The Other Life (6 page)

Stupid locker. Stuck again. I yanked. Nothing.

I yanked harder. It swung open fast and I stumbled back.

Stupid thing.

I pushed my bag into it.

“You dropped something.”

Alex.

I turned so fast, my neck cracked. My skin flushed with heat. He was much closer than I’d expected.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Huh?” More heat flooded my cheeks.

“You dropped something.” Alex pointed at the ground. A sheet of paper lay on the linoleum, just centimetres from my feet.

I bent down and my head collided with his.

“Ouch.”

God, I was such an idiot.

“I’m sorry.”

I ripped the piece of paper from his hand. With a mumbled thanks, I dashed away.

I sat up but the movement made the dizziness worse. My vision was still blurry. A person stood in front of me – for a fleeting moment, I thought it might be Dad, but he
was too young and his hair wasn’t red. I struggled when he tried to lift me.

“Stop it, or I’ll leave you here. More of them will be here soon,” he hissed.

He picked me up and straightened with a small groan. Then he carried me through the store and out of the building to a car.

“My dad…” I tried to get the words out.

“Can you stand?”

I nodded numbly and clung to his T-shirt when he set me down on my feet. He wrapped his arm around my waist to keep me steady and I leaned my head against his chest.

I almost fell into the passenger seat when he opened the door for me. The purr of the engine brought me back to my senses.

“My father’s still in the store,” I said groggily.

He shook his head as he steered the car across the parking lot. The speed threw me against the door and I was too weak to keep myself upright.

“No. Nobody’s in there. Except for two dead Weepers.”

“But my father—” I began, but he interrupted me.

“Believe me, he isn’t in there.”

I took a shaky breath. The heat was getting to me. My head was aching where I’d hit it, and I felt woozy. “It’s stuffy. Can we open the windows?”

He shook his head. “No. You’re bleeding all over the place. They’re like sharks. The smell of blood attracts them. They’d follow us and I won’t risk
that.”

I frowned at him. “How do you know that they aren’t following us already?”

“I just know it,” he replied and returned his gaze to the windshield.

The car was going at a maddening speed. Every bump in the concrete catapulted me off the passenger seat, bringing my head dangerously close to the ceiling. The car was definitely travelling at
its limits, and there wasn’t any traffic to slow us down.

“This was the car in the parking lot? The Lincoln. Why was your car in the parking lot?” I slurred like a drunk.

“I was hunting. I heard gunshots,” he replied casually.

Hunting? Maybe he’d been after the wild boars.

I breathed deeply, but it didn’t help to clear my mind. “Where are you taking me?” I asked, my eyes half-closed.

“Somewhere safe. Maybe you should close your eyes for a little while. You look like shit.”

I stared at the windshield and listened to the noise of the engine. My hands were coated with blood, still sticky. Dad’s blood. My throat tightened. I closed my eyes. Images of him being
ripped apart, torn into tiny pieces, flashed into my mind.

Dad.

I’d abandoned him, failed him. My fault. All my fault. I swallowed hard, trying to stop myself from crying.

After a while, when I felt steadier, I tilted my head to the side to look at the profile of the boy beside me. He had high cheekbones and tanned skin. “My name is Sherry.”

He glanced at me. “Joshua,” he said with a fleeting smile, before handing me an old towel. “To stop the bleeding.” He turned back to the road and I pressed the towel
against my head.

“What happened to my father?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.

“I don’t know. But since I didn’t see a body, I guess they took him with them.”

“Took him with them? Where?”

“I’m not entirely sure. There are a few places where the Weepers live.”

“Weepers?”

“That’s what everyone calls the infected.”

I stared at him.

“They look like they’re crying. When you’re face-to-face with them, you’ll know what I mean.”

An image of the dead mutant – Weeper – flashed into my mind.

“But why would they take my father with them?”

He shrugged. “They stockpile.”

“Stockpile?”

“Like squirrels.”

I clamped a palm over my mouth to stifle a sob. Do. Not. Cry. I swallowed and dropped my hand. “You mean, they eat humans?”

He nodded, his eyes focused on the street. A shotgun was resting across his lap. “Yes – easy prey. Humans have forgotten how to survive in a battle of the fittest. Our instincts are
dormant, and the Weepers prefer easy prey.” He pulled off the freeway and onto a smaller street.

“But weren’t they like us once?” I croaked.

He pulled his gaze from the windshield and smiled sadly. “But they don’t know that. The virus has turned them into predators without a conscience. They’ve lost their memories
of who they were.”

I couldn’t stop myself from imagining that creature chewing on Dad. Horror exploded within me.

“We have to save him!” I shouted.

He glanced at me, studying my expression before he shook his head. Desperate, I reached out and tried to grab the steering wheel, but he knocked my hand away. “Have you lost your
mind?”

“What if he’s still alive? I can’t let…that…happen to him!” Waves of terror for Dad washed over me. And what about Mom? How could I explain it to her?
She’d never forgive me. I began to hyperventilate as a new fear struck me. Mom! “My family – I have to get back to them! They’re still in our house, in a bunker. I need to
warn them about the Weepers!”

Joshua didn’t slow the car. “We can’t go back now. Even if we could save your dad – and I’m not promising anything – it’ll be getting dark soon, and the
night is the time for predators. Believe me, you don’t want to be on the street when they’re on the prowl – they’ll sniff out your blood before you even see them, and then
you won’t be able to save yourself, let alone your dad. As for your family, as long as they stay in the bunker, they should be fine.”

I shivered. “But my father told them to find other people if we haven’t returned by tomorrow.”

Joshua’s brows dipped in a frown. “Look, we need to spend the night outside the city. But we can search for your father and go back for your family tomorrow after sunrise.”

I had no choice. “Okay,” I managed to croak out.

The moment the word left my mouth, guilt pulled at my throat. Joshua touched my shoulder briefly. “There’s nothing more we can do tonight. And your family will be fine. The bunker
has kept you safe until now, hasn’t it?”

I nodded. “We’ve spent the last 1,141 days there.” Surely it would keep them safe another night. Some of the pressure lifted from my chest, allowing me to take a deep
breath.

“You counted the days?” He smiled.

“There wasn’t much else to do.” I stared at my lap, where my jeans were smeared with blood. Dad’s blood. I ran my fingertips over the rough material.

“1,141 days is a long time.”

I glanced at him. He was staring at the road as he spoke.

“I spent 515 days in a bunker.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You counted the days too?”

One corner of his mouth pulled up in a lopsided grin. “Yeah.”

“Why did you leave your bunker? Did the military make contact?”

His mouth set in a thin line. “The military never showed up – they just broadcast their useless warning.” His eyes flickered towards me. “It was a public bunker. Things
escalated pretty fast.”

He turned his face away and stared out of the windshield.

“My father and I left the bunker because we’d run out of food…” I began, but guilt and grief gripped me at the thought of Dad, and I slipped into silence, tension
crackling like static in the air.

Joshua’s jaw tightened. I stared out of the side window and watched the landscape as it passed us by. Broken-down cars littered the streets, rusty and covered in dirt. Fallen debris lay
everywhere. Was Dad out there somewhere, waiting for me to help him?

We slowed down and turned onto a narrow dirt track. We were driving away from the coast and into the surrounding hills. I still hadn’t seen any other human being except Joshua. He stayed
silent during the rest of the drive. I didn’t know what to say to him. It had been so long since I’d dealt with other people. Maybe I was out of practice.

I sat up when we neared a huge villa with smaller cottages surrounding the main building. It must have been a winery; the surrounding slopes were overgrown with vines heavy with grapes. The
sweet smell of rotten fruit carried into the car, sweeter than anything I’d smelled in a while. We drove through a set of iron gates. A stone wall, overgrown with ivy, surrounded the
buildings, reminding me of pictures of France or Tuscany.

We pulled up in front of the main house. The ochre paint was peeling off and a few of the clay shingles were missing. The white of the window shutters had faded to a dull grey, and two of them
swayed precariously in the wind.

Joshua got out of the car without a word and slammed the door shut. I glanced at the small clock on the dashboard. The journey had taken us a little over an hour. No traffic, no stop lights, no
speed limits. Just us and the Lincoln flying over dead freeways. Los Angeles had turned into a still life.

I got out of the car, but had to grab the door to steady myself. Joshua took my arm. “Don’t fall. Your head’s only just stopped bleeding. Come on.”

He led me towards the main building. Every time my right foot touched the ground it burned with agony, and the pebbles covering the courtyard dug into my soles, sending jolts of pain through my
feet and up my neck.

“Where are we?”

The sun hung lower in the sky now, so it didn’t dazzle me when I looked up at him. He was almost a head taller than me. His skin tone reminded me of the honey Grandma used to make. The
buzzing of bees and the taste of homemade honey had once belonged to my summer, like sunshine and ice cream. Not any more.

1,148 days since Grandma had given up her beehive. It had felt like more than a goodbye to her bees.

He shrugged. “People here call it Safe-haven. A few other survivors live in the winery with me.”

The wooden door of the main building was dark, maybe oak, and it was cross-braced with iron, which gave it a medieval touch. Joshua opened it with an old-fashioned silver key that he’d
taken from his jeans pocket. Loss of blood and lack of food were taking their toll on me. All I wanted to do was to lie down, close my eyes and sleep.

It was slightly cooler in the house than outside, but the heat was still bothering me. The hall was dimly lit and a wooden staircase led up to the first floor. A flowery carpet covered the
ground and a silver chandelier hung from the ceiling. The owner must have been rich.

“Come on,” Joshua said. He wrapped his arm more tightly around my waist and walked me towards the door on our right. It led into a huge living room with the same flowery carpet. I
hoped I wouldn’t bleed on it.

That’s your main concern?
a snarky little voice in my brain asked. I shook my head to get rid of it, but that only worsened my headache. Sweat trickled into my eyes, making them
sting. I blinked a few times to clear my vision.

A middle-aged woman sat in an armchair, her head leaning against the backrest and her eyes closed. A book lay open on her lap, and several piles of books and papers littered the floor beside her
feet. Her short brown hair was streaked with grey. Crinkles lined the skin around her eyes and mouth. A few more armchairs and a sofa were positioned in front of a huge fireplace. The room was
clean, free of dust or soot. It was obvious people lived here.

“Karen, there’s someone here who needs your help,” Joshua said, all but dragging me into the room.

Karen’s eyes shot open. They were light grey and seemed to pierce right through me. Her gaze swept over my body for a second before she got up so fast it startled me.

“Joshua!” she exclaimed. She held a hand to her cheek, her lips parted in surprise. “What happened?” She hustled over to us in a few steps. Her smile was reassuring and I
tried to smile in return, but I wasn’t sure if it worked.

Together they helped me towards the sofa and made me sit down. I slumped against the soft leather of the backrest. Finally, the pain in my foot lessened.

“When I found her, two Weepers had picked her for dinner. They’d have killed her if she hadn’t fired off her gun in every direction,” Joshua told Karen with a hint of
dark amusement.

I glanced at him. His eyes sparkled and his words had sounded like praise. But what did I know? My social skills had suffered during three years in the bunker.

Karen prodded a tender spot on my head, making me wince and stopping my train of thought.