"You okay, Lily Bear?" he said.
The little girl sighed, her round face sad and eager. He knew that look: she wanted to ask a question.
"What is it?" He squeezed her fingers again.
Lily's large black eyes swiveled up to his.
"Did he turn before he died?" she said.
It was the question everyone feared, but no one understood. To become a Parasite was to become another creature. And if you died a Parasite, what happened to your soul?
"No." The lie was like bugs crawling inside Eli's mouth. "He was himself. To the very end."
Lily squeezed his hand. The buzz of the crowd grew. Their angry eyes burned the back of his head, their whispers slithered in his ear, cursing and blaming him. He ached to flee. He stayed for Squirrel.
The pastor, Mark, started with the Lord's Prayer in a sad voice. Eli closed his eyes and recited the familiar words to himself. The pastor cleared his throat.
"Allen James Toomie," he began. "Our friend. I wish we had more than just this wooden plaque to remember and honor him by. We can only hope that his soul is at rest, like the lost souls of all the infected."
At rest.
Squirrel's blank, dead eyes stared back at Eli; his final grunts of pain roared in his ears. The breath caught in his chest with a surge of panic.
"Allen's death is a reminder of how precious we are, how vulnerable. We must use this time to think of those we've lost, to take comfort in our friends, our new families, and our haven in this terrifying world. Remember, all we have inside these walls is each other."
Sobs erupted in the crowd. Eli stared at his boots. The pastor's words were for everyone else, but not him. They wanted him gone — dead or infected, it didn't matter.
There are just a handful of people left on this Earth, probably. People wonder when you can't get along.
Eli didn't know how to make these people trust him, because they shouldn't. Three years before, they let in a wolf to live among sheep.
"And now, Lauren will say a few words," Mark said.
Lauren passed her daughter to a friend and stepped to the front of the crowd. She reached into a pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and wiped away tears.
She began to read.
Her voice shook as she spoke about finding love again after losing so much. About how Squirrel gave her new life, made the world safe for her again. Her voice was an earsplitting racket pounding in Eli's ears. He grew dizzy.
It's my fault she's a widow. It's my fault that baby has no father.
Eli stared at Lauren's tear-stained face and dropped Lily's hand. No matter what he did, there was no fixing this for them.
"I'm sorry," he whispered in Frank's ear.
Eli spun around and faced a sea of angry, weeping eyes. They glared at him and he swept between the rows, their whispers following him through the crowd and out of the graveyard. When he was out of sight, he marched down the quiet, empty street, breathing heavily against a vice tightening in his chest.
He needed to do something that told him the world was still normal. He needed the distraction of pain to clear the thoughts swirling in his brain. Squirrel bleeding on the forest floor. Collapsed walls, his loved ones as Parasites. The day he left Jane's house healed, awake to a world in which he could be anyone he wanted.
A man with no past or secrets. A new beginning.
How wrong he was.
Chapter 4
For two hours, Eli perched on the roof of Jane's house, replacing shingles and trying to make the day feel normal.
His neighbors walked together to the eating hall after Squirrel's services; roasting meat and steamed corn drifted on the air. Eli kept pounding his hammer. His leg muscles burned, his back ached from stooping, his wrist throbbed. Every nerve rattled with pain and the sun reached its height in the sky, burned through his T-shirt and gave him a headache.
In the quiet between strikes, his mind settled in dark places.
Blood pooling on leaves. The whites of Squirrel's eyes. Every neighbor whispering behind their hand. Parasites digging at the wall, a stranger from nowhere. And his old worries, the ones that plagued him when he couldn't sleep: the wells drying up, the crops failing, another sickness.
When the job was nearly done, a voice called from the ground. It was the doctor, standing below him in the yard, gazing up.
Jane. The woman who saved his life three years ago.
"Come down from there and let me make you something to drink," she said.
He smacked his hammer again, though he'd sunk the nail deep into the wood already. When he stopped, Jane raised her voice again. He thwacked the hammer.
If he sat at her kitchen table, Jane would start asking questions, like Frank. She saw right through him, especially when he didn't want to be seen. It terrified him.
"For Christ's sake, Eli, you've given that nail hell! Let me thank you with some iced tea or something."
"No thanks."
An angry groan sounded from the yard, then the scrape of wood on wood. Eli turned to find the ladder disappearing from the roof edge.
"Then you can spend the night up there, you stubborn bastard!"
Jane threw the ladder to the ground and strolled away toward her house. Eli scrambled to the edge of the and called out, "What kind of tea you have?"
She put the ladder back and he hopped down beside her. Eli breathed in the smell of her skin and the rosemary-scented soap she used to wash her hair.
"Thanks for doing that." Jane had large green eyes the color of moss, a face splashed with sandy freckles, a pointed nose and chin. She kept her hair short and the soft curls now blew in the wind.
"It's my job."
Eli tossed his hammer into his toolbox and flinched in pain.
Jane scowled. "Hurt your wrist?"
"It's nothing," Eli said, but she grabbed his wrist and probed it with her calloused fingers.
"Get inside."
She marched away. He followed.
Jane's house was one of the largest in town. The hallway was a waiting room, the downstairs bedrooms exam rooms, the upstairs reserved for the sickest patients. The whole place smelled of rosemary and garlic and a terrible herbal tea Jane always served him. She swore it tasted like Earl Grey.
"Just sit there." She pointed to a table nestled near a window in the kitchen and swept away and down the hall. In her absence, Eli smoothed his wavy hair and tucked in his shirt and fastened its buttons. A second later, Jane returned with a full basket and an irritated expression. "I told you to sit."
He did. She ordered his arm up on the table. He obeyed. As she examined him, her pale brown eyebrows furrowed, casting delicate wrinkles across her freckled forehead. Jane's face was as familiar to him as his own; for weeks, as she repaired his broken body, he saw only her, spoke only to her. Back then, he was a wild animal, suddenly domesticated and unused to people. She coaxed him from his shell.
"Just a sprain." Jane's green eyes smoldered, an eyebrow cocked. "You could've come to me yesterday."
"It doesn't hurt bad."
"Bullshit. You're quite the tough guy, aren't you?"
She shook her head and pulled strips of fabric and a pair of sticks from her basket, the corner of her mouth curling in a smile. Eli's heart fluttered.
"So what was up with you this morning?"
She placed the sticks along his arm and began to wrap it tightly with the bandages. He watched her work, a comfort easing in his chest at her presence, the scent of her house, the familiar scrape of her fingers on his skin.
"Nothing," he mumbled.
"That's not an answer."
She glanced up from her work; something about her face made Eli speak without thinking. "Guilt. I as good as killed him." He turned away from her fiery green eyes.
"If people say that, they're idiots who've nothing better to do but talk." She secured the fabric with safety pins and handed him a small satchel. "Willow bark, for the pain."
He brushed it away. "Save it for som
eone who needs it," he said. Jane rolled her eyes. "I don't blame them for sayin' it. Maybe I could've …"
If I'd shot that arrow one second earlier...
"They need to get over it, because they're wrong." She returned the items to the basket. "People die. People get infected. No one's to blame most of the time."
Jane stood up and went to the kitchen. She rifled through a cooler, fished out a pitcher, grabbed two cups, and started to pour.
"You need more peppermint?"
He shook his head.
"Stomach getting better, then?"
"Not really."
"We can try ginger, that could help." She set down the pitcher and stared at him, her gaze probing into his brain. "Or you could stop worrying so much."
He pulled his eyes away and studied a quilted place mat on the table. She came back to the table and placed a cup in front of him. He sipped the awful drink — it tasted like dirt.
"See the visitor yet?" he asked.
"Examined him after the service." She sat back down at the table. "Very young, no more than twenty-five. Looks like what you'd expect after being out there. Dirty, cuts, scratches, pretty thin."
"Did he say where he came from?"
"Native to the area, apparently. Said he was from another group. Didn't say much else."
Eli gazed out the window; it looked out on an overgrown backyard and an imposing stretch of the wall, looming high above the house. Above its lip, distant trees swayed in the wind.
If there was one other group of survivors, there could be more. And maybe they also wondered how many people remained on Earth and how they would survive.
"Saw Parasites digging at the wall this morning," Eli said.
Jane's eyebrows shot up. "And ..."
"I was told to mind my own business."
"I hope you don't. Lazy bastards."
Eli sipped his tea and tried not to wince. The wind whipped past the window.
"You think this place'll make it?" he said after a pause.
Jane didn't hesitate. "Nope."
Eli turned from the window to find her watching him. Her face was calm.
"Why?"
She shook her head and pointed out the window. "It's too fragile. The people here too weak. One strong wind, one mistake, is all it takes. This place is gone." She gulped her tea. "Haven, my ass."
It was true: eighty people against thousands of Parasites had little hope. But an idea was forming in Eli's mind: they stood a chance with more people, joined together.
"And what then? What happens to all of us?" Eli's voice caught in his throat. "To you?"
"I don't know. Some of us make it, some of us don't. Whatever is left of humankind gets whittled away, I suppose."
She leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms across her chest. Voices sounded from the street — people coming back from the meal.
"Doesn't that bother you?" he asked.
She shrugged and her eyes grew distant. "What was ever so great about us?"
At dusk, Eli stood outside the grandest house in Hope. It belonged to Tobias Sharpe, the town's leader.
People had huddled in their houses all day, talking softly and sadly about Squirrel. Most of them visited Lauren and the baby, said sorry and gave her food. Eli spent the afternoon walking around town, stopping at the spot he first heard the Parasites digging, listening with his palm pressed to the steel. It was silent. As evening neared, he climbed the watchtower to see what had been done.
He peered over the edge. Five dark figures hunched in the gathering dusk, digging their tools into the earth. Eli squinted at the main post to find the watchmen crowded inside, chatting and unconcerned. Waiting for them to give up.
So he climbed back down the tower and marched to the leader's house and stood at the end of his driveway, summoning courage. He didn't want to knock on Tobias' door; Eli knew his place. But now he had to say something. It would be weeks before the hole was deep enough to be dangerous, but Eli's anger and worry went beyond that. What did it mean for Hope's future if its residents got too comfortable, too settled, and grew blind to the danger outside the walls?
The street was quiet. A pale moon rose in the sky behind a haze. Ahead, the house loomed three stories, its tall imposing windows staring back at him.
He walked to the front door and knocked on the gleaming wood door. Soft light glowed behind the inlaid glass; Eli jolted when a figure moved inside.
The door creaked open. Tobias' son — his actual son, by a miracle — stood in the crack.
"Hey, Matt," Eli said. "Is your father home?"
The boy just turned nineteen. Eli had never seen him smile. Matt stepped back with a nod and let him in.
"He's upstairs. Give me a minute."
Matt climbed up the stairs.
The house was all wood floors and brass and Persian rugs. Tobias had been a senator and he talked like one. He used fancy words and looked through people, coddled favorites, and still believed the government was going to march through the gate and save them all.
Eli ran his hands over his shirt and pants to smooth them, fixed his hair, absentmindedly brought a finger to his mouth and chewed the nail. He began to question himself, the gall he had to run to Tobias like this. He had no right to question anyone. Butterflies tickled his stomach.
Three hushed female voices sounded from the kitchen. Eli felt himself pulled over to the sound, down a short hallway. One of the women burst out with a question.
"Where did he come from?"
"He was vague about that. Just another group." The voice belonged to a woman named Peg. "Said there were more, too, that he passed in his travels."
"More settlements?" the first voice asked — it was Mrs. Sharpe's. "Did he say how big?"
Silence. Eli imagined Peg shaking her head.
"But I've heard he's told quite a lot of stories."
Another pause.
"He says there are Parasites everywhere you go — huge towns full of them. Buildings falling to ruin all over, roads washed out, bridges gone. Lots of abandoned settlements, most of them a couple years old, he said."
Mrs. Sharpe hummed. "And he wouldn't say where he came from?"
"Not a word. Didn't even say from which direction."
"I don't know if I like that," she said. "A man without a past might be trying to hide something."
"Or he's traumatized — "
"And they're going to let him out of quarantine?"
"I suppose ..."
Mrs. Sharpe huffed. "I'm going to speak with Tobias. He's probably dangerous if he's been out there all this time. We can't trust anyone until they prove otherwise."
"We don't have to trust him," Peg said. "But we should give him shelter and food — it's the least we can do."
"It's too much, in my opinion."
A brief pause. Footsteps rapped across the ceiling — Tobias was coming. Eli crept away from the kitchen.
"I can't help thinking about Eli —"
He froze.
"Why?"
Mrs. Sharpe dropped her voice.
"Well, he came here with bullet wounds he refused to explain. And now he lets Mr. Toomie die out there in the woods. What good has he done? I tell you, it's a mistake to take in strangers."
A sharp ache stabbed Eli's chest and he couldn't breathe.
"Mary, we can't shut everyone out —" Peg began.
"Sure we can, if they're not one of us," Mrs. Sharpe half-yelled. "What does this Simon want anyway? Does he want to stay?"
Steps thudded down the stairs. Eli tiptoed to the living room. He took up his post on the Persian rug, hands clasped before him, just as Tobias was sweeping around the banister.
"Mr. Stentz, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Tobias said without a smile. He had gray hair and a ruddy face and shuffled to Eli in a pair of sandals, shorts, and a faded Penn State T-shirt.
Eli stood at ease. "I'd like to report something, sir."
"Very well." Tobias sighed. "Sit."
Tobias settled into a grand leather chair and steepled his hands. Eli eased his heavy body onto a small rocker, put his hands on his knees, sat up straight. The leader studied him over his glasses.
"I got concerns about security," Eli began. Tobias raised an eyebrow and nodded. Nerves shook Eli's voice and he forced himself to be calm. "The watchmen ain't doing their jobs, not outside the walls."
Tobias' face wrinkled with disapproval. "This is the first I've heard of it."
Eli studied the fancy rug. "I understand that, but —"
"What's the basis of this accusation?"
"What I seen, sir."
"You know, many of those men have been here since the beginning. Long before you arrived. I trust them."
"Well, I don't." The words burst from Eli's mouth before he could stop them.
"I'm amazed you think that's your concern, Mr. Stentz." Tobias took the tone of a stern teacher disciplining an ignorant student. "You have your own duties to attend to. And this settlement has rules, of which I'm sure you're aware."
"I know, sir —"
"Every citizen of Hope has a job, which allows him to contribute to the settlement and earn his keep. The council assigns jobs according to an individual's skills and abilities. You've been assigned your job. And this isn't it." Tobias sat forward, readying himself to rise. "If that's all —"
"It ain't, sir," Eli broke in. Sweat bloomed across his forehead. "This morning, I was up one of them abandoned watchtowers."
Tobias dropped his hands into his lap and pursed his lips. "Mr. Stentz, you are not a watchman."
Eli stared at a pattern on a corner of the rug. "I heard a noise, went up to see. I was concerned, is all."
"Very well. Continue."
"I saw two of them, digging at the base of the wall," Eli told the rug.
The leather chair squeaked as the old man leaned back. Eli looked up and found Tobias staring into space.
"Why are you coming to me with this, Mr. Stentz? This information, if it's true, should be reported to the watchmen. I would like to think you know better than to —"
"I did report it." Blood rushed to Eli's face; the warning prickle began at the back of his neck. He breathed deep. "Sir, they don't think the Parasites will finish the job."
A New America Trilogy (Book 1): The Human Wilderness Page 3
