The Way We Fall (18 page)

So now I know what Gav didn’t tell me yesterday.

This morning after breakfast, Tessa said she’d take me over to the house to grab my things. I wanted to go by myself, but I’m not sure where Dad has our car, and even if Tessa would let me borrow hers, it’s a stick shift, which I don’t know how to drive. Walking was out because I still get faint sometimes. We had a hushed discussion about Meredith, and in the end decided it was safer for her to stay in the house with the door locked, since we didn’t know who we’d run into. God, am I glad for that.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I asked as we drove. “That we’re, like, moving in with you? Meredith and I could stay at my place now that I’m out of the hospital.”

“Your dad said he didn’t know how safe your house is, right?” Tessa said. “Because you and your mom were both sick in there? No one’s been sick at my place. It makes sense for her to stay there and for you to stay with her. There’s lots of room.”

“But it’s your house,” I said. “You don’t have to let us just because it makes sense.”

She hesitated for a moment, and then she said, “I kind of like having someone else around. The house gets really quiet sometimes.”

She always seems so unflappable, I forget to think she might be lonely. But of course it’s been weeks now since she could talk to her parents, or to you, Leo—since the long distance and the internet went out. If it were me, I’d have gone insane by now.

“Okay,” I said, “then it works for both of us,” and she smiled.

As we drove, I noticed a couple houses that reminded me of the gang Gav had talked about. The doors were swinging open and the front windows smashed. When we turned onto my street, I was suddenly terrified my house would look the same. But it was fine, everything as it should be.

I told Tessa I’d rather go in on my own, both because the virus might be hanging around and because I wasn’t sure how emotional I’d get. But when I went in and looked around, I didn’t know what I’d been worried about losing. Tessa had told me they’d already moved all the food to her place, so I went straight to my bedroom. I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, wondering if I cared enough about any of my belongings to risk the virus traveling with them.

In the end I stuffed a garbage bag full of the clothes that seemed the most useful and sealed it up so I could throw them straight into the wash when we got back to Tessa’s. I tossed my iPod into my backpack with my coyote notebook and a couple other journals I’d been writing observations in, a guide to surviving the wilderness I’d gotten as preparation for research expeditions, and the framed photo of the four of us, Mom, Dad, Drew, and me, that Aunt Lillian took down by the beach a couple years ago. I looked at Mom and Drew a little too long, and had to blink hard as I was putting the photo away. Then I hemmed and hawed over my computer and finally burned a disc of pretty much everything on the hard drive.

So there you have it. That’s what my life comes down to now: some clothes, a few books, and a DVD.

“Okay,” I said when I got back in the car. “Let’s get out of here.”

We were about halfway back to Tessa’s house when a woman ran in front of us.

Tessa hit the brake so hard I jolted against my seat belt. The car stopped just a few inches away from the woman, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s so good to see someone!” she said. “Where are you going? Can I come with you? I don’t think I can stand being alone another second!”

Her face was flushed, and she sneezed as she waited for us to answer, refusing to budge. Tessa backed up a little, and the woman followed us.

“No, no,” she said. “Don’t leave! I just want someone to talk to.” And then she started crying—sobbing and coughing at the same time.

I realized right then that I could do something. I could get out and talk to her, and I’d be almost as safe as if she were healthy.

“I should take her to the hospital,” I said. “I think I can get her to walk there. I’ll meet you back at your place.”

Tessa shook her head. At first I thought she was going to tell me not to bother, but then she said, “We can drive her. We’ve both got masks—it should be okay, right?”

To be honest, I didn’t really want to spend an hour or more cajoling this woman into coming with me as far as the hospital. I decided I’d get her into the back of the car and stay with her there, and put my mask over her face so the virus stayed more contained.

As I got out of the car, I heard another engine somewhere behind us, and I figured it was one of Gav’s group taking food around. The woman turned toward me, scratching at her scalp above her ear. A few strands of hair drifted to the ground.

“What’s your name?” she said, beaming at me. “I’m—”

The air crackled, rattling in my ears. I flinched and ducked my head. When I looked up, the woman was falling. A circle of blood was spreading across her forehead. She crumpled onto the pavement.

Her body twitched, and then she was still.

A door slammed. I spun around to see a guy a few years older than Drew striding toward us from a pickup truck, a shotgun dangling from his right hand. He was wearing a face mask with the words “survival” and “strength” scrawled on it in blue pen, but I recognized him by his white-blond hair. He used to help out at the MacCauley’s apple orchard, where we picked up a basket every fall.

Then Tessa called my name, and it occurred to me that I had better get back to the car.

“What the hell are you doing?” the guy said, stopping about ten feet away and cocking his head like he was making sure the woman was dead. “Don’t you know what’s going on? You want to get sick?”

“What are
you
doing?” I shouted back. “You just shot someone!”

“She already had it,” he said. “She was dead anyway. I just made sure she didn’t pass it on first.”

“She wasn’t dead!” I said. “She could have gotten better! I did.”

I knew as soon as the words came out of my mouth it was a mistake. His eyes narrowed and he raised the gun. “You’ve had it?” he said. “Probably still in you then.”

I threw myself at the car door, but I’m sure he would have shot me before I’d gotten inside if Tessa hadn’t stepped out right then, between us.

He hesitated, and she started yelling.

“You have so many bullets it’s worth wasting them?” she said, hands on her hips. “Did your friends tell you to go around shooting healthy people?”

He just stared at her. I did too.

“You’re worse than the virus,” she went on. “At least
it
lets a few people survive. You’re out here trying to kill everyone.”

“See if you’re still saying that when your friend gets you sick,” the guy said, but he’d lowered his gun. As soon as it was obvious he was walking away, I dove into the car. Tessa followed. She’d left the engine running, and she backed up just enough to swerve around the woman’s body before she put her foot on the gas, so abruptly my shoulder smacked the window.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding like her regular self again. “I didn’t think we should give him time to change his mind.”

“No,” I said. “Oh my god. Thank you.”

“Well, I couldn’t let him shoot you,” she said, like it was a fact.

But it’s not. She
could
have let him shoot me. She could have driven away and not risked her life for some girl she wouldn’t even sit next to a couple months ago.

I don’t know what I would have done if our positions had been reversed. I want to think I’d have stood up for her, but I can so easily imagine my mind going blank until it was too late. I want to be that kind of person, though. The kind of person who saves other people.

I fought off a virus that’s killed almost everyone who’s caught it—I should feel stronger. I
am
stronger. I have to remember that.

When I went to take a shower this morning, the water coming out of the tap was brown. Enough that it looked muddy in Tessa’s clean bathtub. I tried calling the hospital, but the line was busy like pretty much always, so I told Tessa and Meredith not to drink any water, and headed over. Thankfully Dad brought our car around last night.

I saw Nell as soon as I went in. “Something must have broken in the filtration system,” she said. “We’ll try to find someone who can fix it, but I think we’re lucky it’s only happened now. Anything mechanical will break down without proper maintenance. I’m surprised the electricity’s held up this long.”

So we have to boil the water before we can drink it now. I spent the morning filling up the hospital kitchen’s biggest pots and letting them steam and then pouring the still-brown but at least safe to drink water into these jugs one of the volunteers found. The more they have on hand, the better. It seemed like a simple way to help.

After I’d topped up the last jug, I went looking for Nell to find out what she wanted to do with them all. I’d just spotted her in the hall and was calling her name when the elevator doors opened between us and a man with shaggy, graying hair came out, wheeling a wide gurney.

A sheet was draped across the top of the gurney, but that wasn’t enough to disguise the lumps and bulges underneath. Feet and elbows, shoulders and foreheads. A hill of bodies. My stomach lurched as he pushed it past me, the wheels squeaking. The patients in the hall went quiet. When I managed to pull my gaze away, Nell was standing beside me.

“Where does he take them?” I asked.

Nell lay her hand on my arm, which was trembling, and I realized what I was really asking was, Where’s my mom?

“I wish we could give them the proper respect,” she said softly. “But after the first wave…There aren’t enough volunteers and there isn’t enough time. We’ve had to use the old quarry.”

The quarry. I remember exploring it as a kid, slipping and skinning my palms on the gravel. It was like a big empty lake. Except it isn’t empty now.

My lungs tightened, and I had to fight the urge to walk right out of the hospital and not stop until I was standing on the edge, until I could find Mom amid the jumble of bodies. To see her one last time. I know that sounds morbid, but I think there’s some part of grief you just can’t get past when all you have is other people’s words. When you haven’t looked at the body with your own eyes, or watched a coffin lowered into the ground. You can’t shake the feeling that it could be some big mistake, like they might be wrong and no one died after all.

Animals honor their dead. Elephants stand vigil over fallen friends and family. Gorillas howl and beat their chests. Mom didn’t even get that much. She was dumped into a pit with so many others, like the victims of a genocide. Like garbage. How could we do that to her?

In a way, it’s not so different from what I saw yesterday. All it takes is one microscopic virus, and even the people who aren’t sick start acting like mass murderers.

I closed my eyes and opened them again and swallowed down all the angry painful words I could have said. It isn’t Nell’s fault. Not really. And there are worse things to be upset about. Like the fact that Drew could be floating out in the strait or crumpled on the mainland shore somewhere, dead and lost. At least I know where Mom is.

I watched the man with the gurney disappearing through the front doors. “Isn’t he worried about getting sick?” I asked after a moment, groping for something else to talk about. He was wearing a mask and a protective gown like everyone else, but being that close to so many bodies has got to be risky.

Nell smiled a little sadly. “Howard’s like you, hon,” she said. “He caught the virus early on, was our first to make it through. That’s why he took the job.”

Dad told me I was the fifth survivor, and the woman who shared my room would be number six, but somehow the idea hadn’t quite sunk in until then. There are other people walking around who beat the virus. Who’ve shown that we can.

Dad also said we were lucky, but that’s a cop-out. When it comes to science, luck just means you haven’t found the reason yet.

A shiver of excitement went through me, like a flash of light in the darkness. “Nell,” I said, “there are records for all the patients, right?”

“Of course,” she said. “Though we haven’t been able to keep them as organized as we used to. The file room’s just off reception. Why?”

“Could you write down the names of the people who got better?” I said.

She frowned. “Kaelyn,” she said. “You know your dad’s already been over those records a dozen times. He hasn’t found anything.”

“I know,” I said. “But maybe they need a fresh pair of eyes. Can’t hurt for me to look.”

So she gave me the code for the door and the names of the five other survivors, and left me to get to work. She was right about the disorganization—the cabinets are overflowing, folders left sitting on top of them or jammed into the wrong spots. But after a half hour I managed to dig out the files for the six of us who recovered. I sat on the floor looking them over until the tiny print started to give me a headache, and then I stuck them together in the space between two of the cabinets so I can find them right away next time I come.

I didn’t see anything today that would connect us, explain why we lived and all those other people didn’t. But I’m going to keep looking. There has to be something.