Rage Within (15 page)

Best not to think about the past. She’d learned that from Michael. She could see how he pushed away the dark thoughts that clouded across his brown eyes. He didn’t think she noticed but she did. Whatever happened to him must have been horrible.

The decline was steep and it was hard moving in the dark, but she slowly managed to work her way down to the water. She ducked a few times behind bushes when the Baggers got too close, and once she was positive she heard Michael’s voice call out in the darkness but she didn’t dare call back. Not when so many of them were nearby.

There were boats tied to trees by the shore. They were canoes, and she also saw a few kayaks. Inside were supplies covered with tarps.

No one else was there, and she didn’t know how many boats had been there to begin with. Was it possible that a few others had managed to make an escape by sea?

Sitting on a rock, she waited. It was cold down by the
water. She brought her hands close to her face and tried to blow warm air onto them. She shivered.

It wasn’t long. She heard branches breaking and jumped to her feet, her can of spray paint raised in front of her. She realized the nozzle was aimed at her face and she quickly turned it around. But not before someone crashed through the trees.

She yelped. Someone grabbed her arm and she shrieked louder, pulling backward but refusing to let go of the can.

“Clementine, it’s me.”

Michael.

She threw her arms around his neck, pulling him close. The instant heat of his body warmed her, comforting her, making her feel that everything was going to be all right.

When she tore herself away from him, she noticed that they weren’t alone. Not only was Raj standing behind them, a big grin on his face, but there were a few others. Larisa was one. There was a sullen-faced boy with bright anger in his eyes. And two other girls she didn’t recognize. One of them was covered in blood from a gaping wound on her shoulder.

“That’s okay, babes,” Raj said. “We got about three minutes.”

Her cheeks instantly began to burn. She turned her attention to the wounded girl, who was leaning against a tree. The girl’s friend had taken off her jacket and had it pressed into her shoulder. The cloth was turning red at an alarming rate.

“We have to get her help,” Clementine said. “Who else is wounded?”

Larisa had a gash on her forehead but it wasn’t major. She also walked with a severe limp. Blood had pooled in her shoe, which made squishing noises when she moved. Already Raj
was untying the canoes and preparing them to head offshore. It would be the quickest way out.

“If we can get her to our place she’ll be okay,” Clementine kept saying to Raj as she helped him pull the paddles out of their hiding spot in the bushes. “We’ve got some medical supplies there in case you need more. Stuff from the pharmacies.”

One of the girls jumped into the water, then clambered into the boat, pulling her friend after her. Raj and Larisa followed. The sullen-faced boy grudgingly walked past Michael, slamming him with his shoulder as he passed. He was obviously blaming them for everything that had happened.

Michael reached out and touched Clementine’s cheek. “I told you not to let go.”

“Me?” she said. “You’re the one who let go.”

He laughed.

Branches snapped behind them and a Bagger appeared, running straight at them. Someone in the boats screamed. The Bagger reached out to grab hold of Michael’s hair before he could turn his head around. Clementine didn’t think. She raised the can of spray paint and pushed down on the nozzle, sending a steady stream of black paint right into those nasty black-veined eyes.

The Bagger screamed. He pulled his arms back from Michael, clawing at his eyes as he bent over in pain. Michael shoved him and he flew backward and into the rocks, cracking his head against the stone.

It was over as quickly as it began.

Clementine was still pressing the nozzle button, but there was no more paint. She’d finished the can. Letting it drop, she turned and looked at Michael in astonishment.

“Nice,” he said.

The silence was short-lived. Someone started screaming for help off in the woods beyond them. Coherent pleas. Desperate.

Everyone else was in the boat.

“I have to go back,” Michael said suddenly.

The air inside her lungs was sucked out in an instant.

Michael put his hands on her shoulders. “I need you to take them back. Get them help. I’ll be right behind. There are others out there. You . . . you know I can’t leave them.”

“But I need you.”

“And Raj and his friends need you. I won’t be far behind, really. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“You promise?”

“Swear to all that matters.” With that he led her over to the water and helped her into a boat. Her entire body was numb; she didn’t resist, although she wanted to. Someone handed her a paddle and Michael gave the two boats strong pushes to send them off.

She watched him disappear back into the woods. The sun was beginning to rise over the horizon. The air was thick with smoke from the destroyed museum and it made the morning light burn even redder in the pale sky.

“He’ll be fine, babes,” Raj whispered.

She nodded. But would she?

ARIES

Bang!

A strange noise brought her up from a deep sleep. No dreams. She didn’t seem to have them anymore. Nothing but thoughtless darkness. It sure beat the horrible nightmares she kept having the first few weeks after the earthquakes. Dreams in which she was running down dead-end streets as monsters popped out from the shadows. Quick, jolting images of her family dissolving in front of her eyes while she was frozen in place and unable to help. Her mother silently mouthing her name and Aries screaming back.

But sleeping was better these days.

Bang!

Her whole body was heavy. She had sunk into the mattress and it had taken her hostage, almost refusing to let go. Struggling, she finally opened her eyes. Soft, muted light fell across her face, the morning sun fighting its way through from behind the blinds.

“Aries?” Tapping on the door.

Panic. What time was it? How long had she been asleep?

“Aries?”

“Yeah, I’m awake.”

The door opened and Nathan hesitantly walked in. His forehead was full of frown lines and his lips were stretched in a tight grimace.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What time is it?”

“Ten a.m.”

She’d slept in. How could she? She was almost always the first one awake in the morning. There was so much to do. Sleeping in was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

“Why didn’t someone wake me?” she snapped. Unwrapping the sheets from around her legs, she managed to get up. The mattress was a tangle of blankets. Pillows were on the floor. A glass lay turned over on its side, whatever liquid it once held now absorbed into the beige carpet. She may not remember her dreams, but obviously they were still there. She had been thrashing around like a wild woman. Night traveling.

“You were tired,” Nathan said. His face changed from worried to guilty. “And I think we just kinda forgot. We’ve got some problems.”

“What problems?” She ran her fingers through her hair. Tangles. Lots and lots of them. She cringed as she felt the hair break between her fingers.

“Clementine and Michael are still missing in action.”

The last thing she thought about before falling into her dreamless sleep was what she’d do if morning came and they weren’t back. She hadn’t come up with an answer last night and she still didn’t have one now.

“We’ll figure something out,” she said.

“There’s more. Mason’s gone too.”

Now that surprised her. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“He’s not here.”

That made her pause. Why would Mason leave? He’d been there last night when she got back in from visiting with Daniel. Right? She tried hard to remember if she’d seen his face with the others. “Did he take off? Is his stuff gone?”

Nathan took a step backward. “I didn’t check. I didn’t think about it.”

She pushed past him and stormed down the hall to the last room, where Mason had shut himself off from the rest of the world. She stopped for a moment at the closed door and didn’t bother knocking. Instead she turned the knob and walked right in.

His room was dark. He’d covered the windows with dark bedsheets. She scanned the room quickly. The bed was empty. Wrinkled and tangled blankets spilled off the mattress and onto the floor. For some reason she was relieved to see that Mason was obviously doing his own night traveling.

What did he dream about that made him run miles in his sleep?

She walked into the middle of the room, carefully stepping over a pile of plaid shirts and wrinkled jeans. Nathan followed behind her. In the corner was a dresser, the drawers open, the mirror cracked from where it looked like he’d put his fist right through the glass.

“Guess he didn’t like his new haircut,” Nathan said with a heavy load of sarcasm.

“Or he just needed to hit something,” she said. “I can honestly say I feel like that at least once a day.”

Aries went over to the closet and opened it. Inside was a mess of clothing, most of it the former owner’s. On the shelves in pristine condition were stacks of photo albums, yearbooks, and other personal items that would never again be enjoyed by the person they belonged to. It didn’t look like
Mason had even gone inside. She closed the door and walked back over to the bed.

“So do you think he took off?” Nathan bent over and started picking through some of the clothes. “I always got the impression that he didn’t want to stick around. Didn’t talk much, did he?”

Aries took a deep breath and nudged a sock with her toe. “No, he didn’t leave.”

“How do you know?”

She moved over to the side of the bed where a small table was pushed against the wall. Reaching down, she picked up a worn photograph. Turning it over, she read the inscription.

Stanley Park. Second Beach. Vancouver, BC,
Mason and Mom—enjoying the sun.

She handed the picture to Nathan. “Because he wouldn’t leave this behind. He never goes far without it.”

Nathan took it from her and studied the print. Aries liked how young and happy Mason looked in it. She liked how big his smile was and the way the baseball cap covered his ears. A reminder of better times. Times they couldn’t get back no matter how much they wished it. It would have been nice to have known him before the earthquakes. She liked to believe the two of them might have been good friends.

Nathan nodded. “Okay. What should we do?”

“Organize a search party,” she said. “We’ve got to find them. Or at least figure out what happened. They deserve that much.”

She popped her head in to check on Jack on the way down the hall. Joy was there with him. They sat together on the bed
and she was reading a magazine article out loud. She stopped speaking and both of them looked up.

“I need you downstairs, Joy,” she said. “In a few, okay?”

Joy nodded, and the expression on Jack’s face wasn’t hard to read. He knew what was going on and was frustrated that he couldn’t do anything to help. Even climbing down the stairs was a hard enough challenge.

“You feeling any better?” she asked.

“Just fine,” he said, but he gritted his teeth as the words popped out. The light banter was gone. “Wish I wasn’t so damn useless, though.”

“Don’t say that,” Joy said. “You’ve done so much for us. It’ll get easier.”

“No, it won’t.”

Aries suppressed the urge to tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself, especially when she couldn’t really disagree with him. So she left the room. She’d sit down with him later, once the others were found, and discuss what they’d do in the future once he was able to get out of bed. There had to be something he could do so he’d feel like he was contributing to the group. Maybe Joy could teach him to cook?

As much as she loved Jack, this wasn’t the time to have that conversation. Finding the others took priority. Aries hated to admit it, but she was lost without Mason. For all his silence and mystery, he’d pretty much taken over Jack’s role since the blinding, becoming her new confidant and helping her through the tough problems they faced as a group. They’d spent a lot of nights discussing things in the living room long after everyone else had gone to sleep. He always knew the right words to say to calm her down. Being a leader wasn’t easy, especially when everyone was so lost and scared most of the time. She had to make sure everyone was organized
and had something to do. She had to assign tasks and keep them busy. She had to keep them together. And if three of her friends disappeared, she had to find them.

But where to begin? If only Mason were here. He’d be able to give her advice.

Or Daniel. But she wouldn’t see him until later tonight. If the others weren’t back by then, maybe he would know where to look.

Depending on Daniel, however, was something she didn’t care for much. She didn’t want to owe him any favors. If only he were more reliable. If only he stayed with them instead of whatever rock he crawled back to every night. Why did he have to complicate things so much? What was wrong with her that he could only stand to be around her for a few hours each night?

“Stop it,” she snapped to herself. Daniel spent enough time in her thoughts. She didn’t need him now. She needed to concentrate.

It didn’t take long for everyone except Jack to assemble in the living room. Eve and Nathan, the rare brother-and-sister team who were so lucky to still have each other, sat on the couch, and Joy was in the rocking chair by the fireplace. Colin sat in his usual seat, the Game Boy powered on in his hands, a stack of burned out batteries on the floor beneath him.

There were so few of them. How could she expect them to fix this?

She didn’t sit down. Instead she stood in front of the darkened flat screen and addressed them all. “We’ve got to pair up,” she said. “I know it’s dangerous, but some of us have to search for Clementine and Michael, the others for Mason.”

“I agree,” Nathan said. “We know Clem and Mike are off at UBC. So two of us should head out that way. But does
anyone have any idea where Mason might have gone?”