I set the car's GPS to Dairyville and headed towards home. I could feel Wrecker now, faint but alive, a distant hum in my bones. I focused on that and drove harder.
Chapter 25
Wrecker
Darkness.
Not the cool, forgiving dark of sleep, but a red-black suffocation behind the eyes. I thrashed against it for hours, or maybe days. My mind cut the hours into pieces, fed them back to me in random order. Sometimes I wandered the dead hallways of the old compound, every turn ending in a locked door or an empty room. Sometimes I chased a shape through the ruined corridors—my little bird, always just out of reach, her pink and dark brown hair a flash in the smoky air, her scent burned away by bleach and rot. Always, I woke up more tired than before.
I knew she was gone. The bond between us was a slack wire in my chest, a phone line severed by a careless backhoe. For days, her feelings had been sunlight under my ribs. Now nothing. A cold, empty ache, like a mouth with all the teeth knocked out.
Sometimes, when the fever hit the right pitch, I saw her. Not in dreams, but in the flicker between blinks. She’d stand at the edge of the room, arms crossed, eyebrows drawn together in that look that meant I was being an idiot. Sometimes she just watched. Sometimes she mouthed my name. Sometimes, if I let my heart slow enough, I could almost hear her through the static—Eli, Eli,where are you?But there was no voice at the other end. Only silence, thick as blood.
I don’t know how long I’d lain in the bed. The sheets were knotted around my legs, slick with sweat and maybe worse. My own smell was unbearable. I’d soaked through the mattress; every inch of me stuck to every other. When I finally tried to stand, my knees collapsed. My face hit the floor and stayed there.
I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew, the world returned with the sound of a door smashing open and the rattle of voices.
I tried to get up. Couldn’t. My limbs twitched but refused to organize themselves. I could feel the blood slick on my cheek, tasted iron pooling in my gums. The air was full of body odor and disinfectant. Something about it made me want to cry.
The bootsteps came closer, hard and insistent. They stopped at my head. I saw the edge of a heavy boot. I’d know the pattern anywhere.
“Eli! Wrecker, fuck, get up!” Menace’s voice, sharper than a fresh razor. He hauled me up by the back of the neck and propped me against the wall. My skull thudded against the drywall. I blinked at him through swollen eyelids. He looked pretty as always—white blonde hair cropped short, golden skin. The eyes, though the same hazel, no longer held their unflinching coldness. No, they had a look full of fear.
I tried to speak, but all that came out was a hiss.
He looked up with a helpless sigh. “Fuck.” Then helped me slide down the wall until I sat there, barely upright.
He yelled over his shoulder. “Savannah! Do you see her anywhere?”
Her voice came back from somewhere in the house, frantic. “No! She’s not here!”
He slapped my face, not hard, but enough to get my attention. “Where is she?” he barked. “Where’s Parker?”
The name tore a hole in my chest. I looked at him, tried to focus, but my vision split him in two. “Gone,” I managed, voice a gravel pit. “She’s gone.”
He didn’t flinch. “What the fuck does that mean? Gone? Gone where, Eli? You don’t mean…”
“No, not that. Fuck, at least not then.” I coughed a shredded cough through tears. “I heard voices. They must have.” My lungs locked up. The rest was just air.
He shook me again, harder. “Try. Try harder.”
“I can’t feel her,” I whispered. I let my head drop to my chest. “She’s dead, Bridger. She’s dead.”
He let me fall over. The room spun sideways; the floor was the only thing that made sense.
A softer voice, behind him. Savannah. “Let me see.” She pressed a cold hand to my forehead, then my neck, then my chest. The touch sent a shiver through my bones. She murmured something. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. “He’s burning up. You shouldn’t have left him alone!”
Menace growled, “I only just got in. He locked himself in here and tore up anyone who tried to help.”
“Did I hurt anyone?” I asked, though I knew the answer. The taste of blood in my mouth wasn’t all my own.
She shook her head, curls trembling. “Just yourself.”
I laughed again, or tried to. My jaw clicked out of joint. “I can’t do this.”
The next minutes were a blur. Savannah and Menace dragged me to the bed. My arms didn’t work; they flopped behind me like muscles and tendons had forgotten their jobs. Someone had changed my sheets. I saw the others in a pile on the floor stained with sweat and blood and other fluids. It looked like someone had butchered a pig. Maybe they had.
Savannah brought in a clean, damp rag and pressed it to my mouth. The icy sting made my gums bleed more. “It’s the fever,”she said, to herself or to Menace. “It’s eating his brain. We have to cool him off.”
