Every Dark Little Thing

by T. S. Ward

  My voice is strained and hoarse. “He was just a kid. Five years old, I think. And that psychopath—she was going to hurt him.”

  “A kid,” he says slowly, a mix of understanding and confusion on his face. “And when you say she, you mean…”

  “Lana,” I whisper.

  He nods, cautiously. “Why would she hurt a kid?”

  There are tears in my eyes. I can’t look at him. “Because he—because he was yours.”

  He tries to say something a few times but can’t quite figure out what, until he starts shaking his head. “You said five years? Has it been that long?”

  “Not mine, Ben.”

  He pauses, and then he leans back. “I don’t understand.”

  “You do,” I say. “I wouldn’t call her a psychopath if I didn’t have good reason to.”

  “I have a kid,” he says quietly.

  My cheek twitches. My lip quivers. “Had.”

  There’s a split second before he catches on to what I said and what it means. There’s a split second where he looks at me like I’m still human, and then he changes. He stops looking at me, looks through me, like he isn’t here. Like he’s gone to some other time that isn’t now, that isn’t us. That isn’t him listening like he said he would. That isn’t him staying like he said he would—he stands up, paces the room, and then he leaves.

  He leaves, and I’m lying there feeling like I’m floating around in space, like I’ve got nothing to hold onto anymore. Nothing feels real. Nothing is real except that he’s gone and he doesn’t come back.

  Eventually, I get up. I wander aimlessly around the house. I stare at some painting on the wall in the hallway until Charlotte asks if I’m okay.

  I look at her, pressing my fingers to the wall to steady me.

  “Ghost? You alright?”

  “Where’s Ben?”

  She looks back into the kitchen, leans to look out the window, and then back to me. She tilts her head, arms crossed. “Think he’s in the barn. You know him, don’t you? Really well?”

  I start to agree, but stop myself. “I don’t know, really.”

  “Well,” she says, starting to slink back into the kitchen, “He seemed a little tense. Upset. He gets worried about you.”

  I nod slowly. My voice sounds rough. “I know.”

  The door opens behind me, and I press myself against the wall as a group of people I don’t recognize flood the house. Macon is in the middle of them.

  “We have pallets in the basement, the living room has floor space, but the upstairs rooms are all taken—Ghost, have you seen Lou?” He stops next to me, hand on my shoulder.

  I shake my head, shrinking away from him, and then there’s too much sound accosting me. There are too many people, all smiling and laughing and messing around with each other like a bunch of teenagers. It’s too much noise and energy, so I grab my journal, I find everything that’s mine, and I sit out on the back porch.

  This side of the house is cold in the shade of the pines, but it’s quieter. No one comes around this way. And the setting sun peeks through the trees in a brilliant orange that helps me relax just a little.

  Soldier’s coat keeps me warm. It keeps the dampness of the cushion on this wicker chair from reaching my clothes, and I find a pen in the pocket where he’s kept the journal. A pen that I hold, clicking repeatedly as I try to think and settle myself down, until I force myself to write. I can’t start with what happened, so I skip it, and I write it all down for hours. Until all the noise stops and the light dies enough to tuck a flashlight between my cheek and my shoulder, and even with my hand cramped and exhaustion creeping up on me and this hunger—I keep writing.

  Past this. This part, where nothing else has happened yet, and I have nothing to write other than that. The things I haven’t told Soldier yet.

  You’re stalling, idiot!

  I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know how to write it. I don’t know how to live with it. I don’t know how to shake the horror of knowing that we could have gone just a little further, could have found this place and everything would have been okay.

  Everything is always this close.

  We were this close to a massacre in the hospital. We were this close to bombs being dropped on our heads. We were this close to getting to Lakeside safely. We were this close to the farmhouse, to Ben, to Lou.

  I don’t ever want to be this close again.

  So.

  YEAR FOUR

  Day Ninety-Six

  The sun is rising, and it’s turning everything flat with its pastel colours. This is the most silence I have heard in a long time. This is the most peace I have felt since… well. Ever.

  I lie there listening to the faint sound of the wind funneling into the car through its shattered windows and through the tree tops on either side of the road. The idea of being purely alone doesn’t bother me in this moment. For once, I’m at peace with it.

  I’m not hurting anyone.

  I’m not being hurt.

  There is no disappointment or expectation.

  There is only silence and the wind and the sun gentle on everything it touches and I can smell the stone of the earth. It isn’t masked by pollution, smog, gasoline in the air—it’s just the smell of the earth, and the feeling of the sun, and I think that makes the loneliness that much easier.

  It reminds me that I am small on this planet.

  And then.

  Then, there’s the sound of a car door shutting in the distance, and a voice, and it’s all gone. My muscles grow tense and my heart kicks up a beat.

  I sit up slowly, staying low, and look out over edge of the windows.

  The highway is a divided northbound-southbound, and there are trees and rocks on either side and down the center. Grass and weeds grow thick through cracks in the pavement. And, a short way down the hill, black trucks are parked just outside the old rock shop.

  My hands search for the bow dropped to the floor next to me.

  Lana is unmistakable, even from a distance. The only person in this damn apocalypse to wear white and not have a hint of dirt on it. It’s not a coat, this time. A dress. A spring dress, like she’s about to be off to some southern belle sweet tea party.

  I lift the bow, arrow drawn and ready, and set my sights on her head. She’s watching the beetles hold a test subject still, watching more guide a biter toward the person’s arm, watching—and then she turns. She turns, and she looks at one of the trucks, and she says something with this snarl on her face.

  I could shoot her. Right then and there. Maybe it would miss, or maybe it would only hurt her a little, but I could. I can. I should. But I don’t, because I look at that truck.

  I look at that truck and suck in a breath.

  There’s a child playing with the window. He’s making it go up and down, up and down, up and down, completely oblivious or completely desensitized to the person screaming a few feet away. He looks—Jesus fucking Christ, he looks so much like Soldier. The hair, that face, even from this distance.

  It’s clear. It’s obvious. I won’t need her to tell me that.

  And there’s this horrible feeling, this pit opening up inside me. This dark chasm. And everything in me just breaks and falls in.

  My hands start shaking. My breath shudders in my chest.

  I don’t know why, exactly. Or maybe I do. Maybe I know too many reasons and I know it’s every single one in some small way, like the very idea of Soldier having a fucking child with this woman—I think this might be jealousy, and confusion, and mistrust.

  Mistrust, because if he knew and never said anything about it, what did I really mean to him? Was she telling the truth? Is he really working with them, against me? I finally give in to loving him only to be hurt immediately—but the answer is worse.

  It is worse, and it is less selfish, and less self-centered of me.

  Ben would have told me, if he knew. No matter how reserved he can be, he wouldn’t have held that back. Not after seeing tha
t kid in that tent. He would have let it slip, even in some small way, but then, maybe I don’t know him as well as I think.

  We only had one hundred days. One hundred days, but it was enough, for me.

  All I know for certain is that there is a child who looks like Soldier, and he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know he exists.

  I set the bow down. I dig out the radio from where it’s been lost at the bottom of my bag, and I turn it on. I find the right channel. I start talking.

  “Lana.” I have to stop before I say anything else, to clear my throat, because it’s been a long damn time since I’ve said anything. Even to myself. “You know who it is. I want to talk. Alone.”

  It takes a long time for her to answer. So long that I don’t think she will, except that I can see her, holding a radio in her hand. Staring at it. The way that I sometimes turn it to Soldier’s channel and wait, and listen, and stare at it. As if something else will happen. As if, magically, he’ll appear and all will be well.

  “I know you can hear me.”

  “Yes,” she answers, sounding out of breath. “I’ll talk, but not alone—”

  “Alone. Alone, or nothing.”

  Day Two Hundred And Two

  The next time I see Lana, it’s—it doesn’t matter how.

  It doesn’t matter how, or where, or what the fucking weather was like, or what I did leading up to it. Mostly, I can’t really remember all that stuff, but I remember a building made of metal filled with all these giant machines, and the way our voices echoed.

  I’ve been waiting for an hour when I hear a door creak and groan, and the rattle of cans. Every possible entrance to this place has a warning.

  She said she would come alone, but there isn’t an ounce of me that trusts her.

  “Ms. Newell?” Her voice rings out. “Are you here?”

  “That’s not my name,” I answer, slinking between the machines.

  They’re taller than me, taller than most people, and it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage. I peer through the pipes at the end of one.

  She stands in the open, searching the shadows for me, and she’s alone as far as I can see. She isn’t wearing white today. She’s wearing black. There’s a smile on her face—this goddamn smirk. It pisses me off immediately.

  “Then what is your name, if not Keely Newell?”

  “Ghost,” I say, “But if you insist on formality, it’s Finch.”

  A derisive laugh answers me. “Alright then. Ms. Finch. Answer me this: what is the horror in helping me create a vaccine for this mess? What is so horrible about saving your fellow man that you cannot possibly offer your incredible immunity for the rest of us?”

  “This mess?” I call out, moving around the machines, bow in hand. “What exactly is this mess?”

  “A failure,” she says, “An attempt to do good.”

  An attempt to do good? “What good could this possibly do?”

  “It was supposed to be the cure for cancer!” She yells across the factory, and that makes my blood run cold. “And it was going to be brilliant.”

  I slip out from behind the machines, behind her back, and move quietly up the stairs. As soft footed as I can get—no boots, just thin cotton socks, and all my things stashed nearby. She doesn’t turn around. The way my voice echoes, she probably thinks I’m going to the opposite way.

  “You can help me do both. You are the key I need to fix this.”

  “I have very little confidence in that,” I say, bow aimed at her head.

  She turns, looks up, and her expression doesn’t change. There might be a slight widening of the eyes, but maybe I just imagine it. She doesn’t flinch, and I think that terrifies me a little. “I have gone to great lengths to perfect my work, Ms. Finch. With your help, we can fix this. The world can return to normal. You can finish school—”

  “What makes you think I want this fixed?” I cock my head to the side, frowning as I watch her closely. “This benefits me. I lived in a trailer in a redneck community with three generations of my family. I was the victim of capitalism, corporate greed, and corrupt governments run by the uber rich—and now that it’s all gone, you think I want it back? That world was obsessed with freedom but did not have it. This world is purely free.”

  She doesn’t move. She just stares at me. “You’re afraid to die.”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “But you more so than the rest,” she says, “You, immune to eternal life.”

  “A hijacked, decaying body is what you consider eternal life? This is why I won’t help you. You’re completely fucked. And you’ll fail again and again and again.”

  She looks down at the floor, and then toward the door, where it’s still sitting ajar.

  Her hands come together in front of her, linked together at the fingers. “You refuse to offer yourself as the cure?”

  “It’s impossible to make one.”

  “But it isn’t—” Her voice rises in pitch and volume, and she cuts herself off. Composes herself again. But there is darkness in the way that she speaks. “Do you love him?”

  That catches me off guard. “What?”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who,” she coos, “Benjamin. You love him, don’t you?”

  I hesitate.

  “If someone you loved was bit, was dying, and you could sacrifice yourself for the cure that would save them, would you?” She stands so still, speaks so casually, other than the occasional glance to the door. It makes my blood run cold. “Would you do it for Benjamin? Do you love him enough to die for him?”

  She has him. That’s my first thought. She has him.

  “Come in, Oliver,” she says to the door. And then she looks at me. “Well? Come on down. Come meet the boy.”

  I freeze, watching him walk through the door. I had convinced myself that he wasn’t even hers, let alone Soldier’s. I had convinced myself it was nothing, that it didn’t matter. And yet here he is—and it’s almost impossible to keep telling myself she’s lying to me.

  He stands apart from her. Nervous. Flinching when she sets a hand on his shoulder. And when I join them on the floor, it’s plainly evident.

  Once I had said I couldn’t picture Soldier as a child—but now I can, because I see him standing in front of me, and I can feel my heart breaking for him and the kid.

  “Mommy?” He says, moving away from her hand.

  She steps closer to him again, just to push him forward. “Go on. Introduce yourself.”

  He stands closer to me than he does to her, hands worrying together, shoulders hunched. He is shy, but not just shy—terrified. His eyes meet mine easily, and he moves closer. “I’m Oli. Do you know my daddy?”

  I crouch down. “I do. He calls me Ghost. You can call me Ghost, too.”

  “Are you a soldier, too?” He asks quietly, and his tiny voice is absolutely crushing me. “Are you in the war with him?”

  I don’t know what war he means. I don’t know what she’s told him. I just nod, and smile, and fight back the tears that are welling up. She is using her own child to make me go willingly, and I can’t stand it.

  I look up at her. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “Spite.”

  “Spite? You didn’t tell him he has a son because of spite?” I stand up then, stand beside the boy, bow clutched tight in my hands. “Are you fucked in the head?”

  She turns away, scoffing, tongue tucked between her bottom lip and teeth. “He left me just before he was stationed at the hospital. He called off our engagement, and he went to his post. I found out a few days later in the heat of a break-up.”

  “That’s no excuse,” I say quietly. “My mother did it three times.”

  “And your father took full custody. You think I wanted my child taken from me?”

  I laugh, forcibly, loudly. “Ben would never. He would never take a child from his mother, but—you say that as if you aren’t threatening me with his life for the potent
ial of a cure. You don’t love him. You’re using him as a tool.”

  “Some people are made to be mothers,” she says. Her eyes look me up and down. “Some people don’t get to choose. Some people try and try and try to love these things they birth, and still… But you—all you need to hear is that he’s Ben’s son, and you’re already in love.”

  “You’re a damn psychopath,” I breathe, lifting the bow to aim it at her. “You’ll kill him for this.”

  “And you will hand yourself over to save him.”

  I look down at the kid, nudge him, whispering, “Do you want to meet your dad, Oli?”

  He nods quickly.

  “Oliver,” Lana warns, “You come here right now.”

  The kid takes a step closer to me, but she snaps her fingers, and he slinks back. He goes back to her. And all I want to do is grab him and run.

  “I’ll give you a chance to think about it,” she says to me. “I have men outside ready to swarm the building if you try anything, ready to have this child bit.”

  “You won’t just kill him, then. You’ll make him suffer first.”

  The boy’s eyes are wide, listening to all this.

  “What do you want?”

  “Bone marrow,” she says. “Once without a bite, and once with.”

  My palms are sweaty against the bow. “And if I agree. You won’t hurt him, you’ll leave me alone?”

  “I’ll leave you alone if my current hypothesis can be supported.”

  I look at this kid, Oliver, and how everything about him is just a smaller, softer, rounder Soldier. I can’t say no. I cannot say no, and there is a drill burrowed into my bone before I know it, before I can find an opening to grab him and run. The pain is excruciating. Unbearable. It makes my head spin with dizziness and lightness. It makes the rest nothing but the fever dream that comes with being bit.

  And she leaves me there, alone, to suffer through it.

  Day Two Hundred And Thirty