What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (20 page)

Then she says, out of the blue, “He keeps to himself. Apart from the others.”

It’s obvious who she’s talking about. “Needle? Why?”

She shrugs. “It’s good for us that he does. Can you imagine going to where they all are…like this, at night?”

“You’ve never been to see him before?”

“William has, but me… No one’s made me, until now.” I try to catch her expression but she is looking straight ahead, out over the water. “We never cross the river unless they tell us to. Mostly for a ceremony. And we’ve never been to where…”

“Where what?”

“Where they live.”

I start to say something but she cuts me off, speaking rapidly but keeping her voice low, like we might be overheard. “They move around a lot. The only reason we know where he is, is because we have to bring stuff to him. The stuff he takes care of. That we’re not supposed to have. It’s like a drop-off place.”

“Medicine. Drugs.”

“If we’re caught with it…it’s…it’s bad. If we find anything we bring it to him and he keeps it. He
might
share some if one of us gets really sick but he doesn’t like giving it away.”

Then she says in a small voice, “Aiden told me about it.”

The wind kicks up and a blast of ice-cold droplets stings my eyes.

“Did he tell you anything else about Needle…?”

“We should keep moving,” she says, starts walking and I follow. “I don’t even know if it’s the same place where he sleeps during the day but he always comes around there, at night. And we have to bring him the stuff at night so he knows who found it. We have to tell him where we found it. Show him exactly what we have. Usually it’s from a house, an old apartment.”

I realize that she has distracted me completely from thinking about the cage. And I’m sure it was what she was intending to do. And I gain just a little smidgen of respect for her.

William.
I look over my shoulder at a small, shadowy figure trudging doggedly behind us. He maintains his distance like he wants to keep open the option of being able to turn and flee at a moment’s notice. “Still back there, Will?” I shout at him.

Tetch and I have been talking to each other in voices so low they’re almost whispers and the sound of my raised voice is shocking even to me, filling the night, booming out over the water.

We pause for a moment, allowing William to scurry up to where we are. “Don’t do that,” he says, hissing his words, looking hunched and frightened. “Don’t you yell like that.”

Tetch and I walk on, getting close to the river’s western shore. But William is walking so slow he’s barely moving, so we stop again to wait for him. He tries to shoo us along, waving his arms like he’s trying to urge onward a wayward flock of chickens.

Then he calls out, trying not to shout too loudly but wanting to make his voice heard. “Tetch, come here.” It comes out as a stifled squawk, like a croak I heard a peacock make at the city zoo years ago.

We both turn but he points at me. “Not you,” he says. “Just her.”

Tetch gives me a look as if to say
what’s up with him
and starts to backtrack toward him slowly, unsure. He’s not that far away and I let her walk all the way to his side where they start whispering, their words unclear but their voices becoming urgent, their gestures exaggerated.

I hesitate, not really wanting to let them talk, to let them conspire, but they’re still too close to easily run away from me.

I let a few minutes go by, then turn and jog back to where they are. They immediately cease talking. It’s hard to see their expressions clearly but they look a little like small kids caught doing something naughty.

When I get close I hear William say, “We’re not going.”

My stomach clenches, blood pulses into my head. “Not this again. You are
not
doing this to me.” My voice rises and William looks around nervously. Except for the sound of the wind chopping the surface of the river, whistling through the bridge’s steel beams, the night is still, nothing human, nothing animal to disrupt it.

I stalk up to them fast the last few steps like some beast of prey, stomping in my boots, swinging my arms. They both scrunch down as if about to be attacked.

“You—are—a—worm, William,” I say, snarling out each word. “Did he convince you, Tetch? That was fast. What about saving Aiden’s life? What about Jendra, William? I thought you wanted a chance to see her. You think she still cares enough to pay
you
a visit?”

They look at each other, standing closer than they ever would under normal circumstances. I think for a moment about Stace, brave and stoic, staying by Aiden’s side, far tougher at her young age than these two will ever be. My smidgen of respect for Tetch has vanished like the traffic that once poured across this bridge.

They say nothing in response. I imagine them mulling over the possibility of trying to run. One could surely get away while I was tackling the other, dragging him or her with me across the river. Tetch and William do appear to be sizing each other up, trying to decide who can sprint faster, who has a better chance. I’m close enough to knock both of them down but there’s no way I could hold onto both.

My left hand reaches for the rifle I would have had slung over my shoulder in the past. Its absence confuses me for a second. Walking with these two out into the empty city at night has taken me back to a sense of my former freedom for the first time since being captured at that motel on the outskirts of Raintree. It seems like an eternity has slipped by since I first saw the

Black Riders.

But, unlike that first encounter, I’m unarmed. Foolishly unarmed.

I think of swiping a knife from the kitchen but William guesses what I might do and warns me. He tells me right before we leave, looking me up and down as we stand waiting for Tetch to meet us on the school’s front steps, “If you want the medicine, do not bring a weapon.”

I have bundled myself in a bulky ski parka I found in a back room of the Orphanage, a dusty dirty thing much too large for me. “God knows what they’ll do if they see you walking free,” he says. “But if any of us approaches them with a weapon, they’ll for sure…you know.” He draws a quick finger across his throat.

Then I do something crazy. I start speaking louder and louder. “If you try to run, I will grab the first one I can get my hands on and drag you over the bridge with me. You know you can’t both escape. And when we find Needle or whichever one we find, I will tell them that it was whoever runs off who is responsible, who sent us from the Orphanage. I will tell them that the coward is the one who set me free.”

By now I’m almost screaming, words tumbling out of my mouth in a ferocious rush. William is squirming, trying frantically to figure out what to do. Tetch stares at me open-mouthed.

I am determined to scare them, bully them into going with me.

As soon as I stop yelling, only the low moan of the wind sweeps back to fill the night. All three of us, I know, are now alert for the splutter of a motorcycle engine coming to life from the far side of the river or for another, equally ominous sound to crack the stillness.

“Why didn’t they just let you fall into the river,” Tetch says, just loud enough so I can hear her. “Jendra should have dropped a bigger stone on your cage.”

It’s such a hateful thing to say—so ugly, so raw—that it takes my breath away. I thought we had bonded in some small way over Aiden but her fear and her self-absorption clearly win out over any deep human feeling.

“Shut up, Tetch,” William mutters, scanning every direction, eyeing me warily as if I might start braying at the moon. “Don’t agitate her. She’s crazy. She’ll do anything.” Then he heaves a big, exaggerated sigh. “Let’s just go and get it over with.”

“I
will
do anything,” I say, biting my words off hard but not quite shouting. “Anything I have to do to protect the ones I care about. But you two wouldn’t understand that.”

Then I lower my voice but still speak with fierce intensity. “Even when the one you love, Tetch, is dying. And the one you cared for most, William, has gone someplace where you’re afraid you can’t follow.”

“Shut up.”
William screeches the same stupid command much more loudly than he intended to. He jams a hand in his mouth and looks all around again.

“Jesus! All right, we’ll go,” Tetch says. Her voice, too, is loud and William pushes her and she shoves him back. “What difference does it make now? We’re screwed anyway. I’m sure they’ll find us. Not just Needle. All of them.”

And they both stalk right past me, heads down and shoulders hunched, hands in their pockets. I follow close behind.

What blood leaves
behind is this hollow, empty world. A shell of a thing. No communities, no societies. Cities barren and crumbling.

Animals roaming wild that either flee from us or try to kills us.

Cities filled with all the stuff of civilization, nearly all of it beyond the ability of any of us who remain to ever use again. All of it rusting, rotting. Less salvageable, more weed-choked with every passing year.

As Tetch, William and I step off the bridge’s walkway, the tallest buildings in Raintree rise up before us, huge lanky monsters that loom and tower and reach out to us with their enormous moon-backed shadows. It feels strange as we hurry down the off-ramp from the bridge and finally set our feet on a downtown city sidewalk. It should be familiar—a short distance from the Orphanage—but it’s like we’ve reached an unknown country.

But I’ve walked here all on my own this time. Not locked in a cage on the back of a truck.

We skirt the edge of Riverfront Park, now an overgrown jungle. I stop and look back at it for a moment, trying to remember where the fountain was that I once spent a summer day splashing in long ago, my parents watching from a nearby bench. It’s impossible to tell. The only visible sign that there was once a park here are the ruins of the last carnival held in Raintree, some of the rides still lifting their metallic arms above the weeds, all of them topped by the enormous spokes of a Ferris wheel, a few gondolas still dangling from its rim.

There is the smell of moisture in the air from recent rain and a low bank of fog creeps in to huddle over the river.

William takes the lead, hurrying us along. He’s moving fast now. He takes time to stop at crosswalks although there’s no need, cocking his head this way and that like a bird listening for an unusual sound. He relaxes just a little when we’re able to shelter in the deep wells of shadow between high rises along the main business streets, no longer passing through wide open spaces like we were near the park.

We start to creep through the blocks I had caught glimpses of when I was being transported in the cage. It’s darker, harder to see in the narrow canyons between the tallest buildings. We walk in the middle of the street, sidewalks too littered with refuse to be passable. A slim pathway has been cleared in the middle of all the garbage, as if a large truck was used to slam aside ruined vehicles, furniture, clothes, appliances—every kind of human-made debris.

From far, far away the howl of some sort of canine creature rises above the hills. The first animal sound I’ve heard since leaving the Orphanage.

William stops and says in a tense whisper, “It’s so weird.” I’m a step or two behind him, trying to keep up while also trying to keep myself from tripping over scattered garbage or bumping into the side of an overturned car.

“What is?”

“It’s so…quiet. That wolf or dog or whatever it was reminded me of what’s missing.”

All three of us stand still for a moment. We’ve reached the intersection of Broadway and Main. Across the street from us an enormous sign dangles, slanted asymmetrically above the prominent brow of an old theater marquee. It’s in the shape of a long ladyfinger cookie, half the size of the building behind it. I can make out dead neon letters that spell vertically from top to bottom, “Raintree.”

And he’s right. It’s spooky, the wind cutting around the corners of buildings the only real sound. That and another cry from the wild dogs. Tetch stands beside us, silent, staring ahead and frowning, a hood pulled tight over her head, focused solely on making her way through these cluttered streets.

William nudges my shoulder and we start walking again. He begins to chatter, like if he keeps talking he might be able to still his jitters. “Usually you can hear
something
. Someone on a motorcycle exploring or Bodie’s van. Sometimes we can hear them screaming or shouting or singing or…”

But his chatter puts Tetch on edge. “Shut it, William!” she hisses at him, then looks around, spooked by the echo of her own voice.

The wind picks up with a stinging gust, whips my hair back, throws grit in my eyes. The Raintree sign creaks and groans as we pass beneath its shadow. We scrutinize it, notice that it’s kept above us by only a few remaining clamps and bolts, imagine what would happen if it fell.

Tetch’s command silences William. I also feel no urge to talk, concentrate on the jumbled street we weave through, occasionally prodded by William to cross an intersection or turn in a particular direction at a corner.

“It’s not far,” William suddenly pipes up. “Just around—”

Then it happens. The stutter, the bark of an engine igniting. All three of us duck down as if we’ve been shot at, swiveling our heads in all directions but the noise is not that close, probably half a dozen blocks away or more.

“God,” William says, standing straight again and wringing his hands. “We can’t
be
here.” His voice rises into that panicky whine of his which grates on my nerves more and more every time I hear it. He looks as if he’s about to dart away but I snatch his arm tight, my fingers digging into his scrawny bicep.

I shake him, growling, “You must have known they’d be somewhere around here. So let’s keep moving. We have to finish what we’ve started.”

“Yes,” Tetch says, suddenly alert and voluble. “If we get there, we can act like we brought something for Needle. Like he asked us to come. They won’t bother us if Needle sees us first.” Her words fly after her thoughts as she tries to reason the situation out using what little knowledge she has.