I push the thoughts of her away, but it’s like swatting at bees. They sting where they land, and I feel them long after they die.
“Logan doesn’t have much hair, so you two can probably get by with sharing a box.” I give her head a pat. “You’re gonna look like a complete badass.”
She giggles, hiding it behind cupped hands.
“What about you?” Logan asks. “I guess you don’t need it, huh? Your hair’s dark brown already.”
I hold up two boxes of extreme platinum.
“Wait—I thought we were supposed to be blending in with the night here? That doesn’t seem too . . . blendy.”
“Someone’s looking for me.” I finish my last bite of soup and set the bowl and spoon aside. “Those people, they . . . had me once. I escaped. I think they’re looking for me again. I need to alter my appearance so I have a chance.”
“Ah, gotcha.” He nods. “They had you held captive, you said?”
“Y-yeah.”
“What happened? What did they do?”
I turn away. After a long silence, I peer up at him. “I’ll tell you . . . but not in front of her.”
Missy huffs, annoyed that she can’t be included in the conversation.
“Let’s go for a walk.” He holds out his hand, and I take it, letting him lead me to the door, though my feet have gone numb. My fingers are tingly, too, but the familiar sensation that sometimes leads to panic dissipates when he pulls me to him. “Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours.”
He moves closer, inches from my lips. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“I want to know the things that have broken you.”
“I’m not broken.”
“We’re all broken.”
With a thorough consideration of my words, he kisses my lips. “You might be right.”
I don’t start from the beginning. I tell him what happened at Riverbend, but I leave out Eve—my reason for going there—and Murray—the reason I got out alive. I don’t tell him the things about my past that I told Gideon; as if harboring the truth of my past life, the inner workings of my mind, reserving that for Gideon somehow makes up for this thing with Logan. It doesn’t. But it makes me feel better about it.
“Holy shit.” Logan drops his hands from my arms and backs away, shaking his head. “How the fuck did you know to crawl through the shaft like that?”
“It was the only option, other than going through the door, which wasn’t an option if I wanted to survive. I just got up there and kept moving down and around until I got to the ground.”
“Jesus.” He shakes his head again. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“You’re not . . . worried, are you?”
“About?”
“I don’t know, contracting something?”
He laughs, and it’s a genuine belly laugh that catches me entirely off guard.
“What’s so funny?”
“Well, it’s just that . . . there are dead fucks on our doorstep and you’re worried about a little venereal disease?” He waves a dismissive hand. “We’re gonna die before any of that shit would kill us anyway.”
He does have a point.
“Besides, that’s the least of my worries.” He moves closer to me again. “I won’t be so rough . . . next time.”
“No, it’s fine, I . . . I liked it.” The sultry voice in his ear is unfamiliar to me. Who is this trampy nymph, and where did she come from? I’m not sure if I like her yet.
“Oh, yeah?” He holds me closer, tighter, and there’s a quickening of breath as his hand moves up my shirt. He kisses me again, rubs my pussy through my pants, and I cave, kissing him hard and stroking him.
“We have to stop.” I pull away, attempt to compose myself by fidgeting with a package of cat food on the shelf beside me. “We have to get ready to go. I think we should leave tonight.”
“We gonna do the hair thing first?” He plucks a strand of my long, straight hair, holds it between his fingers.
“Yeah. Before I bleach mine, I’ll need your help cutting it. It’ll take two applications, at least, so we need to get started soon.”
Outside, the screech of car tires sends Logan darting toward the front door. I follow close behind as the sound of what may be two or three speeding cars passes us. Logan peeks through a slit in the board barricade.
“What do you see?” I whisper.
“One of those white vans and two black SUVs.”
“They’re going the direction I came from. Where the accident was. I bet it’s them.”
He turns to face me. “Apparently, they don’t know we’re here, but that’s a yet, especially if they have drones, like you say they do.”
“They do. I shot one out of the sky.”
“Oh, yeah? You’re right then, we need to tear ass.”
“I wonder why they’re out during the day?” I mumble to myself.
“No clue.”
Logan walks off toward the back, and I follow, as a small, girl-shaped shadow slips away ahead of us. I didn’t even know she was there. She’s quiet. That’s good.
“We’ll need water to wash the shit out with,” I say. “How much do we have?”
“Not much. We’ll make it work, though.”
We enter the breakroom and find Missy curled up in her bed again, snuggling her bear.
“You ready?” I pick up the box of black sapphire and show it to her.
She nods, then rises reluctantly to sit in the chair I’ve pulled out for her.
“Can I cut it, too?” I ask her. “Your hair is beautiful, but shorter hair is easier to care for. And it’s . . . safer.”
After a few seconds of thought, she nods.
“Awesome.” I grab the half-full jug of water to fill the spray bottle, and wet her hair down, then give it a good combing, working the tangles out toward the top. I take the hair-cutting scissors and cut a straight line at the base of her neck, and eight-inch clumps of wet, light-brown hair drop to the floor. When I finish, she reaches back to touch it, and I hand her a small mirror and hold a larger one behind her, so she can see what it looks like.
“You like it?”
She nods, then peeks to Logan for approval. He gives her a nod as he takes a drag off his cigarette. “Looks good, little sister.”
I prepare the black dye, noticeable pain flowering all over my body, along with the telltale signs of withdrawal. I guess Logan senses my discomfort, because he grabs the brown bottle and a syringe from the cabinet and holds it up to the light.
“I won’t do any more so you can have the rest,” he says, setting the bottle on the counter. “I can fix you up another shot when you’re done with ours, before I do yours?”
“Yeah, okay? How much is left?” I lather the dye into Missy’s short hair, watching the transformation from innocent little girl to creature of the shadows.
“Maybe six or seven shots,” Logan answers.
“I don’t mind sharing. We have pain pills, right?”
“Tons.”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
“Nice, thanks.”
I pile Missy’s hair up on her head then pin it with a pink plastic clip, and tap her shoulder. “All done. Now we wait about twenty minutes for it to process.”
She leaves the chair and sits on her bed, and I motion for Logan to sit in the fold-out chair in front of me. He finishes his cigarette and saunters over, slumping down into the seat.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just thinking. My brain won’t stop sometimes.”
“I know what you mean.”
When the blue-black meets his blond and begins to change, I see Lucy becoming Eve. I see the darkness after the light. It’s what we’ve all become now: hidden lights in the dark.
A glance at the extreme platinum on the table reminds me of something, though: I’m no coward. For the first time in my life I’m shining a light in the dark. However dim, it’s something. It�
��s gotten me this far, and now, I can spread my dark wings over those who need my protection. They can shine for me, and I can shield their light from the rest of the world. I tried to do it for Evie, but failed. I wasn’t ready yet. But I am now.
“All done.” I take my gloves off and lay them on the table, then give Logan’s neck a good rub. He moans and melts into me. I give him a few more kneads to the neck and shoulders, then lean down to whisper in his ear. “You gonna do me now?”
“Uh . . . ?”
“My shot, and my hair.”
“Oh.” He straightens his posture, then stands and stretches. “Yeah.” He faces me, his goopy, blue-black fauxhawk plastered to his head. “Is it time to wash hers out yet?”
“It’s fine if we leave it. We can rinse hers and yours after we cut my hair.”
“Sounds good.”
When he gets up to retrieve the dope, I take his place in the chair, nervous. I haven’t cut my hair short in forever. After fixing up the syringe, Logan returns, pressing at the fold in my arm to locate a good vein. I look away when he inserts the needle. The bloom of euphoria follows the pinch of needle tearing skin, then becomes warm honey, seeping down into my soul.
“Okay, so . . .” He picks up the scissors, and I take a seat. “How do I do this?”
I make scissors with my fingers and demonstrate. “Right below my ears.”
“That short? You sure?”
“Yeah.”
In less than three minutes, he hacks off my hair, and it joins Missy’s on the floor beneath the chair. About the same amount, though mine is a few shades darker.
“What’s this?” Logan traces an area of my back between my shoulder blades.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a scar. Like a . . . like a branding, or something.”
“What?” I crane my neck.
“Yeah, it looks like a ‘Y’ with a circle around it.”
My blood runs cold as I recall a similar tattoo on Gideon’s back. Then, there’s the brief remembrance of pain there, when I was at Riverbend.
It all makes sense now.
“What?” Logan crouches in front of me. “What is it?”
“Gideon was one of them. The ones who started this whole thing.”
Thirty
Rage doesn’t begin to cover it.
I eject myself from the seat, and the room, and pace the store, in search of something. I’m not sure what. But I swipe a can of dog food from the shelf and hurl it down the aisle, pegging a row of household products. Logan rushes over and gathers my trembling body into his arms, holding tighter when I fight him.
“No,” he says in a firm tone that almost reminds me of Murray. “You can’t do this. You’ll get us found. I know you’re fucking pissed—you have every goddamned right to be—but you gotta use that as fuel. You tuck it away and save it for a time when it serves you, got it? Pull it together.”
After a futile fight, I surrender, taking a deep breath to attempt to chill out. Logan releases me. “You can’t let shit like that break you. Not now, not ever.”
The way he says it tells me he has personal experience with this mantra. I make a promise to myself that I’ll do the best I can to try to adopt it, because I hate the way I feel right now. Not feeling anything would be better—it once was, in a way. Making friends with these emotions is something I’m not sure how to do yet. And I’m not positive I even want to. Not feeling means not hurting as much, and that’s starting to sound better and better.
Maybe I’m still more of Ophelia than I thought. Or maybe I’m both now. Who the fuck knows? Whatever it takes to survive and keep all of my promises.
It takes nearly three gallons of water to wash all of the dye out of Logan’s and Missy’s hair. I lather my own with bleach, then sit behind Missy to comb hers. It takes seconds now, and she’s happy with the change, too. She now has a mirror the size of her face propped beside her bed so she can stare at herself.
“So . . . are we not going to the Tunnels now?” Logan asks me, tinkering with his radio.
“No, we’re still going.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s a safe place with other survivors. We need to go check it out. And when Gideon shows up, he has some fucking explaining to do.”
“If he shows up.”
“He will.”
“Hm. Okay, then. We leaving after dark?”
“Yes. I’m not sure how to get there, though. Do you know how to get to highway sixty-five? The entrance is a midway between exits thirty-two and thirty-three.”
“I do, actually. I used to be an oxygen delivery driver. I delivered all over the place. The old grain silo?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said.”
“Holy shit. That’s intense. And that’s all you know about this place?”
“I’ve told you everything I know. How long will it take to get there? On a good day?”
“Maybe an hour. It’s a hike.”
“We should start packing.”
With the second application of bleach washed out, my hair is fried. It’s more of a dark golden blonde than platinum, but it’ll do for now. I hardly recognize myself in the mirror, but that’s a good thing. I clear the rest of the boxes of bleach and black hair dye from the shelves and remove the contents from their boxes to put in Ziploc baggies so they’ll take up less space. We’ve got a ton of supplies to clear from here and pack into whatever vehicle we can find. Thanks to Gideon, I have anger-fuel to counteract the dulling effect of the Molly. Whatever does the trick, I guess.
“We can go out once it gets dark and look for a vehicle,” I say. “Or, one of us can stay here with her—”
“We stay together,” Logan says. “It’s the only way.”
Missy’s face turns white, her body tenses, and she bursts into screams, sucking in panicked breaths like she’s going down in an airplane. Her panic sets mine off, and as I fight her limbs to let me hold her, my heart pounds beneath tightening chest muscles, and I break out in a cold sweat. With each deep breath I coax from her, I will myself to calm.
When she finally does, my hands shake around her. Logan has repositioned himself to our side, rubbing my thigh. “You two okay?”
“Yeah. We will be.”
“How the fuck are we gonna do this?” He runs his fingers through his now blue-black hair. “Just talking about going out there makes her flip out. What’s she going to be like out there?”
“She’ll be brave.” I kiss her head, and she whimpers in my arms. “We’ll be brave together.”
I hold her for a while until we’ve both calmed, and then I hold her at arm’s length. “You can do this, Missy. You have to.”
In her porcelain-doll face, there’s a glimmer of inner hardening, a resolve. Though her hands tremble, she nods.
Logan walks out to the lobby and returns a few seconds later. “Dusk. We’ve got a good hour before dark. We should plan our exit.”
“Okay, sounds good.”
“When you were out there, did you see any vehicles around here that looked promising?”
When I try to recall the vehicles in the vicinity, they’re a blur. “There are vehicles around, but I couldn’t tell you if they looked promising or not.”
“Guess we’ll have to see when we get out there.”
“I want to go to the Blazer, salvage what I can of my stuff, and check out that drone.”
“Yeah, we’ll do that.”
I offer Missy my hand. “Come on, sweetheart, we’ve got some work to do.”
She takes my hand and stands on shaky legs, giving me that look of ‘huh?’.
I cross the room to where my katana lay on the floor and I pick it up, dizzy either from getting up too fast or from the flow of narcotics through my bloodstream. I turn around to face Missy, steadying myself, and remove the blade from its sheath. “It’s time to learn how to live.”
Thirty-One
With the last black dress on the clothing rack—an XL—I fashion
Missy a cloak to hide her pale skin and to make her feel safe. I’ve never cared for anyone before, so I’m not sure why I know these things, or how. Maybe things I’ve witnessed here and there from Eileen and Henry? Or common sense? Is there some kind of parenting instinct that arises in time of need? Something had sparked with Corbin . . .
And when I think of how neither of us had the chance—he, to live; or I, to love him the way I wish I could’ve—that familiar, crushing weight rests in my heart, a backflow of regurgitated pain from a place deeper than me. My sweet baby brother . . . How I wish I could hold you, hug you, kiss you, and tell you I love you, one last time.
I fasten the safety pin to the cloth at Missy’s neck, and wipe tears from my cheeks. She regards me with concern while I straighten her slinky black cloak around her shoulders and arms. I manage to ward off a further onset of sobs. I have to be strong for her now. We’re about to leave here, which means I have to stay vigilant. I’ll die before I let what happened to Corbin happen to her.
“Okay, first lesson.” I stand beside her. “Holding the blade correctly.”
I go through Gideon’s lessons, and a few of my own findings, and she gapes, wide-eyed, terrified.
“You’ll be fine, honey.” Logan squeezes her shoulder. “Take a deep breath and relax.”
She does as he says, struggling to still her shakiness. I place the weapon in her hand. “Hold it how I showed you.”
She repositions her hands on the grip.
“The important thing for you to remember is that when you’re holding this weapon, you have the power to wound, to kill, to protect yourself, and to survive. It’s like a . . . superpower. Yeah, you’re a superhero now, and that’s your magic sword. Have faith in the magic sword, and it’ll keep you safe, okay?”
She bites her lower lip.
“No matter how scared you are, you never back down, unless you’re outnumbered.” I crouch to her level. “You charge forward if one is near you. Like this.” I show her a running start-and-swing of my imaginary blade through the air, then turn to face her. “Got it?”
She nods, katana shaking in her grasp. Some target practice would help her. I survey the store, consider a stack of adult diapers, but then my gaze drifts to the half-empty dress rack, and a lone, legless mannequin perched on a metal stand.
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