by Tarah Benner
They sped down the highway at eighty miles an hour, desperately hoping that the place Sybil had mentioned would have the medicine Simjay needed. It was only twenty miles away, but it felt much farther as they navigated the deserted highway in the dark.
Suddenly they hit a bump and heard a loud crack! followed by a horrendous scraping against the skid plate. The road was so dark that neither Axel nor Soren had seen the branch in time to avoid it, but half a second later, they saw what looked like an entire tree lying flat across the road.
Axel slammed on the brakes, and Soren winced as Simjay yelped from the back seat. They screeched to a halt mere inches from a downed tree, all of them breathing hard and fast.
“Musta been one hell of a storm that came through here,” said Axel.
“Yeah.” Soren opened the door and climbed out, partly to get a better look and partly to catch his breath.
The tree was a massive oak — probably more than a hundred years old. It had obviously been alive when it fell, and it was lying directly in their path. When Soren shined a flashlight down the trunk, he saw that the roots were still intact, having been ripped from the earth by a massive gust of wind.
The trunk had to be at least two and a half feet in diameter. If they’d had a saw, they could have cut it up and hauled it off piece by piece, but without the right tools, the road was impassable.
“Well?” said Axel as Soren climbed back into the truck.
“There’s no way.”
“Aw, hell. I’ll just tie it to the trailer hitch and haul it off.”
“With what?”
Axel looked stumped. They didn’t have a rope, a strap, or anything else they could use to move the tree.
“We passed another road back there,” said Lark, flipping on the cabin light and consulting their battered map. “It looks like we can take it around and hook back up with this road down the way.”
Soren let out a heavy sigh. They couldn’t afford to get lost. Simjay didn’t have that kind of time.
“You’re sure about this?”
Lark nodded.
Soren hated to stray off course, but there was nothing else to do. With a huff and a grumble, Axel threw the truck into reverse and pulled into the ditch. He whipped the truck around in a spray of mud and gravel and sped off in the direction Lark had mentioned.
The detour took them onto a narrow county road dotted with ranches and a few mobile homes. The road was scattered with debris and more downed branches, and Soren wondered what kind of storm could have caused so much destruction.
Half an hour later, they were back on track. Axel was speeding down the highway like a bat out of hell, whipping around turns at a stomach-churning speed. Soren was gripping the door so tightly that his knuckles turned white on the handle. Several times he almost yelled at Axel to slow down, but then he realized that Axel was just worried about Simjay and anxious to reach the pharmacy.
Sybil’s directions led them to a medium-sized town that looked completely deserted. Soren rolled down the window to stave off a sudden bout of carsickness and got a strong whiff of pond scum and decay.
Even in the dark, he could see that the road was awash with mud and debris, and many of the buildings looked as though they’d been chewed up by a tornado and spit back out again. Several old cars sat abandoned in the mud, as if they’d been dropped from a great height and left to rust where they landed.
“Must be from the flood,” said Axel.
Soren nodded. From the looks of things, the town had never gotten the aid it needed to rebuild. With its infrastructure destroyed and the world in shambles, people had been forced to leave their homes behind — never to return again.
When they reached the street that matched the address Sybil had given them, Axel slowed to crawl so they could read the numbers on the sides of the buildings. They passed a dilapidated old café, a Salvation Army thrift store, and a payday loans place with a blindingly yellow sign. On the corner was a seedy-looking gas station, and directly across from it was number 189.
“Is that it?” asked Axel, clear distrust in his voice.
“It’s gotta be,” said Lark, glancing down at the paper Sybil had given them. “Across from the EZ Fill. Yeah . . . That’s it.”
Axel pulled over but didn’t kill the engine. They were idling in front of a gloomy brick building that had been so viciously vandalized that it hardly seemed worth stopping. Slogans like “Stop the Killing,” “Baby Murderers,” and “You will burn in hell,” were spray-painted along the face of the building. The front windows were broken, and flimsy sheets of plywood had been nailed up inside.
The sign out front said “Women’s Health and Wellness Center,” but by the looks of the colorful graffiti, it was one of the few clinics in Texas that had performed abortions. Next door was a small family pharmacy with a drive-up window, which seemed to be connected to the clinic.
“This is where she sends us?” Axel spluttered.
Lark shrugged. “Seems like it might be the last place looters look for drugs in Texas.”
Soren glanced in the back at Simjay, who still had the slightly hazy look of someone who was drifting along in a drug-induced fog. “It’s worth a shot.”
“I’m not goin’ in there,” said Axel, looking scandalized.
“Why not?” asked Simjay in a loopy voice. “You worried you might get smited just for looking at the place? Wait . . . Is it smited or smote?”
“Smote,” said Lark, the corners of her mouth twitching into a grin.
Axel looked sullen, but it was a mark of how worried he was about Simjay that he didn’t lash out.
“Let’s go,” said Lark, lifting Simjay’s legs so she could slip out of the truck. Denali hopped out behind her, wagging his tail.
“Whatever,” said Axel as Soren got out to follow. “I’ll stay here and watch the truck.”
“Don’t let Satan’s minions kidnap Simjay!” Lark called cheerfully as she slammed the door shut behind her.
Soren stifled a laugh and rummaged around in the bed of the truck for something they could use to break in. He could tell that the doors were locked and fortified with a chain and padlock, but it wouldn’t be difficult to bust through a sheet of plywood or break the pharmacy window.
He unearthed a rusty hammer and a flashlight from a toolbox in the bed and followed Lark around the building. Denali was already sniffing along the perimeter, so Lark ordered him to stay and guard the exit.
To Soren’s surprise, the back door was already unlocked — or, rather, someone had broken the handle clean off the door. It swung open with an eerie creak, and they found themselves standing in a long tiled hallway that smelled like raw sewage and mildew.
Judging by the water damage on the walls and the patches of mold basking in the corners, the clinic had been hit hard by the flood. Crinkled posters of wombs, developing fetuses, and checklists of stroke symptoms fluttered on the walls as they passed, and most of the furniture was upturned as if it had been floating in several feet of muddy water. Lark scanned the walls with the flashlight, marveling at the scale of destruction brought by the flood.
Most of the doors led off to exam rooms, but when they reached the end of the hallway, they saw a small window that looked as though it belonged to the pharmacy.
Lark vaulted the low counter and swung her legs through the window. Soren followed her and snatched up a penlight that someone had left on the desk. They passed filing cabinets and shelves of prescriptions that no one had ever picked up to a room in the back where the medications were stored.
He pushed the door open, and Lark shined her flashlight inside. They were definitely in the right place. The room was long and narrow — no more than ten feet across — with most of the space filled by tall white shelves. Some of the shelves had toppled over against the wall. Trays of medications had spilled onto the floor, and it looked as though the supply of drugs was already depleted. Still, it was their only hope.
“You have the list?” he ask
ed.
“Yeah,” said Lark, moving closer so they could both read the names of the antibiotics in the glow of the flashlight. All three had unpronounceable medical-sounding names, but Soren gave them each a singsong quality in his head to help him remember, and they split up to begin their search.
Lark started in the corner closest to the door, and Soren walked toward the back of the room. He shined the little penlight along the top row of trays, and a flicker of movement caught his eye.
Soren froze. There was someone else in the room, and he was moving toward the door.
“Found one,” said Lark out of nowhere.
“Lark!” Soren yelled. “Look ou —”
But it was too late. Lark let out a scream of surprise, and Soren flew back down the aisle to reach her. Denali barked loudly in the distance, and Soren saw the intruder lunge toward the exit.
“Hey!” Lark shouted, shining her flashlight through the shelves to try to get a good look at whoever it was.
But Soren saw what was going to happen before Lark did. The intruder threw his weight against one of the tall shelves, and everything seemed to slow down.
Soren had no idea how he managed to get to Lark — only that he catapulted himself around the shelf and shoved her to the ground. The shelf pitched and teetered above them for one or two seconds before hitting the wall with a deafening crash.
Dozens of bins and boxes cascaded down over the floor. Soren blanketed Lark with his body and covered his head. One heavy tray slid off and hit him squarely between the shoulder blades, but once everything settled, he was relieved to see that Lark was completely unharmed.
She was lying on the floor beneath him, staring over his shoulder transfixed. She looked as though she’d seen a ghost, and when Soren turned to pan his light up the intruder’s torso, he saw why.
She was small, very blond, and dressed like a high-school girl on her way to an alien convention. She was staring at Lark as though she couldn’t believe her eyes, and for a moment, neither could Soren.
Lark opened and closed her mouth several times, and when she finally managed to speak, Soren only heard one thing: “Bernie?”
twenty-three
Lark
A jolt of shock flared through Lark’s system. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. She could hardly even breathe.
It was dark inside the room, but the beam of her flashlight cast a glow on features that were so achingly familiar she might have been looking at herself.
She was staring at a girl who looked like Bernie but for all practical reasons couldn’t be Bernie. She was dressed in baggy camo pants and leaning heavily on a crutch. Her honey-blond hair was matted and greasy, so she’d pulled it into an untidy knot at the top of her head. She was Bernie’s approximate height and build, but it was her face that gave it away: warm brown eyes, big bold lips, and a touch of mischief so subtle that it made you question whether you’d seen it at all.
“Lark?” croaked the girl, looking just as bewildered as Lark felt.
Lark staggered to her feet. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
A bizarre series of emotions flashed across the girl’s face: surprise, denial, and elation, followed swiftly by confusion.
The realization hit Lark like a ton of bricks. The girl didn’t just look like Bernie. She was Bernie.
Lark let out a noise halfway between a hiccup and a sob and launched herself across the room. She threw her arms around her neck, and Bernie seemed to collapse under her weight. Lark hung on to her as she dissolved into tears, sobbing and swaying on the spot. Bernie gripped her tightly around the shoulders but didn’t say a word.
“I thought y-y-you were d-dead,” Lark choked, drinking in Bernie’s familiar scent to reassure herself that she was real. “I heard the g-gunshot, and I thought . . .” She shuddered, shaking her head to fend off the feelings she’d come to accept as reality.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Bernie said with a laugh. “I thought you just . . . left me.”
“No,” said Lark, racking her brain to remember exactly what had happened back at the prison.
She’d replayed that horrible night so many times in her head, and yet she was still fuzzy on the details. She’d heard the gunshot and seen Bernie go down. No. She hadn’t actually seen Bernie fall, but somehow she knew it was Bernie who’d been hit.
“Soren told me you’d been shot,” she said dazedly. “He saw it.”
“I was shot,” said Bernie, pulling away and gesturing to her lower body.
In the wavering glow of Soren’s penlight, Lark saw that one of Bernie’s legs looked much larger than the other, as if she were sporting a cast under the hideous Area 51 pants.
“Your leg?”
Bernie nodded.
“Oh my god,” Lark whispered, holding back a shudder. “How did you . . . Why did . . . We heard about you on the radio, but I didn’t think . . . Wait. Why are you here?”
“Oh.” Bernie turned around and snatched up a canvas bag that she’d dropped on the floor. “We were at this clinic in Brownfield, and I found the address to this place.”
“We?”
But Bernie was too busy rummaging in the bag. She withdrew a plastic canister of what looked like vitamins. The word “prenatal” on the side caught Lark’s eye, and a million more questions erupted inside of her.
“Wait. What?” She shook her head as if to clear it. She felt as though she were stumbling through a very bizarre dream. “Are you —” She lowered her voice. “Are you pregnant?”
Lark felt like an idiot the moment the words left her mouth, and Bernie let out a laugh so free and beautiful that it made Lark want to cry some more. Of course Bernie couldn’t be pregnant. Although it seemed as though years had passed, it had only been four days since their separation.
“They’re not for me,” said Bernie, glancing up at a corner of the ceiling and shifting awkwardly on her crutch. “They’re, uh . . . They’re for Portia.”
Lark stared at her dumbfounded. At first she was positive she must have misheard Bernie, but then the police radio report floated through her mind: Asian female, five-foot-six.
“No,” said Lark.
Bernie nodded, cracking a grin as if it were all some big cosmic joke. “When I woke up, I was in the hospital. Well, it wasn’t really a hospital . . . It was the San Judas medical center, I guess. I’d never been there before. Anyway, I look over, and guess who they’ve got in the bed next to me?”
“Portia?”
Bernie nodded with the look of someone confirming a particularly juicy bit of gossip.
“She’s alive?”
Lark felt as though she needed to sit down. She’d thought about Portia almost as much as she’d thought about Bernie since their escape. The last time she’d seen her, Portia had been groveling at Mercy’s feet, about to get beaten for lying to Mercy and leading Zachariah to his death.
Lark felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted off her chest. The guilt she’d been carrying around for the part she’d played in Portia’s supposed death was gone.
Now she was left only with a bitter hatred. Portia had made Lark’s life hell, and she was the one who’d accused Lark of fraternizing with Mercy’s son. She couldn’t believe that Portia and Bernie were working together.
“Where is she?” Lark asked.
“Resting . . . I drove here on my own.”
There was something in Bernie’s tone that gave Lark pause, but her brain had latched on to Soren, who’d been strangely quiet throughout their entire conversation.
She turned around and saw him standing a few feet behind her, looking anywhere but at her. When he felt Lark’s eyes on him, he lifted his head and gave Bernie a warm smile.
“It’s great to see you,” he said. “I thought . . . I thought you were dead.”
Bernie rolled her eyes. “Please. It takes more than a bullet to get rid of me.”
Bernie’s tone was light and cheerful, but Lark couldn’t shake the imp
ression that the gunshot wound in Bernie’s leg was more serious than she was letting on. She was on crutches, after all, and there was a lot more in that bag than prenatal vitamins.
“I’m so sorry,” said Lark, her eyes filling with tears.
“Why?” Bernie looked genuinely perplexed.
“If it weren’t for me —”
“If it weren’t for you, I’d still be rotting away in that stupid hellhole. We might have starved to death before they let us out. I still can’t believe that they kept us there all this time, knowing . . .”
She trailed off bitterly, and Lark knew that Bernie had uncovered the horrible reality that they’d discovered back in Loving, New Mexico. The world as they knew it was gone.
“We should go,” said Lark, suddenly remembering why they’d come to the clinic in the first place. “Simjay and Axel are back at the truck. Simjay was stabbed, and —” Lark brandished the crumpled box of antibiotics. “He needs to take these.”
“He and I both,” said Bernie, rattling her canvas shopping bag.
Lark swallowed. “Is your leg —”
“It hurts like a motherfucker, but I think it’s all right. They had me on a course of antibiotics after the surgery. And painkillers — so many painkillers! I was fucked up. The pain I can deal with, but being out of it like that . . .” She shivered. “I never want to feel that way again.”
Lark’s stomach twisted with worry. The administrators at San Judas had decided to keep Bernie under observation in the days following the escape. Who knew what the doctors had been doing to stave off infection and ensure that she regained normal function of her leg?
“I’m fine,” said Bernie, interrupting Lark’s stream of angst. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
Bernie led the way out of the room and back behind the pharmacy counter. She put down her crutches and shimmied awkwardly through the window, and Lark handed the crutches through. They filed down the dingy hallway toward the exit, Lark’s mood much lighter than it had been earlier.
