Melancholy: Episode 2

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Josi smiles a little, moving her lips to the crook of my neck. With my free hand I stroke her dark hair.

  “The lovely thing between us is gone now,” she says quietly, breaking my heart, “but I’ll miss it every day of my life.”

  *

  February 9th, 2066

  Josephine

  Pace wakes me some time in the night and it’s a measure of how tired Luke is that he doesn’t stir even when I disentangle my limbs from his and get up to take Shadow-watch.

  She walks with me to the kitchen, where I check the windows for any signs of police or Blood patrols and then sit beside the table. “Get some sleep,” I tell her.

  She nods, but doesn’t go anywhere. “I didn’t mean that stuff I said to you,” she says suddenly. “I was just giving you a hard time because when you get pissy you get strong.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not helpless and you’re not a freak.”

  “Are you in love with me or something?”

  She snorts. “Shut up.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my real name.”

  Pace shrugs. “We all get to start over at The Inferno.”

  She heads into the living room and I sit with Shadow, reaching for his hand, which feels cool to the touch. The night is abruptly too quiet and too still. His unconscious breathing is too soft for me to hear and it makes me uncomfortable.

  “You’re not allowed to die,” I say. “You’re not meant to be killable.” I lean my head on the table and press my cheek to his palm. “Not by a stupid drone cop with a stray bullet.”

  I can’t help thinking of Luke in his bed, and me in his bed with him. I’ve always been so sure of how people should behave when betrayed or lied to or cheated on. I had this standard … I pitied women who forgave their lovers and fell back in love with them. In my head I urged them to be stronger, to respect themselves more. Lying, to my mind, was selfish and it was cruel.

  But I hadn’t yet understood the power of the thing that overtakes you when you fall in love, and what I feel in Luke’s touch is not selfish or cruel. What I feel when he looks at me is neither. It is generous and kind, it’s pleading and sorry and protective. I don’t know how to marry those things that I feel with what I know to be true, which is the simple fact that liars lie and will keep lying.

  I’ve no reason to believe anything good about people. They hurt each other, and that’s fact. Love seems to invite betrayal. It implies heartbreak.

  Even with everything he’s done, with the impending pain he’s sure to bring me were I to forgive him, it’s the shame, I think, that feels worst of all. The shame of forgiveness. Of valuing myself so little as to yearn for the cruel love of someone who made a fool of me. I do yearn for it, of course I do. But I can’t let myself give in to it.

  “Are you a praying kind of person?” a voice asks and I see Luke’s father emerge from the hallway.

  “No,” I murmur. “Are you?”

  He shuffles in and pulls up a chair to sit beside me. He is a tall man, someone who obviously shared Luke’s stature but now seems hunched and smaller than he once was.

  “I used to know the answer to that adamantly,” he says. “I was sure that anyone who put faith or belief in something that couldn’t help or be proved was foolish.”

  “I don’t see what the point is,” I agree.

  “Nor do I. I suppose I’ve simply come to question things a little more than I used to.”

  “And does it help you to wonder if there’s a god?”

  “No.” He smiles.

  “I don’t wonder,” I admit. “If there is, then he’s a cruel God to make us endure a world like this.”

  Mr Townsend rises to pour us both a glass of whisky. I watch him, watch his hands shake almost to the point where he can’t pour the drink. I don’t offer to help – I think that would offend him, somehow.

  When he hands it to me I look up into his aging face. He is a handsome man, the lines around his eyes and mouth making him no less attractive. He looks like Luke, a little. “Parkinson’s,” he explains with a sad smile.

  I sip the whisky, feeling the burn of it go down my throat.

  “I don’t know your name,” I say abruptly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Tobias. And you’re Josephine.”

  “You taught Luke to box,” I murmur.

  “If I hadn’t, someone else would have,” he replies. “He was so restless. Heartbreaking for a parent to watch.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever know. I’m not sure he does.”

  “But you loved him anyhow.” It is a question, not framed as one.

  “Sweetheart,” he murmurs, and what it really means is of course.

  I swallow. “And Dave?”

  Tobias stops a while, swirling his whisky. Eventually he says, like the weariest of all sighs, “My Dave. He was sweet and funny. He was the best of us all.”

  And I start to cry because it’s too sad, and I am grieving, suddenly, for this invisible man I never knew, because I love more than anything the man who loved him more than anything.

  Tobias takes my hand and gently sort of tugs me so that I’m resting my head on his knees, and he strokes my hair while I cry.

  *

  The sun is rising as we pack the van. We’d prefer to be taking a different car, but Claire and Tobias’ vehicle is too small to fit all of us, and we don’t want to split up.

  Ben and Meredith are still unconscious, but Shadow has woken and according to Claire he hasn’t yet got an infection, which is a great sign.

  I feel bone-weary. Nothing actually happened between Luke and I, but even just lying in his arms sent my mind spinning so badly I was hardly able to sleep at all. My wrist aches, but what I haven’t told anyone is that I think it’s already healing itself. It itches in this maddening way and no longer feels as though the bone is snapped. Which for some reason embarrasses me.

  “Must have just been sprained,” Luke comments when he redoes my bandage. We are sitting in the kitchen while the three musketeers make sure everything is ready for the trip to the subway. Tobias has organized food and water for us, and Claire’s set us up with a whole lot of painkillers and instructions for Shadow.

  “How are your ribs?”

  “Sugar, if you think a few broken ribs are enough to bother me, you don’t know Luke Townsend.”

  “And if Luke Townsend keeps referring to himself in the third person I might feel inclined to break a few more of his ribs.”

  He smiles as he pins the end of my bandage. “Done.”

  I use the hand to shake his. It’s a very weird thing to do and I can only blame it on nerves. “Friends?” I ask.

  He looks down at our handshake and then up at me. His eyebrows arch as if to point out how idiotic I am. “Sure. Friends. Are we also business partners?”

  I wrench my hand from his and blush pink. “Let’s go already.”

  I hear him laugh under his breath.

  “Get a move on!” Pace shouts from the garage.

  Claire and Tobias are waiting by the door for us. I hug them both quickly, wanting to give Luke a moment alone with them.

  “Thank you so much,” I say to Claire.

  “It’s my job, sweetheart. Well, actually it’s not at all. It’s illegal. But, you know, all in good fun.”

  I grin. To Tobias I murmur, “I think you’re right to question. Don’t stop.”

  “Only if you’ll do the same,” he smiles, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Deal.”

  I climb into the back of the van with Will and Shadow, crammed in beside the sleeping Ben and Dr Shaw.

  “What are we doing with this woman?” Hal asks from the passenger seat.

  “Taking her with us,” I shrug.

  “So we’re kidnapping people now?”

  “Why not?”

  Luke joins us and it takes me one glance to know he feels like absolute crap. There’s a heaviness to his shoul
ders and mouth I’ve not seen in a long while. He rests his head against the side of the van and orders Pace to drive. She starts the van and begins reversing.

  “Stop!” I shout suddenly. The van jerks to a halt halfway out of the garage.

  “We have to go or we’re not gonna make the train,” Hal warns.

  I open the back door and jump out. “Josi?” Luke calls but I run inside.

  Claire and Tobias are hugging in the middle of the living room, but turn to me in surprise. “Did you – ”

  “Get in the van,” I tell them. They stare at me blankly. “We’re not leaving you behind,” I say clearly. “It’s ludicrous. Come to the west and be with your son.”

  They look at each other, then back at me.

  I spread my hands. “What have you got to stay for?”

  “We’re cured,” Claire states. “They won’t take us!”

  “Trust me. Parents of the second coming will be treated like bloody deities in that place.”

  “Can I bring a few things?”

  “Yes,” I laugh. “Just hurry up. Go go go!”

  When we finally return to the van, I explain, “New recruits.”

  “If it’s okay with you,” Tobias hedges.

  Luke stares at his parents, then at me, and finally he smiles the best smile I’ve seen him give in years.

  Chapter 12

  February 9th, 2066

  Luke

  It is selfish and stupid to take them with us. The west is dangerous, not to mention we could be caught by Bloods at any point on the way. I vowed never to bring them into the storm of my life, and here I am, sucking them right into the heart of it. I know this. But for the first time in years I feel like I can breathe. With the simple act of inviting them along, Josi has basically countered the secret fear I harbored that my parents were gone forever. To me, cured meant dead, essentially. Stripped of a soul, a personality, any kind of truth. Now I’m not sure what it means, but Josi is demanding that we at least explore the idea of life after the cure. With one simple act she has refused to believe that drones aren’t real people, aren’t worth loving or protecting.

  She hated them once. As I have always done. Not because it’s their fault. But because they are a product of our ruined world: the proof of humanity’s worst traits. But it was spending a year with a cured psychiatrist that made Josephine understand the complexity of our remaining population.

  Which all means, in essence, that I might have a family again.

  *

  We are stopped at a checkpoint. I refrain from pointing out how idiotic it is that Pace has just driven straight up to it.

  “How was I supposed to know it was here?” she hisses.

  “Calm down,” I order crisply. “Mom, get in the driver’s seat.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a nurse. You’re taking supplies to the hospital. They’ll want to check you’re cured.”

  There are about a dozen cars in line before us, so Mom climbs into the front seat once Pace and Hal have joined us in the back.

  “I don’t even know how to drive this thing,” she points out.

  Dad takes that moment to start ripping through the sheet covering Meredith and Ben.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I ask.

  He doesn’t respond, and when I catch sight of his face I know his brain’s completely short-circuited. He tears violently through the sheet, his eyes vacant.

  “Hold onto him,” I snap at Hal. “Don’t let him make any noise.”

  While Hal grabs hold of my dad’s shaking hands I scramble to the front of the van and perch myself behind Mom, gun pointed out her window. There aren’t any windows in the back so the cops won’t spot me unless they open the doors, and if they do that the game is up anyway and I’ll have to shoot them.

  Mom starts giggling hysterically and it makes me feel queasy. I reach through the grill and squeeze her hand tightly. “Listen to my voice,” I tell her. “Take a deep breath and think about rain falling on a tin roof.”

  It was always her favorite sound. When I was a kid she told me that it calmed her so deeply she felt like she could dissolve into a puddle on the floor.

  Mom’s laughter slowly peters out and soon she is breathing steadily.

  “Drive us forward a little,” I tell her gently. “But keep thinking about rain.”

  She revs too much and the car lurches into a bunny-hop. We can’t turn the auto-drive on because it responds only to prints and is connected to the network, which means the Bloods would instantly be able to track the stolen car and Mom’s presence in it.

  “Easy,” I soothe her. “You’re doing great.”

  A glance behind tells me that Dad is wantonly trying to destroy anything he can get his hands on, giving small whimpers of grief. Hal has wrapped his arms around Dad’s middle to limit his movement, and Josi is pinching his fingers. It’s clever, because the physical pain will hopefully ground him in his body and stop his confused emotional centers from firing incorrect responses to stress.

  We approach the blockade, only one car remaining in front of us.

  Mom jolts the car forward and winds down her window.

  “Print please, ma’am,” the police officer says in a bored tone.

  Mom lends him her hand so he can take her print, then a prick of her blood. When his tester blinks green he drawls, “Very good. What’s in the van?”

  “Medical supplies.”

  He reads the file projected from his tablet – Mom’s info, along with the fact that she’s a registered nurse.

  “Says here your son’s a fugitive,” the cop frowns. Goddamnit.

  “So I’m told.”

  “When did you last speak to him?”

  “Is it really your job to be questioning me?” she replies calmly. “You’re a traffic cop. I answered every question I could about my son when the Bloods interviewed me last year.”

  He blinks, then nods. It might have offended him once upon a time, but now he simply understands the words as true. He considers her, long and slow.

  Behind me, Dad tries to speak through Hal’s hand.

  The cop hears it and looks at the back of the van, frowning.

  I hold my breath.

  “I’ll have to check the van in any case,” he says apologetically.

  “I’m in a rush – there was an emergency this morning and I need to get the blood supplies to the operating room.”

  “Won’t take me a second, ma’am.”

  I sigh inwardly. He seems like a nice bloke. I squeeze the trigger and fire a bullet straight into his thigh. It takes him a few seconds to react, as he has no idea what’s happened or where the sudden burst of pain has come from. Falling to the ground, the man wails.

  “Drive,” I tell Mom.

  She revs so hard the engine roars, then takes her foot off the clutch way too fast and stalls the car.

  “Move over,” I say and she does so quickly.

  I wriggle into the driver’s seat and take us straight through the checkpoint, setting off an alarm in the process. The cop fires his gun six times and I feel one of the bullets hit our back tire.

  Two police sirens whir behind us, but I’m not worried about cops. I’m worried about the fact that it won’t be long before the Bloods join the party. Turning right, I feel the tire skid and lose some of its rubber. It’ll be a miracle if it lasts until we get to the tunnel.

  “Train’s in ten minutes!” Hal shouts.

  Uh-oh. I skid into oncoming traffic and then jump a median strip to get to the right side. A traffic cam takes a nice, blinding picture of us as we speed past. A third police car swerves to chase us, and I can feel the steering go because of the blown tire.

  Thankfully the subway tunnel looms and as I approach it I spin the car to block its entrance, making sure the back door opens onto the stairs. I’m not about to roll my vehicle down these steps a second time.

  “Will and I’ll cover,” I announce because Will’s the best shot and makes the
smallest target. “The rest of you get these bodies down into the tunnel.”

  From our windows Will and I start firing at the cop cars, fast as we can.

  Hal has Ben over his shoulders, leaving Pace and Josi to carry Dr Shaw between them. Mom and Dad have managed to get Shadow below ground. It seems like we might just make it.

  Until in the distance I see a sleek black car arrive and my heart sinks.

  “Go, mate,” I tell Will. “I got you.”

  Will ducks his head and sprints around the van for cover. I take out three policemen crouched behind their car doors who are too stupid not to keep popping back into my line of sight.

  When Will is safely below I round the van, bullets raining over me. One takes me through the upper arm, another grazes my ear, a third ricochets into my big toe. I keep moving. There is no time for pain, there is time only to stop those Bloods from getting into the tunnel. I fire three rounds into the oxygen tanks in the back of the van, then another two into the engine.

  It takes about four seconds to make a popping sound, then the car bursts into violent flames.

  I am already sprinting down the steps. Here comes the tricky part. Getting two bodies onto a moving train. Josi and Will have decided they’re going to jump on at one end and get the doors open wide. The rest of us will wait at the other end of the platform so that by the time the first carriage reaches us we can swing Ben and Dr Shaw straight in and then grab whichever carriage we can get a hold of.

  It’s impossible to count the number of things that could go wrong.

  And that’s when, of course, the two Bloods emerge onto the platform, having managed to get past the flaming van.

  The moment slows as I take them both in. Everything inside me blisters; adrenalin pumps through my body and I reach calmly to harness its strength and speed within my limbs.

  They raise their Glocks toward us and I am already firing two guns and two sets of bullets smash through their hands. Their respective weapons go flying and by the time I hear them clatter to the ground I have already shot one man through the neck and am approaching the second.

  He’s a Blue, more deadly than his Red companion. He reaches me before I can get off another shot and knocks the gun from my grip. My second fires wildly into the air but I allow my hand to let it go. This needs to be close and fast; I can hear the train approaching already.