Chapter five.
Sam
Rose and I were sharing the smallest room, but there were bunk beds and we were the only two people comfortable sharing such close quarters. It was Karla’s nephew’s room, or at least I assumed by the red and blue décor, celebrating both Marvel and D.C. and every other comic book Super I could imagine. Rose had hopped on the top bunk immediately, stretching her shorter frame across the twin mattress with its rocket sheets and Spiderman comforter. She’d linked her fingers behind her head, lying down against the pillow and sighing.
“A proper bed’s the ticket,” she said nonchalantly, but I could tell she was forcing her voice to stay even. I wondered what she was thinking about. Her own bed, maybe? Her own room on the other side of the world?
“I haven’t slept on a twin bed since I was eleven.” I sat down on the lower bunk, grateful the jeans were the kind with stretch. I was sitting on Iron Man’s face. I’d readily admit to that being a fantasy. Hello, Robert Downey Jr.
“My room at home’s not much bigger than this.” Rose turned over on her side, propping herself up on one elbow. “I liked it though. It’s cozy. Pale yellow, and my mum painted little butterflies everywhere. I love butterflies. I’ve got them everywhere—my duvet, pillows, bookcases. Flipping heck, that makes me sound about two years old, doesn’t it?” she laughed with a small shake of her head.
“No. Butterflies aren’t reserved for toddlers.” I smiled up at her, then patted the bed to feel its firmness and scooted a little further back on the mattress.
“They are,” she said with another shake of her head and a melancholy look.
“You know what my thing is?” I pulled my sock-clad feet up on the bed and crossed my legs, no longer able to crane my neck to see her—too close to the wall now.
“What?” she said, leaning over the edge of the bunk to look down at me, her hair waterfalling over the metal rails, a mess of tangles and blood spatter. We didn’t just need changes of clothes, we needed showers. Stupid water going off.
“Warthogs.”
Rose stifled a giggle.
“Hey, you promised not to laugh,” I protested.
“No I didn’t. Good job, too, because that’s ridiculous.” She snorted a bit, in a cute, enamoring way. I didn’t think she had that in her. She was more the tough one, more: stick to it and get it done, no matter the cost. At least that was how it had felt since I’d met her.
“It’s not!” I grabbed one of the pillows off my bunk and hit at her head, which she quickly pulled back to safety.
“Seriously though.” Rose’s head popped back into view. “Why in the world?”
I shrugged. “The Lion King. It was mine and Dad’s favorite movie. He’d pretend to be Timon. I’d pretend to be Pumbaa. We’d sing about being upwind and eating bugs, and one time he actually made me try this chocolate with roasted ants on top. I drew the line at worms and grubs though. Honestly, not even cooked with ketchup.” I felt my nose wrinkle up in disgust, thinking back to the mealworms Dad had ordered at a high-end restaurant once in the city after a rehearsal. He’d thought it was funny. I hadn’t been amused. I wished now that I’d laughed and tried the damn things. It was only a few months later that he was gone.
“Slimy yet satisfying,” Rose quipped with an arch of her eyebrow.
“Who knows.” I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll feel the same way about…” I let my words trail off, giving a little tap on my forehead suggestively.
She rolled her eyes. “Enough with that. You’re not going to turn into a…a zombie, Sam.” Her words died to a whisper and we shared a look that showed both of our uncertainties about that possibility.
A knock on the door stole our attention before I could tease again over my possible future appetite. It seemed to annoy her a bit, but I needed to joke about the possibility. It was keeping me sane. It was helping me avoid the actual, gut-wrenching what-ifs.
“Who is it?” I called, standing up and shoving my hands into the back pockets of the jeans.
“It’s Karla, baby.” The cheerful woman’s voice was instantly soothing. She seemed calm, at home here. I thought maybe we were seeing more of the real her—family woman, doting aunt. Zombie killer enthusiast didn’t really seem to suit her.
I walked over and opened the door, a smile on my face. I genuinely liked her; I think I’d have liked her outside of this whole mess, though we might not have ever truly met without the end of the world happening. That was a strange thought—the way our lives had suddenly diverged. Or maybe this was the path we were always on, a set fate, a set future.
“What’s up?” I heard Rose clamber down behind me.
“Nolan wanted me to see who’d be up for a second-shift watch. Leon started to come up here, but he looked like he needed to step out on the deck and get some fresh air. Bug up that boy’s butt right now, if you ask me.”
Rose was beside me now, nodding. “Yeah. Something’s up with him for sure.”
Karla looked at Rose, her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop earlier, but you did right. This ain’t no time to be thinking about love and fighting over feelings.”
“Exactly how I feel,” Rose said, a little awkwardly.
“I don’t mind taking the next shift,” I said, changing the subject.
“I’ll do it with her,” Rose nodded, heading back toward the bunkbeds.
“Nolan was wondering if he could come get you for later, actually,” Karla questioned. “Barrett’s already said he’d go after me and Leon. Nolan doesn’t want anyone staying up alone and he’s not exactly Barrett’s biggest fan. Those two are oil and vinegar.”
“They are that.” I nodded. “I don’t mind taking watch with Barrett,” I said probably a little too eagerly.
“Great,” Karla replied, “I’ll tell Nolan so he can get some rest. You two hit the hay too. I’ll come wake you, Sam, when it’s your turn.”
“All right,” I said as Karla started closing the door.
Rose was already back on her bed and snug under the covers. I looked down at the bed I was using and knew I wouldn’t fall asleep quickly enough to get any decent period of rest. I often suffered from insomnia—stress-induced, according to my doctor. And it was Armageddon, no happy sleeping pills in sight. I pulled the superhero covers back anyways, took off the blazer and folded it onto a small nearby dresser, and then climbed into bed.
At first, I didn’t want to disturb the little boy’s bed. I thought I’d just settle myself atop the comforter, be as noninvasive possible. But as my eyelids grew heavy, my mind foggy, my body craved how it felt to be snuggled down in bed, comforted by a warm cocoon of covers and pillows. So I relented, giving myself what I needed—that sense of safety and home that is associated with a house, a room, a bed. I pulled the covers awkwardly out from under me, wiggled my legs beneath them, and pulled the thin, soft material up to my chin.
It was my turn to sigh. Twin-sized or not, the bed felt like heaven after the hard floor of the terminal. When I closed my eyes, I hoped for restful sleep.
But I was immediately caught up in darkness. Light. Then dreams.
I was standing in a bathroom. Freshly showered, water dripping down my arms and thighs and soaking the pale blue floor mat. It felt wonderful—to be clean. I basked in that for a moment, in the feeling of being, somewhat, made new. The room around me was still steamy from the hot stream of water that I realized…no, felt…had been cascading over my body while I’d stood in the bath, watching the bottom of the tub run red with all the gore and blood that had been stuck to my skin. That part of the dream was before me though, before I fell asleep.
Because I was asleep.
Caught in one of those conscious dreams where reality and make-believe collide.
I lifted a corner of the towel that wrapped around my body—because there was a towel there now, as if magically conjured by my wet nakedness—and walked toward the fogged-up mirror. I pressed the soft material of the white cloth against it and was about to
stroke downwards to wipe away the mist and see myself clearly in the glass.
A knocking at the door made me jump.
Hadn’t someone else just knocked on the door?
No, wait, that was in the bedroom…I’d been with Rose. That had been real.
“Coming,” I said, the word sounding like I was caught underwater somewhere or still in the shower, droplets running over my mouth like a fountain.
The knock sounded again.
“I said I was coming.” Even I could hear the impatience in my dream voice, despite its lack of clarity.
My fingers went to the doorknob, also made slick by the steam, and I turned it. It hadn’t been locked. Whoever was waiting on the other side could have simply walked in. I didn’t like that, for some reason. It bothered me more than it should have.
I swung the door open slowly, revealing my father on the other side. My father. My dad.
My heart thumped with joy, a laugh caught in my throat.
Caught, because the sight of him did not only make me happy, it made me hungry.
Suddenly, my throat felt like a desert—dry and aching for water.
No, not water.
Blood.
And my belly was empty, yet it had no use for breads and fruits and typical human sustenance.
He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but I was faster.
I launched myself across the threshold, pounced on his body. My mouth went to his neck and I felt the warm spurt of something that tasted like heaven: blood.
I groaned.
Blood.
I sat up so fast, so hard, so startled, that I slammed my head into the bottom of the upper bunk.
“Motherfu—” I stuttered out, not finishing the expletive, my hand clamping down on my now-throbbing forehead.
Rubbing at the place that smarted like hell now, I pushed back the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Rose was softly snoring above me. Sleeping, I hoped, more peacefully than I had.
Knock. Knock.
A tentative thump on the door made my eyes go wide. Was I still asleep?
“Sam, baby, your shift’s up.” It was Karla’s voice. Not my dad. Not still sleeping.
“Coming,” I whispered. I got up, standing on tiptoes for a moment to really check on Rose. Her forehead was slightly scrunched up, so maybe she wasn’t sleeping as well as I’d hoped. The covers were tangled down at her knees. I gently pulled them up to her shoulders. Instantly, the tension in her face eased. I was glad for that.
Grabbing the blazer from the dresser, I moved toward the door, wishing I had something other than socks on my feet, but glad that it made for quiet walking.
When I opened the door, Karla didn’t look a bit tired.
“Sorry, honey. Wasn’t going to wake you, not a bit sleepy myself, but Barrett insisted that I try to lie down. Leon’s already fast asleep in Benji’s home office—that only room on the first level.” Karla looked truly remorseful.
“I was already awake, really.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” she questioned as I clicked the door softly closed behind me.
“No, I slept.” I sounded grumpy. “But I couldn’t stay asleep.”
“Bad dreams?”
“You got it.”
“I think that’s why I’m not wanting to sleep,” Karla admitted, nodding. “I mean, I’m worried like hell—pardon my language—about my sister and her babies, but what scares me most? Closing my damn eyes and seeing Jamie and Alexa. And”—she sniffed now, wiping her nose with her sleeve—“we shouldn’t have left Trent to die. I don’t care what bad he done. It wasn’t our place to judge the living.”
“You don’t really feel that way,” I protested, feeling angry. “What if it had been your niece instead of Alexa?”
She bristled at that, coming to a stop in front of the master bedroom entrance. “It wasn’t my niece. And we don’t even rightly know what he did to Alexa. Never got so far as someone flat-out saying it. Just a finger pointed by a distraught teen.”
“I’m not going to debate this with you,” I said, holding up a hand. “It’s done. And I believe Trent was a bad person, Karla. He was bad, or else I helped kill an innocent man. I can’t live with that. As if my freaking nightmares aren’t shitty enough.”
She shook her head sadly but didn’t reply, and disappeared into her sister’s room.
I walked down the stairs slowly, arms crossed, trying to hold myself together and, despite what I’d said to Karla, going over the Trent situation step by step in my head, wondering if we’d all done the wrong thing. It was Barrett’s face that stopped me going through the motions of presumed guilt. He looked completely at ease, his boot-clad feet propped up on the oak coffee table.
I hovered on the last riser, staring at him. “How in the world can you look like that?” I didn’t qualify “that” and just expected him to understand what he was doing, and how wrong it was, given our situation.
“Like what?” he asked, quirking a smile. Because he did know exactly what I meant, despite his deliberate obtuseness.
“Sit there looking like you’re just visiting a friend for the night, not a care in the world.” I went to the window, looked out into the night that was lightened by the ambient light from the fires burning throughout the city. “It’s awful out there, Barrett. Everything is awful. I don’t understand how you can be so relaxed about it.”
I felt, more than heard, him get up and walk over to me. When his arms snaked around my body, I completely forgot his eavesdropping, that his likeability factor had diminished, that he was a drug-dealing bad boy. I just felt the weight of him about me, like a wall of security. Like he was my own personal barrier against the ugly of the world.
When he answered me, what he said wasn’t at all what I was expecting. There was no front, no amusement, no detachment. He sounded as honest as I’d ever heard him.
“You know, that terminal jail wasn’t my first time behind bars.”
I turned in his arms until I faced the openness of his face instead of the dark, windowed reality of the world. But in a way I was also looking at the world in his eyes—and there was pain in his past. “It wasn’t?”
“No—I did time in juvie when I was a kid. Stole a pack of cigarettes for my old man. He’d been out of work a while. He beat my mom if he didn’t have his smokes.” He looked over my head, this time his gaze focused on the flame and chaos. “She was a piece of shit, my mom, but she was mine. She used to hide a box of cereal after grocery shopping. My favorite. Dad would toss it if he found it, say I didn’t deserve to leech off them.”
“That’s terrible, Barrett. I’m sorry. Why on earth would she stay with someone like that?”
He looked down at me then, a small smile spreading his mouth, none of the usual cockiness in the expression. “Like I said, she was a piece of shit. But she still tried. Every month. And that meant something, you know?”
I nodded, trying to keep my eyes from studying every inch of Barrett’s body. He was so deeply tanned that his teeth seemed unnaturally white. I wanted to take out his braid and run my fingers through his hair.
“Anyways, after my mom died and my dad bailed, I was put in the system. I met people there—people that were like my real family. I’d do anything for them.” His voice was steel and determination when he spoke, a more serious tone than Barrett put on display in mixed company. There was no emotion or humor to clutter the facts. He’d do anything for them. Period.
“Anything…like transport drugs?” I bit my bottom lip, waiting for what he’d say.
“My point, Miss Prim-and-Proper, is that this ain’t my first rodeo in hell. I’ve been surviving my whole damn life, and I’m good at it. I have family, most based around Vegas, and I’ll find them again. But for right now, I’m here.” He looked down at me, his hand reaching out to grip the back of my neck.
“Barrett.” I said his name, though I had no idea what else to say after that.
He smiled, his usual cocky half-smile,
and then he bent down and kissed me. And I didn’t fight it. Because right then, with the blackened realism of life around us, the future uncertain, and his past like its own brand of nightmare, that human connection was what we needed.
More than anything.
Chapter six.
Rose
When I woke, the house was quiet. And the world beyond? Deathly silent. It was as if I had dreamed the past couple of days, and the nightmare I had been living was nothing but that: a nightmare. I blinked and stared up at the ceiling, currently the only thing showing me that I was wrong and this hadn’t been a dream. Because it wasn’t my ceiling. It wasn’t my room. And none of it would be able to be wiped away like sleep from my eyes when I sat up.
I let my breath come evenly, in and out, controlling each inhalation and exhalation as I focused on the movements of my chest, forcing myself to try to relax. I didn’t remember any of my dreams, but I knew I’d had them. The vague recollection of things grabbing me, and the sounds of screams and the noise of a plane crashing were still ricocheting through my head loud enough to remind me.
The door opened and soft footsteps padded across the room. “Rose?”
I turned to look at Sam, peering up at me over the side of the bed, and I offered her a smile. She seemed tired, but there was color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before I’d gone to sleep.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” I stretched and sat up. “Guessing it’s my turn?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, Nolan is downstairs already. He said to take your time.”
“Anything happen while I was passed out?” I jumped down off the bed, my feet landing lightly.
“Not really. It’s all quiet outside. Still a couple of fires burning somewhere, and there’s some of those things moving about every once in a while, but other than that it’s pretty quiet. I think that’s what’s keeping them away from us—the silence. Karla made up some more food before she headed to bed, so make sure you eat.”
I went to the window and pulled the curtain back a little to peer out. She was right: the streets were bare, though if I looked in the distance I could see something moving. I let the curtain go and headed to the door. “You get any sleep?”
Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 4 Page 6