Through Glass (28 page)

“It’s okay, Lex,” she soothed, her voice mellow like she was talking to a wounded animal. “I’m not going to hurt you. They just want me to bring you home.”

I knew her voice was meant to be calming, but everything about it sent me into a tighter defensive mode. She thought I was dangerous. I wanted to say that was wrong, that she was foolish, but I felt dangerous. My muscles tightened, my jaw clenched and I fought a need to kill her.

Maybe I
was
dangerous.

“They?” I asked, the word distorted through my clenched teeth.

“Yeah, the leaders. Azul.” There was that word again. It sparked something deep inside of me, like I should know what it meant, but I couldn’t remember.

“Azul?”

“Yeah, well, it’s what they call themselves anyway,” Bridget said. She was trying to keep her voice casual in an effort to calm me. I couldn’t say it wasn’t working. I didn’t feel quite so dangerous, but I still didn’t trust her.

“Azul,” I repeated, getting used to the feel of the word in my mouth.

“They lead the survivors, lead the war against the Tar. Azul is supposed to remind us of the blue sky, the sun and what we are working towards.”

That’s what it was; Azul was the Spanish word for blue. I had chosen French over Spanish, but living in Texas, a basic knowledge of Spanish was required. It felt weird that I had forgotten something that was so simple.

Blue.

The word triggered something, a more recent memory. The writing on the wall. The mad scribblings of a crazy man who had somehow kept me safe, kept me alive, even if he couldn’t do the same things for himself. Now, sitting in front of me was a girl who said she knew of them, that she was with them.

“Follow the Blue,” I whispered, my eyes trailing away from her toward the roof of the grocery store. Even without a roof, the air above me was as dark as it would be outside.

“Yeah, for being hot you sure know a lot about the charter. Where did you find it? Did someone tell you about it?” I didn’t miss the hidden curiosity in her voice, the worry at what the truth was that was hidden behind her words.

I looked at her closely, my eyes narrowing dangerously as I continued my attempt to regulate my heart beat.

I had sat here since the moment I woke, begging myself to trust the girl who sat across the fire from me, but now she was asking questions, questions I wasn’t sure I could trust her with the answers to. I still held the rail in my hands, I remained ready to strike.

Now, though, I wasn’t so sure if that was the right choice.

Follow the blue.

“It’s all right Lex, you can tell me,” she soothed, her voice trying to take away the last of my doubt.

Follow the blue.

I swallowed slowly, my fingers uncurling from the rail.

I needed to trust her.

“They were written on the walls of a house that I hid in,” I said, careful to keep my voice level. My eyes never looking away from hers.

Her eyes widened for a brief moment before lowering back down to her lap. Her hands tensed around the can she was still holding, her reaction making me instantly regret telling her anything.

“I guess it’s a good thing you found them,” she said, her body leaning forward as she poked at the fire with a stick. “You would probably be in worse shape without it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the longer you are out in the dark, the more the Tar affect you, the more you become like them.” Her words were simple, but I couldn’t quite grasp her meaning. My jaw worked for a minute as I tried to find words to match my questions, yet nothing came.

She talked like simply standing on the street could turn you into a monster. I knew that wasn’t right. I had lived in the darkness of my house, walked down the streets, but I was still me. I shook my head quickly, dismissing the questions, and turned my attention back down to my beans.

“How long have you been roaming?” Bridget asked again as she leaned against a broken shelf, her combat boots stretching out in front of her.

“Roaming?” My eyebrows arched at the question. It sounded like a word for a tiger on the Savannah, not a girl wandering the streets.

“Yeah, living out in the open? In the dark?” She moved her fork around, signaling to the grocery store we were still hiding in.

Okay, so I guess it was the word for a girl wandering the streets. Although, I wouldn’t count this as being out in the open. On the street, yes. Here though? We had four walls and a roof. Not to mention the possibility of food. This was hiding, this was survival.

“I don’t know, a few days,” I said simply, still not understanding why she was so scared of being out in the dark. Not that I blamed her, but I didn’t fear it quite as much as she seemed to and I had nearly been killed only hours before.

Her eyes widened at my words and everything froze. A few days gets a reaction like that? I swallowed my beans slowly and set the can down, feeling suddenly scared for what her reaction could mean.

“Where were you before?” Her voice was awed, as though she had never heard the likes of someone walking around for a few days. My jaw clenched at her response, my body moving away slightly. I was torn between fear of being attacked and fear of a twenty question session. Judging by the look on Bridget’s face, she could easily manage either.

“In my house, on Nicolas Street,” I said simply, desperately hoping to have that be the end of the questioning.

It wasn’t.

“How long did you hide there?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew she had tried to make the question sound simple, yet it was anything but. I didn’t trust this.

“Two years, since the beginning.” I regretted answering the moment I did. Her eyes darkened again. The dark stare boring into me as I refused to look away. The look lasted only a minute and then it was done, the intensity making me feel violated.

“Interesting,” she said as she pulled out her phone and hit a few buttons. I don’t know why, but it made me feel uncomfortable, like she was turning me into the cops, as if I was a fugitive. The thought made me feel dirty. I didn’t know why she would view me that way. I was human just like her. I leaned toward her defensively, my danger radar prickling uncomfortably again.

“Why is that interesting?” I asked, my words drowned out by a loud noise that echoed from somewhere behind us.

I jumped at the noise, my fingers twitching around the rail. The sound continued to echo around us, lasting twice as long as it would have without the hollow space. It filled the air around us and sent my heart into a frantic pulse. Something was there. I wanted to say it was only a rat, but I had heard the feet from before, the creatures running at me from every angle surrounding me. Bridget’s reaction matched mine, suggesting it was something else, and her fear supercharging my own.

Bridget jumped up, her hands flying to her pockets as she pulled out a small, metal flashlight and what at first glance looked like a bright green water gun. It obviously held more than water, though. Why it needed to be florescent green though, I wasn’t quite sure.

Everything in my body tensed as I began to scan the dark grocery store around us. My nerves prickled angrily as she flashed the light into the darkness; shadows, broken shelves and garbage lighting up eerily. I looked from side to side as she did, our eyes desperately looking for something through the black, although I wasn’t quite sure what.

“We have to go,” she said into the emptiness that swallowed us, her voice trailing away from me and putting me on edge.

I didn’t want to dispute that. Although the sound wasn’t the screech of a Tar, it was too close to the attack from before. The quicker we got out of there, the better.

I secured my backpack to my back and grabbed one of the large pieces of wood out of the fire. Although more of a hazard than anything, it would have to do for now. After all, I still had to get my lighter back from commando Bridget here.

I held the wood above me, letting the bright light filter into the air in a halo of sunshine. Bridget looked at me once and nodded as if in approval. Why I needed her approval, though, I wasn’t sure. I narrowed my eyes at her in question, but she only turned away from me.

“Stay right with me, Lex,” she whispered before taking off down the dark aisle.

I hesitated, still not sure what was scaring her, before I followed her quickly. My head throbbing with each step, the pace almost too fast for me to manage. She shone her light down every aisle we passed, the flashlight and neon gun pointed in sync like she thought she was in some spy movie.

I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t find it in me. Her tension still hadn’t lessoned enough that I could feel anything beyond the terror that still rippled through me.

The sounds of our panicked breaths joined the soft sound of our footsteps as we walked, each step sounding louder than I knew it really was.

I held the light higher, my other hand gripping the rail as I followed her. I wanted to say that the light made her safe, but with how she was acting, I wasn’t quite so sure anymore.

Bridget continued to move until she led us out of the grocery store and into the darkness of the world outside. Without the enclosed walls, the sound of our panic spread away from us, leaving us trapped in silence.

I would have expected her to relax, but her body stayed tensed and her gun still pointed dangerously before us. The action only put me more on edge, my nerves jumping dangerously. She walked forward a few steps before she suddenly relaxed then her gun dropped to the side, even though her flashlight stayed high.

“We need to get her back to Azul,” she said, her back still to me as she spoke.

I looked around quickly, not knowing if she was talking to me; her voice was so deep.

“Bridget?” I asked, my anxiety growing the longer she kept her back to me.

“I’m sorry, Lex,” she said, her voice deep as she turned to me, “but I just can’t trust you yet.”

Her face pulled up in a wicked half smile, her high ponytail swinging as she lifted her arm, the gun pointing right to my chest.

The sound of a shot echoed through the empty blackness as light burst from the end of the gun.

I never felt the impact. All I saw was black. All I felt was cold.

Everything was cold, so cold and hard. It was the first thing I was aware of; the cold, hard floor that someone had lain me on. It wasn’t like the grocery store, I could already tell that nothing would be familiar. I knew I had been brought here. I felt the cold rock beneath me, my fingertips running over the small crack in the stone as if looking for something familiar, I already knew there wouldn’t be any and it scared me.

A dull, red light seeped through my eye lids, stinging my retinas. A light that should be unbelievably welcome only brought more questions about where I had been brought and why. Answers that I wasn’t sure I would find.

My eyes opened slowly to a grey cement room that surrounded me. They burned as they attempted to adjust while I took in the cement that seamed and cracked like an over-used bomb-shelter. I held completely still as I looked around the bare space, the only other objects that I could see were a circular grated drain in the floor and a lone light bulb, the dim glowing orb hanging from a single wire. The frigid temperature of the empty room seeped into my body, making my skin prickle, even through my father’s leather jacket, everything was too cold.

I didn’t dare move, a million horror movies ran through my mind as the room in front of me came into clearer focus. I looked at the three walls that faced me. Three bare walls, I couldn’t even see a door.

I was trapped here.

A shiver wound its way over my skin and I moved into myself in an attempt to find warmth, however the one movement made it very clear that it was not going to happen. The coldness of the cement was everywhere.

Everything ached as I moved, deep tissue aches that rippled over my body until they congregated over the still throbbing pain in my head and a spot right over my heart. Right where I was sure the bullet had hit.

My eyes widened at the thought, my hand flying to my chest in a panic. My fingers gripped the fabric of the shirt I wore, a tiny hole over my heart the only evidence that anything had even happened. That I had been shot. There wasn’t a sign of a bullet or of blood. My skin was smooth and unmarred beneath the hole. Besides the pain in my chest, I wouldn’t have known anything had happened. Someone had washed all sign of that away.