“I don’t know.” I pulled her into a hug. Touching her pink cotton hoodie, feeling her heartbeat against me, helped steady my thoughts. This is now. This is real.
Whatever we were sick with, we needed to get help from real doctors with real medicine, real knowledge, not from a person who was already living on the wrong side of crazy.
Christopher might be telling the truth as he knew it, I believed that, but it might not be the whole truth. Maybe there was a way to undo the sickness etched into my skin and flaring in my brain. Cal Expo was where the doctors must be. It was where the radio said to go, it was where, if Christopher could be believed, they took Dylan.
In spite of everything I knew, or maybe because of it, I needed to know he was still alive, I needed to face him again, I needed to hear the truth from him.
It was time for us to leave, but Christopher was still tied up and I didn’t know what to do.
“We should leave him,” Maibe said.
“I know,” I said.
“He infected us. He was hurting you, he was—”
“I know,” I said.
There was a long pause where Maibe just stared at me.
“You’re not going to leave him,” she said finally.
I shook my head. “I can’t,” I whispered.
“He’s going to follow us.”
I knew she was right, but I didn’t know what choice I had. He had done a horrible, unspeakable thing to us. And yet, and yet. He had lost his wife, his children. He had gone more than a little crazy.
I could not bear to think of him suffering and dying of thirst.
So I untied him.
He sat up, rubbing his wrists and ankles where the ropes had been.
Maibe held the bat, knees bent, arms cocked. She must have played baseball before. It looked as if she knew what she was doing.
“It wasn’t me. It was me, it was, but I was living in the memories and I didn’t see you. I saw my sick child and my wife and—”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” Maibe said.
“It doesn’t,” he said.
“We don’t want you following us,” I said. “You can’t think we could let you. You infected us, you—”
“I promise you will thank me for that,” he said.
I raised my hand in a fist. He flinched.
“Don’t EVER think you did right by us. You didn’t ask. You didn’t explain. You just decided you knew what was best for us like we weren’t even real people.” I lowered my arm. “Don’t follow.”
We left the army surplus store, Maibe and I.
Christopher stayed behind. He pretended to listen to us, but I knew Maibe was right. He would follow. But we would deal with it when we had to.
I took my first step outside, listening, watching. The sky was clear and soon we would gain some warmth from the sun, though not much. My heartbeat flooded my ears and filled the silence. It was as if all the world had gone to sleep. No white noise of cars. No blinking street lights. No car alarms. I searched every shadow and corner and window for movement.
There was nothing.
But even still, the stench gave it away. The decay of something gone rotten.
A flash of something. Blonde hair. Someone stood up from behind a car.
“Jane,” I said.
“Where,” Maibe said.
I pointed. My arm wavered, my fingers trembled. There was an odd outline to her shape. A waviness that made my eyes swim.
She was supposed to be gone. She was supposed to have abandoned us to our fate.
Maibe clutched my hand. “I don’t see her. I don’t see anyone.”
I willed her shape to either solidify or disappear. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted more.
She didn’t move. She didn’t disappear either.
Maibe tugged on my hand. ‘“Let’s go.”
We left Jane—we left it behind and it stayed behind. When she was out of sight, I remembered to breathe again and then I thought I might dry heave.
I ordered her shape to go stand against the wall of my mind. I tried to make myself believe it had to obey. I held my breath as the memory did back off, slowly, making me fear it would not quiet down like the others, but finally, it faded into the background, and Maibe pulled me to the tracks, and they looked so much like the tracks where Dylan was taken, where Luna had stood mute and Stan had stood yelling. That memory was running from the walls of the room to the very center, ready to slam dunk itself across my vision.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Squeeze my hand,” Maibe said. “It helps keep it away.”
I did, and I felt her return squeeze, and then felt the prick of her nails as they dug into the back of my hand, and it was that pain which drove the memory back against the wall.
I looked at Maibe.
“Sorry,” she said.
Four drops of blood welled up from the crescents her fingernails had made. I shook my head. “Don’t be. I was about to lose it.”
Maibe closed her eyes. “I think this is going to be hard.”
A laugh erupted from me.
Maibe’s eyes flew open.
“Going to be hard?” I said.
Maibe hid her face in her hands and stifled a giggle.
Okay. I rested a hand on her shoulder. “Time to go.”
We walked alongside the railroad tracks in a type of ditch. The tracks took us away from houses filled with who knew what. The tracks felt safe. Relatively speaking.
Talking, we realized soon, helped keep the memories in check, so we dared it, even though silence would have been safer.
The tracks passed by a café that Dylan and I used to go to for breakfast. The shape of the building and the topmost windows, they triggered ghost-memories—that’s what I decided to name them—something different than the fevers.
The memory-rush took over completely, but the ghost-memories superimposed themselves onto the present, making it feel like I was watching a 3-D movie without the special glasses.
I saw Dylan and me joking over pancakes and orange juice and how the morning light filtered through the windows and voices bounced off the walls. And I saw too how it looked now, all burned out with a body lying on the sidewalk in front of the entrance.
At the café was when we noticed that Christopher had caught up to us. A scratching footstep had given him away. Maibe said she caught a glimpse of him.
Of course, we couldn’t be sure, not with the ghost-memories. But then I caught another glimpse of him a few seconds later. He had dashed around the corner of a building when I bent to retie my shoelaces.
We decided it was unlikely we would have the same ghost-memories.
We hoped we were right about that.
We decided to take a break against an old sentinel oak across the tracks from the café. I pressed my fingers into the rough bark and felt the air sing in my lungs. Stopping for just these few seconds brought the memories clamoring back.
“I could walk forever,” Maibe said.
I dug my fingers deeper into the bark to keep myself anchored in the present. “Let’s keep walking then,” I said with desperation.
I couldn’t think much beyond sending those memories back to the wall to shut up. What hurt the most were the good memories with Dylan. I couldn’t utter a breath without those memories crowding in and making me regret everything I had done to sabotage us.
Maibe grabbed my hand and we scrambled back up the gravel together. We stepped onto the middle of the tracks. It felt as if we were traveling a horizontal ladder above the city.
“Do you see that?” Maibe pointed to smoke curling into the sky from one of the downtown skyscrapers.
A smaller building off in one of the neighborhoods also sent up a curl. “There’s another one,” I said. I did a slow circle and saw multiple smoke trails.
Three weeks later and there were still fires burning. It must have been bad while we were in the fevers.
“Did you see that?” Maibe said.
She pointed into the neighborhood next to the café.
“I don't see anything.”
“There's something. I don’t know,” she said.
“We should keep going,” I said, not sure what would be worse, if something really was out there, or if she had just seen a ghost-memory.
I turned in a full circle again, got halfway around. Froze.
Christopher had stopped trying to hide. I didn’t know how long it had taken him, or what had changed, but he was out in the open now. On the tracks. A few hundred yards behind us.
Running.
A dark figure flashed in the corner of my eye and disappeared around a building.
“There.” Maibe said. “Christopher?”
“He’s behind us.” I readied myself to run.
The dark figure, small, moved again, this time into the middle of a shadowed street.
The object moved again, this time out of the shadow, revealing four legs and a proud head and tall shepherd ears that swiveled at us, then to the side, then behind, all without the dog moving its gaze an inch.
“Whoa,” I said, not realizing I had been holding my breath. I followed after the dog and allowed memories of Blitz to crowd in: how safe I felt burying my fingers into his fur, how he greeted me with a dozen circlings every time I returned from work, how he liked to lick the shower water off of my legs.
Like a whip he flipped around and let out a low, deep, throaty growl at something that had come up behind him—a larger shape, clearly human, the shape that Maibe must have seen.
A second person loped into view, followed by a third and then a fourth. The dog crept backwards even as it growled and bared its teeth. Anyone sane would have stopped in their tracks at such a sight, but these people kept going until they cornered the dog against a wall. The dog’s tail tucked between its legs and its butt pressed against the wall.
One of them reached out a hand. The dog snapped at it, but caught only air.
Christopher came running up, gasping for air, yelling. “There’s more!”
Four heads turned and the faint light hit one face just right to see the sickness in him.
The dog dashed through their legs. A woman tumbled onto her side. The dog galloped across the open space straight for us, tail between its legs, hair still raised on the nape of its neck.
Maibe gasped.
The dog shot up the incline to where we stood stupefied, yelped as it passed alongside us, raced down the other side and then disappeared into the fields.
“Hey,” I said, “here boy, come back.” But it did not turn.
Maibe tugged on my arm. “There's no dog! Snap out of it! We gotta go. We gotta go now!”
The dog hadn't been real? But I was so sure.
Before I could stop it, I saw the bloody mess on our neighbor’s front yard, the sickening crunch of bone as I bowled into that woman, the slap as Stan took a bat to her. No, no, no. This was not the time, but my brain wouldn’t stop and I fell to my knees, the wooden tracks digging splinters into my palms, the strings of puke glistening in the light. I tried to force myself back up.
Come on, come on.
The crunch of gravel told me I hadn't moved fast enough.
My stomach heaved one more time. The memory cleared.
Maibe was up ahead a few dozen yards. I willed her to keep running, but she stopped and turned and waited and flapped her arms as if it might speed me along.
I yelled at myself to get up, get up, get up.
“Run!” Christopher said and flung himself in their way.
I set my sights on Maibe’s sweatshirt and ran like an old woman.
Christopher screamed and then his scream cut off.
Something snarled behind me. I risked a glance over my shoulder—but that was a mistake.
I fell, scraping my hands and knees. One of them bared his teeth as he reached out his hands. I got back to my feet and sprinted after Maibe, realizing too late that I was leading the gang right to her.
Maibe ran to a building that backed up to the tracks, it’s clay-colored paint peeling and familiar. The café. She struggled with the back door and then got it free, slamming it open against the wall, the sound ricocheting through the air.
I veered off the tracks. For a split second, I thought about passing her by, leading them away, but then something moved in the shadows behind Maibe, inside the building, and I found speed I didn’t think I had.
She wasn’t looking behind her. There was something behind her and she couldn’t see it.
My feet crossed the threshold of the door, slapping against tile. My body bowled into something big and solid, cushioning what otherwise would have been a bad fall. My cheek felt the hot breath of something alive, its hands wrapping around my chest, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
I fought back, but the arms pinned me in place.
Searing pain in my shoulder. No, this was wrong, no. My flesh tore as this person ripped it from my shoulder like a rabid dog.
I screamed.
His grip loosened. I kneed him in the groin, knocking hot air out of him. He dropped me. I scrambled backward, tracking myself through dust, and made a frantic search for a weapon, but there was nothing within reach.
And then I saw it. On the stove top was a cast iron griddle.
Pain made my right shoulder useless, but I took up the griddle in my left hand and planted my feet in a fighting stance. The man stumbled to me, chef’s apron askew and bloodied, oblivious of the weapon in my hand.
I swung the griddle and whacked him on the side of his head. Bone crunched, but he did not fall.
I readied my arm again, pivoted to put the full weight of my body into it this time, and swung again. The crunch was louder and the man fell to the floor like a tree.
My chest heaved from heavy breaths, the agony of running too hard, the pain from my bleeding shoulder. I stood over him for a long, silent moment.
I did not want another death on my hands. But it was too late.
I told him that I was sorry. I told him I hoped he would find some peace now.
Only then did I notice the low pounding sounds that said people were still trying to break down the door. Maibe stared at me across the man’s dead body.
“You did the right thing,” she said.
Even though I didn’t think so, I was glad she did.
“Is the door secure?”
“For now,” she said.
I scanned the kitchen, the gabled windows overlooking the street, the café tables and chairs, the bright green counter, the chintzy wallpaper of cowboy boots and spurs. The place seemed empty, except for the dead cook at my feet.
I waited for a memory-fever or a ghost-memory or some new damn symptom to worm its way forward and overtake me at this familiar breakfast spot, but there were only tendrils I easily waved off.
Maibe helped draw the clothing down over my shoulder and we used the bottled water she found in a cabinet and a few folded towels to clean out my wound.
“Don’t hold back,” I said. “Make sure you really clean it.” The pain helped beat back the fever rising again in my body. I had been bitten by one of the insane people. Supposedly Christopher’s inoculation would keep me from going even more insane than I had already become—but what if it didn’t?
Maibe finished patching me up and threw the bloodied towels into the sink that no longer worked. “We should find a place for you to rest,” she said.
I began to protest, but stopped when a wave of heat rolled from my head, ended at my feet, and then restarted. My legs wobbled and I leaned against the edge of the sink. I didn’t have much time.
A sturdy wooden door led to some stairs. I remembered the owners had been this middle-aged couple with two kids who all had lived on the second story. The door stood slightly ajar, but the stairs were dark and I wanted to avoid going up there at all costs.
“Corrina!” Maibe’s voice cut through my contemplation.
She had not yelled it, but the urgency in her tone was
undeniable. She stood at the archway between the kitchen and serving area. Her eyes were wide, her face solemn. “They’ve surrounded us.”
Halfway across the kitchen my legs turned to Jello. I landed feet from the crushed skull of the man I had murdered. The kitchen filled with the smells of coffee, breakfast sausage, eggs. Matilda's laugh rang out and so did the bell the cook used to signal someone’s breakfast was ready.
Dylan lifted his hand in a wave from across the café. The light from the windows framed his shoulders. Our two cups of coffee sent off curls of steam. He smiled as I approached.
Chapter 11
A thick coating of dust lay heavy on my tongue again. That was my first sensation, my thick heavy tongue, dry, covered in a layer of dust, desperately needing water. That and a twilight darkness. The ceiling fan above my head sat silent, dead. One blade had broken at the gold-painted attachment to the head. Thick cobwebs and more dust covered the rest of the blades.
I pushed myself to a sitting position. I was in a sea of pillows. A glass of water stood clean and clear on the bedside table. I tossed the covers and pillows aside and drank the water without considering how it got there. How I got there. I slaked my thirst and wiped away the grime from my tongue. A hint of fermenting fruit layered what otherwise was stuffy, still air.
Worry for Maibe shot me up onto unsteady legs. I went for the door, but before I touched the knob, it opened outward. There Maibe stood, a little dirtier, a little more tired
“Oh! You’re awake!” She threw her arms around my waist. Her grip was both strong enough to knock me over and hold me in place. I wobbled and then patted her on the shoulder. “I’m fine.” I said, and then took an inventory of myself.
Skin still old, head still thick with memories. “It’s not any worse now than it was before.”
“I was so scared,” Maibe said.
“What happened?”
Maibe sighed. “You should sit.”
I sat down in a chair next to the bed, my sore muscles grateful.
Maibe cocked her ear as if listening for something.
My pulse quickened. “Are we safe?”
“Enough as you can hope for right now.”
I was about to press her when she saw the look on my face and said, “No, it’s okay. There’s just…I’m glad you’re awake.”
Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Page 16
