Текст книги "The Release"
Автор книги: Shelbi Wescott
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
Rain dripped on her head and she shivered, her teeth chattered. “Salem was my best friend. She…” Lucy stopped and took a second to compose herself, “gave everything she had to me. She was fun and loving. For many years, she was my sister…my only sister. I feel like I’ve lost my heart, my other half. I can’t imagine a world without her.”
Grant walked over to a rosebush and looked to Leland, “May I?” he asked and Leland nodded. He broke a single red rose off of the vine, between the thorns. It snapped easily in between his fingers. Tossing the rose on to Salem’s grave, Grant cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and said, “God our Father, your power brings us to birth, your providence guides our lives, and by your command we return to dust. Lord, those who die still love in your presence, their lives change, but do not end. I pray in hope for my family and friends and for all the dead known to you alone. Wipe away all our tears. Unite us together. And all God’s people said, amen.”
Lucy stammered out a belated amen. And then she looked slowly over to Grant, her eyebrows questioning.
He shrugged. “Catholic.”
“Full of surprises,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After they left Leland’s house, it took one hour to reach Lucy’s street.
Loaded down with bags of canned peaches, pickled green beans, baby corn, and strawberry jelly—something the old man insisted upon, despite their numerous objections—they wound their way through empty houses, a looted coffee house, a smoldering police station, until they reached Lucy’s neighborhood. Passing by familiar cars and facades, they trekked down the road in the open, their heads panning from side-to-side in an effort to catch movement.
It didn’t surprise anyone that the street was silent.
When Lucy’s house came into view, she tossed her bag with Leland’s food to Grant, who caught with a clumsy grasp. “Take this,” she said and then bolted. She ran, full speed, down the street.
It pained her how much she needed to see Ethan and how much she needed to ask him. They had remained mostly silent as they made their way to the house. Lucy tried to pry details out of Darla, but she had remained focused during their journey, trading only barbs and not information.
Lucy ran past the front door and straight to the side-door to the left of the carport and crashed her way through into their laundry room, pushing off the washing machine, and then she took the steps into her house two at a time. She ran across the family room, past the stairs, calling his name loudly and without reservation.
“Ethan! Ethan!”
“Here Lucy! I’m in here!” came the reply and Lucy followed his call into the den. Ethan rested on their father’s leather couch, the giant throw blanket from their mother’s alma mater tucked up around his legs. He looked at her bleary-eyed and then broke into a giant smile and threw his arms up in response. Lucy rushed into the embrace, crouching down near the edge of the couch to get the best grip and Ethan held his hands tightly across her back and squeezed.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said and Lucy was too overcome to respond, so she just tried to melt her body into his.
From the back part of the house, she could hear Darla and Grant enter from the carport and then slam the door. The house was alive with footsteps and muffled conversation.
“Who is with her?” Ethan asked and he dropped his arms, raised himself up on his elbows and craned his neck.
“Grant Trotter. A friend. But Ethan…” Lucy’s chin trembled and she bit her lip.
Ethan interrupted, “Wait…there’s someone else alive? Did you bring anyone else?”
Lucy shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away. She wasn’t ready to talk about Salem yet, the death was too recent, too fresh and too painful to mention.
Ethan blew air out his nose, muttered an expletive, and went back to lying down, crossing his hands over his chest and staring at the ceiling. “This is a mess.” He reached a hand out and locked hands with his sister.
“Ethan—”
“We do have much to talk about little sister. So much.” His tone implied disagreement, exhaustion and, Lucy thought, fear. But Darla swung into the room with Grant following behind. He slipped into the matching leather chair in the corner, and she walked right over to Ethan, ignoring Lucy’s presence on the ground beneath him. Without a word, she reached behind his head and grabbed a prescription bottle of pills from a side table and shook the orange container, counting them audibly as they rolled around.
“There are extra. You haven’t been taking them.” She dropped the bottle on Ethan’s chest and it started to roll, he caught it with his left hand and tossed it back up in the air. Swooping in, she caught it on its way back down. “I told you. No skipping.”
“We will run out of the supply,” Ethan groaned and sat up. He cracked his neck one way and then the other. “I’ll make them last.”
“No one likes a martyr,” Darla sighed and opened the bottle. She rattled it until two oblong white pills tumbled into her hand and she thrust them toward Ethan. He didn’t take them at first and then she moved her hand in closer, her body an inch from Lucy’s. He grabbed the pills, popped them in his mouth and swallowed them dry—opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue for effect, like a petulant teenager.
“Happy?” he asked.
“Let me see,” Darla said and made a motion to tear the blankets off his legs, but Ethan ducked his body in front of her hand. Then she paused, looking between Ethan and Lucy, and back again. “You didn’t tell her.”
“She’s been in this room for sixty-seconds!” Ethan replied, his tone angry and combative. “Come on Darla, give me a break.”
“I’ll ignore the opportunity for a joke,” she replied and then she looked around the room. “Where is he?” she asked, softening. She unhooked the holster from her hip and gripped the gun, then placed it on a high bookshelf, standing on her tiptoes to store it out of reach.
Ethan pointed above him to the second floor. “In the twins’ room. He discovered the Legos.”
Darla ducked her head out of the den and called up the stairs, “Teddy? Mommy’s home!”
Confused, Lucy looked between Ethan and Darla, and then she stood and wandered to the center of the room where she had a clear view of her family’s staircase. Then she saw the little boy. Carrying her brother’s tiger flashlight in one hand and a fireman hat in the other, the dark-haired child, with large eyes and a rash of freckles, bounded down the steps in a rush of energy and extremities. Arms flailing outward, feet stomping and jumping, the child didn’t stop until he reached his mother as a barricade, moving Darla back a few inches as she absorbed the hug.
“You were good for Ethan while I was gone?” she asked and the boy nodded vigorously. “And did you eat?”
“Hamburger,” Teddy answered.
Darla looked over her shoulder and saw Lucy staring. She put a protective arm on the boy and moved him into the light from the windows.
“Lucy, this is my son Theodore. Teddy, we call him.”
“You have a son,” Lucy stated and then immediately regretted not having anything else of value to say about it.
“I have a son.” For the first time since she met her, Lucy saw emotion in Darla’s eyes: A flicker of fragility underneath the comic-book persona. “He’s five. He’s sweet, and he loves to sing…and he’s intuitive,” Darla stopped and swallowed. “And he is alive because of your brother. We are alive because of your brother.” She picked the boy up and he wrapped his legs around her middle and placed his head on her shoulder.
“Mama,” Teddy whispered loudly. “What’s the girl’s name?”
“Lucy,” she answered. “Her name is Lucy. She’s Ethan’s sister, sweetie. Go ahead, say hello.”
“Hello,” Teddy said and then he buried his head into his mother’s shoulder, shielding his eyes. Then he lifted his head again and smiled, displaying a neat, straight row of perfect baby teeth, before burying his head again.
The child was around the same age as Harper. Lucy crossed her arms and smiled at the boy, her lip trembling. Then Lucy turned to Grant and she looked at him apologetically.
“I’m sorry, but can everyone just give me a moment with Ethan? Alone.”
She waited until Grant had risen from his seat and wandered off with Darla before she turned her attention back to her brother. The discharged duo followed Teddy up the stairs, their footsteps echoing overhead. It amused Lucy that this was the quietest she had ever heard her house. She kept waiting for the rowdy shouting from her brothers, the crashing and tumbling, or Harper’s whining that someone stole her toys.
“What’s going on?” Lucy’s voice was on edge. She took a giant step toward Ethan. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know how any of this must appear to you…” Ethan started and then frowned.
“Let’s start with this vaccine. With our siblings’ names on them? Can we start with that, please?”
“Okay.”
She gulped. “Okay, what? Just tell me what you know. Tell me everything.”
“I can’t. It won’t work like that. I don’t think you’d believe me.”
“Then what am I supposed to do? Wait until you feel like filling me in?”
Upstairs, Teddy dumped out what sounded like a crate of blocks.
“I’m really glad you’re home and that you’re okay. You don’t know how much I worried that I would lose you forever.”
“Darla said that I was safe. Are we safe?”
“From the virus, yes. We were already vaccinated.”
“When?”
“You don’t remember being vaccinated lately?” Ethan asked with his eyebrows raised. When Lucy’s stare remained blank, he sighed, and then added, “For our vacation. Our injections.”
“The ones for the trip? But…” she lowered her eyes and her head began to hurt. Her father had been the one to supply them with their inoculations and, at the time, it seemed reasonable and normal—par for the course of living in their household. After a rant about lobbyists and health-care costs, their dad had convinced their mother that he could talk his co-workers into providing him with the vaccines on the cheap. Lucy was starting to gather the facts, but still there was a shadow over what those facts implied.
“The vials we gave Spencer were back-ups. A precaution. A safeguard.”
“Where did our vials go then? The Ethan and Lucy vials?”
Ethan looked to the ceiling. Darla and Teddy’s voices drifted downstairs.
“Oh.”
“I couldn’t—” he struggled with his words. “She helped me. And Teddy is so young.”
“Of course.” The decision seemed reasonable. There was no way Ethan could have predicted Salem and Grant surviving to Day Six. While she wanted to respect Ethan’s compassion toward these strangers—especially a child—she fought the instinct to be angry with him for giving away the only way she could help her friends. It was too late for Salem, but she felt so impotent and lost with Grant, upstairs, just waiting to die. The power to stop that death was in Ethan’s control and he squandered it.
“You should have kept some back,” Lucy said.
“We had no way of knowing.”
“That isn’t the point!” She felt her cheeks blush. Arguing with Ethan always felt so personal.
“Spencer wasn’t going to let you go. There were talks happening with Darla before he even got you to the front office. Don’t you think we tried everything? You don’t know what it would’ve taken to get you out of there. And besides…how was I supposed to know about the boy?”
“Grant.”
“Grant. Right.”
“He’s going to die and we could have saved him.”
“That isn’t my fault,” Ethan said to her, his voice rising.
Lucy threw her hands up in the air. “Then whose fault is it?”
Ethan shook his head. “Lucy. Just stop. It hasn’t been a picnic for me either. Can we stop? Let’s back-up.” Whisking away the throw blanket from his legs, Ethan exposed the broken, beaten, and bloodied mess that lay beneath. His left leg dangled unmoving to the side; there was a swollen mass above the knee that seemed to float to the side, which defied Lucy’s understanding of human anatomy. The skin was yellow and black like someone had attempted to paint him into an exotic animal.
Recoiling at first and then moving her body closer to inspect the injury, Lucy held out a tender hand and it hovered above the wreckage.
“This looks horrific,” she said. “Ethan…what happened?”
He took a breath and then launched into his story. He had gone to the airport looking for their family and encountered Darla and Teddy there. It was the boy that Ethan encountered first; the child was calm, but rattled, and Ethan wanted to get him somewhere safe. Compelled, in the absence of his siblings and his mother, to do something good amidst the disaster, Ethan convinced Darla that he could offer them shelter.
“She wasn’t convinced at first. But as soon as we got out of the airport and to a side street, this truck comes out of nowhere, barreling toward me. The driver…impaired by the virus…is—”
“Dying?” Lucy asked, interrupting, and the question drew Ethan out of his storytelling daze.
“Or dead already.”
“He hit you.”
“Pinned me to the side of another car.”
Lucy gasped and looked down at his legs, imagining her brother stuck between two vehicles, scared and facing the realization that there was no one there who could help him. “You could have died.”
“I should have. Darla…she had to pull the dead man out of the truck and put the car in reverse to get me out. But my legs were broken. Shattered, I suppose. Not like we could just call 911 and hightail it to the ER, right? And poor Teddy. Just standing there…so concerned. But so brave too. That’s a brave little dude.”
Lucy waited for him to continue.
“Good Samaritans brought me home eventually. Some couple in their forties, driving a minivan. Carting people around obstacles like some sort of taxi service. By that time, I think Darla figured she was stuck with me. She really did save my life though, by helping unpin me, flagging down the van. And then everything she did afterward to get me medicine. I was in shock. I should have died, but she just, I don’t know, made it a priority to get me better and she didn’t have to. She didn’t know me.”
“You owed her.”
“Yes.”
“And now she owes you?”
“Maybe she sees it like that, but I don’t know. It was…” Ethan paused, “it was awful out there…Lucy…everything about this. And I feel so…I felt like I couldn’t help you…” Ethan began to cry. He collapsed forward and buried his head in his hands. She had never really seen Ethan cry before and it took her by surprise. “I just keep thanking God that you’re alive,” he said after he composed himself. “After everything…Mom’s phone messages, the house…”
Lucy had put a hand on her brother’s back and was patting him gently, but she paused.
“What phone messages?” Lucy blinked.
“I have a lot to tell you,” Ethan said, his voice quieter and more alert.
Both heads turned in unison as Darla reappeared in the doorway. She had changed her clothes and she was now wearing a pair of sweatpants that belonged to Lucy’s mother and a hooded sweatshirt that belonged to Galen; she stood barefoot clad from top to bottom in gray.
“Grant?” Lucy asked, attempting to make her question sound as casual as possible.
Darla shrugged. “He’s playing with Teddy. He said if he starts to feel sick he’ll leave the room. But Teddy knows what to look for. Teddy will tell us if anything changes.”
“That’s really sad.” Lucy didn’t mean it to sound harsh, but Darla bristled.
“The world changes and you change with it,” she answered, clearly defensive. “A lot can happen in a week.” She spun a lock of her hair between her fingers.
Lucy thought of poor Teddy, only a year younger than Harper. He seemed so oblivious, so fixated on his own needs, but also so aware that things had changed. Her heart ached for the children abandoned and orphaned, lost and confused. Those who, unlike Teddy, had no parents left to protect them. It was unfair.
“Ethan’s been telling me about how you helped him,” Lucy said. “Thank you.”
“Yeah well. It worked out that way. And he’s helped with Teddy and anyone who can be so nice to my kid, well, you know.” She smiled, but it was reserved and lacking. It was difficult to get a read on her.
“Does Teddy understand any of this?” Lucy asked. And Darla took a step forward. She shoved her hands into the pouch of the hooded sweatshirt.
“Teddy? Sure. A little. He knows he’s suffered a loss. He knows that our lives feel different.”
“I’m glad he has his mom though,” Lucy tried to smile. She meant it to be comforting, but Darla’s face fell.
“He has only one Mom,” she replied and she closed her eyes. “And I haven’t come to terms yet with that…with the idea of doing this by myself. I never thought I’d have to.”
“And you know? That—”
“That she’s gone?” Darla nodded. “Yes. It happened at the airport. Right away after landing and before Ethan and I saw each other. She went so quickly. It was the three of us and it was chaos and then she slipped away and I couldn’t stop to stay…I couldn’t have Teddy see. Couldn’t have him watch his mama die. Above all, he couldn’t see that.”
Ethan sniffed. “That’s how we met,” he said.
“I asked Teddy to stay by this trashcan to wait for me while I said goodbye.” Darla looked straight at Lucy, her emotion was raw, but she didn’t break. “And when I looked back, he was gone.”
“I found him crying about thirty feet away. He was disoriented. Wandered a few feet, got pushed around, ended up down the terminal. I picked him up,” Ethan added.
“Then I saw this guy holding my kid. I just lost my wife, I was a mess, and I thought someone was kidnapping my son. So, I took a swing at him.”
Ethan smiled. “I’m glad you missed.”
Darla returned the smile and then she closed her eyes. “Teddy was bawling for his mama. Over and over…just mama, mama, mama…and I couldn’t help him. Ethan—it was Ethan. He said he had to find his sister, who was his age, and did Teddy want to help him on an adventure? It was the only way to distract him from the fact that we both just…left her there.” She stopped, overcome with emotion and then she pulled her hand out and put it up as if to say, “No more.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lucy said and it felt so small and trivial.
“Me too.” Then Darla let out a thoughtful hum. “You never think it’ll be you who’s left behind to pick up the pieces. And then all of sudden you realize it is you and you didn’t get a choice. And maybe if you had the choice, maybe if someone had let you make the decision, you would have picked yourself to be the one to die. I mean, yes, I’m grateful to your brother.” Darla nodded toward Ethan with a smile. “What I did is no repayment. If I hadn’t decided to follow this kid around who was helping me with my son, we’d be dead. I may question how hard things are, but I can’t imagine a world without Teddy.”
Darla attempted to fill in some of the gaps of her and Ethan’s story. Like Lucy’s and Grant’s, it was one of survival against the odds. Once they got back to the house, Darla had left Ethan, with Teddy as a guardian, shivering and feverish, aching and unable to move, to raid the local super store a mile from their house. Luckily for them, the looting was just beginning and Darla’s tenacity and bullying got her right into the fray. During this Herculean task, she managed to locate heavy-duty painkillers and gauze. And she also happened to steal a wheelchair. She had marveled at the people still running out of the store with TVs and videogames, sporting equipment, clothes.
Food. Guns. Medicine. This was what people needed and those who knew what to steal were the dangerous ones. “Anyone using manpower to lug a fifty-inch plasma to his or her car was missing the point,” Darla had said.
Lucy realized that, if the car had killed Ethan, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been vaccinated. From start to finish, the fact that they were alive was a testament to something larger than them. The thought reminded her of Salem’s crucifix, shoved into her pocket. She took it out and held it in her hand, then put it on and clasped it around her neck.
With the sun setting, the house slipped into darkness. Darla started a fire in the den and then yelled upstairs for Grant so they could work together to get Ethan into his wheelchair for the first time—something Darla couldn’t do on her own. He barely passed through the study door and into the living room, but out in the open he could move about freely. While Darla hunched over the fire burning brightly in the fireplace, Teddy ran matchbox cars over the hardwood floors. Between the fire and a collection of candlesticks, the room was lit in a flickering orange hue.
Everyone’s features were cast in shadow.
Grant was quiet and staring at the wall. Occasionally he’d connect with a piece of conversation but, for the most part, he remained stoic and apprehensive. Lucy couldn’t blame him. She wondered what she would be thinking about if she knew she had hours left to live. She hated that Grant was spending this time with the rest of them trying to carve out daily routines. They were catching up with each other and plotting to move forward. She got up and sat next to him and placed a hand on his knee.
Right as Lucy was about to ask him if he wanted to take a walk with her, sneak away to the darkened kitchen or the family room, Ethan cleared his throat.
“Darla,” he said and she looked up at him. “Could you get the video camera? I think it’s time to show Lucy everything.”
Following Ethan’s orders, Darla rose and went over to the bookshelf and grabbed the video camera her parents used years ago to record first steps and school outings. Handing it to Ethan, he opened up the tiny screen and handed it to Lucy and instructed her to press play.
“What am I watching?” Lucy asked. Her hand shook and she wished that she could hold it steady.
“Mom left me a message. I didn’t know if I would still be able to access my voicemail when the network went down, so I videotaped it.”
She pressed play.
The camerawork was shaky and she could hear a news report broadcasting in the background. In the video, Ethan’s phone was on the kitchen counter and he had put it on speakerphone. The Ethan holding the video camera leaned down and pressed a button to access his voicemail. Lucy deeply drew a breath as she waited anxiously to find out what she’d hear. The moment the message clicked through, she heard her mother’s voice—it filled the kitchen on the video and as Lucy held the camera, her voice filled the den as well—the first syllable was immediately recognizable as her Mama Maxine. And Lucy bit back tears. For the first time she realized that she truly believed she’d never hear her mom say another word to her again, but there was her voice, captured for her to listen to again and again.
“Ethan. Ethan. There’s no time. They took us. Dear God, they took us. Some guys, from an agency…I’m calling you from a car…a transport…I tried to get them to wait. But…” the voice was indecipherable for a moment. And then there was a click.
Lucy kept watching.
From the videotape, a woman’s voice announced a second saved voicemail and said the date and time, mechanical and rote, like any other day. Like it was just any other message.
It was their mom’s voice. Again.
“Ethan. Listen to me. Get to the airport. Get to the airport now. Get to the airport. That’s where we’re going…but I don’t know yet…”
Another click.
Another announcement of a saved voicemail.
“No time. I’m sorry. You need this message.” In the background, there was a rumble. It was the distinct and unmistakable rumbling of an airplane funneling down a runway. “I called your dad. I…your dad says…” there was a bump, a pop. Their mother was yelling and the phone was far from her mouth now, but her voice trailed after it, barely audible. She was yelling two words over and over again, screaming them, with vigor and intensity, until the line went dead and her voice disappeared.
The automated woman announced: “That is the end of new messages…to replay this message press four…” and Ethan in the video pressed four and listened to the last message again. Zooming in the camera to the front of his phone screen. Hearing it a second time didn’t make her mother’s panicked voice any less haunting.
Then Ethan turned the camera on himself.
“Lucy…I’m in a rush…I’ve got to get to the airport. But in case you get back…I need you to see this.” He jostled the camera back toward the house and out of the kitchen and through the dining room to the entryway. At the time of the video, it was only a half hour or hour after Lucy had left that area. Ethan zoomed in on Lucy and Ethan’s monogramed bags. The only bags left at the foot of the stairs. A lump formed in Lucy’s throat when she saw those—their things had been left behind.
They had been totally and completely left behind.
Then the camera panned to the entryway. And when Lucy saw it on the camera, she opened her mouth in horror and turned to Ethan, who confirmed with a nod. There had clearly been a struggle. Lucy had watched enough cop dramas on TV to know the signs—the mirror was broken, a potted plant on the floor, the vase shattered, the roots exposed. The entry table was turned on its side.
Lucy hadn’t gone through the front door when she came home, she had gone through the side door through the carport. Was this chaos still there?
Would it be a permanent reminder that something bad had happened at their house?
Not taking her eyes off of the camera, she spoke—shocked by the waver in it. “What was Mom saying?” she asked as video-Ethan opened the front door and panned to muddy tire marks in the grass which right led up to the door. A car had pulled up on their recently mowed lawn.
If what Lucy was seeing was true, then people got out and grabbed her family. In the midst of nuclear war, a deathly virus, and the end of the world and life on the planet, her family had also been kidnapped. It was mind-boggling.
“What was she saying?” Lucy asked again. The video had ended. She slammed the monitor shut and held the camera against her chest. “Do you know? Did you figure it out?”
Ethan nodded and glanced to Darla and Grant.
“Ethan?” Lucy asked again.
“Yeah,” he finally answered, his voice small. He sniffed and looked at his sister and then tilted his head. “She was saying fruit cellar.”
“Fruit cellar?” Lucy couldn’t hide her incredulity. “Fruit cellar.”
Their mom canned fruits and vegetables. As kids, she took them cherry picking and blueberry picking and made them go out and play on long canning days. Then she meticulously stored her goods in a dirt-walled fruit cellar in their basement. It was slightly raised off the basement ground and could be accessed by climbing up and over a two-foot wooden barrier. It was a fruit cellar—and their mother referred to it as such—but the children called it “the dungeon” and loathed stepping foot inside the tiny space. Monroe and Malcolm always chose to hide there during games of sardines or hide-and-seek; but they usually were left to discover on their own that no one was coming for them because none of the other kids wanted to open the giant wooden door to see if they were there or not. It was the only place in the house that elicited nightmares and phobias among each of the King kids. They hated the fruit cellar.
In her final message to her lost children, Maxine King had been shouting for them to go to the one place they dreaded more than anything.
“The dungeon.” Lucy reworded. And then she shook her head. “Mom was sending us to the dungeon? No, I don’t get it.”
Ethan and Darla exchanged another look.
“Grab a flashlight,” Ethan instructed. Then he turned to his sister, as the color drained from her face. “Lucy…Grant…there’s something in the fruit cellar that you two need to see.”
