Capture (34 page)

“
Thank you, Hayden.” She leaned around the Christmas tree, and I kissed her. But it was a different kind of kiss this time. I had to hold myself still, my whole body shaking with the effort not to grab her and beg her to leave this place for her own safety, to see reason.

I could only hope that eventually she’d change her mind, before it was too late.

So I stayed quiet, letting her have her peace and happiness while she could. After awhile, she opened one of the journals, her fingertips tracing over the empty lines waiting to be filled, the rasp of that dry caress filling the silent cab with a wordless plea to be left alone so she could start writing.

“
Have fun,” I murmured, forcing a smile for her sake. “Come join me later if you want to.”

I got out of the truck, pausing for a minute, letting the cold slap the frustration away and kick start my mind again.
Insane or not, this was where Tarah was determined to stay. Before we’d come here, back when I had first tried to describe Tarah to my grandmother, I had admired Tarah’s unbreakable will. Since then, it had become my biggest enemy.

I only had two choices now.
I could try to break the very part of Tarah that I had once admired the most and take her out of here, probably kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs, so that she could hate me for weeks, months, maybe years to come. And in the process risk killing whatever this fragile thing was between us.

Or I could let her stay here while I did whatever I could to keep her as safe as possible and hope, as she wanted me to, that eventually the virus would run its course and die out or be cured somehow.

I walked over to the tiny house’s trailer with its promise of a home outlined in posts and beams and subflooring. How long might it take to finish if I focused on it more, worked faster, slept a little less each night?

For now at least, I couldn’t do much to help the other members of this village.
But I could try to do something to protect Tarah, even if I couldn’t take her away from here completely.

And so I went back to work on the tiny house.
Maybe if I could get it finished in time, it would give us both somewhere separate to eat and sleep away from the others, reducing our risk of getting sick. It was my only hope of protecting Tarah now.

CHAPTER 21

T
arah got out of the truck a while later to help me work on the tiny house kit. She stopped again a few hours later for a late lunch, but I wasn’t hungry, so she went inside one of the other houses alone to eat.

She must have told everyone about Bud’s death, because no one ever came to ask me about it.
She did come back later with a sandwich and a mug of coffee, which she left on top of the trailer’s wheel well for me. But instead of staying, she hurried back to the infirmary to see if she could help the healers.

I doubted I would be much fun to hang out with for awhile anyways.

Later that evening, she came back with another sandwich and a cup of tea. I still wasn’t hungry, worry churning in my stomach and making me nauseous. But she wouldn’t leave till I ate. Silently I stuffed down the food in the biggest bites and gulps I could manage.

“
Thanks,” I told her after I was done, thinking she would leave again.

“
Are you going to quit soon? You’ve been at it all day, and it’s getting dark.” Her voice was quiet and a little uncertain.

“
Maybe later. I’ve got a flashlight. I’ll be fine,” I muttered, turning back to the work. I had too much left to do before I could quit today. I’d managed to get all the outer and inner wall supports up. But I still needed to get a roof on it to help protect all the exposed wood from the weather.

After awhile, she went back inside.
I ignored the ache in my chest and kept working until it was time to start on the roof. Which was when I realized I needed a ladder, and we didn’t have one anywhere in the village.

I thought about going into town for one.
But most of the building supply places would probably be closed for Christmas. So I gave up for the day and crept into the new house where Tarah and I had been reassigned to sleep.

The house was dark and silent.
Everyone had already gone to bed, many of them on pallets on the living room floor, turning the place into an obstacle course. I barely managed not to step on anyone on the way over to the couch, where I found a section set up for me near Tarah’s head.

I took off my coat and boots but left everything else on as I eased down onto the couch.

As soon as I laid down with my head near Tarah’s and got comfortable, a soft, familiar hand slipped over onto my shoulder.

I fell asleep holding Tarah’s hand.

The nightmares hit me hard and fast and didn’t take a genius for me to interpret. Everyone in the village had turned into zombies, their skin rotting off them in contagious pieces I couldn’t stand to look at. In my dream I tried to drag Tarah away to safety.

“
I can’t leave them,” she whispered.

In the dream, I looked down at her and realized she’d already turned into a zombie too, her once beautiful skin, pale as a moonbeam, now turned a mottled gray with death and decay.

And even then I was tempted to let her touch me, to bite me and turn me into a zombie like her, just so I could stay with her.

Saturday, December 26

Tarah

Hayden woke up with a shout.
But I and several others in the house had been awake and watching him long before the noise.

Because he was floating, his body hovering several inches above the couch in the early morning shadows
just like that day in the woods when we were kids and I'd learned for the first time that magic was real.

Hayden looked around him then down at himself.
I tensed up, worried he would freak out. But he only closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and his body slowly lowered to the couch. As soon as his body made contact with the upholstery, he sat up, swung his legs over the side to the floor, and buried his face in his hands.

I reached for
one of those newly blistered hands, wanting to remind him without words that he wasn’t alone. But he pretended not to see the attempt, reaching down to pull on his boots instead. He was probably embarrassed that he had been seen hovering in his sleep.

I touched his shoulder.
He slid out from beneath my touch, grabbing his coat on the way out the front door.

I worked to breathe through the pain of the rejection.
He wasn’t trying to hurt me. This was about him and his fears, not me.

Then I heard his truck start up a few minutes later, the engine’s rumbling quickly fading as he drove away from the village.
An icy sensation rushed over my skin, which I slowly tried to rub away on my arms.

He probably just had to run to town for another tool or something.
He would never leave the village permanently without at least saying goodbye to me.

I tried to get on with my day
at the infirmary, focusing on one step at a time, never thinking beyond that. But my ears kept listening for the return of that rumbling engine.

The minutes ticked by.
An hour passed. Then an hour and a half. Then two.

It was a long and winding drive on the scenic byway back into Spearfish.
He must have had to drive extra slow due to the ice and snow on the roads. Maybe there had even been an avalanche or a fallen tree across the road to cause further delays. Maybe he got caught behind a snow plow or something too.

Had he slid off the road?
The byway didn’t have a shoulder in most places. If his truck slid, he would either hit the sharply rising mountain face on one side or go down the occasionally steep bank into the river on the other side.

No, don’t think that way, Tarah,
I told myself, taking out my anger at myself on the washcloths I was wringing out in the kitchen’s sink instead.

He was fine.
He probably just stopped for breakfast in town.

I delivered clean washcloths to the healers, brought each of them fresh mugs of coffee, then took a mug of hot chocolate for myself out onto the steps.
It was freezing outside and the cement steps chilled me right through my jeans. But the cold air felt good on my face and in my lungs, clean and pure, a badly needed slap to wake me up and pull me out of the fog of my thoughts.

And then Hayden’s truck came bouncing back up the village road, parking in its usual spot beside his work in progress on the
flatbed trailer.

I wanted so badly to get up and go over to him, especially when those long legs unfolded out of the driver side
doorway and he looked over at me. He hesitated, staring at me from across the many yards separating us. My leg muscles tensed, eager and ready to take me over to him.

But I stayed where I was.
There was nothing I could say to him to change his feelings, and I refused to nag him about it. When he was ready to talk, he would come over.

He turned away, reaching into the back of the truck to pull out a metal ladder, which he set up on the trailer near what looked like the beginnings of wall frames.
Then he went back to the truck’s cab to get a plastic bag of stuff I couldn’t make out from this distance. He took what looked like a pocket knife out of his pocket, unfolded it, and began to saw into the packaging of whatever he’d bought this morning.

He never looked my way again, not even when I got up and went back inside the infirmary.

Hayden

At
noon, she showed up with two sandwiches and two cans of soda. I didn’t know which I needed more...the food, the caffeine or her company. We ate inside the truck, which I started both to warm us up and to keep the cordless drill’s recharger from draining the truck’s battery.

She was quiet today, fiddling with the stereo till she found a CD she liked from my limited collection.
After we finished eating, she surprised me by moving the Christmas tree to the passenger side floorboard, then scooting over to lean back against me.

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth as the emotions and the sensation of her closeness t
ried their best to overwhelm me. My hands shook as I stroked her hair and her upper arms hidden beneath the bulk of her thick coat. I tried to memorize the silky feel of her hair against my face, afraid the memory would disappear like a popped soap bubble if I didn’t make a point of memorizing every detail.

I wished I could tell her how I felt, how much she meant to me.
I wished I could promise her that everything would be all right. That was how it was supposed to work, right? Once you found someone you loved who loved you back, everything else was supposed to fall into place.

Instead, everything around us was falling apart.
And loving her made it all the harder to endure.

“
One of our patients died.”

Her words didn’t mean anything to me at first.
She spoke so calmly she could have been commenting on the weather, for all my brain registered it.

Then I understood, and my truck’s heater suddenly couldn’t keep up with the inner chill that spread goosebumps racing over my skin.

Death had found our secret village at last.

“
Are you ready to leave now?” The words blurted out of me.

She froze, and I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“We already talked about this.” Her voice was a warning, low, controlled.

But I could be stubborn too.
“That was before two people died.”

“
It doesn’t change anything.”

I waited a beat, trying not to react, but I cared too much not to.

Cursing, I got out of the truck, slamming the door after me, and headed for the edge of the woods, needing some distance from her before I could lose control and start yelling at her.

A few seconds later, she caught up with me.
“Hayden, wait. Where are you going?”

Nowhere.
There was nowhere to go to escape my feelings for her and this situation.

“
You have to stop being afraid and running away,” she said.

I froze, closing my eyes, my control slipping away.
“You tell me someone else has died, but I have to stop being afraid.” Could she even hear herself?

She didn’t hesitate to reply,
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying! Can’t you have some faith, even just a tiny bit, that the healers will figure this out?”

“
When, Tarah? When will they figure it out? Before everyone else gets sick too? Before you do?” Bile rose to burn the back of my throat, and I had to shut up or else throw up.

That was it.
Her crazy ambition was going to get her killed. And letting her do it was just as bad as helping her kill herself.

She made a loud gasping oompf as I turned, grabbed her around the waist and tossed her over my shoulder.

“Hayden, what are you doing?” she shrieked, slapping my back as I headed for the truck.

“
The only thing that makes sense...getting you out of here whether you like it or not.” We were nearly to the truck.

“
Oh, so you’re going to just haul me off against my will? Just like Steve would do?”

I stopped, still several feet from the truck.
She did not just compare me to that guy. “I’m not like Steve.”

“
Oh really?”

I stood there, hating her words, hating the truth behind them.
I realized what we must look like to anyone watching. My grandmother and mother would have killed me if they could see me now.

Growling, I set her on her feet again, but I held on to her shoulders, forcing her to stay and talk to me.
“Can’t you get it through your head? You’re not a witch! You don’t have any powers. These people are not
your
people. You don’t owe them any loyalty at all. And you damn sure don’t owe them your life.”

“
I know that. But I owe it to myself to see this through. If I leave now, how will I end their story?”

Their story.
All of this was about telling some stupid story! Could she even hear herself anymore? “And just when and how do you think you’re going to get that story out if you die? And even if you don't, what publisher would risk even publishing it now that the whole world’s turning against us?”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping.
“I have no idea when I’ll be able to share their story. Maybe it’ll be months or even years. But when the time is finally right for us to change public opinion about the Clann, I’m going to be ready to tell their story exactly the way it needs to be told. And once that story is out there for everyone to read, every member of this village will become heroes and martyrs for the cause, and the government will eventually be forced to stop what they’re doing. Don't you see? It’s the only hope we have to end this war! If people out there really knew what was going on, what it was like for the outcasts, sooner or later they would demand justice and equality for the Clann community. It’s history repeating itself, over and over. The Nazis and the Jews, blacks versus whites, equal rights for women, safer working conditions in American factories...change only came when someone was brave enough to write the truth and share it with others.”