The Plague Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Jones, Isla

  Zoe was something I would never be: Cool.

  Vicki sat with her at the dining table. There were only two seats, so I glowered from the armchair. Mac, Adam and Castle had disappeared—likely to the cellar—to discuss ‘a private matter’. I’ll give you three guesses for what that matter is. Here’s a hint: It starts with long legs, has mocha skin more flawless than mine on the best of days, and ends in a badass hairstyle.

  “Cute Chihuahua.” It was Zoe. I looked up at her; she was twisted around in the chair, a smile on her face as she gazed at Cleo. “Mind if I hold her?”

  I hugged Cleo closer to my chest. “She bites,” I said. It was true. Sometimes she did bite.

  Zoe smiled; her curls wobbled as she gave a slow nod, one that told of her disbelief.

  “I’m not lying,” I insisted.

  Zoe arched her brow, and looked at me as if I was the weird kid that followed her around school. I suppose I am that weird kid. I’m not quirky or adorable—I’m just strange.

  Zoe didn’t hold back the humour in her voice; “I didn’t say you were lying.”

  Vicki just gazed at the fire-pit.

  I licked my lips and rose from the stuffy armchair. Without a word, I left the kitchen—before dinner had even been cooked—and went into the lounge room. The door in the fireplace was open. The deltas were down there.

  With a sigh, I gathered up my bedding and wandered out of the room. Zoe might want the second mattress now—and I didn’t fancy being in there with her and Castle.

  There was a blow-up mattress in the spare room. I strolled down the corridor, hugging the blankets and pillows to my chest. Cleo trotted in front of me; she glanced over her shoulder often to check that I was still behind her.

  As I neared the kitchen again to pass it, I heard Zoe’s voice. Normally, I wouldn’t stop to eavesdrop, but I’d heard my name.

  “Does he like her?” she said. “She doesn’t seem his type.”

  “Oh, and what’s his type?” said Vicki with a laugh.

  “Not that.” The viciousness of her tone stung me. “She’s a bit off, isn’t she? Maybe he was just using her while they were stuck together.”

  Vicki hummed neutrally. “It’s complicated.”

  “What’s complicated about it? I’m back now—Castle and I have unfinished business.”

  “It’s the same kind of complicated as it was with you and Castle.”

  “My relationship with him is not the same as hers. With Leo … things happened. It got messy.”

  “Like I said,” replied Vicki. “Her relationship with them is very much like the one you had with them.”

  A door shut behind me. I spun around and looked into the dark hallway. No one was there. It would be the deltas leaving the passageway.

  I huddled up the bedding in my arms and crept by the kitchen door, further into the darkness. When Cleo and I got into the spare bedroom, I shut the door behind us and dropped the blankets and pillows onto the inflatable bed.

  I tried to distract myself with books and magazines. But within twenty minutes, I realised that nothing was going to distract me. I reclined on the bed and shut my eyes—and I let it all in.

  And suddenly, it hit me.

  What if I’d become the new Rose?

  *

  The door opened.

  I was sitting at the edge of a dressing table, flicking through a health magazine. The light from the candle illuminated the pages in a faint orange glow.

  I looked up as Castle came into the room. He balanced a bowl of tinned soup in his hand as he shut the door behind him.

  “You missed dinner,” he said, and placed the bowl on the floor beside the inflatable bed.

  My eyes traced his stare to the blankets draped over the blow-up mattress. Before he could meet my gaze, I looked back at the magazine.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. The sound of my grumbly voice was overpowered by the loud flick of the page; a recipe for coconut protein balls faced me.

  Cleo woke on the bed at the scent of pumpkin soup. She sniffed the air sleepily.

  Castle crouched down beside the bed and pulled out a tin of tuna in spring-water. “And this one’s for you.”

  I arched my brow as he peeled back the lid and placed it on the floor. Cleo hopped off the bed and stuck her face into the tin; I don’t think she breathed at all as she scoffed down her meal.

  “How’s Zoe?” I asked. I hoped my voice didn’t betray the tornado within me.

  Castle slid from the floor to the mattress. He rested his forearms on his thighs, and his eyes looked up at me from beneath long lashes. The flicker of the candle stretched shadows along his face.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. His fingers tangled together between his spread legs; it was the only sign he gave of his unease. “I’ve been preoccupied with other matters.”

  “Or,” I said, “you’ve been pretending to be busy to avoid all of this.”

  He said nothing. His eyes flickered green and blue against the light of the flame. The words he wanted to say swarmed in the hues, but they didn’t reach his tongue.

  “Castle,” I said quietly. “You and Zoe have a history. It’s something I don’t have with you—and whatever happened between us was quick to end. Please don’t think for a second that I’ll resent you if you get back with her.”

  Of course I would resent him. But I couldn’t tell him that. It wouldn’t be fair to push that sort of pressure onto him. Especially since we’d never gotten together—not really.

  Castle’s tongue dragged across his bottom lip. His eyes shifted to his entwined fingers. “That’s how you feel?”

  The magazine rustled as I shrugged. “I’m not going to stand in your way.”

  Castle shook his head, as if disappointed. The waves of dirty-blond brushed over his temples and fell into his eyes. He swept a hand over his face to move the stray strands.

  “The day I met you,” he said, “it took me seconds to realise what was going on between you and Leo.”

  My heart skipped a beat at the sound of Leo’s name. I closed the magazine.

  “I didn’t understand it,” he said, still staring at his hands. “The mission is the priority, yet Leo had lost sight of that.” Castle pried his fingers apart before he rubbed a hand through his hair. “At the farmhouse when we were under attack, Leo went looking for you. His first instinct should’ve been the cargo.”

  “That’s not my fault,” I whispered.

  “It isn’t,” he agreed. “I never blamed you. I blamed Leo.”

  A burst of protectiveness exploded within me. I wanted to argue that Leo wasn’t to blame for any of it. To blame a dead man was easy—easier than defending one.

  I bit back my words and waited for Castle to explain.

  “It was slow,” he said. “It was so gradual that I only realised when we were at the gun shop—when Billy looked at you the way he did. It was as if I’d woken up one day with something, something that I didn’t have the day before. I could relate to Leo.” Finally, arctic-green eyes met mine; the air was shoved out of me at the force of his gaze. I’d never seen them so clear; so empty. “The mission is more important than you are,” he said. “But that logic doesn’t seem to matter to me anymore. I try to prioritise, but you come out on top each time.”

  My lips spoke the words he’d said to me; “I’m a distraction.”

  “You are.”

  I shifted my gaze to the wall. “Was Zoe?”

  “Never.” Castle pressed his hands against his knees and pushed up to his feet. “Zoe and I are finished. There’s nothing there, not on my end.”

  With his assurance came the understanding—this hadn’t been a ‘let’s-work-through-it’ speech. Castle had wanted me to know how he felt about me, while keeping me at a distance. I would’ve preferred he avoided the talk.

  Castle stood by the inflatable bed, watching me. I kept my gaze on the wall; if I met his eyes, I’m not sure what would have slipped from my mouth. Words of truth were too valua
ble. If I told him of how I was shredding inside, I would be vulnerable. Besides, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  He cleared his throat.

  The moment shattered, and we plummeted back into the pit of uncomfortable acquaintance. I looked at him.

  Castle gestured to the cold soup. “If you’re still hungry, you know where the supplies are,” he said. “Everything you looted from the town is in the lounge.”

  “I’ll get it later.” The coolness of my tone surprised me. “Thanks,” I added. “For the dinner, I mean.”

  He nodded.

  A moment passed where he just stood by the bed.

  I wondered if he was stalling, but for what? He’d said what he wanted to, and that was that. There was nothing left to say. So why didn’t he leave?

  Was this one of those moments in life where grand gestures applied? Should I have told him that I didn’t want him to walk away, that I wanted him to stay with me? Is that what he was hoping for?

  If it was, he didn’t get it. I just stared at him.

  Castle walked out.

  *

  Something bad was coming.

  Call it intuition or paranoia, call it whatever you will—but my gut told me.

  Do you remember before all of this, when perhaps you had a job interview in the morning or some awful meeting where you knew you’d be ripped to shreds? Maybe you had class but hadn’t done the readings or the assignments? Whatever it was, the dread plagued us all the same way. When we’d rest our head to pillows come night, our minds would spiral out of control with possible terrible outcomes of the next day’s events.

  That is what I suffered. I slept on the blow-up mattress—but my dreams were fleeting, twisting around dread and paranoia; coiling my stomach into a gurgling pit of nerves.

  Something just wasn’t right.

  My dream told me it was rotters—hordes of them overrunning the shop, trying to recruit all of us. But then it switched; and my nightmares told of a different tale, one that warned me off Zoe; she chased me down corridors and across roads with a baseball bat.

  And then there was Castle; in all of the dreams I had that night, he was the constant. He was there in the background, watching. The emerald stones gleamed from his sun-kissed skin, sucking me into his soul. They grew bigger, glowed brighter, until Castle was no more and I all I faced was a pool of—

  “Winter.” The hoarse whisper snuck into my dream. “Winter, are you awake?”

  The voice was followed by the creak of a door. Someone had come into the room.

  As my eyelids fluttered open—too heavy to obey—the inflatable mattress dipped to the side. It was dark in the room; too dark to see the details of the silhouette. But I knew who it was.

  Castle climbed into the bed and pulled the blanket over his legs. Cleo growled and rolled onto her back between us.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered. “Is everything ok?”

  His lips parted, but no words came out. Whatever he tried to say died in his throat before it could be voiced. I wondered for a moment what it was like to be so afraid of your own thoughts that you must constantly find the right words to conceal them.

  Castle needed to grow up in that sense. Words were just words. He was too afraid of them.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  My brows knitted together as I squinted at his shadowed face. Of everything he could’ve said, he’d gone with a cliché.

  Castle moved closer.

  “What I said to you,” he began. “It wasn’t the entire truth.”

  My drowsiness could only afford a groan in response.

  Castle shifted closer again; now all that separated us was the snoring Chihuahua.

  “I don’t want things to change between us.”

  The sound of my heavy sigh filled the room. “It already has.”

  It was the truth—a lot had changed. And I couldn’t help but wonder if what we’d had, however brief, was just a product of the situation we’d been in. A matter of ‘what if there’s no tomorrow’. The truth is, I don’t know how I felt—because I felt too much at once. It was a tangled ball of yarn inside of me and each string was a contradiction of another.

  Castle’s hand found mine on top of Cleo. His fingertips brushed over my knuckles. “I need to know,” he said. “If he comes back, will you go back to him?”

  “I was never with him to begin with,” I groaned. “And he’s dead—”

  “Humour me.” The sharpness of his voice sliced through my words. There was no emotion, no pain or sadness in his voice. It came from his words instead. “If Leo returns, will you choose him?”

  I thought about it. I faced Castle on the mattress, and let my mind dive into the place it shouldn’t have. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I don’t believe that. It’s death that makes it grow fonder. Death, loss and sacrifice. Leo delivered all three to me; my heart couldn’t fit any more of him in.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t believe my own answer. But what did it matter? Leo was gone. “I wouldn’t choose him.”

  Castle leaned forward, his hand slipping behind my head. The touch of his lips on mine tickled, like little shocks of electricity. The firmness of Castle was in the kiss; with him it would never be tender. It would be as it was—a kiss. But from Castle, that kiss was the grand gesture he’d wanted from me earlier. The one I didn’t give him.

  I kissed him back.

  I climbed on top of him.

  Castle let me guide him back onto the mattress; his hands brushed over my thighs, and I thought—through the cloud of need—that that might be the gentlest way he’s touched me ever.

  I didn’t know what it meant, what any of it meant. Were we shifting back to what we’d almost been? Or were we lost in a moment that would disappear in time?

  I didn’t know. I paid it little thought.

  I stayed on top of Castle, leaving the doubts to haunt me in the morning.

  18.

  The atmosphere between Castle and I was not how I’d predicted. Awkward tension and shame simmered between us. We’d slipped into the place we’d been in before the meet-up point.

  Castle took me to the town in the morning. Vicki watched Cleo for me.

  Castle had said that to practise shooting, it had to be a distance from the meet-up point. If rotters heard the gunfire, we wouldn’t be swarmed that way.

  In the town, we’d climbed up a fire escape to the roof of the pharmacy. Castle showed me how to dismantle the guns, tell the difference between the rifles, how to load them and—the part I’d been waiting for—how to shoot confidently.

  At first, our targets had been windows on the shops opposite the road. Then, Castle cranked up the difficulty. He told me to aim for mannequins inside of the shops, or cash registers and chairs; little things that were obscured by distance. And then came the best part—the rotters.

  One by one, half a dozen rotters had closed in on the sound of the gunfire. I’d never imagined how difficult aiming at a moving target would be. I’d gotten two of them, one in the chest, the other in the neck. Castle took care of the ones that got too close.

  By the time the sun—hidden by thick blankets of clouds—slid to the middle of the sky, Castle called it a day. We’d spent hours practicing. My aim was better, but I still fired with my eyes closed. He wasn’t pleased about that.

  As we drove back to the auto-shop, Castle carried on about it; “You have to maintain your focus. Each second you don’t have the target in your line of sight, is a second you put yourself and everyone around you at risk. What happened back at the cabin—the bullet could’ve hit me. Your aim is decent, but your technique is lacking.”

  I interrupted, “I didn’t have sex with you so you could lecture me all day. I’m almost certain the opposite is supposed to happen.”

  Castle arched his brow and side-glanced at me.

  I shrugged and pressed my feet against the dashboard. “You’re supposed to tell me how good I’m getting with guns and how exc
ellent I am at everything I do.”

  Castle scoffed and looked back at the road. “And jeopardise your promise for talent in favour of appeasing your ego?” He shook his head. “I’d rather anger you and perfect your survival skills than have you running around with your eyes closed and a rifle in hand.”

  “And I would rather be lied to about how I’m the best shooter,” I said.

  Castle’s lips dared to quirk at the side. It was a smirk. My goal that day had been getting Castle to smile; a real one. It hadn’t happened yet. I doubt that it will ever happen. He wasn’t the type.

  “Besides,” I added, “it’s new to me. I’m trying.”

  With one hand on the steering wheel, he turned his face to me. The emerald shines of his eyes studied me for a moment. “You did well,” he said, “for a beginner.”

  It was the closest to a compliment I would get from him. My lips curved at the corners with pride and I wiggled my brows. “Damn right,” I said.

  The road raced towards us through the windshield, bringing the shop nearer. We were only a few minutes away now, and with it came something I was avoiding—or someone.

  “Have you talked to Zoe yet?” I asked. “About us?”

  Castle reclined in the driver’s seat. “Am I expected to?”

  My finger hooked around the lace of my boot and fiddled with the frayed edges. “There seems to be something still between the two of you.”

  “I told you there isn’t. Not from my end.”

  “From hers, then.”

  “I can’t be held accountable for another’s interests or intentions.” The pad of his thumb ran over the leather on the steering wheel. “Is this how it’s going to be now?”

  I slouched in the passenger seat. “I’m only suggesting you talk to her.”

  “What you’re suggesting,” he said, “is that I tell her I’m with you.”

  Castle had seen right through me.

  I was threatened by Zoe. How could I not be? She was everything I would never be, everything I’m not. Where I’m clumsy and accident-prone, she’s agile and free of trouble. Zoe is like them; the deltas. A warrior, a fighter. And I’m a stray the deltas picked up on the way.