The Star Dwellers (8 page)

“Thanks,” she says.

“It’s okay.”

“They were eating my flesh.”

“What?”

“Maggots, insects,
things
. They
freaked me out. I could see them on me, feel them chewing on my
skin. It was so real.”

I nod. “We’re both going to have to try to
ignore them, try to remember it’s all part of the Flu.

Tawni sighs. “I’ll try.”

“We have to keep moving.”

“I know.”

Standing up again is torture. In the few
minutes we’ve been on the ground, it seems every muscle in my body
has frozen. My right arm is better off, so I use it to straighten
my left arm, flex it, massage it. I feel a spurt of warmth as some
blood rushes back into my arms. Next I work on my legs. Tawni is
doing the same thing. Then we use the wall and each other to pull
ourselves up. It probably takes us ten minutes to get to our
feet.

Ten precious minutes.

I am dreading my first hallucination.

We continue walking, Tawni dragging a foot
while I manage to lift both feet off the ground far enough to take
real steps. At some point we switch from holding hands to huddling
against each other, arms around each other’s shoulders. She is my
crutch and I am hers.

My fever is out of control. When the sweat
isn’t pouring down my face, I am shivering uncontrollably, shaking
from head to toe. We are a mess. First Tawni shakes for a few
minutes and then stops just in time for me to start convulsing.
Soon our shaking begins starting and stopping at the same time.
It’s weird, almost like how they say girls who spend a lot of time
with each other somehow synchronize their periods—we’ve
synchronized our shaking.

I hear a sound. A thunder, of sorts. It
sounds like a train is heading our way, moving down the tunnel. But
there is no train station, no tracks. It’s no train, of that I am
certain.

I see what is making the noise, but it’s too
late. The water is moving too fast, charging toward us, a deluge of
power, bubbling and raging and bursting. I scream, loud and long,
and try to pull Tawni in the other direction, back the way we
came.

She resists my pull and I don’t know why.
Perhaps she has given up; perhaps it is all too much for her;
perhaps she just doesn’t have the strength. Whatever the case, my
hand pulls free from hers and I run alone, but not fast enough. The
torrent sweeps me off my feet with the power of a mining machine,
lifting me up and slamming me on the rocky floor. I roll and
bounce, battered by the white bubbly rapids.

My only hope is that the force of the water
will sweep me all the way back to the contaminated lake, where it
will exit the tunnel, washing me up on dry land before I drown.

Tawni is already lost.

But the flood doesn’t push me along. Instead,
it encompasses me, leaving me churning on the tunnel floor,
desperately straining to hold my breath for another second, another
ten, another minute. It’s like all my childhood nightmares about
drowning—brought on by my near-drowning when I fell down a well as
a young girl—are muddled into one horrible reality. My lungs are on
fire, setting my chest ablaze with pain. Agony. Somehow I’m crying
underwater, blubbering and sputtering, my lips parted and my eyes
closed. The water should enter my mouth, suffocate me as I take one
last breath.

It doesn’t.

Tawni is by my side, holding me. The water
swirls over and around her. It’s as if she’s in an air bubble,
protected from the current. Not even her hair is wet. Her eyes are
soft. Still red, but soft. Her lips move.

“Not real, honey,” she says softly. “Hush—not
real.”

I realize I’m yelling something amidst my
blubbering. I’m not sure what I’m saying, but I stop. The water
looks strange. Almost too blue to be real. Too perfect.

Before it begins to ebb away, I know it’s a
hallucination. The waters subside and I’m left in Tawni’s arms,
much like she was in mine not that long ago. I’m soaking wet and
shivering.

“So cold,” I murmur between blue lips.

“No,” Tawni says, shaking her head. “Not
cold. Not real.”

“But I’m all wet,” I say, hugging myself,
trying to get warm.

“Not wet. Completely dry.”

Even as her words sink in, warmth returns to
my body and I watch as my clothes stop sticking to me, the
slickness on my skin vanishes, and the soggy, dripping locks of my
black hair are replaced by soft, loose locks around my face.

I take a deep breath, trying to fight off the
surreal memories of the life-taking water. “I’m okay,” I say,
wiping the unwanted tears from my face. I’m embarrassed, even
though I know the hallucination was so real. I knew it was coming,
but couldn’t combat it. I need to do better with the next one. “We
need to go.”

“Maybe we should just stay here and ride it
out,” Tawni says. Her face is shining with sweat, her white hair
tight and knotted, twisted together from the sweat on her neck and
cheeks. Her words are a temptation. I can feel my face flushed with
the fever and my muscles are battered and bruised. I couldn’t
handle the hallucination, but I
can
handle a little
pain.

“No,” I say, pushing myself up, biting back a
groan as my muscles and bones scream at me. “That would be
suicide.”

Tawni knows I’m right so she lets me help her
up without complaining. “I’m scared, Adele.”

“We will make it,” I say.
Won’t
we?

With the Flu, things just keep getting worse.
Thirty minutes later, Tawni is a ghost, pale and gaunt. She looks
like she’s sweated off ten pounds that she can’t afford to lose.
Her bony hands are clutching me at the elbow, depending on me to
stay on her feet. I’m not much better off, but am coping with the
achy muscles better than she is. I’ve been grinding my teeth in
determination for so long I can feel the enamel flaking off on my
tongue, gritty and dry.

Thankfully, neither of us has hallucinated
for a while, and, despite the pain we’re in, we are making steady
progress, although I don’t know if we’re minutes, hours, or days
from our destination. Nor do I know what to expect when we arrive.
For all I know, the star dwellers might kill us on the spot. They
are not the friendliest of people at the moment.

My mind is becoming a problem. One minute it
is sharp and clear, and then the next it’s hazy and groggy, like
I’m sleepwalking through a deep fog. The foggy times are fast
becoming the majority. I want to slap myself, but I can’t get my
hand up to my face; nor can I move it with the speed required to
hurt enough to snap me out of my numbed state.

Tawni’s fingernails dig into my arm and I
know something is wrong. I slowly turn my head toward her to see
what’s going on, but it’s too late. My face swivels right into her
punch, and I feel a dull impact when her clenched knuckles collide
with my cheekbone. It doesn’t hurt exactly, but does force me off
balance, and my legs are in no position to correct my momentum.

I tumble hard to the earth and try to roll
away from my friend, who is now my attacker. My body disobeys me
once more and I remain pinned to the ground. All I can do is hope
that whatever hallucination is clutching Tawni will release
her.

It doesn’t.

Tawni leaps on top of me, grapples with my
outstretched arms, tries to get the tips of her fingers into my
eyes. She is screaming at me, shouting horrible things,
obscenities, things I’ve never heard come from her mouth.
Disgusting, vile things.

I try to remember that she’s hallucinating,
but she’s trying to hurt me, and I have to defend myself. When she
tries to hit me again, I grab one of her hands and get it under
control. “You’re hallucinating, Tawni, get off me!” I cry, but she
doesn’t listen, just keeps fighting with me.

A knife flashes, shiny and deadly. I can
barely make it out in the dim light provided by our flashlights,
which we have cast aside haphazardly during our fight. Where did
she get a knife from? Why would she even have a knife? Tawni is the
least violent person I know—more prone to run or hide than fight
back. And yet she has a knife—and is trying to cut me open.

I grab the wrist of the hand with the knife
and try to force it away from me. But Tawni has somehow become
stronger from the Flu, gaining superhuman strength. The knife moves
closer to my chest. She’s going to kill me. I have no choice.

I close my other hand around her neck. The
Flu has weakened me beyond recognition, but I use every last ounce
of energy to squeeze my fingers shut, hoping to get her to drop the
knife. The feeling is sickening. Horrifying. Knowing that you are
literally squeezing the life out of someone. But I don’t stop,
because Tawni doesn’t stop. It’s weird. Although she’s being choked
to death—that much I can tell by the wretched gurgling sounds she’s
making—she won’t drop the knife. It’s like killing me is more
important than her own life.

So this is how it ends for us? With friends
killing each other?

Her lips are moving, trying to tell me
something, but I can’t understand her. Is it a trick or should I
relax my grip? I’m afraid if I do she’ll cut me to ribbons. “Ha…”
she chokes out.

Her face is turning blue. I loosen my grip
slightly. “What?” I ask. The knife is so close to my skin, inching
closer, but I have to know what Tawni is trying to say.

“You’re…you’re hal...luc…in…ating,” she
breathes.

Huh?
I’m
hallucinating? She’s
the one with the knife, the one trying to kill me. The cold steel
pricks my skin, just below my neck. It doesn’t hurt, doesn’t bleed.
I try to consider for just one moment that I might be the one
having a waking nightmare. As soon as I do, the knife disappears.
My world spins upside down and I am on top of Tawni, rather than
the other way around.

I’m trying to kill her.

I’m hallucinating.

My body shakes and I wrench my hand from
Tawni’s neck. Twisting to the side, I throw myself against the hard
rock, panting heavily.

Next to me I can hear Tawni gasping for
breath, half-gagging.

I did it to her.

I spit once more and desperately wish for
water. I’d even take a hallucination of water—they are so real,
after all.

I turn back to Tawni, who looks like she
might throw up, her head between her knees, her matted hair clumped
around her face, which has no color in it. She’s not gagging
anymore, but her breathing is ragged and forced.

I did it to her.

The fact that the Flu caused me to do it
provides no solace. I still tried to kill my own friend, my only
friend, and I hate myself for it. I hate myself even more when I
pull Tawni’s hair away from her face so I can look at her, and she
visibly twitches, pulls away sharply. She’s afraid of me. She
should be. I’m dangerous. Lethal. I’ve killed before and I can do
it again, even if I don’t want to.

Her neck is marked with red stripes where my
fingers gripped her skin and I frown as I look at them. They will
surely bruise, reminding me of my sins for the next few weeks. If
we make it that long.

“Tawni, I’m—”

“It’s okay,” she croaks, suddenly looking
from the ground to my eyes. Her eyes are watery—not from crying,
but from the pain I put her through. I start to object, but she
cuts me off again, once more in a voice two octaves lower than her
natural timbre. “You were hallucinating, Adele. I would’ve done the
same thing. It’s not your fault. Let me guess, I transformed into a
goblin, some evil monster with big eyes and tentacles?”

In spite of the way I’m feeling, I laugh.
“No, you were just yourself, but you were like a wild woman, ten
times stronger than normal. You were trying to stab me in the heart
with a knife. But I should’ve known—”

“No, it’s fine. Really. Promise me you won’t
apologize again, won’t even speak of this again.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to promise,
don’t deserve to be able to make such a promise.

“Promise me.”

“Okay.”

“We’ve got to go,” Tawni says. She is playing
my part.

We go. We are moving even slower than before,
hobbling along like a couple of oldies. At some point we strap the
flashlights to our wrists because we can’t grip them anymore. I
don’t know how we even manage it, as all dexterity is gone from my
fingers. Seconds pass like minutes, minutes like hours, hours like
entire days.

Somehow we keep going.

My head is down; I am watching my feet scrape
the ground, barely rising high enough to move forward. Instead of
holding each other up, we are slowly dragging each other down into
the dust. Tawni falls first, not even trying to break her fall with
her hands. I try to help her up, but she has nothing left. “Go,”
she says. “Find help.”

I don’t want to leave, don’t want to abandon
my friend, but we will both die if I don’t. “I will come back for
you. That I promise,” I say.

I leave my pack with Tawni and will my body
forward, using the wall to support my left side. Struggling along,
I pray for a miracle. The walls start closing in, the ceiling
falling on top of me; the floor even rises slightly under my
feet—all moving together to crush me. It’s a hallucination—has to
be.
Not real, not real, not real
, I tell myself, but it
doesn’t help. The stone walls keep coming.

I am crouching now, trying to get out of the
tunnel before it destroys me. I see a light in the distance, dim
but visible, a mere hiccup in the endless darkness before me.
Stretching, reaching, extending my arm, I fight toward it, beyond
desperation. My vision blurs.

I am going to die.

My legs crumble.

Without seeing my mom again.

My vision blurs.

Without seeing him again.

The dim light is gone, once more replaced
with utter blackness.

Tristan.