Thicker than Blood (45 page)

He tried to smile, wincing as he did.
“Take…care…of…” He trailed off, his one eye closing.

Frantic, I dropped his arm and leaned
forward, pressing my face against his, searching for his breath.
Placing my hand over his heart, I waited breathlessly for it to
thump, and sighed in relief when I felt it. Although his breaths
were shallow and his heartbeat slow, he was still breathing, and
his heart still beat.

My own heart pounding furiously, I fell back
on my ankles. I wanted to scream. I wanted to beat my fists on the
floor, beat them against my face and my thighs and just scream and
scream and scream and scream. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking
fair. Everything good left in this world was going to be eventually
snuffed out altogether, one by one, and not by the infected but at
the hands of the selfish, greedy people who’d taken control, who’d
turned a worldwide devastation into their own personal playground.
Soon there would be nothing decent remaining, only sin or
sacrifice, and my only solace was the hope that eventually they’d
all kill each other off.

“Move, Lei!” Evelyn shouted, rushing back
into the room with her arms full.

Setting down Alex’s hand, I scrambled to his
other side while she dropped the bundle she was carrying and began
to sort through it.

“There’s nothing to clean the wound with,”
she muttered. “Nothing to stitch it with either. I’m going to wrap
it as tightly as I can and then bandage it, okay?”

Still crying, I nodded. “What can I do? How
can I help?”

She paused in her sorting and looked up at
me, her wild eyes suddenly growing soft and sad. Opening her mouth,
no sound came out, and she closed it, then licked her lips. As she
shook her head slowly, tears began to gather in her eyes. “This is
my fault,” she said, choking over her words. “This is my fault, all
my fault, Lei! It’s all my fault!”

She was shaking now, trembling so violently
that I stood up, stepping over Alex to drop down beside her.
Pulling her quivering body into my arms, I could feel how cold she
was despite the heat, nearly as cold as Alex.

“No,” I whispered fiercely. “No! Not one
single thing that has happened has been your fault! All you’ve done
was fight for us, for me. The actions of others is not your fault,
Eve, do you hear me? It’s not your fault!”

Pulling away from her, I took her battered
face gently in my hands. “Now, please,” I begged her. “Please help
me save him.”

Pressing her lips together, Evelyn squeezed
her eyes shut and curled her hands into fists, then shook her head.
Reopening her eyes, she swiped the tears from her cheeks and
pointed to a pile of clothing. “Help me rip it,” she said, her
voice sounding stronger. “We need long, thin pieces to tie around
him.”

Forgetting our grief and our regrets, we
busied ourselves with the task at hand, knowing the only thing that
mattered at the moment was to try to do something to help Alex.
After tearing the clothing into strips and tying them tightly
around his abdomen, we continued to bandage him with the remaining
suitable articles of clothing. When we were finished, we made a bed
of sorts for him using scraps of material for a pillow and his
jacket as a blanket.

Afterward, when Evelyn had gone to check the
area for threats, I lay down beside him, taking his hand in mine
and holding it to my heart. Humming softly, I began to pray. Who or
what I was praying to, I no longer knew.

But in the end, all our efforts were wasted.
Alex died as the sun was setting, while rays of gold and yellow
streamed in through the window, touching every inch of his body.
Appearing as if he were glowing, he took his last shuddering breath
before going still.

“Thank you,” I whispered, kissing his cold
lips with my own trembling ones as my tears fell on his cheeks,
making it look as if he were crying in his sleep. “Th-thank you for
everything.”

• • •

“Where should we go?” Evelyn asked, her head against
the wall, her eyes on the window as she watched the fat and full
moon hanging low in the night sky. “Should we still head south? Or
west, maybe?”

Seated beside her, my back against the same
wall with Alex’s head in my lap, I ran my hand through his hair,
much like I’d been doing all night. “Does it matter?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, sounding listless and far
away. “It doesn’t.”

“I wish we could bury him,” I mused, still
running my hand through his hair. “Instead of having to just leave
him in here.”

Several rather bold rats had already begun
sniffing around his body, not seeming to mind when I would kick
them away. They were waiting, I guessed, for us to leave him here
so they could have their meal.

“We could try,” Evelyn offered, still staring
out the window. “Maybe I could find some rocks for us to dig
with.”

“That sounds good,” I whispered, trailing my
knuckles down Alex’s scruffy cheek. “We should do that.”

We lapsed into silence, Evelyn’s gaze still
on the moon, and mine on nothing in particular. While Evelyn
continued to sniffle, I couldn’t seem to cry. It was as if my tears
had all but dried up. It was about time, I thought wryly, that I
stopped crying every other second.

“Lei?”

“Hmm?”

“Remember what you said to me at my wedding?
Right before I was supposed to walk down the aisle?”

My lips attempted to turn upward, wanting to
smile, yet I hadn’t the strength for it. “Yes,” I said. “I remember
you were scared out of your mind, and so I told you to put your
big-girl panties on and get your ass out there.”

“No,” she said. “After that, right before you
were supposed to walk out there. You looked over your shoulder and
smiled at me, remember what you said?”

“I remember.”

“You said, ‘If you don’t walk down that aisle
and marry the best thing to ever happen to you, then I’m going to
lose the best friend I’ve ever had. You can’t be best friends with
your husband’s best friend’s ex-girlfriend, you know?’”

Evelyn rolled her head toward me, her blue
eyes glistening with tears. “I didn’t want to lose the best friend
I’d ever had,” she whispered. “So I put my big-girl panties on and
walked down that aisle.”

I stared into her eyes and gave her the best
smile I could muster. “I remember,” I said. “I also remember what
you said to me when I found out I couldn’t have children.”

Evelyn’s eyes closed, more tears spilling out
from beneath her lashes. “I said,” she replied hoarsely, “that I’d
have babies for both of us.”

“And Thomas had asked if that meant he got to
have sex with you, remember?”

Through her tears, Evelyn smirked. “He was
only joking, but I’d never seen you so mad.”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t funny.”

“Lei, it was funny. Even Shawn thought it was
funny.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t funny.”

“It was.”

“No.” I cleared my throat and glanced down at
Alex. Even with only the light of the moon, I could tell that his
lips were now blue, his skin a waxy sort of white. Gently, I combed
my fingers through his short beard before glancing back up at
Evelyn. “In fact, I’m still annoyed with him for that.”

“He loved you. He would never have touched
another woman.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You’re silly.”

“I know. And yet, you love me anyway.”

Reaching out, Evelyn placed her hand over
mine, and together we ran our fingers through Alex’s hair.

“Thomas would have liked him,” she
whispered.

“I know.”

Letting my head fall sideways onto her
shoulder, I closed my eyes and let out a sigh. “I could’ve loved
him, you know? Not like I loved Thomas, but…I really think I could
have.”

Pressing a kiss to the top of my head, Evelyn
inhaled slowly. “I know.”

“I love you, Eve.”

“I love you too, Lei.”

Evelyn

I’d been dreaming of Shawn. Nothing specific, just
another ordinary day in our ordinary life together, lost in the
daily humdrum. I dreamed of washing clothes and ironing them,
vacuuming the throw rug in our living room, grocery shopping, the
feel of his strong arms wrapped around me and the gentle kisses
we’d shared. It had all seemed so vivid, so real, that when I
awoke, still leaning back against the wall, slumped sideways over
Leisel, I sobbed from the loss of the dream, the loss of Shawn, the
loss of the woman I’d been.

The sight of the motel room only made my slap
back to reality that much harsher—the filthy, blood-soaked carpet
beneath me, the dirt-stained walls, the cracked and crumbling
ceiling above, and the body of Alex, his once sun-kissed skin now
mottled with the bruising appearance of rigor mortis. The smell in
the room was awful, the stench of the dead always was, an
unforgettable mixture of feces and urine amid the rancid smell of
rotting meat. But beneath all the foulness there was always a hint
of sweetness, a tinge of fragrant perfume, as if in death,
underneath all its ugly glory, lay a sort of beauty trying to claw
its way forth.

Worse were the twelve or so rats gathered
around his ankles, chuffing and crackling noises coming from them
as they chewed happily through his pants.

Pulling away from Leisel, I stood on shaky
legs, kicking at them with all the strength I could muster. They
squeaked loudly as they were flung across the room, one even going
so far as to hiss at me while it scurried across the carpet,
disappearing into the tiny bathroom.

Leisel stirred in her sleep, her lips parting
as she sucked in a noisy breath, her hand clutching tighter to the
grip she still had on Alex’s hair. Choking back a threatening sob,
I turned away from her, unable to watch her cling to yet another
thing she’d lost.

Approaching the window, I touched my face,
gently probing my stitches and the tender skin surrounding them. My
face was hot, too hot, my cheek burning beneath my fingers. Closing
my eyes against the sunlight, I wondered what on earth we were
going to do if my wounds became infected. Yet, that was the least
of our problems. Where were we going to go? Were we going to make
it out there on our own? With no man to protect us?

Did we go back to Purgatory?

Despite my tears, I nearly laughed out loud.
Go back to Purgatory? They’d kill us for sure, or worse, enslave us
to a lifetime of prostitution. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the
horrors E would have in store for me.

Opening my eyes, I watched as the sun rose.
Another day behind us and the next one beginning, each one worse
than the last, becoming harder and harder to keep struggling,
though.

The soft humming in my ears and the deathly
silence in my heart were all I had left, except for the bittersweet
memories of a life I’d never have again. Exhaustion, downright
heavy in its intensity, enveloped me. But I was more than just
tired; I was excruciatingly exhausted. This world, this life—the
misery of it was endless, the constant battle for survival and the
hunger, the sadness, all tied up together with so very little
happiness woven between. I didn’t know how much longer I could
carry on like this; the burden of pretense was so thick, so all
consuming.

There was nothing left for me here, nothing
left for Leisel. There was nowhere to go, nothing we could depend
on but each other.

I had failed them all—Shawn and Thomas, Jami
and Alex, even Leisel. Their lives, all cut far too short,
continually flashed through my mind like an endless fucked-up
kaleidoscope of pain and sorrow, and I just wanted to forget it
all, wanted to be absorbed by their memories, to be swallowed
whole. I wanted to go back to a life I could count on, back to the
people I’d loved, to a place where I’d been safe.

A light touch on my arm caused me to jerk in
surprise, my heartbeat slowing the moment I realized it was only
Leisel. She was filthy, Alex’s dried blood covering her clothing
and skin, and yet she was still beautiful. Seeing her familiar
face, feeling her much-needed touch, reminded me that I still had
something left here, something worth facing yet another day of this
shit world.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered hoarsely, my face
crumpling as I tried to stop the flow of tears. “I don’t know
what’s wrong with me.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,”
she said softly. Taking my hand, she brought it to her face,
pressing a kiss on my knuckles.

“But I don’t know what to do…” I choked on
another sob as a fresh wave of tears spilled down my cheeks,
stinging my wounds.

“We don’t need to do anything,” she said,
shaking her head.

“But we do!” I protested, pulling away from
her. Turning to face the room, I gestured wildly. “We can’t stay
here! And yet, we have nowhere to go! I don’t know what to do, Lei!
I don’t know!”

Leisel appeared in front of me. Placing her
hands on my shoulders, she looked into my eyes, her gaze hard. “We
bury Alex,” she said firmly. “Then we drive. We don’t need to do
anything more, except drive. We’ll keep driving until we’re out of
gas, and then we’ll walk and we’ll keep walking until we can’t walk
anymore. We’ll find another place, Eve, we’ll find something, and
we’ll keep going. That’s all we need to do.”

Her fingers touched the bottom of my chin. “I
don’t need you to be strong for me; I need you to be strong for
you. We’re alive today because of you, and I’m grateful for
that—for you. There’s nothing else we need to be or do except to
keep going.”

She smiled then, her eyes going soft,
shocking me that she had the will to smile after all that had
happened.

“Help me bury him, Eve,” she whispered. “It’s
the least we can do after all he’s done.”

Pressing my lips together, attempting to stop
my tears, I nodded. She was right, God, she was right. Alex
deserved so much more than anything we could do for him now. He
deserved a full life, a family, to have been able to grow old in a
world that still had a place for people like him. Good, strong
people, people who’d persevered even in the face of adversity,
people who were willing to sacrifice themselves for others.