Thicker than Blood (14 page)

“Eat up,” he said, holding out the squirrel
kabob in offering. “Plenty more where that came from.” He gestured
to a small pile of squirrels beside him. I counted three more
little bodies, already skinned, and all appearing to have had their
necks broken.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the food, my
chest near bursting with gratitude toward this man and all of his
unexpected kindness. “Thank you for everything.”

Alex’s eyes shifted upward, and he loudly
cleared his throat. “There’s a creek nearby,” he said, sounding
suddenly uncomfortable. “Decent place to wash up in the
morning.”

He was purposely changing the subject,
obviously uncomfortable with my gratitude. I didn’t understand it,
but neither did I push it. Instead, I blew on my hot meal, simply
grateful to have one, grateful that my very best friend was alive
and safe and sleeping beside me, and forever grateful to the man
seated across from me who’d made all this possible.

We ate in silence, the only sounds from
our continuous chewing, the bird calls from the hidden life within
the depths of the forest, and Evelyn’s soft and peaceful snoring.
Then, when my belly was full and exhaustion once again crept up on
me, I lay back down beside Evelyn on the hard and uneven wood
planks and closed my eyes. Only this time, before sleep could
overtake me, I felt a light touch against my fingertips. Jerking, I
opened my eyes to find Alex had moved closer to me, his hand barely
touching me.

His eyes on me, he threaded his fingers
through my own, his dirt-caked and calloused hand curling around
mine. I was uncomfortable for a moment, then a soft, contented sigh
escaped my lips and I squeezed back. I wasn’t sure why, maybe to
convey the gratitude he didn’t seem to want to hear, maybe to share
with him some sense of comfort. Either way, it felt oddly right,
and I soon drifted off to sleep.

• • •

The creek was only a short distance from our
shelter. Although my body ached fiercely and I felt as though I
could have slept for weeks, I was able to manage the quick
walk.

The sight of fresh water, clear and clean,
was enough to rejuvenate me despite my injuries. Evelyn was the
first to undress and I hastily followed her, though unlike her, I
remained in my undergarments.

As it was, the moment I was free of my shirt,
both Evelyn and Alex averted their eyes and the woods grew suddenly
silent. I knew their reactions were because of the sad story my
body told. Old scars and fresh bruises riddled the skin on my
stomach and back, reminders of the beatings I’d endured at the
hands of that bastard. My body was no longer a pretty package,
something to be proud of or coveted, but instead a living reminder
of the hell I’d lived through. I didn’t hate it, wasn’t ashamed of
it, but neither did I like to look at myself for any length of
time.

But seeing their faces, the cringes they
both tried but failed to hide, caused a wave of humiliation to
barrel through me. I didn’t want their pity; I didn’t want anyone’s
pity. We’d all lived through our own horrors, and whether they
showed on our skin or not, we all bore scars, didn’t we?

Evelyn’s scars were internal, buried down
deep. She never spoke of her pain, of the past, of the people she’d
loved and lost, but instead concealed them, hiding from them using
whatever distraction she could, drawing strength from our
nightmare.

And Alex, his scars were there, though
shrouded by his silence and his perseverance. I didn’t know his
story, the life he’d lived or what he’d endured before he came to
live behind the walls of Fredericksville. But whatever it was, it
had left a mark.

Wordlessly, I followed Evelyn into the creek,
the stark contrast between the warm day and the cool water was
glorious against my chafed and broken skin. I sank down quickly,
feeling the silt and stones beneath me, and closed my eyes with a
happy sigh.

“You know what would be amazing right now?”
Evelyn asked.

I cracked an eyelid, squinting through the
sun
light to find her
perched on a small rock, bringing handfuls of water up to her
face.

“Soap?” I suggested. “Clean clothes?
Starbucks?”

From a few yards away I heard Alex snort,
causing my own smile to form. Evelyn too, having raised her head
from her hands, was grinning at me.

“Yes,” she agreed, laughing. “Soap, clean
clothes, and Starbucks would all be amazing. But I was thinking
more along the lines of a frosty cold one, straight out of the
cooler. Getting a nice buzz going and lying naked out in the
sun.”

She threw her head back, her face pointed
toward the sky, and closed her eyes. Sitting there on that rock
unabashedly, the sun beaming down on her, her luxurious hair
hanging down her back, her naked and nicely toned body half in the
water, half out, she arched her back in such a way that she looked
like a mermaid, an ethereal beauty not from this world.

For reasons unknown to me, I found myself
glancing over my back to where Alex was, kneeling in the shallow
water, expecting I’d find him looking at her as well. The shock of
his nudity momentarily startled me, and I found myself looking over
every finely honed inch of his suntanned skin. He was a beautiful
young man, his dark hair and scruff shining wet and black against
his golden body, his dark eyes…

Our eyes met, mine wide with shock and his
dark with guilt. He wasn’t looking at Evelyn at all; he was looking
at me. And the intensity of that gaze wasn’t just surprising, but
somewhat stifling. He looked away quickly and I did as well, only
to find Evelyn watching me. She glanced between the two of us, her
brow arched knowingly, a smirk on her lips. I stared at her,
pleading with her with my eyes to keep her devilish mouth shut and
not worsen what had just become an awkward situation.

Her impish grin turned gentle, and with a
wink she turned away. Relieved, I set to washing myself as best I
could, trying hard to ignore the sudden elephant that had just
bumbled its way into my already complicated world.

Why had he been looking at me like that?

Although, I’d be lying if I were to say I
wasn’t somewhat pleased to find that he hadn’t been looking at
Evelyn.

Evelyn

Several days passed while we recuperated. We slept,
ate, and healed, though some scars would never go away. I felt
fractured, as if deep gouges had been ripped through my heart,
hurting far more than my physical injuries. It was as if my soul
was sad, almost crushed with the gravity of our situation. Was this
it? Was this all we had to look forward to now? Meeting crazy
people as we struggled to live—to survive each day?

I didn’t for one minute regret my decision to
break Leisel out of Fredericksville, but I had hoped that there
would be more to offer her out in the world. That perhaps man had
been surviving, and we’d been merely locked away from the efforts
that were being made to bring us back from near extinction. But I’d
been wrong.

There was nothing good left in the world, and
I didn’t know how to deal with that. I didn’t know how to make
things better. That was my job, after all, who I was at heart. A
people pleaser, someone who fixed things, made them work again. But
I couldn’t make this better, didn’t know how to make this right.
And the more I worried over it, the more I ached because of it, the
harder it became to keep everything locked up tight inside me.

Things began to bubble to the surface,
emotions and feelings that I’d kept locked up tight for so long
now, cracks beginning to appear in my facade. Without Jami here, I
didn’t have an outlet to rid myself of all this nervous energy
simmering just below my surface. Without Jami, I didn’t know how to
rid myself of my own demons, to quash them, rebury them before they
started to show. The truth was, I could actually feel myself
breaking apart and once I broke, who was going to put me back
together?

I looked at Leisel, who was sitting on the
forest floor, her back against a thick tree trunk, staring off into
the distance again. It was something she’d always done, but she’d
been doing it a lot more lately, her mind going elsewhere for hours
at a time. Once she came back to us, it was usually with a start,
as if she’d forgotten for a moment where she was. She’d been like
this for a while now, ever since Alex had left to check his traps
for food, and I couldn’t help but think that if I couldn’t hold it
together, it wouldn’t be Leisel who would save me. Not with her
being so emotionally wrecked. My gaze dropped to her wrists, noting
that they were healing well after her skin had nearly been scraped
completely off. Thankfully, scabs were beginning to form, easing my
worries that she might develop an infection from the wounds.

As my stomach began to growl, I placed my
hand over it and turned away from Leisel, searching out the woods
for any sign of Alex. We’d been lucky so far, with plenty of
squirrels and snakes as our food source, and even a bush with some
edible berries to give us more variety in our diet. In fact, we’d
been very lucky, probably luckier than most. Luckier than Jami had
been, anyway. That thought made my stomach twist painfully, and I
purposely forced all thoughts of him away.

Focusing back on Leisel, I found her looking
at me, her eyes wide.

“Did I do it again?” she said, her cheeks
flushed.

Nodding, I smiled at her. This was the first
time that she’d acknowledged she did that—disappeared into herself.
Maybe it was because Alex wasn’t around, and she felt somewhat
comfortable to speak of it.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

Cocking her head to one side, she raised an
eyebrow in question.

I shrugged. “I hate to say this, Lei, but you
killed a man this week, and that’s a new record for you.” I
purposely kept my voice light to show her that I wasn’t judging
her. Being a murderer myself, I had no room to judge her or anyone,
but more so because I thought what she did—killing Lawrence—was
pretty amazing, and she was coping with the aftermath better than I
would have expected her to.

“He wasn’t a man,” she said, sucking in a
sharp breath. “He was a monster.”

I nodded fervently in agreement. “Can’t argue
with that.”

“Real men were people like Thomas and Shawn,”
she continued. “And I haven’t seen a man like that…” Her words
drifted off, her eyes glossing over, her expression growing sad at
the memory of our first husbands, our husbands before everything
was destroyed.

“Where do you go?” I asked in an attempt to
change the subject. “When you zone out?” Picking up a twig, I began
breaking it into small pieces, tossing each one aside.

“To the past,” she said without hesitation.
“I go back to the past.”

I shook my head, unsure of what to say to
that. I never thought of it—the past. Once a day, I would close my
eyes and try to envision Shawn’s face, only so that I didn’t forget
him, but I refused to think back to the happy times, to birthdays
and barbeques, to Christmases and vacations. Thinking about better
days just made reality that much harder to live through.

“What?” she asked, looking surprised. “You
don’t? Not ever?”

“Why torture yourself?” I retorted, hearing
the annoyance in my tone, and then wincing in regret.

“Because.” Averting her eyes from me, she
looked at the ground. “I don’t know…”

“It’s okay,” I said hurriedly. “We don’t have
to talk about it.”

Mostly because I didn’t want to talk about
it, couldn’t actually bring myself to talk about it. And I couldn’t
fathom any reason why she would want to talk about it either. It
was far too much pain for any one person to have to think on. How
much pain could one person live through? But to purposely dredge up
the past, knowing full well you were never going to have that life
back? No, I couldn’t. It would break me completely, drive me insane
with sadness. I couldn’t think of those days, those lost lives,
because I wouldn’t want to come back from those beautiful memories.
Not ever.

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said. “I want to.
Actually, I think I need to.” Her eyes flitted to mine and I found
her smiling, the smile distorted among the many bruises still
visible on her pretty face. “If that’s okay?”

I shrugged noncommittally, silently hoping
she wouldn’t force me back there. “Sure, if you think you’re up to
it.”

Leisel’s smile grew wider, her eyes lighting
up from within. “I think about it all the time. Things like the
first Christmas we all shared together. You and Shawn came over,
you brought me that awful chocolate cake—your first attempt at
baking, remember?”

She started to laugh and it was such a
foreign sound, an infectious one. Despite myself, despite now
vividly recalling the memory of that very Christmas that had just
forced itself out of the dark recesses of my mind, I found myself
chuckling with her.

“It was disgusting,” I said, still laughing.
“Why would you think about that?”

“Because it makes me smile, and because it
was that day that I knew we’d be friends forever.” Her words were
spoken with so much conviction that tears suddenly sprang to my
eyes.

Biting down on my bottom lip as a dull
pain sprang to life inside my chest, I shook my head. “A shitty
chocolate cake makes you think the weirdest of things, Lei. Maybe
you’re just being overly emotional—you’re probably about to get
your period or something.”

I tried to laugh then, only to remember that
Leisel hadn’t gotten her period in nearly two years, not since
recovering from the beating that had nearly killed her. “Shit,” I
mumbled as my own tears slipped free of my lashes. “Shit, I’m a
fucking idiot. I’m sorry.”