by Alyssa Cole
I threw myself into household chores, eager for a distraction. The place was already clean, so I decided to wash the clothes John and I had worn during our journey.
I didn’t want to waste clean water from the cistern, so I hauled in snow from outside and melted it in pots on the stove to get water for the laundry. I hadn’t carried any heavy loads since the massage, and I was pleased to find there was barely any pain in my back and shoulders as I worked.
Gathering the snow was the first time I’d gone outside since John and I had arrived. The day was freezing and amazingly bright in contrast to the dim interior of the house. The boarded-up windows would deter intruders, but they kept out light, as well.
The air was crisp and carried the scent of pine sap. The only sound was the wind shushing through the trees and the occasional fall of snow sliding from branches. The scenery was reminiscent of a Bob Ross watercolor. It should have felt freeing to be outside, but a bubble of fear welled up in me instead. Anyone could be hiding behind those happy little trees, waiting in ambush like Blue Hat and his partner had a few days before.
I hurried inside with the last pail of snow, ashamed at how relieved I felt when I locked the door and leaned back against it. I thought about Gabriel trudging through the woods alone and felt a sickening pang of fear for him. I’d have given anything for a quick text message or social media status update right then. just searched some dead bodies and saved my parents, like a boss. brb. There was no point in obsessing over his safety though. All I could do was hope for his return. I threw myself back into my chores with vigor.
“How quaint,” John said when he popped into the bathroom as I leaned over the tub to rinse out our freshly washed clothing. “Making breakfast, doing laundry—you’re a regular Betty Homemaker.”
I flicked water at him, and he skittered back dramatically.
“I’m just trying to keep busy,” I said, flashing a smile at his theatrics. “It’s kind of relaxing to focus on putting things in order. And it would be nice to have some clean underwear. I refuse to wear Maggie’s. That’s just a bridge too far for me right now.”
John watched me struggle to wring a pair of jeans dry. He came over and took one end of the pants and began twisting the fabric in the opposite direction. We worked silently, but from the set of John’s mouth I could tell he wanted to say something.
Did he know where Gabriel had gone? Did he suspect I was keeping something from him? How was it that I now shared a secret with Gabriel instead of my best friend?
He finally spoke. “Arden, do you think things are ever going to be okay? It’s been weeks.”
I stared at the blue-tinged water dripping from the denim as we twisted it, tighter and tighter. This was the kind of question I’d sought to avoid with my cleaning spree, and I felt a surge of anger at him for asking me point-blank the thing that terrified me the most. What did it matter if things got better? What did any of it matter? But when I looked at that sweet face of his, at the way he twitched his nose because his hands were too occupied to scratch it, I realized that it did matter. If it didn’t, what was this warmth that filled my heart when I looked at my best friend? What was this desire to comfort him when I didn’t have the tiniest scrap of evidence we’d be okay? That feeling was something stronger than terror, and I could only hope it would see us through.
“I don’t know, John,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t know if things are ever going to be the same, but I have to think they’ll get better. I mean, humans were built to last. If the world blows up, that’s one thing, but as long as there’s land to stand on, people won’t disappear without a fight.”
He shook his head in exasperation. “But what if this is it for us?” He had stopped wringing and was staring at me. “What if I never get to play an online RPG again? Never post a snarky comment about the latest iOS upgrade? What if I never live tweet a bad movie, or humiliate a corporation by co-opting their hashtag? Worse than all that, what if all the work I put into curating my porn Tumblr was for naught? Do I really want to live in a world where all the online street cred I accrued over the years means nothing?”
I was tempted to laugh, not out of lack of empathy, but because the name of his microblog, Fuzzy Wuzzy Banged A Bear, got me every time. But the frown lines that creased his cheeks and the anxiety in his eyes put that brief temptation to rest.
“Well, if things never go back to normal, then we’d better get a washboard because this isn’t going to cut it,” I said. I stood and pulled the jeans from his hands and tried to shake out the wrinkles. “And there’s always Dungeons & Dragons instead of online RPGs. You can be my dungeon master anytime.”
He smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He went silent instead of snarking back, which scared me. He didn’t even shoo me away when I shook a rain of water droplets in his direction. When I was feeling optimistic about our survival and John looked hopelessly adrift, there was a major problem.
“Is your head doing okay?” I asked.
“There’s an ache that comes and goes, but it hurts a lot less.”
I nodded, unsure if that was a good or bad symptom. “Do you have a headache right now?”
“No.”
“Good. I won’t feel bad asking you to show me how to make a fire so we can dry these clothes.”
He nodded unenthusiastically but seemed to lighten up a little while teaching me his tried-and-true technique for starting a fire with just his hands, a stick and a board. “It’s funny the Scouts are so anti-gay. They taught me everything I know about handling wood,” he said as we watched the fire crackle to life.
After laying out our clothes, I carried a final pot of heated water up to the bathroom. Using a bit of conditioner and the razor Maggie had given me, I shaved my legs and underarms. I thoroughly conditioned my hair, and then plaited it into two simple braids so it wouldn’t be too out of control when it was fully dried.
Doing chores, followed by the ritual acts of hygiene that I’d foregone for so long, gave me a sense of normalcy that seemed almost alien in its mundanity.
I examined myself in the mirror, glad to see the dark circles under my eyes had faded and I didn’t look quite so haggard. The bruise still marred my cheek, but I was on my way to feeling human again.
Gabriel showed up as evening was settling over the house. It was hard to tell exact time, with the windows boarded up and no analog clocks in the vicinity, but something changed in the air that signaled the coming of night.
Maggie, John and I were milling about the kitchen, warming up the last of the stew that we’d eaten for lunch and dinner for the past few days.
“Where the hell have you been?” John asked flatly as soon as the back door swung open, letting in a frigid gust of air. He hadn’t said anything since night fell, but I’d seen him giving the door sidelong glances.
Gabriel closed the door behind him and stomped the snow off his boots. His face was ruddy from the cold and his clothes were covered with mud. His gaze was dull and closed-off when he looked at John. “I was checking something out, like I told you I was going to,” he said, heading into the hallway to hang his coat. He moved stiffly, and I wondered if it was from being outside in the cold all day or if he had injured himself.
“You didn’t say you were going to be gone for so long,” John pushed. Maggie had frozen on the other side of the room, tensing for whatever her two older brothers were about to get into.
“I didn’t know I would be,” Gabriel said, stepping into the kitchen and into the nightly dinner routine as if he’d been there all along. As if three people hadn’t spent the day carefully avoiding mentioning how long he had been gone.
Maggie made a disgruntled noise. I turned to catch her mouth pull down into a frown, but then the anxiety John had kept corked exploded from him.
“I know you’re an insensitive ass, but I was worried all fucking day, and so were Maggie and Arden. Mom and Dad are missing, Arden and I got attacked by freaks and you’re fine with just traipsing
off for hours without letting us know you’re okay?”
Gabriel paused, his gaze flicked to me for a second, and then back to John. “I’m sorry,” he said in a voice strained by fatigue. “I went back to where I found you guys to move the bodies somewhere less exposed. I needed a little time to myself after that. Is that okay with you?”
“Okay, and now I feel like an asshole,” John said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I can’t help that I was worried about you, can I?”
“No, Jang-Wan, but you should trust that I wouldn’t leave you guys alone without good reason,” he said, his gaze moving in my direction again. Was he surprised that I hadn’t ratted him out? Had he expected me to?
“You can’t just keep doing things without letting us know!” Maggie shouted suddenly. “It’s not fair. You don’t tell me anything, and you don’t care if I’m scared because I don’t even know what’s going on in our own house, let alone outside of it!”
There was so much anger and frustration in her voice that it was effective as a whip crack at shutting everyone up. I realized that she’d been cooped up with Gabriel for days and days after living only with her parents; it was understandable that she’d finally reached a breaking point.
Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up in confusion. “Maggie, what do you mean? I do tell you things, and if I don’t it’s because I don’t want you to be scared.”
“I’m not a little kid,” she said, but she delivered her announcement in such a petulant manner that I couldn’t help but think otherwise. I wanted to say something to make this all stop; however, Maggie barely knew me and she needed to hear it from Gabriel.
He drew in a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I know you’re not a kid,” he said. “I know you’re smart and resourceful and that you want to help. But my job is to protect you. I was just trying to keep things as normal as possible for you. I’m sorry if I made you feel unneeded.”
Maggie bobbed her head in a nod that showed her confusion; she still wanted to fight, but Gabriel had actually agreed with what she said. “Just, don’t keep things from me anymore, okay?”
“I’ll try not to,” he said, but his eyes lingered meaningfully on mine, putting me on alert. “Can we just have a happy family dinner now?”
We were mostly silent throughout the meal. Maggie sulked behind her bangs, and everyone seemed lost in interior contemplation while they ate. I spent most of the meal wondering what Gabriel had seen and trying to suss out why I’d been so worried while he was gone. I’d just met him; hell, I didn’t even like him most of the time, and he didn’t seem to like me much either, right? But I’d felt a weight lift off my chest when he’d walked in the back door.
I ventured a glance across the table. He was rearranging the food on his plate with the incongruously fancy chopsticks we’d been using at meals. His golden gaze flashed to mine, and I was paralyzed, unable to look away from the tumult of emotions I saw at play. He looked away quickly, but something in his gaze had touched on that needy part of me that had been improbably awakened since I’d first met him in the midst of snow and gore.
“I’m going to go do some inventory in the cellar and see what our supplies are like,” Gabriel said suddenly, his voice rough. He left in haste, his food half-eaten.
“This really sucks,” John said, laying his chopsticks down on the table. “What am I supposed to say to him? ‘So, thanks for killing and disposing of those freaks who tried to knock my brain out, brother, and sorry I was an anxious jerk who blew up at you for no reason’?”
“Um, I’m pretty sure I win the sibling spaz-out award, John,” Maggie said as she scraped together the last of the rice grains in her bowl.
“I think he understands,” I said. “He probably just needs to take a few minutes to decompress after what sounds like a shitty day.”
I talked a good game, but the desire to go to Gabriel had been on me the moment he’d stood. I told myself I was just curious to hear what he’d found and ask what that pointed look had been about, but the undercurrent to that curiosity was the need to make sure he was okay. Not the jerky, control freak Gabriel, but the caring doctor who tended to our wounds after killing for us, the man who so desperately wanted his parents to be okay.
“I think you should go talk to him,” John said with a glance in my direction.
“What? Why?” I stayed seated, although in my mind I was already halfway down the cellar stairs.
“Because he might need to talk. He’s so used to being mother hen to me and Maggie that he’d just tell us he’s okay so we don’t feel bad,” John said. “With you, there’s at least a chance that he’ll be willing to unload some of what’s bothering him.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll go,” I said in a put-upon tone as I headed toward the cellar door. “If you think that’s best.”
“Oh, please. Who does she think she’s kidding?” John asked Maggie. I pretended I didn’t hear.
The cellar was low-ceilinged and lined with shelves, which were themselves lined with jars. Stacks of grocery store inventory filled most of the floor space: palettes of pinto beans, boxes of beef stew. A single lightbulb cast a dim glow about the loamy smelling room. I’d expected it to be damp and cold, but it was dry and only slightly chilly.
I stepped around a stack of boxes and came upon Gabriel holding a jar of pickled vegetables up to the light. “Need help?”
He fumbled the jar, we both lunged and it ended up securely wrapped in two sets of hands. I relinquished my grip and stepped back, raising my palms in apology.
“Jesus, can you not creep up on me when I’m holding part of our limited food supply?” he snapped. He placed the jar back on the shelf and sketched a mark in a notebook that lay close by. His head almost brushed against the ceiling of the enclosed space, making him seem even taller and more imposing.
“Sorry. I’ll save my creeping for more appropriate times,” I said. Why had I wanted to come down here again? Every interaction between us thus far, minus one, had ended with Gabriel acting like a prick and me either yelling at him or getting my feelings hurt.
“Do you need something?” he asked, still curt.
I need you to stop acting like an uptight jerk, I thought, but then remembered what I’d actually wanted to say, which was much more civil. “I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I should have done it when we spoke last night. You were right—it wasn’t my place to tell you what to do when it comes to your family. It’s just...I care about John. And even though I’ve just met you and Maggie, I care about you guys too. I do want to punch you sometimes, but I don’t know what they’d do if anything happened to you.”
He stopped examining jars to glance at me. He didn’t speak for a long moment, probably waiting for some catch to my apology, but there was none. “No need for that,” he said, his voice a little less harsh. “You were right. I knew you were right, but I still had to go and see anyway. It would have driven me crazy otherwise, knowing there was something, anything, I could do to find them.”
“I shouldn’t have been so confrontational about it,” I said, ignoring the way my guts twisted as I thought of my own parents. “I wish I had the opportunity to do the same for my folks.”
“I believe that. You seem to be just as stubborn as I am,” he said. “That’s why it’s good you’re here. I need someone who’ll call me out on my shit, and you have no problem doing that.”
Yesterday he’d said that John and Maggie needed me, but now he needed me for something, too, even if it was just to be a pain in his ass. To my dismay, I felt the heat of the blush as it suffused my cheeks. I was definitely getting soft—pre-blackout me would’ve already cussed him out, but here I was fawning over the fact that he’d said the words need and you in the same sentence. Ridiculous.
I did retain enough dignity to remember the main reason I’d gone after him. “Do you want to talk about what you saw out there today?” I asked, pushing the sleeves of my sweater up. “It must have been hard, so
if you need to talk about it...”
Gabriel shifted away from me, out of the circle of light the dim bulb provided. “No,” he said. He was firm, but not rude as he’d been earlier. “I’m fine.”
“Maggie has a point,” I said, and the silhouette of his head whipped in my direction. “You shouldn’t carry this weight alone when you have people willing to help. I understand if you don’t want to burden John and Maggie, but you should be able to talk to someone. And I’m happy to listen.”
He remained silent. I thought I’d overstepped my bounds and that he was going to close up on me again, that he was going to push me away, but then his deep voice eased into the quiet of the room.
“I’m used to dead bodies, okay?” he started. “I know that sounds weird, but I’m a doctor. I’ve dissected cadavers, and I’ve seen things in the emergency room that would make most people snap. I’ve gotten used to death. But dragging those two guys deep into the woods, hiding them under mounds of snow...I’ve lost patients before and had to deal with it, but that was completely different than willfully taking a life. I just saw John bleeding and that guy on top of you, and—”
“You saved us,” I said. The words came out soft and low, touched by the awe of acknowledging this horrible bond we shared. “I know it’s hard to deal with, but you acted on instinct and you did the right thing. Those men wanted to hurt us. The look on that guy’s face when he got me on the ground was terrifying. He was enjoying himself. It was more than a need for supplies.” I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying to hide the shudder.
Gabriel clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to be pardoned,” he said. His voice was raw, but not angry. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But knowing that didn’t make dealing with their bodies any easier. It made it worse, actually.”
He went back to tallying cans, ending the conversation, and I decided not to push. I eventually kneeled beside him, checking what was in the jars that lined the bottom shelf. Green beans. As I inspected each jar, not knowing what I was looking for but mimicking Gabriel’s actions, the immensity of his words hit me. He’d kill again, even though it was causing him so much pain. He’d do it for John. And for me. I gripped a jar tightly and looked up at him. From this angle, I could see that his brow was still drawn in worry. There was something else.
