Half Lives (17 page)

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Authors: Sara Grant

Tags: #Speculative Fiction

BOOK: Half Lives
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But when the hot guy shot the gun, I did both – just not in that order.

There was one long, blood-curdling outburst that made Jamie Lee Curtis’s screams in the original
Halloween
and
H2O
sound more like my grandma’s disapproving mews
when her tea gets cold. I heard the sound and realized I was screaming.

My eyelids snapped open as wet, red bits rained down on me. This all happened in nano-seconds. The guy’s eyes were fixed straight ahead, with the gun still extended in front of him, but he
hadn’t been looking
at
me. He was focused on something behind me.

I sprang to my feet, whipped around and saw what the guy had shot. That’s when I did that thing where I realized I wasn’t breathing. I took a ginormous gulp of air and then I
screamed again and again and again and again. I couldn’t stop. I wiped the red flecks from my arms, still screaming. These bloody chunks were all over me. They dotted my clothes and were
lodged in my dreads. I flipped the baseball cap off and shook my head like some Rastafarian on crack. I had to get every piece off me.

The guy tucked the gun in the back of his jeans and came over and flicked away the pieces I couldn’t reach. His fingernails were rough and scratched my bare skin.

‘You’re OK,’ he said between my screams, which were dying down to a whimper. He circled his arms around me in an air hug and then slowly lowered them. I fell into him, sobbing
uncontrollably. His body was rock solid and his grip like steel.

Until I’d seen the bloody bits and mentally reassembled them, I’d forgotten that Nevada had snakes. Rattlesnakes.

I’d shut the TV off if an image of a snake flashed on the screen. I never saw
Snakes on a Plane
because even the title had given me nightmares. Snakes in a confined space,
slithering under seats and dangling like oxygen masks from overhead compartments.
Uh, no, but thanks for asking
.

I wrapped my arms around this stranger and slobbered and snotted into the crook of his neck. A moment ago he was a serial killer who was going to blow my brains out. Now he was my hero and I
didn’t plan to let go of him – ever. I wanted to climb his frame and have him carry me on his hip like a mother holding a toddler. I didn’t want my feet to touch a ground that
could be covered with snakes. I now knew what it meant to have your skin crawl. I felt as if I were covered in snake bits and the clan of the dead snake was collecting its posse to come after me. I
imagined the scaly bodies skimming along the mountain, collecting snake comrades as they raced to finish the job their rattler friend had started. How much more was I supposed to take?

‘Icie! Icie!’

Marissa burst through the pines with Tate behind her. Seeing Marissa and Tate, I was reminded and overwhelmed again with the unknown end-of-the-world scenario I was living. As horrible as snakes
were, they were only slimy little creatures which this guy had proved could be defeated with a gun.

‘Ice, are you OK? What’s wrong?’ Marissa yelled. I couldn’t answer. She jerked me free of my tall, dark, handsome rescuer. I couldn’t stop crying.

Then she did it. She did that thing that I’ve always wanted to do. She did that thing that you think is the most terrible, yet appropriate, thing to do to a hysterical person.

She slapped me. Open palm. Square on the cheek.

Horror flick cliché or not – it worked. The shock and burn of her hand switched off my tears like an abrupt cut in a movie.

‘Ice . . . are . . . you . . . O . . . K?’ she asked.

I nodded and struggled to catch my breath. I was being baked by the sun and fried inside by fear.

‘Who are you?’ Marissa wrapped a protective arm around my shoulder and turned her attention to my mystery man. She scanned his body from head to toe.

‘I’m Chaske,’ he said, and then, as if he knew my brain hadn’t processed this new name, he repeated it slowly so I could take it in, pronouncing it
chas-kay
.

Marissa didn’t move. She must have noticed that I was covered in blood spatter, or maybe she spotted the mangled snake leftovers. ‘What did you do?’ Marissa’s tone was
cold and threatening.

Chaske surveyed his kill. As he did, Marissa and I both spotted the butt of his gun tucked in the back of his jeans.

‘Listen,’ Marissa barked, her muscles flexing as she swept me behind her. ‘Leave us alone.’

‘It’s OK, Marissa,’ I said, finally able to speak. ‘He saved me.’

Marissa turned to face only me. ‘He’s got a gun,’ she whispered, as if that explained everything I needed to know.

‘If he wanted to shoot us, we’d be dead already,’ I said, regaining my normal voice.

‘Did you kill this?’ Tate nudged the snake bits with the toe of – I kid you not – his tasselled loafers.

Chaske shrugged.

I noticed a red blob on my yellow smiley face, which made it look as if smiley had been shot right between the eyes. I stripped off my shirt and wadded it into a ball. I’d forgotten about
the key around my neck. I wrapped my fist around it. I didn’t want them to see it.

I twisted the chain so the fob hung down my back and the silver chain strained at my neck like a choker fit for a dominatrix. I was normally self-conscious about my body, but after everything
I’d been through, I didn’t care that Chaske, Tate and probably even Marissa were staring at my electric-purple bra and the money belt cinched to my waist. I wasn’t what
you’d call a girly girl, but I did like matching bra and knickers. After being called ‘granny’ all through middle school thanks to my white cotton panties in seventh-grade gym, I
knew the power of Victoria’s Secret.

I sucked in my stomach when my eyes met Chaske’s. He raised his eyebrows a little in what I thought might be approval.

‘Where’s our stuff?’ I asked Marissa.

Tate dumped my backpack and Marissa’s goodie bag at my feet but never took his eyes off my tits. I tossed my shirt on the ground and snatched a bottle of water from the bag. Even then, I
knew I shouldn’t do it, shouldn’t waste water. I unscrewed the lid and poured the whole bottle over me. I used my hands like squeegees and wiped the water off. I shook like a dog, my
dreadlocks thudding against my face and back. My dreads stung like I was being flicked with a wet towel in gym. I slipped on the first shirt I found in my backpack. It was bright yellow with black
silhouettes of monkeys with wings and the slogan
Beware of the flying monkeys
. In my current situation, flying monkeys no longer seemed that implausible.

Everyone was staring at me as if I’d grown two heads, but the hysterical terror was subsiding to mere mind-blowing fear. I realized what was missing from this scene. ‘Where’s
your cat?’ I asked Chaske.

‘She’s not my cat really. She found me on this mountain. She must be around here somewhere.’ Chaske glanced around, but there was no sign of the black cat.

‘Where did you come from?’ Tate sized him up as if he was determining if he could take him in a fight.

Chaske shrugged. ‘I could ask you guys the same.’ Ah, the question-with-a-question diversion. Who was this guy?

‘What’s with the gun?’ Tate asked and stepped in front of me and Marissa. Was he really getting all mini-macho on us? It was kind of cute.

When Chaske didn’t answer, Tate did that thing that people do when speaking to foreigners. He slowed down and spoke up. ‘Where. Did. You. Get. The. Gun?’

Chaske smiled this wonderful cheeky smile, which was so slight that I felt privileged to notice it. ‘What’s with all the questions?’ It was a rhetorical question, but Tate
didn’t get it.

‘Well, you have a gun, which you shot at Dread, and it’s not the first gun that has been pointed at me today so I’m a bit freaked out, and you shot it once so I’m
wondering if you’ll shoot it again but this time at one of us and, I mean, I’ve been through a lot today, what with being thrown out of the back of an RV . . .’ On and on Tate
went in this stream-of-consciousness way, and everything he’d been holding back came spewing out like a spit-take in one of my dad’s stupid sitcoms.

The tension that had solidified in my veins seemed to shatter. I glanced at Marissa and we busted up laughing. When he said it all like that in one massive run-on sentence, it sounded so
unbelievable and for some unknown reason incredibly, hysterically funny.

‘Hey, that’s not funny.’ The whine was back in Tate’s voice. ‘The guy’s got a gun.’

This only made Marissa and me laugh harder. My laughter had an uncontrollable edge, like crying. Chaske looked at us like we were mental patients.

‘How can you laugh?’ Tate asked Marissa and me, who were now doubled over in convulsions of laughter. ‘It’s not funny,’ he told Chaske. ‘I’m just
saying, there’s some crazy shit going on.’ Tate went on to tell Chaske every gory detail. Tate’s commentary ended my laughter like the snap of a flyswatter on bug then glass. I
tried to tune him out. I didn’t want to hear Tate describe it like a TV newscaster would an event on the other side of the universe.

How could Tate be so casual about it? He couldn’t really understand, could he? How could any of us? None of us had ever experienced anything in the same zip code – or galaxy –
as this. How could we possibly imagine what this meant?

Each time I crawled out of the funk and horror of it all – even if it was just the tips of my fingernails breaking the surface – I was immediately sucked back under. As Tate talked,
Chaske’s face paled and everything about him slumped.

‘Is this for real?’ Chaske asked, looking from Marissa to me. We both nodded.

‘We need to get moving,’ Marissa said to keep Tate from saying anything else.

Tate added, ‘And Icie, here, says there’s some underground bunker where we can stay until this blows over. Isn’t that right, Dread?’

‘I’m not sure where the entrance is exactly,’ I said. ‘My mum said it was marked with an infinity symbol.’

Chaske raked his fingers through his hair, pulling out the nude rubber band. He seemed to withdraw inside himself as he re-tied his ponytail. It was like those before and after pictures where
the main difference is the person’s facial expression and posture. He was looking ‘before’ and less, well, less the hero.

‘I think I might be able to help you find it,’ he said. He disappeared through the trees. I stuffed my hat and shirt into the goodie bag. Chaske returned a minute later with a proper
camper’s backpack, complete with sleeping roll at the bottom and two canteens crisscrossing his torso – and, to my relief, Midnight. ‘Onwards and upwards,’ Chaske said.

Marissa and I followed Chaske and Tate up the mountain. Tate was giving this monologue about everything from his love of cinnamon-flavoured chewing gum to how to win at
blackjack. Chaske listened and let Tate fill the space that was once occupied by normal.

Marissa checked her phone but there was still no signal. Maybe the phones were working again, but we couldn’t get reception on this godforsaken mountain. The sun was setting but it felt
more like darkness was rising, transforming every boulder and clump of trees into some sort of beastie. It was like a non-lame haunted house, except it wasn’t a house and these screepy
illusions weren’t props. I tried to tell myself the shadows and shuffling were just my imagination. I wondered if I had days, hours, minutes or seconds to live.

I tried not to imagine the bazillion different heinous scenarios that could be playing out around the globe. Would the survivors stack the bodies like layers of lasagne, bury them in Grand
Canyon-sized pits, or set them adrift in the oceans, Viking-style, and watch them bob on the waves until they sank out of sight? Or maybe there would be no survivors. I had to stop thinking about
it, but I couldn’t. My parents, Lola and even Tristan had to be alive. I wouldn’t let myself think that they were, well, you know.

‘Careful,’ Chaske said, pointing with the toe of his hiking boots. It was a thorny, knee-high hedge. Midnight was cradled in his arms like a sleeping baby. She opened one of her
bright yellow eyes when he started talking and almost immediately closed it again. ‘This thing circles the mountain.’

‘There’s no way this occurred naturally,’ Marissa said, glancing at Chaske as if for approval.

Was this supposed to make us turn back? Like those people who had ‘Beware of the Dog’ signs but no dog? I hoped my mum hadn’t used her Oxford education and tax-payers’
hard-earned cash to come up with this ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. You can’t just write ‘Keep Out’. It’s like when my parents locked their top dresser drawer. They
might as well have put a sign that said, ‘Something really awesome is in here’. I picked the lock and sure wished I hadn’t. I was like ten and didn’t quite understand what
all the gadgets and goos were, but when I finally figured it out . . . Major emotional scarring. The only proof, well, besides me, that my parents had sex.
Um, gross
.

If this tiny hedge was supposed to be a warning sign for when the nuclear waste repository was finished, then future generations had no hope. That is, if there were going to be any future
generations.

Chaske helped Midnight over and then took a flying leap and easily cleared the hedge. Tate tried to mimic Chaske, but his jump was less graceful and he fell hard on all fours. Chaske hauled Tate
to his feet as effortlessly as he’d picked up Midnight. Marissa jumped, practically doing the splits in mid-air.

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