“There’s
more,” she said. “You’re right, though. Ever since
the virus, it’s like I know how to do things with my body I
never learned. Like roundhouse kicks and using this sword. But there
was something really weird that happened right after my mother died.”
Noah came to sit next
to her.
She nervously picked at
the skin around her fingernails. “I was really upset and alone.
And the more I thought about what was happening, the angrier I got at
the world. I had this crazy urge to start destroying everything in
the house, so when I looked up and saw this sword on the shelf, I
gave in and started slicing things up,” she said. “There
was this violin on the wall that my parents bought me when they still
had hopes that I had an ounce of musical talent in my body. I just
felt this pure anger and hatred and I took the violin and smashed it
up.”
“None of that
sounds weird,” he said.
“No, it was what
happened after that,” she said. “I started crying and all
of a sudden, my tears were really cold. Ice cold. One of the
teardrops fell onto the violin and the whole thing frosted over with
this thin layer of ice. I know it sounds impossible, but it happened.
I have no way to explain it. It was like I was crying ice.”
Noah’s breath
came faster and she looked up to see his face had gone white.
“Something
similar happened to me,” he said, his eyes wide. “When I
killed my father with that bat, my whole body felt like it was
freezing cold. I mean, I honestly thought that for a second, my bat
iced over, but then I wondered if it was a trick of light. And when I
hit him, did you see it? His head came off with one swing. A sword is
one thing, but to take off a human head with one swing of a bat?”
Parrish nodded. “I
guess I didn’t really think of it that way,” she said. “I
was just focused on the horror of it all.”
“Me too at
first,” he said. “But when I was sitting there afterward,
I started piecing it all together.”
“Piecing what
together?”
“The fact that
I’ve been growing stronger and stronger ever since the virus
started,” he said. “And it isn’t just strength.
It’s some kind of healing, too, I think.”
“What do you
mean?”
“When you and
Karmen first came to my house, remember how her leg was bleeding and
I put my hand on it?”
Parrish nodded. She
remembered him making some kind of bandage to stop the bleeding.
“It was like I
could feel her pain being sucked from her body,” he said. “I
felt that same kind of cool energy I felt when I hit dad with the
bat, but it was different. Instead of pouring out of me, it was like
it was flowing into me. It’s hard to explain.”
They fell silent and
Parrish thought about what he’d said. About what they were
saying to each other.
“Do you think
this is happening to everyone?” she asked. “Everyone who
is still alive?”
Noah shrugged. “I
have no idea,” he said. “I thought it was just me. I
thought maybe I was imagining it or losing my mind or something.”
She laughed. “Me
too, honestly.”
“Come on,”
he said, standing and offering his hand to her. “We need to
grab your stuff and get moving. We’ve got a lot to do today.”
Parrish took his hand,
then followed him inside her house for the last time.
Noah raised his glass.
The three of them sat
at the long table in the dining room. He’d managed to find long
white candles and crystal candlesticks that must have been his
mother’s long ago. Light flickered across the table. Parrish
had set out his parents’ wedding china. He couldn’t even
remember the last time it had been used. Maybe not since his mother
died.
The table looked
beautiful.
Parrish finished
pouring red wine into the other glasses, then the two girls raised
theirs as well.
They’d done what
they could to dress up and look nice for dinner and he was glad they
had this one last night together before it all changed.
“I’ve never
really given a formal toast or anything before,” he started.
“But since this is our last night in this house. This
neighborhood. Maybe even this city. I wanted to take a moment to say
thank you. We’ve been through so much in the past few weeks
that it’s hard to imagine things changing any more than they
already have. At the same time, we don’t really know what
tomorrow might bring.”
He couldn’t help
but look to Parrish when he said that. He knew she ached for her
sister, but was she really going to go to New York to find her? Did
she want him to go with her? There was so much uncertainty in their
lives right now.
In the candlelight, her
eyes sparkled like amethysts.
“I wanted to say
that despite everything else, I’m grateful for both of you,”
he said. “This would have been a very scary, very lonely couple
of weeks without you.”
Parrish and Karmen
nodded, then they all took a long drink of wine.
Karmen nearly choked on
it.
Noah laughed and
Parrish brought a hand to her mouth to hide her smile.
“Sorry,”
Karmen said with a giggle. It was a sound he hadn’t heard in a
while from her. A happy sound. “I’m used to vodka.”
“Haha,”
Noah said. He knew nothing about wines, really, but he’d seen
it sitting there on the counter. He’d heard his dad say it was
an expensive bottle, and it seemed wrong to let it go to waste.
“What are you
grateful for Karmen?” Parrish asked.
Karmen looked up toward
the ceiling. “Grateful? It’s hard to think about being
grateful right now,” she said. Then she held her glass up and
smiled. “I’m enormously grateful to have clean underwear
and deodorant.”
Noah couldn’t
help but laugh. Only Karmen would be grateful for underwear.
“What about you?”
he asked, turning to Parrish.
She held her glass in
both hands, then looked down, fidgeting. “I’m grateful
for the time I had with my sister,” she said. “I’m
grateful she might still be alive somewhere. And if she isn’t,
I’m grateful not to have had to watch it happen.”
Noah ached at her
words, but he understood them. He would have given anything not to
have been here to see what his father had become.
“I’m
grateful that I never got close enough to most people to miss them,”
she said, heavy sadness in her tone. She tried to smile it away, but
there was such truth in her words, it hit Noah hard. Then, she looked
up at him, her eyes glistening as she raised her glass. “And I
am truly grateful there are still people on this earth who are worth
getting close to.”
They each took another
drink. Parrish looked at him over the top of her glass and a smile
tugged at the corners of her lips.
Noah smiled back, his
heart full. Maybe he’d managed to break down a little piece of
that wall she kept around her heart after all.
They sat down as a
group. Karmen had managed to put together a meal despite there being
no electricity. It was mostly things like crackers and anything that
she could salvage from the fridge and the cans in the pantry.
But it wasn’t
half bad, really.
For the rest of the
dinner, they shared their memories of life here on the street. Life
as neighbors. Good times with their families and friends. Things they
hoped never to forget.
They all slept in the
living room instead of going to separate rooms for the night, finding
comfort in the closeness of each other.
And in the morning,
they loaded up in Parrish’s mom’s van and drove toward
the hospital, leaving the neighborhood where they’d lived with
their families and dreamed of a different future, behind forever.
Karmen kept her eye on
the house where she grew up for as long as she could until the van
turned a corner and the house was gone.
So many memories to
leave behind. Some of them nightmares for her.
Parrish had said she
thought Karmen’s life was perfect. She had no idea what Karmen
had been through in her life. What her father had made her do.
Karmen shuddered, then
pulled her backpack closer against her chest, hugging it like a teddy
bear. The end of the world was both a blessing and curse. It had
brought her out of one nightmare and straight into another.
But now things were
going to be better.
The Army was going to
take care of them. And she didn’t care if Parrish wanted to go
off on her suicide mission to rescue her sister. Let Noah go with her
for all she cared. As long as Karmen could be safe and taken care of
at the evacuation zone, that was all she cared about.
At least that’s
what she kept repeating to herself over and over.
But the truth was that
she had really grown attached to Noah and Parrish. She acted like
they annoyed the crap out of her, and sometimes they did, but she
loved them in some weird way. She felt like herself when she was with
them. Like she was complete.
Which was ridiculous.
Anyone in their right
mind would rather be in a safe zone where they didn’t have to
worry about rotters or electricity or where their next meal was
coming from. That should be what Karmen wanted more than anything in
this world.
And yet, the thought of
separating from the other two made her feel like her heart was being
torn from her chest.
She stared out the
window as they made their way toward the hospital. They had planned
to take the highway since it was faster, but when they got to the
spot where they would normally pull on, the ramp was trashed. Four
cars were piled up in a horrible crash, the bodies of the dead still
inside.
Karmen looked away as
Parrish pulled the van over to the side of the road.
“Which way should
we go?” she asked.
“Can you pull up
GPS?” Karmen asked. Noah had brought her cell phone from her
house, but the screen was cracked pretty bad and it wasn’t
working right.
“I tried,”
Noah said. “The cell service is down. I can’t get it to
come up at all.”
“I kind of know
how to go,” Parrish said. “But I might need help
navigating.”
“Maybe we should
stop somewhere and grab a map,” Noah said. “Just in
case.”
“There’s a
gas station over there across the street.” Karmen pointed
toward the one with the blue sign. She’d been there a thousand
times with Aaron to pick up cigarettes. There was a guy named Boone
that used to work there. He was always hitting on her when Aaron
wasn’t looking.
Karmen had made out
with him a couple of times.
Boon was probably dead
by now, though. Like most of everyone else. She just hoped he wasn’t
dead and still hanging out at the gas station.
“They have all
kinds of maps beside the cash register.”
The car jerked as
Parrish ran the van straight over the median and across to the gas
station. Even though there was no one around, it still felt strange
to be breaking the rules. Karmen felt like she should be looking back
to see if anyone noticed what they’d just done.
Of course, no one had.
They had gotten a later
start than they’d intended, but they had yet to see a single
car or person on the road.
When the van stopped,
Karmen jumped out. “I’ll grab the map,” she said.
“What do we need? Just the city?”
Parrish shrugged. “Just
grab one of everything,” she said. “Be careful.”
Karmen jogged inside,
so glad to have her tennis shoes now instead of just those flip-flops
she’d been wearing. The bell over the door dinged as she
entered. Gosh, how many times had she heard that sound? A million?
It had never felt eerie
until today.
The station had windows
all around the top half, so there was plenty of light inside. She
walked up to the counter and imagined Boone behind it, smiling and
winking at her, asking if she wanted to meet up with him when he got
off work.
It had seemed fun and
naughty to do stuff like that back then, but now she felt guilty. If
she had known what would happen to Aaron, maybe she would have
treated him better.
Or maybe she would have
never strung him along the way she did.
Karmen sighed and
grabbed a couple of lighters from the display up front. She also
reached behind the counter and grabbed all the medicine she could
find. Aspirin. Ibuprofen. Stuff like that. She put them all in a
paper sack, then walked down the aisles and quickly snatched up some
candy bars and a couple sodas.
Outside, Parrish honked
the horn.
“I’m coming
already,” Karmen muttered.
She took one last look
at the shop, thinking how she’d taken so much for granted
before all this.
Then she shook her
head. Now who was being the emo one?
She quickly picked up
one of each type of map, then ran back out to the van.
With the help of the
new maps and Noah’s navigation skills, it only took them
another two hours to get to the hospital. They were lucky the van had
plenty of gas. Karmen never would have thought it could take so long
to go just ten miles or so, but the roads were wrecked. Literally.
Cars and debris were everywhere.
There must have been
several fires, riots, and general freaking out going on. They had
been lucky to be sheltered from it on their quiet street.
But when the sign for
McLean Memorial finally came in to view, Karmen started tapping her
toes.
This was it. No going
back. Everything was about to change, one way or another.
He’d been waiting
all morning for the three from his dream to arrive.
He was trying to
imagine what it would feel like for them. Who knows where they’d
been hiding out since this whole thing began. What they’d lost
or what they’d been through. And here they were, headed to what
they thought was a safe zone.