Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse

by Williams, Beverly

  Eric stiffened, realizing the weight of what I had said. I took the opportunity to peel myself off him and put some distance between us.

  “You really were bitten before Lowe’s Trip Lean-To Day?”

  A nod.

  “Weeks ago?” he asked.

  “And twice back at the city, on the 45th floor.”

  Eric closed his eyes briefly, trying to let that sentence pass through him without getting stuck on it. He took a breath and resumed his interrogation.

  “Why haven’t you turned?”

  “I’m not sure, though I’ve thought about it a lot. Maybe some people just don’t. Or…” I paused. “Well, my stepfather had some nasty chemical experiments going. Maybe something he did somehow protected me. That’d be ironic, huh? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he had a hand in causing the rotter outbreak, actually. He was sick, twisted—but he was also brilliant. You know how rotters’ wounds tend to glow at night?”

  “That blue stuff?”

  “Yeah. It’s caused by a kind of bacteria. The phenomenon is known as ‘Angel’s Glow.’ Glowing soldiers were fairly common in the Civil War, because of the lack of sanitation. My stepfather cultured that stuff, mutated it, grew it, and injected—” I heard a twig snap and stopped to listen. “Matthew’s here.”

  “What?” Eric turned to see Matthew strolling around the corner of the path.

  “You found her! Good!” Matthew called up as a greeting. “Jeff’s got his panties in a bunch about you running off, Kit.”

  I had no response for this.

  “He can bloody well wait awhile,” murmured Eric.

  “I should go back and let him know you’re okay,” said Matthew.

  I was NOT okay.

  “Yeah. Tell him we’ll be back to camp later,” said Eric.

  I didn’t correct him. I am not going back, I assured myself.

  Matthew turned away.

  Feeling suddenly charitable, I called to him, “There’s going to be a bad cold snap tonight. Let Jeff know? He’ll want to have everyone get out more blankets and be prepared to huddle up.” I realized this was my parting gift for Jeff, and I tried to let my hard feelings go.

  This hot day was going to turn into a brutally cold night. I could sense it. And our—their—campers weren’t going to be ready if someone didn’t lead the sheep. Jeff’s job. Not my problem.

  “How cold?” Matthew asked.

  I rubbed my wrist. It screamed at me. We could count on its accuracy more than a meteorologist’s predictions. Not that there were meteorologists anymore.

  “Twenty-five? Twenty? Maybe a little colder. Cold.”

  In this area, the temperature didn’t usually drop below forty, even in the dead of winter. This would be tough on some folks.

  “Fuck.” Matthew headed away quickly.

  Eric took my hand in his, turned it over, and rubbed his fingers across the scar pileup there. The scars were layers of branding, punishment.

  Before he could ask, I shook my head. “Not today.”

  He didn’t let go right away. “I want to know, Kit. All of it.”

  I eased my hand from his. I guiltily hauled the gloves back on and got down from the ledge, venturing away from him and his Inquiring Mind That Wanted to Know.

  “Time to go?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  He caught up to me and we hiked down the path and turned—him toward camp and me away from it.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” he told me.

  A negative head shake.

  “NO! No, no, you can’t leave!”

  “Can’t go back. You heard me when you arrived. I’ve gone away, remember? You can keep the backpack,” I said, only making things worse.

  Then I heard his plea, spoken gently, with heartrending sadness, and I stopped walking.

  “Please,” he said.

  I turned and saw he’d sunk to the ground, the picture of despair. Every swear I could muster ran through my mind. Today had been a disaster. I considered walking away despite Eric’s protest. Instead, my feet carried me back to him.

  I knelt at his side. “Release me.”

  He shook his head hard and tears sprayed into the air as if his eyes were spitting them out. And then he was full-out sobbing, head-in-hands sobbing.

  This cannot get worse, I thought, not knowing what to do. I still thought, foolishly, that I could leave.

  I said, “It really is for the best, anyway.”

  He shook his head more. “I can’t lose you now.”

  I can run for it, I thought, but with fading hope. By accepting Officer Bissett’s offer, I’d made a commitment. By choosing the path Eric had placed before me, by going back for him in the city, I’d made another commitment.

  I berated myself again with every filthy word I could think of.

  And then he tried to kiss me. My brain responded with the minced oath my stepfather hated most: God’s hooks! I’d certainly thought about a relationship with Eric, but in the innocent way of one who knows It’s Never Going to Happen. Worse, with the naïve, solitary view of one who’d never had that sort of relationship and had no idea how to go about it. And now it was happening, and I was unprepared. I shied away.

  “I don’t… know how… might not be safe… not worth the risk,” were my blurted words of explanation.

  He moved to kiss me again, undeterred. “Just let it happen,” he entreated.

  I did.

  Eric walked me back to camp. I felt tethered to him by an invisible cord. He chatted easily along the way. It seemed bizarre under the circumstances. Thoughts tumbled about in my mind, churning like clothing in the wash. I’m an unbalanced load of laundry, I thought. I’m a load. I wondered if this was what going insane felt like.

  At camp, we went separate ways. Eric had chores, and I needed some space. I spent the rest of the afternoon alone, feeling all mixed up, sitting on a boulder and leaning against the back of our lean-to. No one would even think to look for me there. I heard Matthew enter the structure and rummage for something while talking to himself, and he left and Thom arrived. I heard Thom pick up one of the books I’d stacked in the corner and listened as he slid down the wall to sit and read. If there hadn’t been a wall, we would have been sitting back-to-back.

  The day grew long, and as night descended around us, the temperature plummeted. Jeff had organized the group into making a huge bonfire, a pathetic attempt to fend off the cold. Feeling like it was hardly worth the effort, I approached the group. Lots of people had gathered, trying to gain a reserve of heat before the icy night air held them shivering in its arms. There didn’t appear to be any space left. I started to walk away, then halted at the sound of my name.

  “Kit!” It was Eric. He was sitting by the fire and leaning against a tree. He patted the ground between his knees, and I surprised us all by moving to the spot he’d indicated and settling there.

  I leaned back and rested against him. Warmed by both Eric and the fire, I thought, Best seat in the house.

  ear to bedtime, I left the lean-to and took my sleeping bag with me. “Need space tonight,” I said, and no one followed me out. I got down under a stand of pines partway between the lean-to and the tent area, and watched the stars through the trees’ branches. I zipped my sleeping bag tight (it was supposedly rated down to 15 degrees) and wrapped a long-sleeved shirt around my head. Then I waited. The cold air prickled.

  I don’t sleep much. It’s not like I don’t want to sleep. I’m just not very good at it. Sometimes I stay awake for days. I wish my body would love sleep the way my mind does.

  I’ve loved sleep for letting the time dwindle. I’ve loved sleep for letting my life get shorter with every second I slumber. Sleep hasn’t loved me back. I usually wait for hours, eyes open. Every time I close them they snap open again. It feels like I stare into the darkness for eternity.

  Sleep, when it finally does come, descends abruptly, cutting off consciousness. There is no melding of the two. Either I am awake
or I’m not. There is no drifting, no gentle transition pulling me down toward sleep or drawing me upward to wakefulness.

  Sleep usually comes with nightmares. Sometimes these are of new-world horrors, like being eaten alive by a swarm of rotters. Sometimes they’re lost memories breaking the surface. Mostly, they’re repeats, familiar and somehow less frightening, though they’re no less brutal.

  Whatever physical pain I feel in dreams—and I do feel such pain—is drawn from actual hurts and deposited elsewhere. A sprained ankle transforms into a broken wrist. A long cut becomes the short slices of my etching of roses. Such is the nature of my dreams.

  I had a different nightmare that night, when I finally dropped off. This type of nightmare was new to me, filled with what I might lose and dooming the one I cared about. Eric was wrested from my side, shouting as he was drawn away by the Hand of God. It should have been obvious then that it was a dream. There is no God.

  So there he was, being drawn away, plucked like a ripe piece of fruit. As with almost all dreams, this made complete sense at the time. I knew where he was going and what would happen to him there, but those details didn’t survive the dream any better than Dream Eric had. Still asleep, my actual body sat straight up. I did something I’d never done before: I screamed.

  And then Eric was shaking me awake. I was so cold. The night air felt full of tiny daggers.

  Eric’s breath was a cloud. “Kitty Cat! You’re dreaming. Wake up! Come on, now.”

  A mass of jumbled, mumbled, incoherent words was all I could offer him. I was too cold to shiver. I just wanted to lie down and go back to sleep. Eric unzipped the sleeping bag, pulled me up, grabbed my stuff, and led me down a path, guiding me home. The brothers had zipped four sleeping bags together. Eric helped me down in and then climbed in behind me, zipping the cloth shut around us. He threw my unzipped sleeping bag over me.

  “Move in, Thommy,” he said, throwing his arm over me to nudge his drowsy brother.

  Thom made a whuffling noise.

  “Come on!” Eric said urgently.

  “Christ, you’re a block of ice!” Thom mumbled, sliding our way so I was pressed tightly between them.

  On the other side of Thom, Matthew rolled closer, too. I was too cold to even think about being sandwiched between their bodies.

  Glorious, rich darkness enveloped me. It was the very best sleep I’d ever had.

  So I’d let Eric kiss me, I let him hold me by the fire to warm me up, and I slept pressed between him and Thom when my body was too cold to make heat for itself. I was embarrassed about screaming at the bad dream, though, and my defensive walls went back up the next day. Eric found a way around them.

  “Smoke?” he asked as we settled on the lean-to’s new deck, which we’d spent all morning building.

  “Sure.”

  Eric pulled my sparkly pink acrylic pipe from a pocket. It looked tiny in his hands. We passed it back and forth for a while and the smoke mellowed me out.

  “Breathe with me,” Eric said. He took a long drag. He brought his mouth down to mine, sealing his lips to my lips. As he exhaled through his mouth, I inhaled through mine. As I exhaled through my mouth, he inhaled through his. We did this as long as we could hold out, until there was no oxygen left to breathe. Only then did we break apart, panting. It made the high higher.

  And then I was high and low at the same time.

  I spoke the words which gripped me so tightly: “I will disappoint you.”

  “We’re not going to be a disappointment,” he promised me.

  And he put his mouth to mine again, but not to breathe.

  Thom and I returned to the shack that afternoon, along with Eric. Eric didn’t play any instruments. He sat back and was content to listen. I sat on the floor in front of the overstuffed chairs.

  I borrowed the guitar from Thom, practicing chords I’d learned from the farmer’s wife. I hadn’t played in a long time, but it came back easily. I began fingerpicking a song they wouldn’t know.

  I move into the corner,

  Where the world is dark and cold,

  And no one’s gonna touch me,

  Reach out and grab hold.

  I move into the corner,

  Where my world is dark and small,

  Pull my arms around my legs,

  And lean against the wall.

  I move into the corner,

  Beg the darkness to surround me,

  But I know that it’s too late,

  For fear and fate have found me.

  I handed the guitar back to Thom.

  “May I borrow your MP3 player?” Thom asked after a few seconds of silence.

  He wouldn’t find that song on the device.

  “Yeah, help yourself to it whenever.”

  I looked over to Eric. He was playing with the nap on the blue velvet recliner he sat in. He’d brush it one way, push it back, draw a picture, and wipe it out. He looked like his head was full of thoughts, like they were penned in there, and he couldn’t put them in order.

  Thom played a song I didn’t know. I liked the way his fingers slid on the neck of the guitar, caressing it. The strings squeaked as he pushed his hand over them to another chord. Sexy.

  “The Cure,” he said, by way of explanation. I knew some of their music, but not this song. I awaited further information, but Thom didn’t say anything else. The strings squeaked again, and I smiled.

  Eric leaned forward, took hold of my hand, and gently pulled me his way. I stood and moved in his direction. I didn’t stop in front of him as he’d expected, though. Feeling brave, I shoved him back in the chair and mounted him, straddling his legs.

  “Hello there,” Eric said, smiling. “Well… hello.” His hands slid through my hair.

  Thom played on, chiding, “Get a room, you guys.”

  When I looked his way, Thom grinned comfortably, shook his head, and kept playing.

  “Your eyes,” Eric whispered, awed.

  My pupils had dilated to the point that my irises were barely visible around the rims—just like his. The world was irritatingly brighter, but I didn’t mind too much. My eyes were telling him the words I couldn’t bring myself to say. Eric kissed me lightly and his fingers tangled in my hair. Thom’s song filled the small building and I set the memory in my mind. I didn’t want to forget the tiniest detail.

  I sat alone the next morning, in a secluded grove I’d found. A memory rose. My sister, Annie, lay on her back, chained to a table. The Lucky Top Bidder bounded down from my stepfather’s audience and chose his weapon. He picked a small chainsaw and held it up. The all-male crowd roared its approval. The man donned a leather apron and fired up the saw. Annie looked over to me, struggling against her bindings.

  I thought the memory would stop there, but it didn’t. The details of how and where he cut her flooded in. I remembered exactly how she screamed, reaching a high pitch I hadn’t thought she’d be capable of.

  Eric shook my shoulder, bringing me back to the present. “Hey,” he said, gently pulling at my hands. I’d been digging my nails into my arms.

  “Tar Pit,” he said, sitting down. He wasn’t asking.

  I nodded anyway.

  “Bad one,” he commented.

  I leaned on his shoulder. The muscles in his arm were perfectly shaped to rest against. I’d come out here to be alone, and now I wasn’t, and it was… it was okay. I was okay with it.

  I tried it on for size: I Told Of, unbidden. I told him about Annie.

  Afterward, Eric seemed so sad.

  “What?” I asked, worried I should’ve kept it to myself.

  “How many siblings did you have?”

  It had seemed like an endless supply. “Twenty-two.”

  I named them each in my head, in memory of.

  “How were there so many?”

  “My stepfather had, like, seven wives before he married my mom, and then he went through two more before my escape. Most of them had been married before and had kids already, so the majori
ty of us weren’t related by blood.”

  “I mean—I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you feel like you have to keep explaining this psycho, but…”

  “You’ve caught me in a loquacious mood,” I assured him. “Go ahead.”

  “How the hell did he get so many women to marry him? Especially since it sounds like he had more kids in tow with each successive marriage?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure. I didn’t meet either of the wives he took after my mom until they were already married, so maybe he didn’t tell them about the kids beforehand? He was charming enough that he believably could’ve gotten these women interested in him, but I think he probably used drugs to keep them attached and obedient to him after their initial attraction. That seems to have been his M.O. Drugs and maybe violence, too. It’s occurred to me—well, no, that’s impolite.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, it’s occurred to me that the sort of flinchy, cowed way Sam acts around Buck is the way I remember my mom acting.”

  Eric nodded sadly. “And you, Zack, and May were the only ones who even managed an escape attempt?”

  “Yeah.” I was surprised he’d filed their names into his brain. “It wasn’t as easy as hopping in the car and going. There were lots of locks and things. I would’ve left a lot sooner, if it had just been me.”

  Eric shook his head, and I knew he was curious about what had happened to the others. Instead of telling him about them, I distantly observed, “If it was just me, getting out would’ve been much simpler. In a sense.”

  “When you look at a man, what do you notice first?” asked Matthew. He and Thom and Eric and I had gone out to the float.

  “Threat level,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant, smartass.”

  I considered it for a moment and gave him a different answer.

  “Arms.”

  “Do you mean weapons, or these?” He indicated the limbs attaching his shoulders to his hands.