by Lee Hayton
She shuffled down on her knees and undid the belt of his jeans.
Rebekah face suffused with hot blood and she twisted so her shoulder formed a shield against X-rated views. When the man moaned and raised a limp hand, she caught and squeezed it gently before replacing it at his side.
“My name’s Rebekah,” she said. “And we’re not trying to hurt you.”
Pressing her palm flat on his chest, she leaned in to whisper near his ear. “I know this stuff stings, but it’s better than getting an infection.”
Her eyes filled with tears as the memory of her mother’s voice echoed in her head, saying the same thing over a younger Rebekah’s grazed knee.
“Pass me the antiseptic again?”
Rebekah did and glanced down. An injury in the man’s thigh looked deeper and more swollen than the injuries on his chest.
“Hold his arms,” Annie said, miming. “I’m going to pour this into the wound. If he’s not awake yet, he’ll soon be.”
Encircling the man’s warm pulsing wrists with her fingers, Rebekah used her weight to press them firmly into the soft soil. “Okay.”
Annie poured the liquid straight into the gaping lesion. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the man jerked his chest up, his arms writhing to get free. His eyes shot open, and he yelled a barking cry of distress.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Rebekah cried back. “It’ll be over in a second.”
Annie pressed a pad against the torn flesh and wrapped it up tightly with the bandage. Holding the ends with one hand, she tore off a piece of tape with her teeth.
Rebekah looked straight into the young man’s eyes and nodded. “You’re doing really good.”
She twisted her head just as Annie fixed the tape into place. Annie cut another, using the scissors this time, and put it across the bandage end, fastening it to the hairy skin of his leg.
“You did so well,” Rebekah said. “It’s all finished now. You can go to sleep again.”
The man blinked rapidly in confusion then followed her instructions. Closing his eyes, he soon began to snore.
While Annie fixed his jeans into position, Rebekah leaned her body back onto her heels. Pride bloomed like a warm flower in her chest.
Chapter Seven
Annie
The dawn started to light up the sky sometime after five thirty. The sun might take another few hours to crawl up into visibility over the horizon, but for now, that faint glow was enough to buoy Annie’s spirits.
She turned to look at the trio in the back seat. For a moment, Becca’s sleepy gaze greeted hers, then Becca closed her eyes again and nodded off. Robert sat between Becca and their new guest, “In case he causes any trouble.”
In his current state, the young man didn’t seem capable of causing anything. The wound on his leg nagged at the back of Annie’s mind. What he needed was a doctor, not a mom experienced only in applying Band-Aids.
Careful to be quiet, Annie slowly opened the passenger side door. Once outside, she used the weight of her hip to close it. Even that muffled sound made her wince in the still morning air.
As she walked to a park bench, Annie combed her hair with her fingers. The curls once driven into submission with heat and effort seemed to take pleasure in staging a return.
She sighed and shook her shoulders, trying to force them to relax. With her eyes closed, Annie jiggled each limb, releasing the cramps from sitting in the car.
Despite her best efforts, Annie didn’t think she’d fully dozed off during the night. Each time she closed her eyes, Mikey’s face revved her nervous system back up.
As she’d run toward the burning car the night before, Annie had seen every feature of Mikey’s face, trapped in his damned seat while the vehicle burned around him.
Except, he wasn’t.
Just her memory playing a trick. Pasting her son’s face on the matte blue fabric of the highest safety rated car seat she and Greg could buy.
The trick recurred now each time she closed her eyes.
Annie turned to walk down the wooden path. Her visions dissipated as she strained her eyes to pick out the trail in the dim morning light.
When the trees blocked her view of the car, she walked off to her right side. Five yards in, she squatted, pulling down her shorts and underwear. As she urinated, Annie shuffled her feet to keep them out of the flow.
Dead leaves were the best she could do for a toilet paper facsimile. Better that than catching the drips with her clothes, then sitting in dried urine all day.
Men have it so easy.
She straightened her clothing and walked back to the path, navigating farther along until she came to the stream they’d used last night.
Even though she’d soaked her hand in the cool water then, blisters were forming on her thumb and fingers where she’d gripped the burning heat of the door.
Annie washed her hands in the water and left them for a minute in the cooling flow. She scooped a few cupped handfuls of water to her lips, losing as much down her chin as she got into her mouth.
She walked back to the bench, slowing as she saw the outline of a figure already there.
“You okay?” Robert’s voice was filled with gravel from the night.
“Fine,” Annie said, taking a seat beside him. “Just thinking about things.” She hunched her shoulders and clasped her hands in her lap.
“Yeah. I’m doing a lot of that, too.” He rubbed his hand over his face and scratched behind his ear. “Frankie’s tried to find information on her phone. The signal’s bad out here.” He waved his arm toward the thicket of trees. “All she found on the Internet seems to be a mix of gossip and anecdotal reports. Nothing new from yesterday.”
Annie tilted her head back to look up into the sky. “Someone must know what’s happening. The authorities will be working to bring everything back under control.”
Last night, they’d tried to find a station on the radio: either static or an endless play of songs. No human voices at all.
Robert cleared his throat. “I called Annabelle and got through to her voicemail on the first try. It appears the overload has been sorted.”
When he didn’t add to his statement, Annie didn’t bother to ask. If the news had been good, it would have burst out of him. Good news today would be a treat denied to most of the population. No one would hold it back.
“What’s your plan?”
Annie looked at Robert, her brow crinkling. “What?” Her hands gripped the edge of the bench. The moon’s silver rays shaded his face into grayscale. Soon it would lose the battle for brightness with the sun, but for now, it cast the greater light.
“Your plan,” he repeated, then swept his arm across, his palm facing up. “Where do you want to go next? We can’t stay here; there're no supplies. And sleeping in the car isn’t ideal.”
She shook her head not in disagreement but in complete denial.
Robert tipped his head back to look straight up at the moon. After a few moments, he closed his eyes, looking like a vampire sunbather.
When he next spoke, his voice was soft—as gentle as the wind slowly rustling the treetops. “We survived yesterday on luck. If we want to survive longer, I’d prefer to get somewhere the odds aren’t stacked against us.”
Annie swallowed. Her throat was closing up. “I need to find Mikey.”
“Yes.” He stretched out his hand and laid it atop hers. The skin of his palm was dry and smooth. “And Becca needs her mother to be alive. Frankie needs a missed call on her phone. That young man there,” he pointed at the back seat, “needs a hospital with trained doctors and nurses.”
The tears she’d held back for so many hours started to flow down her cheeks. Each minute, the gaping hole in her heart grew larger. Although she cried silently, she knew Robert saw by the way he cleared his throat and shifted on the bench.
“Do you have an idea of how to find him?” Robert asked.
Annie closed her eyes and bent forward, wrapping her arms around
her chest. She eased her forehead down to rest on the tops of her knees.
The loss pulsed through her. Her mouth stretched open in a silent scream.
She felt Mikey’s loss so intently that it seemed possible to track him solely with her thoughts. But her internal radar completed a circuit, not finding a trace.
Her one idea to find him had failed.
You can take me, if only you’ll keep Mikey safe.
A contract with a God who didn’t answer her prayers.
“If we go back to the parking lot,” she said, raising her head, “we could spread out and look for him. He can’t have got far walking on his own.”
Robert placed his hand on her back, rubbing in small circles of comfort. “If he was on his own.”
The spit dried in her mouth, and her pulse beat faster. Annie shook her shoulders to throw Robert’s hand off her and sat up. “It’s better than sitting here doing nothing.”
“It’s more dangerous, certainly.”
Annie gave him a sharp look, then her shoulders crumpled inward. She covered her face with her hands, pressing on her cheekbones to ward back the tears.
You can’t give up. It’s Mikey! You need to find him.
Annie bit her bottom lip. If it was just her, then there was no question. But Robert wasn’t asking about just her. Two teenage girls sat in the car. A wounded young man as well. She couldn’t drag them into danger.
Go by yourself, then.
And what? Ask Robert to drive her back into the city? If she tried to walk there, she’d lose hours, maybe half a day.
You’ve lost a day already. Mikey could be anywhere. He’s probably already dead.
Annie shook her head slowly.
“I think we should head out to the country. You saw the news; this is happening everywhere.” Robert put a tentative hand on her knee, then pulled it back. “If we stay away from the city, we’ll have a better chance of survival. The lower population means lower rates of sick people.”
For a second, Annie thought of waving her hand, of saying, “Go on without me,” then heading back into the city on foot for her son.
Then she looked over at the car and caught Becca looking back at her. The girl had found her mother dead, and she was still coping.
It’s not the same thing.
No, it wasn’t.
Annie stood up, wiping the last traces of tears from her face. Becca waved then pointed at the young man. Last night, his bouts of consciousness had been short, enough for them to know he was alive, not enough to know anything else. Now he was blinking and shifting in the back seat.
Annie walked over to the car, opening the back door to peer inside. “Morning,” she said, whispering in case Frankie was still, by some miracle, asleep.
The man wiped the edge of his face with his hand then winced. Some of the skin on his hand had blistered, similar to Annie’s. “Where am I?” he asked.
His eyes were bright blue, the bruises on his face not enough to conceal the strength of his features. Annie felt every year of their age gap as she compared him automatically to Mikey.
“You’re safe,” she said, her voice firm. “You’re with friends.”
Becca looked at her with the same expression that Mikey used when he petted a kitten. His “Can we keep him, Mom?” expression.
Annie struggled to inhale through the expanding hole in her heart. She blinked back tears as the young man looked up and answered, “Hi, I’m Blain.”
Frankie
Becca’s giggle carried across the park to where Frankie sat on a wooden bench in the morning sunlight. The noise set Frankie’s teeth on edge. Obscene. She’d moved away from Blain and Becca’s chattered conversation in the back seat of the car. Still, it followed her.
If Becca wanted a happily ever after with their newcomer, perhaps she should wait at least more than a day from the time she’d seen her mother’s brains splattered across the front lawn.
The night before, Frankie had woken in the car. Everybody had been gone. The terror she’d felt at first had morphed into anger. How dare they leave her alone? Her fright had dissipated when Robert returned. The anger had stayed.
Hissing air through her teeth, Frankie pulled her mobile out of her pocket. The battery charge was down to eleven percent. Soon the screen would dim down to half strength before the phone died altogether.
Even knowing this, she flipped the screen on to check. Five minutes, maybe ten since the last time. Still no new messages.
Last night, Frankie had managed to get one phone call through to her parents. She’d left a stuttering message on her mother’s voicemail, half of it spent reciting her number though her mom knew it by heart. Each time she’d tried to call before or since the system had been overloaded.
After the drama of the burning parking lot, everyone had focused on getting away from the city. No time to visit Robert’s house, no time to visit Frankie’s.
Each time she saw the blank message icon, Frankie felt a muscle pull in her chest, the same one that turned her body into a frozen statue. As she poked the mobile back into her jacket pocket, she rubbed at her sternum. With so many unknowns in the world, she wouldn’t write off her parents just yet.
Becca’s giggle carried again across the park, and Frankie pulled a corner of her bottom lip into her mouth. If she nibbled on it gently, some of her fear went away. Last night, surrounded by fire, she’d almost bitten it through. Although it was swollen this morning, her teeth still gnawed away at it, like a baby sucking its thumb despite blisters. Emotional comfort trumped the physical.
She jumped to her feet when the giggle sounded again and stomped off down the wooded track. The trees closed in, muffling any sounds from the car.
Robert and Annie had walked off earlier, to forage, they said. Frankie knew they’d be discussing plans for the group. What could anyone find in forest land this close to the edge of the city?
They’d be discussing plans, and it was evident they didn’t want Frankie’s input. Well, so what? Unless it was heading back into the city for Frankie’s parents—an outcome not high on anyone else’s agenda—she didn’t care where they went now, anyway.
Yesterday morning, Frankie had kissed her mother goodbye. At school, she’d chatted with a group of seven friends before heading into class. Two of them had been shot dead in first-period math. Another four would rot in the confines of an air-conditioning duct. Frankie’s throat tightened as she thought of the chip in the nail polish on Angela’s fingertip. She’d have hated that. Daddy’s little girl was such a perfectionist.
“Hey, kid. Hey, you.”
Frankie turned and saw two teenage boys jogging toward her, traveling along a path perpendicular to hers. She frowned. There’d been no other cars in the park last night or this morning. An arrival today would be something she’d have clearly heard.
“What?” The fear and frustration of the last twenty-four hours poured into a word full of attitude. She jutted out her hip and stuck her hand on it, tilting her head to one side.
The first boy—blond—skidded to a stop just a yard away, his dark-haired friend slowing and walking the last few steps. The second boy was taller, topping Frankie’s own five foot six—a feat few of her male schoolmates had achieved. She had a good few inches on the blond boy, though. Judging by the state of his teeth, the meth had stunted his growth.
It was the short one who spoke. “You, ah. You by yourself?”
“What’s it to you?”
The taller boy looked over Frankie’s shoulder, back along the path. Frankie resisted the urge to turn and look. She didn’t want to take her eyes off them, and she didn’t want to give away the location of the car if it wasn’t visible.
“We’re just looking for some company, like.” The top half of his body leaned toward her. “Have you been near the town?”
As far as Frankie was concerned, they were near the town. A five-minute drive from here would land you on the outskirts of the central business district. The woods wer
e just a hangover from the nature-loving forefathers who had founded their great city.
“I came from there,” she said. After a second, she stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. “You?”
The taller boy giggled nervously. “Course, yeah. That shit got real. We grabbed some camping supplies, came out here on our bikes.” He looked back over his shoulder as a bird rustled the forest canopy. When he turned back to her, all trace of a smile was gone. “We’re planning to stay here. Our foster dad is . . .” He mimed a gunshot to the head with his right hand.
Blondie took a step closer. Nerves jangling at the proximity, Frankie stood her ground. She looked from one boy to the other. Neither one caught her eye.
“Well, this has been a great conversation, but if you don’t mind—”
“Grab her, Lou.”
The tall boy ran to the side, flanking her, as the blond boy lunged forward. Frankie took a step back, her footing unsteady on the loose twigs and soil beneath her. She stuck her hand in her pocket, concerned above all else that they didn’t grab her phone. She clutched it tight in her fist and jutted her hand forward.
“Whoa. Steady, there.”
The blond backed up a step, raising his hands. Frankie jabbed her fist at him again, threatening a punch.
“Josh.” The word was a warning. Lou jerked his head toward her jacket pocket.
Flicking her eyes down to check, Frankie understood what he thought he saw. A metal object tucked in her front pocket, the bunching of her hand. She prodded the mobile phone further forward, heightening the illusion.
“I think you’d better head back where you came from,” she said, jerking her fist to the side. Two sets of eyes followed it with rapt attention. “If you know what’s good for you.”
“Cool, cool,” Lou said, backing up a step, hands still raised in surrender. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t go looking for it.”
“You okay, Frankie?”
Robert’s voice drifted out from behind her. Relief flooded her, but instead of relaxing, her shoulders started to shake.
