and whispered, “Meet us there.”
He chuckled. “Don’t leave without me this time.”
I slipped the severed thumb into the pocket of the dress that I had stolen from a girl walking to the party. I had knocked her unconscious and never even batted an eyelash at it. I turned and walked back to the ever-watchful blue eyes behind the mask. He looked past me. “What did he say?”
I let him wrap his body around mine as he danced. “He said that he would meet us at 2 am on the pier.”
He pulled me back. “Then we better get going.”
I nodded and grabbed his hand, stuffing it into my pocket. He made a face. “Is that what it feels like?”
I laughed.
He pulled me to the other dark hallway, where he would pretend to be making out with me as we slipped out into the night, to start the sabotage and the path to freeing our people.
The End
Find the conclusion, Duplicities, at Amazon
If you liked this book, you may like The Seventh Day. Here is a sample!
The Seventh Day
There is a question burning on all our lips.
Chapped lips coated with saliva from the nervous licking and the dehydration that comes with constant running. The question is, how long does someone with CJD live?
After they've died of course.
I know I'm getting ahead of myself but it's all we think about. I haven’t stayed anywhere long enough to know the answer.
I know some things and hope for others. I know in my heart, my father is still not infected. He was thousands of miles away from me when we started this journey, and I don’t know how far we've come, but I know this—my father has to be okay. He has to be.
My mother is dead. I watched as her fingers twitched their last movements.
My cell phone hasn’t worked in what feels like a lifetime. Those and regular phones haven’t worked in a week. We ran out of gas in the car we stole yesterday. But the important thing is Joey and me are still alive, and in my heart I know our dad is still not infected. I smile, thinking about my father—knowing he has to be safe. I know this. Even if I don’t find him, I will die knowing it.
Chapter One
Seven days ago
The dream felt like a dream, like when you're sleeping and you just know it isn’t real but it hurts regardless. It was one of those dreams.
The dream was a haze of mixed images and my mother shaking me awake. I could hardly make out her face in the flashes, but her voice was crystal clear as she screamed at me, biting her fingers into my arms and repeating one word. Over and over she said it. Her shrill voice made my hair stand on end.
"RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN!”
But it was just a bad dream. I woke this morning in a gasp and the dream faded away with the haze in my head. As it pulled back from me, my mother’s screams faded too. It was an eerie way to wake, and regardless of how badly I want to shake it, I can’t. It’s stuck in there, lodged in my mind and replaying constantly.
"Get your backpacks and get to the car." Mom points, offering up her fiercest pre-coffee face. The hardness of her looks, combined with the severe makeup job she wears on court days, doesn't make her look anything like a mother. Especially not the worried one from my dream. Instead, she looks like a model on a Revlon commercial. Dark hair pulled tight into a bun that gives me a headache just looking at it. Her blush is nearly a sharp line on her jagged cheekbone. Her lips are lined in a way that makes me think she might have been annoyed when she did it. I think she’s always annoyed.
I shudder remember
ing the way she screamed at me in the dream as my eyes almost roll themselves. "Mom, it's not time for school yet."
“You can spend a bit of time in the library before school starts.” She doesn’t look at me or care. She just shakes her head. "I have to get to work, so you have to go a little early today. I don’t want to hear it."
Before I can stop myself, a snarl tears out of my throat. "Dad doesn’t leave us at school early. It’s not safe. The libraries aren’t open at my school or Joey’s. All the early kids just stand outside waiting for school to start. And we can’t leave Joey outside alone."
She continues ignoring me, muttering things I know I don’t want to hear. When Dad's gone on mission she’s distant and self-absorbed. She is a martyr and a victim of circumstances—a single, working parent who suffers through life for the duration of his work away.
She has no clue what a mom does, let alone a single one.
She doesn’t see that she’s terrible at this—she thinks it's us. She thinks we’re badly behaved for her, saving all our proper behavior for him. What she doesn't see is that the respect he gives us makes us behave for him. The care and love goes a long way with us.
Joey, my little sister, gives me a freckled frown. "Maybe we can stay home today? My belly feels funny anyway." Furgus, our dog, nuzzles into her, whining like he agrees wholeheartedly.
The bitter sneer that has claimed my lips makes my response to her, and the dog, a little harsh. "She won't let us. Just get in the car."
Furgus backs away, bowing his head as Joey gives me a look, silently letting me know that she didn’t deserve the harshness of my tone and I know it’s true. I offer her a look but she sighs and stalks off to put the dog in the backyard and then head for the SUV in the garage.
The drive to Joey’s school is awkward. The air is filled with Mom barking into her Bluetooth and we sit, listening to her poor secretary take the demands and criticisms. I shake my head, muttering at her reflection in the rearview mirror, "Why don’t you just make coffee before you go, so you aren’t in such a hateful mood?"
She flashes a scornful response in the rearview mirror. I scowl back. She doesn't scare me—I see the ridiculousness of her.
Dad makes the coffee in the morning. If he isn’t here, she doesn't make it. She buys it. She's a princess—a bitchy one at that. She doesn’t cook, she orders. She doesn't clean—she hires a maid. She expects everyone to jump at her every whim and command, like she is the captain of our ship. But then he comes home and she changes, relaxes almost. It’s odd, contradictory at least. She is a ball-busting, independent woman, until he walks through the door. Then she has never needed a single thing more than she needs him and he tolerates it all.
I don't understand marriage.
I don’t want kids when I’m old enough to have them, but if I ever accidentally had them, I would never be the kind of parent she is. I would want to be more like my dad, even though I don't think it comes naturally for me to be like him. Joey is like our dad. She is calm and sweet. I get scared sometimes when I hear myself say something that’s too harsh.
Mom sighs impatiently. "Just make sure that the lunch meeting is rescheduled. I refuse to eat there again. The waiter was rude to me last time." My mom is always rude to service staff. She barks orders, never thanks them, and always sends her food back. In my opinion, she gets what she deserves.
Julie, the poor defenseless creature my mother has as a secretary, sounds sweet, if not a little scared, "Of course, Ms. Nelson."
Ms. Nelson—she couldn’t just be a Stoddard like the rest of us? At least Dad had enough balls to deny her Nelson-Stoddard request. I always feel sorry for the poor hyphen kids. It sounds like their parents either got a divorce, or their mother was married before, or she just didn’t love the dad enough to choose one name and be that together. I always imagine they hate it and just wish they could be one name, one family.
I turn my head as she drives us to Joey's school's front door. Mom doesn't turn around to say goodbye. She stops the SUV in the drop-off circle and waits, sending a text on her phone as she parks. I think she might not realize she’s not even saying goodbye, but we do—I do.
Joey sits for a second, waiting for the kiss or the hug or even just a wave. When nothing happens she grabs her bag, not noticing the thing my eyes are stuck on. The way they sit there, Mom preoccupied and Joey annoyed, I imagine neither of them sees it—but I do. I grab Joey’s arm, holding her in the car, stunned by the thing in front of me. It’s so out of place, I don't think I comprehend what it is, not fully. It takes me a second to puzzle out whether the thing I see is an injured man or a dangerous one. I almost have the instinct to jump from the car and see if he’s all right, but the way he stands stops me. It stops my breath.
There are no other kids in the schoolyard—there is just the man, standing in front of the school. I can’t see a single duty or teacher—just the man. He looks homeless, but in a way that screams dangerous addict. His nose is pressed to the glass of the front door, and in the reflection I can see his eyes are fixed on the inside of the locked school.
In my peripheral I catch a glimpse of Joey’s small hand reaching for the door. As she opens it his head twitches to the right.
"Wait," I say and pull on her other arm. My stomach has a tickle—it always has a tickle when something isn’t right. When I was little, my dad said it was magic, but I suspect it is just intuition. For a scientist, he is always a little whimsical.
Joey sighs. "Mom, no one is even here yet. You can’t leave me here alone. I'm only ten. The teachers say you have to be twelve to be at the school before the duties."
The man's head twitches again.
"Close the door," I whisper, turning to my mom.
She turns around, impatiently but doesn't speak as her eyes narrow and her gaze stops on the man. Her mouth remains open, ready to say something harsh but her lips don't move. Her left eyebrow rises as she ponders the man. I nod, about to say something about him, when in my peripheral I catch movement from the man.
"CLOSE THE DOOR!" I drag Joey back as she panics, pulling the door shut just as the darkness of his shape flies toward us. We all jump when his bloody hands land on her window with a thud. Joey and Mom scream but I just stare. His eyes are dark, bloodshot, and confused. His bloody hand makes a sound as it slides down the window.
He calms down the moment he reaches us, lost in his reflection or the bloodstains, or just the fact the SUV is there. His hand slowly drags down the window, smearing the dark blood everywhere. His neck is bleeding and his frothy lip trembling when he whispers, "Help me!"
Mom clicks the lock button, making his eyes dart up to my face again, and like a switch has been flipped from the noise, he slaps the window again. His lips part as a scream tears from them.
Mom throws the SUV into drive and hits the gas. As we get around the circle drop-off, I see a pair of twitching feet behind the recycling bin. They look small, like Joey's. The soles of the feet are facing us. The rest of the body is behind the dumpster.
“WHAT WAS IT? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HIM?” Mom’s screaming makes Joey rock and hold her trembling hands against her ears.
“MOM! STOP!” I wrap an arm around Joey. “He was probably just a junkie, Joey.”
Mom speeds away, continually pressing 9-1-1 and On-Star, but there is no answer, just the message that the circuits are all busy. She dials again but the lady’s voice in the message is the same the second time. “Please continue to try until the operators are free. We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Please hang up and dial 9—” Mom slams the Bluetooth off and punches her steering wheel. Her sobbing and slamming is making Joey worse. I hold Joey tighter, whispering, “He was probably on drugs, Jo. He was sick. That’s all. They’ll cancel school. It’ll be fine.”
She shakes her tear-stained face. “What about the other little kids? What about the walkers? They’ll walk to school on the trail and he’ll kill them! Julia is a walker.”
I wa
nt to go home but she’s right. “Mom, drive to Julia’s. It’s in behind our house. Do the circle.”
Mom nods, heaving her breath. “Okay. Okay. Okay.” She makes the turn, wiping sweat from her suddenly moist brow.
The moment I see Julia on the road with a group of other kids about to go down the trail to the school, I jump out of the SUV as it’s still slowing, waving my hands like a crazed nut. “GO HOME! THERE’S A DRUG ADDICT AT THE SCHOOL COVERED IN BLOOD! GO HOME NOW! CALL YOUR PARENTS!”
“What?” Julia freezes. Her little brown eyes seek out my sister as she panics and runs for our SUV. Joey gets out sputtering, “Th-there was a man covered in blood and he was acting crazy.” Joey’s little body shakes when she speaks, so Julia grabs her, hugging her tightly. They always act so old and dramatic; the moment finally suits their usually odd behavior.
I speak calmly as more kids and parents make their way to us.
“What’s happening?”
I nod at the trail. “A man covered in blood is hanging out at the school. We can’t get 9-1-1 on the phone. The circuits are busy.”
One of the ladies cocks an eyebrow. “My husband is a deputy. I’ll go call him.”
Another woman nods, grabbing at kids and shouting at the rest. “Go home and tell your parents you don't have school. Just stay in the house until we know if he’s caught. Lock the doors. No matter what, don't answer them. If you're scared you can come to my house and call your parents from there.”
Julia backs up, nodding and afraid. More people round the corners on the sidewalk as schooltime nears. I shake my head at the herd coming toward us. “There is no school. There was a bloody man at the school. He slapped his blood or someone else’s on the SUV.” When I point at the bloody handprint, I notice my mother is still sitting in the SUV. She’s shaking her head slowly and staring out the window.