After Life Lessons (Book One) Read online

  I miss Lake Ontario, its coldness and its depth and the way it looked like a portal out of this world the longer I stared at it. I miss the memory of your finger, brushing over the small expanse of blue on the map, too, and the way you would talk about this journey as though it was an adventure and not a life-or-death necessity. I shouldn’t have walked us all the way up here in the first place—but that was the plan. Avoid major cities, get to the lake and then south. Maybe I was just slower than we anticipated.

  I screwed up, love. It's my fault. I thought it was done snowing; I thought it safe to move south, to leave the towns at the lake shore. It was getting so hard to find food, and you'd always said to go south. I screwed up, I made the wrong call. And now here we are, in the middle of nowhere, and we're dying.

  There is so much I regret, Sullivan. I should have been with you; I shouldn’t have let you go. You shouldn’t have been alone. Nobody should be alone when they die, and I let you go. And now every night when I can't sleep because of the bloody cold, I find myself imagining how you ended it, and that I should have been there. I should have held your hand. It wasn't worth surviving for this.

  I still can’t believe in God—less than ever, really. Did you believe, all the way to the end? I should have asked you that. And I should have asked what to tell Song.

  I haven’t told him anything, really. I’m a coward. Because he believes you’re just… late. He's so used to you disappearing over night and coming back weeks later, with adventure stories and a little present, it seems almost natural. Deep down, I think, the real reason I don’t correct him is because the more he talks about it, the more it feels like a possibility. In a different world. Because I'm used to it, too: that you always come back. In the end.

  It’s what I imagine when I can’t sleep at night. A hundred different scenarios—but you come back to me. Sometimes, just sometimes, I can hear your voice and what you would say, and I try to remember the way you used to hold me and how your kisses tasted and how you smelled. It’s the first thing that went: smells. And more has gone, I know.

  Did you know I took your letters with me when we left? You said essentials. But you took the guitar and I took my pencils, and so your letters found their way into my art supplies and I never told you. You sent them from so many places, all those towns with strange names, splattered all across the map. Song and I would stand in front of the one we pinned up in his room, I would lift him on my hip and we’d trace the route of your tour bus with little markers.

  I have lost my way, Sullivan. I don't know where our last marker will go. A gas station in the middle of nowhere, if the snow doesn't let up.

  I want you to know, that I haven't given in. Not yet. And that I kept my word.

  And that I love you. That’s all.

  Always.

  Chapter Two

  The storm blew itself out sometime in the night and the fetid little room was white like a bare bulb when Emily opened her eyes. She’d slept, then—it had been dark the last time she’d closed her eyes. Had it not been for the dig of Song’s shoulder into her ribs, the sour taste at the back of her throat, she might have thought they’d gone ahead and died, white light at the end of the tunnel and all.

  As gently as she could manage, Emily lowered Song to the floor. He was still wrapped in the blanket and his coat, and curled there like a mouse, nose chapped and running. Emily ignored the pounding in her head, the way everything seemed to be swimming in and out of focus, to admire him for a moment, the curve of his cheek and the amazing ability he had to just sleep, sleep for hours.

  Grasping the edge of the crumbling desk with her good hand, she hauled herself to her feet. The room wavered again, and a crackling noise filled her head, like the white noise on a stuck channel of an old television. It grew in volume, and it was only when she shook her head once, twice, that she realized it wasn’t the rattling of her own brain, but tires crunching over ice and gravel.

  Forgetting about her arm, she flung herself to the ground next to Song. Something large parked right outside: she could see it through the crack in the door, out over the ruined shop floor and through the gaping glass that faced out on the driveway.

  The chair was still shoved in place, but it offered little comfort. Chin pressed to the cement floor, her fingers crept in the direction of her deflated backpack, seeking out the slickness of the zipper pull. Gritting her teeth, she tugged at it, inching it open just enough to push her hand in, and locate the gun.

  The chamber was empty: it had been for weeks, her last bullet wasted on a shadow that turned out to be nothing more than a rotted tree stump. Still, there was comfort in the cold metal, the heft of the thing, that she wouldn’t have believed in her life before.

  The crunch of footsteps traveled around the side of the building, drifted away, came back into sudden and amplified sound. They were careful, she noted, checking the vicinity, something she’d not had the wherewithal to do when she found the place. The sound moved closer, and she pulled up her shoulders, sank down along the wall and held her breath. There was the sound of a door creaking, then the crunch of boots on broken glass. For a heartbeat, then another, she allowed herself to hope they would go unnoticed, that whoever it was would see the ransacked place and move on. But then the handle moved, and the door shook under the impact of force.

  “Don’t come in here!” Her voice was raw, high-pitched, nasal, but her clipped British accent and the sheer lack of anything to lose gave her a more threatening quality than she could have hoped for. “I’m armed.”

  A second ticked by in silence, then another.

  She actually jumped when a voice called out: “I’m sure you are.”

  The gun shook in her hand. Swallowing the bile creeping up her throat again, she leaned closer to the door to look out the crack, at the dark patch the person made on the other side.

  “I am too,” the voice announced; it was male, and there was some accent she couldn’t place, though her brain spun up and then clung to it, stupidly obsessive, trying to place it.

  “I don’t want to shoot anyone,” he went on, inexplicably. “I’m guessing you don’t want to, either. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  He tried the handle again, the chair held and Emily wheezed a sigh of relief, until a movement caught her eye. It was tilting further, slipped out from under the handle and then landed with a clatter on the concrete floor. Song stirred beside her; she clutched the gun harder, tried to hold it steady, but her eyes were blurring.

  “Drop your gun.” She sounded silly, like a girl dressed in period clothes auditioning for a cop show, and, truly, the words were something she remembered from a movie, sometime, somewhere. “Or I’ll shoot.”

  The door didn’t open, and she heard something click against the floor outside; she didn’t dare inch closer to the door again to look.

  “Hands up,” she said, then, unblinking, eyes burning. She felt wild and delirious, suddenly powerful. “Say you have your hands up.”

  She could hear a cough, but then he replied: “I got my hands up.”

  Shifting onto her knees, she scuttled close to the door and reached for the knob. There was that sense again, the one that said they were about to die, but this one felt much more comfortable, more acceptable, than freezing to death. Was this really the person she’d become?

  “Step away from the door, away from the gun.”

  She heard the sound of boots again, heavy and slow, then closed her eyes, sent a silent thought back to Song, to Sullivan, and pushed the door open.

  Aaron hadn’t expected much, and was not surprised: the girl standing in the open door, handgun clutched in skinny fingers, was about half his size and thin as the door itself. She pointed the weapon at him with an unsteady grip, and he found himself sighing inwardly, in guilt, in sympathy.

  “I was just stopping at the pumps,” he told her, hands still in the air; if he could tell her gun was unloaded, he didn’t mention it. She didn’t look like she could squeeze off a shot,
anyway, even in the best of circumstances.

  “The pumps?” she asked, swaying on the spot. She wasn’t too steady on her feet, was already tilting sideways as though instinctively searching for something to lean against.

  “There’s always a pump switch.” He watched her and, after another beat, lowered his hands, down to his sides, a slow maneuver, his eyes never leaving hers. “Behind the counter. Lot of places still have gas in the underground tank.”

  “You have a car?” she asked, and her shoulder finally found support in the doorframe, though she kept her gun more or less level.

  “Van,” he provided. “Outside. So, you know...” He chanced a smile. “Gas.”

  She swallowed, blinked, and Aaron noticed that she was holding her free arm strangely against her stomach. The wrist looked swollen to him, and he sighed, scratched his head.

  “Er…You been stayin’ here?”

  “Yes. No. Yes,” she decided, finally, and shrugged, falling silent.

  “Okay.” He’d rested his shotgun against the counter, and knew he didn’t need it, not against the slip of a girl standing in front of him. “You don’t look so good.”

  Her face changed; he imagined a hiss, like a cat pushed into a corner, but it was just her eyes, narrowing and glinting, promising that she was ready to defend herself no matter what she looked like. It made him want to smile again.

  “I can help you…” he tried again, slower this time, raising his brows as well as his hands. “I’m a medic. United States Army. Name’s Aaron.”

  She sagged, a little, enough to make him want to reach for her, but he kept himself in check. The hand holding the gun finally dropped to her side, her fingers slack enough to almost lose their purchase on it outright, but it hung on by the tips.

  “Can you get us out of here?” The words popped out of her mouth with the force of a pierced balloon and, this time, he was surprised—she looked it, too, lips rounded in a silent Oh.

  “Us?” he couldn’t help but echo.

  “Us,” she answered, then nodded at a pile of blankets in the corner, the pink face of a child, wide-eyed and silent. “My boy and me.”

  Aaron’s stomach clenched, and then unraveled. He waved at the kid, just a flutter of his fingers, before looking back at her.

  “I can...” He paused; what was the danger in helping two starved little rats like that? He’d encountered much worse, and, once the gun was down, he didn’t think the girl could or would do much more than glare.

  “I can take you up where I’ve been stayin’,” he said, finally, rubbing the back of his cold neck. “If that’s what you want.”

  She stayed silent; her nose scrunched up in thought. Aaron watched her weigh her options as though they were physical, tangible objects in the air between them. Finally, she expelled a breath, bit her bottom lip.

  “You don’t… have to. I… I just need to get to the nearest town or something. We lost most of our stuff, I need to replace it, a base from where I can start searching for food. Somewhere I can keep him warm. That’s… that’s all.”

  Aaron’s tongue skimmed his lips. “Ain’t nothing real near,” he said, after a moment. “I...” He breathed out his nose, and wondered how much he was going to live to regret what came out of him next: “I got some stuff you can have.”

  “I… have nothing to trade,” she wheezed, looked at her gun and sighed. It took her awhile until she lifted her gaze again. “Song’s sick. I mean he not... infected, just sick. That’s… I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

  She looked like she was about to say something else, but then closed her mouth and stuck the gun into the waistband of her jeans. His training made him want to tell her how dangerous that was, but he figured it wasn’t loaded anyway.

  “I can...” Hands up again, he took one step closer. “I can check? On your boy.”

  She hesitated only a moment and Aaron saw her eyes sparkle as they glazed over with tears. She nodded then, took a few uncertain steps backwards and knelt down by the child, gently running her fingers over his hair.

  “He’s a medic, Duck. Like… like a doctor,” she whispered as Aaron followed, his chest contracting painfully at the sight of the boy, flinching away from him.

  “I’m better than that,” he said, aware of how his frame filled the doorway, how the room went that much darker with his shoulders blocking the reflection off the snow. “I don’t come with needles.”

  The girl came up with a ghost of a smile, the boy did not. He just pressed himself against her side until she wrapped her own skinny arm around him.

  “He’s burning up,” she whispered, in that broken little voice that Aaron recognized from so long ago, the voice of women holding back pain and tears, more than just sadness. “And he’s got a cough.”

  Crouching, Aaron came closer to level with the girl, and held his hands out, palms up to the both of them.

  “Okay if I touch your head...?” He glanced at her, already having forgotten the kid’s name.

  “Song,” she said, softly, voice melodic for just the length of the word.

  “Song,” he repeated. “Okay if I touch your head?”

  He nodded, only once, and Aaron reached over, touched his forehead and his cheeks. There was a fever burning through the boy and even from where he crouched, Aaron could hear his rattled little breaths.

  “I got some antibiotics,” he said, finally. “But I think what he needs, what you both need,” he added, raising his eyebrows at her. “Is water and food and rest. That work?”

  “Th... thank you,” she whispered and swallowed down a hard lump in her throat. She pressed her lips against Song’s sweaty temple and then eyed Aaron with wide, almost pleading eyes. “I tried... I tried making tea but we ran out of food days ago, and we got stuck out in the snow. I… I tried to make fire, but…”

  Aaron lifted his hand, it jerked a few inches towards her in the instinct to touch, to console the woman who seemed so distraught, but he stopped himself when she flinched, and smiled at her instead.

  “You did right,” he informed her. “You did what you could. It’s… warm in the car. I got to try the pumps, it’ll take a while if I have to get it out by hand. You’d be warmer waiting in there.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but ended up nodding instead. Aaron got back to his feet, to his full height, a tree above her, and offered her his hand. She hesitated only a moment before she took it; she had fresh run out of choices.

  Chapter Three

  “I… I’m Emily.”

  Aaron’s head jerked up. He was squatting by the nest of blankets he’d improvised, checking on the boy’s heartbeat. He’d made them tea, given them both antibiotics to swallow and the boy had fallen asleep again almost immediately after the warmth had started seeping into his system. Now the slip of a girl was sitting on the floor of his storage cabin next to the bed, her good arm wrapped around her legs, watching him; her eyes looked huge and spooky in her emaciated features.

  “I didn’t… I forgot to say before. My name’s Emily.”

  “Emily and Song,” he repeated, poking at his forehead as if wearing a hat, tipping it in her direction. His smile was lopsided. “Nice to meet you.”

  She snorted, but not unkindly; the corners of her lips quivered, then stilled. Silence stretched, and Aaron took her in—that matted dark hair, the small, strong nose, her intense brown eyes.

  “You’re not from here,” he noted, easily. Aaron had that way about him, that sort of ease in conversation, that made talking even to a brick wall mostly painless. It took Emily more effort, and he didn’t mind filling in the blanks.

  “Your accent,” he provided, then, with her stare.

  “Oh,” she breathed, rubbed at her chin. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m from Brighton. England. A long time ago.”

  “And more recently?” He smiled and righted the box from which he’d pulled the medications, pushed it back with the small pile near the door.

  “New York,” she breathed. And the wa
y she said it, Aaron thought, it didn’t sound like the city at all, but a more exotic, faraway version. This time, she bit her lip, and he waited as her glance slid over the sleeping form of the boy, and she pieced together how to uphold her part of the conversation. “You?”

  “It ain’t obvious?” He would have winked if he didn’t think that would make her startle like a deer. “Georgia.”

  She tried to smile, he could tell. It was an empty, ghostly thing, startling in its effect.

  “I thought it might be… somewhere thereabouts.” She cleared her throat; it rattled loud in the quiet room.

  “Really? I was just about sure I had lost it by now.” His hands went back to the boxes, the only nervous habit that leaked out into his behavior. There weren’t many, just a small cluster, leaving the tract house feeling strange and empty, like a cave. The girl stared at him, as though unable to come up with anything else to say and eventually, Aaron got to his feet. He dusted off his jeans, if just to give his hands something to do, and threw her a smile.

  “I’m gonna get more snow. Check the perimeter.”

  She coughed, and nodded, edging closer to the little boy. They were clearly half-starved, at the end of their strength, and he wondered how long they’d been wandering in the snow—New York was far away.

  Once the door closed behind him, Emily stretched, reached for a box to prop herself up on and struggled to her feet. The motion made her dizzy and then nauseated, when it forced her to give up protecting her arm, and the pain shot back through it. She swayed on the spot, but knew she couldn’t rest yet.

  Aaron, if that was his real name, was a kind, helpful man and it hurt somewhere in the place where she still remembered a normal life, that she couldn’t trust that anymore. That his very friendliness set her on edge, made her fear for their life.

  She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she hobbled from box to box, prying them open to peek inside. The first few contained medical supplies, bandages mostly, nothing too exciting—it was when she found the ones full to the brim with canned goods, that she let out an involuntary whimper. She hadn’t seen that much food in one place since the first riots had made going for groceries impossible.