Текст книги "The Wounded"

Автор книги: Lauren Nicolle Taylor

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

A loud banging pulled me from my vengeful thoughts. In the far right corner, a man kicked a door with unhappy enthusiasm. When I got closer, I saw it was Frederick.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my eyes focused on the giant, boot-sized dent in the door.

“I just want to be alone,” he said, frustrated. I understood that. This was one open space. There was no privacy. I agreed and started kicking the door as well, the shock of it not giving, shooting shockwaves of pain up my leg.

Finally, the lock snapped and splinters of wood flew everywhere, like sharp rain. We pushed door gingerly and saw that it lead to a stairwell. It went down one flight and up about six, until I could see a fragment of open sky overhead. Frederick patted my arm. “Thank you. I just need some time to think about Hana without everyone watching me.”

I put my hands behind my back, standing on my tiptoes to try to catch his eyes. “Do you want some company?”

He shook his head slowly. “No, thank you. Don’t take this the wrong way, little rabbit, but you remind me of her.”

“Oh, that’s ok. I understand.” As he swung around the first handrail, I said, “Can you just let me know when you come down? I want to know that you’re safe.”

“Sure,” he said as he took two steps at a time with his extended limbs.

I closed the door and left Frederick to mourn. Something I felt I couldn’t quite do yet, because I wasn’t sure who I was mourning.

*****

I returned to my little rectangle of concrete and stared at my hands, picking out the dark creases that ran across my palm like rivers of mud. When Frederick tapped me on the shoulder an hour later, I felt like he had zapped me with a stunner.

“You should go. It will be good for you,” he said, pointing to the door and upwards.

I got up and made my way over to the door, tripping over people and ducking when I saw Pelo. After only twenty-four hours in here, I felt like I needed air, even if it was ashy. I wanted to taste the wind. Pushing the door open, I ran up the stairs.

I reached the top, and the howl of the wind brought me back to the bodies buried in ash. Gulping, I put my hand over my mouth. This was where the rest of the car park had broken off and slid towards the Hole. I crept towards the edge and peered over. It all looked so precarious, so ready to crumple and squash everyone inside. I shook my head and pulled back, the tips of my ears and nose screaming for warmth. I turned back and scanned the level. Everything was violently snapped in half. Although this violence had happened hundreds of years ago, it still lived in this gaping lesion of a building.

A burning smell crept up my nose, filling me with a sense of comfort, with home. I followed the smell to glowing embers and a small pile of debris, glowing against a bright green, shiny vehicle. One car was left behind. Did the others make it out, or were they somewhere in that Hole with the others?

I sat down with my back against a crumbling wall and searched the sky, my head scratching against the rough concrete that was all-too familiar. The moon was a sliver, like a wound stabbed through the sky. I could almost imagine on the other side was some bright, golden world—almost.

The wind still howled, blowing embers and smoke around me like a sparking tornado. I stamped out the fire and reached out to touch the car. It was such a vibrant color. A yellow stripe ran down the side. It represented a life I couldn’t understand, and a life that was lost down a loud, whirling tunnel of fire and hate. But for all of that, for its wastefulness, it was still beautiful.

I swiped my hand across the window and peered inside. It was dark and clean. Strands of beads and gold and red ornaments hung from a mirror in the center. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I moved around the car, trying each one, but they were all locked.

I pulled on the handle harder and felt it give slightly, the metal making a gritty noise as it fought against me.

“Are you trying to escape?” a familiar voice asked, an edge of gruffness to it. I jumped at the voice and pulled my finger out, reopening a cut as they grazed the rusty metal.

“Ouch!” I put my finger in my mouth, instantly regretting it as the taste of rust made me want to vomit.

He was there fast, wrapping his arms around me and inspecting my finger. “Are you ok?” A question that seemed impossible to answer.

I nodded and returned to pulling at the door handle, bringing my foot up to try and lever it open.

“I’m fine,” I said, my forehead creased in concentration. “I just want to see inside.” I twisted, feeling the ache of my broken rib seesawing over my abdomen. I doubled over with my hand still hanging on limply to the handle. “Ah.”

I heard an exasperated sigh. “Of course you do,” he said, placing his hand over mine and tugging the handle. My body hummed at the contact. The door popped and creaked open slowly, solid, compacted dust falling from the crack.

Joseph looked down at me with concern, and then he smirked. “I think you better let me give you that examination.” He swept his arm in front of him and indicated for me to go inside the car.

“I’m fine,” I grimaced, “but if it will shut you up, then let’s get on with it.”

I shuffled along the long back seat and let myself sink into the cushions. Wiggling into further into them, I let out a big sigh. “Where’s Orry?” I asked.

Joseph searched his pocket and withdrew a small flashlight. “He’s sleeping,” Joseph said, his expression hard. “He can sleep.”

He put the flashlight between his teeth and put his hands on my waist.

I tried not to wince when his hand brushed over my ribs. “You can’t sleep?” I asked.

Joseph’s warm hands pushed gently on my right side, and then moved to my left. When he pushed around the base of my ribs, I let out a sharp squeak. He took the torch into his right hand and spoke, “I sleep, just not very well. It’s hard you know. Nightmares.”

I nodded. I knew.

He tenderly moved his fingers up my ribs, gliding over them and pushing carefully. I breathed in sharply. He stopped. “Does that hurt?”

I shook my head. I wanted to say that nothing hurt. But I was in pain. I felt like I would be until we were together again.

I put my hand over his and brought it to my lap. “Talk to me.”

He looked down at our hands. “I don’t know. What good would it do? Telling you only makes it more real. I don’t know if I want that.”

I leaned in and kissed him softly. His lips received but didn’t return.

“Whatever it is, just tell me, or it’ll never end. It’ll stay inside you, eat at you.” I grazed the corner of his mouth with my finger. “And then this sadness that’s living in there, it won’t go away.”

He opened his mouth to speak. I braced myself against what I thought was coming. I knew he was angry with me.

He released his hand and lifted my shirt again. “Your lower rib is broken. But it should heal well.”

He tried to withdraw, but I put my hand over his and held it there.

“Joseph…”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, incensed.

“I’m sorry.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “I know. It’s ok. I know why you went. I know you failed. How can I put any more on top of that?”

I laughed half-heartedly. “I can take it.”

He smiled. “You know, I was really angry. When you left, I couldn’t believe it. But then, everything that’s happened, the people we’ve lost… Well, it took over. I don’t care about that anymore. In a way, I’m glad you weren’t there.” He gripped the edge of the seat strongly, like he would rip it up. I felt tears sliding down my face. I felt so guilty it was strangling me.

“I wish I had been there with you,” I said, reaching for that tense hand.

“I don’t,” he said in a voice so bitter it left a sour taste in my mouth. “You would have done something stupid, like offering yourself up in Deshi’s place. Then Orry would have lost his mother all over again.”

I held his hand against me closer, even though it hurt to breathe. I felt like I needed to feel some pain.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He hit the side of the door. “Stop saying that! You don’t know. They killed Apella. They took my best friend. Alexei is a shell, and everyone is looking to me. You want to know my nightmare? It was living those days, thinking you were dead. Thinking you’d left me, and you weren’t coming back.”

I smiled and cupped his chin, forcing him to look at me. Surprised by my own calm. “And you said you weren’t angry.”

He sniffed and bent his forehead down to touch mine. “I guess I am,” he said softly, but then he huffed. “But mostly I’m just so sad, Rosa.”

I leaned forward, kissing him, and this time he returned my kiss fully. He parted my lips and pressed down like weeks were piled into this one kiss. His hand snagged in my hair and he pulled my head back, pressing his mouth to my neck. Skipping over my bruised rib, he ran his hand under my shirt and over my bra. My heart skipped into a knowable rhythm. I couldn’t breathe or I was breathing hard, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was we were returning to something.

I put my leg over him so I was sitting in his lap, rushing my hands under his shirt, pulling it off in a struggle. I wrapped my tongue around his earlobe, and he moaned as he fumbled around for shirt buttons, giving up and tugging it over my head. It was still hanging off my wrist as he started to unbutton my pants. I pulled them off awkwardly, everything kicked into the well behind the driver’s seat. Clothes were in the way.

We paused for a moment; the thin stream of light of the abandoned penlight cut a line across his eyes and the bridge of his nose. I put my hands to his face and took him in, one hand still buttoned up in a shirt cuff but both burning. Joseph’s stare was loving and intense. He lifted me up, and we collapsed into one another.

This was different. This was the same.

It was rougher, warmer… more need and less discovery. I was certain it felt exactly as it should. For a moment, we could lose our sadness. We could wrap around each other and forget the disaster surrounding us; the ashy claws that would try to drag us down.

I wasn’t making it up to him. Anger would still be there later. But we were ‘it’. Always. We would work it out. If we had time. We would.

We never had a choice.

“We need to get back to Orry,” I said, my breath coming out steamy. The windows were fogged up, and it was starting to feel a bit stale in the car. Joseph nodded and rummaged around on the floor, separating out his clothes from mine. He nudged my shoulder and winked at me.

“I love you, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. I never doubted that part. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

As I pulled on my pants, something occurred to me. “How’d you know I failed? I mean, my mother could have been back at the hospital with the others.”

Joseph shrugged. “Pelo told me.”

Anger bubbled busily beneath the warmth of what we had just done.

I picked up the torch and shone it at his face. “Oh yeah, what else did Pelo tell you?”

Joseph looked mischievous, his beautiful eyes shining more gold than green under the light. “He warned me.”

I bit down on my tongue in shock. “Warned you about what?”

“About your little friend. He said you were rather close on the journey home.”

My fingers curled into a fist, begging me to punch something.

“Can you do me a favor?” I asked in a tight voice, my lips barely moving as I spoke.

“What? You’re not going to ask me if I’m worried about this ‘friendship’ you have?” he said with mock hurt.

I ignored him. He knew. He knew how I felt, what I was capable of. The idea that there was something going on between Rash and me, other than friendship, was ridiculous and didn’t deserve any attention.

“Just do this favor for me. You warn Pelo that if he doesn’t stay out of my business, he’s going to be sorry.”

Joseph face settled into seriousness. “You know, you really should give him a chance.”

I crossed my arms angrily. “He had his chance. He threw it away.” I could feel unwanted tears brimming and teasing my eyelashes. “Just tell him, ok?”

Joseph grabbed at me with both hands and swept me into an awkward embrace, my back pressed into the armrest. “Ok.”

We had to leave, all three thousand of us, minus those lying in the crater. But now I didn’t want to. My body was reluctant, juiceless. I’d been squeezed too hard, and I wasn’t sure what was left. Joseph dragged me along. I walked, carrying Orry, next to Pelo, trying to see what my father was, and what was underneath all the energy and scatty movements, but I came up with very little. I thought about to giving him a chance as Joseph had asked, but I didn’t know how.

I trailed my hand along the filthy, graffiti-covered wall. The black loops and straight brush strokes were hypnotic and a good distraction from the anticipation of sliding on my belly along the collapsing concrete incline.

We stopped when we hit a wall of people in front, and someone at the front cried out. “Babies!”

People muttered, “Babies, babies,” and someone reached for Orry.

I snatched him to my chest and looked to Joseph. He smiled down at me kindly and nodded. “It’s all right, this is how they did it when we arrived.”

I let hands pull me to the front of the line. Hessa was being passed up into the concrete pipe, another person’s arms stretched out ready to receive him, and then he disappeared into darkness. He was quiet but for a little squeak. It sounded as if he had lost his voice.

A woman with kind eyes and thick tendrils of red-brown hair fixed into long, looping plaits smiled at me. “You go up, dear, and we will pass Orry to you.”

I felt small and warm, cradled by these people’s compassion, but still scared to let Orry go.

The woman beckoned with her fingers and tugged at Orry’s hand-knitted cardigan. “Go,” she said, gently but urgently.

I placed Orry gingerly in her arms and hoisted myself into the pipe.

*****

Inside was a network of interlacing torchlight, all held between grimacing mouths as people lay on the concrete slab with their feet atop of each other’s shoulders.

I followed their light, wiggling up, getting a shove or a hand pulling me up as I went. If this were the Woodlands, people would just go. There was no thought, no conceiving of others’ needs. But here they were, forming a human ladder to help me up, to help Orry.

When I reached the top, I turned around and waited, arms stretched into the darkness, my fingers longing for the weight of my baby. I watched as Orry was carried with so much care, like he was as delicate and breakable as a thin, shelled, sugar egg. They talked to him as they passed him, muttering unintelligible words of comfort, until he was safe in my arms. With Orry in my arms, I looked down, feeling like I might cry. The ladder was laden with more helpers, waiting to bring him safely to the ground, to join Hessa in the alley.

Sometimes I worried that bringing Orry into their world was a mistake, that the pain and violence he has had to witness would damage him in some way. But when I saw these people, the way they treated him as precious, the kindness and strength they exuded with their actions, I knew he would be ok. If we could pull this together, he would be better off for knowing life here with the Survivors.

*****

It was a different feeling, walking away from the car park. Thousands of words clashed and ground together in the air. The wind was still strong and biting, with tiny teeth of ash and grit, but we were louder and stronger. We poured in and out of the buildings, with scarves and masks over our mouths, holding onto each other when one threatened to topple over the edge, heading home with a purpose.

When we hit the first tangle of bodies, now buried deeper in the black soot but still painfully visible, it went quiet. Words were ripped from our mouths as the wounds that were delicately gauzed over reopened.

Pelo was the first.

He turned away from us, tugged at a vine still bumpy and budded, not ready to show petals, and pulled it from the earth. Solemnly and deliberately, he threw it into the crater. We all followed its arc and gasped when it landed, clumsily draped over a jeaned leg. Hysterically, I waited for the leg to move. It didn’t.

The sound of hundreds, and eventually thousands, of hands ripping at the sparse flowers nestled in between ropey tree trunks and peeking shyly out from under slabs of broken road was strange. Stranger still was the sound and sight of them whizzing through the air and landing on and in between the bodies. It was beautiful and heartbreaking. There would be no burial for these Survivors. This was the best and the only thing we could do.

I gazed down at one long-stemmed flower lying over a small, delicate hand, facing palm upward, almost as if it were holding it. I stared long and hard, willing those fingers to close around the stem. Joseph put a hand on my shoulder and said, “We have to keep moving.”

I lifted my eyes slowly, casting them over each and every lost Survivor. I wouldn’t forget them. I took a step forward, bending my toe awkwardly over a loose section of asphalt. I pitched forward onto my hands, managing to stop myself from falling face first into the hole with Orry, my hand sunk deep into the insubstantial ash.

“Rosa!” cried Joseph as he put his arm under me and helped me up. I was lifted off the ground like a crab from the water, my arms and legs dangling in the air.

My eyes caught sand pouring, moving like a cascade of water over a person’s back.

“Stop!” I said sharply, still hanging in the air with Orry gripped to my chest. “Look over there, what’s that?”

Joseph hung me there as he searched the edge of the crater. “Oh my God.”

I could feel his arm shaking from my weight and scrabbled to put my feet on the ground.

I sat down and shielded my eyes. The morning sun created a flat and angry shadow that ran like a knife through the center of the crater. “Is that a…?” I didn’t want to say it. Hope clawed its way out of my throat. It kind of stung, because it didn’t seem possible.

“It’s a person. Look! Look!” Pelo yelled as he tugged on peoples’ sleeves and directed them to where we were looking.

Joseph smiled, and I grinned until my face hurt. A Survivor. Someone had managed to claw their way out.

It was so far away that we couldn’t tell if it was a male or female. It was right on the other side of the crater, close to where the town began. But it was a definitely a moving, living person, gradually and doggedly scaling the cliff.

We were still, watching closely, gasping as the person slipped and rolled back down a few meters, like they were climbing up a waterfall slick with moss. They gained a little ground but kept skidding down.

Everyone moved faster, a sea of excited people pushing, pulling, and bringing each other closer. I was separated from Joseph; he seemed on a mission to get to the front. I watched as his head floated further away, striding with force through the mass until he vanished. I slipped and stumbled, trying not to get knocked over by the swell of anxious people. A hand grabbed mine and pulled me in from the edge.

“Don’t let go of me,” Pelo said. I didn’t. I held on tightly as we made our way back to the edge of town.

We got to the other side ahead of most of the others. Just in time to see Joseph sprinting around the edge to where we had last seen movement. Now there was none.

Alexei bounded behind him, a thin, white streak against the dark green trees.

Through the wind, through the screeching, the dust sticking to our throats like talcum powder, his scream cut through.

“Apella!”

Something struck in me like a match. Apella, Apella, Apella. A song. A sound. Hope. Life.

I dropped Pelo’s hand and faced him.

“Can you take Orry home?”

He seemed surprised and flustered by this request. “I… I don’t know where you live,” he stuttered. “Where are you going?”

I patted his arm. “They know,” I said as I gestured around me. Someone nodded behind me.

I glanced back at Joseph. He had stopped running and was squatting down by the edge. Once they hit the town side, others had started to run towards Alexei and Joseph perched on the edge. We couldn’t all go. I had to get there. I had to see if it was her. I had to help.

I handed Orry to Pelo and pressed both my hands against them, wrapping them together. “Please do this for me. My family is over there.”

He looked upset, left out, but his face forced a smile. “Of course. Of course. You go.”

Orry whimpered a little in the arms of a stranger. Pelo held him tightly as he watched me run away.

*****

Heat glanced off my back as my steps pressed desperately into the slurry ground, although the sun was a presence rather than a force. The heat was my fear and hope burning into my skin. I slammed into the scaffolding propping one of the ramshackle buildings up, as I spun sharply towards Joseph and Alexei.

Quickly and without warning, the trees took over and I was winding my way in and out of thick, rough evergreens and crunching down on pine needles, the smell of sap and dirt slowing me down. The thought that it wasn’t her slowed me down further.

When I reached the place, about fifty people had crowded around the spot we’d last seen movement.

“Where’d they go?” one man said.

“Maybe it was a trick of the light.”

Joseph’s voice rang out above the many bobbing, searching heads, and I followed it. “No. I saw her.”

Alexei stood next to Joseph, his eyes skimming back and forth. People were starting to pull away from the powdery ash edge as they gave up.

I pushed my way to Joseph and sat beside him, scanning, looking for some sign of movement.

Everything was black, black, black. Where did they go?

Black… black… pinkish white…

I lifted my hand and pointed shakily. There, cutting through the black, was the thinnest sliver of pink-white. It stretched up, the ash sifting and spilling over it like water. A slender white hand. A tattoo on the wrist.

I gasped rather than spoke, “Apella.”

Alexei was hysterical. Fear and excitement made a mess of his thoughts and actions as he danced back and forth across the bank

Joseph rose. “Rope. Get some rope. Now,” he ordered.

Voices carried the request, and rope appeared arm over arm until it reached us.

Apella revealed herself, flipping onto her back, taking a long, raw breath, and then coughing and spluttering as she tried to exhale. Her eyes were lined with black, her mouth and nostrils clogged with ash.

I made eye contact. She was so close, no more than ten meters down the edge.

She blinked and listlessly moved one arm, trying to find something to hold on to. We all watched in horror as she skidded further down towards the center.

I snatched the rope and threaded it around the tree, grabbing glances at Alexei’s panicked face. If he had to watch her die, he would end like a bad book. I tested the strength of my knot and then threw the rope down the cliff towards Apella’s body. It landed just a foot from the top of her head, which she lifted, her eyes deadened like she was ready to give up.

She looked from Alexei to me and made a grab for it, missing by a fraction and sliding slowly downwards, mouthing the words, “I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” I screamed. You have to, I thought. We couldn’t lose anyone else.

She laid one cheek against the rock and ash, shivering, beads of silky dust sliding off her skin like beads of sweat.

Joseph hastily pulled the rope upwards.

“What are you doing?” I screeched. “You can’t give up yet.”

He looked to me, his face stony, a tiny bridge of sweat forming across his perfectly crooked, freckled nose. “I’m not giving up. I’m going down.”

He tied the rope around his waist and turned to face me. I could feel the blood leaving my face in streaks. Inside I was thinking, No, swearing and thinking of ways to stop him. Outside, I straightened myself, kissed him, and sent him on his way into that black hole. “Be careful,” I said, wavering, swaying a little.

He winked. “I always am.” He grimaced, his face showing the strain as he slowly edged his way towards her, his legs buried knee-deep in ash after only a few steps.

I grabbed Alexei by the shoulders, trying to calm him down. He bit away at his fingers and pulled at what was left of his hair.

I clamped down on the bony cups of his shoulders. “Alexei, stop.”

His eyes had retreated, the pale blue sunk below his grief. He stopped moving and stuttered, “Rosa, yes, sorry. I’m, well, I didn’t expect this. She’s supposed to be at the hospital.”

I shook my head and pointed. “She’s right there. She was never at the hospital. Alexei, you need to get a grip. She needs you to be strong.”

I wasn’t sure if I got through to him, but he stopped jittering and watched with me as our loved ones tried to meet in the worst of places.

I think I held my breath the entire time and only let air in when the two of them collapsed on the edge of the hole. It was only then that we noticed the entire town was watching us. No one had gone to their homes. They all stood watching and waiting to hear the words.

Joseph gently laid Apella on her side and rubbed her back. She convulsed and vomited black sludge.

She looked dead but for a tiny rise in her ribcage. Maybe she should have been. We were waiting for something to flag, a noise, a cough, some hope.

And then she opened her eyes and said, “Alexei.”

I turned to the survivors and yelled as loud as I could, “She’s alive!”

The sound and surge of almost three thousand people clapping and cheering, and the sound of feet stamping with relief and joy was amazing.

Apella’s tiny, pale, crescent moon-shaped body lay in the grass in front of me. I kneeled down and kissed her cheek, the tears forming mud and sliding down her face.

“Look what you did.” I smiled at her.

I wrapped my arms around Joseph’s waist and pulled him closer, wanting to wrap the four of us into one giant cocoon. “You too,” I said. “You’re like hero or something.”

Addy was dead and Apella was drowning, slowly.

That was where we were. I knew the truth of it. But I couldn't accept it.

Matthew seemed at peace with Addy’s death. He’d expected it and had said his goodbyes to her before we left. I had denied it, and now it felt like my grief was dangling from a string just out of reach. I had no energy to jump for it.

We had been waiting at the hospital for three days. No sleep, no peace. Our bodies contorted to fit into cold, plastic chairs. Life was on hold.

We ate and drank other peoples’ food. The Survivors had poured into the town and flooded every corner, cleaning up, cooking, and caring.

*****

Rash placed his hand on mine and Joseph stared at us touching, my skin hot and prickly under his gaze.

“Are you ready to hear it yet?” Rash whispered, his finger absently stroking my knuckles.

I bowed my head, ashamed of my cowardice. Rash had a message for me from Addy, but I couldn't hear it. Not yet. Not when I could lose Apella.

He let it go.