Winter Castle

by Isla Jones

  Castle stepped back and turned to look at me. There was a smile—a real smile—on his face. And once I looked past him to the wardrobe, I realised why he was smiling.

  Rows of clothes, dangling from hangers, filled the wardrobe. The carpeted floor beneath the clothes was sparsely visible through the shoes—boots, slippers, sneakers—and above the railings were scarves and hats and gloves.

  For the second time that day, I grinned. This was the closet to Christmas I’d ever gotten.

  “Aren’t you going to say it?” asked Castle. His smile had turned to an arrogant smirk.

  “Say what?”

  “What you always say we find things.”

  I frowned at him, the kind that made my nose crinkle too. “And what’s that?”

  He turned back to the wardrobe and plucked a flannel hat from the shelf above. Then, with that stupid smirk still on his face he threw the hat at me, and said it.

  “Score.”

  THE DAY I FOUND YOU

  ENTRY FIVE

  Castle had picked out his clothes, they were no different to the ones he wore other than the stains and tears: a grey t-shirt, black sweater, stone-washed jeans and boots. He packed a few other pieces away for when we would leave the cabin.

  After I’d done the same—packed and picked out clothes—we carried them to the lake. Castle’s collection of toiletries came in handy there, and I suddenly didn’t think it so funny anymore.

  As we dumped our finds on the shore, dry tufts of brown grass, I looked at the sky. Dusk was coming. And with it would come the rotters.

  “You should go in first,” I said. “I’ll take watch.”

  Castle stripped bare and gave me his gun—it was the last handgun we had.

  The van we’d taken from the farmhouse had been stacked with guns and ammo. We took what we could carry; two AKs and two handguns. But at the cliff side, Castle lost one of the guns.

  As went into the water, I tried not to look at his body. My gaze kept swerving to his beige skin, lingering over the white scars that marked his back. At his side, I could see part of the faint bruise he’d gotten at the cliff side.

  He looked over his shoulder.

  I wrenched my gaze away, cheeks burning. I’d be furious is he looked at me while I bathed. It wasn’t as though I was checking him out. His scars and bruises caught my attention, not the sun touched shade of his skin, or the defined lines of his muscles, or the dip of his spine that travelled down to his—

  I shook the thoughts from my head.

  “What are you thinking?” Asked Castle.

  My gaze slipped back to his. He faced me, the rim of the water covered his lower half. His hands slipped up and down his body, using the body wash to lather away smears of dirt and dried blood.

  “You were shaking your head,” he said at my confused expression. “Having an argument with yourself?”

  “It’s not important.” My cheeks burned so hotly that I wondered if he could garner my thoughts just by looking at me. A low breath of relief pushed through my lips when he changed the subject.

  “So you’re not a doctor,” he said. His hands massaged shampoo into his sawdust hair. He needed a trim, I noticed; the tips of his hair curled at his temples.

  I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t, and then I remembered the guessing game. “Was that a question?”

  “Are you a mechanic?”

  I smirked and shook my head.

  “Could’ve fooled me,” he said.

  “I’ve had experience with bad gas before.” Suddenly, I heard my words and choked on a gasp of humiliation.

  Castle grinned—a genuine one that I’d never seen on his face before. It looked strange, as if painted on the wrong canvas. Just as I thought that, grief punched my gut. Leo’s grins fitted his face. They were natural.

  “You know what I mean,” I grumbled. “And you’ve used up one guess.”

  Castle sank into the water. He was submerged for a few seconds as I gazed around the thin spread of trees. Daylight was creeping away from me.

  Castle came back up, all soup washed away from his body. He pushed through the lake to the shore, and I looked away.

  As he towel-dried himself, I left the gun on his pile of things and peeled off my own clothes. He didn’t look.

  His head turned away from me as he handed me the shower caddy. I took it into the lake with me and kept my back to the shore.

  Castle’s voice carried over to me; “Where are you from?”

  I rubbed shampoo into my peachy hair. The suds lathered into brown bubbles. “I lived in LA.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  I flipped my hair forward and rinsed out the shampoo. “I’m from Atlantic City.”

  I heard his derisive snort. “The city of the boardwalk empire.”

  I didn’t condition my hair. It would only make it greasier faster, and I didn’t know when I’d have the chance to wash it again.

  “Of all the places you could move to, why LA?”

  “It’s where the bus took me.”

  It’s all I said. He didn’t pry any further.

  “Time’s up,” he said. “It’s getting dark.”

  As I looked up at the sky, I saw that he was right. The blue was gone, replaced by swirls of purple and pink. Soon, stars and darkness would come.

  I got out of the water and wrapped a towel around myself. We went back into the cabin. As Castle barricaded the doors, I dressed in the living room.

  End scene.

  I made dinner that night as Castle searched the basement for petrol canisters. It would be easier to use the tinned food when we got on the road again, so I stuck to macaroni and cheese with brown rice. By the look on Castle’s face when he walked in, he wasn’t too excited by the strange meal.

  “Food is food,” I chided, spooning clumps of rice into his bowl.

  Castle hummed and shut the door behind him. He put something on the floor—I couldn’t see past the second armchair—then dragged the shelf in front of the door.

  That was it, I thought. No more toilet breaks until dawn. One of the many reasons I hate night. I’ve always hated the night. It’s full of danger. The darkness that sweeps over the world, the shadows that slink down the streets—it releases the worst in people, as if what they do in the dark will never be seen.

  Darkness is our poison.

  “Did you find gas?” The scrape of the shelf pulling over the floor almost drowned out my voice.

  “Not much,” he said.

  But my eyes still widened and I stared up at him. “There was gas down there?”

  “Two canisters,” he said. The shelf was now firmly in place. He lifted up the red canisters. My heart swirled—red meant petrol. Castle put them in the kitchen by the barricades door and draped a blanket over their stench.

  When he walked back in, I spotted a brown-leather book under his shoulder.

  “What’s that?” I asked through a mouthful of rice.

  Castle dropped onto the mattress in front of me and handed the book over. “Found it in a box in the basement. Thought you might like it.”

  With a frown, I reached forward and took it. A leather string tied the book together; I unwrapped it and flipped it open. Blank, thick pages looked up at me.

  “It’s a journal,” he said. “You were always writing in the old one. Thought you’d want to start another one.” As if embarrassed, he gave a dismissive shrug and lifted the bowl. He ate, his gaze fixed on the mac and cheese.

  I pressed my thumb on the edge of the book and flipped trough the pages. “I need a pen.”

  Castle reached down and slipped one from his jean-pocket. It was a plain old ball-point pen. But I took it with a mumbled thanks and tucked it into the diary. This diary.

  I placed it beside me and dug into my dinner. “If you had a diary,” I said through a mouthful, “what would you write?”

  Apple-green eyes burned into my face. He looked at me from beneath his dark lashes, milling over my q
uestion.

  “Would you write about Leo?” I surprised myself with my question. It was bold, maybe insensitive. Then again I wondered if he cared at all about Leo’s death.

  “I don’t know what I would write,” he admitted. “Do you write about him?”

  I stirred the rice into the leftover cheese sauce. “Sometimes.”

  “Who else?”

  “Everyone I meet.”

  He inhaled through his nostrils. “I’m not sure id like to know what you write about me.”

  “The truth.”

  “Your truth,” he said. I frowned at him. “Your perspective,” he explained, “moulds the way you see and think of me. So your truth might be wrong.”

  Once my bowl was empty, I abandoned my spoon in favour of my fingers. I wiped up the remaining smudges of sauce and licked my fingers clean. “Can you guess what I wrote about you?”

  The sharpness of his green eyes gleamed in the darkness, as if they were candles themselves.

  “I’d rather guess your occupation first. Like I said, I might not like what you wrote.”

  “If you didn’t want me to see and write you in a bad light, you shouldn’t have been such an asshole.”

  His head jerked up, and by the flash in his eyes I suspected no one had spoken to him like that before.

  I shrugged. “It’s true.”

  Castle put his bowl on the floor. Silence pulsed between us, saying unspoken thoughts.

  “Maybe,” he said, “I didn’t expect to be reuintited with my comrades in that way.” His gaze was steady on mine. “To find that another civilian had weaseled their way in to our group.”

  “You mean the deltas.”

  “Yes. Vicki wasn’t the first to get close to one of us. I tolerate her, she’s not too nosy and her skills come in handy. But you,” his gaze lingered over me, “I didn’t understand.”

  “Not to be too modest, but I doubt I’m very complex.”

  “It’s not you exactly that I didn’t understand,” he said. “It was your place with us—It wasn’t with the other survivors. It was with the deltas. I suppose I was a little hard on you.”

  “You wanna know what I think?”

  “You’ll tell me whether or not I want to hear it.”

  He was right.

  I sat up primly and raised my chin. “I think you were jealous of Leo and me.”

  “Maybe.” He lay on his back. “But not for the reasons you might think.”

  I made to reply, to ask of his reasons, but the words caught in my throat.

  A choked cry came from outside. Castle jolted up on the mattress; I froze, fingers twisting in the blanket beneath me.

  The cry ripped out again; strangled and pained. Not human. It was a rotter.

  Castle lifted his finger to his lips, silently hushing me. If I wasn’t so afraid, I might’ve flipped him off. It was just common sense not to make noise with rotters around—I didn’t need him to tell me.

  The rotter cried again. I could hear the pain it’s howl. I’d never heard them like this before, like a bear caught in a trap, howling in agony.

  The urge to peek through the curtains clutches me. I resisted it, fighting back the temptation.

  Was it lost? Did it cry out for its nest? Did it even understand pain?

  I shuddered. The howls were so close now, close enough to hear the whimper at the end of the melancholic sound.

  Castle slipped off the bed in one smooth motion. He blew puffs of air at the candles, until we were left in darkness.

  But even in blackness, the rotter’s pain reached me.

  I stayed quiet, and crawled closer to Castle. My heart thudded against its cage of ribs and I sank down beside him.

  We were silent that night. The howls kept up awake. The rotter wandered near the cabin for hours. And when I finally fell asleep, I dreamt of rotters—the ones who lost their children and searched for them, the ones with broken legs left on the street like roadkill, and all the while I felt their pain and I cried.

  OUR LAST DAY AT THE CABIN

  ENTRY SIX

  In the morning, my clothes stuck to my skin as if pasted on. The hollowness of my dreams lingered with me even after I woke.

  Castle had gone outside to check the lot. The rotter was gone. But for how long? It could find more, it could come back, a nest could be tucked away nearby.

  We had to leave the cabin.

  Castle fixed the tank back onto the Jeep and put the fresher fuel in. It was an all-day job.

  I knew how to spend my time to fight off boredom.

  I wrote my first entry that morning. I wrote and wrote until my wrist hurt and calluses appeared on my fingers. It was when Castle came back inside to make lunch that I stopped.

  “It was a good find, I see,” said Castle. He gestured to the diary.

  “You did good,” I said. I was thankful, grateful—but bitter too. A new diary. It seemed so final. A chapter in my life without Cleo; without my heart. “How are you going with the car?”

  “It’s almost ready,” he said. “We should be good to leave tonight. We need to pack everything we can. Food, blankets, water. Whatever we can fit.”

  He was asking me to do it. I nodded and tied my diary shut.

  “Do you have everything you need?” he asked. “It’s a long drive to the meet-up point.”

  I frowned. “I think so.”

  There was a meaningful look in his eyes that baffled me. Unspoken words swarmed in the green irises.

  Then, I realised.

  A smirk rugged at my lips. “Do you mean tampons?”

  A light flush spread over his cheekbones.

  “Seriously?” I said. “You spent your life killing people and now we live in blood—and your embarrassed about periods?”

  Castle turned his face to the side; I choked on a laugh.

  “I have loads,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Vicki told me they were valuable in the group—never got a chance to trade them.”

  Castle reached out to steady me, but I swatted his hand away. He followed me into the kitchen, where I perched on a stool.

  “Leg up,” he said.

  The first-aid box was still on the island bench, the lid open. He wanted to check my ankle.

  With a sigh, I kicked up my leg and gingerly rested my foot on the other stool. Castle rolled up the leg of my jeans, revealing the beige elastic bandage. It was a bit discoloured from wearing it into the lake.

  “The swelling in your foot has gone down,” he said, unwinding the dressing from my ankle. “Normally, sprained ankles take around six weeks to heal. But it looks as though yours might take a little longer.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You just said the swelling isn’t as bad as it was.”

  The bandage slipped from my foot to the stool. He was right—my foot didn’t look like a balloon anymore, but the purplish tint to my skin spread over a lump at my ankle that had only gotten bigger.

  “Wear this,” he said; he plucked a black ankle-brace from the first-aid box, then fitted it to my foot. “It should help.”

  He released my foot and stepped around me. His fingers reached out and slid the sleeve of my singlet off my shoulder. The dressing on my gunshot-wound had been white once, but it was now a murky shade of brown, like the colour of sewage water. He shed the bandage from my skin; I winced as it peeled from the wound, taking some congealed blood with it.

  When Vicki changed my dressings, she at least said sorry for hurting me in the process. Castle said nothing; he grabbed a bottle of amber liquid—antiseptic, I realised.

  Castle must’ve sensed my sudden panic; I stiffened on the stool, titling away from him and the bottle. He guided me back, closer to him, and unscrewed the bottle. “It’ll hurt,” he said, “but not as much as an infection will.”

  He splashed the liquid onto my wound; my hands slapped to my mouth, eyes clenched shut, and muffled a cry. My skin burned, it was on fire, being stripped to the bone by the liquid. Even through my closed eyes, tears leak
ed from the corners, and I trembled. I fought the need to pull away from Castle, but then he threw another splash onto the wound and I couldn’t fight it any longer.

  The stool scraped against the floor as I flew from it. I landed with a thud and curved over the bench. “Fuck!” My curse rebounded through the cabin, hoarse with stifled groans.

  The muscles that clenched to my body, as if trying to protect me from him, didn’t relax as I heard the lid being screwed back onto the bottle.

  “Grab those bandages for me,” said Castle. There was no emotion in his voice at all, not even the slightest hint of apology. Asshole.

  I snatched the fresh roll of bandages from the tin and shoved them into his hand. My narrowed eyes followed him, watchful and cautious, as he unfurled the dressings.

  After the pain of cleaning the wound, the touch of the new bandages were barely felt at all.

  When it was done, he said, “I’ve seen children react better than that.”

  I sneered at him. “Had they been shot?”

  He quirked his brow. “Some.”

  My sneer faltered as I fleetingly wondered what his life had been like before the world ended—had children been caught in the crossfire’s of wars he fought? Or was it children from the group, shot by the defected deltas who were after our cargo?

  I decided, I didn’t want to know and pulled away from the bench.

  “I should start packing.” It’s not a chore I wanted to do exactly, but in that moment I just didn’t want to be around him.

  I’d scavenged cardboard boxes and old suitcases from the basement. It was a treasure trove down there. Tucked away in sloped boxes I’d found ...

  But we could only take what we needed. Even still, I rammed ... into a suitcase and carried them up to the kitchen one by one.

  I’d managed to fit everything from the pantry in three boxes. Then, I filled up my own backpack with a few packets of muesli bars and cracker boxes. Just in case. You never know when you’ll be seperated again.

  By afternoon, I was carrying the lighter boxes out to the shed and dumping them beside the car. With my ankle and shoulder, I could only do so much—and even then, I was exerting myself.