“Yeah,” his laugh was more like a wheeze. “Thank you. I know you don’t like to go out there alone, but sometimes I just need to be by myself.”
“You think I do that for you? I swear you’re the most selfish person I know. We need the supplies.”
Before his next bite, he peered up with a smirk, calling her bluff. If he knew anything about her—and he was likely the most Graciela-savvy person in the world—he knew that she hated leaving him alone and defenseless. But she had worked hard at trying to smother those feelings in his company. And, because of it, for the first time in weeks, he experienced a handful of moments of complete relief. However brief, it was enough to keep them both uplifted.
“Seriously,” his sister started again, unable to prevent the faint smile tugging at her lips. “If you ever need a minute or some space, just let me know and I’m gone. For an hour or whatever you need.”
“Okay, Gracie,” he chuckled at her quick switch to seriousness and resumed eating.
As he plucked a piece of cob shell from his teeth with one hand, he handed the half-eaten vegetable to her with the other. Before she could refuse, he groaned as if his belly was about to burst from overeating. Rather than argue, she took it, granting Santiago this one small victory, one shred of feeling in control of something.
Santiago took the opportunity of having both hands freed to rub his temples. He still felt winded from earlier. Graciela looked at him, eyebrows furrowed, and Santiago groaned from the influx of emotion that exuded her. Although he still wasn’t able to discern each emotion as they hit him, he knew what worry looked like in his sister’s eyes.
“Ay! Sorry, Santi, I can’t help it. Seeing you like this is hard for me,” she said with both hands pressed to her chest.
“It’s okay,” he said, inhaling deeply. “Truthfully, I always knew what you were feeling long before I was able to actually feel it. I guess this was just my fate from the beginning.” He forced a smile to which Graciela returned.
After fluffing his pillow, Santiago reached for a small, square mirror he’d tucked under the couch and held it out to examine his reflection. When she turned to him, Graciela rolled her eyes with amusement. He paid her little mind though. Even before the Awakening, everyone had given him a hard time about how obsessed he was with his hair. Now without his strength though, it was about the only thing he had left.
“So, what’s the plan?” he blurted, putting the mirror down and gently nestling into the pillow so as not to ruin his hair. “It’s getting too dangerous to stay here.”
Graciela gnawed at the few pieces of corn that remained, tossing the empty cob when she finished. She gave her lips a deafening smack and continued to lick the excess from her fingers.
Santiago cringed. “You’re disgusting.”
Grinning slyly, Graciela said, “What? I don’t want to be wasteful.” She took great pride in making one final dramatic slurp before answering his question. “I don’t know if you’ll like my plan.”
“I’m up for anything at this point.” An unexpected yawn helped to hide the misery in his words. “Anything’s better than always looking over our shoulders.”
She didn’t continue immediately. Instead, she distracted herself with unrolling her sleeping bag and consolidating the items she had found earlier with the rest of their rations. Santiago paid little attention, confident in her ability to take care of them. In the mix though he saw more canned vegetables, more canned fruit, a couple of handfuls of yellow cherries, a bag of beans, and a bag of rice.
Already in the pile was Santiago’s hairbrush, a bar of soap that was so thin it had become translucent, one battery, and three half-empty containers of styling gel. It was likely they were the only people in the world collecting the stuff.
She tossed a new tube at Santiago’s stomach.
“Uff!” He let out a meek chuckle. “Hey, watch it!”
Under normal circumstances, he might have chucked a pillow at her or chased her around the house trying to hawk a loogie, like they used to play. But the world seemed too gloomy now for such horseplay. Not to mention, Santiago didn’t have the energy to spare.
When everything was organized, eyes closed, Santiago listened to Graciela go to her sleeping bag and zip herself inside. There were six beds in the house, enough for each of them to have their own and then some. But it felt safer to sleep in the same room, and they were closer to the exits here. Just in case.
Graciela reached over, dimming the lantern until it finally clicked off.
Exhaustion was quickly beckoning him to that place of deep sleep, the one where not even dreams exist. But just before the world turned off, he realized Graciela still hadn’t told him the plan.
Santiago was not known for his unending patience and it was unlike her to not share something unless she was afraid of his response. “Let it out already. What’s your idea?”
In the silence of the night, he could hear Graciela swallow. “I was just thinking about looking for a sanctuary—”
“Gracie, you can’t be serious? You know I can’t.”
“I know that you couldn’t when this first started,” she corrected. “But things could be different now. For all we know, people might have answers. They might know how to save empaths.”
Santiago just snorted. What she was talking about was no more than foolish optimism. If there wasn’t a cure back when the world was actually functioning, there definitely wasn’t one now.
“I know we already talked about this, but the truth is we don’t have many other options. I know, it’s a long shot and we don’t even know where to start…but maybe…” She stopped just before her voice cracked. As if that would be his only indication that she was upset, that she was desperate. “I just don’t know what else we can do.”
Santiago bit down on his tongue. He didn’t want to get into another argument about something they’d already agreed upon. It left him practically shaking. “Don’t you remember the sanctuaries we saw early on?” His usual strong voice broke slightly at the memory.
It was a rhetorical question that needed no answer. Of course, she remembered. It would be etched into the back of both of their eyelids for the rest of their lives.
They had been to two sanctuaries since leaving home, both haunted Santiago equally. What had been created as safe havens for those with Awakened powers had become publicly targeted massacres. There was no doubt in his mind that most of them were created to lure the Awakened to their slaughter. A horrific deception meant to be the extinction of people like him.
Before they had even reached the falsely designated safe zones, the air reeked of a metallic and rancid stench. As he and his sister had drawn closer, she had seen the decapitated heads, frozen in pain, crows pecking at the decaying flesh of skulls speared atop pikes that created a perimeter. Inside, it was worse. People had been mauled and eviscerated, a warning for all the other Awakened who might pass through.
Something like that lingered. No matter how much time had passed, Santiago didn’t think there’d ever be a day when he, or Graciela, wouldn’t remember.
The two of them fell silent. Santiago realized then that their lives could’ve easily ended the way those others had in the sanctuary, had they been caught by those crazed men earlier. The thought brought bile to the back of his throat.
Before the thought went any further or became more descriptive, Santiago concluded, “Even if I could be surrounded by crowds of people, there are no sanctuaries left that are safe.” As he rolled from his back onto his side, the cushions muffled his already low grumble but the sternness in his voice was unmistakable. “And even if we tried finding one, we wouldn’t know where to begin.”
When Graciela didn’t say anything, he assumed the conversation was over. He tried thinking about anything but the sanctuaries, but the only thing of note was the flavor of corn still in his mouth, which he also didn’t want to think about because he was still hungry.
“You’re right,” his sister finally sa
id. “We will stay here as long as we can and just keep moving when we have to. I’ll…we’ll think of something better.”
Mirroring one another, they each rolled onto their sides, and Santiago tried to ignore her soft sobs and the pounding waves of feeling that came with them.
Moments later, once Graciela’s breathing had slowed, Santiago drifted asleep too.
°°°
Dimly, from the edge of slumber, Santiago could hear Graciela tossing and turning, likely plagued by the nightmares they shared of the fallen communities. In the dreamland, these memories were amplified. He was all too familiar with the terror and grief they brought, endless replays of the same brutal scenes.
But tonight, the nightmares stayed hidden to him, ostensibly content to prey on his sister instead.
Tonight, Santiago dreamed of hope.
He was first aware of his body, seated with both legs crossed in a pretzel shape. Below him, he felt the jagged surface jutting into his thighs and buttocks uncomfortably. His hands found the ground and grabbed at it. Crumbling pieces of earth and rock escaped his fists, only to return to the land they had come from.
Santiago opened his eyes to confirm his suspicions: he was sitting in a wasteland, one more barren than any place he was familiar with. There were no trees, no buildings and shacks, nothing. In addition, it was sweltering, despite the absence of the sun. Only the moon and stars remained in the sky. He couldn’t remember ever seeing the moon that color before, providing him with his only source of light and tinting everything in an ominous light-red hue.
He appeared to be in the center of an endless, desolate region. There was a lonely characteristic about the place, as if one could never enter or leave. But somehow, here he found himself, trapped in isolation from the rest of the world.
In front of him, he saw something gliding toward his location, flicking its tongue. Snakes never scared him much, but this one had eyes like two glaciers that shone like stars. They were unnatural and made Santiago shiver. If he didn’t have to encounter it, he would avoid it.
He looked to his right to see what other options he had.
Something dashed at a startling pace. All he could see was the shadow of the movement, a second-delayed imprint of where it had come from.
He focused on the direction it stirred, but it fled much quicker than he had time to adjust his eyes. The unknown being looked too colorful for an animal, too fast for a human.
Santiago rose to his feet, and for the first time, he realized he wasn’t in nauseating pain. Normally, even when he was alone, he could still feel the remnants of his power, a constant shameful reminder that he was different. But for some reason, right now, there was nothing. It was a relief and yet, somehow, immensely worrying.
The snake had gained some distance on him, slithering and hissing as it closed in on its prey, though still a couple of hundred meters away. On impulse alone, Santiago took a step backward.
“How did I get here?” he uttered, reaching the peak of his perplexity.
He looked again toward the long-past mysterious movement. It was then that he noticed something lying on the dry ground. Even before he consciously decided to investigate, his legs were moving. It only took maybe ten strides before he realized that it was moving. Breathing. Short, quick bursts of exhaustion or perhaps fear. The mound was cloaked in a dark, ragged rug. But there was no mistaking it: there was a living creature underneath.
Five more strides, and Santiago was atop it. He could hear wheezing now. From a human, he realized. The figure most definitely sounded female.
“Hey.” Santiago never was one for pleasantries. “Do you know where we are?” Without caution, and feeling rather indignant in the matter, Santiago reached down to rip away the woman’s cloak.
A hiss sounded from behind him before he’d even touched the fabric. It rattled loudly, freezing his arm in place, fingers dangling centimeters away from the woman’s cape. That noise did not equate with the image of the small snake he’d seen earlier. This sounded much larger.
Santiago gasped when he turned to find the monstrous serpent. Matching him in height, its scaly body stretched as far back as the moonlight would let him see—which to be fair wasn’t far. Its eyes were even more chilling up close. Two arched, lethal fangs gleamed as the snake hinged its mouth wide open, anticipating the moment to come. One fang alone would easily pierce through his abdomen. A droplet of what Santiago could only guess to be venom excreted like drool from the snake’s gaping maw. There was no telling what the poison would do. One nick and that could be the end of him.
Equally as menacing were the deep purple, spiraled horns that protruded from the snake’s skull. Santiago had never seen anything like it. It reminded him of old depictions of what people once believed to be el diablo, only purple, and serpentine.
Never before had he felt so helpless and afraid. Fighting people was one thing. It was something mankind had done for millennia. But surviving this beast? The odds seemed stacked against him.
The mammoth snake weaved over and around the rough terrain like it was made of powder rather than sharp jagged rocks. All the while it twisted and slithered, keeping its gaze focused on Santiago—not the plumpest meal, but a meal, nonetheless.
It would devour him whole.
Santiago had never seen something so big and terrifying in his entire life. He searched for any nearby weapons, somehow already knowing that there were none. The woman who had been crouching in the middle of the desert only seconds before had vanished. Even she knew this wouldn’t end well.
Slowly, Santiago took a step back, anticipating a long run ahead. Then another. His third met nothing but air, and Santiago’s other shin scraped across the edge of a serrated cliff as he fell into a giant, unforeseen abyss.
No cliff had been present during his earlier glances around the landscape. In fact, he was completely certain that this hole was exactly where the woman had been sitting.
Under normal circumstances, when falling unexpectedly or when the movement of his body changed suddenly, it would be accompanied by a light, fluttering feeling in his lower belly, like someone had tied an invisible string to his stomach and gave it a flip.
Falling here though had no similar effect. It was like the world was flying by, but with no real meaning to it.
Santiago stared up at the ledge from which he had tumbled, expecting the snake to come plummeting after, but the dim light above revealed nothing. The darkness around him thickened as he fell, no end nearing. The wind whizzing by was somehow not enough to give him the oxygen he needed to breathe. Each breath was labored, anxiety taking hold. Santiago thought about his sister and what this would do to her.
He couldn’t watch what was to come next. His hands clutched his head, as if that limited protection could save his life. This wasn’t what he wanted, what he and his sister had been trying to survive for—so he could die falling down an abyss? No, he wanted to live, or at least he didn’t want to die yet. Graciela still needed him.
Instead of waiting for the inevitable, he would instead try to stop it. Maybe there was something he could grab to climb back up?
When Santiago opened his eyes, he was no longer falling. It wasn’t nighttime anymore either. In fact, the only constant that had remained was that he still found himself in a desert. A tuft of his fauxhawk fell before his eye, which he hastily groomed back into place. Wherever he was, he couldn’t let himself walk around all disheveled.
Santiago came to his feet and rotated to get a new look at his surroundings, this time with the much-appreciated aid of sunlight. He found himself standing a kilometer or two away from a gated community of sorts. From this location, he could see only the top of a handful of white tents, a few buildings splotched with beige, tan and russet brown, and microscopic moving dots that he decided had to be people.
Exhaustion trampled over him like a stampede. All at once, his power came crashing back. But the especially frustrating aspect of his power was that he felt all of th
eir emotions as different forms of pain. Some of it sharp, some throbbing, the sensations wreaked havoc on everything from his head to his elbows to his toes. Not a single ounce of him was left unscathed. It was like being weighed down by the very world itself.
A crippling migraine burst behind his eye sockets.
His only viable option was to turn and walk away from the little town, in an attempt to get away from the population of people before they rendered him unconscious. Hunched over and clenching his head, Santiago began to crawl in the opposite direction. Anywhere, it didn’t matter.
He didn’t make it far, only a step, before his forehead collided with a post that read, “Welcome to California.”
It confused him to find himself in North America, let alone in the Pacific Union. Puzzled, he glanced back toward the community. It appeared much clearer now, not as far away, like it had been teleported closer sort of like the snake. But there was something different about the place now. Where the town had previously been a bustle of emotions, now it was a ghost town.
Under the canopies were tables of food, uneaten, but not rotten. Fire pits cackled and smoked with dying flames. Chores were left unfinished, and half-full baskets of soaked clothing were still waiting to be hung on the empty clotheslines. It was as if everyone had abruptly left. It reminded him of all the other sanctuaries, the ones people didn’t have a chance to survive in.
However, as he checked the roads and spied through tent flaps and barrack windows, there didn’t seem to be signs of any struggle.
“Hello?” he hollered.
Only his echo returned in answer.
“Is anyone there?”
Still, there was no reply.
Santiago looked back to the tables of food and was suddenly aware of his hunger. He and his sister had been travelling for maybe a month by now, with minimal access to food; he could use a bite.
“I’m going to eat your food if you don’t come out here,” he said jokingly. Giving a moment’s pause, he then began to worry that the statement could be perceived as him stealing, so he added, “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just lost and…kind of confused.”
Blood Awakens Page 3
