by Tracey Ward
“Billings,” I mutter softly.
“Just say the word,” he replies somberly.
“Don’t look, baby,” Syd grunts to Alissa.
She shakes her head stiffly, stares at him one last long moment, then turns to bury her face in my shoulder. I can feel the wetness of her tears on my shirt as I wrap my arms around her tightly. I press my hand against her exposed ear, lay my face against her head and close my eyes.
“Now.”
The shot fires. Alissa jumps once in surprise but she doesn’t make a sound. When I open my eyes I’m careful not to look at what has become of him. If Ali has taught me anything it’s that images like that will haunt you forever and I’ve got enough ghosts. I look down and I can see she still has hold of Syd’s hand. She stayed with him. I can’t imagine what it will cost her in the future to have done it, but she never left him. That’s just how Ali is.
I don’t know how much time passes but eventually Leah carefully pulls Syd’s hand from Alissa’s. She lets it go without a fight. Without a word. I can feel her breathing against my neck. It’s deep and even, like she’s sleeping. I stand, taking her with me, surprised at how easily she comes. I’m careful to keep her face buried in my shoulder and when we’re up she wraps her arms tightly around me.
“We’ll take her to the hospital,” Leah tells me. “I want to keep an eye on her. We might need to sedate her.”
I nod in agreement. With Ali’s condition who knows what this is going to do to her?
I follow Leah, passing through the tent door into the dark night. The wind whips with a sudden cold and I feel Alissa shiver against me.
“Jordan?” she asks, her voice muffled and strange.
“Yeah, Ali?”
She pulls back slightly to look at me. I’m surprised to see her eyes sharp and lucid.
“You have to burn him.”
I frown. “What?”
“My dad,” she repeats patiently. “You have to burn him. They can’t have him.”
I involuntarily look out over the landscape. I can’t see the base across the river but I know that’s what she’s talking about. It’s almost the same thing Simmons, Billings and I worried about with Kyle. She doesn’t want his body to fall into their hands. To be dissected and destroyed.
“I’ll take care of it. I promise.”
She falls slowly against me again, her arms tightening down with a surprising strength. At the hospital, Leah helps me get her into a bed in a room alone near the nurse’s station. Alissa moves when we tell her to but other than that there’s no response from her. Her eyes are open, she hears our words but it’s all autopilot. She’s checked out for now and I can’t decide if I’m relieved or terrified by that.
“I’ll give her something to help her sleep,” Leah whispers to me. “She needs to rest and reset.”
“Is she pregnant?” I ask abruptly, staring down at Leah intently.
She sighs, not surprised by the question. “I don’t know. Alissa doesn’t either.” Leah pauses, considering, then looks me in the eyes. “She’s off her meds.”
“What?!”
She presses her finger to her lips. “Quiet. If she can fall asleep naturally that’d be better.”
“Why is she off her medications? Do you know what she takes them for?”
“Yes, and she’s off them because they’re dangerous to the baby if she’s pregnant.”
“But she doesn’t know if she is?”
“She told me yesterday that she’s missed her period. That alone doesn’t mean she’s pregnant. It’s a symptom, but not a sure sign. A lot of things can throw a woman off her cycle. Stress or change in diet alone could have done it.”
I shake my head in frustration. “Let’s do a test. Let’s find out. She can pee on something, right?”
Leah grins faintly. “Yes, she could. But she hasn’t yet and I won’t perform that test until she tells me to.”
I look to Alissa who lays with her back to us in the dark room. I can’t see her face but I know her eyes are open. I also know no one is home at the moment.
“She can’t exactly consent right now.”
“No.”
“With what happened tonight and her going off her medication…” I fail to find the words to describe my worst fears for her. I can’t imagine what this will be like. The horrors she’ll have cascading down on her when it all catches up to her. I’m scared for her.
I’m scared for me as well.
“It could get very ugly,” Leah agrees, confirming my fears. “Which is why I want to move her in here permanently. At least until we know for sure what’s happening. Besides, she can’t very well go back to that RV alone. With or without her medical condition, that’s not a good environment for someone who’s grieving.”
“Can I stay with her?”
She squeezes my arm as she turns to leave the room. “Why do you think I picked a room with an empty bed?”
I leave Ali there. I hate myself for doing it but I made a promise to her and I can’t be in two places at once. I’ll sleep beside her tonight, though. That’s a promise I make to myself.
When I get back to the quarantine area, Billings and Simmons are gone. There are new nurses here cleaning up the mess of blood on the floor of the tent. Alvarez is supervising with tired eyes. He nods to me when I enter.
“How’s she doing?”
I shake my head in reply. He curses softly but nods in understanding. He’s not surprised. How would anyone be? I can see it in the slouch of his shoulders that he’s exhausted. Spent. He’s torn up over Kyle just like Ali is lost over her dad. It’s been a bad night all around.
“Where are the bodies?” I ask him reluctantly.
He sighs. “Near the fence line. They’re being guarded.”
“Are they being kept safe or are we being kept safe from them?”
“Who knows anymore,” he mumbles tiredly.
I pause, unsure to ask what I need to ask. It’s not your average borrow a cup of sugar kind of favor.
“I need Syd’s body.”
“I know.”
“Do you know why?”
“It’s already being set up. Kyle too.”
“Good.”
“Did you hear about the other base?” he asks suddenly. “The one on the coast?”
I shake my head. “I know there is one. That’s all.”
“It fell.”
“What? When?”
“Three days ago. They lost all communication. When they did a fly by, it was gone. Empty. Nothing but droves of Zs roaming around it.”
It’s my worst fears come to life.
“Unreal,” I say, disbelieving. Not wanting to believe. “If it happened to them—“
“It could easily happen to us.”
His eyes haven’t left the blood stains on the floor since I got here. He’s mesmerized by them. By the small soapy bubbles turning reddish orange with each pass of the nurses’ scrub brush. It’ll never come out entirely. Blood never does.
We stand in silence for another ten minutes at least. The nurses never speak. They never acknowledge us as we mutely watch them work. When they finish, when the dark black-red stains on the ground are faded orange ghosts, Alvarez silently leaves the building. I nod to the nurses as I follow him out.
He leads me to a Jeep which we hop into and peel out over the dusty earth. There’s pink building on the horizon. The night is almost over but our work has just begun. I think of Ali in that bed alone in the hospital and I wonder what lays ahead of us. What tomorrow will bring. The fact that she’s taken herself off her drugs doesn’t really phase me when I think about it. Drugs or no, the death of her father, her only living family, was going to destroy her no matter what.
When we arrive at the gate, I’m surprised to find so many people already there. Practically the entire crew from the top of the plateau and I recognize a few guys from the maintenance crew Syd worked on. News travels fast. Especially bad news.
“Are we rea
dy?” Franklin asks Alvarez as we pile out of the Jeep.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
“We’re not waiting for his daughter?”
I shake my head, replying vaguely, “She’s not up for this.”
Franklin nods in silent understanding.
We move as a group to where they’ve built a pyre out of old, worn wood planks. On top of it are two bodies, both covered in dark sheets that can’t hide the telltale wetness of the blood soaking through them. The wood around them is dark with wetness as well and I can smell the strong scent of gasoline in the air.
“Would anyone like to say any words?” Franklin asks.
He looks at me questioningly, but I shake my head. I’m no more equipped for prayers now than I was when I asked Alissa to pray over the dead in our dorm. I could repeat her words but I choose silence instead.
All I can think to say is this; I miss him already. Kyle because he was my friend and Syd because... well, because he was Syd. It seems like I wouldn’t but I do. I didn’t realize until now how much I counted on him to show me the way around Ali’s condition. I resented him and his condescending tone, but he was still teaching me. I could still fall back and let him run the show, leading me by example on how to navigate the ups and downs of life with Alissa. But now he’s gone and I’m on my own during one of the darkest hours of her life.
I’m terrified. I’m absolutely, positively scared out of my mind because not only is she slipping into a depression, she’s off her medication and she might be pregnant with my kid. How am I supposed to handle all of this? I’m still a kid myself, trying to come to grips with this new life we’re living along with the loss of my hand and my sister. I’ve got troubles of my own and now I’ve got to find out how to fix hers too? I can’t rescue her from this. I’m barely keeping my own head above water.
It’s then, just as I’m freaking myself out and my breaths are starting to come short and panicky, that I remember what Syd told me.
Her problems are beyond you. They’re beyond me too. Don’t ever think you can cure her.
In all the time I spent with them, Syd never tried to fix Ali. He never tried to make the world right for her, never coddled her, never tiptoed around her and her condition. He never treated her like she was anyone or anything other than Alissa. Than Al. The tough as nails, resilient woman we both know she is. And that’s exactly what I have to do. I don’t have to make it right for her. If it were me on that pyre and him standing here, he wouldn’t be contemplating how he could fix her world. How he could save her from the pain she’s being engulfed in. He’d be doing what needed to be done. He’d burn my body just as she asked, then he’d stay beside her. Nothing more.
It’s such a simple thing. It feels too passive to be of any use, but when has Ali asked for more? That girl is too strong, too independent and fierce to ever need me to solve all her problems. She’s never asked that of me and she never will. She doesn’t need me to kiss her wounds and make them all better any more than I need that of her. What she needs is exactly what I need – someone to have her back until the bitter end.
Suddenly the pyre is lit. It bursts into angry red, yellow and orange, reaching into the sky and hungrily devouring the air around us. It burns bright and fierce for a minute before dying down to a steady blaze. Across the flames and smoke, through the blur of the heat rising into the air, I see Gabrielle. She’s standing tall and straight, her hair down in long curls. Her face is hard, her jaw set squarely as she glares at the flames in front of her. She looks pissed off, pure and simple. Like she would take issue with God Himself if he showed his face right now. I watch her image dancing in the flames. I see her face take on a sheen, sparkling like glass, and I realize she’s crying silently. Stoically.
It makes me glad for Kyle in ways I can’t explain. In the same way I take comfort in knowing Alissa would weep for me. There’s a strange sense of pride in it. In the man you must have been to earn that level of devotion from a woman that strong. We should all be that lucky. We should all be that man.
Chapter Twenty Five
I stand outside the door to the radio room, my stomach in knots. I need to do this. I’ve put if off for too long as it is. Syd was right; my parents need to know. They deserve to know. And Beth deserves to be put to rest.
I push the door open slowly. I was hoping before that it’d be someone I know, someone like Gabrielle, but now I’m not so sure. Now I’m praying for anonymity. For this moment to be smaller than it feels, to pass unnoticed through someone else’s world so it won’t feel so huge in mine. When I look inside, I get my wish.
The guy sitting at the desk is someone I’ve seen around but I’ve never actually met. I don’t know how well he knew Kyle, but his manner is reserved when I enter. Solemn.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Not much,” I answer reflexively. I offer him my hand. “I’m Jordan.”
He shakes it firmly. “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen you around. What can I do for you?”
I take a deep breath, praying I won’t lose my shit. “I need to add my name to the list. The survivor list.”
“You haven’t done that yet?” he asks, sounding surprised. “How long have you been here?”
“Weeks.”
“Wow, okay, yeah. Let’s get your name on there.” He begins sifting through the papers sitting on the desk, searching for a pen. “You got family that will be looking for you?”
“Yeah, my parents.”
“They’ll be thrilled, man.”
“Maybe.”
He chuckles lightly, pulling out a pen from a low drawer. “No maybe about it. Who wouldn’t be thrilled to know their kid is alive?”
“I need to add another name too.”
“Another survivor? Is it that girl you came here with? She’s not on the list yet either. I don’t have a last name for her,” he says absently, opening a large ledger and flipping through the pages.
“No, it’s my sister.” I cough, clearing my throat. This room is starting to feel small. “I need to add her to the other list,” I blurt out, the words falling out of my mouth in a dizzying chaos I can feel inside my stomach.
The guy stops, his hand freezing on the pages. He turns to look at me with saddened eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s happened to all of us, right? Doesn’t make it any easier.”
“No,” I agree tightly.
He turns back to the book, finding the page he wants. His pen hovers over the empty slot.
“What was her name?”
“Beth. Beth Bishop.”
I watch his hand scrawl the words across the page. It’s just letters. Just a jumbling of the alphabet and nothing more. I remind myself to breathe, to keep my cool because it’s already done. She’s already gone and telling my parents doesn’t make it any better or any worse. It doesn’t kill her all over again any more than keeping it from them kept her alive. It simply is what it is. That’s all.
“You’re Bishop too? Same last name?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, you’re both accounted for. I’ll send the message immediately. Your parents should know by the morning.”
I nod my head, mutter a thanks and bolt for the door.
“Hey, wait!” he calls after me. I pause with the door already open, one foot outside. “The girl, Alissa. I’m gonna add her to the Living List with you.”
“Good,” I mutter, wondering why he thinks I need to know that.
“What’s her last name?”
I frown, turning to face him. “What?”
“I only put in full names. I added her dad to the… the other list tonight, but I didn’t know if they shared a last name. Do they?”
“I don’t know.”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll leave her in limbo then.”
“No,” I say sharply, stepping back into the room. “Don’t do that. Add her to the Living List. She deserves to be on it.”
“But what name do I give her?”
“Mine,” I tell him. “You
give her mine.”
***
I make sure to shower before I go back to Alissa’s room. I spend a long time under the scalding hot water, double washing my hair to make sure the smoky scent is out of it completely.
I push the second bed in the room right up beside hers, but I keep to it, leaving her on her bed alone with plenty of space. She hasn’t moved since I left. Her back is still to the door and I don’t look to see if her eyes are open or closed. I’m hoping for closed but I’m scared to find them open and vacant. It will haunt me all night and I need to sleep. What’s coming next, I can’t be sure of, but you can bet it will be tough.
“Goodnight, Ali,” I breathe.
I close my eyes, feeling exhausted. I know I’ll sleep immediately, despite my hibernation earlier. I think—
“Goodnight, Jordan.”
My eyes snap open, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I didn’t expect a response and I nearly pissed the bed when I got one. This woman lives to scare me. To surprise me.
She reaches her hand back behind her blindly. I take it in mine, weaving my fingers through hers as she pulls me closer. She guides me, tugging on my arm and rolling me over until I’m lying with my back up against hers, our hands still laced together. This is how we slept in the stock aisle of the store. Back to back, hands clasped.
The nightmares will still come for us. They always do. There’s nothing either of us can ever do to make them stop. But at least we know we won’t face them alone.
***
It takes weeks, but we get there. Ali gets there. She falls hard when her dad dies, but she never sinks so far under the surface that we can’t reach her. There are times where I’m terrified for her, though. When she stares at one point on the wall for too long or she stops listening to you for no reason, like she’s distracted by something else. Something I can’t hear. But she deals with it because she’s a fighter. Because she doesn’t know how to quit. I know this was an effort for her, something she struggled with every second of every day, and I’m proud of her. She’s still off her medications, though, which makes me a little crazy inside. But it’s her body, her mind and her decision. I’m with her, no matter what.
