by Amy Engel
By the time I come across a road, more weeds than asphalt, I’m limping from blisters on both feet, and my entire right side sparks with pain at each step. I sink down to the ground on the edge of the road. I can’t afford to stop for more than a few minutes. I won’t want to continue if I don’t keep moving forward.
My canteen is only half full, but I take a swallow anyway. I meant to make the water last longer, but the unforgiving sun is making a joke of all my good intentions. I debate whether to eat the last apple or another strip of jerky and finally decide on the apple. It will spoil before the jerky. I make it last as long as I can, sucking on the core until every last bit of moisture is gone, then toss it away.
It’s a risk to go out on the road. I’ll be more easily spotted there than if I keep to the tall grass or trees. But the uneven landscape is quickly proving too difficult for me to navigate with my useless arm and shoulder. Better to take the road, where at least I can keep my footing and avoid a fall. Decisions are easier, I’m finding, when there are no good options to begin with.
Turns out it’s not easy going on the road, either. I have to watch for cracks in the asphalt, ragged chunks that hide behind clumps of creeping green plants. But it’s still less challenging than navigating the tall grass. The sun shimmers off the broken asphalt for as far as I can see, the gray snake of road disappearing into the far horizon, and I follow it into a future I cannot yet fathom.
Four days. More than a hundred hours I’ve been on the road, and I haven’t passed a single abandoned town. The only signs that anyone’s ever inhabited this land in the entire history of the world are the skeletons of rusted cars I navigate around. But there’s never anything more, just this endless stretch of road and the broad, blank sky. If not for the position of the rising and setting sun, I would think I’d gotten turned around at some point and was simply retracing my steps over and over.
My water is gone, my thirst slackened only by a brief rainstorm that partially refilled my canteen and a small puddle of stagnant water at the side of the road. Water I knew I probably shouldn’t drink, its surface dark with dirt and the smell of rotten things rising from its shallow depths. But in the end, my thirst beat out my good sense. My brain’s dim warning bells were no match for the desperate need to drink.
Earlier today I could have sworn I heard someone calling my name in the distance. And in that moment, I didn’t even care if it was Mark Laird, I was so relieved to hear another human voice. But it was only the harsh cries of a few crows circling overhead, their wings turned a glossy blue-black by the unrelenting sunlight. As I watched them wheel above me, I understood how easy it would be to slip into madness out here. How quickly it could happen.
I expected it to be difficult outside the fence. And dangerous. But I never anticipated how relentlessly empty it would be. How vast the land and how small I am in comparison, almost like I’m steadily shrinking into nothing under the endless expanse of late-summer sky. I might have done better out here before I met Bishop. Before I got used to having someone listen to me, walk next to me. Before someone loved me.
I used to be better at loneliness.
I haven’t dared to take off my shoes; I don’t want to see the wreck of my feet. But I won’t be able to walk much longer. A few more miles is what I tell myself. I make it a challenge. Take one hundred steps. If I’m still alive, take one hundred more. It’s a sick little game, but it keeps me going. I passed a sign a few hours ago, knocked over into the weeds. Barely legible words across its rusted tin surface: Birch Tree—8 miles. After all the distance I’ve covered, eight miles is nothing. But I have an irrational fear that I’m never going to reach Birch Tree, that the town will just keep moving farther away from me, somehow always creeping beyond the far horizon.
But at the top of a small hill it took me much too long to climb, I finally see something in the distance besides grass and trees. Houses. The road I’m on passes right between the cluster of buildings. A harsh, choking sound escapes me, part laugh, part sob. I walk faster downhill, a kind of shuffling run as I try to protect my shoulder and favor my feet at the same time.
I have no idea what I’m going to find in Birch Tree. Maybe nothing. Maybe something worse than Mark Laird. But right now I don’t care. The town may be empty, but it once harbored life and some remnant of that time will remain, some proof that people once populated this barren land. A reminder that although I’m alone now, maybe I won’t always be.
I slow down the closer I get to the town, the back of my neck prickling with awareness. I don’t see any movement, no sounds of human inhabitants, but my body is sending out warnings anyway. I feel watched, eyes crawling over me as I limp along the road. I’d be easy pickings for someone, my arm useless in its makeshift sling, my body weak from hunger and dehydration. And while nothing moves in the shadows between the houses, the uneasy feeling in my gut doesn’t leave.
The first house on the left has been partially burned, the roof collapsing inward, fire-blackened boards pointing their jagged remains toward the sky. The second house is in better shape, a squat little bungalow, its front windows smashed. A bit of tattered curtain, faded to colorlessness, blows inward on the hot breeze. I pick it for no other reason than because it reminds me of the house I shared with Bishop.
I climb the front steps, my back still tingling with the knowledge I’m being watched. It could be my imagination, my mind playing cruel tricks, but I don’t think so. I push open the cracked front door anyway. If there is someone out there, they can catch me on the road as easily as they can inside the house. It’s not like I’m going to be able to outrun them.
People have been inside this house since the war, although how long ago I can’t tell. There’s a coating of dust on every surface, but not thick enough to have been undisturbed for fifty years. And everything that once made this house a home is gone. No pictures on the walls, no knickknacks on the mantel. The only things that remain are those too large to be easily moved. A weather-beaten dining room table, missing part of one leg so that it slouches lopsided, partially blocking the doorway. A couch in the living room spews stuffing onto the floor, holes in the mildewed fabric probably providing nests for all manner of small animals over the years. There is a dark stain that runs almost the whole length of the entryway, practically black against the wood. Blood, years old. Probably spilled sometime after the war ended. So many people weren’t killed by the bombs. They were done in by fear and mindless panic, their own neighbors as lethal as weapons. Survival of the fittest taken to its most deadly conclusion.
I walk into the kitchen, wincing at the screech of the floorboards under my feet. It sounds like I’m announcing my presence, my exact location, to the entire town. The kitchen is bare, all the cabinet doors hanging open to reveal empty shelves. Not a single crumb left to scavenge. I didn’t expect anything different, but I’m still hit with a sharp pang of something close to panic. For the first time I accept that I may die, that this long-abandoned town may be my final resting place. I don’t know where to go from here. There doesn’t seem to be any point in climbing the stairs. It would take too much energy, and the thought of being trapped up there if someone followed me inside keeps my feet firmly planted on the first floor.
The sun is blinding when I reemerge onto the sagging front porch. I put up a hand to shield my eyes from the harsh light. Nothing moves in the midday heat. In the distance, I can hear what sounds like a door swinging in the breeze. Beyond that, there is nothing. Even the crows have fled.
I was wrong. Being here, in the skeleton of this ruined town, is worse than the open road. I’ve never believed in ghosts. The things that frighten me have always been right in front of me, easy to see and categorize. But if there are ghosts, this town is full of them, haunting all the cobwebbed corners and dusty yards. Whatever I was hoping to find here has long fled. All that’s left behind are the husks of lives that ended decades ago, tainting the air with sorrow and waste.
I stumble down the porch ste
ps, back out onto the parched pavement. And again it hits me, a steady thump right between my shoulder blades. The knowledge that something is watching me, even now tracking my unsteady steps.
I turn in a slow circle. Only the lifeless houses stare back at me, dark windows capable of hiding anything within their shadows. The smart thing to do would be get off this road. Find some cover among the trees and hope I can outsmart whatever is tracking me. Maybe become the hunter instead of the hunted.
But I’m too tired for that. Too weak and too angry. I hold my good arm out from my side, beckoning into the hot, still air. “Come on,” I yell. “You want me? Come and get me.” Nothing. I nearly stamp my foot in frustration. “Come on!” My voice, furious and fragile in equal measure, spirals off into the silence, as though swallowed up along with everything else that used to be alive.
Chapter Four
Bishop is pressed against me, his bare chest heating the skin of my back and shoulder. I can’t see him, but I can feel him, smell him, and the relief is so immense it threatens to engulf me, rolling over me like a wave I’m happy to drown in. I try to speak but all that comes out is a sobbing breath. “Shhh,” he says, barely a whisper. I want to roll over and look at him, but when I start to turn, his hand on my shoulder tightens, hurting me. The pain confuses me. Bishop would never hurt me. But when I cry out, he only squeezes harder. My hand scrabbles upward, desperate to loosen his grip, but I don’t find his fingers. Instead, something slithery-soft and faintly greasy slides through my hand, making me recoil. A long black feather. I wrench my head backward and Bishop is gone. In his place is a huge crow, its talons digging into my shoulder, slicing through the swollen flesh. Blood that burns like fire runs down my arm. I scream, try to bat the bird away, but it only stares at me, my own pain-twisted face reflected back in the vacant pools of its eyes.
“Here,” a voice says. “Drink this.”
My eyes feel glued shut, and I don’t try very hard to open them. I don’t have the energy. Something clanks against my teeth. “You have to open your mouth.” The same voice. My lips are pried apart, and a trickle of liquid hits my tongue. Now I open my mouth without hesitation, my hand coming up blindly to grab.
“Hold on, you’re going to spill it. Slow down.”
Water wets my lips, my tongue, the back of my sandpaper throat. I give a cry of anger when the flow of water stops, force my eyelids apart in order to chase the source. There’s a girl leaning over me, dark hair, brown eyes, wrinkled brow.
“Callie?” I say, and don’t recognize my own voice. I sound a thousand years old, more dead than alive.
The girl’s eyebrows shoot up. “Not last time I checked,” she says. Even before she’s done speaking, I realize my mistake. This girl’s hair isn’t as long, just skimming her collarbone, and her eyes are the muddy blue-brown of river water, not dark and inky like my sister’s.
Too late I notice the man slouched in the doorway, watching me, and realize I’m inside a house. Lying on a bed. Panic slaps me hard and fast, and I lurch backward, succeeding only in smacking my head against the headboard and waking the pain in my shoulder.
“Relax,” the girl says. She holds out a hand but doesn’t touch me. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Yet,” the man in the doorway says with a smirk. He has a crossbow slung across his back, the tip of it just visible over his left shoulder. His eyes glow pale brown against his dark skin.
“Shut up, Caleb,” the girl says, her eyes still on me.
“Who are you?” I ask. “Where am I?” I look around, my eyes bouncing from doorway to wall to bed, not able to land on anything for more than a second. Not sure where the biggest threat lies. “Where’s my bag?” That bag is the only thing I own in the whole world; I can’t lose it.
There’s a beat of silence. Caleb shifts into the room, takes a step closer to the bed. “You mean Mark’s bag?” he asks.
My heart leaps sideways in my chest, and I’m instantly alert. Anyone who knows Mark, who speaks of him with such familiarity, is a potential threat to me. I have to be careful. “I found that bag,” I say. “It’s mine now.” I try to hold Caleb’s gaze, but my eyes slide away before his do.
“We can worry about Mark and the stupid bag later,” the girl says. “Right now we need to get your shoulder fixed.”
Ever since Mark dislocated my shoulder, getting it back in the socket has been all I can think about. But now, faced with the prospect of these strangers touching me, I shrink back, bring my knees up protectively. I notice for the first time that my cut fingers are freshly bandaged.
“We cleaned those up,” the girl tells me, following my gaze. “You should have had stitches, but it’s too late now. You may have some scars, but they should heal up fine.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“No problem. But now we have to take care of your shoulder. It’s going to hurt,” she says. “But we have to do it. The longer it stays like that, the less likely it’s ever going to be right.” She looks at Caleb. “Come on.”
Caleb has to be close to a decade older than the girl, but he listens to her like she’s the boss. He crosses the room, stopping next to the bed so that he’s on my injured side. He has a length of faded cloth stretched between his hands like a cradle. Or a noose. I look up at him. His face is impassive, waiting for the girl.
“Lie down,” she tells me. “On your back.”
I uncurl my legs slowly. I feel like prey, exposing my delicate underbelly as I flatten out on the bed, the two of them looming above me.
“Are you good with pain?” the girl asks.
That surprises a hoarse little laugh out of me. “Getting better all the time,” I say.
The girl smiles, revealing a slight gap between her front teeth. She tucks her hair behind both ears and nods to Caleb, who bends down and loops the cloth under my armpit, pulling it taut. I clench my teeth to keep from crying out. I try to keep my breathing even, tell myself if they were going to hurt me there’d be no point in healing me first. Unless they’re sadists, a little voice in my head whispers, but I tell it to shut up.
The girl nods at Caleb again, and then reaches forward and takes hold of my injured arm, pulling steadily downward, while he keeps tension in the cloth. My shoulder, already filled with broken glass, explodes, pain rippling up into my jaw and shooting sparks from my fingertips. The girl pulls harder and I can’t keep quiet any longer, screaming into the humid air as she gives a final yank and my shoulder shifts back into place with a pop that sends me pinwheeling down into darkness.
I jerk awake, gasping out the last of another horrible dream. No talons this time, but something equally as horrifying, involving Bishop and blood and my own guilty hands. I can hear my shuddering breath and I count backward from one hundred until it evens out, slow and steady. My head aches, a dull, insistent throb. It takes me a few seconds to realize I’m in the same room as earlier, still in the narrow bed, although the daylight is fading fast, purple-tinged light edging in around the cracked and dusty shutters. I lift my injured shoulder off the bed, just an inch, testing.
“Better not,” a man’s voice says from the gloomy corner to my right. “Likely to pop it back out. Gonna be a while before it’s ready for normal movement.”
My eyes swing wildly, landing on Caleb, who is sitting on the far side of the room, his body slouched on a wooden chair. His relaxed stance is deceptive; he has the lean, hungry look of a predator. One false move from me and he’d be up and out of that chair before I could blink.
“You scared me,” I say, fingers twisting in the worn quilt someone has thrown on top of me.
Caleb shrugs, doesn’t apologize. His eyes pulse with a quick, clever intelligence that warns me to be careful. “Ash is always looking for someone to save,” he says after a tense beat of silence.
I have no idea what he’s talking about. The smoky early-evening light shades the whole room with the foggy, underwater quality of a dream, making me wonder if I’m still asleep an
d my nightmare has simply taken an unexpected detour. I blink fast, pinch the back of my hand. “What… I don’t know what you mean?” I say eventually. “Who’s Ash?”
“Ashley, the girl who was here earlier.”
He sounds impatient, but only half of me is really listening. Now that I’m sure I’m awake, I’m wondering if we’re alone in this house, whether he’s dangerous, calculating whether I can beat him to the doorway. And where to go from there if I do.
“Hey,” he says, loud and sharp. “Pay attention to what I’m saying.”
I try to focus on him. I don’t want to make him angry, or any angrier than he already seems. But I can feel my own irritation rising, too. “I am paying attention,” I snap back.
“She’s looking for someone to save,” he repeats. As he speaks he points in my direction. It has the ease of a gesture he’s done a thousand times, probably so much a part of him he doesn’t notice it anymore. “Even if they’re not worth saving.”
I shift upward in the bed, scooting up to sitting. Caleb doesn’t try to help me, just watches. “So what are you saying?” I ask, once I’m upright. “I’m not worth it?”
Caleb shrugs again, apparently his default reaction. “Too early to know.” He kicks at something on the floor, and for the first time I notice my bag lying there. Well, Mark’s bag, if we’re being truthful. “I’d be interested to hear how you got this bag.”
“I already told you. I found it.”
“Where?”
“By the river. I slipped on some rocks and dislocated my shoulder crossing the river. When I finally got to the other side, I found this bag on the bank. So I took it.” I’m not even sure why I’m lying to him. All I know is that he knows Mark, knows him well enough to wonder why I have his bag. If he finds out I hurt Mark, regardless of the circumstances, I’m not sure what he’ll do to me. Until I have a better idea of who, and what, I’m dealing with, lying seems like my best option.
