The Blood Will Dry

by Mary, Kate L.

  When Bryan slipped into my room I was awake but in too much pain to even entertain the idea of sex. Someone in the hall had lit a lantern and a sliver of light penetrated the darkness in my room, allowing me to see when Bryan’s gaze moved over me. He knelt at my side, keeping his distance as if he could tell just by looking at me that I was hurting. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The throb in my shoulder seemed to have changed while I slept, leaving behind an ache in my arm that somehow had the same pins and needles feeling you got when an appendage had fallen asleep and the blood began to rush back into it. It was a pain I’d never felt before, half hurt and half numb.

  “How are you?” Bryan whispered.

  “Not great.” I pushed myself up with my good arm, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip to stop from crying out. Not that it helped because my next words came out sounding like a gasp of pain. “It hurts.”

  He was on his feet in a flash when I shifted to a sitting position, his hands moving toward me like he wanted to help, but stopping just short of touching me. “Do you need help?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t like asking for help. Nothing had ever come along that I couldn’t handle on my own, and I told myself that this would be no different even as Alex’s warning about taking it easy flitted through my mind.

  “I’m fine.” I adjusted the homemade sling with my good hand, tightening it so my arm was supported better. I’d decided to get some rest before going to the infirmary for a real one, but at this point I was starting to think rest was going to be impossible. “I’ll be fine.”

  Bryan nodded as he lowered himself onto the bed at my side.

  “What did you guys find out there?”

  “We got lucky and the claws seem to survive the grenades. We managed to scrounge up a handful.” He paused. “It’s raining again though, and it started to get too dark to be able to see well.”

  I knew he meant it was pouring again. These days, we never bothered to mention rain if it was only a drizzle or a light mist, because that was the norm. It was always wet outside and didn’t seem worth mentioning unless it was heavy enough to affect visibility.

  “As bad as the other day?”

  He shook his head, but then nodded. “Not quite, but it’s coming down pretty hard.”

  It wasn’t a shock. Heavy rain had been scarce lately, a weather pattern that had taken a toll on our water supplies. Still, it was bad timing. We suddenly had plans for how we were going to get these bastards, and it was like they knew it and had pushed some button that would force the clouds to drop buckets on us. Or maybe the most recent rainfall was just another sign that things were changing. That these assholes had more up their sleeves than we’d bargained for.

  “Are the clouds thicker?” I asked even though I didn’t really want to know. “Darker like they are close to the hive?”

  I thought of the crater at the end of our street and how the hive I’d been dragged into was nestled inside one just like it. They could be expanding, especially if they had a bunch of recently hatched young. What if they were coming here? What if we woke up to find our settlement a jungle of alien foliage just like the one that surrounded the hive?

  “It’s not that bad…” I was glad when he put his hand on my knee because I could read between the lines. Yet. It wasn’t that bad yet.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “First, we need to get some sleep. Including you.” He patted my knee. “Tomorrow, when the rain stops, we’re going to search the city for as many of those flowers as we can find. Anderson has come up with the idea of filling metal barrels and setting them up in the street. If the bugs show up we can blow the barrels and see if your theory pans out. We have a couple dozen gas masks, which will protect us from pollen. It should also buy us some time while we plan our next move.”

  Our next move. It had been years since I’d had enough hope to believe that we would be able to do anything, but even now that we knew how to penetrate the exoskeletons and the thick vines covering the hive, I wasn’t sure that it mattered. So what if we managed to get in? So what if the pollen did kill the bugs? It was just one hive in who knew how many. There could be hundreds in the state of Ohio alone, tens of thousands all over the country. It wasn’t like we could take all of those things out.

  “What are we fighting for?” I found myself whispering.

  Even as I said the words I felt like a traitor to myself. Like I had given up when I’d sworn I never would. Maybe it was just the exhaustion talking, or the pain, but I suddenly felt like the little bit of hope I’d felt was childish. Like I’d been fooling myself. I couldn’t help it. Since the day that mall exploded, I’d never really felt like having a real life was possible, but I’d also never really sat down and considered the hopelessness of it all the way I was right now. We could take out one hive—in theory, anyway—but what would it do? Could we really win?

  “What do you mean?” Bryan asked.

  I lifted my head so I could meet his gaze. The light from the hall had faded, as if the lantern was about to burn out or it had been carried further away, and one side of his face was cloaked in shadows so dark they seemed to swallow him. For the first time since we met I could really, truly see his brother in him. I reached out and caressed the side of his face that was illuminated, loving how warm his skin was against mine, but hating the fact that it had tricked me. Being with him, finding myself attracted to another man after all this time, had blinded me to how useless it all was.

  “I forgot how nice it was to be with another person.”

  He covered my hand, still pressed against his cheek, with his. “What did you mean?”

  A sad smile slipped from my lips. “I don’t know what we’re fighting for. Even if we do manage to take out this hive and save our part of the city, it’s a small battle in a war so big we can’t possibly fathom it. Meaning we haven’t really won anything. The bugs will still be out there and there’s nothing stopping a new colony from moving in.”

  “Then we’ll fight those too.”

  I shook my head. “And the next ones?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly, “Because this isn’t about winning the war. Not right now. At this moment, in this city, it’s about making a life for ourselves. The only way we can do that is by refusing to go down without a fight. Maybe we’ll take the hive out and none of those bastards will come this way again, or maybe we’ll have to do the exact same thing a year from now. I don’t know for sure, but I know that I want to try.” His hand tightened on mine. “Just think of everything that can happen in a year.”

  I did think about it, about a year and how much it could change your life. About Michael and me being together, young and carefree and in love, and how only twelve short months later we were married and parents to the most beautiful girl in the world. Happy and smiling despite the pitfalls of being thrust into adulthood too soon. The only problem with the image was that it didn’t stop there. All I had to do was blink and all of it was gone, replaced by horror and death and pain. Was that what I wanted for my life? Did I want to fight and struggle to build something only to lose it all over again? Hadn’t I been through enough?

  “Diana,” Bryan whispered when I said nothing.

  I shook my head. “I can’t do it.”

  “What? What can’t you do?” I knew that he understood what I was saying though, because he shook his head. “What happened? Just a few days ago you were telling me that you wanted to join the militia. You said you had hope for the first time in years. What changed?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  His fingers flexed on mine, but I wiggled out from under his grasp with ease. I got to my feet and when I did he shifted, allowing the light streaming in from the hall to illuminate his pants. They were army green, but not dark enough to hide the red stains splattered across them. Blood. There was so much blood these days. It was like the rain that constantly fell from the sky. It would ease for a bit, giving us momentary relief, but it never really went away. When it
started all over again it was a downpour. Just like the blood. It never dried, not really. It only eased enough to give the illusion that it had.

  “The blood never dries,” I said, still staring at the stain on his pants.

  Bryan looked down, following my gaze. “It’s dry.” He looked back up. “It’s an old stain, Diana.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean.”

  I focused on his face only to find him frowning.

  “What then?” he asked.

  “I meant the death never ends. It never will. And I don’t know if I can go through that again. The last week with you has been good, and I let myself believe that I could move on, but I can’t. I can’t lose again.”

  “Diana—” Bryan stood and took a step toward me. “—losing has always been a part of life, but it also means that you had something worth losing to begin with. That you were a part of something good.”

  He reached for me, but I backed away.

  “I. Can’t,” I said firmly.

  The expression of concern on his face changed to surprise before once again morphing. This time it was full of bitterness and pity.

  His arm dropped to his side. “Does this mean you’re just going to go back to the way things were?” He waved across the room. “Go ahead, hide in this shithole like these walls will keep you safe. Drift through life instead of actually having one. I wouldn’t want you to take any risks or anything.”

  “It’s none of your business what I do.”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me sick.” His gaze flicked down, looking me over, and there was so much disgust in his eyes that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He looked like that boy I’d met seven years ago, the one who’d looked at me like I was a speck of dust not even worth his time. “I should have known better than to get involved with anyone living in a settlement. Don’t worry, the militia will take care of your little bug problem for you.”

  He turned away from me, only stopping long enough to swipe his weapons up off the table before ripping the door open. The light that burned somewhere in the hall shone in, casting a beam across the room to where I stood like it was trying to put me in a spotlight. I wanted to step out of it, but I found that I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at the back of Bryan’s head and wish that I were a stronger person. This wasn’t how I’d wanted things to happen, but I had my reasons for doing things this way. Reasons I couldn’t voice, especially not to the man walking away from me right now.

  Bryan didn’t look back before stepping into the hall, and once I was alone I found it nearly impossible to move.

  A jolt that I was certain was an earthquake woke me, but the second my brain started working another thought occurred to me. The bugs were back and they were trying to break through the wall.

  The shock of it made me move too fast. Pain pulsed down my shoulder to my elbow, drawing a moan out of me. I wanted to sit up, but I was afraid it would hurt too much, so instead I cradled my injured arm and cracked one eye. The room was lit with the soft glow of a lantern and Daisy was standing over me. She had her arms crossed over her chest and a glare on her face that could only be called ugly. A word I was certain had never been used to describe my friend before.

  “What the—”

  “You better be damn glad you’re already hurt,” she said, cutting me off, “or I would kick your ass right now.”

  I shifted and forced myself up, biting down on another moan of pain as the throb in my shoulder grew more intense. “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you serious?” Daisy arched her eyebrows. “Bryan?”

  Guilt and something else, regret maybe, twisted my insides. “I did what I had to.”

  Even as I said it I found myself wondering if it was true. Now that I’d gotten a little rest, I thought that my judgment might have been clouded by the pain and exhaustion. Maybe I’d made a mistake…

  Daisy threw her hands in the air. “Five years. For five years I’ve been waiting for you to get over yourself and let your family go, and I thought you’d finally done it. But then you go and throw it all away at the first sign that it might be hard. I thought you were stronger than that, Diana. I thought you of all people wouldn’t go down without a fight. I mean, if you’re willing to just give up, why keep going at all? Why put up with all this shit if you’re not going to fight. Nothing about this life is worthwhile without people. We live in a dark and disgusting building, we don’t have electricity or running water. We have nothing but other people, only you are determined to keep a wall between yourself and everyone else. I just don’t get it.”

  Her words pushed all my doubt away, replacing it with hurt and anger. I’d thought Daisy understood. Thought that even though I’d never said the words out loud she got what I was going through.

  “No,” I spit out, glaring up at her from my position on the cot. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t get it because you don’t know how it feels.”

  Daisy jerked as if my words had slammed into her, but her shock quickly changed to anger. “Fuck you,” she practically screamed. “You aren’t the only one who lost and I’m sick of you walking around acting like you got screwed while the rest of us were spared. That’s bullshit and you know it. We all lost. I lost everything, just like you did. No, I didn’t have a child or a husband, but I lost the chance to ever have those things. At least you got to experience what it was like to have a normal life with normal concerns. I will never get that. Even if I do find someone I love and have a child, I will never live a life where my biggest worry is how I’m going to pay my Visa bill. You’re lucky, and I’m sick and tired of tiptoeing around the truth. All you have left are your memories and that sucks, but at least you have that.”

  The second the last word was out she sucked in a deep breath as if she hadn’t bothered to take one during the entire speech. Then there was nothing but silence and pain. Pain in my shoulder, pain in my chest, pain on Daisy’s face. She’d been my best friend for the last five years, the one and only person I’d allowed myself to really connect with. Or at least that’s what I’d thought. Now, staring up at her, I realized I’d been fooling myself. Not just about our relationship, but about everything else as well. Daisy was right. I’d somehow convinced myself that my pain was special or unique, that no one else’s could ever measure up to it, but that was bullshit. Everyone here had lost. Maybe not a husband or a child, but they’d lost people they’d loved. People they’d depended on. I wasn’t special.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  Daisy’s whole body relaxed and she let out a deep breath. “I didn’t want to do it like this. I didn’t want to have to beat you over the head with the truth.”

  “Maybe that’s what I needed.”

  I exhaled, trying to blow out some of the weight that had settled over me. It didn’t work. I felt heavy with the truth. With the pain I’d caused my friend and Bryan. With what I had done to myself.

  Shit, what if I’d screwed up so much that it was too late? I knew Daisy would forgive me, but what if Bryan had given up and left already? I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d turned him down because I’d been asleep, but he very well could have met up with an incoming militia and hightailed it out of here. I wouldn’t blame him, not after I’d allowed my insanity and insecurity to take over the way I had.

  “Did Bryan tell you what happened?” I wanted to ask where he was and what he was doing, but my fear had once again gotten the better of me and I chickened out. If he was gone, I didn’t want to know yet.

  “Yeah. He came down in a pissy mood and I got in his face. He’s pretty hurt, Diana, but I don’t think you’ve done any permanent damage.”

  “He’s still here?” I allowed myself to ask.

  “He’s out in the city collecting flowers right now.” One side of her mouth turned up. “I don’t think he was quite ready to give up. In case you hadn’t noticed, he’s a bit stubborn.”

  I pushed mysel
f up, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. “I need to see him. I need to apologize.”

  But I didn’t move because I knew there were other things that needed to be said, things Daisy had been waiting five years to hear. Logically, I knew that I could walk away right now and she wouldn’t think twice about it, but I also knew it wasn’t fair to her. I owed her much more than I’d given her and the sooner I started to repay her the better both of us would feel.

  “I had a daughter.” My eyes were focused on the other side of the room when I started talking, on the bottom drawer of the desk. “Cassidy was seven months old. She’d been a surprise and I was so young and scared when I found out that I was pregnant that I hadn’t been sure what to do, but from the moment I told Michael about it, he was supportive. He transferred from Harvard to Wright State and we got married. I was barely eighteen and he was only a year older. His family hated me. They hated that I didn’t come from money and that I’d dragged him away from the future they had planned for him, but he never let me feel bad about it. Never let it seem like he was making a sacrifice.” Daisy was so quiet that I almost felt alone in the room, but when I glanced toward her she was listening intently.

  “I only met Bryan once before that day he came in with the militia. It was shortly after Michael and I started dating. His mom and dad had thrown him a birthday party, and I’d known the second I met them that they would never like me. They weren’t rude, but they let me know that I was just a mistake their son had to make. Bryan, however, was a total asshole.” I paused, remembering how he’d treated me that day and how angry it had made me.

  Looking back on it, I had a hard time reconciling that boy with the man I now knew. With the soldier who was determined to put his life on the line for others, to beat the bugs so he could have a life. Who lived traveling from settlement to settlement, and rarely had the chance to shower. They seemed like two totally different people. The one was a part of a past that I’d hated to think about, but one that had made me stronger and more determined to show the world that I was worth something. The other was a man I could see myself loving, someone who just might be what I needed in my life to help me move on.