I die a little when I hear his voice. It’s off. It’s the wrong key played in the middle of your favorite song. It’s someone changing the lyrics on you and it all stumbles to an awkward halt as you look around dizzily, wondering what went wrong. But when I see his eyes, I know what it is. It’s fresh pine and twinkle lights. It’s Jingle Bells played backwards. It’s blood on the stockings and lower intestines on the hardwood.
It’s a bloody bathrobe bobbing in the water.
Chapter Twenty One
Ali has the body. What’s left of it. The explosion tore through everything. Metal. Stone. Flesh and bone. I don’t want to see it. I already did. I saw enough. I’m not sure why Ryan takes me to see it again, but I don’t ask and I don’t fight.
I don’t care.
I follow him and I watch him. I look at him the way Trent told me to—trying to understand how he works. Not simply accepting that he does, but wondering why. How. I’m looking at the complicated mechanics of his muscles moving his bones and his lungs filling with air and his blood somehow staying inside his body, warming his skin from the inside out. It’s impressive how he does it when everyone else keeps springing leaks.
It was the Colonists. Not directly, but it was their explosives that killed Crenshaw. He launched a second bomb at the gate, one that did the job and sent pieces of it flying everywhere. Right into the field of landmines they had set up against their wall. The falling debris triggered them all, setting off a daisy chain of explosions that tore through the earth, heading straight toward us—right through Crenshaw. It was the shrapnel that did him in. The blast kicked him back into the water, but not before shards of cement and steel ripped through his flesh. According to Ryan, he was dead before he landed. The only reason Ryan and I are still alive is because we were already on the ground when it happened.
“Ali has him in this tent by the water,” Ryan explains, though I don’t know why. I didn’t ask. “She said Crenshaw used to love the water, back before the gangs and the Colonies took over the bay.”
I can see the tent just ahead of us. The sun is rising behind it, the first rays of light scorching the city, setting the tent on fire and making it glow with an eerie light.
He holds open the flap for me. I go in without hesitation and I walk directly to the tables where the body is laid. Blankets have been pulled over it to hide the mess, but blood is seeping through. It’s destroyed. It’s nothing. It may as well be a zombie for how alive it is. Some would say that he’s better off because he died as himself. He was never a mindless meatsuit for some unthinkable freak show.
I say that’s bullshit. Dead is dead.
“Where’s Ali?” I ask Ryan.
“Sam took her away. She needed to sleep.”
“Why am I here?”
He pauses. “I don’t know. To say goodbye?”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need me for that?”
More silence.
“No,” he says quietly, but his voice is hard.
I turn on my heel, carefully avoiding his eyes as I leave. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
I burst out of the tent into the sunlight, leaving him behind, feeling like I’ll vomit.
And I know. No one needs to tell me, because I already know: I’m being awful. I’m pushing him away, I’m acting like a coward, I’m ruining everything. I see it crystal clear. Don’t think for a second I’m not aware of it. Don’t think it doesn’t kill me to do it.
Here’s what it boils down to—instinct. This is my survival. Being alone is what I know and I tried something different and that’s great—yea, me!—but it didn’t work out because as nice as the ride is, the destination is always the same. Simple truth is everybody dies. I can’t stop that and neither can they. I also can’t handle it. My instincts are telling me to run away from Ryan as fast as I can, the same way they told me to run away from the fireball. It doesn’t matter that I understand running away from it will get me killed. If it happened again, I’d still go the wrong way. Just like I’m running the wrong way right now.
I spend the rest of the day sleeping. It’s my only chance to get clear of everyone. People know me now. They all knew Crenshaw and they’ve heard we were close, so now everyone wants to console the wild girl suffering a loss. It’s a miracle I’m still here. I don’t know how many times I look longingly through the throng of people surrounding me and dream of running through the streets. I want to go home, lock my door, and never think about this day again. I want to stow the crazy old man in the vault with the rest of them—the others, whose names I’ve managed to forget. The faces that are a blur, then a scream, then nothing.
So I sleep. I hibernate through the day and come out long after dinnertime. Long after I was supposed to meet up with Ryan.
“It’s time.”
I jerk my head up, surprised to find Alvarez standing in front of me. I hadn’t realized I was parked on a cot in a tent, staring into nothing. I stretch my aching back, shaking my head to clear it.
“Time for what?” I ask groggily. How am I still tired after sleeping all day long?
“The burial.”
I stand abruptly. “Nope.”
His eyebrows form a deep V of disapproval. “Excuse me?”
“No,” I tell him, swaying slightly. I feel lightheaded. Dizzy. “I’m not doing that.”
“No, but the rest of us are and you’re attending.”
“No, I’m not.”
“When did it sound like I was asking?”
“You can’t bully me into saying goodbye to him.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He steps in close, crowding me. “The point is we’re honoring a man’s life. I don’t care how sad you are—”
“I’m not sad.”
“Or how unaffected you’re pretending to be. He was a great man, he treated you kindly, and you will show the proper respect for his passing. Now you will walk out of this tent tall, proud, and strong like the warrior he swore to me you were, or so help me God, I will send you on to meet him.”
I believe him. There’s a fire in his eyes that has never gone out, no matter what this world has shown him, and he’s directing it straight at me. Right into my skin until it burns with anger and embarrassment. And shame.
I step around him because he doesn’t give me an inch, then I walk slowly out of the tent. I do it tall, I do it proudly, but I feel anything but strong.
He follows me out, then leads me forward. We walk silently toward the shore where the sun is setting and the Colony is still burning and the zombies are still dining. And the sickness in my stomach gets worse.
Across the water is a madhouse. After the gate was blown and the Zs made their way inside to do their business and ours, the Vashons sealed it. They moved the street barricades and locked the survivors in with the infected. It’s part of the plan that was never openly talked about before. It’s a brutal move that I didn’t see coming and I’m still working out how I feel about it. I can’t tell if the horror and the hallow I feel inside is all from losing Crenshaw or if some of it has to do with the situation going on across the water.
I want to hate them. I want to think they’re getting what they deserve for all the years of slavery, sitting in their comfy compounds while the rest of us struggled and died trying to clear the world of the plague they preach about cleansing. But then I have to hate the Vashons a little for that too. For cleaning their own house and leaving the rest of us to die outside. They were hiding from the Colonies like the rest of us, sure, but they still closed their doors in people’s desperate faces.
Either way, I don’t think anyone is a hero here.
Standing near the water I spot Ali and Sam. Ryan and Trent are not far away from them. I see several familiar faces, several people I could easily go stand beside and wait out this ceremony that I don’t understand. That I feel too raw and scared to be part of.
I hang back, staying on the outside of the gathering.