Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  Zoey followed her, and waited nervously as Kris closed the door in Cole’s concerned face. When she began to heave, the dog circled her, whimpering and panting in distress.

  “Don’t worry about me, girl,” Kris said, patting her head and scratching behind one of the dog’s floppy ears. “I’ll be okay.”

  She closed the bathroom door, leaving Zoey on the other side, and carefully removed the clothes from her waist down. Her underwear was soaked through, and a dark red stain had begun to seep into the crotch of her jeans. She tossed them into the tub for cleaning later, and sat on the toilet. There was no water in the tank, but it was the most comfortable place to wait while the cramps rolled through her back and into her abdomen. It felt like she sat there for hours, hunched over her legs in pain. Her butt had gone numb, her thighs were shaking, and it felt like someone had uprooted a tree and hit her over the lower back with it, but the cramping slowly subsided, coming in longer and longer intervals. The bleeding slowed, too. It didn’t completely stop, but when she was finally brave enough to look into the toilet bowl, she realized the hardest part had passed. She had miscarried. Nothing she saw reminded her of anything that resembled a baby, but she was still barely in her first trimester, so she figured that was normal. Kris didn’t have a pregnancy book, or a guide to help answer her questions, in fact, she’d been living in complacent denial of what had been happening to her body.

  The first thing she felt, as she began to clean up her mess and search around the cabinets and her belongings for a sanitary pad, was relief. Relief that it was over. That she’d been spared something that had happened to her without her consent, and without her blessing. But then she felt guilty for feeling relieved, and the guilt quickly turned into anger. None of it should have happened to her, she thought. None of it.

  While pulling a pair of sweats on, and adjusting the cotton bulge in her clean underwear so that no one else would notice the pad, she ignored the soft knocks on her door, most likely from Cole. She didn’t want anything to do with him. The only person she wanted was her mom. And her mom was dead. She pulled back the covers on the bed and climbed beneath them, patting the space beside her for Zoey, who snuggled into her carefully, as if she knew that Kris’ body was healing. In the morning, if she didn’t die from some strange miscarriage related complication she was unaware of, Kris would deal with what happened and remember it was a new day. A new beginning. Except, she told herself, as her heavy and swollen eyes began to close, it wasn’t a new beginning for the life she had been growing. It was the end. Perhaps that life had been spared the miseries of the new world for a reason, she thought. Didn’t everything happen for a reason?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  COLE

  Around the same time that Kris was secretly losing his baby, Riley’s fever broke. Cole wasn’t present for either event, instead he was downstairs, digging through the kitchen drawers looking for a corkscrew to open a bottle of wine. He’d finally found one on its side in the storeroom. It was covered in a thick layer of grimy dust, on a high shelf tucked behind a row of rusted olive oil cans and a large unopened plastic bottle of white vinegar, as if someone had hidden it for a rainy day.

  He brought the merlot back to the kitchen, sure that at least one of the adults would be happy to see it. Everything he’d done since finding Riley and Jin on the mountain was to earn their favor, to maybe make a place for himself in Riley’s group. He knew it would be the only way that Kris would ever forgive him. Except, unlike the others, he had nothing to contribute. Cole was painfully aware that he was simply another mouth to feed, another body to keep alive. But even though he wasn’t built of solid muscle, like Drake or Jacks, he was strong. He carried pile after pile of chopped wood into the cabin. He hauled bucket after bucket full of snow into the kitchen to be divvied out, or left them in a row in front of the fireplace to be melted. He retrieved what they needed, or cleaned up what was forgotten. He washed towels and hung them in the storeroom to dry. He kept watch over the valley and along the front side of the property, and acted as an unofficial sentry to ensure the lodge was still safe. He did all this with a smile, and no complaints, because it was all he could think of to help.

  At the Ark, they told Cole that he had a place there, and they told him he was part of the future, an asset to it, as Fern had told him many times. At the lodge, surrounded by the sick, the injured or the lonely, Cole wasn’t an asset to anything, yet he felt more important somehow. Like the little things he did really mattered. At the lodge, the longer he was around Riley’s people, the more he realized how the Ark had used him, and manipulated him with their lies. It wasn’t a good feeling. It made him sick. Sure, Riley wanted to kill him, Kris hated him, and the others found him a hindrance, but they didn’t lie to him about how they felt. Not once.

  He spotted what he was looking for in the junk drawer next to an opened package of straws and disposable skewers. He picked the vintage style corkscrew up by the wooden handle, settled the protruding coiled metal part between his fingers, making a fist around it. The tool would be the perfect weapon, he marveled, and then realized quickly he had no idea how to use it on the wine without cutting himself, or breaking the bottle. He was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter punching at the air with the corkscrew still tightly in his hand when Connor came in, skidded to a stop, and glared at him.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  Cole’s cheeks flushed and he dropped the corkscrew onto the counter, shoving it under a dirty dish towel. “I found this in the storeroom,” he said, pointing to the bottle of wine.

  Connor’s eyes dropped to the towel, then flicked back to Cole’s face. “I’d say you’re a bit young for the drink, but that wouldn’t make much sense with the ways things are now, would it?”

  Cole shrugged. “I guess not, but I don’t want any. I brought it out for you. For you and your friends, I mean. Need something?” he pushed off the counter and squared his shoulders, ready for a task.

  “Riley’s waking up,” Connor grumbled, reaching down and lifting one of the fresh snow buckets. “Boil some water, since you have nothing else to do. Jin’s going to make another batch of his tea.” After Cole nodded, Connor turned around to leave the kitchen, but stopped in the doorway. “Hey, things have been shitty over the last day or so. I’ve forgotten to say thanks…for helping out, I mean.”

  The warm flush on Cole’s cheeks burned and he beamed, struggling to resist the urge to bounce on his feet. “Sure thing, happy to do it.”

  Connor made a soft chuckling sound and adjusted the bucket handle. “I just said thanks, mate. Don’t let it go to your head. To some of us here, you still share a spot with a few others at the top of a short shit-list, don’t forget that.” He turned around and left Cole standing in the kitchen with his smile stuck as an awkward smudge across his face.

  “They’re never going to trust me,” he mumbled to the counter, kicking the wall with the toe of his boot. “Never.”

  JIN

  His sack of tea was more than half gone. Used well, he reasoned. It took him several shops to scavenge the herbs he needed for the mix when he passed through the last town, and even then, he didn’t have all the ingredients his mother used when preparing her special teas. But it was heavy with anti-inflammatory plants nonetheless, and would work well for Riley’s fever if she could stay awake long enough to sip it. He’d nursed her back to health once before, but she wasn’t ready to venture out into the cold air. He knew that, yet still allowed her to leave the cabin. Her latest fever was his fault, he reckoned. His fault only.

  Jin hovered in the background, observing the goings on in the lodge with little interest until the morning that Riley didn’t wake up. Somehow, while displacing himself from the rest of the group, he had missed something, several somethings, he imagined, that were building up to a great implosion. He wasn’t sure what had happened while he and Riley were hiding in their treehouse, of course, but the dynamics of the cluster’s core h
ad shattered into jagged and sharp edges. He could tell that with the right push from one person, another would get badly cut. He just didn’t know when this would happen, or to whom. Being on the outside, it was easy to see that something awful was coming, but Jin had no idea how to bring this up, or who to say this to, and not sound more than a little crazy.

  So, he watched them. The men took turns caring for Riley, which he was grateful to see, and he watched as the girl took care of the baby, the only true innocent in the bunch, aside from Riley’s dog. He watched as the boy stuck around until he realized there was nothing he could do, and found other tasks to occupy himself with. He also watched as the other woman disappeared into her own world, a feat Jin imagined she’d been perfecting for some time. There was a dark energy around her, a raw magnetism that bounced him into the opposite direction, and he was grateful for that, because he didn’t like her. Not one bit.

  As Jin spooned small amounts of amber liquid between Riley’s pale lips, he tried to ignore the constant presence of Drake and Connor in the room. They stood or paced always near her, never leaving much room to breathe, and when she finally sat up for the first time on her own, they were on her like gnats. It wasn’t what she needed, to be fawned over. She needed space. And Jin knew she also needed real medicines. An antibiotic for her lungs, perhaps. Something with menthol to help her sinuses, which they didn’t have. Riley needed a doctor.

  The moon had risen high in the sky by the time he left her room and retreated into his own, exhausted both mentally and physically, and thinking too much about the next day. He would set out at dawn before the others woke, and hike into the next town. Along the way he hoped to find a working car, but mostly he hoped to find a hospital or a clinic, or any place that might have something stronger than his mother’s tea.

  As a last resort, he recalled the vague directions Cole had given him, and the name of the highways that led back to the Ark. They had a doctor. As Jin tossed in the bed and struggled to fall asleep, he wondered if the place was still there. He could barter his services, or offer them supplies in exchange for medicines. With his hair sticking to his damp forehead, Jin kicked at the bedding and cursed softly. He had nothing they would want, unless of course Jin brought along the boy. The more he thought about trading Cole, the closer sleep moved in around him until he was taken by it, and pushed into a violent nightmare that he couldn’t escape. No one could escape their past.

  COLE

  He woke up in the dark, with a hand clamped over his mouth, and black strings dangling before his eyes. Thinking it was the grim reaper come to claim his soul, Cole squeezed his eyes shut and began to pray, but the hand left his face and a low whisper warned him to stay silent. He did as he was told, and stayed frozen in the bed with his arms up by his head in surrender.

  “Get up, and be quiet about it,” said the voice. When he opened an eye to peek into the darkness, a familiar face moved away from his.

  “Jin?”

  “Get up,” Jin instructed a second time, nudging his side.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” he sat upright and rubbed at his face, grateful that he was still alive and not in purgatory yet.

  “We’re going for a walk.”

  “A walk?” He looked out the window at the grey moonlit pre-dawn and laughed. “Now? Are you crazy?”

  Jin bumped the edge of the bed with a knee. “Up. I’ll explain on the way.”

  “Explain what?” Cole asked, sliding free of the covers and reaching for the clothes he’d left on the floor.

  “I need your help.”

  He stilled with one leg in his jeans and stared through the shadows of his room at Jin, noticing that the man had his pack slung over a shoulder. “You need me?” he whispered, excitement hitching his voice up an octave higher than most boys his age would like.

  “Shush. Meet me downstairs, in the kitchen.”

  Jin left the room and Cole scurried around it, pulling on his clothes and boots, and cursing when he couldn’t find his hat. Realizing he must have left it downstairs on the coat rack, he grabbed a flashlight, a thin sweater, and a bag of baby wipes, plus his pack, which was empty except for a water bottle. He quietly rushed down the stairs and through the dark rooms of the lower level till he found Jin waiting by the kitchen door.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, nervous, but also happy that Jin had asked him along.

  “We’re going to get Riley medicine,” Jin answered, turning Cole around and dropping a handful of supplies into the pack before closing the zipper. “Let’s go.”

  He snagged his hat off one of the rack hooks and turned to follow the taller man, when he remembered the corkscrew on the counter. In the dark, his hand fumbled around dishes until landing on the towel, and then the smooth wooden handle beneath the fabric. Feeling safer just having it in his hand, he tucked it into the front pocket of his coat and rushed out onto the deck, where Jin impatiently waited for him.

  “Where to? The others said they’ve been up and down the roads around here…never mentioned coming across much till they found the lodge.”

  Jin nodded and led the way through the snow, circling them around the backside of the cabin and toward the small road that led out of the valley, toward the highway. “We’ll walk till we find something.”

  “Really?” Cole laughed. He turned around and looked over his shoulder at the lodge that was quickly fading into the distance.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t ask Jin for more details, because he’d learned by then that the man would say only what he wanted, and not much more, but as the early morning hours turned into early afternoon hours, and the sun was burning the back of his neck, he began to question Jin’s plan with every step they took. They’d passed a gas station, abandoned long before the virus, which served absolutely no use to them. They walked down a frontage road to a house, looking for supplies, but found it ransacked already. The few vehicles they came across were either too frozen to start, or out of gas.

  After walking for eight hours, according to Cole’s scratched watch, he decided he couldn’t walk any more. “I have to stop and take a break, man.”

  He intended on sitting right in the middle of the highway on his ass, but ended up collapsing on his back, staring up at the blue sky, dotted with white tufts of clouds. His toes hurt, his legs felt even worse, but it was his head that pounded with fury from dehydration. He’d run out of water an hour before, and Jin wasn’t volunteering to share his rations.

  “Five minutes,” Jin stated, taking a seat on a nearby guardrail.

  “What? I’ll barely catch my breath in five minutes,” Cole complained.

  “Five minutes.”

  “Fuck,” Cole said with a loud sigh. He’d ticked two minutes off in his mind at an alarmingly quick rate, when Jin hopped off the guardrail and told him to stand. “No way. Still have three minutes left, at least.”

  “Get up,” Jin snapped, with more urgency. “We have company.”

  He pushed off the loose gravel and looked up the road, following the direction of Jin’s squinted gaze. A truck, solid white in color, was slowly coming down the hill toward them, but stopped at least a mile away, idling.

  “What’s he waiting for?” Cole wondered, standing up and cupping his hand over his eyes to block out the sunlight for a better look.

  “He’s being cautious,” Jin stated.

  “What’s the plan?” Cole asked, searching the land that flanked the road. There was nothing, nothing other than patches of woods, or open land. No structures, no homes. Nowhere to hide.

  “We wait,” Jin said, returning to his seat on the guardrail, and watching the hill with interest. “We wait, like he is.”

  Cole couldn’t sit back down. He fidgeted with the strap of his pack, and looked between Jin and the truck, running scenario after scenario through his mind. None of them ended with a happily ever after.

  “I think we should go,” he said.

  “Not yet.”

  Jin handed h
is water bottle over to Cole, and he took it greedily, sucking down half of it before giving it back. He pulled his hat off his head, which he’d been using to keep his scalp from burning under the sun, and tucked it into one of his pockets. Seconds later, the truck slowly began to move toward them again.

  The vehicle had seen better days long before its bumper had been smashed in and the grill was dented beyond recognition, but when it got close enough for Jin and Cole to see that the driver was the only occupant, Cole’s stomach flipped with fear. He knew the face behind the wheel. But it was too late to run then. As it slowed to a crawl within spitting distance, Cole’s brow began to sweat, and as the rough-looking man hopped out of the cab and pulled his ball cap down to block out the sun, Cole inched closer to Jin.

  “We should’ve run when we had the chance,” he whispered.

  “Well, ain’t this a surprise,” the driver sneered. He leaned against the front of his truck, with a hand on his hip where Cole knew he was armed. “It’s like fucking Christmas came early today, minus this damn heat.” With a flick on the bill of his hat, he smiled at Cole, but meant nothing friendly about it.

  “How’d you find me?” Cole mumbled. Jin stiffened at his side, but remained calmer than Cole thought reasonable.

  “What? No, ‘Hello, how ya doin’, so great you found me before I died on this fucking asphalt bitch of a road’?” The man said with a chuckle. Then he eyed Jin, and with his hand still on his hip, gave him a nod. “Who’s your new friend, Cole?”

  He didn’t answer, but his hiking companion did. “Call me Jin. Are you friends?”

  Cole risked a glance at the Asian man of little words, and noticed that he also had his hand on his hip. A knife was no match to a gun, though, Cole knew.

  “Friends? Hmm. Not sure we’ve ever been friends, but looks like today I’m the closest thing to it, right, buddy?” The driver shifted on his feet and waited for Cole to speak.