Strays Page 15

  “Don’t touch me!” She screamed as he roughly sat her down on a homemade maple stool.

  “Sit down and shut up!” he said, sternly, pointing a finger at her. “Before you get us killed! You’ve got to stop screaming.”

  “Don’t touch my sister like that,” Eric said, pushing him sideways so that he could lean in front of Max. Max glared at Curly with the sinister eyes of a murderer.

  “He’s going to be fine, Max.” Curly sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than he was trying to convince her.

  “We’ll look for him tomorrow morning.” Eric stroked her wet hair behind her ears.

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” She put her hands over her face and sobbed. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t be—I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  We fear what we don’t see…

  No one slept.

  Max wasn’t sure if Taddy’s lack of emotion for his lost mates was because he was too busy caring for Ginger or because he simply didn’t care. They should have been used to losing people by now. She hadn’t known Mariana or Hank well, but Darcy had been a friend and he was gone, too. And Dakota… she couldn’t think beyond that. Because if she let herself believe he was dead she would lose her faith. She would lose her belief that she could actually survive this world. Curly sat quietly against the wall with his head back and his eyes up at the ceiling. Eric was tampering with an array of tools, mostly rusted, that he thought could be used as weapons. He had grouped together a handsaw, a wrench, a screwdriver and an old car battery. The rusted tools and other objects he’d thrown in a pile on the floor.

  When Max had finished setting out their clothes to dry, she sat with her arms in her shirt. They would all get deadly sick for sure. The shed provided some warmth from the cold outside, but she doubted there was any insolation for a shed. She sat quietly and hoped to goodness that her jacket dried soon or, hell, her socks.

  “Darcy,” Ginger moaned, crying so hard that she had to gulp down her tears every couple words just to keep talking.

  “Sh sh.” Taddy sat on the floor with Ginger on his lap. The back of her head pressed against his bare chest. “You have to be quiet.” He kissed the top of her hair. “Okay?”

  “Darcy.”

  We fear what we don’t see…

  Max thought their existence was sadly and rapidly coming to an end. Strays had won. They had won. The world belonged to them. It wasn’t fair, but it was life and Max was tired of fighting for it. If they no longer had a right to live freely then she didn’t want to live at all. She had been somewhat of an optimist when the whole thing started. She had prayed that things would go back to normal, that she and her brother could walk through the front door of a house and call it their home again. But her senses had come to her and she saw the world for what it was: a desolate, deserted death zone, which was becoming everyday more void of humans.

  Eric walked to her and sat, cross-legged, in front of her. He had torn a pair of dirty jeans to wrap around the wound on his arm. “Look what I found.” He brought a box from around him and sat it in the space between them. Old photos and jewelry were in it.

  “I don’t want to see that stuff.” The last thing she wanted to see was someone’s beautiful past.

  “But look.”

  “Why?” Max snapped. Tears clouded her vision. “They’re dead. Why do I want to look at it?”

  “How do you know they’re dead?” He unfolded a water-damaged sheet of paper, stained with yellow and smeared with red ink. “It’s a love letter. Carver to Marigold. It’s sweet. Want to read it?”

  “No.”

  “Want to see their pictures?”

  “Nope.”

  “Look at this locket I found.”

  “Eric.” She sighed. “Please. I don’t—I’m not in a mood for that stuff right now.”

  He snatched her hand and forced her fingers open with his thumb. He placed an old, sterling silver locket into her palm. “He gave this to Marigold. They ran away together. She’s not going to wear it. So you can have it.”

  Max wasn’t going to wear some dead woman’s locket. She didn’t know if she was actually dead, but she thought it was safe to assume she was. She forced a grin for her brother’s sake. She had always tried to be strong for him, but she didn’t have the strength for that now. He was trying to be strong for and appease her, instead, and she was grateful for it. He left the box there and went back to tending to his new tools.

  Max didn’t want to see beautiful, but she wanted some faith or motivation, something. She opened the locket, hoping to see two smiling faces, but the old thing was empty. It was more discouraging than she’d anticipated. She pushed the box away and pressed her forehead to her knees.

  Strays had won.

  Twenty-One

  Max

  ●

  I’m on a train. I think I’m on a train. I can feel the motion of the ground beneath me. I’m on my stomach. I think. A strip of red has obstructed my vision. I’m bleeding somewhere. My head I think. The world has gone quiet, save for the racket of the train on the tracks. I can’t understand how this thing is still moving. It takes my arms some time to respond to my brain’s commands and when they finally move to lift me they’re so heavy and sore that I wonder if they actually belong to me. I wonder if someone is holding me down. I lift up as high as I can, onto my knees. The train is quiet. And, yes, my head is bleeding. And, yes, I’m alone.

  “Dakota?”

  This isn’t the first car I was in. None of these windows are boarded. In fact, they’re so clear that I can see my own battered reflection. Yes, my head is bleeding. A rivulet of wine red blood runs from a thin gash on the side of my head to my cheek. My ear is covered, too. I try my best to push off the nausea that has encased me.

  “Kota?”

  This car is empty and has been protected from any damage.

  “Dakota?”

  But he doesn’t answer.

  Max must have been too exhausted to stay awake because when she opened her eyes, it was morning and sunlight beamed into the windows in brilliant yellow rays. Ginger had fallen asleep in Taddy’s arms. Curly was asleep with his jacket over his face. Eric had the door open, letting in the cold air. He stood quietly in front of the shed, staring at where they had jumped from. It seemed so far away now.

  The shed was on a strip of sand and surrounded by more trees. She couldn’t call the place a beach since the trees dominated most of the land.

  Max stood. Most of their clothes had dried overnight, but her jacket was still moist. She didn’t need it. She ran into the cold and it knocked against her already sensitive skin. They were all still getting over the ordeal they’d gone through last night.

  “He hasn’t shown up,” Eric said. “I checked the water. Didn’t see anything.”

  “You went in the water?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how do you know?” She advanced toward the bank of water, but Eric stopped her again.

  “You’re going to get sick if you go back in there.”

  “Move, Eric.”

  “Maxxy, don’t be stupid!” Eric shouted. “Alright! He’s dead! You’re not going in there to look for him.”

  “He’s not dead, what’re you talking about?”

  “If he hasn’t shown up by now, he’s dead.”

  Is that what he had thought about her when she was away? “You don’t even know him.”

  “Neither do you!” Eric said, shrugging. “That’s why I’m a little confused by why you’re trying to risk your life going after him.”

  “Because he risked his getting me back to you. Getting us this far!” She threw her hands helplessly up and they sluggishly dropped back to her sides. “He saved my life and I’m not going to just leave him.” She plopped down into the sand. The wind was harsh and bitter and stung her skin like snaps of electricity. She didn’t know what had happened to Dakota or why he hadn�
�t just jumped with the rest of them. Maybe he had been trying to protect her from the Strays pouring from the woods and they had overwhelmed him, or maybe he had found some place to hide. He could be hurt. It could be taking him a while to heal like it had when he was shot. He could be hurt… but he wasn’t dead.

  She could wait for him. She could sit in the sand and wait for him. Because he would’ve waited for her. Right? If he thought there was a chance she could be alive? He would’ve waited.

  Twenty-Two

  Max

  ●

  I’m on a train. I sit between the seats, my knees up to my chest. I’m alone. I don’t know where I’m going, but the train is taking me far away from here. I’m alone. I want to close my eyes and just feel the motion, feel the train carry me away from this place… and if I close my eyes…

  Twenty-Three

  Max

  ●

  I’m on a train…

  Three days passed. Each morning Max woke up and waited for hours in the sand. She had waited in the cold for so long that her body had gotten used to the sting. The water moved so slowly it looked still and it was beginning to ice over. A thick coat of ice glistened like a mirror. She didn’t know what everyone else was doing, only that they didn’t wait with her. Ginger had tried to bring her food earlier, something fried and burned, but Max wasn’t hungry.

  On the fourth morning, when everyone was readying to move on, Max sat and waited. She hugged her jacket to her. The snow was gone, but even though the sun was bright in the sky it delivered zero warmth. The water had completely iced over now in one large bed of white. If he had jumped into the water, he was dead… and she would never see him again.

  Curly sat quietly beside her, but she wasn’t in need of the company.

  “I really thought he’d show up,” Curly said when neither of them spoke for a while. He waited for her to respond, but she preferred silence. “He, uh, has always come back. I don’t—I’m not sure what to do now.” He looked around at the damaged, corrupted world. “I can’t go back to Lincoln without Dakota.”

  “Maybe he went back.” Max thought. It hadn’t occurred to her before that he could have turned around and gone back the other way. He could be headed back to Lincoln, back to Reagan and the others… but then he would have to go back through the woods. That or he would have to walk around and there was no telling how long that would take. Still, it was possible.

  “No.”

  That simple word crushed any hope she’d had left. “You think he’s dead?”

  “I think if he didn’t die up there”— he nodded toward where they had jumped— “he’s Stray by now.”

  Max’s eyes welled. Becoming Stray was a worse fate than being dead. She had forgotten all about that part of his life. He was a vampire, had been, was, but if he didn’t feed he would become Stray. And he hadn’t fed. When she had tried to offer him her blood he had turned it down to wait for Curly, but Curly hadn’t been there for him. Curly hadn’t been there well enough for him since she had met them. She looked at him and she would have detested him if she couldn’t see the obvious pain on his morose face. He was supposed to protect his younger brother, like she had fought to protect hers. He hadn’t. She looked away from him at the ice.

  “Either way.” Curly sniffed and wiped his nose and eyes. “We can’t stay here, Max.”

  He talked with a calming voice that was supposed to coax her, but only made her angrier. “Then go. Thought you were supposed to be going back to Lincoln anyway.”

  “I can’t face Reagan without Dakota. She’ll kill me.”

  So what did that mean? He was never going back?

  “I can’t go back now, at least,” he said, before she asked.

  “Well, you can leave. I’ll just wait here.”

  “You’ll die here if you wait.”

  She shrugged. “Not if Kota shows up.”

  “Max, Dakota is dead!” His voice cracked when he said the words and he had to clear his throat. “Look, Taddy knows of a place a couple hours from here he calls the Fray. If we go now we can make it before sunset. There’re vampires there. They’ll want to help.”

  “Help what?”

  “I told Taddy about Alias Corp.”

  Alias Corp? She still didn’t even understand Alias Corp. Or his sick delusions of thinking he could take down any Strays that resided there. If the place was full of Strays like he thought, she didn’t understand what getting him killed trying to kill them would accomplish, and why he thought some random vampires he didn’t even know would help him with that.

  “Eric and I’ll stay here.”

  “Eric doesn’t want to stay here. He doesn’t feel safe here.”

  “He can always feel safe with me.”

  “What? He doesn’t even think you’re sane right now.”

  Max sighed and slammed her hand into the sand. A sharp rock hidden within it cut her palm. “Damn it.” She brought her hand up and licked the blood away. “We’re not chasing you to Alias Corp so we can watch you die, too.”

  Curly sighed and stood up. He wanted to think she had said that because she cared about him, but he took it in the literal sense. She literally didn’t want to watch him, or anyone else die. “You’re difficult. My brother always… liked the difficult ones.” He ran his hands over his face. “I know that you cared about him… that you do… whatever, but Max… we lose people in this world. There’s nothing we can do. You can’t wither away. We have to keep moving.”

  “I don’t want to keep moving. I’m tired of-of moving. I’m tired of moving, Dante. God.” She pressed her fists to her eyes so hard that the pressure of them pushing inward hurt in her chest. “I’m tired of moving.”

  “Max.”

  “I’m in pain!” she screamed and chuckled softly. His not understanding that was enough to drive her insane. “Why am I in pain?”

  “Because you cared about him?”

  “Because it’s my fault if he’s dead.” She twisted her mouth up. She didn’t want to face that possibility, that his death was a result of something she had done. She couldn’t face herself. “I’m pathetic.” She stood.

  “You’re a kid.”

  She snorted. “Oh, so that’s why I’m pathetic.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t st—he was always in my head. I thought about him when he was only one room over.” She paused, with a sigh. “I can’t explain.” Her jaw tensed and she thought about whether or not to keep talking. She wasn’t sure Curly was the right person to say all those things to. “I’m afraid… all the time. I’ve learned how to pretend well, but I’m always afraid. And I know you thought I was sleeping next to him because we were screwing around, but Dakota never touched me, I just… slept. I could sleep. I wasn’t afraid to sleep with him there. Oh God.” She rubbed her eyes again. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Max.”

  “And he’s your brother.”

  She broke, but Curly wouldn’t let her fall. He wrapped his arms around her and kept her on her feet. With one arm holding her up, he used his free hand to stroke her hair. “We don’t know. He could be safe. He could be with Mariana and Hank and Darcy and they could all be together and safe. We don’t know that he’s dead, alright?”

  “Or he could be Stray.”

  He pulled her back and grabbed her face. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”

  She put her hands over his to move them away from her face, but he only moved them to her hands instead. “We’re going to be okay, Maxxy… but not if we stay here.”

  She nodded and pulled her hands from him. He was right. “Okay.” He was right. As hopeless as she had become, she was still alive and Eric was still alive and that had to mean something. It had to be her motivation somehow. Dakota hadn’t been her world. She had barely known him, but it didn’t make her feel less guilty. He had still disappeared protecting her. He had made sure she jumped over that railing like everyone else and it
had saved her life. He had saved her and she was abandoning him… if he was alive.

  I don’t know where I’m going…

  Max nodded again. “We could leave a note.”

  “How?” Curly stepped away from her.

  “We’ll write it in the sand.”

  “The water’ll wash it away.”

  “You have paper in your bag don’t you?”

  “It got wet when we jumped.”

  “Okay. We’ll write it on the shed.”

  Curly sighed. “With what?”

  There had to be something. Max went back to the shed and pushed her way between Taddy and Ginger to get to the back table. Eric had moved the box of sentimental items to the table. She rummaged through what could now be considered garbage, but there was nothing that could be used to write anything on the vinyl siding. If they were going to go, if she was going to leave without closure, she had to leave a note. The note would be her closure. She had to tell him somehow where they were heading. She thought about collecting a bunch of rocks to form the words The and Fray, but that would take too long. She rummaged through the box again. There had to be something. A pen. A pencil. A damn Sharpie! Something. She grabbed the love letter Eric had asked her to read earlier. Even this guy had managed to leave a note.

  She unfolded it and read it quietly to herself.

  [Dearest Marigold,

  Your image has been etched into the deepest part of my memory. I feel as though I’ve been transported to another planet. The distance between us causes me both mental and physical pain. I’m sure that if I was to die tomorrow, I’ll have experienced no greater pain in my lifetime than being apart from you. I long for the day that our fingertips can touch again, so that the warmth of you can melt me, like it used to.