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My water is gone, my thirst slackened only by a brief rainstorm that partially refilled my canteen and a small puddle of stagnant water at the side of the road. Water I knew I probably shouldn’t drink, its surface dark with dirt and the smell of rotten things rising from its shallow depths. But in the end, my thirst beat out my good sense. My brain’s dim warning bells were no match for the desperate need to drink.
Earlier today I could have sworn I heard someone calling my name in the distance. And in that moment, I didn’t even care if it was Mark Laird, I was so relieved to hear another human voice. But it was only the harsh cries of a few crows circling overhead, their wings turned a glossy blue-black by the unrelenting sunlight. As I watched them wheel above me, I understood how easy it would be to slip into madness out here. How quickly it could happen.
I expected it to be difficult outside the fence. And dangerous. But I never anticipated how relentlessly empty it would be. How vast the land and how small I am in comparison, almost like I’m steadily shrinking into nothing under the endless expanse of late-summer sky. I might have done better out here before I met Bishop. Before I got used to having someone listen to me, walk next to me. Before someone loved me.
I used to be better at loneliness.
I haven’t dared to take off my shoes; I don’t want to see the wreck of my feet. But I won’t be able to walk much longer. A few more miles is what I tell myself. I make it a challenge. Take one hundred steps. If I’m still alive, take one hundred more. It’s a sick little game, but it keeps me going. I passed a sign a few hours ago, knocked over into the weeds. Barely legible words across its rusted tin surface: Birch Tree—8 miles. After all the distance I’ve covered, eight miles is nothing. But I have an irrational fear that I’m never going to reach Birch Tree, that the town will just keep moving farther away from me, somehow always creeping beyond the far horizon.
But at the top of a small hill it took me much too long to climb, I finally see something in the distance besides grass and trees. Houses. The road I’m on passes right between the cluster of buildings. A harsh, choking sound escapes me, part laugh, part sob. I walk faster downhill, a kind of shuffling run as I try to protect my shoulder and favor my feet at the same time.
I have no idea what I’m going to find in Birch Tree. Maybe nothing. Maybe something worse than Mark Laird. But right now I don’t care. The town may be empty, but it once harbored life and some remnant of that time will remain, some proof that people once populated this barren land. A reminder that although I’m alone now, maybe I won’t always be.
I slow down the closer I get to the town, the back of my neck prickling with awareness. I don’t see any movement, no sounds of human inhabitants, but my body is sending out warnings anyway. I feel watched, eyes crawling over me as I limp along the road. I’d be easy pickings for someone, my arm useless in its makeshift sling, my body weak from hunger and dehydration. And while nothing moves in the shadows between the houses, the uneasy feeling in my gut doesn’t leave.
The first house on the left has been partially burned, the roof collapsing inward, fire-blackened boards pointing their jagged remains toward the sky. The second house is in better shape, a squat little bungalow, its front windows smashed. A bit of tattered curtain, faded to colorlessness, blows inward on the hot breeze. I pick it for no other reason than because it reminds me of the house I shared with Bishop.
I climb the front steps, my back still tingling with the knowledge I’m being watched. It could be my imagination, my mind playing cruel tricks, but I don’t think so. I push open the cracked front door anyway. If there is someone out there, they can catch me on the road as easily as they can inside the house. It’s not like I’m going to be able to outrun them.
People have been inside this house since the war, although how long ago I can’t tell. There’s a coating of dust on every surface, but not thick enough to have been undisturbed for fifty years. And everything that once made this house a home is gone. No pictures on the walls, no knickknacks on the mantel. The only things that remain are those too large to be easily moved. A weather-beaten dining room table, missing part of one leg so that it slouches lopsided, partially blocking the doorway. A couch in the living room spews stuffing onto the floor, holes in the mildewed fabric probably providing nests for all manner of small animals over the years. There is a dark stain that runs almost the whole length of the entryway, practically black against the wood. Blood, years old. Probably spilled sometime after the war ended. So many people weren’t killed by the bombs. They were done in by fear and mindless panic, their own neighbors as lethal as weapons. Survival of the fittest taken to its most deadly conclusion.
I walk into the kitchen, wincing at the screech of the floorboards under my feet. It sounds like I’m announcing my presence, my exact location, to the entire town. The kitchen is bare, all the cabinet doors hanging open to reveal empty shelves. Not a single crumb left to scavenge. I didn’t expect anything different, but I’m still hit with a sharp pang of something close to panic. For the first time I accept that I may die, that this long-abandoned town may be my final resting place. I don’t know where to go from here. There doesn’t seem to be any point in climbing the stairs. It would take too much energy, and the thought of being trapped up there if someone followed me inside keeps my feet firmly planted on the first floor.
The sun is blinding when I reemerge onto the sagging front porch. I put up a hand to shield my eyes from the harsh light. Nothing moves in the midday heat. In the distance, I can hear what sounds like a door swinging in the breeze. Beyond that, there is nothing. Even the crows have fled.
I was wrong. Being here, in the skeleton of this ruined town, is worse than the open road. I’ve never believed in ghosts. The things that frighten me have always been right in front of me, easy to see and categorize. But if there are ghosts, this town is full of them, haunting all the cobwebbed corners and dusty yards. Whatever I was hoping to find here has long fled. All that’s left behind are the husks of lives that ended decades ago, tainting the air with sorrow and waste.
I stumble down the porch ste
ps, back out onto the parched pavement. And again it hits me, a steady thump right between my shoulder blades. The knowledge that something is watching me, even now tracking my unsteady steps.
I turn in a slow circle. Only the lifeless houses stare back at me, dark windows capable of hiding anything within their shadows. The smart thing to do would be get off this road. Find some cover among the trees and hope I can outsmart whatever is tracking me. Maybe become the hunter instead of the hunted.
But I’m too tired for that. Too weak and too angry. I hold my good arm out from my side, beckoning into the hot, still air. “Come on,” I yell. “You want me? Come and get me.” Nothing. I nearly stamp my foot in frustration. “Come on!” My voice, furious and fragile in equal measure, spirals off into the silence, as though swallowed up along with everything else that used to be alive.
Chapter Four
Bishop is pressed against me, his bare chest heating the skin of my back and shoulder. I can’t see him, but I can feel him, smell him, and the relief is so immense it threatens to engulf me, rolling over me like a wave I’m happy to drown in. I try to speak but all that comes out is a sobbing breath. “Shhh,” he says, barely a whisper. I want to roll over and look at him, but when I start to turn, his hand on my shoulder tightens, hurting me. The pain confuses me. Bishop would never hurt me. But when I cry out, he only squeezes harder. My hand scrabbles upward, desperate to loosen his grip, but I don’t find his fingers. Instead, something slithery-soft and faintly greasy slides through my hand, making me recoil. A long black feather. I wrench my head backward and Bishop is gone. In his place is a huge crow, its talons digging into my shoulder, slicing through the swollen flesh. Blood that burns like fire runs down my arm. I scream, try to bat the bird away, but it only stares at me, my own pain-twisted face reflected back in the vacant pools of its eyes.
“Here,” a voice says. “Drink this.”
My eyes feel glued shut, and I don’t try very hard to open them. I don’t have the energy. Something clanks against my teeth. “You have to open your mouth.” The same voice. My lips are pried apart, and a trickle of liquid hits my tongue. Now I open my mouth without hesitation, my hand coming up blindly to grab.
“Hold on, you’re going to spill it. Slow down.”
Water wets my lips, my tongue, the back of my sandpaper throat. I give a cry of anger when the flow of water stops, force my eyelids apart in order to chase the source. There’s a girl leaning over me, dark hair, brown eyes, wrinkled brow.
“Callie?” I say, and don’t recognize my own voice. I sound a thousand years old, more dead than alive.
The girl’s eyebrows shoot up. “Not last time I checked,” she says. Even before she’s done speaking, I realize my mistake. This girl’s hair isn’t as long, just skimming her collarbone, and her eyes are the muddy blue-brown of river water, not dark and inky like my sister’s.
Too late I notice the man slouched in the doorway, watching me, and realize I’m inside a house. Lying on a bed. Panic slaps me hard and fast, and I lurch backward, succeeding only in smacking my head against the headboard and waking the pain in my shoulder.
“Relax,” the girl says. She holds out a hand but doesn’t touch me. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Yet,” the man in the doorway says with a smirk. He has a crossbow slung across his back, the tip of it just visible over his left shoulder. His eyes glow pale brown against his dark skin.
“Shut up, Caleb,” the girl says, her eyes still on me.
