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“NO!” I was screaming now, loud enough that I was afraid his team might somehow hear me and come running in anyway. I softened my tone, hoping they hadn’t heard my outburst and said, “Please, please, I can’t do this again. I can’t have someone come in and tell me stories about my life I don’t remember that I just have to trust and believe are true. I never want to hear another story about my own life that I can’t confirm with my own memories. He made me believe...”
“I know.”
I shook my head. “Youdon’tknow. I believed I loved him. Isleptwith him, willingly.” As mortifying as it was to say, it wasn’t as if this man couldn’t figure that out with what he’d been about to walk in on. It was somehow important to me that he know Trevor hadn’t thrown me down and had his way with me, that at least I’d wanted, or thought I’d wanted, to be with him.
“I’m sorry,” Shannon said.
“I thought we were surviving together in a collapsed world. He took good care of me. I feltsafewith him. B-but then you show up, and you rip that reality away, and now I’m not a survivor anymore building a life with somebody who loves me. I’m a victim. And he died with mecryingover losing him. He’s won. I can’t ever take that victory away from him. I can’t trust anybody else to tell me the truth about me. Please just go. Forget you found me. I’ll figure something out when the sun comes up. P-please.”
By this point, he’d managed to inch his way to within reaching distance of me. “Elodie, the park is dangerous and hard to get in and out of. You have to at least let me help you get out of here, and give you something decent to wear.”
I watched warily as he took the pack off his back. He unzipped it and tossed me some pants and a T-shirt. After sizing me up, he gave me a nylon belt that I’m not a hundred percent sure was really meant to hold pants up.
He turned his back to me and waited. I stood there for a moment, staring at the clothes in my hands, still gripping the bloody sheets around my body.
“I’m not going to look. I promise. Just put some clothes on. I need you to stay here in the present moment, no matter how unpleasant it is. I don’t want you to go into shock. Start moving.”
I dropped the sheets on the ground and put the clothes on.
“O-okay, you can turn around.”
The walkie talkie crackled again. “Shannon. You okay? Where’s our check-in?”
“I’m fine. But I think I’ve come down with a stomach bug. I’m going to head out.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Where are you guys?”
“We set up clear on the other end of the park near the Ferris wheel. We can’t even see the castle from here. Do you want us to come to you?”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. Though I did throw up in here so... sorry about that. It’s not pleasant.”
“Yeah, you sound sorry,” the guy on the other end said, laughing. “We might brave it tomorrow. I assume you don’t feel well enough to clean up?”
Shannon’s voice affected a sick sound, coming out more slow and labored. “No such luck. I might be puking the whole way to the car. You guys okay?”
“Yeah, we feel fine. We’ll catch you next trip.”
Shannon clicked the walkie talkie off. His gaze went across the room in a calm, assessing way, finally landing on me. “Are you absolutely sure you can’t face the world right now?”
I nodded.
“Then here’s what will happen. I’m going to dispose of the body, then I will take you out of here. You will stay with me. I will honor your desire to do this at your own pace. For now.”
That sounded too much like Trevor’s veiled rape threat that first night when I hadn’t swooned in his arms immediately.
“What is it?” he asked.
“N-nothing.”
Shannon wasn’t talking about sex. It wasn’t enough that I didn’t remember my life; now I had this new screaming vortex of horror to deal with.
3
Once things had been decided, Shannon went into this laser-focused sort of zone—like the whole rest of the world just shut off, and everything turned to auto-pilot. He was suddenly so intense. I sat quietly while he assessed things. I think I imagined if I was very quiet he would forget I was there and leave without me. How hard could it be to get out of the park on my own in the daylight? Even though I’d never ventured to the perimeter, as it was so overgrown and Trevor’s warnings had kept me away, I felt certain it couldn’t bethatbad.
Shannon came over to the table where I was sitting like a piece of statuary. He knelt in front of me and pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it into my eyes. He felt the skin on my face with the back of his hand. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Signs of shock? Were my pupils relevant in that? I didn’t know. Ask me something about plants.
