The Way We Fall (23 page)

You know, for all the talk you hear about “Mother Nature” and the harmony of the natural world, the truth is, nature doesn’t give a crap about anything or anyone.

Every scientist knows that. Nature doesn’t have feelings or morals; it’s just a bunch of random chances that sometimes work in the favor of this pack or that herd, and sometimes wipe one out. Some random chance gave this one virus the ability to infect our brains and spread itself by making its victims want other people’s company. And as far as nature’s concerned, whether we win or the virus does, it’s all the same. There’s nothing that stops and thinks about how much or how many are going to get hurt.

But every now and then I still want to have someone to grab and shake and shout at: “How could you?”

A question Nature’s never going to answer.

I was at the hospital this afternoon. Tessa and I decided we shouldn’t leave Meredith alone in the house for our scavenging trips, what with the gang lighting fires all over. I found a copy of
Never Cry Wolf
in the hospital library a little while back, and I’ve been reading chapters to the patients who are sick but not that sick yet, who get bored and depressed sitting around waiting for the virus to crawl deeper into their brains.

I was at my favorite part, where Farley Mowat chases after a pack of wolves wearing nothing but his shoes, when I heard someone yelling. Which would have been normal in the hospital these days, except the voice was coming from the direction of the reception room, not upstairs, where they’ve moved the most sick patients. And it sounded familiar.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, and went out to see what was happening.

The words got clearer as soon as I opened the door: “How long will the test take? When will you know?”

Gav was standing at the end of the hall, one hand splayed against the wall, the other clutching his mask. His face was flushed and his shoulders were shaking.

My heart didn’t just sink. It plummeted.

“I need you to calm down,” Nell was saying to him. “We’re doing the best we can. Please put on your mask.”

What does it matter? I thought. What good’s the mask going to do if he’s already sick?

He took a long breath and said, not quite shouting this time, “Are you going to do anything for him? Is there anything you
can
do?”

And I realized he was flushed with emotion, not fever. It wasn’t him. Which meant there was only one person it could be.

“We’re doing our best,” Nell repeated.

“Great!” Gav said. “So I brought him here so you could just shut him in some room and leave him to die. Fuck that.”

He wavered on his feet, looking like he wanted to say more but was too angry to find the words. When they didn’t come, he spun around and stalked out through the reception room.

For a moment, I was paralyzed. Then my legs lurched forward and I ran after him, peeling off my protective gown as I went.

He’d already pushed past the front doors. I caught up with him on the steps outside. He didn’t hesitate or glance back at the sound of my feet, so I said, “Gav, wait!”

It was like I’d hit him. He stopped and dropped down onto the steps amid the puddles left by the morning’s rain, lowering his head into his hands. The coat he’s been wearing is too big on him—used to be his dad’s, he mentioned once—and suddenly he looked very small in it.

I sat down next to him and slid my arm around his back. It didn’t seem right to talk first.

“I tried so hard to make sure he’d be okay,” he said after a bit. His voice was ragged. I think he was trying not to cry.

“Warren?” I asked, even though I couldn’t imagine who else he’d be this upset about.

“I convinced him he’d do the most help working with the kids in the church, because I knew they’d all been tested, so it was safe,” he went on, without answering. “I made sure he wore his goddamn mask every minute of every goddamn day.”

“Has he had the blood test yet?” I said.

“They’re doing it now,” Gav said. “But…I could tell. It hit him hard. He was fine the whole day, and then about an hour ago, all of a sudden he couldn’t stop coughing. Or scratching his neck. I practically had to wrestle him into the car—he’d decided he was going to drive himself here, as if he even could. He was worried about
me
.”

He shook his head as if that were the most ridiculous idea ever.

We sat there, not saying anything, for a few minutes. Everything inside of me felt like it’d been tied into tiny knots. Finally he raised his head and looked at me. The expression on his face made all the knots pull tighter, until I could hardly breathe. He looked beaten.

“What’s the point, Kaelyn?” he said. “If nothing we do matters, if we’re all just going to die anyway—what’s the point of anything?”

I don’t know. If even Gav can’t see the point anymore…What if there isn’t one?

But I couldn’t say that. Not when he was looking at me that way. A thought started to uncurl in my head, so delicate I was afraid to touch it.

Maybe I don’t need to be worried about the way I feel about him, Leo. This is different than it was with you. Maybe he needs
me
.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I kissed him. And he brushed his fingers into my hair and kissed me back, hard.

That was a good enough answer, for now. I hope I can find a better one. For both him and for me.

I went back to the records room last night. Wondering if there was something both Dad and I managed to miss. I pulled out the files for the six survivors, including me, and randomly grabbed another ten for comparison. As I was tugging out the last one, my eyes skimmed over the names behind it, and I saw your folder, and your mom’s and dad’s.

I hadn’t seen your parents in my rounds. I’d hoped they’d managed to stay safe, but I didn’t know. I could have asked Tessa if she’d talked to them; I could have gone by their house; I could have looked at the records earlier. Except I didn’t really want to find out. As long as I didn’t, it could still be good news. But yesterday, without really thinking, I set down the file I’d been holding and took out theirs.

I’m so sorry, Leo.

There’s a reason I haven’t seen them since I started volunteering. Your mom came in with the early symptoms a week after the quarantine was announced. Your dad followed her a few days later. They were both dead before I even got sick.

There’s a folder for just about every person on the island in that room. Staring at them, I realized I could see how many of our neighbors the virus took, how many of our teachers didn’t make it, how many kids from school came to the hospital before Shauna and never left.

I don’t know why, but the enormity of it hit me in that moment in a way it hadn’t before. Five seconds later I was across the hall in the bathroom, crouched on the floor, trying to keep my dinner down. Even when my stomach finally stopped churning, the back of my mouth tasted like acid.

The quarry must be overflowing with bodies. So many people. People we spent most of our lives with. It has to stop.

When I could stand, I went back to the records room, shut the file drawer, and made myself get to work.

Organizing the information would be a lot easier on a computer. Drew could have made up a program like he did for those phone calls I was making…was that really less than two months ago?

If Drew were here.

But if the electricity goes, like almost everything else has, I’d lose all of it. So I started making charts on a pad of graph paper I found on the supply shelf, comparing numbers and dates and medications. How long it took each person to reach each stage. How much of which drugs at what time of day. Looking for any sort of pattern. The answer could be something so small, no one would see it unless they studied every little factor with incredible scrutiny.

There’s so much data. So many factors. I filled six sheets of paper in three hours, and none of the information ended up looking remotely meaningful. Then Nell found me.

“What are you still doing here, Kaelyn?” she asked. “It’s almost midnight.”

I stared up at her, kind of dazed. My brain was swimming with medical notations it hardly understands.

When I didn’t answer, her eyes went soft, but her voice got more firm.

“All right,” she said. “Come on. I’m ordering you, as a doctor, to go home and get some rest.”

As if sitting here in the same room as Meredith, knowing there’d be nothing I could do if she woke up and started sneezing right now, is going to make me feel any better.

I’m going back today. And tomorrow and the next day until I’ve accounted for every tiny detail. There has to be a connection. I’m not stopping until I find it.

It’s rained at least part of every day since Mom’s birthday. The cold driving rain that always comes at the end of the fall. Not pleasant, but we’re taking a car everywhere we go anyway, so I haven’t had much chance to be bothered by the weather.

The good thing is, rain and fire don’t mix well, and Quentin’s friends obviously know that. As far as we can tell, they haven’t tried to light up any more houses. Maybe they’re just saving the gasoline they stole for when they can do the most damage. Or maybe they’ll finally get a clue and realize burning down a few buildings here and there isn’t going to solve our problems. Unless they do us a favor and burn themselves up too.

Since the fires had stopped as long as it was raining, I figured it was safe to leave Meredith on her own for a little while—as safe as it ever is. So Tessa and I set off for a quick scavenging trip this afternoon.

We went through a bunch of houses not far from Main Street, but half of them looked like the gang had already gotten to them. They’ve mostly focused on food and electronics, though, so at least we sometimes found pills and creams in the medicine cabinets.

When we came to the third place with a vacant TV stand, Tessa shook her head.

“I don’t know why they think a bunch of televisions and DVD players are going to keep them alive,” she said.

“Maybe they’re planning on taking everything over to the mainland and trying to sell it,” I said. “When they figure out how to do that without getting shot.”

Then I remembered seeing the garden shop the other day, so we swung by there. Tessa looked at the shelves for a few minutes, picking up packets and cartons and then putting them back, frowning.

“I used to come here almost every week,” she said. “The woman who owns this place would special-order things for me. She loves this store.”

“Chances are those guys will come back eventually and grab anything you don’t take,” I pointed out. “Or burn the place down.”

Chances also are the owner’s already dead.

“You’re right,” Tessa said. “And I can always bring back what I haven’t used and pay for what I did when she opens up again.”

She took all the seeds and bulbs and as many bags of fertilizer as she could fit in the car, and a bunch of pots and planting trays. After she closed the trunk, she paused for a moment under the awning.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and laughed lightly. “I was just thinking—Leo used to come here with me, help load the car. I’d be talking the whole time about all my plans, and he’d nod and grin so you couldn’t tell he didn’t have any idea what I was going on about most of the time. He wasn’t into gardening or farming or any of that. But he would be, right then, because of me. That’s the way he was.”

She lowered her eyes and turned her head away. I hadn’t realized before how much she misses you. An uncomfortable mix of my own missing, and guilt—for the times I thought she couldn’t have cared about you enough—swelled in my chest.

“He’s a great guy,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “The best.” And slid into the car. That was it, subject closed.

“Is Gav all right?” she asked on the way to the hospital. “He hasn’t come by in a while.”

“He’s okay,” I said. “He’s just—his best friend got sick. He’s been spending most of his time keeping him company.”

Even though it hurts talking about Warren, knowing how worried Gav is about him, and even though I had an extra twinge of guilt realizing how hard it must be for Tessa to see us together when her boyfriend’s hundreds of miles away, I still got that warm, tingly feeling thinking about him. I floated in it, wondering how I could possibly be so happy about something when so much else is going wrong, the whole way back to Tessa’s house.

She parked the car in the driveway. Everything looked normal. Then the upstairs window jerked open and Meredith’s voice brought me back to earth.

“Kaelyn!” she called down. She gasped a couple times, that breathless gulping sound people make when they’ve been crying and are trying to calm down. “Be careful!” she said. “I think they all went away, but I don’t know.”

My heart stopped.

“Who?” I said. “What happened?” But she’d started sobbing and couldn’t answer.

Tessa walked to the door and yanked it open. The knob fell off in her hand. Inside, the floor was caked with muddy footprints, and I could see that all of the cabinet doors in the kitchen had been flung open. Tessa hurried in that direction. I dashed up the stairs.

The door to the master bedroom was closed and locked. I knocked on it.

“Meredith,” I said, “you can come out. Whoever it was, they’re gone now. Are you okay?”

She sniffled, and the lock clicked. The second she opened the door, I knelt down and pulled her into my arms. She buried her face in my shoulder.

“It was that guy, the angry one who came into the toy store,” she said. “And a bunch of other people too, but I didn’t know them. He grabbed me and told me to show them where we kept the stuff you and Tessa have been taking from the houses. I said that you gave it to the hospital, and he got really mad. But then they started going through the kitchen, and he wasn’t paying attention, and I got away from him and ran up here. That was good, right?”

“Really good,” I said. I was so angry, my voice shook. If I’d had a gun, and Quentin had stepped in front of me right then, I think I could have blasted him away without hesitating.

I eased Meredith back and looked her over. Her wrists were already starting to bruise, a purplish pattern of fingers against the dark brown of her skin. I hugged her again and kissed the top of her head.

Then a thin wail split the air, so pained it made the hairs on my arms rise.

My first thought was that I’d been wrong, someone was still here, and they were hurting Tessa. “Stay here,” I told Meredith. “Keep the door locked until I come back.” She nodded solemnly, and I crept to the stairs, peering over the banister.

I hoped I’d have more of a chance if I took our enemy by surprise, but I didn’t see anyone, just the ransacked kitchen and, as I edged into the hall, the back door swinging open in the wind.

When I reached it, Tessa was standing on the patio just outside, her pale hands clasped in front of her. The rain was soaking her clothes and hair.

She must have been the one who’d made that sound, but she was totally silent then. Just staring at the greenhouse. Seeing it, I jerked to a halt behind her.

They’d smashed the entire front wall, and part of the south side too. Wet glass glinted on the patio stones. Boot tracks crisscrossed the garden areas, leaves and stems trampled in their wake. There were dips and pits in the dirt where plants—I guess the ones that were clearly edible—had been uprooted and taken, and others stood at half-mast, their upper parts torn off.

The rain started to trickle down my neck, under the collar of my jacket. I shivered, but I didn’t want to move until Tessa did. I was waiting for her to spring into action, to start picking up the pieces and fitting them back together into the best shape she could make; to tell me that while what happened was really awful, it could have been worse. It can always be worse.

Instead, she turned around and looked at me, her eyelashes dark and wet.

“They knew when we’d be out,” she said. “They were watching us.”

“Meredith said they were looking for the food we’ve been taking from the houses,” I said. “I guess they must have seen us….”

I stopped. Because I knew how they’d happened to see us. They’d seen us because they’d known I’d survived the virus, and Quentin had been convinced I knew something about the cure, and so they’d been watching
me
. Possibly ever since that first guy aimed his shotgun at me. How else could Quentin have known where I’d be the day we went to the toy shop?

And since that day he must have been waiting to take his revenge for the way I embarrassed him. The gang didn’t need the little bit of food we’d been gathering on our own. They had tons.

Tessa had heard the story of the toy shop from Meredith. She’d obviously drawn the same conclusions I had, just faster.

“It was because of you,” she said. Simply, stating a fact. Then she brushed past me and walked inside. As I hurried after her, her bedroom door thumped shut. She hasn’t come out since.

If she hadn’t invited me into her house, this never would have happened.

I don’t know what to do. How can I make up to her something so enormous I can’t imagine where to begin?