These new emotions, I can’t name. Corbin deserves better than me, than this. He deserves his parents; they should be here with their son. It should be me in their place.
I circle the Ranger to the nerve-grating sound of snarling and fingernails scraping against the metal garage door. Far-off screams, more sirens and weapons firing than usual. We’re about to enter a war zone.
When I make it back around to the driver’s side door, I spy a box with scrawled, faded sharpie letters that read Family Keepsakes. And though I’m tempted to grab it, fear makes me dive into the driver’s seat instead. Fear of the monster trapped inside that box forever.
“You one of those New Age Witches?” Gideon asks.
“Zalaan.” My hands shake at the wheel.
“Oh, nice. Was that a protection spell?”
“Yeah.”
“My Aunt’s a Witch.” He looks away. “Or, was.”
I grip the wheel for a moment trying to form words. “Maybe she’s fine.”
“I doubt it.”
I catch his eyes with mine, hold them for a silent spell between us.
“Ready?” He lifts his weapon, hands in position.
“Yeah.”
But he stops me from starting the engine. “Wait. I should be in back, in case some are blocking us. Does the window open?”
“It slides down like the rest.”
He clicks the safety on, ducks to the back seat, and over into the cargo area. With a deep breath, I turn the key in the ignition, then roll the window down a couple of inches. “Is that good?”
“A little more.”
I press the button again.
“Okay, whoa.”
“Good?”
“Yeah. Let’s do this.”
I step on the brake, put it in reverse, and hold Suki between my thighs, with the rifle between the seats beside me. After a slight hesitation, a build-up of barbaric courage, I hold my breath, and hit the garage door open button on the visor.
When the door rises a few feet, bodies duck beneath it. Gideon nails the first two, but one slips by and races to the passenger side door, arms outstretched.
“Go!” Gideon takes out two more, as she mauls the door with bloody saliva, and what might be flesh hanging from her bottom teeth. I pop the vehicle into reverse and screech out of our driveway, into the alley where more of them charge toward us.
Corbin screams from the backseat as a body slams into his door. The man’s fingers grasp through the window crack, hanging on as I slam it into drive and screech forward. Gideon crosses to the other side of Corbin, flicks the fingers up with his rifle barrel, and the infected man spins and flops down the street behind us.
“It’s okay, little dude.” Gideon wraps an arm around Corbin’s shoulder. “We won’t let them get you. You’re safe.”
“Hello? Hello!”
I take my phone out of my bra. “I’m here, Evie.”
“What’s happening?”
“We’re driving. They’re everywhere. But we’re on our way. Are you ready?”
“Yes. They’re all around my house, too. I’m scared, Ophelia. I’ve never been this scared in my life.”
“Me, either. But we’ll be okay. Trust the Goddess.”
Two overturned cars and a school bus block the road, and dozens of bodies swarm around them, feeding off the vehicles’ inhabitants. When they see us they stand and head our direction.
“Reverse!” Gideon says, jumping into the back. He shoots a few behind us, and the SUV rolls over them as I spin into a U-turn.
“I know a shortcut. Eve, we’re going down Slater Blvd, then to your alley entrance off Commons.”
“Okay. Please be safe.”
“I’m doing the best I can, but it’s insane out here. How . . .” I trail off, a wave of astonishment and confusion washing over me. “How did this happen?”
We’re silent during a moment of clear travel as we contemplate this sudden and unexpected end of the world as we knew it.
Off in the distance, a young boy runs from a group of them. My urge is to save him, but seconds later I look away and cringe at what happens next in my peripheral.
“The vaccines.” Gideon takes Corbin’s hand. “I believe it was purposeful. Though I couldn’t say if it was our government, or someone else’s. A terrorist group here in the US, maybe.”
Three green Black Hawks fly overhead, and the noise makes the infected turn to the sky. I take a left down Slater Blvd, met by more of them. I swerve to miss one, and barrel over another one, feeling the thud of him beneath the floorboard.
“If they’re so sick, why don’t they die?” I ask Gideon.
“They . . . are dead.”
I shoot him a side glance, swerving around another pair of runners, passing the parking garage at Regional Station. “How is that even possible? This is real life, not a movie.”
“I don’t know. But it is. I saw a dude die, then, a few minutes later, he was one of them. Seemed to . . . come back to life. Night of the Living Dead and shit.”
For the next mile, I’m too dumbfounded to speak. They run, though it’s obvious they’re slower than they would be if they were . . . alive. Still, something about dead bodies that can chase and eat you is fucking terrifying. Not to mention, this is not even possible. Dead people don’t come back to life . . .
Yet, they have, and they are.
“Are you almost here?” Eve asks.
“About to turn on Commons now.” I make a right, then an immediate left down Eve’s alleyway. “Shit.”
“I’m on it.” Gideon hops into the front and rolls down the window enough to lean out and spray gunfire into the onslaught of infected.
“At your garage in ten seconds, Eve.”
“Okay, should I open it?”
“Go ahead.” Gideon hops out through the window. “Which one is it?”
“The gray door.” I point.
“I’m opening it now,” Eve says.
To our left, a group of older children fires from a roof. In my review mirror, I see some runners fall behind us, right as we’re crunching over three in front of Eve’s garage.
When Henry put brand-new tires on this thing last month, I’m sure driving over mounds of human bodies wasn’t something he’d anticipated. How quickly things have swan-dived into the depths of an unprecedented hell.
A group of bodies rounds the corner of her house when the door begins to rise. Gideon takes out three, and Eve appears beneath the rising door to take out the other two with an AK. More of them come from behind us as I pull into the garage.
As the door closes, Gideon and Eve drop to the ground to take them out before they get under it. Then, there’s the thud of more hitting the metal. I eject from the driver’s seat and race to Eve. She sets her weapon down, tears streaming from her eyes, and I cry, too. We hold each other tightly and rock, and Corbin wails from the backseat.
“Hang on.” I let go of her to open his door, take off his headphones, unbuckle his safety harness, and gather him into my arms. Eve joins us, while Gideon stands back a few feet. He manages a half-smile, but I see the pain behind it.
“Eve, this is Gideon. He lost his family, too. He’s a good guy.” I usher him to us with the wave of my hand, and he comes closer.
“Thank you so much for helping them get here.” Eve wipes her eyes, then throws her arms around him. “I’m so sorry you lost your family.”
“Thanks.” He pats her back. “I’m sorry, too. For you three.”
We share a group hug, and our hearts still pound together. We’re alive. I’ve just gained a whole new appreciation for that concept.
“I’ll get the bags.” Gideon says when we break apart.
Eve moves her AK to the wall by two more weapons. “I’ll help.”
The SUV is splattered and smeared with dark spots, and Eve and Gideon step over bloody tire tracks to open the rear door to gather all of our bags. Once they’ve gotten everything, we head into her house.
Tog
ether.
Safe.
“So, I guess . . . we’re kinda family now, huh?” Gideon asks.
I brush his tattooed forearm with my fingertips. “Yeah. We are.”
TWENTY
“Where are they?” I clasp Eve’s hand and we drop to the couch. Gideon sits on the ottoman, legs crossed, head rested in his hands. Her living room is disheveled; the brown area rug is gone, and only two crosses are left hanging on the cross wall.
“After I . . .” Eve cringes at the inner pain, one that resonates in me.
I reposition Corbin in my lap and take her hand again.
“I used the rug to drag them out to the shed, one at a time, so the . . . the blood wouldn’t get everywhere. The rug already had vomit on it so I figured it needed to go out, too, anyway. In case whatever they had was contagious, you know?”
“Smart.”
“It was,” Gideon says. “But I don’t think it’s contagious. Especially if it was from those vaccines.”
“You’re sure?” I ask.
He points to his shirt, which is stained with dried blood. “I had it all over my hands, too. I mean, maybe if you got it in your mouth or something . . . Bit or scratched, perhaps. But I don’t advise trying to find out.” He runs a dirty hand through his tangled hair. “Would you mind if I showered off?” he asks Eve.
“Sure, go right ahead.” She points over her shoulder. “Bathroom’s at the end of the hall.”
“Sweet, thanks.” He hops up from the ottoman. “You wouldn’t have any extra clothes I could borrow, would ya?” He pinches the cotton fabric of his Tijuana Tidal Wave T-shirt, now caked in blood.
“Yeah. You can borrow some of my dad’s. I’ll get them.” She rises from the couch on unsteady feet.
“You okay?” Gideon and I ask at the same time.
She nods. “A little dizzy. And weak, I guess. I haven’t eaten in a while.”
“I’ll make some food after I get out of the shower.” Gideon gives us a thumbs-up.
“Thank you.”
He crouches in front of us as Eve heads off toward her parents’ room. “You okay, little man?”
“He’s better now,” I say. “Thank you. We wouldn’t have gotten here without your help.” Corbin lays his head on my chest with a sniffle.
“Well, you helped me, too. I would’ve been dead in minutes if you hadn’t opened the door. It’s the least I could do.”
Eve returns a few minutes later with a stack of clothes. “This should be everything you need. Sorry if it doesn’t fit right.”
He takes the stack. “No big deal, I’ll manage. I’m just happy to have clean clothes, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I won’t be long.” He makes his way out of the living room and to the guest bathroom.
After a moment of silent drifting off into space, Eve sits beside us on the couch. “He seems nice.”
“He is. Maybe the Goddess sent him to help us.”
She stares into her lap.
“What?”
“I can’t shake it.” She peers up at me. “The thought that maybe we did this.”
“No, stop that. We didn’t do this, okay? This was done by evil—”
“But I gave them my blood. What if I opened some kind of doorway? What if I let a darkness out that will never retreat? What if I did this, Ophelia? What if it’s all my fault?”
I wrap my free arm around her, tugging her to me. “It’s not your fault. You’re still a young witch. I doubt you’re powerful enough. No offense.” I kiss her forehead.
“But . . . the candles? And the temperature change in the room? Those can’t be coincidences, can they?”
“Well, it’s unlikely, but . . . the alternative seems more unlikely to me. Aislynn told me some things that happened to her—things she saw; ghosts, visions she claimed were from the future, or the past. But she was always fucked up on something, so I attributed some of it to that.”
We settle into heavy silence for a few minutes until Gideon appears from the bathroom. “I made it quick.” He now sports brown pants and a white T-shirt that hugs his sculpted chest, with tattoos that peek through the stretched, white cotton. “A little snug, but they’ll work for now. Thanks.”
“Of course,” Eve says.
Gideon towel-dries his chin-length hair, then brushes the wet strands with his fingers. “We may not have running water for too much longer, so if you two need a shower, you should probably grab one while it’s on.”
After a quick inspection of Eve’s oily hair, I give her a nudge. “Go take one. You’ll feel better.”
She lets go of my hand and rises from the couch. “Okay. I’ll be back.”
When she leaves to head toward the bathroom, I find Gideon grinning at Corbin, who now sucks a thumb sleepily at my chest.
“He’s about to pass out.” Gideon takes his seat again on the ottoman.
“He’s had a long day. Actually, ‘long’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“I was about to say that was an understatement.” He chuckles, but it fades as he slips into thought.
I drown in my own thoughts, the familiar shards of painful reminiscence. They’re now tinged with the blood of a new wound, the deepest yet, and overshadowed by the looming notion that the infliction has only just begun. We can’t stay in this house forever. Sooner or later, we’ll have to go. Sooner or later, we’ll have to find food, water, and other supplies. Sooner or later, we’ll have to leave the safety of this house—risk our lives—in order to survive. That’s some motherfucking irony.
Gideon sighs. “I keep wondering if this is all a bad dream. I mean . . . logically, I know it isn’t. But growing up, I was obsessed with end-of-the-world movies, and never once did I think for a second something like it might happen in my lifetime.” He picks at a cuticle. “All the movies in the world couldn’t prepare us for this. Not enough, anyway.”
“True.”
After a long silence, I’m distracted from my thoughts by Corbin’s rhythmic breath of sleep on my chest. “Could you hand me that blanket?” I whisper to Gideon. “The armchair behind you.”
He brings it to me, and I cover Corbin, before extracting his tiny body from me and laying him down on the couch. After tucking the blanket around him, I remove my pipe and lighter from my pocket, finding the bowl still half-full. “You smoke?”
“Haven’t in a while. Not since the job at the bank tower.” He moves the ottoman over in front of me, then sits on it with his legs crossed. “But seeing as how I don’t have that job anymore, it seems like a good day to start up again.”
I light my Bic and touch the flame to the weed, inhaling until I feel the slight burn in my throat. “Yeah.” I hold the smoke in, enter sweet clouds of euphoria. They go nicely with the storm clouds of devastation and loss occupying my other hemisphere. I blow it out in a steady stream above my head. “Yeah. Now’s a pretty good time.”
I light it for him, and Eve emerges from the hallway. “Ooh, good idea.” She sits on the love seat adjacent to the couch. “How much do you have left?”
“Not much. About a gram.”
Gideon exhales, then coughs into his sleeve. He hands the pipe to me, then goes to the front entranceway to cough some more, I assume so he won’t wake up Corbin. I remove my small stash from my duffel bag at my feet, refill the empty bowl before passing it to Eve and lighting it for her.
She takes an enormous hit, almost cashing the bowl, holds it, then blows the smoke up toward the slowly spinning ceiling fan. She peeks over at me with naked eyes I haven’t seen makeup-free in ages. Her wet, black hair, parted down the middle, is sleek, glossy, and clean, a perfect frame for her pale, heart-shaped face and pouty lips.
You’re so beautiful, I want to tell her. But I’m no good at this, especially with an audience. I never have been good at telling her how I feel about her.
“I don’t ever want to be sober again,” Eve says.
I move from my place next to Corbin to
sit beside her and hold her close. “That may not be an option after a while.”
Gideon returns from the front of the house, hands stuffed into the pockets of Eve’s dad’s brown pants. “Goddamn,” he says. “I’m high as fuuuck.”
We share a quiet, short-lived laugh as he moves the ottoman over again, this time, to sit in front of us.
“I sure am glad I ran into you two,” he says. “I don’t know you that well, but I’m positive I’m the luckiest dude in Selam County right now. I mean . . . look at you. You’re two attractive, badass ladies.”
“Thanks,” I say. “You’re sweet.”
“I’m glad you found Ophelia, too,” Eve says. “But . . . what do we do now?”
“We get high.” I hit the pipe again, lean to blow the smoke into her mouth, and she takes it, with a lingering kiss to my lips.
“And we take it a minute at a time,” I add.
Eve blows the smoke out with another soft chuckle. “You should shower.” She gives me a nudge this time. “Being clean does make it a little better—you were right about that.”
“Okay, I’m going.” I grab some clean clothes from my duffel bag and stand up. “Be back soon.”
TWENTY-ONE
Being high isn’t enough. The warm water washes away the grime of the last forty-eight hours, but that’s not enough, either. The thing that needs washing away is trapped inside of me forever, until the day I die, occupying the space where my soul should reside. But that gem left a long time ago.
The world has changed, but this is how it’s always been for me inside. Always the inevitable loss . . . I keep my despair quiet, though. The last thing I want is to make things worse for anyone else. I have to stay strong for them and give them hope. They deserve that light, that illusion, that protective veil of ignorance. And I’ll give it to them, even if it’s a lie.
I chant a spell for strength and protection, scrubbing my body clean, when the light in the bathroom shuts off and the water slows to a stream, a drip, then stops altogether.
“Shit.”
I scoop some water draining from the tub to finish rinsing the soap from my skin, then snatch the towel from over the door, and step out of the shower. With a quick comb of my hair, I hurry to get clothes on.
Dysphoria and Grace: (NA Apocalypse Romance) (The Night Blind Saga Book 1) Page 9