My heart beats faster. I can feel sweat drops beading at my brow. Finally, I blurt out, “You mean other than tap dancing?” I ask. I feel so dumb. I’ve never tap danced in my life, but this seems to make Paxton happy. He lets out a snort and picks up the folder from the table as he stands.
“We have room for you and your friends, though we are steadily running out.”
Paxton and Gabe lead me to the next room where Ethan and Gilbert wait for me. Gilbert looks annoyed but Ethan smiles widely.
“You made it through,” he says.
“We made it through,” I answer.
Gabe leads us through the dark city streets of Crestwood. It looks bleak and empty, but I’m positive it is more lively during the day. He takes us to an apartment building where we must share a room for the night.
“It’s only for the night,” he says. “I’m sure that tomorrow there will be some other living arrangements made, but you have plenty of blankets and room to sleep for now.”
“Thank you so much,” I say. “This is wonderful.”
Gabe looks at me and takes a deep breath. “Yes,” he says. “I’m sure it is.”
Gabe starts to leave the room when Ethan asks him another question. “Do you enjoy it here?”
“It’s safe,” Gabe says. “For some of us, anyway.” He looks away and scratches his head when he says this. “It’s hardly a city. There are only a few things for people to enjoy, but at least you are safe. Do any of you have any more questions?” When none of us say anything else, he gives us another curt smile and walks out of the room.
There is only one bed in the room and a couch. Gilbert claimed the couch the moment he saw it and Ethan gave up the bed for me.
“There’s room for us both,” I say. “You shouldn’t have to sleep on the dirty floor.”
Ethan smiles at me as he looks over at Gilbert, his snores echoing off the empty walls. “This world may have gone to hell, Waverly,” he says as he lays out a blanket on the floor, “but my principles haven’t.”
“Your principles?” I ask.
“That’s right,” he says.
“Chivalry has no place in a world where the dead walk,” I say. “This bed is large and the floor is disgusting.”
“I’m not being chivalrous,” he says. “I just feel weird about sharing a bed is all.”
“In this world, you take what you can get, and I’m offering a spot next to me. That’s all.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “Goodnight, Waverly.”
I try to sleep, but nightmares consume my mind. All I see is Lucas’ head shattering from the bullet impact, his body falling to the ground next to me. I wake up crying out in my sleep, but I calm down when I feel a pair of strong arms wrap around me.
“Lucas,” I whisper.
“I know, I know,” a voice says to me. “It’s hard. I know it is.”
It’s Ethan.
“Cry as much as you need to,” he says as he rocks me, my head resting against his chest. I don’t know why, but there is no white flash. Maybe because I’m not deliberately touching him. I’m glad.
He sets his cheek on the top of my head. I don’t know if he kisses my hair or not, but his embrace is enough to make me feel safe. He somehow makes the pain lessen.
I feel for the chain at my neck and follow it down to the diamond ring at the end. I fall asleep in his arms, but even his warm embrace cannot keep me from the nightmares that fill my mind.
Chapter 14 - Waverly
Three Years Ago
It was a month or two after Charles’ death when Hattie was infected by a greyskin. There was a deep bite in her shoulder and scratches all along her back. The hour was late and the three of us sat in an abandoned fast food restaurant, not knowing what to do.
She was beyond coherency and probably only a few minutes from dying. Her skin had already turned ashy, and her eyes looked like pieces of wet coal. I didn’t know what was more difficult to watch: the pain on Lucas’ face, or Hattie struggling to stay alive. We both knew she was suffering, but while she was still able to talk to us, she told us not to kill her. She told us just to leave her there in the building and run as far away as possible. But we had not been able to do the second part. It was easy for neither of us to kill her, but there was no way we could just leave her there. Neither one of us said it, but we knew we would never let her turn into a greyskin. She would die, and that would be it.
Lucas was confronting what I had already faced from the very beginning of the outbreak. He was facing the death of his family.
The three of us had been traveling through the country for as long as we could. It was no small wonder that any of us were still alive. We had faced greyskins, bandits, murderers…this was the beginning of survival and people were nasty about it. No one trusted anyone else. Everyone held onto his or her possessions as if they were the only things that would keep a person alive. It was a struggle just to come across a canned good, much less shelter. Lucas had been somewhat of a good hunter but ammunition was hard to come by. He had once shot a deer only to have it stolen from him as he was bringing it to us. It seemed that ever since the outbreak, fate was dealing us blow after blow with no end in sight until we simply died. And then, with Hattie bitten and scratched as she was, there was only the two of us left.
“What are we going to do, Waverly? She’s my mother.” He bit at his fingernails incessantly, the occasional tear finding its way to the bottom of his cheeks before sliding off to his shirt.
“I know,” I said, but I didn’t know how to comfort him. I couldn’t tell him this, but I wanted to say that it affected me just as much. I loved Hattie more than my own mother. It was harder to see her suffer than it was to hear my father get ripped to pieces over the phone.
The worst part about it was knowing that she was going to die, and not being able to do anything about it. For a long while, she had just sat there and mumbled words that neither of us could understand, but for the last hour she had been asleep. Her breaths were shallow and the virus was quickly taking over her completely.
None of us had seen the news since the day we left their home when Charles died, so we didn’t know much more than we did the day it started. All we knew was what we had learned from others. One thing we knew was that the virus would kill within twenty-four hours, and Hattie was in her last hour.
I reached out and touched her forehead. She was burning hot. When she reached up and grabbed my arm, I nearly screamed because I thought she might have turned without us realizing it, but her touch was gentle.
“Waverly,” she said. “Lucas.”
Lucas jumped to the floor and was by her side in an instant. “What do you need, Mom?”
“Why are you two still here?” Her voice barely came out as a whisper.
“We’re scared,” I said. “We want to be with you.”
“It’s dangerous to be near me.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” I said, gripping her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gone out. I’m sorry.” Her foggy, blackened eyes turned toward Lucas and then to me. “Neither of you deserve this. You were meant to grow up with a different life.” Her breaths became more labored with each word. “I wanted to see you grow up to be like your father.”
“He is still with me,” Lucas said. His lips were quivering and I knew he was trying to hold back the tears to seem strong for his dying mother. I felt so proud of him. “And so are you, Mom.”
A faint hint of a smile formed at the side of her mouth. “That’s good to hear.”
Her eyes turned to me and it was almost too much to look back at her. Those eyes didn’t belong to Hattie. “You two can never let go of each other,” she says. “You have to rely on each other. Watch over each other.”
“We will,” Lucas said, looking up at me.
“Always,” I said. “I will never leave his side.”
This made her smile again. “It does me good to hear that. Neither of you have family, but now you are family.
Don’t give up. They will find a cure. The world will get better. You just have to survive to the end.”
Hattie closed her eyes with these words. No matter how hard we tried, Lucas and I could not stop weeping.
“Hattie,” I said, “do you feel pain? Are you suffering?”
She took a deep breath, her eyes still closed. “Go fish.”
A short laugh escaped my lips and Hattie’s grip on my hand squeezed tighter. We sat next to her for another twenty minutes before she finally took her last breath and her grip on my hand eased.
We were then faced with the grim reality that Hattie could wake as a greyskin at any moment and someone had to do something about it. Lucas got up from her side and walked out of the little restaurant and into the parking lot while I sat still holding Hattie’s hand. I pulled her fingers from mine and followed him out there.
He was shivering and the wind blew at his thick blonde hair. “I can’t be in there,” he said.
I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, leaning my cheek against his shoulder. I wanted to tell him that I knew how he felt, but he already knew that. He didn’t need me to comfort him with words. He needed his mother to hold him and to tell him that everything would be all right.
“It’s my fault,” he said, wiping away a tear.
“No it isn’t.”
“It is. You know why she got bit.”
“She was bitten because she was overwhelmed,” I said.
“She was bitten because I complained, Waverly. Don’t you remember? I complained that it was cold and that we didn’t have any blankets. Then she…she…” His tears turned into sobs as he crouched to the ground, holding his belly. His stomach tightened so hard that he threw up on the ground in front of him.
I rubbed his back, not really knowing what to say but, “It’s not your fault…it’s not your fault,” over and over.
It was just like Hattie. She heard the simple complaint that her son was cold, and she felt guilty about it. There was an outlet mall not far from us at the time and while we were asleep, she went out to find some blankets. She came back with a bite and scratches instead.
“We can’t let her wake up,” he said.
“I know.”
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
“I know.” He wanted me to do it, but I wasn’t certain that I could either. He knew that Hattie was close to me too, but she wasn’t my mother—despite the fact that she was more of a mother to me than my own. I rubbed his back one more time, stood up and walked away from him and into the restaurant.
I knelt beside Hattie again and watched her face. Even though she was dead, she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I reached for her hand again, this time finding the small diamond and gold ring that was once a symbol of her devotion and love, recently serving as a symbol of love lost and torn away. But Hattie wouldn’t have seen it that way. She would have seen it as a reminder that love still exists as long as we exist.
I slipped it from her finger and held it out in my palm. Almost every girl thought about the day when a man would kneel down and offer her a ring such as this, declaring his undying love for her in a way that no other could. I thought about how such a thing would probably never happen to me. It wasn’t a thought of self-pity, rather, a thought of finality. I didn’t have the same hope that Hattie had in her last moments. I didn’t see a future where all would be made right and a cure would be found. Even if someone did cure the greyskin virus, they would never be able to fix the broken hearts of all those that lost someone to it. They would never be able to replace the people long gone. The effect of the outbreak would be a mark on the world forever. The future had been altered for everyone because of it. Generations upon generations would feel our pain in some way or another.
I tucked the ring away in my pocket and set Hattie’s hand down when I felt a slight twinge at her knuckle—a movement. There was a long, metal pipe that Lucas had used as a weapon lying on the floor a few feet away. I stepped over to it and picked it up off the ground. I didn’t want to make any noise. I didn’t want Lucas to hear the act take place.
Several fingers on Hattie’s left hand were beginning to tremble. This was the first time I had ever seen what it was like for someone to wake as one of those things. But I would not fully see it yet. I never wanted to see it. I knew that if I waited much longer, her dark eyes would pop open. Her jaws would try to clench around my skin. She would no longer be Hattie. She would be just another greyskin.
Both of her hands were shaking now. I gripped the pipe with both my hands and held it back like a bat. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
This isn’t Hattie, I thought to myself. Hattie is gone. This is just another greyskin. Hattie is gone. Hattie is gone.
I opened my eyes and swung down as hard as I could and the pipe landed against the side of her head. Her fingers still twitched so I had to do it again. Sobs escaped my lips as I raised the pipe. Again. Her blood splattered, black flecks hitting my face as I swung again. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but I couldn’t.
Finally, Hattie’s body was completely still and I dropped the pipe to the floor. I just about threw up like Lucas had outside, but I was able to hold it in. I turned away from her body and made my way out of the restaurant. Lucas was still sitting in the parking lot. I knelt down next to him and handed him his mother’s ring.
“She won’t become one of them,” I said softly.
He didn’t say anything, but he let me hold him as he stared at the ring. Neither of us slept that night. We just sat in silence until the morning came.
One Year Ago
Lucas and I were resolved to a life as travelers. We had tried to stay in one place for long periods of time but it never seemed to work out. Supplies would run short. A herd of greyskins would run us out. Any number of things would happen to keep us on the move at all times. Once or twice we tried to become part of a group or village. We made promises to pull our weight. We swore up and down that we would be worth the food it would cost to make us a part of their community, but we always got the boot. Groups had already decided upon their members. Villages were too careful about who they let in. So, we moved around for the next two years in no particular direction. For some reason, it worked for us. Sure, if we had come up on a town or group that was willing to have us, we would have gladly joined with them, but by this point, we were no longer looking.
On the road, we had become more skilled at avoiding the greyskins. We became better killers, better hunters. Lucas taught me everything he knew about stalking a prey for food. We would set traps and if we ever came across a rifle, we would hunt deer. Guns were few and far between and on a couple of occasions, the sound of the blasts got us in trouble, so we usually preferred not to travel with them. We made slingshots to kill squirrels and birds, and we carried sharp weapons to fend off the greyskins. We avoided the cities and towns so we wouldn’t come across raiders. That’s not to say we didn’t have some close calls.
This particular night was storming wildly. The winds howled and the lightening flashed, shooting out booms of thunder so loud that I had to cover my ears. It was imperative that we find shelter, but when we came across a shady cabin in the middle of the woods, it almost seemed safer to brave the storm. Lucas looked at me with rain dripping off his face, our clothes soaked to the skin.
“It looks small enough,” he said. “Shouldn’t be too many greyskins in there if any.”
I was more worried about the fact that it might have someone in it. The thought of greyskins didn’t scare me. We stalked toward the front of the cabin, the rain concealing our steps. Lucas held a crowbar in his hands and I had a long dagger I had found on a dead body.
At the front door there was a sign that said Frank Miller. I didn’t really like that I knew the identity of the cabin’s owner.
Lucas pressed his face against the window and peered in. “It’s just one room,” he said. “Doesn’t look like anyone has b
een here in a while.”
“Okay,” I nodded at him.
He moved forward and tried the doorknob and found that it was unlocked. He stepped in quietly and I followed behind him. The room was dank and smelled awful. To our right was a small fireplace with wood chopped and stacked neatly next to the hearth. To our left was a bed with a dead, bloody corpse in it. It might have turned to a greyskin if it were not for the self-inflicted bullet hole in its forehead. A handgun was resting in the man’s limp hand.
Then I knew I didn’t want to know the name of the owner.
“I’ll start a fire,” Lucas said.
As he worked at the fireplace, I looked through each cabinet and closet in the cabin. I found plenty of food that had gone bad and rotten, but there were some nonperishable foods as well. In a closet, I found a bunch of blankets. I grabbed one and covered the corpse.
Out of sight, out of mind, I thought.
Once the fire was started, I poured a can of beans into a pot and cooked it over the flames. I sat in a chair next to Lucas and smiled.
“What?” he asked, smiling back.
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just…I’m really happy to be in here right now.”
“Even with Mr. Miller behind us?”
“Mr. Miller isn’t here,” I said. “He’s out of town.”
“You grab the gun from his hand?”
“Nope. We don’t need it.”
Lucas looked back at the fire and raised his hands to warm his palms, but I continued to stare at him.
“I’m really glad to be with you,” I said.
He looked at me, this time his face much more serious. “The roads have been long, but I would choose to travel them with no one else.” He leaned his head in and kissed my lips tenderly. “I have something for you,” he whispered. He stood and pulled out a silver chain from his pocket. On the end, glittering in the firelight, was Hattie’s ring. “I got this chain off a…from someone,” he said with a smile. “I thought it could be a symbol of our connection together. You and me.”
The Starborn Ascension: Books 1, 2, and 3 (The Starborn Saga) Page 16
