What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (3 page)

“It was my mother,” I said. The words sounded hurtful and huge.
Was my mother.
“She came here to look for food.” My chest felt tight, my hands clenched. “How did you know you could trust
me
?”

“You’re not like that,” she said. “Not…changed. You’re like me.”

It’s hard to describe how totally alone I felt. Even with Emily, the world was vast and empty, a wilderness where everything looked the same. Barren. Abandoned. No place to go, no home to return to.

We began to follow the road out of town leading to the interstate. It took forever to travel a few miles. Emily was weak, kept wanting to stop but we found houses and farms with dry places to sleep and at least a little food to scavenge. I couldn’t have hurried her along if I’d wanted to and I was not going to leave her behind.

Those first nights on the road with Emily were the worst I’ve had. When I first set out, walking to Mountain Park alone, I’d been full of the hope of finding my mother. Now it seemed impossible that nothing had happened to her. If she had returned to our house and found it empty, she would have set out again to keep looking for me.

The days were long trudges through drizzling cold but they were more comfortable than the nights. I made sure we had a place to stay picked out long before daylight faded. Although we were dry at night, it was never warm. While we lay huddling together on a mattress, the dark exploded all around us with the howls of dogs and coyotes. We heard the snuffling, the yipping, the growls of predators prowling just below the windows of the room we’d found.

One night, something entered the house where we lay. I had locked all the doors I could lock but there were broken windows and a back door had been ripped from its hinges. The closer we got to the highway, the worse shape the houses were in. That night I heard something rustling through the cupboards in the kitchen, stalking through the main part of the house. At daybreak, I made my way through the house prepared to kill whatever it was but found only sofa cushions tossed on the floor where it had slept.

When we reached the highway after so many hungry days on the road, we walked straight to the middle of the overpass. We stared until our eyes blurred in both directions, north and south, not saying a word. It was so strange—a huge, useless road to nowhere. The four lanes were studded by trucks and cars which had been wrecked or abandoned long ago.

Near the overpass was a gas station and a convenience store, a fast food restaurant across from that but nothing else. I could see a farm house in the distance but, otherwise, the road spooled out into an infinity which looked so bleak, so lonely, I started to cry.

It was Emily who took my hand and led me to the north side of the overpass. “Look at that,” she said, pointing to a green highway sign half a mile up the road. “There’s a place we can go.”

“Emmy, that town’s seventeen miles away.
How do
we know there’s anything left there to find?”

She just shrugged her shoulders and I knew she was right. I remembered going to that town with my mother. And I remembered that beyond that town there was another, and another and a small city and more towns and then the largest city I could imagine us ever reaching on foot. We went back to the convenience store and stuffed our packs with whatever we could find and headed north down the off-ramp.

It took us more than a week to reach the next town but that was where we found Larkin. We had to keep wandering far off the highway to find looted farm houses where we could stay. Some of them were burned-out shells, left without a dry place to sleep but there were usually cars we could lock ourselves into or even barns and sheds. We found very little food. When we reached the outskirts of Potterville, we were so hungry and cold we were shaking like leaves in an ice storm.

There was a small grocery store not far off the highway. There was still a little food left and we stuffed our mouths with cupcakes and fruit pies. Soon Emily was sick in the middle of one of the aisles. I was rubbing her back when I began to heave. We found some bottled water and drank and drank to soothe our ragged throats.

It was already getting dark out when we left the store. We walked a few blocks to the first house I saw that wasn’t badly damaged. We went inside and scouted for a dry mattress and blankets. Emily was in the kitchen rattling through cupboards when I pulled open a door at the end of a hallway and was knocked back by the stench of decay. I glanced at the body just long enough to see that it was human and pulled the door shut. I kept Emily from that part of the house. It was already dark out. Dogs were howling and we couldn’t go back outside.

The next day I found a better house for us with no cadavers and even a few cans of food remaining in the kitchen. Once we had this place to stay, we didn’t venture out much. There was a wood stove in the living room. I smashed some furniture into kindling with an axe and lit a fire. It grew smoky in the house and we had to open windows but it felt amazingly good to huddle in front of the warm stove. We piled sofa cushions on the floor in front of it and slept there.

The following morning, we found a note taped with masking tape to the big front window of the house. A message was scrawled out in jumbo block letters with a felt-tip pen on a torn grocery sack. I read it out loud. “Here with you in Potterville. Saw you yesterday. Don’t want to hurt you, just talk to you. Meet me in the school parking lot. And don’t shoot!” There was no name, no indication of whether it was a man or a woman, a boy or a girl.

I’d been waiting for this. Not a note, exactly, just another living human being. The fact that this person bothered to write a note made them less threatening to me. They had noticed my rifle. They weren’t going to barge in on us but wanted to meet us on neutral ground. But they could be anyone, good or bad, crazy or sane, healthy or twisted with disease.

“Should we go?” I asked Emily.

She was quiet for a while. “It’s up to you. We should see what they look like. Maybe they could help us.”

There was a school just two blocks away. I wanted to leave Emily behind but she wasn’t going to stay in the house alone. We cautiously approached the school’s parking lot. An enormous elm tree had fallen and smashed in part of the building near the front steps. I saw the tree first and then the shape of a boy, tall and lanky, black hair, bundled in a ski jacket, sitting on the steps below it. He was watching for us and saw us at the same moment we saw him. I held up the rifle, not pointing it at him but just showing that I had it. He got to his feet and raised his hands above his head. “I’m unarmed. It’s okay,” he called.

I led Emily through the parking lot, ducking behind cars, ready to retreat if the boy ran toward us. Finally there was only a small space between us. The boy grinned. “I’m a good guy,” he said. “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.” He had a big, goofy smile plastered across his face and it was hard to feel threatened. He didn’t seem to be threatened by me.

Holding the rifle in front of me so I only had to raise it to my shoulder if he moved, I said, “Are you alone?”

“All alone,” he said. “Been alone for weeks. And very happy to see you.”

It was Emily who pushed past me and walked right up to him. I tried to grab her, to hold her back, but she wiggled out of my grip. She stopped a few feet in front of him and said, “I’m Emily and this is Gillian,” pointing back at me.

The boy held out his hand. “I’m Larkin,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

It only took half a day before we felt comfortable around each other, or half a day for me to feel comfortable around him. Larkin and Emily got along like old friends from the start. He was so easy to get along with, so eager to please. He never crowded me, never told me what to do, was just happy he’d found us.

That first day together, he helped fetch wood for the stove and brought us some of the food he’d been hoarding. I wasn’t sure about him staying with us that night but Emily began to beg. “I’m scared, Gillian. He can help if someone comes.” She meant someone coming in the night, in the dark. Someone sick, someone older—we still thought there might be adults around, survivors.

I agreed to let Larkin stay.

I’m awakened late
at night, disturbed by a low growling sound, as if a feral dog has crawled into the house. I reach for the rifle but it’s not there. I sit up on the mattress where I’ve been sleeping under a thin sheet, the warm summer air pushing in through the open, second-story windows.

It grows quiet again and I begin to think the growling was part of a dream. I hear Emily snoring on a mattress near me. I can see the shape of her in the dim moonlight, then the black ink-spot outlines of the others—Stace and Terry and CJ—become clear. We sleep in the largest bedroom upstairs.

Larkin prefers to sleep by himself. He sleeps in short intervals and is easily awoken. It’s never easy for him to stay asleep. Sometimes I’ve stood outside his door and listened to him whimper while in the throes of a bad dream. I’ve asked him if he can remember what he dreams about but he’s never told me if he does.

I peel the sticky sheet from my body and fumble around for the rifle. At first I’m not worried, thinking I must have kicked it away from me in my sleep. But I can’t feel it anywhere. As my eyes adjust more to the dark, I can’t see it, the shape of it, at all. I’m completely awake now, worried. It could be a game, the kids might have hidden it, but I doubt they’d do that. I’ve yelled at them so many times not to touch it, refusing to let any of them handle it.

Then there’s the low growling again. It sounds like its coming from right outside the door. The door’s been left open a crack and some hungry creature could just push its way in if it wanted to. But how could a wild animal get inside the house? I get to my knees, listen, then rise to my feet. I check again for any sign of the rifle but there’s nothing, no glint of the barrel in the starlight.

I gingerly make my way to the door, stepping around the sleeping children. I reach out and touch the doorknob. This close to it, the growling starts to sound more like troubled breathing, like someone drawing ragged breaths through fluid-filled lungs. But it’s so loud, it seems to fill the house, as if the house itself is breathing. I force myself to push the door all the way open and the sound stops.

Out in the hallway I hear nothing. I shuffle slowly to Larkin’s door. He refused dinner and has stayed in his room. I’ve checked on him a few times, brought him something to drink. He keeps telling me he’ll be all right in the morning.

The door is closed. I knock softly, hear no reply and ease my way inside. There’s an odd smell in the room now, unfamiliar to me. It reminds me of an injured raccoon that got under our house when I was younger. I remember having tried to pick it out in the dark crawlspace with a flashlight, the stink of it, the raccoon’s eyes gleaming and the way it thrashed out at me.

A little light creeps in through the curtains. It takes a while until my eyes are able to pick out any shapes in the murk of the room.

I steal softly to the edge of Larkin’s mattress. I stub my toes against it and I’m frightened of waking him. The smell is stronger, filling the air, a compressed animal scent, like I’ve wandered into some critter’s underground den. Then I hear the growling again which turns into Larkin’s ragged breathing. It’s so loud. It sounds like his lungs are being ripped to pieces. I kneel down on his mattress, bend over him.

“Larkin.”

There’s no response.

I try to touch his forehead and poke him in the eye instead. Cursing the darkness of the room, the smell, the stifling closeness, I go to the window and push back the curtain, lift up the lower pane as high as it will go. There’s little breeze outside and the open window does nothing to clear out the room. I look out at row after row of dark houses, not a soul anywhere.

Then Larkin begins to moan. I hurry to the mattress, lean over him and grab his hand. His hand is dry—his flesh feels like paper. “You’ve got to drink something.” I reach for a bottle of water near the bed. I lift his head up and try to get him to take a sip. I run my finger across his lips and they feel hard and cracked. I pour out a little water and it dribbles down his chin.

“Damn it, Larkin. Don’t do this.” I want to slap him, pound on his chest, shock him back to life. His breathing is slow, one tortured breath after another. How could he have gotten so ill so fast? Only a few hours ago he was rubbing berry juice across his chest, throwing berries at me, crushing them into my hair.

I notice that my nose is running, my eyes are wet. I go back to the window, burbling like a baby. Looking out, I wonder what I would do if I
did
finally see another light out there, somewhere far across town. There must be others, somewhere. Larkin helped me to feel so self-sufficient, so in control of everything. Now my helplessness engulfs me.

I stare outside at the abandoned neighborhood, at all the dark houses, and listen. From behind me, one ragged gasp after another, the breaths slowing, coming farther and farther apart.

Is he dying?

Just as I’m turning around to see, Larkin sits bolt upright and screams. The sound is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard.

I remember when
Larkin told us his story. Part of it, anyway. All he would tell. It was that first night we spent together, the start of our little family, he and Emily and I huddled around the smoky wood stove in the house we’d found in Potterville.

Emily and I didn’t have much to tell, very little that Larkin couldn’t already guess for himself. We had been abandoned, deliberately or accidently and left to hunt for food and shelter. To try to survive. After telling him where I was from, Larkin asked me where my father worked.

“It was called Formammon Laboratories. It was a medical research facility. They did some sort of anti-aging, cellular regeneration stuff.”

“He actually worked there, huh? Was he a scientist, a research scientist?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It’s interesting, is all. My dad taught biology. I grew up south of you, in Clarence.” Clarence was a city at the far end of the valley, the second largest in the state. “My dad taught at the university there.” He stretched, looked around the room. He seemed to be trying to decide how much he wanted to say.