Anyone? (20 page)

“You were supposed to meet them
here?”
The family
pictures strung on the walls adopted a more ominous feel than ever before, and I
searched for him in the frames amid the strangers and the smiling faces. The
house evolved and became dreadfully real—a painful possibility.

A sense of heaviness weighed me down, more mental than
physical, though I sank deeper into the cushions of the couch.

He sliced through the plastic band around my wrists, but
instead of releasing me, he ran his thumbs over the indents in my skin. “Next
door, actually, but...” He shook his head. “You saw what it looks like out
there.”

Of course I did. The barrenness, the emptiness, the
destruction—I’d seen it all. A sigh pressed through my lips as I tried to
process what his revelation meant, and what he expected me to do exactly. Give
up looking for Dad and Toby? Never. “I’m sorry your family isn’t here, but it
doesn’t mean my family is gone too. They might still be waiting for me.”

He nodded. “If I had a clue to where my family might be, or
even a hint they might still be alive, I’d probably be chasing after it too. I
get that, but I have to warn you, it hurts like hell to get to your destination
only to wind up no better than when you first started out. Believe me, I know.”

Of course those thoughts had plagued my mind—I wasn’t naïve
or stupid. It had been over two months after all, and of course I’d wondered
why Dad hadn’t come back for me in all that time, but his message to me was all
I had to cling to. Thinking anything different, expecting the worst, would
crush me into nothingness.

“What’s your plan if you get there and they’re gone?” He
continued to massage my wrists while bruising my confidence.

I shrugged. “I don’t have one.”

He studied me for a moment. “Yeah, I kind of figured you
didn’t. You should probably have one though. You need to stay at least one step
ahead of this. Two or three is even better.”

I jerked my hands away from him. “I don’t want a plan B! If
I allow myself to give into doubts I may never attempt plan A! I’m not good at
this survivor stuff, I’m not, but this is all I have. This is it for me. So,
stop it, okay? Just stop.”

He stared at the floor while turning the broken plastic band
around in his hand. “Okay.”

I didn’t care whether the whole idea was foolish or not; I
would climb that damn mountain. I would! “What’s your plan now, huh? What are
you going to do since your family isn’t here? What’s
your
plan B?” Tough
questions could go both ways.

He turned the piece of plastic over and over in his hand,
increasing the speed before finally dropping it at my feet. “My plan B changed.”
He stood, brushed off his dirty pants, and looked down at me. “You’re my plan B.”

“Oh, no, no, no!” I clambered from the creaky couch and
positioned myself in front of him. “No way. I don’t want to be your plan B. I
don’t want to be
anyone’s
plan B! Go and do whatever you were planning
to do before I showed up, okay?” I couldn’t believe I’d actually said that, but
I’d said a lot in the last couple of days I wouldn’t have thought possible.
Logical? Heck no! But I no longer cared. Cole had ruined that for me.

“If I hadn’t shown up, what were you going to do? Where were
you going to go?” He’d drilled me on having a second and third plan in the back
of my mind. Now I wanted to know his plans.

“It no longer matters.”

He tried to walk past me, but I grabbed his arm and stopped
him. “No, really, tell me. What were you going to do?”

“I said it doesn’t matter, okay?”

I refused to release his arm. I wasn’t sure what to expect
from him, what words of wisdom he might hold, but if he knew something I didn’t,
then he needed to spill it here and now. He had to tell me. Cole had taught me something
important during my time with him—that I could be stubborn too.

He glanced at my hand clasped on his forearm and then back to
me. “My plans seem to change every day.” He gave a noncommittal shrug. “That’s
what I’m trying to tell you. Be prepared for anything and everything, because
two weeks ago, I had decided to hole up here, make this place work for me, gather
supplies, and wait this thing out. See if my family or
anyone
would come
back. A week later when nothing changed, I tried fixing up an old motorcycle,
thinking I would ride until I couldn’t ride anymore, but then this happened.”
He paused as he reached up, his fingers hesitating for a moment as if
rethinking his decision, before finally removing his worn beanie. He stared at the
floor then squeezed his eyes shut.

My hand slipped from his arm.
Jeez.

Patches of dark hair dotted his scalp, thin and wiry. Long
pieces and short pieces mixed together, looking as though a toddler had gotten
hold of a pair of scissors and decided to play barber. His smooth scalp peeked
through the fine strands, and as he ran his hand lightly over his head, several
clumps fell away like dandelion fluff, hardly attached at all. But that wasn’t
the worst part—the healing scabs and open sores were.

He grabbed the discarded hat, and with shaking fingers,
shoved it back on, drawing it down over the tops of his ears.

“Are... are you sick?”

“I have to be, right?” The circles I’d noticed under his
eyes the day before—something I had attributed to exhaustion—stood out as
another unhealthy sign. He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on, but
before all of this happened I was fine. I have a military physical to prove it,
but whatever this is I do know it’s getting worse. Much worse.”

What does that mean?
“You need to get to a hospital
and be looked at.” The suggestion came out of my mouth before I realized how
impossible that might be.

He must have realized it too and gave a soft laugh. “I’ll be
sure to do that.”

“See? This is another reason why I can’t be your plan B, and
why you need to stick to jumping on your motorcycle and trying to find a doctor.”
He wanted to follow me and climb a mountain when he might be dying? No way. He
needed help, and by the looks of it, he needed it sooner than later.

“Finding help was several plan Bs ago. Besides, whatever is
happening to me is getting worse. I gave up on the idea when my vision went a
little haywire and I crashed my bike. It’s ruined.”

“Then walk there if you have to.”

His shoulders rolled forward. “Walk where? Look around us.”

“You have to try.”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

I stood my ground, forcing him to look at me. “That’s it
then? You’re not going to search for your family or try and get any help for
yourself? You’re just going to follow me and maybe die in the process?”

He let his breath out slowly and gave a single nod. “Yeah, I’ll
probably die one way or the other, so I may as well do it trying to help you.”

“Help me? Why? Why would you do that?” Maybe his sickness
had affected his brain too, because nothing he said made any sense whatsoever.

I felt fine. He didn’t.

His eyes watered, but the tears didn’t spill over. “Until
yesterday, I didn’t know anyone else existed, from Denver to here, not a living
soul. You’re the first person I’ve talked to in months, and that gave me hope.
Before that...”

I waited for him to finish his sentence but after several
seconds ticked by in silence, I nudged him on. “Before that, what?”

His eyes held a sadness I’d only seen one other time in my
life—my father’s face after he was told my mother had been killed. “You said
you weren’t a good survivor.” He shook his head. “Well, I’m not either.”

His words told me very little, but his hunched shoulders,
the tears rimming his eyes, the small tremor of his bottom lip—something he
fought to hide by biting it—and his overall defeated appearance told me exactly
what his plan B had been. He didn’t have to say the words for me to know.

“Then why did you run away from us?” Understanding his
motives was almost as complicated as trying to figure Cole out. “Why did you
leave? We could’ve all worked together and tried to find some help.”

“Maybe, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t know what kind of
games you were playing with me, so I planned to follow you to find out, except
you ended up following me first.”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t follow you, and I’m
not playing any games.” Who the heck had time for mind games and weirdness at a
time like this? Okay, bad question, because apparently Cole had, and this guy
wasn’t turning out to be much better, but still.

“The guy you keep talking about? The one you said you were
traveling with?”

I nodded. “Cole? Yeah, what about him?”

“I watched you... for a long time before I talked to you. At
first, I thought I was seeing things, confusing you for a store mannequin or
something. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me again.”

I wanted to tell him me too, and that Cole had actually
accused me of the same thing about seeing him—confusing a real person with a
store advertisement—but the way he stared at me, the intensity and emotion in
his eyes, kept me from opening my mouth. It wasn’t the time to speak.

“You kept saying ‘us’ and ‘him’ and ‘we’,” he continued, “and
even now you keep saying it, but the only person I ever saw at the mall, the
entire time I was there, was you.”

He can’t be serious?
I tipped my head to the side,
incredulous. Who was playing games now? “Cole was running around the mall,
maybe you didn’t see him”—
how could he not have?
—”but you definitely
heard him? He’s a big guy and he was pounding the floor pretty hard.”

He kept his eyes on me, unfazed. “I know you were on your
own, which is scary, and you didn’t know what I might do or if you could trust
me, but now you know. If I had wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it already.
So, you can stop pretending with me. No more games, okay?”

“I... what... I don’t.” I pushed his shoulder. He might be
deathly sick, but that wasn’t an excuse for him to mess with me. “You stop
pretending. You stop playing games!”

He raised his hand to stop me. “How long were you with him?”

“A few days.”

“And before that?”

“I was in a bomb shelter in my backyard.”

“Was he there with you, in the bomb shelter?”

“Of course not, it was just me and my cat. Why all the
questions? This is getting really weird.”

His eyes narrowed and his brow pinched together. He stepped
away from me, moving with calculated steps, until the plush chair brushed
against the back of his legs, and he sank into it. “You really think someone
was there with you at the mall, don’t you?”

No, not this again. What is it with these guys?

“I don’t
think
anything. Cole
was
there! He’s
real! You can’t make up that kind of crazy, and I’m not losing my mind, if that’s
what you’re suggesting. You may not have seen him and he didn’t see you, but
that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe your sickness is starting to affect more than
just your hair.”

Mean words, but this was going too far. He didn’t say
anything, but stared at me in such a way it forced me to take a small step backward.

I raised my hands. “What? Why are you looking at me like
that? Are you planning to tell me I don’t own a cat either or that all of this is
a figment of my imagination? One big fat lie, a glitch in my brain?”

“No, I’m not. All of this is real, too real.” His eyes
remained on mine, and he leaned forward. “But I do think you’re starting to get
sick like me.”

“Nope! I’m not doing this. Cole told me you didn’t exist. Now
you’re telling me he doesn’t, and I’m telling you you’re both nuts. This is the
most bizarre experience I’ve ever had. I’m done. I’m done!” I knelt next to my
bag and shoved my loose belongings inside. “I’m fine, by the way. I feel great,
so I don’t need your help.”

He scooted to the edge of his seat. The faux leather crinkled
with his movement. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Oh, really? Telling me the person who stitched my arm,
saved me from a beastly tornado, and who kissed me isn’t real, that I’m
probably losing my mind and will end up with no hair on my head wasn’t meant to
scare me? Then let
me
apologize. I’m
so
sorry for reacting in a
way you hadn’t expected.”

I swung my bag over one shoulder, and as I marched through
the kitchen on the way to bathroom to fetch Callie, I pilfered two bottles of
Nutella from the open cabinet. “I’m taking these. I think I’ve earned them.” I
shoved them into my bag.

He followed and did nothing to stop me. “Take whatever you
want. I won’t be needing any of it after today.”

I spun around to face him. “Don’t you dare try guilting me
into letting you come along.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. I want to make it clear, whatever you do
from this point on is on you, not me. Do you understand?” I didn’t want to
think what he planned to do once I left. I refused to carry that responsibility.

“Of course.”

I inched the bathroom door open, squatted down, and caught
Callie’s leash as she shot through the crack, trying to zip through my legs. She
jerked backward, coming up short when the leash tightened. I gave her furry
head a quick pat as a way of apologizing for knocking her on her behind. “I’m
leaving, and I don’t want you following me.” I scooped her into my arms. “I
mean it.”

“I won’t.” He shifted and made room for me to pass him in
the tight space of the hall.

I stopped mid-movement, trapping him against the wall, my
chest against his. “I’m doing this on my own.”

“Okay.”

“I just want to find my dad and my brother, and for all of
this to be over.”

He offered a single nod. “I know.”

“We’re clear?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re clear.”

He followed me into the balmy garage, watching me in the
same way Cole had when I’d left him. Why couldn’t I have found another female
survivor? It would have been so much easier. No mind-games and nonsense, just hair
braiding and drama—something I knew how to deal with.

I knelt next to the gap in the garage door, hardly believing
I was about to leave another person in the span of two days. At one point, the
idea of being alone would have put me in a panicked state. Now, I couldn’t wait
to be on my own and away from these guys and their insanity. Last people or
not, I couldn’t stand them.

But before crawling through the space, I stopped, turned
around and looked at him again. “You said no one was at the mall, and I’m
probably getting sick and that creating another person is my mind playing tricks
on me. A symptom of being ill?”

He tugged on his beanie and leaned against the wall for
support. “I’m only telling you what I saw and what I think might be happening
to you.”

I waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, okay, but then by that logic, maybe
you’re the one who’s not real. Maybe you’re the figment of my imagination. It’s
possible my sick brain created you.”

I didn’t really think any of those things. Both he and Cole were
real,
very
real. I had felt Cole’s lips on mine, and this boy touched
and caressed the indents in my skin left by the plastic band. Minds could be
tricky, but not that tricky.

I wasn’t delusional or sick—well, not anymore. My fever was
gone and the antibiotics had cleared my infection. For the past several days, I’d
felt physically fine. Yeah, I had suffered a mini-meltdown the day before—a
panic attack—but I’d suffered them long before the world started to fall apart.
Nothing new.

I
was
fine.

He shrugged. “Then by that logic, maybe I am.”

Great.
His response didn’t help me at all.
“You’re
not going to try and convince me you’re a real person?”

“What would be the point? Anything I do or say can be taken
as real or not, depending on what you want to believe. I guess it’s up to you to
decide.”

I let out a frustrated breath and shifted my anxious cat in
my arms. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” I moved toward the gap, but stopped
again. “Please go get some help. I’m not giving up, and I make a horrible survivor,
but if I can do it, I know you can. So don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

He sighed. “I’ll try.”

“No, like Yoda advised, ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try’,
except don’t do the ‘do not’ part, okay?”
Just shut up already.
I didn’t
know what I was saying anymore. Maybe I
was
losing my mind. I shook the
thought off before it took root.

His lips curled in a semi-grin, then he coughed into his
hand and wiped the spit off on his pants. The grin disappeared. “Okay.”

I tried to shove Callie through the gap first, but she meowed
and clawed her way backward, getting as far away from the hole as possible. “Stop
it!” I jerked on her leash, but she arched her back, thwarting my efforts. “Fine,
I’ll go first.” I’d drag her out if she gave me no other choice.

I pushed my backpack through the hole, doing my best to get
it out of the way so I could crawl though without being hindered. Early
afternoon sunlight swallowed my backpack and part of my arm, but in those few
seconds the light touched my exposed skin, an intense heat branched out from
the tips of my fingers all the way to my shoulder.

I screamed and yanked my arm inside. A hand to a hot burner,
steam raising from a teakettle, touching the metal surface of an iron—none of
it compared to the sensation that pricked my skin and heightened my nerves.

And I hadn’t done anything, but reach outside.

He knelt next to me and moved to take my hand, but I jerked
it away and cradled my seared limb to my chest. “No, don’t touch it!”

“What did you do?” He tried again to touch my arm, but I
shot him a look and he backed off, raising his hands like a white flag.

“Nothing! Ahh... it hurts!”

“I won’t touch you, but you’ve got to show me what’s going
on so I can help.” He inched closer, but kept his hands up. “I promise. I won’t
touch.”

I eased my arm from the safety of my chest and balanced it
in the air, not wanting to bump it against anything. If he touched it, I would
kill him, but he didn’t even attempt to grab my shaking arm.

After a moment, he released his breath and ran into the house.
Callie’s leash slipped through my fingers and she took off after him, using my
injury to her benefit, but I didn’t care. Good for her. No wonder she didn’t
want to go first through the gap in the garage door. She’d be a fried cat right
now, if she had.

The burning pain continued to throb. I tried to replay the
scene over in my head: Did I touch the metal garage door? Did the sun reflect
off something, intensifying its rays? My mind ran wild searching for logical
explanations but ended up settling on “this is impossible,” and “this makes no
sense.” No one gets sunburned in seconds. No one. And if the sun was that hot,
then the house and everything surrounding it should have gone up in flames,
spontaneously combust—but it didn’t.
Thank heavens.

But we didn’t get tornados or electrical storms or bowling
ball sized hail either.

He skipped the two garage steps, jumping over them, and
skidded to my side. “Put your arm out.”

Heck no!
“What are you going to do?”

“It’ll help, I promise.” He held his hand out in front of
him, palm up as if waiting for a gift to be placed in it. “Come on, trust me.”

I took a deep breath, held it, and then laid my arm in his
outstretched hand. I bit my lip when my sensitive skin made contact with his,
but didn’t yank my arm away. If he had an answer to end my suffering, then I’d
play along.

“This should help.” He used his teeth to unscrew the cap to
a bottle of water before pouring the cool liquid over my burns. “How’s that
feel?”

“Better.” Not by much, but it did help some. The fiery feeling
seemed to dissipate a little.

“It’s only a mild burn, no blisters or anything, so that’s
good news.”

“
Good news?” My eyes about popped out of my head. “Maybe
it is, but how did this even happen in the first place? I got sunburned in less
than ten seconds! That’s the opposite of good. It’s bad,
very
bad.”

He took a second bottle of water from where he’d tucked it
into his waistband and poured its contents over my burn as well. “I gave up
trying to make sense of all this weeks ago. Why does the sky sometimes turn
green? I have no idea. Why does the temperature drop to near freezing one day
and then boiling hot the next? Not a clue. I don’t think we’re supposed to make
sense of it. We’re only supposed to try and live through it, somehow.”

For a minute, I forgot about my arm. He’d said,
“We’re
only supposed to try and live through it.”
I took it as a good sign. Maybe
he’d given up on following through with his plan B.

“So, it’s not hard enough being the only people left, but
now Mother Nature is setting out to try and kill us too? That’s not even fair.”
I didn’t even care if my statement resembled a toddler’s. None of this was
fair.

What was next, huh? Hurricanes and volcanic eruptions in our
land-locked city in the West? This was the kind of thing people wrote
best-selling books about, or made millions of dollars on by producing action-packed
movies, starring Tom Cruise. This was far-fetched, not real!

“I agree it’s not fair, but we have to deal with Mother
Nature’s tricks anyway. There’s no getting around it.” He poured the last of
the water over my arm. “How does it feel now?”

“Still hurts, but better.”

“I know you wanted to get away from me and everything, but
you’re stuck here for a while. At least until the sun goes down. You can leave
later tonight or try again tomorrow. Everything tends to be better the next
day, if you think you can wait that long.”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

He stood, held out his hand to me, and helped me to my feet.
“I guess not.”

“What did you mean by the sky turning green? What’s that
about?” I followed him back into the house, careful to avoid any specks of
sunshine coming through the cracks in the wood or sneaking in through the
partially covered windows.

He shrugged as he went about closing the drapes and twisting
the blinds to block the sun. “I haven’t a clue. I’ve only seen it twice so far.
Something to add to the ever-growing list of weird things. Nothing surprises me
anymore.”

“But the sun? Have you seen that happen before? And what
would I have done if I were outside when it got this hot?” I grabbed a kitchen
towel from where it hung over a cabinet door, drenched it with a bottle of
water, and wrapped it around my arm. The cool wetness eased the sting of the
burn. “I’d end up with third degree burns, or worse.” A minute in the direct
sunlight, and I’d have blisters. Ten minutes or more, my skin would be falling
from my bones. Or at least, those were the images my mind created. Vivid and
frightening.

“No, I haven’t seen that before. It’s something new.” He
leaned against the counter, watching me. “Whatever is happening out there seems
to be getting worse too.”