Ophelia

by Rain, Briana

  There was a long pause.

  “He was able to stitch you up.” I said.

  He checked his side, where I’d slapped a bandage and a butt load of duct tape after Harrison was done. He had ditched his gloves, which were on the ground a couple feet to my left, once he was done with his brother, and put on a new pair for my sister.

  Then Harrison instructed me to give James something for the pain when he woke up, because there would be a heck of a lot of it, and that's what I did. I noticed that Harrison had a lot of medical supplies in his bag. I don't think Mom and I had even thought of gloves when raiding that drugstore on day one.

  Clyde was nowhere to be found. Harrison and Addeline had volunteered for the whole fuel run, but Clyde hadn’t said anything about going. After what happened the last time she left the group, I just kind of assumed that he would go with her.

  “I cried like a baby, didn't I?” I looked up, taking a second before realizing that he had said something, sitting in the opening of the trunk.

  I was standing across from him using hand sanitizer to try and get the blood off of my hands. I didn’t like the fact that blood stained. It really bothered me. Like it held on to torture you of whatever bad memory came with it. It was cruel.

  And gross.

  “Yeah... yeah but you stopped when you passed out.” I wasn't gonna sugarcoat it, but I also didn't want to make him feel odd about it. He was shot for Pete’s sake. That was a huge thing.

  “Harrison went to go get fuel, after stitching you two up, so that we can get the heck out of here.” Even though I didn't sugarcoat it, I still didn't want to linger on this topic for long. I nodded to where Vi was sitting in the backseat, her legs swinging out the door.

  Mom was taking care of her arm. My sister looked so fragile and completely drained of what little energy she had in the first place. I had the urge to find a warehouse, take all their bubble wrap, and wrap her in it.

  Lucky was playing with his ball, but much more carefully this time. Anyone could see that he was fearfully spending more time making sure that he had control of it than having actual fun.

  “So… why didn't you do them? The stitches?”

  I grossly snorted as my way of laughing.

  “Me? Me, stitch you up? James… I'm, like, the least qualified person here, dude.” I threw the bottle to him, giving up on the sanitizer, and really, really wanting some soap and water.

  He reached over and shoved it in the closest bag to him, which happened to be mine.

  “Look around,” he said. “we’re all the least qualified person to be doing anything.”

  I just obsessively wiped my hands on my jeans, but nothing happened. I was starting to feel manic about the red.

  I looked around, seeing nothing but trees and a highway sign that read “New Lisbon”.

  I wondered what happened to the old Lisbon. Ha.

  While looking through the trees I could see something shiny.

  I'd bet the farm that it was water.

  “I gotta get this stuff off of me.” I said. “It’s making me insane.”

  “Mom! Mom, I see some water over there, I'm gonna see if I can get this stuff off of my hands.” I called loud enough so that, on the other side of the Jeep, she could hear me, but not so loud as to attract unwanted attention from anything that could be nearby.

  “Be careful. Hey, take this.” She rummaged around before throwing a plastic bag with something in it over the top of the car.

  It was close enough that I could've caught it, if I had any hand eye coordination. I still tried, though, so I deserved points for that. Even if I dropped my bat in the process.

  I turned away, ignoring James, who was probably watching me as I left.

  I felt kinda bad for leaving him hanging like that, mid conversation. But, at the same time, I kinda didn't.

  There was a guardrail at the edge of the last lane on this side of the highway but I had never “jumped” anything before.

  Ignoring James’s obnoxiously loud snort of laughter, I swung one foot over, put my hands on the metal that's been out in the sun all day, and quickly swung my other foot around.

  Ouch.

  With the tied bag leaking blood hanging off of one wrist and my bat settled in my other hand, I set off. I crossed the median, with grass that went up to my knees that made me fear for bugs, then across the other, completely empty stretch of pavement of I-90. It was weird. I couldn't see any sort of silhouette in either direction. No cars. No people. No Crazies.

  At least it’s uneventful. I'd take uneventful any day.

  I wondered how the others planned on finding gas.

  This place looked untouched. No bodies, no blood— save what was dripping from my bag— no screaming or roaring.

  No apocalypse.

  I could've just as easily been wandering around after our car broke down on our road trip. Our nice, family road trip, with the only danger being the twin’s anger when they weren't provided with enough snacks.

  It was a nice, quiet stroll through a thin field as I approached the trees. I almost felt relaxed, even after everything that’d happened in the past twenty-four hours. Even though I was carrying a bag of blood.

  The sun was up. The field was golden. Everyone who had been shot was stitched up, and were going to be just fine. And I was about to get this blood off of my hands.

  But, then, I literally stumbled across the first body, and almost fell onto a second one, shattering my intricately weaved illusion into so many pieces that I knew I could never put it together again. No matter how much time and effort I put into forgetting I was in the apocalypse, I didn’t think that it could happen again.

  The trail of bodies led to my destination. The sound of flies buzzing and water lapping against rocks mingled with each other. My feet snapped dead branches and twigs, my criss-cross walk not working the way I’d planned. I sounded and felt like an elephant. Scratch that, I sound like two elephants.

  Two more bodies, clearly Crazies, got me to the water. Four in all. The first two were possibly already turned, but it must've been recently, because there was an absence of rotting skin. The second two had probably turned at the beginning of all of this, their entire faces almost gone and the remaining fat and muscles sliding off of the bone and into the dead leaves.

  It was a sight, but not one that I wanted to see.

  If I kept holding my bat as tight as I was, there'd end up being a permanent mold of my fingers in the grip.

  Standing still while listening and waiting was the worst. Like, when you're watching a scary movie, and you know that something’s going to pop out at you, you just don't know when. Except this was real life and I really had to pee. If something jumped out at me, I was afraid that I wouldn't have to pee anymore.

  What was also really bad about the Apocalypse was that everything was a threat. Even the sound of someone crying. It could’ve been a trap.

  At the same time, it also couldn't have been a trap. So for this reason, I went forward on my journey to the lake, motivations changing ever so slightly.

  The water was… pretty. The sun on it and the trees and the breeze— it looked untouched, and for that, I called it beautiful.

  I'd never stood at a tree line before, hidden to all but nothing hidden to me. I felt like a spy, and not in a good way. Like I was trespassing. Like it was illegal, despite there being no more law enforcers to catch me.

  And I definitely I didn't want to spy when I saw who was crying. Clyde sat on a recently fallen tree, his elbows on his knees, face in his hands, quietly sobbing. He cried like you wouldn't expect a man to cry— with jerking shoulders and gasping breaths and rolling waves of tears and snot combined.

  I thought about what to do, and wondered how he hadn't already heard my clumsy clomping through the dead floor of this patch of trees.

  Should I try to retreat? No, that’d be silly. He’d hear me for sure and then we’d be left in that awkward silence thing where neither of us would want to
bring it up. Scratch that plan entirely.

  Should I shuffle around a little? Make some “subtle” noise? Give him some time to collect himself… Yeah, that sounded like a good plan… but it just didn't feel right. Plus, what if he turned and saw me moving my feet through the dead twigs and shaking a branch? Can you spell awkward?

  I'm…okay.

  I'm gonna go for it.

  “Hey.” I stepped out and waited for his reaction. Waited to make sure that he won't be angry. Waited so that I knew I didn't scare him, because I've seen firsthand how quick of a shot he was.

  His sobbing stuttered to a halt as he whipped his head to the right. His gun remained far away from him, propped against the fallen tree. He didn’t even reach for it.

  Some tears still rolled down his damp face, despite all of his strain to keep them at bay. His breath was still uneven. He quickly wiped his eyes with his shirt.

  “It's… okay.” I tried to find the right words, which was a challenge for me in any situation, but this one proved especially tough. “It's okay… to cry, you know.”

  Timid as some sort of nature creature that I couldn't think of, even though there were dozens of names to choose from, I walked over to him, and sat down between him and the rifle.

  I looked ahead at reflection in the water of the sun behind us. The shining, but not blinding, glow. The shadows of the trees. The rocks and dirt and scattered pieces of dead wood along the shore.

  “It's okay to cry.” I repeated.

  I didn’t look at him, because he was looking at me, and it took all I had not to be awkward or say something sarcastic.

  Clyde didn't say anything, which I couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing.

  He sniffed and pulled his shirt up to wipe his face again.

  Then my face was smushed against his tear-soaked and dirt-covered shirt, and the dam had burst again. His insanely strong arms pulled me tight and crushed me against him, but I didn't mind. Correction— I didn't mind once I had turned my head enough so that I could breathe.

  We all had to deal with what'd happened to us. To our families. Our friends. Our lives. And bottling it up wasn't the answer.

  This guy, as tough as he was and as strong as he was, looked broken. Like the plywood and glass that I went to town on with my purple bat back at the police station.

  Shattered.

  The Apocalypse… it did things to us. Simple things that were impossible to explain. I guess for me, I dealt with it in anger and violence, surviving the fear by smashing my bat into car windows and boards.

  Clyde didn't have a bat.

  “I… I've never— I've never shot… and— and…”

  The words after that… I couldn't understand them, but I had a good idea what he was talking about. Killing something that was dead and killing someone that was alive were two completely different things.

  Mom and Kevin.

  Me and the Creeper.

  Clyde and Sparkplug.

  Now, I knew that I was the one who stood out from that list. The one who'd never actually pulled the trigger. Actually, I'd never pulled any trigger at someone before, but I still killed that guy. Although, seeing Clyde’s reaction made me think that I should just take my name off of the list. Like, I didn't actually kill him, the Crazy that ripped out his throat did.

  Clyde and Sparkplug.

  Mom and Kevin.

  There. Much better, I guess.

  Now it was my turn not to say anything, which probably was best. I almost said it's okay, it's okay, like how one usually would when trying to comfort another. But… it wasn’t really okay, now was it? It was traumatic stuff. I missed the safety of my basement. The boringness of my Calculus homework. I missed willing the clock to tick by faster at work. It was the mundane things that were getting to me.

  So I didn't say a thing. We just sat there. And sat. And sat. Our hands stretched out and fingers spread to cover as much possible space, as if the more we touched, the more comfort would transfer between us.

  It made me feel sad. Sadder than I already felt.

  It took a while, but I think Clyde started to feel calmer. He wasn't crying as violently, but the sniffling and tears still had a steady pace.

  Usually if I was freaking out, I would hug my mother. Sometimes the twins, but they didn't get the whole “freaking-out” thing and didn't like hugs lasting very long, so they would usually end up pushing away from me, not helping the situation whatsoever.

  According to one of the many tv shows I watched, the human body actually physically calmed down when you were hugged. Like, the pressure around the torso released something to calm your nerves or the pressure causes them to slow down… I didn’t really remember exactly how, just the end result.

  There was a rustle from inside the trees— twigs snapping, branches moving. The two of us jumped away from each other and I ended up standing a good three feet away from where Clyde was originally sitting while the southerner had jumped another three feet down the fallen tree. He had his gun in his hand now, and whatever was coming towards us made a lot more noise than I did. Like a bull in a china shop. A porcupine in a balloon factory. A—

  Lucky came stumbling out of the trees some yards over from where I’d emerged. Hopefully, this adjustment in direction allowed his young eyes to be pardoned from the trail of horrors that led me here. He didn't need to see that. He didn't need to see a lot of things.

  But that was probably wishful thinking.

  “That guy needs your help.” He wheezed.

  Clyde made a sound that I couldn't describe and lowered his gun to the non-threat, then sat down. He put his head in his hands again.

  “Okay.” I had to answer my brother, and I had to go with him. I had to. There was no way I was sending him ahead of me, alone.

  So I turned away from Clyde, and walked away from him. It felt wrong.

  “Ophelia?”

  I turned back way too quickly when Clyde said my name.

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you… not…” I knew what he was going to ask, or, at least I thought I knew. It was like anticipating someone saying ‘you're welcome’ after you thank them.

  “Don't worry. I won't.”

  I won't tell anyone.

  Chapter 25: Cleansing Liquid

  “Stop whincing!” I yelled at James.

  “Stop using me as your pincushion!” He yelled back at me.

  He sat in the back of the Jeep, leaning on the wall while I tried to give him stitches. How I was roped into it, I had no idea. A lone, quiet Crazy had found the Jeep. Mom took care of it quietly, but before she did, James tried to help. Long story short, James ended up passed out on the ground a few feet away from the Jeep and was bleeding again. I helped Mom get James— the new idiot of the group— back into the trunk, but because I watch more medical shows than her, (5:1, which is pretty bad. I have— had a problem) I was elected by her to attempt to stitch him up while she kept watch.

  This was a fact that James was very bitter about right now.

  Well, I would be crabby too if I had me as a doctor.

  I didn’t mention it, but it also might’ve been because I saw her hands shaking.

  “James, you’re bleeding. Again. You passed out. Either I stitch you up or Lucky does.”

  Lucky, who was standing on the other side of car, looked at me with wide eyes.

  “Can't we try and put pressure on it again?” I mean, it wasn't like he was shot in the leg, or the arm. If he was shot in either of these places, then we could put a tourniquet on it, or something.

  “James, we tried that for like ten minutes.” I was freaking the frick out. My hands weren’t shaking, but when he looked up and into my eyes that he reconsidered complaining. I could just imagine my face now: sporting the eyes of someone who belonged in an asylum yet somehow managed to escape it.

  “Okay.” He kept his reply short, sweet, and to the point. I think he was mentally preparing himself for my crap job as a doctor, and grinding his t
eeth. I noticed that even though his skin was dark, he looked pale. He, too, was understandably shaking, like my mother, and sweating a ton, like me.

  I lined the long, curved needle at the edge of where it was needed the most. I think at most he popped… three stitches? I didn’t know. It was just a mess of blood and flesh that I really wanted to look away from. I just wanted to get one stitch in, and maybe a second one if the first didn't go so bad, but that would already be pushing it.

  Like, in movies it looked so easy! Like, just some Random Joe™ with no experience and a CPR class up his sleeve could whip out a sewing kit he conveniently keeps around him— because of reason 1) emergency costume fixes for his daughter, reason 2) his long lost and/or dead wife used to sew and he, with a sensitive side and all, keeps it as a memento, or reason 3) unexplained reason, or plot hole— and patch someone up! And the person they're stitching just winces!

  No! That’s! Not! How! It! Worked!

  A couple of minutes ago, Mom had to stuff a piece of fabric, possibly a literal sock, into James’ mouth because he was making so much noise!

  Ah! Where was the sock now! Why did he have to make so much noise! I felt so guilty!

  And why—

  “What are you doing?” Called out Harrison, from who knows how far away. I dramatically sighed with relief that I didn't have to start or finish anything with the slippery needle.

  I looked up from James’ bleeding flesh and abs, which I totally wasn't looking at, and breathed out a, “Thank god,” under my breath at the same time James did. Honestly, I couldn't blame him.

  When Harrison approached, I shoved the needle in his hand as he went to snatch it from me. Addeline was jogging over, also with empty hands. I quickly grabbed the hand sanitizer, and got away from the situation as fast as I could. I would’ve never thought that I’d be happy to see a guy who’d pointed a gun at me.

  “She's trying to kill me, Harrison!” James grumbled though clenched teeth to his brother, once he thought I was out of an earshot.

  Obviously, the idiot miscalculated.

  Well, it was no cakewalk for me either, dude.