What Little Remains (The Fallout Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

“Here,” someone says.

A zipper is being undone. I can’t
help but imagine John pulling out a long needle. I squeeze the hand I am
holding and feel the pressure returned.

“I’m
gonna
go ahead and give you a little something for
the pain,” John says.

I nod my head as he sticks a
needle in my arm. He doesn’t tell me when he starts, but I feel the pull of
something through the skin. I’ve helped stitch up a few guys, and to be on this
side of it isn’t pleasant.

I try to keep breathing, and
someone is talking to me. Because of either the pain or the pain medication, I
can’t focus on the words that they are saying. I take a deep breath as John
pulls the needle through my skin for the second time. His fingers feel rubbery,
slipping over my skin.

I can’t fall asleep. I don’t know
why, but I know that I cannot fall asleep. I need something that is going to
keep me awake. Danny. The name pops into my head, startling me. I try to
picture his face, his bright blond hair, sticking up randomly in places. No
matter how hard my mom tried to keep it down, it would pop right back up. The
way his glasses would always be lopsided on his face, and I’d have to
straighten them. What did his glasses look like? For the life of me I can’t
remember.

Were they black or brown? I think
they were black. I’m pretty sure. He had ocean blue eyes that were just like
mine, except he always had a faraway look in his eyes. God, I was awful to him
most of the time. We were two very different people, and we were at the ages
where we couldn’t stand each other. He was a video game lover, and I played
soccer. I could never understand why he didn’t want to be active. We would end
up screaming at each other about stupid things.

God, why wasn’t I nice to him? He
was a good brother, as far as things went. He never left the lid up on the
toilet, and he was always there for me. We had our good moments. Like when we
drove all the way to Nashville to go see a concert. It ended up getting rained
out, but we had fun shopping around until we had to go home. Wherever he is, I
hope he remembers the good times instead of the bad ones.

John finishes stitching, and he
puts a bandage over the stitches on my shoulder.

“Where is he?” I hear Ricky ask,
and I can almost picture his face; the strong jaw, the hard look in his
brilliant green eyes.

“He’s outside waiting for you.”
That voice sounds like Daren’s. “We weren’t sure what to do with him.”

Who’s him? Are they talking about
Liam? Is he right outside? I try to open my mouth to ask these questions, but
my lips won’t move.

“Stay with Charlie,” Ricky
orders, a chilling tone in his voice. “I know exactly what to do with him.”

No one argues with him. He walks
away, his footsteps heavier than normal, and I try to open my eyes to see him,
but I can’t make myself. He talks to someone, the anger clear in his voice.
Someone is yelling again, and the sound is silenced by a gunshot. The tension
in the room builds, and no one says anything. I don’t think anyone knows that
I’m awake.

“He didn’t just kill him, did
he?”
Daren asks, sounding exhausted.

“Of course he did. And if Charlie
wasn’t seriously injured, I’m sure he’d have tortured him before killing him,”
John answers.

Everyone falls into an
uncomfortable silence as Ricky comes back into the room.
Another
prick in my arm.
The world comes crumbling in, and I fall with it,
willing myself to somewhere better.

May
15

Voices bring me close to the
surface but not enough to break through.

“She keeps saying her brother’s
name,” a familiar voice says. That voice has a face that goes with it. I think
hard. It’s Daren.
Daren’s talking.

“I know.” That sounds like Ricky.

There is a silence, and I start
to drift below the surface again.

“She suspects something,” Daren
says, his voice sharpening my focus again.

This is important. I don’t know
why but it is important. I need to focus on this.

“Impossible.” Ricky’s voice
floats around in my head.

Who suspects something? I think
to myself.

“You shouldn’t have lied to her.”
Daren’s voice speaks up again.

Lied to whom about what? I
wonder.

“I did what I had to do,” the
other one says.

“That was her brother. You
destroyed part of her.” Daren’s voice gets louder and angrier as he continues.
“You destroyed the kid, too. You made that kid believe that he had lost all of
his family.”

“I had my reasons.” The tone of
Ricky’s voice doesn’t change.

They drift into silence, and I
start to drift, unable to cling to consciousness.

Sewing skin, sewing me together.
Stitch. Stitch. I am watching someone work,
their
hands slipping over my skin. I move my eyes away from
their hands to see their face. I jump backwards only to see Liam coming towards
me.

“You did this to me!” He screams, and I see a hole in his
head. The image rushes away before I can ask him what I did.

“You’ve come back to me,” says a voice. I turn to see Ricky.
He is covered in blood, but he doesn’t seem to be bleeding. “I knew you could
never leave me.” He takes a step, wrapping his arms around me, but fear washes
over me, and I fall into him, into darkness.

I slowly come to my senses, not
awake yet. The sense of pain is the first sensation that shoots through my
body, radiating from my shoulder to my fingertips. The pain is there, but it’s
more of a dull aching pain. The events of last night come to me in fragmented
pieces:
 
slippery fingers, a
gunshot, blood and yelling. I am propped up on a bed, a blanket pulled over my
legs. The air in the room is stale and smells like sweat.

Before I open my eyes, I know
that I am not alone in my room. I focus in on everything around me, and there
are at least two other people. Slowly I open my eyes, wanting to fall back into
darkness and escape my pain. Everything is fuzzy until I blink a couple of
times, and the fuzziness goes away.

Candles are burning in the room
around me. Ricky is sitting next to the bed. His eyes are red and puffy. His
face has stubble on it. He is looking up at the ceiling like it has all of the
answers.

Daren is next to him, looking
better than Ricky. He shaved recently. And it might just be the light, but his
brown skin looks darker, like he has been outside for the last few days.
Something about the two of them triggers something in my mind, but I can’t
place it.

Memories of last night start to
flood back. Liam. The knife.
All the blood.

“Hey, Charlie,” Ricky says,
reaching over and putting his hand on my arm. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve had better days,” I
whisper, the words feeling like sandpaper going up my throat.

He doesn’t hesitate before
pulling up a water bottle from the ground and opening it for me. I reach my
good arm out for it, but he brings it up to my lips.

“You haven’t had anything to eat
in three days,” he explains as I drink. “I’m just being careful. You need to
drink this slowly.”

The first small sip feels good,
refreshing, but it burns my throat going down. The second one is easier. Ricky
stops me about halfway through the bottle, pulling it away from my mouth.

“If you drink too much you’ll
cramp,” Ricky says. He looks at Daren. “Go get John.”

Daren nods and gives me a smile
before walking out of the room. As I take a few deep breaths, I notice a funny
smell.

“Am I what stinks in here?” I
ask, scrunching my nose.

He cracks a grin, but it seems
forced
. “I wasn’t going to say anything. I don’t smell too
great either.”

“Three days?” I say.

He nods, the grin falling from
his face

“What time is it now?” I ask.

“It’s late,”
Ricky
says.

John walks into the room, a look
of relief passing over his face. “Thank God you are awake,” he says, coming
over. Ricky gets out of the way, and John starts taking off my bandage. “I’m
gonna
check and make sure that everything is looking all
right.”

“Be careful,” I warn. “If the
sight doesn’t scare you away, the smell might.”

John shakes his head, peeling
back the bandage. “Sleeping Beauty just woke up with a sense of humor.”

“What’d you expect?” I ask,
looking away. I have no desire whatsoever to see the holes in my body.

I look at Ricky, ignoring the
pain that is radiating from my shoulder. “I’ve been asleep for three days. I
have a lot of smartass comments to make.”

“Clearly,” John mutters. He
starts pressing around the shoulder wound.

“What happened to Liam?” I ask,
trying in vain to ignore the pain. It’s not working.

“Who?” Daren asks.

I clench my teeth as John pulls
away the bandage. “The man that shot me.”

“He’s been taken care of,” Ricky
says. My heart skips a beat, and a strange feeling shoots all the way down my
body. The meaning of his words is clear, and there is no shame in his gaze.

I look away again, bending my
knees up. John starts to poke around my shoulder, the pain worse with each
poke. “Damn it, John! What the hell?”

“It looks like you have an
infection,” John says. He digs through his bag of medicine and pulls out a
bottle. He opens it and gives me a pill and then my bottle of water. He rewraps
the wound; the sensation of anything touching my skin is unbearable.

I pop the pill into my mouth and
take a small drink of water, washing it down. The pill goes down my throat
painfully, even with the water.

John pats my arm. “I’m
gonna
go get you something to eat. After, I’ll give you
something to help you go back to sleep.”

He ignores my protests, packing
up my dirty, bloody bandages and walks out the door with a sad smile. I feel
incredibly weak, but food just doesn’t sound good.

“What did
Nic
end up making for dinner?” I ask Ricky, shifting a little, using my right hand
to pull the blanket up.

“Not sure,” he says. “I haven’t
been hungry.”

“You have to eat.”

“I know,” he says leaning in and
kissing me on the lips.

The affection startles me, and I
pull away. He doesn’t seem to notice. Maybe it’s the pain medication or maybe
it’s just the natural chaos that’s going on in my head, but I’m not sure why he
kissed me. The last time I remember him kissing me is the day before I got
shot, and I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it then.

Something feels off about the
kiss, triggering something in the back of my head, but I push it away as he
sits in the chair, sliding his hand in mine.

My memory of what happened the
night I was shot comes back. Ricky left the room, and then I heard the sound of
the gunshot. I remember Daren’s comment about Ricky killing the guy and then
John’s follow up about torture. I look away from him, unable to decide how I
feel about him killing Liam. I hate that he killed someone, especially for me.

If Liam were still alive, he
would know where we are and would pose a serious threat. He would have killed
me, and when I was fighting for my life, I would have killed him.

I remember what Daren told me
about Ricky and the first time that he killed someone. It was to protect me, to
protect everyone here. It was after that moment that he snapped.

What if this was the last push,
and he finally loses it all together?

The one thing he was trying to do
was protect me from people who would hurt me. To make this home that he built
for me safe. And it didn’t happen like that. The one person he never wanted to
get wrapped up in this mess nearly died.

No. No. He promised. I look over
at him and give him a small smile. He returns it, reaching forward to tuck my
hair behind my ear.

“You had me worried,” he says. “I
thought you were going to leave me forever. I’ve never been so terrified.”

“I know,” I whisper.

John comes through the door with
a bowl and a spoon. “Broth from the soup
Nic
made.”

 
“You stay here with Charlie; I need to
talk to Daren about something,” Ricky says.

“Alright,” John says, making a
face as Ricky shuts the door behind him. “Do you want help?” he asks.

I roll my eyes. “I’ll feed
myself, thank you very much.”

He sets the bowl in my lap and
hands me the spoon. I can’t move my left arm, so I make do with my right hand
as the bowl sits awkwardly on my lap.

“So what have I missed?” I ask,
my voice sounds like a creaky house.

“Oh the usual,” John says.
Looking at the door, he drops his voice, his blue eyes locking with mine.
“Things have been very tense since you got shot.”

“What are you talking about?” I
ask, lowering my voice as I take a bite. The soup is bland, not
Nic’s
best work.

“Ricky went crazy. After I
removed the bullet and you started to stabilize, he found out what happened.
The guards were drinking on duty, which is why the guy got through,” John says,
watching me eat my soup. “Charlie, he hit one of the men. He pulled a gun on
him before Daren physically restrained him.”

“Do you think…
”
I start.

“I don’t know what to think. You
just need to be careful.”

I stop eating, setting my spoon
down in the bowl. My hands start to shake.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to
spring this on you.”

“It’s okay. I need to know.”

John takes my bowl and spoon,
setting them on the table. “Do you need anything?” he asks.

I nod my head, wincing.

“Are you in pain?” John asks, his
eyebrows coming together.

“John, I have a giant infected
hole in my body, I feel like Swiss cheese; moldy Swiss cheese.”

“What do you need? Pain
medication?”

“To go to the bathroom.”

“You okay to walk?” he asks,
standing up.

I swing my legs off the bed and
sit, the room spinning even when I squeeze my eyes shut. The floor doesn’t feel
steady under my feet. I don’t feel steady sitting. I grip the bed tightly with
my good hand, breathing while the spinning slows. I open my eyes and stand,
swaying as the room threatens to spin again.
  

“I got you,” John says wrapping
his arm around my waist.

His steady body keeps the spinning
at bay. It gives me something to focus on. With John’s help, I leave the
Ricky’s cabin for the first time in three days. The eerie silence that comes
with midnight falls around me. The moon is our only light as we walk around the
houses. Before, I never imagined that I could live in such darkness.

John knows where he is going, and
I just let him lead me.

“You okay?” John asks.

“I’ve been better, you know, like
before I was
shot
.”

I can’t see him, but I know he’s
rolling his eyes. He helps me into the outhouse, and I pull the door behind me.

Ricky built a sturdy little
shed-type thing around all of them, making it so that there were no holes in
the wood, not wanting to give anyone an opportunity to be a creep. The door
also has a piece of wood that can slide across once inside to keep unwanted
people outside.

I am faced with the problem of
only having one hand. I manage all right, but it took almost everything out of
me to get my pants back up. How pathetic am I that I get exhausted going to the
bathroom?

Opening the door back up to John,
I take a deep breath before we start our journey back. He helps me back to the
house and into bed.

I lie back on my pillows and take
a deep breath.

“Pain meds?” I ask, trying to get
comfortable. My shoulder is burning in pain, heat radiating from the wound
through my chest.

John nods his head, a smile on
his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “That, I can do.” He turns around and
picks up his bag, rummaging through it. He pulls out a needle and syringe and a
vile of something. “Sleep tight. Me, or someone, will be in the next room.
Holler if you need anything.”