by Max Lockwood
Clara comforted her sister, murmuring soothing words and telling her all about how she could never forget her big sis, combing fingers gently through her hair, working through the tangles. Finally, Tessa gave a final sniffle and pulled away, her face looking red and splotchy when she let Clara see. And yet, Clara thought it was the healthiest her sister had looked in a while. She was usually too pale.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, and Clara knew what it was for.
She smiled. “You know, if you want to rebuild your life and family, you should open up your heart to that little boy in the forest. Did I tell you Cooper wants to be his guardian?”
Her eyes widened. “Then...”
“He didn’t say so in so many words, but we already sleep in the same room. Even back home, we’ve been sleeping in the same room since the EMP attack. So I think we’ll be raising him together. You can be a part of that if you want to, you know. I would never just shut you out.”
Tessa’s eyes started watering again. “But after what I did, would he even still be there? You said he was skittish, if you haven’t seen him yet, he might have left, you know?”
“Or gotten lost,” Clara pointed out. “I don’t know how long he’s been out there, but probably not long enough to know those woods so well that he couldn’t get lost in them. He’s out there alone, Tessa. His parents are dead, and it was recent.”
Her eyes widened. “He…”
Clara nodded, knowing what she wanted to say. With how the world currently was, with so much violence around, just about anyone would jump to the same conclusion.
“Yeah, Tess, he’s like us. He’s an orphan, and he probably had to watch his parents die, violently, and it must have been weighing on him. It’s a wonder he’s managed on his own.”
Then Clara saw it, the guilt growing in her sister’s expression. While she didn’t want to hurt Tessa further, she needed to realize what she had done wrong and not try it again. When they came across the boy again, Clara wasn’t going to tolerate Tessa scaring him off again.
“If he’s lost in the woods…”
“Then we’ll look for him,” Clara finished. “Just you and me. Please, Tess? We can go right now and see if we can find him. It’s been a few days, maybe he’s relaxed enough to get near again. And Jack already said I could go look for him.
After some persuasion, Tessa agreed, her face resolute as she said, “We should go and look for him.”
Chapter Eighteen
With the two of them reconciled and more or less on the same side now, Clara made quick plans.
“Are we going right now?” Tessa asked, “Or waiting.”
Clara frowned. She didn’t want to wait, but she usually went to look for the boy when it was in the evening, since he’d first appeared to her at night. She didn’t think he’d tried to take anything from the farm in daylight before, unless all the patrols just missed him when he did. She had always thought he did it at night, but…
When she had been with Tessa at the time the boy showed up, it was pretty early in the morning. So, should they stay or wait… and if he didn’t show up during the day time, just how long could they stay out there?
But then she sighed and frowned at herself for her indecisiveness. This was no time to start second guessing herself.
“Might as well go right now,” she finally said. “There’s no point in waiting around.”
The other question she needed to think through was whether they would be waiting for him to come out this time.
Clara was pretty sure she didn’t have it in her to do any more waiting. It might lead to nothing, like the past few days. She was too worried to go and wait when he was just out of her reach through the woods…
But going after him would scare him. If he tried to run from them… it would hurt her emotionally, and it could hurt him physically. Clara wasn’t sure she could be fast enough through the trees to catch him before he disappeared. She hadn't exactly toured extensively through those woods. The times she’d gone in, she had been following a direct route so as not to get lost. The straight path they had picked might not have been long for them to pass through in a little over a day, but there was plenty of the forest they didn’t know. If the boy knew it better, that would be even worse, because it would be easier for him to lose them.
“Tessa,” she said, voice quiet, “if we have to go look for him in the woods…”
She met her sister’s eyes. Tessa had been the one talking about the forest being evil. Clara wondered if she really thought that, or if it was just something Tessa said in the moment that was part of her worries. After all, she didn’t want the boy with them, and he had come from the woods. But their entire walk through, Tessa had been leaning on Cooper’s strength. She was better now, and she could walk on her own. Clara might have been imagining it, but she thought her sister had been putting on some weight, since she ate better, because the food was available and she wanted to eat more than she usually had before. She probably got the same starvation scare as Clara.
Still, maybe rushing off alone wouldn’t be the best idea.
“Why don’t we ask Cooper?” Tessa suggested.
Clara nodded, though, inside, she had some worry. Cooper hadn't asked about the boy again, and it was like Clara had never mentioned him. It had been a while since she went with him to wait for the boy. Actually, not only had he not talked about the boy, but Clara had the sinking feeling that he was pulling away from her, creating a distance between them.
It always worried her when Cooper tried to do this. At least this time she knew it wasn’t because he was mad at her, but because of the boy. He must have been as worried as she was, she could tell even if he didn’t speak to her. Because he was off keeping his worries to himself. Clara didn’t like interrupting him on the rare occasion he got into his moods. He didn’t often act it, but Cooper might be the most stubborn person she’d ever met. He gave in easily sometimes when she was involved, so she hardly got to see it until he was in a mood of his own.
But the suggestion was a good one. Clara didn’t want to bother him, but she thought, surely for this, he would snap out of it. Cooper was a lot faster than them, and he was the outdoorsy type. If they needed to run, he would help them.
Besides that, Clara just really wanted him to be there when they found the boy. She was resolved now that it was definitely going to be today. They would go into the forest, and Clara wouldn’t stop searching until they found the boy. She knew Cooper would feel as she did.
“You’re right,” she said decisively, meeting her sister’s eye. “We need to get Cooper for this. Do you have any idea where he is?”
Clara couldn’t be sure if he was out patrolling or helping in the fields. He had woken up around the same time as she and gone off somewhere else while she went to patrol with Jack.
“He shouldn’t be far,” Tessa said with confidence. “I’m team leader, remember? I like to know where everybody goes and what they do every day. Well, except you, because you don’t really tell anybody.”
Clara smiled, remembering she had been the one to give Tessa the position. Initially, she had done it to appease her sister, but Tessa had obviously taken it seriously and done her job. Clara suddenly felt very glad she had made the decision.
“He isn’t out on patrol today. He’s supposed to be out in the parsnip farm tending the crops. He’s surprisingly good at it, actually, the others say that he seems a natural, and I’ve seen it for myself. I didn’t know Cooper was good at farming.”
Clara didn’t either, but it could just be one of those things she didn’t know about her best friend. His parents might have owned a farm, though he hadn't said that exactly.
“So, let’s go get him,” Clara said. “Lead the way.”
Her sister smiled, and Clara followed her out of the house.
Clara went with Tessa to get Cooper. She knew he was as vested in finding the boy as she was. Getting him to go into the woods with them was easy, and they were on
their way, hoping they could find the child.
They stopped at the tree line around where Clara had seen him both times.
“Do you think we should split up?” she asked, worried. “We could cover more ground that way…”
“But it would be a pain if one of us got lost in there. And whoever finds the kid, how will they tell the others to go back?”
Clara knew he was right, but she couldn’t help but worry.
The boy had been alone too long, and, as far as she could tell after talking to the other patrollers, there hadn’t been any more broken stalks that indicated someone had stolen the food. The boy likely had to break them just to reach the cobs because he was so small. He was probably the only one that had been taking from the farm recently.
Which meant he hadn’t eaten since the time Clara gave him something from the farm to eat.
“What if he died out there,” Clara worried out loud. “Or if he ran into the wrong hands? We have no idea where he could have gone, and we don’t know these woods well enough to know where else they could lead…”
In fact, he probably made it to the farm through these woods, so it could be connected to where his parents had died. The boy was too young to have wandered so far away from home. What if he went back that way? And the people that killed his parents got him…
Her heart ached in her chest, and she pushed the thoughts away. If that happened, then the best thing would be if they killed him quickly. She didn’t want to think what cruel people could do with someone so young and defenseless. She didn’t want to think a fellow human being would hurt a little boy like that, but even before the world went to hell the possibility was always there. It was just higher now.
“I’m sure that isn’t the case, Clara,” Cooper said, trying to comfort her. “He’s probably just lying low somewhere.”
“Well, we can’t just stay here waiting and worrying,” Tessa said decisively. “If we’re going in, we go together and cover as much ground as possible.”
With that, they walked into the woods.
They spread out without losing sight of each other through the trees so they could cover more ground, and Clara couldn’t help the anxiety creeping up on her the longer it took for them to find the boy. After a while, she realized there was silence to one side of her where Tessa should have been. She stopped, listened, then went back, looking for Tessa. She was standing still when Clara saw her, and she looked up as Clara approached.
“I’ve found something that might help,” she said reluctantly. “Though I don’t know how much.”
Clara waved her hands impatiently. “Just tell me where, Tess.”
She pointed. “I found a pair of kid’s shoes, battered and worn by lots of walking. But there isn’t anything else around the area, and there’s no way to know how long ago he left them.”
Clara imagined the child wandering around barefoot, stones and sticks digging into his tiny feet. Tessa was right, he could have left the shoes at any time. Clara couldn’t even be sure if he’d had them on the past two times she caught sight of him. She was having trouble walking through the woods in her shoes, and he ran over this rough ground.
“Can you point out where you found them?”
Tessa did, and Clara looked back the way they’d come. He was always going away from the farm, so they’d have to go farther out. She wasn’t sure how much the location of the shoes would help, but they didn’t have anything else to go on. If not for those shoes, she might as well have imagined the boy existed, for all that she’d seen of him for nearly a week now.
Cooper had come up behind them, and asked. “What’s going on?”
“Tessa found some shoes that belonged to the boy,” she explained quickly. “We’re going to follow that direction and hopefully we’ll find something.”
Her searching became more frenzied as they went ahead, and she was cursing herself for letting him go twice.
She tried to call out to the boy, opening her mouth and cupping her hands around her mouth, before she realized she didn’t even know his name, and just calling him boy probably wouldn’t be enough to catch his attention without scaring him.
“Dammit!” she cursed under her breath instead, moving at an even faster pace.
Then finally, they found something. There was a shuffling in the trees up ahead, Clara almost missed it, being frantic, but then she was frozen and holding her hands out to stop the other two.
“Guys, stay back,” she warned. “I think he’s up ahead. If we keep going forward making noise, we might scare him off.”
She was also glad she’d stopped herself from calling out to him. If he’d heard them before they got this close, they could have lost him.
They all waited, staying still, and Clara really hoped it wasn’t the first animal they’d encountered here. She held her breath as there was more shuffling. Then the boy emerged, looking terrified.
For a moment, she was overwhelmed with relief to find him, and her eyes blurred in tears. But then she blinked them back and crouched down, holding a hand out to the boy.
“You can come closer, little boy. None of us will hurt you—we want to take you somewhere safe and give you some food, and something to drink.”
The boy didn’t move, clutching something, and Clara noticed it was an old teddy bear. He was frozen and unable to speak because of his fear. Clara’s heart went out to him, and she waved for him to come closer.
“I know you’re scared, and that your parents are gone, so we can give you everything you need and make you better. Just come with us?”
Clara noticed how skinny the boy was and how pale he looked. They would need to have Felicia check him over, just to be sure he was okay. But there was no way they could let him go this time, so when he didn’t move, she took the initiative to approach him first, her impatience not letting her wait for him to make the first move, not this time.
She approached him cautiously, and his eyes rolled back into his head. Clara caught him before he could collapse.
“We must get him back to the farm,” she told the others, terrified for his life.
Chapter Nineteen
They hurried back to the farm.
“What’s wrong with him?” Tessa asked.
But Clara had no idea what to tell her. She didn’t know whether the boy was okay or not, and she didn’t see much point in stopping to check. Clara was afraid she wouldn’t know, anyway.
She could guess he was exhausted and hungry, but what if there was something more than that? What if he had gotten hurt, or was ill, and it wasn’t something that would be obvious to them? The best chance they had of a diagnosis was getting him to Felicia, or Alice.
Clara didn’t need to answer, though, because Cooper did it for her.
“Whatever it is, we just need to get him back. There isn’t much we can do for him out here, anyway.”
It was enough to appease Tessa, because she didn’t ask more questions, but it only had Clara in a state of panic.
Please let nothing happen to him, she begged, glancing down at him before looking back ahead.
She tried to move her legs faster, frustrated, but the ground was uneven, and it was harder with a body in her arms. She was trying not to jostle him, hoping if it was an injury she wouldn’t make it worse, but speed came first, and she knew she was failing. She held him close to her chest, fighting the urge in her hands to hold him tighter.
The boy couldn’t have been older than seven years. Clara thought of all the things that he had likely endured and felt her eyes tearing up. She had to bite her lip and force the tears back, though, because they only clouded her vision. She could cry once they had him somewhere warm and safe.
The body in her arms felt too still, though; too light. She couldn’t help worrying.
“Clara, would you let me carry him?”
The voice was Cooper’s, one of the people she trusted most in the world, but she instinctively curled the boy closer to her and shook her head.
“Clara?” he called her name, sounding impatient.
“I’m fine,” she snapped back. “Just keep going, Cooper.”
He made a sound of frustration, loud enough that she could hear with all the noise they were making as they passed through the trees.
“Clara, come on. I could probably get him there faster if I ran ahead. Just let me have him.”
But she shook her head. Her heart quivered in anxiety at just the thought of letting him go, and she knew that, no matter what he said, she wasn’t going to give the boy over to him.
A part of her felt bad. Cooper was right that he could get the boy there faster. Clara could have cursed at herself for her selfishness. She knew if she handed the boy to Cooper and he ran ahead, he would leave her and Tessa behind. She wasn’t so absorbed as to not realize her sister was already struggling to keep up with them, and Clara didn’t want to have to choose between following Cooper at her fastest speed, and slowing so she wouldn’t leave her sister behind. Tessa wouldn’t take it well. Clara didn’t want to make the choice.
But more than that, even if she put her all behind it, she couldn’t keep up with Cooper’s speed, and she didn’t want to have the boy so far away from her. Whatever it was that motivated such thoughts, if it was her dormant mothering instincts waking up, Clara didn’t put too much thought into it.
Cooper kept offering to help carry the boy, but Clara remained adamant about not releasing him. Eventually, Cooper got the idea and stopped asking, so the other two were in the lead. Or, at least, Tessa tried.
It wasn’t like the boy was heavy. She could barely feel the weight in her arms, and she didn’t have to look under the boy’s dirty clothes to know he was too thin. She wondered if he’d eaten anything at all since she had given him food, and she hurried her steps just a bit faster. Feeling relief when the house came into view, she almost stumbled. She righted herself, though, and forced her legs to move even faster.