The Aftermath (2 page)

The woman collapses to the floor. She’s motionless, and I watch as a crimson stain spreads across the chest of her skimpy tank top. Then, her chest expands, a gasp bubbles from her throat and her eyes bulge open.

“I— Where—” Wild brown eyes shift up to me. I want to disappear, to melt into the floor, but I stand still as a statue, staring down at her.

“Help me,” she whispers. Her voice sounds different—there’s an accent now that wasn’t present before. “I feel it. Get it out of me!” She thrashes around, grabbing at her scalp, and I draw in a deep breath. The wound is right under her heart, not in her head. She must not realize this because she yanks her hands through her matted hair. Begs me, over and over, to get it out of her.

“What?” I want to ask. “Get what out of you?” But I say nothing to the woman as I watch her. I don’t even look at Ethan when I say, “She’s been around a long time. Worth a lot of points.”

Suddenly, it feels as if the space around the three of us is rotating, like a revolving door. I have no explanation for what I just said, but it sounds so familiar. Like something I heard or said once before, but I can’t quite grasp where or when. Or why.

What the hell is wrong with me today?

The woman stops moving, and this time I know she’s dead. Burning pain consumes my chest. For a moment, I wonder if we were both hit.

“We should get her things,” Ethan whispers. He throws my bag at me. A few protein bars fall to the floor as it hits me in the chest. “Hurry!”

I keep my eyes away from her face, which is partially covered by her limp arm. Swallow back the bile threatening to come up. Focus on stuffing my bulging bag with the brown-eyed woman’s belongings—one coat, a copper-stained pocketknife, a box of matches, a half-empty bottle of codeine syrup.

“Hurry,” Ethan says in such a calm voice my shoulders tense up. He’s looking right at me, at what’s left of the woman, and he’s completely expressionless.

I grab the gun, swing my bag onto my back and rise to my feet. “There are probably others like her in the building.” My voice is collected, detached.

Ethan processes this for a moment, flicking his hazel gaze from the elevator to the staircase. Finally, he tightens his grip on his knife and starts toward the elevator. I sprint after him, but my brain is screaming at me,
Coward. She needed your help and you just stood there, staring.

I don’t know the person I’m leaving behind—the decisions we made when our world came to an end took us on two different paths—but I still feel like a traitor.

It almost seems fitting that when the doors of the elevator squeak open, we come face-to-face with another stranger—a boy with dark shaggy hair and eyes so gray they seem black. I stand unmoving, ice crawling through my veins, as I take this intruder in. He’s dressed entirely in black and he’s weirdly clean—more polished than anyone I’ve seen in the past few years.

“Don’t tell me you’re—” Ethan begins, but I don’t catch the rest of his words because the other boy swings something at him. Ethan ducks, and the object collides with the top of my head and sends me reeling back. Darkness closes in.

CHAPTER TWO

I seldom have dreams. And when I do, when I’m fortunate enough to close my eyes to something other than the nothingness that seems like death, it’s always the same; I dream I’m someone else. A girl in a world without pain and hunger. The dreams are nice, and I always dread waking. Not once have I had a dream I wanted desperately to leave the moment it began.

Until now.

I’m standing beneath short rows of fluorescent lights, gazing down at a white metallic machine. It’s as long and as wide as the empty casket Mia and I found on a street corner last year after a torrential storm, but one end is rounded and there’s a thin glass panel running along the length of the top. Transparent tubes extend like tentacles from the bottom of the machine into even more machines with dozens of buttons and multicolored lights.

And on the other side of the glass, inside the metal coffin, there’s a body.

I watch quietly as a mechanical arm slides back and forth on the girl’s bloody face, like a pencil scratching lines across a blank sheet of paper. The girl in the machine is so still and quiet, I’d think she was dead if it weren’t for the slight shudder of her chest.

There’s a loud beep behind me, and the metal picks up its speed on her skin. The coffinlike machine begins to make a humming noise, and when I lean in close to the glass, the girl’s injuries gradually start to change. Her skin is being made whole again.

Small forehead, V-shaped scar at the hairline.

Straight freckled nose.

Lips that have spoken my every inadequate word for the past several years.

I am looking at myself.

I want to run away. I want to end this dream now and go back to my world, a world that’s filled with the type of fear that I understand. But instead of backing away, I tap my fingers on the glass and suck in an impatient breath. “This is taking entirely too long.” The voice I speak in is soft—almost childlike.

The voice is not my own, but I’ve dreamed of it before. I’m that other girl again.

“You would be better off going home to wait as she’s horribly damaged,” someone else says.

“She fell on her face after she was hit. It’s nothing you can’t fix.”

“It’s not her exterior that I’m so concerned about—the Regenerator can easily repair that damage.”

My gaze is finally dragged away from my broken body and settles on the woman speaking. She’s bent over a desk, squinting down at a computer screen. She taps the screen a few times, and the machine behind me makes a grating noise. A see-through image of someone’s head drifts up over the desk. Even though it’s neon green, with grid lines running through, I can tell that it belongs to me from the round face and nose shape. The woman touches the screen again, and the projection changes to a floating model of a brain.

“Making sure she hasn’t received any brain damage will take additional time,” the woman explains.

I walk in a circle around the machine. This...thing that is slowly repairing my body’s injuries. My shoes clacking loudly on the tile floor are the only sound other than a steady beep from the machines. Heels. Even if I could find a pair, I’d never wear them outside of a dream because there’s no place for impractical shoes in my world.

“Spare me the technical doctor talk, okay? How long will it be before I can have her back?” I demand.

The woman lifts her eyes to the side of the white machine where I’m standing over myself. She swallows hard and fumbles with the last button on her white coat. “With all due respect, Miss Olivia, there are other characters far more advanced and with the newest technology that—”

Even though this is a dream and I’m somebody else, that name makes me go cold. I want to wake up. I want this dream to be over now.

“I don’t want another,” the soft-voiced me snaps. “I want her.”

“But her vitals are incr—”

“Perhaps you didn’t understand me, Dr. Coleman. Or maybe you lack the skills to perform what you were hired to do. This is who I want, so fix her!”

Dr. Coleman touches her screen again. The brain changes back to the image of my head, and then the entire projection sinks down, disappearing. “She came close to dying this time.”

“If she dies, then you will, too. Make her right again.”

Again.

Again?

Wake up. Wake up right now. This is all wrong...

Dr. Coleman sighs heavily and grabs something off her desk. As I step aside so she can walk past, I catch a glimpse of it. Long and silver—it looks like a square flashlight. She positions her hand over a blinking light on the side of the Regenerator. The machine beeps five times before the glass panel flips open. My body shivers visibly as Coleman brushes back strands of my blond hair.

“Are you sure you just don’t want to wait until—”

“What I want is her functional within forty-eight hours,” I say in the strange voice. “And don’t shave her head this time. She looked hideous the last time you did that. And no new scars, either—she already has plenty.”

Wake up. Please.

I want to turn away as Dr. Coleman presses the square black tip of the tool to my scalp. But my thoughts and actions in my dreams are just the same as reality. Severed. The body inside the machine comes fully to life when the doctor holds down a button on the device. Screaming, thrashing against dozens of metal arms sketching over the rest of its injuries. Somehow, I’d failed to notice them before.

Wake up!

At last, I untangle myself from the nightmare.

And the pain of the girl who is struggling inside the machine coffin with the broken body—now it’s all mine.

CHAPTER THREE

“I hate when that happens.”

My first words when life rushes back into my body are so nonchalant, they nearly knock the breath out of me all over again. A throbbing ache claws the left side of my face, pulsating from my jawbone to my temple and, finally, to the top of my head. I try to open my eyes. They are so sticky, and I’m so weak, I only manage to part them enough to see slivers of bright light and dark faceless figures moving about. My breath quickens as panic surfaces in the pit of my belly and digs its way into my chest.

Where am I?

“Welcome back,” Ethan says. I can detect a hint of a smile behind his voice. Just like three years ago when we’d first met, right after a flesh-eater had attacked me, taking a chunk of my right ear with him.

“Welcome to The Aftermath,” Ethan had said before helping me up. Then he’d touched my bleeding ear and added, “We better get that fixed. Wouldn’t want you to bleed out the first day in.”

Now I should feel more relief he’s alive. That I am with him and not fenced in by rotting flesh and half-dead emaciated captives in a flesh-eater’s den. But I can’t. My head is aching, and the sensation slinks through the rest of my body, leaving a bitter sting wherever it touches. Like poison.

“Here,” Ethan says. A wet cloth covers my eyelids. “Better now?”

No. Not even a little. How could it be better when my head feels as if it’s about to explode and I’ve no recollection of what happened to me? The only thing I remember after being hit by the boy with the dark gray eyes is a string of horrible nightmares.

A vision of me stretched out and bruised in a machine, with tiny mechanical hands repairing my body, flashes through my mind. I swallow back a sour taste in my mouth.

No, nothing is better. And I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that things will become much worse.

“It’s perfect,” I say, my voice scratchy. Raw. Suddenly, I don’t want to open my eyes. I want to stay like this, curled into the fetal position with my head ablaze until I gather my bearings. Piece together my broken memories.

My eyes open anyway.

Ethan’s face hovers over mine. He is smiling widely, despite the open cut on his lip. But for the first time, his eyes startle me. They aren’t injured or anything like that, but they’re glassy, like hazel marbles. My hands suddenly feel clammy. In the three years I’ve known Ethan, I’ve never felt wary around him.

Until today.

“I’m glad,” he says. His fingers intertwine with mine, and I feel weightless as he helps me to my feet.

We aren’t in the jail, I realize as he pulls me to him and into a suffocating embrace. There are no cell doors, no chipping blue paint or exposed piping or opaque windows. This place is open and well-lit, thanks to its many windows, and I know it well. It’s the museum in the Park. Once, I’d found a tourism brochure with a picture of this place tucked inside a tin box in a crawl space. The paper was so old that I could barely make out most of the tiny typed print, except for the words “Tour the Parthenon.” I can’t imagine anyone wanting to tour this museum now, though. These days, it overlooks a lake that’s slowly drying up to reveal a makeshift burial ground.

Dozens of pillars enclose us. Two stories above, light gleams through windows in the beamed ceiling, illuminating splashes of graffiti and blood on the columns. And positioned behind the concrete—with missing heads and appendages—are sculptures that seem to turn accusingly toward me.

Coward,
they seem to say.

Inside, I wince.

“I know you said you didn’t want to come here, but it was so close to the other place,” Ethan explains, leaning against one of the pillars. He glances away, and my heart jumps at the sight of the long gash that runs from the nape of his neck to just by his throat. I want to reach out and touch it. Ask him if this is what happened to him on our raid, if he knows what happened to me when I went under. If he knows what happened to the boy who came out of the elevator.

“I hope you’re not upset,” he whispers.

I stare at Ethan for a long moment, studying his injuries. I feel as if I’m about to pass out from my own. Did I speak to him deliriously, words I’ve now forgotten? I have no memory of talking to him about living here. And even though I would’ve argued against it because this museum practically screams to be raided, I don’t understand why he’d think I’d be upset.

I’m not angry. At the moment, I’m just thankful to be alive. I don’t want him to stress over me when he’s so badly injured himself.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. He’s just worried. That’s why his eyes look so strange—it has to be.

“You have the survival instincts of a toddler. And you listen like one, too,” I say.

No, my words are all wrong. The opposite of what I need to say to him.

He nods quickly and pushes himself from the concrete. “If it makes you happy, we’ll move immediately.” His blank, serene expression is back. Like everything is normal. Like he doesn’t feel the inflamed cut beneath his chin or the bruises that mutilate his face.

I feel them for him, and I’m creeped out.

He nods toward the back of the building. His movements are so quick and wobbly, I want to reach out and steady his head. “This is The Save for now. Open areas are a pain in the ass, but the rest of the building is too small to work with. Come on. I’ll show you where we’ve stored the food.”

I shuffle slowly beside him. Sharp pangs make my stomach tighten. My head feels like a jar and someone is clenching the lid, twisting and wrenching. I twitch. Blink. And once again, I see my body motionless, the long silver device pushing against my scalp.

This is the first time one of my nightmares has stayed with me outside of sleep, and it terrifies me.

“Which one?” Ethan’s soft voice brings me back into the museum. He dangles two protein bars in front of my face. “Double chocolate or vanilla milk shake?”

Chocolate, I think, but a toxic cocktail of frustration and pain, coupled with disgust at the sickening images in my head, suddenly replaces my hunger.

“Vanilla milk shake,” I find myself saying as I snatch the bar from his hand.

“Nice, she’s up.”

Ethan and I both turn to face Jeremy. He perches against the rusted doorway, twirling a butterfly knife like it’s a toy and grinning. “You were gone far too long, Claudia Virtue, but I’m glad you’re finally back. It’s not the same without you. You’re way more interesting than April.”

What isn’t the same? Raids? I draw a dizzying breath in through my nose. I am dying to demand an explanation. To force them to give me a play-by-play of the events following the woman’s death in the courthouse and the brief appearance of the gray-eyed boy dressed in black. But all I manage to do is take another bite of the stale protein bar and stare idiotically between the two of them.

“Thank you both for completely going against my wishes and lying about it. It really makes me want to throw you both out of my clan.” There are a million thoughts racing through my head and none of them are being verbalized— Instead, everything that I’ve managed to say has been a confusing mess.

Jeremy winks at me, but it looks so unnatural a shiver creeps through my body. “Don’t be so dramatic, Claudia.” He kicks his heel against the door frame and starts to walk off. “I’ll catch you in a bit. April and I need to go finish clearing out the jail,” he calls out.

“I really should get rid of all of you,” I say.

“Don’t be like that, Oliv—”

“Don’t call me that!” I snap, focusing on Jeremy’s back as he walks away. Even though Ethan didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, my heartbeat speeds up. He was about to call me Olivia, I think. The name from my nightmare. The name of that other girl. How does Ethan know about that?

“Don’t bend your own rules.” I grind the tip of my index finger against Ethan’s bony chest. “Never call me that.”

I don’t understand the painful disconnect between what I’m thinking and what I’m actually saying today. Why am I bringing up the rules? Within our clan, there are only two rules: never leave one another behind. And never break. Up until now I was certain the rule about breaking referred to us bringing up who we were before The Aftermath—what good did dwelling on things we couldn’t remember do us?

Now I’m not sure what it means.

“Rules are meant to be broken every once in a while. Besides, we almost lost you, and who knows what would’ve happened then.”

I never cry, but I want to right now. From frustration. And from the numbing ache in the center of my head. I am going insane. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. I turn to Ethan and open my mouth to speak, expecting a dam to burst and all my questions about what happened after I was knocked out to come rushing out in a deluge. But all I say is, “April’s the one who wanted to move to this place, huh?”

No. That’s not what’s important to me. Not what I need to say.

The left corner of his mouth tugs up. He stares out of the storeroom to where April is touching the giant statue that’s the centerpiece of the museum. “How’d you guess?”

I look at April, too. Her head is lowered so that her red hair tumbles around the faded golden feet. That statue makes the end of society bearable for her— She’s never said so, but I figured that must be the reason she’s drawn to it. After every successful rescue mission or raid, she comes here. The thief and her shrine.

April’s lips move for a few seconds longer; then she presses her lips to the golden shield the statue carries. She looks up at us, smiles at Ethan, waves and finally disappears out a side door.

Maybe April is ecstatic now that this is our home, but her obsession is the last thing that matters to me. I hate myself for my inability to say what’s needed. I close my eyes to ground myself. And for that moment, I am no longer in the black mold-infested storage room of a dilapidated museum. I don’t even think I am in my world at all.

I am outside it, looking in from a white room.

There are flashing red lights embedded in the ceiling at each corner of the room—ten of them in all. Every light is turned in my direction, like spotlights. The only furnishing in here is a plush leather chair that’s empty. And all around the chair are large video screens that completely cover all ten sides of the wall.

In front of me, the side of Ethan’s face and body fill one of the displays. Two years ago, we took up residence in a movie theater on the far side of town. One of the screens was faulty, playing the same old movie on a monotonous loop. Every time I walked past it, I saw bits and pieces of the film, a movie about car racing. This bright room reminds me of that theater except the picture quality is vivid, not crackled and grainy. Ethan is so lifelike I wouldn’t know he was an image if I couldn’t see the white border snaking across the top and bottom of the ten-sided room.

Ethan stares at the statue, and someone says, “I’m glad we didn’t have to change things—bring in another character.” It takes me a moment to realize the person talking is the one in the blindingly white room and even longer to grasp that I am not that girl. Our voices are completely different—hers is soft and whispery.

The same voice from my dreams.

Am I asleep now?

Is everything that’s happened to me today nothing but a strange dream that I’ll awaken from, ready to look for more food?

Ethan’s smile illuminates the entire display. I observe, transfixed, as he reaches out. On the screen, his fingertips seem to brush back and forth over an imaginary object. “Me, too. We’ll get out of here soon, okay? I promise. Maybe...it’s time to leave the others—just you and me. So the game can be fun again.”

“Hmm, I don’t know about that. There’s that pesky little rule about team size, remember?” the girl in the white room asks. This time I hear my voice, too, speaking in unison with her. “We should stay put right where we are. At least for the time being.”

I startle, and when my eyes fly open, the screens are gone, replaced by the museum itself. Ethan is in front of me—real, touchable. I tremble softly, praying he does not notice how my breath bursts in and out. He strokes my cheek with his thumb and forefinger. Exactly like the motion I saw on the display in the decagon room.

His hand stops moving, pausing right under my lower lashes on the left side of my face. He stares down at me. My heart drums violently inside my chest. I try to swallow, but my mouth is so dry, my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. What just happened? What’s happening to me?

At last, he gives me a smile. “We have more chance of staying alive with them. You know this already, Olivia,” he says grimly.

Olivia. Here I am, my heart in my throat and my body numb, and Ethan is saying her name again. I rise on my toes and run my lips along his cheek. All this is happening, but I am not the one doing it. I’m too stunned to move. “Stop calling me that, Landon,” I hear myself say in a low whisper.

A chill races through my bones.

Who is Landon?

Ethan laughs and pushes me back. “Got to go for a little. My mother...”

He does not have a mother. Ethan is just like me and doesn’t remember anything before the apocalypse and doesn’t know anyone named Olivia. Isn’t he?

“Claudia?” he asks.

Things seem to move in slow motion for the next few moments.

“Go tend to your mommy,” I say. “It’s time to give Claudia a rest anyway—her health level is crap. Log back on in three hours?”

“See you then.”

Log back on to what? I should know exactly what I mean—after all, it’s me saying these words, my voice!—but I don’t, and inside, I am screaming.

“Yes, see you then,” I say, just before an electric tingle begins in the center of my skull, oozing down my face and body until it mutes each of my senses.

* * *

When the prickling sensation stops, I find myself under the statue, staring up at a large crack in its head. In the background, I hear crackling food wrappers. Hushed whispers. Above the statue, the night sky creates a dark canvas over the windows.

When did it get dark? My head throbs as I try to remember what I did after my strange conversation with Ethan. Nothing clear comes to me, just fuzzy images. I am sick of distorted pictures and forgetfulness.