Stung (13 page)

“Where’d it come from?” I whisper, unable to take my eyes from it.

“The wall. There are hundreds of hummingbirds living inside
of it. Every once in a while one gets out. It thinks your blood is a flower. It’s probably on the verge of starving to death.”

The hummingbird, realizing my shirt isn’t a flower, darts away, sweeping through an empty window and leaving the morning disturbingly silent.

Bowen points the remote at me, and my ankles release. I stretch my legs and think about going back to sleep.

After a moment, I hear another sound, reminiscent of the sound of a distant hoe scraping dirt. I open my eyes and look at Bowen—the source of the sound. A gleaming knife glides along his jaw line, scraping a thin lather of white foam and dark stubble from his skin. The scent of pine floats on the air. I stare, entranced, as he scrapes all the cream off, and when he is done, his smooth face looks thirteen again. Almost.

“Here.” Bowen holds a water bottle out to me. I sit up, open it, and take a long drink. He smirks. “That’s for you shirt, Fotard. You need to wash the blood out of it.”

I open my mouth to ask him why, but before the words leave my tongue, he says, “Blood draws beasts—the smell.”

“Oh.” Horrified, I pull off my shirt. Bowen’s smirk disappears, and his freshly shaved cheeks turn a shade pinker. He turns his back as if he’s never seen me with just the binding that wraps my chest, as if the sight of me will make him go blind. “Bowen, I’ve still got the rags binding my … never mind.” I turn the other way, hoping the back of my neck isn’t as hot as it feels, and put my shirt on the ground. Pouring water on the blood, I start rubbing the fabric against itself. I pour more water and rub more, but the blood doesn’t come out.

“I need soap or bleach,” I say over my shoulder.

“I don’t have any. Just give it a good rinse for now.” Bowen’s feet scrape on the ground, and he gasps. I turn and look up at him, every muscle in my body tensed for something bad. His eyes are fixed on my back, his mouth hanging open.

“What?” I ask.

“What happened to your back?”

I crane my neck to peer over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

He crouches behind me and trails his warm fingers over my skin, from the base of the fabric wrapping my breasts to just above the waist of my jeans. I shiver as warmth floods my body. His fingers move to the skin between my shoulder blades, just above the bindings, and trail up to my neck, leaving goose bumps in their wake.

“What is it?” I ask, my voice unsteady.

“You don’t know?”

I shake my head.

“You have scars from here”—he touches my neck—“to here.” His finger trails over the binding and down to the top of my hip.

“Scars?”

“Yeah. They look like they’re from … fingernails.” He presses three fingertips to my midback and drags them downward. His eyes meet mine. “What happened to Jonah?” he asks, eyes guarded.

“He’s a beast,” I say. The words scratch my throat.

“That’s what I thought. He started the vaccine the same time you did, right?”

“Yes,” I answer without thinking, a fact I didn’t realize I knew until this very moment.

Bowen taps his chin with his finger and studies me. And then he’s standing, tugging his Sprite shirt over his head. My body temperature surges, searing my neck and cheeks. He doesn’t notice, is too intent on his chest. I follow his gaze.

His skin is suntanned and smooth over muscles earned by hard work. Right down the middle of his chest are five white lines, like five lightning bolts. I stand and get a better look. “Here, too.” He points to his shoulder. I take a step closer and study the white marks, tracing the jagged crescent with my finger.

“That looks like …”

“Teeth?”

I nod.

“A beast bit me. And the marks on my chest are from fingernails.” He pulls his shirt back on. “We need to go back downstairs. We’re sitting targets up here. Are you hungry?”

“What?” I’m still staring at his chest, imagining the five scar-streaks beneath his shirt.

“Hungry. Do you want something to eat?”

My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten in more than a day. He picks up my sopping shirt and hands it to me. I pull it on and follow him downstairs.

“When did you get those scars?” I ask.

“Three years ago. I was fourteen.” The main level of the factory is dark and muggy compared to the second level. I can hardly see his face. “They had just completed the second level of
the wall and were admitting more people inside, offering protection. If.”

“If what?” I ask.

“If you qualified.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No, I did. But my mom? She didn’t qualify. They turned her away.”

An image wavers in my memory. A bathrobe and bunny slippers, and blood on snow.

Jonah and I were out front, taking turns pulling each other on a sled through the snow. It was my turn to be pulled, when a door slammed across the street
.

She stood on the front porch, wearing a blue flannel robe. Twinkling Christmas lights clung to the roof of her house even though it was the end of February
.

“Look, it’s the crazy lady,” Jonah whispered. “Dad says if you look at her wrong, she’ll kill herself.”

I tore my gaze from her and studied the purple plastic sled, wondering if Dreyden was embarrassed to have a mom like that—a mom who wore her bathrobe and slippers at four in the afternoon. A mom who left their Christmas lights on day and night
.

The sound of Mrs. Bowen crunching through the snow of her unshoveled driveway echoed across the street to our house. A minute later a pair of pink bunny slippers matted with snowballs crunched into our yard and stopped beside the sled. Red dripped between those slippers, like the ticking of a clock … drip-drip-drip
.

“I need help,” she said. “I’ve accidentally cut my wrist.” Drip-drip-drip
.

I looked up, and Jonah rammed his boot into my thigh. “Don’t look at her!” he warned
.

I stood from the sled and stared at the blood melting a red hole in the snow between her slippers
.

“I’ll get Dad,” I whispered
.

“Why didn’t your mom qualify?” I can still see the crimson snow when I look at him.

Bowen unzips his backpack and rummages around. “She didn’t pass their health requirements. And if you aren’t healthy, you aren’t worth protecting.” He takes out one of the meat-flavored disks, and my stomach rumbles. I don’t know how I hadn’t realized it before, but I’m ravenous. Eager, drooling, I hold my hand out for the disk, but he hesitates, his eyes full of guilt.

“What?” I ask, scared he might eat it himself. “We don’t have enough food to last, after all?”

“No. These.” He scowls at the disk. “They’re for Fecs. And beasts. It is a flavored calorie tablet with an appetite suppressant, emotion inhibitor, and tranquilizer. And they’re mildly addictive.”

I stare at the disk, thinking of the pleasant, heavy exhaustion that filled me each time I ate one and made life seem more bearable. I should be angry,
furious
, that he was drugging me. Instead, I want to snatch up the disk and eat it before he has a chance to feel guilty for feeding them to me.

Bowen’s fingers curl around it, and I reach my hand out with a small whimper. He looks at me and puts it back in the
backpack. “Wait here.” He crosses the empty floor and disappears behind the stairs.

I sit on the ground and stare at the backpack, tempted to find the wafer. I’m so hungry. Peering toward the stairs, I place my hand on the pack’s zipper.

“Don’t eat it,” Bowen calls.

I jump and pull my hand away. Taking a resigned breath, I turn away from the backpack and, in the dim light, pull the medical tape from my hand and study my scabbed-over palm. Only, the scab isn’t red. It’s chalky white. After a minute Bowen returns with a can in each hand. He holds them out for me to see, and I forget about the disk and my palm.

“Spam and peaches in light syrup. Worth almost as much as honey,” he says, sitting on the ground beside me. He pops open the lids on the cans, and my mouth fills with saliva. I swallow and take a deep breath, and smell the memory of flowers and breakfast and juice. He takes a knife from his pocket and slices a gelatinous chunk of pink Spam from the can and hands it to me.

I put the meat into my mouth and am transported to a world long gone. Tears of yearning for the past sting my eyes, so I close them and chew. My stomach heaves and jumps, trying to get the meat into it as quickly as possible. I can almost hear the clatter of silverware on plates, hear the quiet sound of classical music in the background, see my family gathered around the dining room table, sunlight streaming through the windows. When I open my eyes, Bowen is staring at me, a ghost of a smile on his mouth.

“Good?” he asks.

“So good,” I say, wiping the tears from my lashes. He hands me the other can without a word. I take a sip of the syrup and slurp a slice of peach into my mouth. I want to melt into the floor. “Heaven,” I say. “Where did you find them?”

“I’ve been storing food here for a while. Just in case …” He trails off.

“What?”

He shrugs and slices off another piece of Spam. “In case I ever decide to go rogue. Permanently. Colorado isn’t the only state out there that cut itself off from the rest of the country and made its own government in an effort to survive. The rumor is, there’s a place—a settlement—in Wyoming, where anyone’s welcome. I figure one day I might want to see if the rumors are true. I don’t have anyone holding me here—you know?” He puts the meat into his mouth and sighs. I pass him the peaches and take the knife from his hand, slicing more cold Spam.

“What happened to your mom?” I pop the meat into my mouth and force myself to chew when my stomach begs me to swallow it whole.

“She died. So I joined the militia,” he says. The muscles in his jaw pulse, and he won’t look at me.

“How did she die?” I ask, Spam momentarily forgotten.

His gaze doesn’t leave the can of peaches in his hand. Juice sloshes out of the can, and he gently sets it down. His hand trembles, and he tucks it into his lap.

“What about your dad?” I ask, trying to change the subject. I hardly ever saw his dad. He drove a semi and was gone for months at a time.

“My dad’s not worth talking about. He abandoned us,” Bowen snaps.

“Where’s your brother?”

Bowen’s shoulders relax a bit. “He’s inside the wall, making babies with a sweet sixteen-year-old wife.”

“Sixteen?” I squeak.

Bowen laughs. “Yeah, sixteen. He loved her enough to wait a whole year for her. Fifteen is the new legal age. When you turn fifteen, you join the militia if you’re a boy, and get married if you’re a girl. The number-one priority right now is repopulation. Number two is to protect those repopulating the world, from the rest of the world.”

I study his face—his green eyes, angled cheekbones, and soft mouth—and my skin suddenly feels too warm as my blood heats beneath the surface. “Why aren’t you married, then?” I ask, finding an imaginary spot on the floor to scratch. “And making babies?”

He exhales, and I feel the air stir against my burning skin, feel his body shift in the space next to mine. “It feels wrong, looking at twelve-, thirteen-, and fourteen-year-olds as possible wives—not that I
get
to look, since they’re all inside the wall and I’m stuck out here.” Bowen picks up the can of peaches and hands it to me. When I take it, our fingertips touch and mine explode with fire. Bowen doesn’t let go of the can. His eyes meet mine, and the factory air seems unbearably hot, too hot to breathe. After a heartbeat, he releases the can and turns away from me.

I peer into the can of peaches, wondering if the heat of my hand will make the sticky-sweet syrup boil.

“I need to get some sleep,” Bowen says, his voice rough.

I set the peaches down and study his silhouette, bracing myself for the zing of my ankle cuffs. But the zing doesn’t come. “You forgot my cuffs,” I say. My sweaty skin itches beneath the metal. Bowen bites his bottom lip and stares at the cuffs for a minute. He lifts the remote and points it at my legs. I clench my teeth, waiting for the magnetic pull and discomfort of immobility. The remote clicks, metal clangs, and cool air swirls around my damp calves. I look at the cuffs, sitting useless on the cement floor beside me. I look at Bowen. He shrugs and lies on the cool cement ground, wadding the sleeping bag up for a pillow.

“You’re not restraining me?” I whisper, afraid if I say it too loud, he’ll remember I’m a Ten.

His eyes flicker to mine. “Do you feel like you’re about to turn?”

I mentally tune in to every single part of my body. “No.”

“I trust you, Fo,” he says. He puts his gun over his chest and cuddles it, then shuts his eyes. The air temperature seems to drop ten degrees, going from unbearably hot to just uncomfortably warm, and I can breathe again.

Bowen has a talent for falling asleep the minute his eyes close. His face goes soft, his lips part, and quiet snores fill the warehouse.

I sit cross-legged in front of him and stare at his sleeping face while I eat the rest of the food, remembering how he looked when he was a kid. He always seemed two weeks overdue for a haircut, with scraggly bangs forever in his eyes. And his cheeks were rounder, though typically pale. As a kid he seemed thin to
the point of malnourished, with knobby knees and gangly arms. Whenever my mom baked, if she saw him outside riding his bike, she’d call him over and give him a plate of warm cookies or a slice of pie.

Now he’s filled out, grown into his body, the perfect image of golden-tan health and strength. He stirs and shuts his mouth, as if he can sense my eyes on him. Were I brave, I would reach out and touch him, brush his bangs away from his sweaty forehead or trace the line of his jaw. But the thought steals my breath, so I lean my back against the wall and spread my fingers, plucking a tune out of the air, hearing notes in my head. My fingers remember exactly where to touch, as if I’d played the tune yesterday.

Chopin’s Nocturne no. 2 replaces thoughts of Bowen.