by Astor Penn
Which is why it’s easy for me to do the right thing now; I detach easily from emotional support. I’ve never relied on others, so I could walk away right now. I could leave Poppy on her own without feeling much remorse, because I’m perfectly conditioned to do so. In some ways, I’m the best survivor for the situation. I’m adaptable. Raven was right; we are two of a kind. We do what needs to be done, no matter what filth we have to drag ourselves through.
But I promised Bryant. And there’s that other part of me, the smaller part, that knows she’s right, even if I do just want to slip off and spend whatever little time I have left alive actually breathing and moving and doing anything. Will it matter if I’m alone? Haven’t I been telling myself that my driving motivation is to find out the definite fate of my family? Do I have any hope that I’ll actually see them? Are they the only people I’m willing to stop for?
What about Raven?
Perhaps the largest part of me believes I’ll keep running until I can no longer, or until I’m the last person left. But there’s nothing special about me. There are others, better survivors, and they will outlast me by days, weeks, months. Maybe years. I’m not sure anyone will escape this disease in the end. I hope so; it’s just that my hope doesn’t go far enough to see the inevitable survival of mankind.
These thoughts don’t make my steps impossible, just heavier. No matter how dark the days, the sun still rises the next morning, which is why I keep moving. Moving means breathing. Moving means one step closer, not toward the end, but toward something in between. Maybe there will be a new beginning, maybe not. Now there’s just this. Maybe it’s worth it, maybe it’s not.
I force myself not to limp as I walk forward. “You coming?” I don’t turn around for her; she’ll follow. She has no choice, because she’s old enough to know I’m right but too young to argue further.
She stomps angrily behind me for a while, drifting just out of reach of my arm if I need her, which I sometimes do: all our running yesterday has left me tired, too tired to properly pick up my feet, and on a twisted ankle, I trip constantly. I’m too stubborn to ask for her, and she won’t give any help without being asked. It’s a warmer day than we’ve had for a while too, so the insects burst out of their sleep to sing us nothing but annoying melodies. I take pleasure in the knowledge that the next big chill will inevitably be here soon to kill them all.
Even as my limp becomes more pronounced, I grin, realizing that Poppy and I are more evenly matched in pace now. If I thought Poppy had been slow before, today she’s barely awake on her feet. She’s sluggish, hopefully from normal fatigue, but beyond that looks and behaves normally.
I feel—fine. I feel just fine. Besides my shoulder and the natural infection that’s spreading through it and making it feel like it’s on fire. I can’t lift it. I can’t move it. I let it hang stiffly by my side as I walk, and I probably look like Frankenstein’s monster. I can barely register the other pain because I’m fairly certainly my arm might actually fall off any moment. I should be more grateful for Poppy’s presence—I couldn’t carry any kind of bag right now even on my good shoulder. Of course, I also probably wouldn’t have been shot if not for her.
No. That’s not fair. I can’t think like that. I push those thoughts away. “Are you hungry?”
She shrugs. Hopefully she’s ready to make peace as well. The area we’re in is actually lovely in every traditional sense. There are dense trees turning autumn browns, shedding their leaves on top of still-green grass. Together they almost form a canopy, a hall made of bark and leaves. Shelter. That’s what it feels like standing here, and if I close my eyes, I can smell crisp apples and hot cocoa, all the things I used to treasure during the fall.
We sit with our backs on opposite sides of the tree, each keeping an eye open around us as we eat. I let her pick what we eat and how much. She’s learned to be frugal, but not as frugal as I am; she eats and drinks twice as much as I do, but I don’t say anything. I’m still waiting. For the time to pass, or the symptoms to start.
We travel a little farther, not really pushing ourselves. Poppy lets me use her as a crutch by the end of the day. Her own crutch is her words—she’s a chatterbox again, asking me all kinds of questions, mostly about school and my friends. I embellish a little. She needs to hear the good things.
“Tell me about your friends. Who was the best?” I ask her, returning her questions whenever she stops. We keep our voices low, cautious.
“I had a few—Lizzie, Megan, and Evan.” She pauses. “And my mom.”
We walk in silence—or close to it. The falling leaves make it harder to keep quiet. Poppy scrapes a faded red sneaker through the golden hues; I think she wants nothing more than to be able to kick them up and crunch them into dust. I warn her not to make much noise.
“You never talk about your family.” It’s a quiet accusation.
I shrug—with my good arm—but it still hurts bad enough I gasp. “What should I say about them? Is it worth the pain to bring them up?”
“You don’t know they’re dead. You don’t know for sure.”
“No.” I just don’t think there’s enough valid reason to stoke the fires of hope. “My parents were both fairly resourceful. They could be out there somewhere. I guess I just find it unlikely that I will ever see them again, even if they are alive. I don’t think they would have been safe living in suburbia for long, so my plan was always to try and make it back to our home. See if they left some kind of message for me. But even then, there was never much hope.”
“Maybe they left you a note to come and find them somewhere. Maybe they’re still waiting.” Poppy’s young voice automatically makes things sound hopeful. I find it irritating.
“Maybe. I hope so.” I think back to the last time I saw them. “I miss them. I didn’t even see them this past summer. I stayed in the city because I convinced them I should be volunteering and interning at places to put on my college applications. I went home last Christmas. It’s been almost a year.”
“What would you do now if you saw them?”
“I’d hug them and tell them I love them, of course.” But there’s no emotion in my voice; I have no emotion left on the subject. “My dad would probably jokingly ask me why I haven’t called, and my mother would somehow talk about absolutely everything except what’s going on. One of her many gifts.”
“I think—I think if I could see my mom again, I’d ask her to cook me something.” Poppy looks as if she wants to laugh. I chuckle for her. “She made the best anything—waffles, fried chicken—waffles and chicken. My dad was more my coach; if I could see him again, I think he’d let me know how proud he was. For making it this far.”
There’s not much to say after this. The sun has set; the dark settles in. Normally this is our prime traveling time, but I see no reason to push it today. My body won’t take it. We settle in for the night. Poppy eats a bit more; I just pop pain meds.
Tomorrow will be history. Tomorrow we will start to heal or inevitably begin to waste. Tomorrow—but all I can think of is Raven. Where is Raven? All I see is her long dark hair and her racing back. The undersides of her shoes. My bag thrown over her shoulder and a gun in her hand. She’s out there somewhere. I’m sure of it. Raven to me is indestructible. They won’t catch her, and she sure as hell won’t stop for anyone else. She’ll live for tomorrow.
She doesn’t live for me. She doesn’t think of me the way I do about her. Nothing I did could have made such an impression on someone who seems to be unimpressionable, and yet it’s me she stayed for. It’s me who talked her into the group; it was me she promised to stay with for the moment. Some promises can’t be kept, I guess.
I miss her. It’s silly. In the moment, I couldn’t celebrate her return to us, but now I can feel it: joy. Fulfillment. I never had many friends, and among the few, none of them were really close to me. Perhaps it’s only the extreme circumstances, but I feel closer to Raven than anyone I’ve ever met before. Maybe it’s the quick way
she judged me and then accepted me, based simply on me and my own abilities, rather than sitting in a place and time of leisure. Those privileges we all cherish build walls around us; I never said the right things or looked the right way, maybe, but no one is going to mind how I look now, with my too big men’s boots, matching men’s coat, arm wrapped in bulky patchwork, and face red from pain and cuts. My hair hasn’t been cut in over a year. I feel less like a girl than ever before, including my freshman year when I paraded around in the boys’ uniforms because I didn’t like wearing the short skirts they so graciously handed to us.
Raven is safer away from me; this I know is true. Regardless of possible infection, Raven has made herself as a solo hunter and survivor. She doesn’t need me. Alone, you make better decisions based solely on your needs. Yes—she will be better off without me. But still, I wish I could see her again. Ask her the things I couldn’t before. Hold out my hand to her and build what might be the last relationship I can have.
I am a selfish person. I won’t stay up and think of her any longer. The pain meds I take now aren’t the over-the-counter kind; these are little blue things that taste more like paper than nothing. I take two of these and immediately feel drowsy. My breathing sounds slow, like an out-of-body experience. In my weakness, I let Poppy inch closer and closer to me, until she’s pressed against my side, and we both warm each other.
Emotional intimacy is a dangerous thing. More dangerous than the infection surely seeping through my shoulder. The loss of Bryant is still heavy on both our minds and nothing, not the physical pain or the impartial small talk, will take it from us. It shouldn’t be, but it is—I feel the loss of Raven somehow just as sharply. She has no business being a physical throb in my body, but there she is. Her brief introduction to me has left me somehow full of discouraged hope.
I can’t physically keep thinking about her, or anything, so I don’t. We fall asleep in the middle of the night once more, and when I sleep, I dream with hope of tomorrow. The hope that we will awake, the hope we will be okay, and the hope we will move onward. The hope that I will see Raven again, or my parents. The hope that Bryant and Aaron are in a better place.
TOMORROW DOESN’T come. Or it does—just too soon. It’s still mostly dark out, with just the faintest of light blues waking up the night, when I struggle to consciousness from under my thick blanket of medicated sleep. When I realize what has woken me up, I spend more minutes hoping I’m actually still asleep, stuck in a nightmare, but this is not something made up in my mind because it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past day. This is literal damnation, both a trial and a sentencing. This we won’t recover from.
My side is cold because Poppy is no longer pressed against it—instead she is curled up on her knees, one hand clutching her stomach and the other rubbing her forehead. She shakes, full-bodied tremors.
“Poppy? You all right?” Silly question, I think, even as I crawl forward on my knees toward her. She’s moved several feet away, to avoid waking me, probably. “Come here. Let me see.”
She doesn’t make any new movements, nothing to indicate she’s heard me. The way her body shakes is rhythmic, almost robotic and calculated. Timed. It’s almost as if she could still be asleep and instead of sleepwalking, she’s gently seizing.
“Poppy.” Her hair obscures her face; when I reach to tuck it back, I ignore my own shaking hand. “Look at me.”
She doesn’t. Now that I’m closer, my face just a short foot away from hers, I hear the small, wet coughs in her breath. My heart sinks before I even get a chance to see her face: it’s white. Except for the bloody streak under her nose.
I break away from her, forcing down a sob and covering my face. Impossible. She was fine just hours ago, not a sign of oncoming infection to be seen. When I feel my own face, my cheeks, my nose, my lips—everything is clean. I feel fine. No fever. My own symptoms have not begun.
Gently, I pull back her hair once more and tuck it neatly behind her ear. She’s still frozen in the same position, just little catches in her breath. I pull her into my lap, feel her forehead. It’s warm, of course. I clean the blood off her face next. I do it with my bare hand, even though there are bandages I could use in our makeshift first aid kit. What will it matter now? We’ve shared the same air, food, water, space for the last several days. What’s hers is also mine, including her illness.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Her shaking now seems to be more shivering. Her teeth chatter, and between the whites I can barely make out something unnaturally dark slipping between her lips. Blood, then. I’ve never seen infection from onset to symptoms to—but I don’t finish that thought. All I know is this is moving much faster than I thought it would.
Where are my symptoms? If I’m shaking now, it’s because I know they’re coming.
In my arms, Poppy abruptly freezes. Her eyes focus, and from her stomach, her body jerks. Rolling over, she vomits up the little dinner she had. There’s blood in that too. I smooth her hair and roll her back in my arms. The shivering has resumed. I reach for the open water bottle and our blanket.
“We’ll be fine.” My thoughts are going around in circles—how can I help her? How can I help myself? We no longer have the gun or the bullets Bryant so desperately saved for this exact contingency. All we have is the knife now. Am I so desperate to contemplate such things? I used to call myself realistic. Perhaps hopeless is the best word.
Her wet breaths turn into a grim laughter. It’s gurgling, bubbling right out of her mouth: deep red and running. “You don’t need to say those things to me. I know.”
“You know nothing.” My voice is soft. The daylight is coming. Tomorrow will be better, I’d said.
Chapter 9
THE STREAM that divides the little town runs all around us even now in the woods; it waxes and wanes into a full river, then into a stream again. I trace it to a close proximity from where we are, then take my time moving first all our supplies there, hiding them beneath earth and leaves on a rocky slant into the river, then stagger my way back with Poppy plastered to my good side in a second trip. She’s a furnace of heat, sweat, and fluids—all kinds of fluids. Her nose bleeds on my shoulder, her salvia runs on my arm. She’s thrown up on me twice, although there wasn’t much to throw up. I can barely get water down her throat, let alone any food.
When we make it to the river, panting and aching, I prop Poppy up. I ask her to look—just look up—but she can’t. Her head hangs painfully off her neck. She can’t support it any longer. After hours of nonstop shaking, her body is deathly still. She hasn’t spoken a word after our brief exchange when we both woke up. The only thing indicating she still breathes is the literal puffs of air I can feel against my neck when I move her.
What I want her to see is how beautiful the morning is. It’s finally officially fall. Peppered rocks and yellow leaves skimming the top of the gentle currents frame the river in front of us. The sun through the leaves turns the water golden, like a kaleidoscope of orange and yellow topping and the gray and blue of the pebbles underneath. The air is so crisp I can almost remember the smell of pie, feel the thick weight of my favorite sweater on my shoulders. I should be at school, beginning my freshman year of college, but I would never see this if I were. I’ve seen more country in the past few months than I had my entire life beforehand, and all it took was the destruction of civilization to do it. My life before was spent indoors, behind desks or windows. The now of my life is spent always sinking one foot into the ground and the other flying through open air. Some would say this is preferable. A small part of me agrees, even with the weight of a dying child on my back.
We walk, or stumble, into the icy water, and without much grace, I drop her into it so she can float on her back. I think Poppy’s begun shivering again, but I realize I’m already shaking so hard in the frigid water I shake her as well. I didn’t bother to remove our clothes because we have one more change in our supplies, and I think one more is all we’ll need.
I lie back in the water, laying Poppy on top of my chest, making sure her mouth and nose are always clear of water. We float peacefully, but I can’t help thinking of Virginia Woolf filling her pockets with stones and drowning in the river behind her house. We could do the same; go gently into the current. If I let Poppy go now, she probably would sink, or I could turn her onto her front so her mouth and nose were in the water. She wouldn’t be able to right herself to breathe, not when she’s barely moved all day.
I can’t let go, though. Instead I wonder when my nose will begin to bleed. When will my limbs become too heavy to move? As soon as it happens, it’s definite and inevitable. We will both die. Either from starvation or exposure, or maybe someone will find us and put us out of our misery.
I wash the blood and vomit and dirt from our skin, and then I take turns stripping us out of our wet clothing. The sun is high and bright; we lay out on the bankside in our underwear to dry off. There’s a slight breeze, enough to raise goose bumps on our naked skin. Poppy has taken to shivering again, not as much as I am, but gentle quakes that punctuate her breathing. It’s comforting to see them.
Once we’re dry, I dress us. The wet shirts from before stretch over tree branches, white flags of our surrender to anyone who might pass by and see them. I lie back down next to Poppy after a failed attempt to get her to eat anything. Now she’s not drinking either. She’s used so many body fluids that if she doesn’t start replacing them soon, things will go very quickly downhill.