I finally lowered my hand. “I think it sounds interesting. Meeting some kids your own age…it could be a good thing for you.”
Again, she rolled her eyes. “I’m not really a kid anymore, you know.”
“Sure you are,” I said, gently tapping her hand with my fork. “Enjoy it while you can.” I put a serving of food in my mouth and chewed it. “In fact, I could go with you, if you want.”
“No! I mean…that’s okay. I can check it out on my own.”
In four hurried bites, her potatoes were gone and she moved on to the neat pile of peas. Kris didn’t like mixing her food together. As I ate, I watched her impale the peas on the ends of the fork, filling up the little spires until each was full. She did this several times till the tiny green balls were gone. Like my daughter used to.
Not a kid, my ass.
I jumped, nearly knocking over my water glass when Ryder spoke behind me. The taste of gravy mixed unpleasantly with a swirl of fresh blood from the hole I’d just put in the side of my tongue.
“Tonight’s movie night, guys. You’re welcome to join us.” He pointed toward the side of the building where the armchairs and couches were. Oversized cushions littered the floor in a U-shape. “We have a projector. Almost like going to the drive-in, but you know, without the car. Obviously.”
We stared up at him. All there was to be heard was the sound of eating; chewing and swallowing and scraping of utensils against plastic trays.
He cleared his throat again. “Anyway. Movie starts at 7:00pm. So…hopefully I’ll see a few of you then.” He turned to walk away but threw an arm up in the air with a forced laugh. “Ah, almost forgot! These are for you to fill out and return after your meal. Any questions, let me know, okay?” He dumped a short stack of papers on the table next to me and hurried off, vanishing out the building doors and into the paling day before we could ask him any questions.
“He’s afraid of us,” Drake laughed. It was the first time he spoke since I’d sat down at the table.
“No,” I said with a half-smile aimed in his direction. “We already talked about this. I make him nervous. He’s afraid of you.”
My comment had the opposite effect I’d hoped for. With a snort, Drake slapped a hand down on the table. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Ass,” I said.
“Brat,” he countered, shoving food in his mouth. Unlike Kris, Drake’s food was swirled and mixed into one large pile, reminding me of a Monet painting. But grosser.
“What’s he left with us now?” Skip asked, ignoring the childish banter between me and Drake. I pushed the stack of papers across the table to him, without bothering to read the top sheet. His hand, pale and shaky, lifted the first and then the second. “Hmm. Schedules and forms…for each of us, I gather.”
“Really? Well, they waste no time, do they?” Jacks asked. Lily rested in a stroller parked next to the table. It was a gift from Ryder. Seemed the Ark had a rather large supply of infant gear. Lucky for him.
“I doubt they want us just wandering around the place, with nothing to do but cause trouble,” Skip said with a sigh. He looked up briefly at Drake before his gaze fell back to the papers in his hand.
“When is your first visit with the doctor?” I asked him, eager to change the subject.
His bushy eyebrows knitted together. “Tomorrow. Seems even with a population this small, I had to make an appointment.” He smiled at me weakly, his voice having lost most of its luster in the recent weeks. Skip was withering away before our eyes. His hair was nearly fully grey, his skin the same matching color. It broke my heart to see him so frail. But he was a tough man, with a determination as strong as steel. If anyone could make it, he would.
“Want me to go with?” I asked, chewing on a piece of steamed squash. Skip began doling out the papers, ensuring we each had our copies. I ignored mine.
“Thanks, sweetie. I think I can manage. It’s a preliminary meeting. I don’t imagine the good Doc can do much for me at this stage, anyway. I already know what he’ll say.”
We let his words hang over our heads in a heavy kind of silence. It was Lily who made the first sound and Jacks hoisted her tiny body from her seat and cooed at her till she smiled. The child’s dark hair was beginning to curl at the ends and fill out along the front of her scalp. I looked away and stared down at one of the pencils left behind for our paperwork.
“Hand her over, dad,” Skip said, carefully wiping his hands with his napkin. “Let uncle Skip say hello.”
With our meals temporarily forgotten, we watched Skip kiss Lily and whisper sweet nothings into one of her tiny ears. He tickled her toes and let her awkwardly yank on his nose. Because that’s what he knew made her happy.
“Let’s get this sorted, shall we?” Winchester asked. He straightened his pile of papers in front of him, after pushing his tray to the center of the table. The rest of us watched as he leaned forward with a determined kind of interest and began reading his documents like he was studying for the bar exam.
CHAPTER THREE
The first night in a new bed is always the worst. None of us slept, not really. Even without a window to announce dawn, each of us stumbled like exhausted toddlers into the hall around the same time.
Drake grumbled at me from beside his suite door. His jeans were wrinkled and hanging low on his hips, showing off the top band of his boxer briefs. With a quick blink, my eyes darted back up to his unshaven face. Morning Drake wasn’t too shabby to wake up to. Until he opened his mouth and spoke.
“You look just as shitty as I feel,” he said.
“And you’re just as shitty a morning person as I remember,” I countered.
There was no doubting I didn’t look any better than he did. Not bothering to look at my reflection when I rose, the closest I came to grooming was splashing water on my face and smoothing down the top of my slept-on pony tail. And I didn’t care. There were no beauty contests to win at the Ark.
Kris leaned against the wall between our room and another empty one while Zoey nudged at her leg for attention. She’d spent one extra minute on grooming and had managed to find a clean shirt to layer under her thick cotton sweater.
“Is Skip up yet?” He was the only one absent.
“He got up early and went for a walk,” Winchester said with a yawn. Unlike the rest of us, Winchester had spent time on his morning routine. He’d shaved and combed his hair back from his face. And whatever brand of aftershave that lingered in the hall was no doubt coming from him. Still as vain as ever. But wrinkles had begun to settle into the delicate skin around his eyes, making him look closer to his age than he had before. They suited him.
“How long have you been up?” I asked.
“Try all night,” Drake groaned. “These bastards snore like sawmills, Riley. I can’t handle it. I’ll smother one of them in their sleep tonight, I swear to God.”
Winchester’s eye widened. “I do not snore!” He yanked the front of his shirt down and smoothed out a fold before pulling on his jacket.
“You sure as hell do,” Drake said flatly. “How do you think my pillows ended up on your side of the room? It sure as hell wasn’t because we were cuddling.”
Winchester blushed and spun around, leaving us in the hall as he made his way topside.
“You know, life would be easier for you – for all of us – if you’d try to be nice every once in a while,” I snapped.
“I am being nice, Riley. And I’m not lying. All. Fucking. Night. They snored all night. In unison. Like a damn orchestra. They’re lucky they woke up at all this morning. I seriously considered strangling them more than once.”
“Wear earplugs, jerk,” Kris said. She patted her leg for Zoey to follow and slowly walked away from us, still sleep-drunk.
“See. It’s like you want everyone to hate you,” I said.
“Good. I don’t need friends here.”
Before he could move away, I yanked on his shirt. “Drake, you may not need friends, but we
all need allies, especially here. If you can’t handle it – leave. You know where the door is.”
He didn’t argue. But he didn’t leave, either.
* * *
Ryder wasn’t lying when he said everyone would have a job. It was obvious from the start I wasn’t going to fit in with the rest of those who pushed papers around a desk, cleaned the bathrooms, cooked meals, fed the chickens, or weeded the gardens. But I followed the motions anyway and stuck to the schedule we were given for our first day. We were on time to each ‘appointment’ and spoke to everyone mentioned on the list. Out of those six or so people, I only remembered one of the names.
She called herself Fern.
Standing at almost six feet, Fern was a sturdy woman with broad shoulders, large hands roughly callused from work, and size eleven feet. Her mousy brown hair hung down her back in frizzy kinks, matching the thick bushy eyebrows she’d probably never attempted to tame in her forty odd years of life. Though she wore a long skirt, I imagined her legs were naturally hairy, to go with the armpit fuzz that peeked out over the nude-colored bra she sported beneath her loosely knit sweater tank.
Fern was the walking definition of a hippie, and I immediately loved her.
She was in charge of maintaining the gardens, including a small chicken coop. The gardens were gorgeously aligned atop each community building except for the main one, which had only wild grasses on its roof. They were tiered and leveled to make harvesting easy. Fern’s job was to show us the lay of the land, how the water sprinkler system worked, and how the run-off was recycled. I should have been bored, but Fern had a syrupy drawl to her voice that kept even Drake’s attention. We spent two hours with her, which seemed to fly by in comparison to any other person we met that morning.
Before we parted ways, I could tell that Kris was going to work with Fern. It was written all over the girl’s face. Kris liked all living things, be them animals, flowers or strawberry plants. And Fern latched on to her interest, making Kris her ‘helper’ as we moved carefully around the gardens.
It wasn’t just Fern’s laid back demeanor that made her seem like a potential confidant…it was also her brutal honesty. And there was plenty of that to go around. Plus, she compared gardening with sex every chance she got, making her lessons impossible to forget.
“Baby, baby, baby…one does not pound at the earth with their fists. If you want anything to grow, you must touch the ground like you would a woman, giving it careful attention. I hope you don’t have sex like you plant tomato seeds,” she said to Drake, using her hands to speak. They waved around her head and the ground in a constant state of motion. A dance. Fern’s dance.
His face flushed several shades of red, but he didn’t stomp away like I expected; instead, he smoothed over the ground that Fern had him kneeling on, and used two fingers to create a hole. Once the seed was dropped in and the hole covered, he patted it with extra care and gave Fern a crooked smirk.
She clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Ahh, see? Good gardening is like good sex. A little exuberant force can be okay, but only when dealing with stubborn weeds, and yet, still you must be careful at times. When it comes to planting seeds…take your time and be gentle. Life grows from love.”
I laughed.
Fern winked at me and then glanced down at my sloppy and lumpy row of planted seeds. “How did I do?” I asked. I had roses in the garden at home, but all I’d done for them was dig a giant hole and drop the already mature plant inside it. Watering and pruning was the extent of my gardening.
She smiled broadly but made a tsk-tsk sound. “Seems your form needs some work, sweetheart. That there is the unluckiest row of tomato seeds I’ve seen all day. Where are you in a hurry to run off to? Got a hot date we don’t know about?”
It was Drake’s turn to laugh.
“Not really good with planting, I guess,” I said, standing and stretching my back.
“Just takes practice, is all,” Fern said with another wink.
Drake reached across my front and brushed loose dirt off my shoulder. “Did you hear that, Riley…just takes practice. Seems you’re a little rusty in the seeding department.”
I flicked the dirt under my nails at his face. “Clearly, I haven’t had the opportunity to do much quality gardening lately.”
Before Drake could respond with an equal insult, Fern grasped both our hands and said in a sing-song voice. “Well, clearly we aren’t talking about planting tomato seeds anymore. Now stand back and I’ll show you how the weather dome covers the garden, and then we’ll move on to the watering tanks.”
* * *
I understood the importance of recycling water and the necessity of purification and storage and distribution of said recycled water, and blah, blah, blah…it just bored me to death. Engineering and developing were also not my strong suits, it seemed.
We were passing between two of the large water collection tanks and filtration systems which were set up behind the main community building that smelled more earthy than I thought sanitary, following Fern through the maze of drainage pipes that led to and from the garden, when a girl not much older than Kris passed by me on the right. She squeezed herself into the few inches of space between my body and the closest tank, catching me off guard. The rough hem of her top rubbed against my arm and for a brief moment, I felt the cool temperature radiating from her skin. She was in a hurry, so I stepped aside to give her room but as I frowned at her rude passing, she looked up at me with a smile as sweet as melted chocolate. I no longer wanted to chastise her for shoving her way by me; I felt compelled to gather her small frame into my arms and hug her. The intensity of my emotions made my feet skid to a stop and I watched her, as she watched me, before she shuffled around the tank, out of sight.
My heart began to pound inside my chest, skipping with each of my rushed breaths. I made no move to follow her. When the young girl had turned her face away from me, I had seen the bloody gash in the back of her head and the dark hole where her brain should have been. No person could survive such an injury. She couldn’t have.
The smile on my face fell with a crash to the ground. I stopped breathing and held the air in my lungs until they threatened to burst from the force of my erratic heart. It wasn’t until Fern’s voice beckoned me from the front of the group that I snapped out of my self-inflicted trance.
“Who…?” I whispered. The smell of limestone lingered around me and I glanced down at the soil, to see what kind of dirt I stood in. It looked normal enough.
Of course, no one replied. I stepped carefully toward the tank on my right and peered around the circular curve of it, not surprised at all to see the space behind empty.
“Riley?”
Every muscle in my body twitched at the sound of Fern approaching from my back and I shook my head, trying to clear the image of the dead girl from my mind. She’d simply poofed into thin air, and apparently I’d been the only one to see her.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. So she wouldn’t see my shaking hands, I rubbed my palms up and down my legs.
Fern gently touched my arm and her body heat spread down to my fingers and up into my elbow. The warmth stilled the nerves under my skin and I felt the shake subside. “You left us for a moment,” she said. “Where did you go?”
Confused, I let a frown settle on my face. “Go? I didn’t go anywhere…I just…” I pointed behind the tank with a loud sigh, then lowered my hand. “It’s nothing. Sorry, go on,” I urged, tugging the front of my shirt down. I’d hoped Fern hadn’t noticed the tremble in my hands. But she had.
She leaned in toward my face so quickly I flinched away from her. When she spoke, her voice was low enough that no one else in the group could hear. “I knew you were different the moment I saw you. You have the gift, don’t you?”
“Gift?”
She nodded once. The puff of her coif bounced. “Yes…the gift of sight. It’s okay, Riley,” she said, while she patted my arm. “I see her too. I call her Blossom. Such a beautiful smile
the girl has…but a pity she doesn’t understand she’s been long dead. Neither do her parents.” Fern sighed before she turned away from me and shooed the rest of our curious group forward, out of the tangle of pipes and tanks and around the backside of the building. Slowly, I followed. But I said nothing. There was more to Fern than she let on.
It seemed the Ark had secrets. Horrible and bloody secrets. What I’d seen was no accident. Someone had bashed in the head of such a beautiful and happy-looking child. But why? And perhaps even more important - who? The child wouldn’t be wandering the gardens of the Ark unless her body was nearby. Did I even want to know the details? Blossom, as Fern had named the girl, didn’t appear to be sick, like the souls that sought me out in California, begging for a release from their chained existence. She’d clearly been murdered. And she’d chosen to show herself to me.
Maybe Drake had been right. We didn’t belong there.
* * *
He had no idea why he’d stayed. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He had an idea, more of a passing thought than a full-blown concept, but he refused to allow it to form into more than a fleeting joke before he stuffed it away with the rest of his inappropriate thoughts. Drake leaned against the side of the closest water tank and watched Riley storm off down the well-beaten path that led around the rear of the Ark’s main building. He flipped through the slides in his mind. By nature, he was a quiet man. Losing most of the world’s population had made him even more of a private person. It wasn’t that he didn’t have plenty to say; he did. He just didn’t have the right people to say those things to. Except for Riley, he felt no pull to be part of anyone’s inner circle at the Ark. And he was beginning to think that Riley was experiencing some of that herself.
Her little ‘group’ had suffered greatly, with and without her. But they had survived. He knew she could see it. That her tight-knit and self-made family was branching out - breaking up - moving on. Drake wondered, while he stared at the placement of Riley’s back pockets as she walked away, if she was preparing a break-up of her own. A sort of escape from the unit she’d struggled to keep together for over a year. And he wondered what that meant for him.
Find Me Series (Book 3): Finding Hope Page 3
