“What about Dad? He’ll come too, right?”
What about Dad, indeed.
“Here’s the thing, Spoon,” she said. “My job is to take care of you, no matter what. It’s the best job in the world. You know that, right?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, believe me. It is. Being your mom has been the greatest thing in my life. I love you more than anything. But sometimes being your mom means I have to make decisions you’re not going to understand, that you’re not going to like.”
His face darkened.
“Dad’s not coming,” he said.
“I don’t know if he will or not,” she said.
“Well, if he’s not going, I’m not either,” Will said matter-of-factly.
“Sweetie,” she said.
“This is bullshit!” he yelled, the intensity of it rocking Rachel backward a little. It wasn’t the profanity that bothered her; she was as guilty as anyone of causing Miss Manners to spin in her grave. In that outburst, she saw a bit of his father in him, his terrible rage, rarely put on display but wise to avoid when it was.
He flung his Lego set against the wall, where it splintered into a shower of red and blue and gray bricks. Then he ran to his room and slammed the door; it was a good slamming door, heavy enough and set just so in its frame that a firm launch could shake the trailer.
Rachel kept her seat on the sofa.
She stared at the Lego pieces scattered across the table.
12
Sleep eluded her all night, her quarry remaining out of reach. Her eyes would droop, and then she would hear a noise, a raccoon outside her window or the trailer settling or one of those other mysterious things that went bump in the night, and then she’d be back up again, her heart racing. On her back, on her side, on her stomach, it made no difference because she simply kept replaying her conversation with Will.
Her window faced east, a window through which she had watched countless nights. From getting up for the first shift at the warehouse, to shepherding Will through infancy, there had been many opportunities to be up late. Will had been a terribly fussy baby, colicky in the evenings and possessed of a circadian rhythm that kept him awake all night. He didn’t sleep through the night until he was a year old.
She would never forget that moment, not as long as she lived. It had been her day off, and she was ready for another sleepless night. He’d fussed a bit before bed, and so she’d lain down on the floor next to him, just for a minute. But she dropped off quickly, probably before he did, and when she woke, the room was filled with light, the sun already above her top window sash. Her mind was clear, her body rested, so much so that for the briefest of moments, she thought she was back in her bed at Caltech, the plague nothing more than a terrible and vivid dream. Then she remembered, and she peeked into his crib with dread, afraid Medusa had come for him in the night, that the virus had been extra cruel to her, to simply come and take him after letting her think he had escaped its terrible kiss. But there he had been, still asleep but stirring. His diaper was full but his pajamas were dry, and that little chubby finger was wedged in the corner of his mouth.
An eternity had passed since then.
Her eyes were thick and heavy and it felt like sludge flowed through her veins. But the die was cast; she’d soon have to face this day with no sleep. All she could hope for was clarity of mind, as there was much to think about today. Many decisions to be made.
A sharp knock on her front door broke her from her trance, setting her heart abuzz. More bad news, it was going to be more bad news. Hell, if it wasn’t for bad news, they wouldn’t have any news at all. She threw on her robe and hustled out of her bedroom as the knocking increased in its fervor.
“Rachel, it’s Charlotte.”
Charlotte rushed inside the house as soon as Rachel had opened the door wide enough to accommodate her narrow frame. Outside, it was still dark, perhaps an hour until sunrise.
“You’re in trouble,” Charlotte said. “You’ve got to get Will out of here.”
Rachel’s throat closed up with fear.
“What? What’s happening?”
“Eddie made the deal.”
“He what?”
“Willy,” Charlotte called out. “Get up, we’re going on a trip.”
“I don’t understand,” Rachel said.
Charlotte made a beeline for Rachel’s room. Rachel followed, her head swimming, feeling like she was moving in slow motion. It was a dream, another dream. Maybe she had simply gone insane somewhere along the line. Maybe she was still wandering around San Diego, insane with grief, a victim of a psychotic break and unable to handle the disaster. Or maybe the plague had never happened at all, and she was in the loony bin after eating some bad mushrooms with her college buds.
“You pack,” she said. “I’ll talk.”
Rachel stood in front of her dresser, frozen.
“He’s been planning this ever since you first met that woman. He made the deal that day and has been selling it to the others. Everyone is in. They just wrapped up their meeting. They’re buying her story. That she’s going to give us two years’ worth of food.”
She paused.
“Really? People are buying it?”
“They’re desperate,” Charlotte said. “They want to believe it. They want to believe she can figure out why Will is different. They want to believe.”
“Jesus.”
“Dammit, girl, pack,” Charlotte snapped. “This is it. You’ve got to go, and I mean now. Eddie thinks I’m on his side, thinks I’m here getting you to agree to it.
A noose of terror suddenly cinched itself around Rachel’s throat.
“Is she here?
Charlotte was shaking her head.
“She’ll be here at daybreak.”
“Brilliant,” she said. “Because Priya won’t kill him and take Will anyway. How can everyone be so stupid? She’s not giving us two years’ worth of food.”
As the reality of what Eddie had done settled in, she hustled out to the hall closet, where she’d kept the go-bags. Every few months, she updated based on the season and accounting for Will’s growth. Inside them, she had packed MREs, water purification tablets, some medicine, clothes, waterproof matches, a gun, and a few other items to give them a head start in case they needed to escape quickly. The supplies would only last a few days, but they would be enough.
“He did this without asking me,” she said, mostly to herself.
A knock on the door startled her. She pressed her eye to the peephole. Eddie. Alone. He looked tired, his face gaunt and unshaven.
“It’s Eddie,” she whispered to Charlotte.
Rachel opened the door after Charlotte had disappeared into her bedroom.
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk,” Eddie said, slithering inside the narrow gap between the doorjamb and her body. Like the snake that he was.
“I didn’t invite you in,” she said, hoping her voice was steelier than she felt.
“Can we not do this right now?” he said. “Something’s come up.”
His eyes drifted toward the gun in her hand.
“What’s with the piece?” he asked, nodding toward the weapon.
“I heard a noise,” she said, sliding the gun into the pocket of her sweatshirt. “I didn’t know it was you. What do you want?”
“I have some good news.”
This was how he was playing it. Make it seem like he was doing them all a huge favor.
“Well, it’s good news, but it’s not easy news,” he said, taking a seat on the couch. “It’s about Will.”
She remained silent, spooling out all the rope the man would need to hang himself with.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. About Will.”
He tipped his chin upward and sniffed, as though he were searching the innermost depths of his soul. Then he sighed.
“You’re right. I haven’t been the best father. I should’ve do
ne better by him.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she said.
“But I think I have a way to make things up to him. To you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Your first instinct will be to hate me,” he said.
She couldn’t disagree with him there.
“You know what?” he said, craning his toward the bedroom. “Will should hear this too. He asleep?”
“Yes,” she said as firmly as she could.
“I’ll wake him up,” said Eddie. He started to get up off the couch. “It really can’t wait.”
“Tell me first,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his arm tightly. “Then I’ll decide if it’s something he needs to hear. That’s what parents do, you know. They discuss things together and then they decide what’s best for the kid.”
Eddie took his seat again, rubbing his forearm where she had grabbed him. She could see red marks in his flesh where she had buried her nails.
“I made the deal with Priya,” Eddie said.
“You asshole.”
He chuckled softly.
“No way this is happening,” she said.
“Oh, it’s happening,” Eddie said. “It’s unanimous.”
“You’re right,” she said. “He’s not going.”
“You and I don’t get a vote,” Eddie said “Conflict of interest. Everyone else voted in favor of the trade.”
“We don’t get a vote,” she repeated. “We’re only his fucking parents.”
“These people have a say in this.”
“They don’t actually. These people can kiss my ass,” Rachel spat. “Do you really think she’s going to swoop in here with a tractor-trailer full of food? She’s going to take Will and then she’s going to kill you.”
He smacked her, a hard slap across her cheek. It stung, rattled her marbles a little bit, but strangely, it didn’t bother her too much. The man he had once been was dead to her, nothing more than a stranger on the street. The slap felt no different than catching her finger in a drawer, than stubbing her toe on a coffee table. Pain came in many forms, and although he had never hit her before, this changed nothing. Was it worse than the prospect of starvation, of growing old in an increasingly empty world? Worse than losing her son? Please. It was a bug bite. Everything she and Eddie had ever been, from the passion of those early days to the comfort they found together to the joy of bringing new life into the world, it was long gone, long dead.
“Will,” he called out. “Dad’s here. Come out here a second, buddy.”
“He’s not going,” she said as he looked toward the bedroom.
“Maybe he’ll want to go,” Eddie said.
“He’s eleven years old. He does not get a say in this. God, how do you not get this?”
He slid down to the couch, out of her reach, and stood up. She leaped across the cushions, wrapping her arms around his legs and pulled him to the ground. That had been the element of surprise; he was much bigger and heavier than her. She felt like one of those little birds that plucked insects from the hide of an elephant. He threw her aside and walloped her across the back of the head. Her teeth clicked together, catching her lower lip between them, and her eyes lost their focus for a second.
He got up and smoothed out his shirt, because he was nothing if not conscious of his appearance, and she didn’t quite understand how she had let herself fall for this nimrod. She pushed that out of her mind with the typical if-no-Eddie-then-no-Will rationalization.
“Will,” he called out again.
She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, feeling a little blood drip from her lip where she had bitten it. Her hands drifted to the pocket of her sweatshirt, her fingers dancing along the cold steel of the barrel, across its worn grip. Without thinking about it, the gun was out, the safety off, a round chambered, and it was up, and oh, Jesus, wasn’t this a scene straight out of a nightmare.
“Mommy!” called out Will as he ambled out of his room.
“It’s OK, sweetie,” she replied, as she aimed the gun at Eddie. “Mommy’s here.”
Eddie quickly glanced over his shoulder, then did a double take as he saw Rachel’s weapon drawn on him. A stone-cold silence fell on the room like the season’s first snowfall. She was aware of everything. The weight of the gun in her hand, the sound of a moth flitting against the lantern, the sound of her dry lips separating from one another.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Get out,” she said.
He smiled, his huge high-wattage grin revealing a set of teeth that had yellowed a bit over the years. That smile had weakened her resolve, even her thighs, many times over the years, the lovable scamp caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But now it seemed wrong, out of place. A bright flower growing amid the rubble of a fallen office tower.
Her heart throbbed fiercely and she could barely breathe now. She glanced down at the gun, which felt foreign in her hands, like she was a third party watching this scene unfold. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye. When she looked up again, she saw a blur in Will’s doorway. She paused, unsure of what to do next.
“Daddy, I don’t want to go,” she could hear Will saying, his voice tight and high-pitched, as it became when he was under stress.
“Come on, buddy,” Eddie said. “It’s going to be great.”
“Eddie,” she said. “You are not taking him anywhere.”
“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” Eddie asked dismissively, the tone of a husband looking curiously at a homemaker wife holding a hammer. She ignored him. His hands flashed behind his back and suddenly, he had his gun was out, aimed squarely at Rachel’s chest.
“Come over here, Will. Get behind Mommy.”
Will glanced up at his father.
“Don’t look at him,” she said. “Do what Mommy says and everything will be fine.”
“Not one step,” Eddie said. “Don’t you move, son.”
Will stood awkwardly, one foot in front of the other. His gaze bounced from parent to parent manically, as though he were watching a high-speed tennis match. Rachel kept her eyes fixed on Eddie but occasionally allowed herself a glance at Will; the look of utter confusion on his face crushed her, but there was nothing she could do about that now. Now simply surviving this was the goal. Emotional scars would have to be bandaged later. If there was a later.
“Why do you have guns, why do you have guns, no, guns are bad, you told me guns are bad,” Will said. His voice quivered and cracked as the words rushed out of his mouth.
As Will reacted to the showdown, Rachel detected movement to her left. She willed Charlotte to stay out of this, tucked away, not introduce this explosive element to an already unstable chemical reaction.
But because nothing, not a goddamn thing was going to be easy about this, out came Charlotte, her own weapon drawn and aimed at Eddie.
“Shoulda figured,” Eddie said, glancing at Charlotte. “You were awfully quick to go along with this.”
“Don’t blame her,” Rachel said. “This was never going to happen, whether she told me or not.”
“It’s the only chance we’ve got,” Eddie said.
“I was going ask you if you actually believed that woman, but here we are.”
“I don’t know why you don’t believe her.”
“Two years’ worth of food? I just…”
She blew out a noisy sigh.
“It’s over, Eddie,” she said, lowering her weapon. “I’m not going to argue with you. But this isn’t happening. I know you. You won’t go through with it. I know you.”
They stood there a moment, the three of them, and in the space of that moment, Rachel thought she had judged Eddie correctly. That when it came down to it, despite all the fear and confusion and mystery surrounding his son’s very existence, he would not do it. The others, she could almost understand. They had no skin in the game. Will was a scientific anomaly and a valuable one at that. His presence among them put
them all in danger. But Eddie was his father. Those were his shoulders that Will had ridden on, go horsey go, many years ago. He was the one who was supposed to teach Will about being a man, especially in the world they now occupied.
He would not turn over his own flesh and blood to a monster.
But then his jaw set, and his eyes widened, and she realized how very wrong she had been. She did know this part of him, this dark side of him, all too well. As Eddie’s finger pulled back on the trigger, she was already diving for the ground. The gun roared, the report deafening in the small confines of the living room. Her ears rang and felt like they’d been jammed with cotton.
Dead, she was dead, her body rolling up against the side of the sofa. Returning fire was not an option because there was a chance she would hit Will, and she couldn’t do that. She had made her choice and now she would have to live, scratch that, die with it, because until the bitter end, she had been unable to accept the fact Eddie had been a father in biology only.
She pushed herself to her knees, using the sofa as cover. Eddie, perhaps thinking he’d removed Rachel from the equation, had turned his attention toward Charlotte, who had retreated behind the doorjamb.
“Mommy! Mommy!” cried Will, his desperate, panicked voice like a thousand knives to her heart.
She fired.
13
The blast from Rachel’s gun shook the trailer, but this one did not seem as loud, perhaps because the first shot had deafened her, or maybe because she’d been hit and couldn’t feel it and her senses were starting to go, one at a time. A scream of bloody murder, Will, it was Will screaming, that crazy son of a bitch had murdered Will.
Eddie lay on the floor, writhing around, his hands clenched at his belly and slick with blood. Will’s arms were wrapped around Charlotte’s waist, his face buried in her hip. Charlotte still had her gun up, aimed directly at Eddie. She watched Eddie, whose gyrations weakened in intensity as blood leaked from the gaping wound in his midsection.
“You guys OK?” she croaked out.
“Mommy!”
Will ran toward her and threw his arms around his mother. His touch galvanized her, and she climbed to her feet, her son still wrapped around her like he had done when he was small. She held him tight, kissing his head and his face and never wanting to let go.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 66