Every Dark Little Thing

by T. S. Ward

  I cut through the flock like that, machete and then knife, shoulder them down, a boot through a couple skulls.

  Soldier pulls the barn door open. He’s on my heels, catching a sheep that I miss and forcing a knife up under its chin.

  “I’ll get her,” he says, “Just cover me.”

  “Oh, yeah, no, I’m doing this for fun!”

  I wait as he passes me, watching his back as he makes it to the flower bushes the kid is crawling out of. She’s a daring little bugger, squealing when she sees him.

  Vanessa comes tearing out of the house as he picks her up, and I take out the few that stand in her way, but I don’t stop there. I don’t stop until they’re all fully dead, until I notice the arrows knocking down a few stragglers around me. Until this fire in my head is all consuming and the sweat is dripping into my eyes and I can’t focus.

  All I see is Vanessa hugging Soldier, the kid clinging to him, and her mouth shaping the words thank you.

  My own breath feels foreign to me. Sounds foreign. It is heavy and laboured and coming from the end of a long tunnel where the light at the end is just a pin prick, is Soldier shouting my name. My real name.

  And I am not myself.

  I stand over my own body, crumpled and small before me, collapsed like all these other dead little things. An entire field of them.

  I see the blood, the gore, speckled and splashed across every part of me. The blood and the dirt still coating my hands from—as if I’m one of them. One of the dead.

  I see my eyes. Unseeing.

  And I don’t hear my breathing anymore, don’t hear anything, but I see Soldier in slow motion. He turns me over, his hands cold against my cheeks, on my neck. Feeling for a pulse. I watch his hands, through a haze, fighting off anyone who tries to stop him, voices telling him to give up. His hands, putting life back into my chest, making my heart beat for me. Soldier, making my lungs breathe.

  Day One Hundred And One

  I wake up in the farmhouse.

  The house, not the barn.

  I wake up, shivering, and nearly scream when I see Lou jump and start at me with a knife. I would scream, if my throat wasn’t dry as hell. If my lungs would inflate properly.

  “Jesus,” he says, holstering the knife to pull me into a hug.

  I manage some strained noise of protest, mostly involuntary, with the pain that’s blossoming out in my chest. My head is pounding from being pulled upright so quickly.

  Lou sets me back. “Sorry, sorry. Scared the piss out of me, kid. Could have said the scratch wasn’t ghoul.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. “Holy fuck. My ribs.”

  He rifles around for a few pills and a water bottle, and then helps me sit up to take them. He looks exhausted, worse than I feel. “Everyone’s expecting you to be… you know. A ghoul.”

  I nearly laugh. “Just a ghost. Sorry to disappoint.”

  He waits while I drink the entire bottle. “He brought you back. He saved you. Wouldn’t let anyone stop him from trying, and honestly, thank god for it. Stubborn bastard.”

  “Him, or me?” I raise an eyebrow.

  He laughs, and then grows quiet. “How do you know him, anyway?”

  I shake my head slowly and look down at my hands, folding them together. Hell. They’re so goddamn thin, these hands. Even my own body doesn’t want to be around me, wasting away the way it is, fading out, giving up like that.

  Lou clears his throat and stands up. “You want to go downstairs, give ‘em all the fuck-you finger?”

  He helps me up, helps me down the stairs and down the hall, into the kitchen. It’s early, and mostly everyone is still asleep, but the few who are awake look up in shock. I catch their hands itching for weapons before they realize I’m alive, and even that takes a little while to fully sink in.

  “I’ll be damned,” Macon says.

  I leave them there and drag myself into the living room, collapsing in front of the fire. The warmth hits good.

  “Ghost?”

  The voice is soft and I almost don’t hear it, but I turn to see Vanessa lying on the couch with Noah tucked against her.

  “I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m glad you’re back. Might have lost her if it wasn’t for you.”

  I nod and look back to the fire.

  “I feel so bad, letting that happen,” she whispers.

  “Worse has been done before,” I say, “I’m sure someone would have seen her.”

  “Still. I lost her dad already, I don’t think I could—and seeing you take out that whole horde like that… it was terrifying. And admirable.”

  I stare into the fire, watching the flames burning low on the last bits of a log, and the embers glowing warmly. After a minute, I stand up, walk to the corner of the room, and grab a log as the front door opens.

  “Hey, Sam,” Vanessa says, and I pause, deciding on another log. “Were you out there all night?”

  “Yeah,” Soldier says. “Noah alright?”

  I see her out of the corner of my eye, her hand brushing the girl’s hair back, and I have to look away. It’s reminding me of why I’m here. It’s reminding me of something I don’t want to remember—and just how close we—

  “She’s good.”

  “Good,” he says, walking into the kitchen.

  I go back to the wood stove, crank the door open, and set the logs inside.

  I’m starting to feel the after effects of everything. The numbness in my lower back, a hitch in my step, the radiating pain in my ribs, the pounding in my head. Hunger. I follow Soldier into the kitchen, slowly, quietly.

  “Lou?” He asks, “Is she okay?”

  He looks up at him, busy cooking something, and then looks past him. He waves a hand to me. “How do you feel about squirrel for breakfast?”

  I slip past Soldier and sit down at the table, sighing. “Revolutionary, Lou, never been done before.”

  “Coffee?”

  “No, no, there’s—that floorboard, under your foot, there’s stuff under…”

  I watch as he takes a knife and crouches down, shimmies it up, and pulls out the supplies I left there. Chamomile tea, honey, a few packs of oatmeal. When I turn back, I catch Soldier’s eye, and look away quickly.

  Macon raises an eyebrow, setting down the worn book he’s reading. “You’ve been living here?”

  “Sometimes,” I say.

  “You still keen on taking Ezra out?”

  I hold his gaze, eyes narrowed. “Jesus fuck, can’t let me breathe for two minutes, can you?”

  “Let you breathe for two years,” he says. “I think you owe it to us, and you know my people aren’t as eager about taking a life as you seem to be—”

  “Come out with any more bullshit, you’re gonna be shitting out your own teeth for a week.” There aren’t many people in the room now, but they’re all looking at us. “What the fuck makes you think I owe anything to you? You really think I’m eager to kill living fucking people?”

  He raises his eyebrows and taps a finger against the table. “You’re the one who said you wanted to kill him—”

  “Bastard killed my sister, what do you think—”

  “Your reputation has you killing upwards of ten people.”

  “Can you do this another time, Macon?” Lou says, setting a plate and a mug down in front of me. He stands there with a hand on the back of my chair. “I could barely get her to hunt as a kid. I doubt that’s accurate.”

  I shake my head and chew on some squirrel. “It’s not accurate. It’s more.”

  Soldier looks at me then, confused, or shocked, or something.

  “My point is, you were close. And he’s looking for you. He came into Lakeside, broke down our barriers, killed our people. We were forced to flee if we wanted to live. And the entire time they’re asking everyone where Squirrel is, right before they kill them. We’ve got fifty-five people scattered around this area. Fifty-five, out of three hundred and sixty-four.” He leans forward, ducking his head to try and look me in
the eye. I’m still chewing on this damn squirrel. Ironic. “What do you think about that?”

  “Three hundred and nine?” I drink some tea. Lean back. My lip twitches. “That makes three hundred and thirty. Three hundred and thirty-one, after… What’s one more, yeah?”

  Macon blinks. “So you’ll help us?”

  I shake my head. “One condition.”

  “Just one? What’ll that be?”

  I look over to Soldier as Fox and Viking walk in, the smell of smoke and burnt biter following them. I drink my tea, set the cup down, and nod toward Ben. “You don’t let him follow me. Ezra will kill him, without hesitation.”

  Macon sits back, the chair creaking loud. “Alright.”

  Fox catches that. He looks at me, frowning, mouthing what?

  “Fuck you, by the way, Macon. You knew. You’ve known. And you’re a piece of shit for it.” I cross my arms, and then uncross them, because it hurts my chest. “But fuck me, whatever, keep my family from me. Why would I get anything when my cosmic debt is insurmountable?”

  I stand up, walk out of the room, walk out of the house. I need air, cold air. I need to breathe. I need to be alone, again.

  I start across the yard and into the woods. Even with a limp forming, and the pain in my ribs, moving is better than sitting. Moving gets the blood flowing and chases the chill from my skin.

  But then Soldier is running after me, walking beside me. “Hey. You know there’s no way I’m leaving you, right? I can’t even let you walk away without having some kind of heart attack—”

  “Don’t say that,” I tell him.

  “No. I want to say it. I want to talk to you. I want to tell you everything that’s on my mind, everything about me. I want to know everything about you.” He stops me by the river, fingers light on my elbow.

  He starts to say something else, and stops. He reaches into his coat, hesitates, and then pulls something out of his pocket that startles me. My journal. My old one. He presses it into my hands and steps back.

  “I’m not good with words, like you.”

  I’m confused for a while, until I crack it open and start thumbing through the pages. There are all these notes he’s left in the margins, and at the very end, in all the blank pages I never got the chance to fill—there’s this note that I can barely read for the tears that come up. And I can barely breathe for it.

  I close the journal, and for some strange fucking reason, I want to chuck it as far as I can, to turn around, to walk away. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s too overwhelming. Maybe it’s too much. Or maybe—maybe it’s just that it’s everything I’ve ever needed or wanted to hear.

  “Keely?”

  I step close again, slip the journal back into his jacket pocket, and tilt my head up to look at him. “That’s slightly embarrassing. I mean, very, but—how could I not forgive you? And why—why me? I don’t deserve you.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s not true. I don’t deserve you.”

  I reach up and set my hands against his cheeks. “Benjamin. I should inform you that my ribs fucking hurt, but if they didn’t, I would hug you.”

  He laughs, his hands soft on my waist, and kisses me right when I think he’s about to say something. It catches me off guard, and my stomach flips, and I get dizzy. But I smile.

  He rests his forehead against mine. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t let you go. You’re my Ghost. You’ve got to haunt me forever.”

  “You’re a fool,” I whisper.

  “I know. I know.” He closes his eyes and smiles this big ass grin, laughing. “You’re one to talk. You wrote about me nearly every damn day.”

  A goddamn fool. “Kept it up, too.”

  “You missed me.”

  “You expected any less?”

  “Well, when do I read that one?” He tilts his head. “Or are you going to tell me about it instead?”

  That one, this one—this is the part where I lose him, where I go to Ezra, where I do all the dumb shit I should never have done. This is the one I regret the most. This is the one where I got Sadie killed, got myself kicked out of Lakeside, spent two years alone—mostly alone—and never wrote a damn thing down about it even though there are things that I really should write down—for my mental health, as that doctor would say.

  Things that I might tell Soldier one quiet night.

  There are a lot of things I might tell him one quiet night.

  Or, a quiet morning.

  “You’ve been sleeping in the barn?” I try to distract him from the matter as I crouch down on the edge of the little stream and rub the dirt from my hands, dig it out from under my fingernails. Seeing it makes my stomach churn.

  “If by sleeping you mean lying awake in the dark, yes,” he says.

  There’s this lightness in his voice, this kind of elation, that I don’t have in mine. Even laughing, I’m bogged down in the mud. Even peering up at him with a sly smile, I can feel the hands wrapped around my ankle, the fingernails digging in so sharply.

  “I haven’t slept since the last night I saw you. Not so well. But I’d like to.”

  He ducks his head down, smiling, cheeks flushed. “Fresh out of champagne, sorry.”

  I laugh, but I hear it so clearly, how forced it is.

  “Ghost. I have been up all night cleaning up these ghouls you left lying all over the yard. I will lie down and sleep with you if that’s what you want.”

  I stand up. “Any of those fifty-five at the honey house?”

  “You think I’d let anyone near that place? I’ve been taking care of the bees every damn spring and winter.” He holds out his hand, and we start walking along the bank of the river, toward the back of the property.

  It’s quiet now, and it’s better than being alone. It’s better to force myself to think of our fingers twined together, rather than mine—I don’t want to think about anything else. I don’t want to worry or remember anything else. I don’t want the stress of Macon’s people or Ezra or Lana and her beetles or anything, other than lying down with my ear to Soldier’s chest, listening to his heart beating.

  Day One Hundred And Two

  It’s been dark for hours when he wakes up. When we both wake up, really, because for a second, I was dreaming. Dreaming that this plague didn’t exist, that I met Soldier, and there wasn’t a migration when we left the hospital. And instead of jumping out of his truck, I stuck out the ride, took his number, and called him as soon as he left.

  I lie there, cold where I’m not touching him, staring at the dull light on the ceiling.

  “Hey, Ben?”

  He hums in response.

  I shiver under his fingertips, light against the scars on my arms. “If there wasn’t some plague fucking the world up, would we have still ended up like this?”

  He’s quiet. “Why do you ask?”

  “Had a dream about it.” A dream that made me feel soft. Vulnerable. It made me think that this mess is the only thing that’s brought me this kind of calm, this kind of warmth—even if I’m cold as hell.

  “Do you want a good answer, or the reality of it?” He asks, and then he sighs, and kisses the top of my head. “Yes, if there was ever a reason for us to meet. You… you’re like a firecracker thrown into a church. I don’t know how else to describe the kind of world-turning-upside-down you are other than that. If we met, I would have bought your coffee, I would have driven you home, I would have asked for your number and given you mine and called you a little sooner than would seem appropriate. If I met you any other way, I would have loved you just the same. Just as quick.”

  “And the reality?”

  “The reality,” he says stiffly, “Is that she never tried to make that cure, and she never tried to test it on humans before it was accepted for trials. If none of that happened, the plague wouldn’t have existed, and I wouldn’t have had much of a reason to leave. I wouldn’t have been in Georgia. We wouldn’t have met.”

  I frown, processing what he’s saying slowly. “She called you h
er fiancé.”

  He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I meant, really. My reason to leave her. I couldn’t stay. Not after that.”

  I push myself up, slip a leg over him, and straddle his hips. “You’re telling me your fiancée ain’t just trying to make a cure out of me? She started this? Is that how I’m to understand that? Think she said as much.”

  “You’re gonna sit there like that and talk about my ex?”

  I tilt my head. “Could talk about mine. How about that?”

  “Could leave the past in the past, really.”

  I lean forward, hands pressed to his chest. “The future then. When you figure out you actually can’t stand me and you’re talking to some other girl about your ex who could have saved the world if she wasn’t a selfish fucking dunce—take your pick over which one.”

  He shakes his head, and I feel his low laugh rumbling through his chest. “Not so fast. You skipped an important step.”

  “What, do I have to be your fucking fiancée first or something?”

  He smiles, eyes squinting. “No, no. You at least have to one up that. I mean, there’s a priest somewhere, right?”

  I press my lips together. “Fool.”

  “But for real—”

  “You know it’s til death do us part, right?” I’m laughing now, for real, as real as it gets for me. “You know how often we’d have to renew our vows?”

  “Every morning, when you’re the crankiest,” he says, “And every night, when you’re the saddest.”

  I sit back, frowning. “You goddamn—how do you manage to be a dick and be nice about it?”

  “How do you manage to be perfect in every way? I don’t get it.”

  I make a face. “You’re gonna end up hating me.”

  He touches a finger to the center of my chest, and then he pulls me close, hand on my neck and thumb against my cheek. He kisses me, humming. “Try your hardest. How are your ribs?”

  “We’ll see about—”

  A noise somewhere in the house makes me pause.

  I press a finger to his lips and listen. It sounds like footsteps.

  I slip off him, off the bed, and grab my knife as I move to the door. He comes after me, pistol in his hand. We move out into the hall, keeping our footsteps to the edges of the floorboards. It creaks less that way.