What Little Remains (The Fallout Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

“Have you ever killed someone who didn’t deserve it? Have
you killed a village with women and children and then burnt it to the ground?”
I ask, looking up at him. “Can you look me in the face and promise that you
haven’t?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Ricky says, and
he forces his expression to change. “You know I’m not capable of something like
that.”

“A year ago I’d have never thought that you’d be capable of
leading nearly two hundred people after an apocalypse, and look at you now,” I
say, not taking my eyes off him.

His jaw tightens. “We all had to adapt. Where are all these
ideas coming from?”

I hesitate, looking away for the first time. “The scavengers
were talking about you before they even knew we were there. They mentioned you
by name and were talking about how you burnt an entire village to the ground
just for kicks.”

“You’d believe the words of some strangers over the words of
someone who loves you. Someone you love?” Ricky asks, sliding his hand up and
down my arm.

“You’d lie to someone who you claim to love?”

“Charlie, I’d never lie to you about something like that,”
Ricky says, pulling me against him.

I shove away from him, the movement hurting my wrist.

“Regardless of whether you lied to me then or not, you can’t
just hug and make up with me,” I say, taking a step back as he takes another
one towards me.

“If anyone should be pissed right now, it’s me,” Ricky says,
his nostrils flaring.

He takes another step towards me, and I take one backwards.

“You disregarded the rules. If you were anyone else, you’d
be out on your ass.”

Another
step
forward. Another
step
backwards.

“I wouldn’t have left if this didn’t feel like a prison,” I
say, not daring to look behind me as my back hits the wall.

Ricky closes the space quickly, getting within inches of me.
“Excuse me.”

“Ricky, there are walls surrounding this place. Not just the
physical ones, but the walls you create with all your rules.”

“For your protection.”

“It also keeps people in. I had more freedom when I was
five. There are men with guns everywhere who you can’t argue with. I just
wanted to get away from it all. Get away from the nightmares, the constant
reminder that this new world sucks. Just for a day, I wanted to live my life
the way I wanted to.”

“You could’ve asked me, I’d have taken you anywhere.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask. And I wanted to get away from you.
I see you every day, and even when you are not here, I am constantly reminded
of your presence. You have me being watched by babysitters nearly twenty-four
hours a day,” I say.

“Only because you need them,” Ricky says, and for the first
time I can smell the booze on his
breath
.

I knock away his hand that is next to me on the wall. I
should have noticed before, the slightly glazed look in his eyes. The fact that
he’s drunk just pisses me off even more.

“You couldn’t even have this conversation sober?” I ask.

“I’m not drunk,” Ricky says, standing defensively, putting
his other hand against the wall. “And don’t change the subject. I’m sorry that
it is so awful for you here. Next time the world ends, I’ll try to make sure
that we end up somewhere you prefer.”

“Ricky, you make this place a prison,” I say, trying to keep
my voice calm. “You’re always watching and controlling everything. Controlling
me.”

Something in Ricky’s expression changes, and his whole face
looks different. The fire that is behind his eyes consumes his whole face. The
hand that I knocked away from the wall shoots out, and a crunching sound fills
the air.

Ricky is panting. The rage he is feeling is evident by his
facial expression. I look over at where his fist went through the wall, which
was an inch from my head. It is still embedded in the wall up to his wrist. His
eyes start to widen with a drunken confusion. I slip out from under his arm,
and he turns around, his arm still stuck in the wall.

“Charlie I–,” he starts, talking a step towards me.

I stumble backwards for the door. How could he do this to
me? Did he mean to hit me and miss? My cheek tingles. Who is he?

I yank open the door and stumble through it. Daren catches
me.

“Charlie, you can’t leave the house,” he says, putting his
hands on my shoulders.

“He just put his fist through the wall next to my head,” I
say, jerking myself out of his reach. My body is shaking. “I’m not staying.”

Daren doesn’t follow me as I go to Nicole’s house. I knock
on her door, trying not to draw attention to myself. My hands shake by my side
as I wait.

She answers it. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and
there is a red mark on her left cheek from where she was laying on it.

“Charlie,” she says.

She looks me over and steps aside. I can feel her eyes on
me, but I can’t look at her. I’m not sure what I’ll see on her face. I don’t
want pity.
 

She offers to light a candle, but I say no. I sit on the bed
that I made the night before we had our adventure. I bring my knees up to my
chest, wrapping my arms around them. The air in here was different then, full
of excitement.

“What happened?” she asks, sitting down next to me.

“He put his fist through the wall right next to my face,” I
say, looking in front of me.

It replays in my head over and over. I see his facial
expression. I can hear the sound of the wood snapping. I can smell the blood
that was dripping off his hand. I remember his heavy breathing.

Nicole doesn’t say anything but wraps her arm around me.

I never thought Ricky would lay a hand on me. I knew he
could yell at me until he was blue in the face, and I was deaf, sure. He
promised that he would never hurt me. He told me that I had already had more
than my fair share of pain in my life. He didn’t want to add to it.

His dad was a violent drunk and beat Ricky until he was old
enough to hit back. He said that he would never make anyone feel the way that
his father made him feel.

But he did. He did to me what his father did him. He bullies
me to get what he wants. He used his physical size against me. He put his hand
through the wall next to my head, just inches away from my face.

If he had hit me, he would have broken my face. It wasn’t
just a slap. His full strength went into that punch. God. Acid tickles my
throat.

He might not have hit me, but he wanted to. I could see the
anger in his face
;
the rage. All those times he’s
grabbed me; I should have seen something like this coming. I should have known
better.

But I guess the apple really doesn’t fall too far from the
tree.

Especially when that apple likes to drink.

“He’s going to come,” I tell her, covering my hands with my
face.

“Are you sure? Daren might
—
”

“He’ll come. He always does. Always will,” I whisper, a
shiver running up my spine.

It was the first time that he left to go looking for
supplies after I had found out about Danny. I had barricaded myself inside of
my room and refused to come out.

“Just go away,” I scream at the door. “You just want to
leave me like everyone else in my life. FINE. Just go.”

The door thumped, and a part of me knew that I was being
childish, but I couldn’t stop myself. I knocked over my nightstand and threw my
mattress across the room.

“Charlie, please. Talk to me,” Ricky says.

“JUST LEAVE,” I scream, letting out a sob.

“Charlie, what did I promise you the first time that I
left?”

“GO AWAY.”

“What did I promise you?”

I let out another sob, shaking my head.

“Tell me what I promised you.”

“You promised that you would always come back for me. That
you would never leave me alone in this world.”

“I will come back Charlie. I promised you, and I would never
break a promise to you. I will always come back for you.”

And he did. He always came back for me.
 

What a future I’ll have. The irony is almost laughable. All
those nights I stayed up and worried he wouldn’t come back to me. Now I’m
worried that he will.

April 7

Through the night, I jumped at every noise. Waiting. That
was the worst part. Knowing that something was going to happen and knowing that
there was nothing I could do to stop it.
 

Dawn comes, but Ricky hasn’t.

“He didn’t come,” she says.

“He will. Daren must’ve talked him down for last night,” I
say. I pat her on the knee. “Let’s try to get a little bit of sleep.”

“I know you well enough to know that you aren’t about to
sleep,” Nicole says, but she can’t hide her yawn.

“You will be of no use to me if you aren’t rested,” I tease,
but my heart isn’t in it. My heart has a bigger hole in it than the wall does.
“Just go ahead and sleep. You’ll hear if anything happens.”

She gets up, pats my head, and goes to lay down. She slides
on her mat, relaxing, and in a few minutes she’s asleep.
 

It is hard to believe that it happened. I’ve never seen him
lose control of himself. Is that what is bubbling under the surface? If an
episode like this happens once, then it will happen again. Is that what he is
like when he isn’t with me? After seeing that side of him, it isn’t hard to
picture him killing anyone.

I can only imagine what my parents would think. I was strong
and independent. By the time I was twelve, I was doing my own laundry and could
cook myself dinner. I was planning to go to some little college out of state
where I would get a scholarship for soccer. My parents loved and hated my
independence.

Then, when I lost my family, everything changed. I don’t
remember those first few months. Ricky had to force me to eat most days. I
wouldn’t listen to anyone else. When he wasn’t around, I’d have nightmares,
kicking and screaming in my sleep. I was fighting to save a family I had
already lost. Every night it was like losing them all over again.

I guarded my heart, not wanting to feel. My heart was being
torn apart, exploding slowly and continuously with every beat. Every memory
summoned up a new wave of pain until it was too much.

I promised myself that I would never love again. Then Ricky
weaseled his way in. At first, I used him as a physical outlet for my pain,
screaming at him, hugging him. I wasn’t surprised the first time that he kissed
me. In the beginning, our relationship was very unhealthy. He loved me, and I
needed him to keep the sadness away.

I don’t remember when our relationship went beyond
friendship. Someone doesn’t just make out with her friends, but I didn’t see
him as anything more than that. It took me three months to realize that he was
calling me his girlfriend.

Looking back through what I know of him and myself, I think
I just assumed that I loved him.

I knew that my parents loved each other because of how they
acted. Sunday mornings, my dad would read the paper. Mom would come into the
kitchen, and he would hold up the home and gardens part of it, knowing that was
what she wanted. They could finish each other sentences and laugh about it.

But there was something else. Something that not everyone’s
parents had. When my parents looked at each other, it was never with anything
but love. My mom told me that whenever she looked at my dad, she saw the
twenty-year-old man who spilled coffee on his pants on their first date.

It’s not like that with Ricky.

He doesn’t trust me to make my own decisions. He definitely
doesn’t trust me not to cheat on him. He has constant control over everything
that I do. And when he looks at me, it is like he is looking at something that
he owns. He’s always towering over me, or pulling me against him. He has a
physically dominating presence, but he wasn’t always that way.

A soft knock on the door makes my stomach freeze. The knock
doesn’t wake Nicole up, so I get up, and creep to the door. I put my foot a few
inches away from the door and open it till it hits my shoe.

The left side of Ricky’s face is in the frame. His eyes are
bloodshot and puffy. I glance down at his right hand and see that it is
bandaged.

“What do you want?” I ask softly, glancing behind me to see
that Nicole is still asleep. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“Charlie, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, his voice cracking.
“Please, just come home. It won’t happen ever again. I swear. I—I don’t
know what came over me. Please just come home.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” I say, starting to shut the door.

His foot moves, jamming it in the door. He puts his hand on
the door, ready to push.

“I gave you space; now I’m asking you to come home. I’m
sorry, I know what I did was wrong,” he says.

“You always apologize, Ricky. You’re always sorry about
something. And I always hear the words I’ll never do it again. But you do it again
and again. I don’t believe you, and I have no reason to.”

“Please, Charlie, I’m begging you,” he whispers, and I hear
the desperation in his voice.

“No,” I say firmly. “I’m done. The next time you get the
urge to slam your fist into something, I don’t want to be around. The next time
it might be my face. It isn’t worth the risk,” I say and when he starts to
protest, I raise my voice. “I’m done, Ricky. If you don’t move now, you will
blow any chance of me forgiving you.”

“Please.”

“Ricky, you’re doing the same thing to me that your dad
would do to you. You explode and then you come begging me to forgive you. I
know how much you hate your dad, do you want me to hate you that way too?”

He peels his hand away from the door first. He moves his
foot slowly, his eyes piercing mine. I close the door before he changes his
mind and turn around, resting my back on it and closing my eyes. Behind the
door he breathes heavily.

The door thumps, and I can picture him leaning against it
with both of his arms.
Another, slightly harder thump.
I can picture his head, resting against the door, his eyes closed.

Too many times I have given into him and let him have his
way. I will be no one’s punching bag. I am not going to forgive his behavior.
He apologizes, and then, when I refuse to forgive him, he uses physical force
against me again.
 

I stay against the door, waiting for him to leave.
Eventually Ricky walks away, and it isn’t until I can’t hear his footsteps
anymore that I open my eyes.

Nicole is sitting up on her mat, her expression wary. “Do
you think he’ll come back?”

I shake my head, my heart slowing down. “Not today. Not
after that. Probably tomorrow he’ll start to be all sweet again, trying to make
up for this.”

“I know that you don’t need me to tell you this,” she says,
a smile coming into her eyes. “But you did awesome. I’m so proud of you.”

I roll my eyes but can’t hide a small grin.

“So I have another idea,” Nicole says, looking at her hands.
“I overheard Alec talking with Daren about a meeting tonight. I think that it
might answer our questions.”

“Ricky always has meetings.”

“Does he always hold them half a mile away from base after
nightfall?” Nicole asks.

“You’re kidding me?” I ask. “A secret meeting. Tonight?”

She shrugs. “All the big guys are going.
Daren,
Ricky, and Alec for sure.
I’m sure Jack as well.”

“Why would they meet in secret like that?” I ask. “They
could use Ricky’s house or Daren’s or the bunker.”

“Where they are going would be private. Ricky controls who
goes in and out of the gates. He could easily make sure they let no one out
during that time. He wouldn’t have to worry about being overheard,” Nicole
says.

I know they have meetings outside the gate every now and
then. I just assumed that they were getaways for the boys where they could gossip
about everything. I know they like to drink while they are out there. I guess
getting drunk might not have been their only reason for going out into the
woods. No one, especially me, would ever be able to overhear
their
conversation.

“How are we supposed to get out to sneak to this
super-secret meeting in the middle of the woods? Do you even know where in the
woods we need to go?”

“Do I have to come up with everything on my own?” she asks,
giving me a look. “Where would Ricky go for a meeting like this?”

There is only one place where he keeps alcohol. It is far
enough away to not be overheard but no so far that he couldn’t walk back drunk.

“He is having the meeting where he keeps the booze,” I say,
trying to remember the place. He only took me there once, and it was to show me
where the extra medical supplies were if anything happened to him. “I can get
us there.”

“Great. Now we just need a plan to get out.”