Wilders

by Cass Kim

  Renna was about to protest when Sydney held up her gloved hand and continued, “But I feel for you. Like I said, I don’t know why you said yes, but you better have a good reason and a clear mind going into this. It won’t be easy.”

  Renna nodded, “I swear, I’m going to come back. I just… I need this.”

  Emerson remained silent, muscles tensed as if he was ready to grab her and run the second Syd changed her mind about going along with it.

  “So,” Syd was very carefully sliding the needle into a cap she’d set on the table, “you got less than .05 milliliters of the solution. I highly doubt that will do much of anything to you immediately. But,” she continued, holding up a single gloved finger, looking Renna steadily in the eye, “it might. And, you have to be back here in less than twelve hours. That serum I injected you with peaks in twelve, and the half life isn’t going to be strong enough. It’s not exactly the sort of thing I can just keep sticking you with. Plus, I don’t know how long I can cover for you being gone.”

  She turned, the capped needle in hand, and said sternly to Emerson, “Look, Emers. This isn’t some game or adventure. I know you don’t want her to do this, but… it’s still her choice. And,” she waved the syringe at him, “She’s already had a small amount. You gotta get her back here, she needs to be in isolation within the twenty-four to forty-eight hour time frame. There is still a small chance she could have aggression or other symptoms.”

  “It’s cool girl genius, I hear you.” Emerson’s voice was low and tight.

  Syd sighed heavily, “I hope this isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” She unstrapped her watch, clicking a few buttons and then handed it to Renna. “It’s got your ten hour count down on it.”

  “I thought you said twelve hours?” Renna reached out and strapped the watch on.

  “I’m revising it to ten. Just to be safe. And, I guess you can’t exactly be walking around with everybody seeing you so…” Syd pulled off the dark green hoodie she’d been wearing, handing it to Renna. “Keep the hood up until you’re out of here.” She looked at Emerson, “And I mean like, past all of the sentry areas.”

  Emerson nodded again, “I know, Syd. I’m not an idiot.”

  “The jury remains out on that. I’ll make my decision when you two return. On time. In good health.” She stepped back then and waved them toward the ten flap. “Shoo, shoo. Off with you. Before I change my mind!”

  Chapter 12

  Renna and Emerson had walked quickly and easily out of camp. Emerson had his dark glasses on and a ball cap to shade his eyes from the morning sunlight, and even then he still kept his head mostly down. He’d set a brisk pace, seeming very sure of the path they were taking. After an hour of the fast pace, Renna was starting to work up a sweat. She was dragging her feet, the lack of sleep she’d had the past few days catching up with her.

  “How much further is it?” Renna slowed as she began tugging her hand through the sweatshirt sleeve, needing to take off the hot hoodie now that they were well away from camp.

  Emerson looked around for a moment, face scrunched up against the sunlight filtering through the trees. “About half an hour more at my normal pace… so probably one to two at your pace.”

  Renna yawned as she tied the sweatshirt around her waist. “Can’t you carry me or something?” Her upper arm where she’d gotten the shots earlier was starting to ache.

  He quirked an eyebrow at her, “Carry you? I might be strong and fast, but I’m still human. I get tired too.”

  “Oh.” She felt her cheeks flushing.

  He huffed out a soft laugh and handed her a granola bar from his pocket. “But we can take a rest break. We have plenty of time right now.” He sat down on a fallen log. Gratefully, she sat next to him.

  Renna took the granola bar and started unwrapping it, something about the wrapper tickling the back of her mind. It wasn’t until he also held out a foil packet of purified water that it hit her:

  “Hey! I found some of these in the woods out here the other day. Did you leave them?”

  He sipped on his own water packet before nodding slowly. “Yeah… I have a few stashes around, in case I stay out longer than I planned to. Or if I get angry at my dad and just take off for a run. It’s not like there are a ton of people out here to steal them.”

  “So I was close to the camp? I thought you said I’d never find my way home on my own.”

  His eyebrow shot back up. “Could you tell me right now how to even get back to the camp?”

  She cleared her throat, “Maybe. Probably.” She’d been following him without paying too much attention, lost in her thoughts of what was worth carrying back with her.

  He nodded. “Yeah, the woods pretty much look alike, right? I mean, a little scrubbier as you go a bit higher, maybe some rock formations here and there. But when you’re in them, it looks like…tree, after tree after tree.”

  She chewed her bite of granola, looking around them, “Yeah, pretty much.” She swallowed the gritty bar, considering the trees around them. “So how do you find your way around?”

  “I’ve been marking the woods as I’ve learned them.” He pointed a few feet behind them at a small circle carved into the bark of a tree, just above eye level. “There’s one of the marks. Circles lead toward the camp.” He made a circle motion with his finger as if mapping out the camp, “Because, you know, the camp is kind of shaped like a circle.”

  “How many paths do you have?” She could see how people would miss the small marks. So far in the woods, she’d spent most of the time looking down and ahead, trying not to trip. For all she knew, the entire area had a map of trails carved by his hand.

  “Just a few.” He pointed toward a triangle shape about the same height, this time facing them. “This one goes toward your town. Your house happens to be almost on the way. And there’s a couple other shapes that lead to a few of the other towns, for supply runs.”

  “Oh.” She sipped on her water, dreading finishing their snack and having to start walking again. Her feet were still healing and sore; the bandages only did so much to cushion them. She glanced at Syd’s watch, ticking away the countdown. Eight and a half hours left.

  He took another long sip and then sealed the pouch back up with the zipper lock on the top, shoving it back into one of his pockets. She followed suit and he reached out a hand to carry the water packet for her after she’d zipped it. Once he had their waters tucked away, he reached out to help her up.

  “When you need a break, just say so. You don’t have to be a hero.” He shrugged belatedly, as if thinking about how this entire trip was based on the fact that she’d decided to ‘be a hero.’ The sun was glinting off his dark glasses, so she couldn’t see if the smile reached his eyes. She hoped asking him to take her back like this hadn’t crossed a line in their fledgling friendship. Gone was the easy teasing and soft honesty she’d come to expect from him.

  They’d been walking again for a little while before he broke the silence. “You know, you can still change your mind. I can just take you home, and you can stay there.” He was leading the way, so she couldn’t see his face as he said it. His voice was soft, and void of emotion. Like he was keeping it neutral with effort.

  “I’ve already made up my mind. Besides, I already have… what did Syd say? .05 Milliliters of the manipulated virus in my body now.”

  “She also said it likely wasn’t enough to do you any real harm,” he kept walking, picking his way confidently over a maze of roots.

  “Yeah, but this whole thing is an experiment anyhow. She doesn’t know that for sure. And I don’t want to be sitting at home like some ticking time bomb that could change any minute. I don’t want to risk accidentally hurting my friends or my mom, just on Syd’s hunch.” She felt her chest tighten at the thought of chickening out now and then having her cowardice directly hurt someone she loved.

  He stopped, finally turning to face her, “You realize that the experiment is longer than just if you su
rvive the next few weeks, right?”

  “What do you mean?” Her heart squeezed painfully as he yanked off his sunglasses, his copper eyes immediately watering in the midday sunlight filtering through the trees.

  “I mean, we still die. The changed. And we don’t know what the virus will do, how long it will stay contained in our bodies. If it’s going to be expressed again.” He paused, flicking his fingers over his thumbs while thinking.

  “Like how before they vaccinated for it, the varicella-zoster virus caused chickenpox.” He continued, “And people got all itchy and feverish, but then their bodies had an immune response and they healed up after about a week. People thought that meant it was over. But the virus was still in their bodies. About twenty-five percent of the people who had chickenpox as kids also got this illness called shingles, caused by that exact virus still living in their body from when they were little. Only the second time around, it was worse than the chickenpox. Sometimes it caused permanent nerve damage to people. Even blindness. From everything I read it was really painful. We don’t know if that kind of second life for the virus could happen to us. But knowing how it felt the first time…”

  “Are you afraid of that? I mean, do you… do you think that will happen to you? To us?” She wanted to reach out and wipe the tears forming under his eyes, even if they were only a reaction to the sunlight.

  “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I am a little. But mostly I just think you’re jumping into it too fast.”

  “Yeah, you’ve said that a few times now.” She struggled to tamp down the frustration in her voice. “Do you think you did? You said before, you didn’t know if you would make that choice again now that you know the consequences. Do you think if you’d taken more time to think, that you would’ve changed your mind back then?”

  He shoved his sunglasses back on. “Probably not. I was a stupid kid, though, idolizing my big brother. You have other choices.”

  “Yeah,” she answered, her voice low and heavy, “I could always just go home and explain to my mom that her favorite child is in the woods somewhere being held by scientists until his body dies of organ failure from a virus that she’s lived her whole adult life hating. But not to worry, because at least she has her daughter that may or may not turn into a Wilder and kill her in a few days.” She pressed her hands to her forehead, swiping them firmly against her eyebrows, trying to massage away the headache she felt coming.

  “Renna, I…” he reached out a hand, resting it gently on her shoulder, “I’m sorry. I guess I just feel like I should have done a better job protecting you from my parents.”

  She shook his hand off and straightened up. “It’s not your job to protect me from anyone. Besides, it’s already done. The decision has been made. Can we please talk about something else? Just for a little bit I want to pretend that life is normal.”

  They were silent for a long moment, squared off and staring steadily at each other.

  “Yeah, okay. We can do that. We’ve got about twenty more minutes before we reach your house. Twenty minutes that will be nothing but fun, light hearted conversation.” He flashed her a grin, and she didn’t need his sunglasses to be off to know that it didn’t reach his eyes. Still, she appreciated that he was trying.

  After they’d started walking again he cleared his throat, voice light. “So what do people our age do for fun anyhow?”

  She shrugged, “Mostly watch movies, or go to music shows,” which reminded her of her brother, so she hastily added, “I guess really just hang out.”

  “Well, Renna, prepare to have a great hang out as we walk through the woods on this beautiful sunny day.”

  Renna raised her eyebrows, “That’s a pretty big promise, a great hang out.” She matched her tone to his. If nothing else, they could pretend it was a great day for a great, normal hangout.

  He flashed her a real smile then, and asked, “Have you ever played ‘three truths and a lie’?”

  “Isn’t that a drinking game?”

  “Yeah,” he didn’t lose his smile

  “We don’t have any alcohol, and we’re in the middle of the woods.”

  “Now it’s a dancing game. If you don’t guess which of the three things is the lie, you have to break out your worst dance move and really show it off. I mean, really go for it. No half-assed disco pointing. I meant like, full on arms whipping back and forth, hips jiving kind of disco moves. And I’ll do the same”

  She rolled her eyes but couldn’t fight the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, “Fine, but we keep walking between our awesome dance moves.”

  “Deal.”

  By the time they neared her house and had to call the game off, Renna knew that the first girl Emerson had kissed was named Lacie, and that he’d always wanted to be a firefighter, even long after most kids moved on from that dream. She’d learned that he’d broken his left arm when he was seven, riding his bike down a hill and hitting a stick. Then re-broken it the week he got the cast off when his brother dared him to run across the monkeybars in their backyard and he’d fallen just before the last rung. He’d learned that her favorite ice cream flavor was pistachio, and she’d only kissed one boy in her life. They’d also discovered that both of them had impressively bad dancing skills. At one point his ‘running man’ dance had made her laugh so hard she had to sit down on the forest floor to avoid peeing her pants.

  Once they’d gotten close enough that the outline of her house was visible between the trees, Emerson called the game to a halt, and suggested they wait and observe for a bit.

  “But this is my house. I live here.” She protested as he cleared a patch of ground of sticks and small stones before lowering himself down to sit.

  “Yeah, and you’ve been missing for a few days. Unless I’m mistaken, the only thing anybody really knows right now is that your brother’s car was sitting in your driveway, covered in blood, and you are both missing, after what the news called the largest Wilder attack in years.” The beautiful bubble of normalcy he’d helped create burst and she was again weighed down by the recent events.

  “Oh my gosh. Diamond. Is his car still here?” She couldn’t quite see around the house to the driveway from where they were sitting. What if nobody had been by yet? Would Diamond’s body still be sitting his car, bloated and starting to decompose? She shuddered, shoving the image out of her mind. That is not how she would remember her friend.

  She was about to suggest they work their way through the woods to see the driveway, to see if her mother was home or not, when she heard a snarling growl ripping through the tall ferns that edged their yard.

  “Tim Tam!” She rushed forward and scooped the cat up in her arms, carrying him a few feet away from Emerson, who now stood frantically looking around for anybody in the yard or house. Renna didn’t care if somebody could see her. She buried her face in Tim Tam’s long fur, breathing in his cat scent. After showering him in kisses she hugged him close and pressed her ear to his ribcage, soothed by the steady rumbling of his purr.

  “Oh, I missed you so much my Timmy Tammy!” She pulled away to look him over, seeing a few small sticks tangled in his puffy fur. As she stroked her hand down his body, she felt a few lumps and a small sticky area she feared was blood.

  “Buddy, you’ve been outside this whole time?” She set him down and sat cross legged on the ground to start finger combing the sticks out of his fur. The entire time he walked back and forth across her lap, swiping his face and cheeks against her chin and bumping her shoulders, still rumbling his joy at seeing her. He stopped and sniffed interestedly at her sore left shoulder, before rubbing his cheek harder there.

  “Emerson, I think it’s safe. If anybody was here they’d have come out by now.” Just as Renna said it the sliding door to the house was whipped back, and Tim Tam trotted toward the house. Renna froze, waiting for the copper door to be opened.

  “Rennoodle! Oh my God I thought you were fucking dead!” Alyssa’s voice was thick with tears as she stepped out
of Renna’s house. She didn’t even look around before she flung herself across the yard to tackle Renna back onto the grass in a vice like hug.

  “Lyss,” Renna found herself crying into her best friend’s shield of blond hair, sniffling back snot and trying to form words. After a few minutes of sobbing, Renna loosened her grip on her best friend.

  “Where have you been?” Alyssa pulled back, sitting up abruptly as if realizing they were at the edge of the yard, far from the safety of the house. “We have to get inside. We can’t be out here, not even in the sunlight.”

  As Alyssa dragged Renna back toward the house Renna looked back to the woods. She couldn't see Emerson wherever he waited.

  Loudly, and for his benefit, she said, “I can’t stay long Alyssa. I’ll explain what I can, but then I have to go again.” And, as an afterthought, “What are you doing at my house?”

  “I don’t know who has a longer story at this point,” Alyssa swiped the back of her hand across her nose. “Was Tim Tam with you? I couldn’t find him anywhere. I thought you guys were all…” She trailed off, flapping her hands toward her best friend.

  Renna swallowed hard as she latched the copper door and then the slider. She didn’t know how to tell Alyssa about Benjamin and Diamond. She was working up the courage when Alyssa cut in.

  “Renna, I… I’m really sorry but…” she swiped at her cheeks as if wiping the tears there would help her stop crying. “Diamond’s dead. She’s outside, in your brother’s car. I don’t want you to see her, so just stay inside, okay? That’s why I thought something had happened to you. I…I found your cellphone on the ground near the car, and it had blood on it.”

  Alyssa’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy from days of crying. Renna knew, looking at her best friend who was inexplicably right where she needed her to be, that coming back had been the right thing to do. Leaving her and her mother to wonder forever what happened was unfair. Now she had to be strong to say that good bye. She had to give those explanations.