by Lee Hayton
Blain still wasn’t interested in her company. She sat on the bedside chair, the same one she’d spent an entire, uncomfortable night on while he was deathly ill, but after a few minutes, he begged her to leave.
“Your breathing is so loud,” he complained. “I'm trying to sleep.”
He wasn't. The only reason his eyes were closed was the bright daylight streaming in through the window. He’d winced and turned away when Rebekah opened the curtains wide.
Blain moved his legs under the sheets as he rearranged his position. No frown of pain accompanied the actions. He was healing fast, making progress just from yesterday.
Hearing Annie call, Mikey’s bath at an end and a new series of tasks available, Rebekah tiptoed upstairs.
If nobody else could be bothered to be friendly or helpful, Rebekah didn’t know why she should. She ducked into the upstairs study and closed the door.
Blain
As Becca left his room, Blain tried to ignore the tug of self-disgust resting in his gut. While he did need to send her away, he wished he’d thought of a way to do it with more finesse. Seeing her wrap her arms around her chest and turn her face away made his breathing heavy.
For a moment, he closed his eyes to focus on a visual nightmare: Becca’s sweet round face exploding apart as a shotgun shell tore through her brain.
The image twisted his stomach, pierced his heart, but eased his headache. The cramped feeling—too much brain squeezed into too little skull—lingered, but the sensation dulled down with the fantasy.
He should get out of here. Pack up and leave before he did something terrible, something he’d regret. Blain could already claim responsibility for a small cemetery's worth of coffins taking up headroom. Adding sweet Becca to their ranks would be monstrous.
Blain traced back in his mind to the parking lot—moments after he'd shot a boy not much different from Mikey. At the time, his mind had split in two.
The part of him controlled by the disease had crowed with satisfaction. The real part of him, the healthy part, wept, the sobs so quiet he barely heard them until the bullets started to fly his way.
His chest wound dealt the first blow to his illness. When the second bullet lodged deep in his thigh, the real Blain had returned.
The disease that had overwhelmed his senses until he committed unimaginable atrocities had disappeared. Stayed away, remained silent, right up till Becca fished a compacted slug from his flesh.
Blain knew a lot about disease. As a boy, assisting his father with veterinary cases, he’d seen minute bacteria rip large animals beyond the help of his father's gentle hands.
Possessed with an intimate knowledge of infection, Blain knew his wound shouldn’t have suppurated with such speed. Even if bacteria had begun breeding from the first moment of injury, they shouldn’t have caused so much damage so fast.
But the infection in his thigh hadn't been caused by bacteria. No more than his wound now healed on its own.
The disease was still in him.
The infection in his thigh was the disease’s attempt to expel the foreign matter, to push it out with a wave of white blood cells and fluid. No wonder he’d been thirsty. No wonder he’d been dehydrated. The disease had pounced on every drop of moisture stored in his body and mustered it toward his thigh.
Becca had helped him, but Blain now believed the disease would eventually have expelled the bullet. Her tweezers had probably only needed to pierce half as deep as the original location of the projectile.
When the bullet was in his leg, it drew the focus of the disease in his system, all attention homing in on expelling the metal from his flesh.
Absent that diversion, the headache now crawled again through his brain, igniting the same painful stimuli, trying for the same result.
Blain needed to give the disease another distraction.
He grabbed a gun from the side table drawer that he’d concealed there while the women were absent, fighting for Frankie’s safe return.
At the time, he’d told himself it was only for protection, to ward against any intruders who might arrive. Robert had been shot dead, so the threat from outsiders was real. The gun safe in his father’s wardrobe wasn’t the only one in the house. Paranoia had always been his dad’s faithful companion.
Blain swung his legs out of bed and stood, using the headboard as a support. After adjusting to the change in position, he flexed one leg, then the other. He was bruised and battered but otherwise as good as new.
Careful to make as little noise as possible, Blain walked from the bedroom to the front door. His shoulders tensed as he pulled the door open—when the hinges were stiff, they sometimes shrieked for oil, but now they glided with ease.
Outside, Blain hurried to the shelter belt of poplar trees, hiding behind their branches and shade. They led in a straight line to the far corner of the farm’s boundary. When he drew near the old well, he pointed the gun at the ground and fired.
The sound was loud to him, but the prevailing wind blew toward him from the farm, carrying noise to the neighbors and away. He crouched down and felt with his fingertip into the dusty hole. When his nail clipped the hard edge of the slug, Blain wriggled his thumb into the hole to work it free.
A quick wipe on his T-shirt removed the dust, then he sprayed it with antiseptic. Biting on a stick to stop his cries, Blain inserted the metal deep into the rapidly healing wound in his thigh.
As paroxysms of agony ran through his body, Blain lay on the ground, staring up at the sky. His headache fled, replaced with the joyful sense of well-being.
When the pain passed, Blain stuck the gun down the back of his jeans and limped back to his room. He placed the gun in the side table drawer, no longer scared he’d misuse it. Then he fell, with genuine need, into the soft comfort of the bed.
Chapter Twelve
Annie
“Stay still, love.” Annie attempted to wrestle a clean T-shirt over Mikey's head. It was a hand-me-down rescued from a box in the attic. Labeled for Goodwill, it had never quite gotten that far.
His small body writhed under her hands. As she straightened the armholes from where they bunched into his pits, Mikey pulled her hand close. While looking her straight in the eyes, he bit down, hard.
Annie yanked her hand back, close to tears. “Becca?” Where was the girl? She'd said she'd help, and she always seemed so amenable that Annie had believed her.
When she combed Mikey’s hair back, his head felt hot. Annie pressed her wrist to his forehead—the same thermometer she’d always used to test the heat of his milk, his bathwater.
He was burning up.
Fever, a virus, an infection? If his temperature kept climbing, she'd need to take him to the hospital.
The thought had occurred before she remembered it wasn’t an option. Annie sucked in her trembling bottom lip. Even if a hospital near them were still operating, it would be overrun.
A vision flashed in front of her eyes: linoleum floors, running with the blood of doctors and nurses.
Annie shook herself, cold fingers tracing up her spine. This was ridiculous. She was never maudlin, never thought the worst. For goodness sake, amid an epidemic of death and violence, she’d located her young son. Unhurt.
Looking at him, a tiny fleck of her skin caught on his teeth, Annie amended the thought. Almost intact. Practically unchanged.
Well, she’d changed too. Annie straightened her back and tilted up her chin. No matter what Mikey needed, Annie would be there rooting for him and helping him through.
She took her son’s hand and led him through the living room. When they entered the kitchen, she pulled him up by both hands, placing him so his feet lay on top of hers. She jumped forward, an overgrown bunny rabbit.
Mikey giggled and squeezed her hands. Annie’s chest glowed with warmth, thawing the edges of her fear. She lifted him onto a stool and spun him to face the counter, standing beside him, shoulders touching.
The drugs that Becca had found when she�
��d trawled through the farmhouse were piled on the counter.
Annie turned to her son and poked her tongue out, checking his when he reciprocated. Healthy looking, a light pink. Aspirin was out, then. Not for fever, unless his tongue turned red like a strawberry. This diagnosis was an echo from Mikey’s pediatrician, but Annie wondered what she’d forgotten or missed. She stroked his hair back again, sweat around his ears gluing the strands along his cheeks.
Liquid Tylenol would be great right now. The kind flavored with raspberries. Then she could just pour it into a measuring glass and hand it over. Mikey liked the taste of something sweet, even with medicinal undertones.
Instead, Annie popped a Tylenol tablet out of the wrapper and crushed it between two spoons. She touched a fingertip to the powder and sucked it gently, scrunching her face at the bitter taste.
No way would Mikey accept that.
Annie pulled a bottle of pills out of reach of her son’s greedy hands. He shrieked and fought her, bucking his body until he tipped the stool backward. She caught him, her heart pounding. Mikey’s little hands balled up and hit out at her chest.
To forestall another incident, Annie took Mikey through to the bedroom. She placed him in bed, forced his arms under the covers, and tucked in the coverlet as tightly as she could.
It was an old trick—child prison, Greg had called it. Annie called it effective parenting.
When she returned to the kitchen, Annie found a jar of honey at the back of the cupboard, half an inch remaining.
Based on the age of the label, the contents had been there for donkey’s years. Honey didn't go bad, did it? Hadn’t some been found in a mummy’s tomb, still edible?
For a moment, Annie ached for the easy answers of the Internet. Now that Mikey was here, she needed to prioritize communication and information. The radio in the car broadcast static, but something must still work somewhere.
She made a mental note to look around the house for Gray’s books. Veterinary advice might be the best she could do for today.
The honey lid was gummed together with sugar crystals, sealed tight as glue. To loosen it, Annie soaked the jar in some cooling water left from Mikey's bath.
After trickling honey into the Tylenol, Annie stirred the mixture into a liquid pulp. Not bothering to taste it this time—she’d make sure Mikey swallowed it, no matter what—Annie took it to his room.
More rambunctious than usual, Mikey had almost managed to wriggle free. When he opened his mouth to complain, Annie stuck in the spoon. With a helping hand keeping his head in place, she waited until he started to swallow. After three gulping motions, Annie withdrew the spoon to see its contents were mostly gone.
She smiled and stroked the soft curve of Mikey’s cheek, then sharp pain flared in her knee. Looking down, she saw the end of a toothpick jutting from her leg. As Annie’s eyes widened, Mikey gave a shy smile of pleasure.
Frankie
“Does he ever stop?” Frankie asked as Mikey hitched in a breath to begin another shriek. “I can’t think with that noise.”
Annie glared at her from tired eyes. “If you're not helping, then I suggest you keep your lip buttoned. Otherwise, you can fuck off back to the commune.”
Frankie’s breath stuck in her throat, her chest too stiff to draw another. Annie clapped a hand to her mouth and turned away, a sheen in her eyes.
Even though Frankie knew she’d goaded Annie into the response, it stung. Hours before, she’d been trapped in a basement expecting to die. For Annie to wish her back there was unbearable.
“I'm sorry,” Annie said, her voice thick. “I don't know what's got into me.”
It was evident to Frankie what had gotten into Annie.
Mikey's cries were so piercing that she’d heard them on her way back in from the field outside and broken into a run. Heartbeat racing, muscles shaking, as she'd neared the back door, she’d twisted her head from side to side, searching to find the source of the attack.
She’d slammed the door wide, pounding inside, while every brain cell had screamed at her to retreat. Retreat.
All she’d found there was Mikey, mid-temper tantrum, his mother sobbing on a nearby chair. A great help.
Through an hour of nausea and adrenal aftershock, Mikey had shown no signs of turning down the volume. Even Blain had dragged himself out of bed, trying to comfort the kid into silence. They’d had a few minutes’ reprieve while Mikey examined Blain’s shaking figure, then the cries had started up again.
Frankie slipped out of the room, her cheeks burning. She’d been expecting Becca to show up before now, but there was no sign of her. She’d helped Blain from the sofa back to his room, where he'd promptly fallen asleep.
Becca had been watching Blain like a hawk since they'd gotten here. Where on earth had she gone?
Mikey's cries abruptly ceased.
Frankie wondered if Annie had grown sick of it and put a pillow over his head, but she doubted it. Pity. With the way Frankie felt now, someone else breaking down and doing something stupid would be a welcome relief.
As Frankie stood in the doorway to Blain’s room, Annie walked out to slump on the sofa, Mikey in her arms. The whole house was playing musical chairs.
Blain muttered, and his legs trod the sheets. He seemed no better now than before Becca had taken the bullet out. Wasn’t that meant to fix him?
For the first time, Frankie felt the pang of his oncoming loss. How would she feel if Blain died? Worse than Robert? At the time, she’d been too occupied to think, and after her escape, it had seemed too late. Why would she mourn an acquaintance of only a few days when she couldn’t cry for her parents?
The sorrows piled up against her internal dam.
The thought of her phone, lying dead in the middle of some windswept paddock, recurred to Frankie. Before, she’d felt a twinge of regret at the loss. Now she was glad. If her parents had survived, Frankie didn't want them to find her like this, no longer the girl they’d loved.
You got Angela killed. You got Julie killed. You were going to abandon Becca.
Although Annie needed help or companionship, Frankie’s soul was too drained to offer either. She turned the other way and walked upstairs.
The master bedroom was empty, just a mess on the floor where half the wardrobe seemed to have landed, deep dents in the mattress where Robert and Annie had spent the night.
She looked over the assortment of cupboard detritus then tossed it back inside before sliding the mirrored door closed. Frankie lay on the bed that had once belonged to Blain's parents and stared up at the ceiling. Her arms stretched wide to each side, forming her into a cross.
Maybe if she stayed here, they’d forget about her. She could just lie here and slowly cease to exist. Let the memories of each thing she’d done wrong slip away, one by one.
A muffled thump sounded from across the hallway. Frankie jerked upright, her chest a tight drum. She pulled herself to the edge of the bed then couldn’t force her twitching muscles any further.
Closing her eyes, Frankie drew a long, slow breath in through her nostrils, held it for half a minute, then released it. Her fingers stopped digging so deep into the bedspread.
When she felt under control, she rose and walked into the hallway. The sound hadn’t recurred, but that gave her more courage to investigate.
Across the corridor, a closed door beckoned for a disturbance. Frankie hesitated before it, her palm flat on the wood. Then she raised a knuckle and tapped lightly, trying to calm the speeding beat of her pulse.
“Becca?” Frankie whispered.
When no answer came, Frankie turned the handle slowly and pushed the door inward. Becca sat behind a desk, books stacked on either side, staring straight ahead and crying.
Frankie opened her mouth to call her name again, to offer solace, then shut it and retreated to the hallway. She pulled the door closed behind her.
As the deep afternoon faded into twilight, Frankie sat midway down the stairs, too frightened to go up,
too exhausted to go down.
Rebekah
Rebekah woke in a darkened room, taking a few moments to work out where she was. Moonlight cut through the window with a silver knife, illuminating objects like stills from an old black-and-white movie.
Her parents were still dead. She still resided in a house of people who didn't seem to want her.
The hard edge of the wooden chair bit into the backs of her legs. Rebekah stood, stretching, bending backward until her spine popped. She walked closer to the window, peering outside for any movement, any signs of life. An owl swept by, wings turned to stone in the moonlight, round black pupils scouring the land beneath for prey.
Rebekah wasn't a country girl. The closest she’d been to a farm before was on organized trips through the school, petting spring lambs, feeding carrots to horses. All the time, she'd been terrified she’d do something wrong, and a teacher wouldn't arrive in time to save her.
The stark landscape outside was nothing like those trips. Fields were laid out in patterns, mid-planting. The only animals were there for work. If no one finished planting the crops, would there be enough food left in the world? Rebekah loved food. She couldn't imagine the factory that churned out her favorite chocolate-covered raisins would still be in business. Sad to think the world now held a diminishing supply of her favorite treat.
She walked downstairs, careful to tread near the wall to forestall any creaking. When she tiptoed through to the living room, she saw Frankie curled up asleep on the sofa. A noise came from beyond, from the downstairs bedroom: Annie whimpering in her sleep.
Rebekah padded through to the kitchen. As she poured herself a glass of water, she winced at the squeal of the old pipes.
She could sleep in the chair next to Blain’s bed as she had last night, or she could head back upstairs to the master bedroom. Her back protested the thought of another night spent in a wooden chair.
Rebekah finished the water and turned to retrace her steps. As she padded through the living room, she stopped to gaze at Frankie sleeping. Maybe she should curl up on the sofa next to her so they could wake together in the morning and talk.
