Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2)

by Samantha Durante

  As Isaac drifted in and out of consciousness in the rosy glow of the impending twilight, she numbly erected the tent they’d commandeered from the mall and stretched out the high-performance sleeping bags they’d pilfered. Gingerly, she dragged Isaac’s prostrate form inside, cradling his head on her lap as she brushed the sweat-stained hair from his face.

  He was still burning up. She soaked the rag once more and caressed it over his face as he slept, his breaths wheezing, a violent cough racking his body every few moments.

  She knew what came next: the bleeding. She’d been lucky thus far to not have observed it herself up close, but she’d heard enough from Isaac to fill her mind with horrors. It would start with that cough, the mucus surfacing first pink, then crimson, then finally an angry florid puce.

  Then the bruises would come, blackening his skin with inky, coal-tinged blooms as the virus liquefied his cells, breaking down his innards and organs until his body overflowed with sanguine sludge.

  And finally the blood – a thick, gelatinous cherry ooze – would drain from his ears, his eyes, his nose, any opening the body could find. It would leak its contents out to the world, sapping him of the very matter of life.

  And then he would be gone.

  A small, repulsive part of Alessa urged her to run, to spare herself the memory – and the dangers of contagion. There was nothing she could do for him now, after all, only watch in horror as he wasted away, as the man she loved – all of his kindness, all of his humor, all of his strength – was reduced to a quivering mass of agony and gore.

  The disgusting weakness inside of her yearned to just turn it off, to cut her losses, to leave now and close this chapter of her life and never look back. She could walk away, not torture herself with the destruction of this person who, for all intents and purposes, was the most essential part of her. It would destroy her to stay – she knew it would. If not the virus itself, then the trauma of bearing witness to his torment. It was a choice between life – a life however cold and lonely, but still a life – and death.

  Isaac would forgive her, she knew. He would want her to go on, to finish their fight. He would want her to live.

  But she didn’t have the nerve to leave him now. She would stay, no matter how much it hurt – and no matter the risk to her own health. She would hold his hand until the light left his eyes, and only then would she give herself over to the grief, to the anguish, to the excruciating fear that threatened her every moment. Until then, she would stay right here, his head in her lap, and she would wait for him to expire.

  Another cough shook his body, and his eyes fluttered open, two flashes of cobalt searching, frantic. “Alessa?” he muttered breathlessly.

  She choked back another sob and tugged the corners of her mouth up, a grotesque approximation of a smile. But she couldn’t stop the tears that spilled from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.

  “I’m right here, Isaac,” she answered, stroking his face. She pulled the rag from his forehead and laid her hand across his clammy brow – it blistered like the sun.

  Visions danced before her eyes, invading her mind in a sudden rush. A blue-eyed boy, his cherub face glowing in the summer sun, clutching a bright red fire truck in his hands as he dashed away, a wicked glint in his eye.

  “Joe,” he moaned. “Joe won’t share.”

  Isaac thrashed slightly, reaching out for something she couldn’t see, only she had a feeling she knew what it was – the fire truck. He was delirious, and somehow Alessa could read his hallucinations.

  “It’s okay, Isaac,” she cooed. Her tears were a river now, waterfalling off the quivering cliff of her chin.

  The visions changed. “No! Josephine’s in the barn!” he cried weakly.

  Alessa pressed her eyes shut as she smelled the memory of smoke, felt Isaac’s mounting panic rising in her chest. He writhed in his sleeping bag, the rag slipping from his brow. She gently slid it back over his eyes.

  Then Alessa saw a flash of her own face, only a different version than the one she recognized from the mirror. A more perfect version, her eyes like jade, her skin radiant and flush, a few strands of her rich brown hair caught in a gentle breeze.

  “I love you,” Isaac whispered. “I – I told Joe…” he wheezed, “I’d… take care of you,” he breathed.

  Finally, Alessa broke. The sobs flowed freely now, her body racked as she crumpled over Isaac, clutching at him, gasping for air, her lungs squeezed tight by the unrelenting vice of despair.

  “I love you, Isaac Mason,” she wept, “I will love you always. You did, you did take care of me. More than you can know.” She reached for his hand and wrapped his fingers in her own, holding them against his panting chest. “I love you,” she repeated.

  Isaac shook his head. “I can’t,” he coughed. “I can’t leave.” The words came out in a rush, the mucus bubbling in his chest.

  “You can,” Alessa wept, releasing him with finality. Her voice a coarse whisper, she promised once again, “You can.”

  And then he was mercifully still, falling into a much needed repose. But to her horror, Alessa knew this wasn’t over yet.

  17. BRINK

  The night wore on, Isaac still but for the ragged pulls from his chest. And Alessa waited in silence, her tears run dry, waited for the bleeding that she knew would mark the end.

  She was numb now.

  The occasional shuffle outside the tent – a footstep, a heavy puff of breath, the crunch of a stray piece of garbage – would draw her attention. It may have been the wind; more likely it was the creatures. But even the threat of being torn limb from limb couldn’t seem to break through the impenetrable shell she’d withdrawn into. There was only one place she could be now, one thing she could do. And she was there, in this tent, doing it – waiting for Isaac, her Isaac, to die.

  She passed the long hours considering her prospects with anesthetized objectivity, weighing the choices she could make as if they were someone else’s, as if she were watching this scene unfold on one of Paragon’s dramas.

  What would this Alessa character do now? If she managed to avoid contracting the virus – which was a big if, at that – she would have two options, the strangely detached third party in her head reasoned.

  She could let go. She could forget about the future she’d envisioned with Isaac, put the era of Isaac to rest along with his broken body, and move on. She could turn off her love for him – turn off her love, period – and fuel her passion with rage instead, rage against the virus, rage against Paragon, rage against the shattered world around her and all of its sorry mistakes. She could pick up the gauntlet, finish their mission, and go home. She could devote her life to the cause and forget everything else.

  Or, she could let the misery take her. She could acknowledge that in all likelihood – between the impending war with Paragon and the constant threat of the virus – she would lose Janie someday, too, that pretty soon there wouldn’t be anyone or anything left for Alessa to love, that there was no point in going on at all. She could recognize that living on anger was no way to live – that it would be better to die from love than live as an empty shell. She could let the beasts prowling outside this forsaken tent take her. She could be with Isaac again, forever.

  But even as these two paths warred in her head, something else popped into her consciousness unbidden. Joe. She was plagued with thoughts of Joe, of the day he was taken, of the moments they’d shared, of the love for him that’d been quietly building in her heart until he was so abruptly torn away.

  There was a third option, she realized. She could do what she and Isaac had done after losing Joe – she could grieve. Then she could hold the shattered pieces of herself together and move forward. And then one day, maybe, she could love again. That was what Joe would have wanted for her, and so she’d done it then. And that was what Isaac would want for her now.

  But she didn’t know if she had the strength to do it. Could she really lose them both, and survive?

  S
he sighed, a long, shuddering, broken thing that told of doubt and defeat and death.

  Alessa sat in the vacant silence, slowly turning over her options in her mind, when without warning an earthshattering wail sounded from behind the tent.

  Sharp claws of terror dug into her heart, her body tingling as adrenaline charged her system, and Alessa was finally shaken from her languor.

  The shock of feeling was a floodgate, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with emotion – all of the sorrow and fear and anger she’d blocked out the past few hours, but something more, too. It was like all of those feelings were somehow doubled, and punctuated with a primal tinge that punched up their intensity. And mingled with it all was bitterness, longing, and just a subtle thirst… for blood.

  No, Alessa realized, she wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

  She eased Isaac’s head onto the ground and slid out from under him, grasping the knife from her bag and crouching into a powerful coil, preparing to strike. If the creatures were coming for her now, they would get the fight of their lives.

  And then just as suddenly as they’d come, the intense feelings that had poured through her only moments ago disappeared, and she was left only with a keen sense of being alone with Isaac once again. Some deep instinct told her that the beasts were leaving, and the tension in her body eased.

  But a strange feeling lingered a moment in the creatures’ wake, a subtle sense of smug satisfaction that settled over Alessa like a silken scarf trailed coyly round her neck. And it was not Alessa’s satisfaction by any means; lying next to Isaac, she was certain she had little to be happy about in this moment. But that feeling was somehow familiar. She tried to place it, some wisp of memory taunting her from just out of reach.

  And then, just like that, the feeling was gone, and Alessa was left to lament the long night on her own.

  18. DEFENSE

  It’d been days since Nikhil had heard from 14, and he was starting to get anxious. Where had they taken her?

  The thought of losing his only link to reality tortured his every waking moment. His mind hadn’t felt this clear in years, and he was terrified of falling back into the swirling jumble of disconnected memories that threatened to swallow him at every moment.

  14 had been helping him to remember, teaching him to pick out what was true from what had been implanted, to discern what experiences had taken place in his real life versus what had been scripted for him on the shows.

  It’d been two nights now since he’d heard from her, and already he felt himself slipping back. He didn’t want to lose himself again.

  And the hunger didn’t help, either. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten – everything he did, everything he thought, felt slow. He was running on empty, literally.

  Pacing back and forth in his cramped, cold cell, a bleak thought occurred to Nikhil. What if they had stitched her?

  She could be on another drama by now, all memory of him completely erased. She would never come back for him; she wouldn’t even know who he was. And Nikhil would be left here to rot, to sit in the dark alone as his mind deteriorated around him. The thought chilled him, blocking out even the sharp pangs in his stomach.

  At one point Nikhil had been resigned to his fate, had been prepared to lose himself in the muddled depths of his own subconscious. But no more – 14 had changed that, had given him hope. He was starting to remember who he was, and he wanted his life back. She couldn’t leave him now.

  He paced, and paced, and paced. Every few steps he threw himself at the base of the wall, scrabbling his fingers across the tiny hole searching for a new note, frantically trying to peer through it into the blackness beyond. And when he found nothing, he got up and paced again.

  Finally Nikhil began to grow weary, the hysteria fraying his nerves and draining his resolve until he could think only of sleep. He flopped onto the stiff metal cot, his too-long legs propped up on the wall in front of him, and settled in to wait.

  Some time later, the slot in the bottom of his door slid open and a tray clattered onto the floor. Food!

  He rolled off the bed and eagerly downed the dry toast and cold soup, carefully setting aside the single napkin in case 14 came back.

  And in that same moment, the blessed sound came – paper sliding through the wall.

  Nikhil snatched up the note, hungrily moving into the light of the door to consume her missive.

  “Still there?” it read.

  “Where have you been?” he replied, underlining the last word for emphasis.

  “Sorry – ran out of paper,” she responded.

  Nikhil breathed a sigh of relief. So she’d been there the whole time, just waiting for the prison to deliver another of their infrequent sorry meals so she could filch a new napkin. Nikhil had been diligently saving them as well, but he’d sent his last scrap through the wall days ago. It seemed they’d need to be a little more careful about conserving their supplies going forward.

  “Thought you’d been stitched,” he admitted.

  She sent back one of her little smiley faces in return. “I’m okay,” she added.

  But despite her cheerfulness, Nikhil knew the day would come when one of them was sent for. They were living on borrowed time, after all – as soon as the producers had a new role to fill, the prisoners were at their beck and call, however unwillingly. Nikhil was dreading it.

  “I don’t want to be stitched again,” he confessed.

  There was a pause before her response came, as if she’d weighed her reply before sending it.

  “You can resist it,” she’d written simply.

  But those four little words had set off a bomb in Nikhil’s cell. He could resist the stitch? He didn’t have to allow Paragon to dictate the rest of his life? He could fight back?

  He could fight back.

  The realization settled over him like a light spring rain, little droplets of resolve trickling over his body until his every inch was finally soaked through, dripping with determination.

  He could fight back.

  “How?” was the only word he needed.

  Her response came quickly. “Concentrate on something real, a memory. You won’t lose it. Then everything else will come back.”

  Was it really that simple? Nikhil sat back against the wall, the knot in his stomach slowly releasing as he realized he might actually be able to do this.

  He finished the last slurp of cold soup and put the bowl down, sliding the tray over the ground with a scrape until it butted against the slot in the door. He stashed 14’s note and the makeshift pen under the cot, just in case the guards happened to peek in when they came to reclaim his tray.

  Sure enough, within moments the slot in his door slid open once more and a gloved hand reached inside toward the tray.

  But then a snarl and piercing cry of pain rang from the hall, and the hand quickly withdrew.

  The screams continued, a man’s voice, shrieking in distress. It sounded like it was coming from nearby. Nikhil heard footsteps rushing away from his cell and he dove to the floor, peeking through the opening.

  Across the hall and a few cells to the right, a guard was on the floor, his face a grimace of agony. His arm was buried to the shoulder through the slot in the cell door. For one infinite second, Nikhil and the guard locked eyes, and Nikhil thought he finally understood the meaning of the word terror.

  A second guard – the one Nikhil supposed had just left his own cell – was leaning over the writhing form of the first. He pulled, but the first guard’s arm wouldn’t budge. Finally, the second guard stood up. All Nikhil could see were his feet, but he heard the distinct rapid click of the guard feverishly punching keys on the pad beside the door.

  A whooping alarm sounded and the hall flashed red, and then he heard a deep clang – a lock being released. The first guard was still screeching, his body flopping, his eyes wide with horror; a part of Nikhil was glad he couldn’t see what was happening to the arm on the other side of that door…

&nbs
p; But before he could contemplate that gruesome thought much longer, the door to the cell swung open slightly, the guard still face down at its base, now almost still except for the occasional twitch.

  Nikhil watched as the second guard stepped back, his knees bracing. The bang of four gunshots rang down the hall.

  A vicious, spine-tingling howl – part rasping scream, part savage growl – sounded from inside the cell. It was the same inhuman roar Nikhil had heard all those nights ago, the same chilling noise that had haunted his nightmares. What was Paragon keeping inside these cells?

  The alarm wailed and the sirens flashed as more boot steps came pounding from the far end of the hall. Nikhil jumped as something – something big and impossibly fast – darted out of the open cell and landed on the guard with a thud, his gun clattering uselessly to the floor. More shots rang out from the other soldiers, but Nikhil couldn’t tell what was happening – the guard and whatever was attacking him had landed outside of Nikhil’s narrow field of view.

  His heart pounding, he strained to hear what was going on. A squish, a crunch, all mingled with constant shrieking yelps of pain. Nikhil flinched as something wet splattered on the floor in front of his door. A drop had splashed on the side of his nose, something warm and thick and sweet. He smeared it away and slowly held his fingers up to the light.

  Blood.

  Choking down the bile rising in this throat, Nikhil noticed that the first two guards were silent now.

  But he heard other voices, shouting with authority – “Alpha team – search east. Bravo team, west. Do not let that thing get away!” – followed by the dull thud of heavy boots dashing off in all directions.

  Several sets of footsteps headed toward Nikhil’s door, pair after pair of thick rubber soles stomping through the blood pooling on the concrete outside.

  Nikhil watched as a set of smooth black leather boots paused in front of his door. His heart slowed, waiting for the soldier to act.

  One interminable second later, the slot in his door slid shut with a clank and Nikhil was plunged into darkness once more. The whooping of the sirens faded into the background as Nikhil rolled onto his back, breathing a sigh of relief.