What Little Remains (The Fallout Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

We waited until a little before nightfall to go out. The red
sun hangs ominously in the sky over the trees, putting a scarlet glow on the
world. Each of us holds laundry baskets overflowing with laundry. I have mine
and Ricky’s clothing, while Nicole has Alec’s as well as her own. Neither of us
helped with anything today. I would have helped with dinner, but a note on
Nicole’s door said it wouldn’t be necessary.

Nicole is unusually quiet as we approach the gate; the door
is still open. There are two guards on duty, and neither
are
familiar to me.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you through,” says the one closest
to us. He walks closer so he can see my face. His eyes widen at the giant
bruise on my face.

“I told you,” Nicole says, shifting her basket. “It’s too late
for laundry. It’ll have to wait till morning.”

I look at the guard and smile. “Listen, Ricky didn’t want me
going out earlier, because of…” I trail off and he nods, getting the picture.
“But he needs his laundry done. He is wearing his last pair of underwear, and
this is his third day in his shirt. If he starts to smell, everyone suffers.”

The guard cracks a grin. “Okay. Since it’s for McQueen. Just
don’t take too long.”

I smile at him, shifting the basket. “I’ll do my best. He
has a lot of smelly stuff in here.”

I lead the way out, Nicole following behind. We walk along
the path that leads to the river. I know the path like the back of my hand.
It’s close enough to the gate but far enough so that the guards can’t see,
especially at night.

I drop the basket to the ground with a thud, and she does
the same. I rummage through the dirty clothing until my hand hits metal. I pull
out the flashlight and set it on the ground.

“And now for our alibi,” I say.

We both grab clothing, stick it in the water to get it wet,
and then throw it back in the basket.

“This better not ruin my clothes,” Nicole warns. “I had to
fight several women to get my wardrobe.”

“It shouldn’t,” I say, trying to hide my smirk. “Come on, we
need to go. Ricky left fifteen minutes before us. They are already there.”

Nicole nods and grabs the back of my shirt. I click the
flashlight on and put my hand over it, cupping the light. It’s enough that I
can see the ground, but no one should be able to see it.

We head to the right. We move along doing our best to make
as little noise as possible. It’s hard with all the dead leaves and branches
cluttering the ground.

Laugher comes from up ahead, and I stop. In the distance, I
can see a fire burning and the shadows of several people. I click off the flashlight
and crouch down. We creep forward, not rising above a crouch. After ten steps
my calves and lower back are burning. It shocks me how out of shape I am.
 

We get as close as we dare, about twenty feet away. Their
voices travel through the open woods.

“It was incredible. Incredible,” Jack’s voice floats through
the night. “You’re a genius.”

“I try,” Ricky’s voice floats over the laughter.

Bottles clink, and I image they are taking a long drink. I
motion
Nic
to stay where she is, and I move forward
even more. I hide behind thick bushes, lying flat on the ground. From my
position, I can see the back of Daren’s head and half of Alec’s face.

“So what are you going to do about Charlie?” Daren asks.

I freeze, glancing back at
Nic
to
see her eyes are as wide as mine. The laughter stops, and tension eases into
the air.

“What do you mean?” Ricky asks.

The area is so quiet I think they could hear my heart
pounding. Daren and I aren’t as close as Ricky and he are, but he’s always
looked out for me when Ricky was in his moods. What angle is he playing?

“Dude, she suspects something is up,” he says, and I watch
as he takes another drink from the bottle. “You are going to have to talk to
her.”

“About what? There is nothing to talk about,” Ricky says, a
deadly cool edge in his voice. “John kept his mouth shut, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but—.”

“There are no buts. She trusts John. If he tells her that
there isn’t anything to worry about, then she’ll believe that,” Ricky says.
“End of story.”

“She suspects something. You know that. John sucks at lying.
He couldn’t look her in the eye. She knows something is up,” Daren pushes. “So
you need to tell her the truth before she finds out on her own.”

Ricky laughs, and a moment later the sound of shattering
glass fills the air. No one says anything, but I can tell by the tightening of
Daren’s shoulders that it was Ricky who broke a bottle.

“Tell her what? She won’t even talk to me right now. She
won’t even look at me. She’s so pissed I can practically feel her hate from
here,” Ricky says, his voice rising.

“She’s pissed because you put your fist through the wall
inches away from her face,” Daren says, his voice tight. “You’re lucky that I
didn’t kick your ass.
The look on her face when she came
running out of your place.
She was terrified.”

“I apologized,” he says, exasperated.

“Apologizing doesn’t fix the hole in the wall. You only
started to get this way with her when you couldn’t tell her the truth. It’s
eating you up, so you take it out on her. You are hiding something, so you
assume that she is,” Daren says.

“What do you want me to do? Tell her that I’m a scavenger.
That I’ve killed hundreds of people?
That
I burnt an entire village to the ground because I was bored?
I’m sure
that’ll go over very well,” Ricky says, and he walks across my line of sight
for the first time.

He has another bottle in his hands. It looks like vodka.

My stomach twists, and I put my hand to my mouth, trying to
suppress the urge to gag.

“Daren, you know how Charlie is,” Jack says, his voice soft.
“If he tells her, she’ll run off and tell everyone else. People will not be
happy. And if she suspects, she needs to be taken care of.”

“Hey,” Ricky says.

 
At the same
time, Daren jumps to his feet and warns, “Don’t ever say anything like that
again.”

“If you or anyone else ever lays a hand on her,” Ricky
warns, pointing his finger. “I’ll kill you in the slowest, most painful way I
can imagine.”

“Dude,” Junior says, standing up as well. “She doesn’t even
love you anymore. You said so yourself. She can’t even stand to be around you.
What are you protecting her for?”

“Charlie loves me,” Ricky says, pointing at himself. “She
does. You can only truly hate someone that you love. She just has to remember
that.”

“Right now we just need to plan out the next outing,” Alec
says. “Our last one was cut short. Or do we even want to risk going out again
with other scavengers this close to home.”

“Those were Razor’s men again,” Ricky says, his words
beginning to slur. “I say we give it a few days before we go out again. If he’s
close, he’ll reveal himself before then. If he’s not, then in a few days he’ll
move past. No more bonfires between now and then. Let’s not draw them here.”

“I want to get back out there,” Junior says, excitement in
his voice. “The sooner the better.”

“You just want to go all Rambo again,” Pete says, but his
voice has the same excitement.

“Two weeks ago,” Jack says. “That was the best. We got a lot
of supplies. And there were only what, thirty people in that group? We got
enough gas to keep us running for a year.”

“I wouldn’t have thought about using the night against them
like that,” Ricky says, and he leaves my line of sight. “Their patrol men never
saw what was coming.”

“It took us, what, fifteen minutes to get in and get the
supplies. Another thirty to pack everything?”

“And then another two to light the fire,” Ricky says “And we
had all night to watch it burn.”

A sick feeling spreads through my stomach at his words. I
didn’t really believe it until then. He called himself a scavenger, but it
didn’t really hit me until then. He did it. He killed thirty people for
supplies, and then he lit the whole place up. They continue to go into detail
about the victims, which ones begged for mercy, which ones screamed. Slowly I
crawled back to Nicole, her face unreadable in the dim light.

In a daze back at the cabin, I open the door for her and let
her walk in. Closing the door behind me, I let myself fall back against it.

“What the hell?” I ask. My stomach is still in
knots.

“Everything those scavengers said was true,” she says,
sitting down on her mat. She brings her knees up to her chest and rests her
head on them.

“I can’t even believe it,” I say as my legs slowly give way
from underneath me. I slide down the door until I hit the ground. My breathing
starts to come in short gasps. Something is sitting on my chest. “He’s been
lying to me.”

Deep
breath
. Just take a deep
breath.

“What are you going to do?” Nicole asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, my voice raising. “This is never something
I thought that I would have to deal with.”

“Charlie, this is not your fault,” she says.

I can’t meet her eyes. She doesn’t realize that it is.

“This world, it’s too much,” I gasp, falling to the ground,
my chest tight. “I can’t take it. We won’t make it.”

Ricky squats down in front of me, his hands cupping my face,
but I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes. His eyes always have a way to make
me feel calm, but I don’t want to feel calm. This is crap. This world that I am
forced to exist in is crap.

“Charlie, I promise that I won’t let anything happen to
you,” he says, his voice is so strong. Strong. I used to be strong. And now I’m
pathetic.

“Don’t promise me something you can’t keep,” I warn, almost
hysterical. “My parents promised that we’d be okay. They promised that they’d
see me graduate. They promised they’d never leave me. But they didn’t see me
graduate. They left me alone in this world. Don’t you dare make a promise that
you can’t keep.
”

His grip on my face tightens, and he forces me to look at
him.

“I will protect you. I will do everything in my power to
protect you,” he says, and when I try to pull away he moves his face to fill my
whole vision. “You don’t have to worry. I will take care of you.”

“I made him promise to take care of me, and he agreed to do
it at any cost,” I say.

“Charlie, we need to talk about something,” she says,
sitting up.

I don’t want to talk at all, but something in her voice
makes me look at her closely. She’s taking this news very well. She doesn’t
seem nearly as disgusted with it as I do.

“I knew,” she says, sounding sad. “When Alec and I first got
together, I knew he was keeping something from me. That’s why I was mad at him.
That night you saw us all hot and heavy was the night that he told me.”

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me?” I ask, confused. She
knew before we ran into those scavengers and before we went out tonight. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“I only found out less than a week ago. You weren’t ready to
hear it,” she says. “You’re just starting to come out of your shell. Would
you’ve believed me if I had just told you? Before you jump to the answer I can
see on the tip of your tongue, think. I know you.”

I bit back my answer and seriously consider the question. I
don’t want to admit it, but she is right. I wouldn’t have believed her. At
least not right away.

“If you’ve known, why haven’t you done anything to stop
him?” I ask. I’m still pissed that she didn’t tell me, but I’ll have to get
over that on my own.

“It’s not that easy,” she says. “If he doesn’t want to stop,
there isn’t a lot I can do to make him. Not by myself.”

Things click into place. “What are you and Alec doing?”

She smirks. “What makes you think we’ve been doing
anything?”

“Don’t bullshit me anymore,” I warn. “I want to know what
you’re doing so I can help.”

She seems relieved. “You want to help?”

“What he’s doing isn’t right. He needs to be stopped.”

“I’m glad that you said that because I didn’t want to do
anything without you,”
Nic
said, sounding relieved.

I scoot over next to her, ready for her to spill. It’s
something big.

“We are planning to push him out of power,” she says.

I laugh. I can’t help it. It seems so simple. Push him out
of power. How can someone be pushed out of power when they are gripping that
throne with every fiber of their being?

“You and what army?” I ask, shaking my head.

“Oh, I guess myself and the fifty people who are backing
Alec and me up,” she says, raising her eyebrows.

I stop laughing and look at her. They are planning to
forcibly remove Ricky from power.

“That’s a lot of people,” I say slowly. “If you managed to
overthrow him, what then? Who would take over? How do you have a guarantee that
the person who took his place wouldn’t be worse than he is?”

“It’ll be a democracy instead of a dictatorship. Three
people will represent all of us. The people who make up this community will
have a say in what we do and how we do it.”

Someone has thought this through. For some reason that
scares me. I can tell that this is a serious plan.
 

“He would kill all of you,” I say. “God, Nicole. He hates
your guts. He would kill you and never think twice about it.”

“Charlie, you are underestimating my group and our
abilities. We can fight him,” she argues.

“No.
And even if you do fight him, what
then?
Are you going to kill him?” I ask.

“It’ll probably come to that.”

A sinking feeling fills my chest. A deep pain radiates from
my heart at the thought of someone killing Ricky.