The Ocean in the Fire Page 16

  There was only a small voice whispering in the back of her head that said maybe her father didn’t have as much control as she thought.

  As everyone else went back to the house, as ordered by Connor, Vera lingered. Poe watched her try to come toward Drew, and saw him being ever-vigilant enough to not let her. “I don’t care if I get sick. There’s nothing here without you. Please, let me come to you.” The tears in her eyes were caught by her trembling lip as they slide off her face.

  “I love you, Vera. You know I can’t do that. I won’t.”

  Vera stepped closer anyway.

  “I will run down this mountain until morning, back toward those…people…if that’s the only way I can keep you away from me. Please, go back inside.” She still hesitated. “You know I’ll do it.”

  With a heavy sigh, Vera seemed to know she was defeated, and ran back toward the house. They could hear her sobs for minutes after they lost sight of her.

  ***

  That night, Poe and Drew built a campfire and stared up at the stars. After her experience, she couldn’t help but think of George. “Feel anything?” Poe asked.

  Drew shook his head. “No, you?”

  “Nope. Nothing.” A question lingered on Poe’s lips. She considered it for a moment, then asked it. After all, she had no idea how much longer she would feel okay. Either never at all or in one minute, maybe ten, she could start to feel that something in her body was off: a tickle in the back of her throat, a dull ache at the base of her head, she had no idea. All she knew was something simple would tell her it was over . What would be the last thing she would tell her mother, or Harper? She considered deciding what it would be, but realized her last words would never be heard. Of course Drew would hear them, but they would never make it to the people they were intended for, because she would make sure they would never get close enough to say goodbye.

  Rather than think of words that she hoped would never be spoken, she decided to ask her question. “If we make it, why do you think that is? I mean gosh, if anyone is going to get sick, it’s going to be us.” Drew looked at her. “Sorry…it’s true though.”

  “I know.”

  Several minutes went by, and Poe thought she was never going to get an answer to her question. Drew just sat there, grabbing fallen leaves and ripping them into fine strips, one right after another. As he passed the time destroying foliage, she found herself getting lost looking at a shooting star.

  Finally, Drew spoke. “If we don’t get sick, there could be several reasons. If it passes through bodily fluid, we must not have any open cuts or sores.” Poe did a quick scan of her own skin, and found nothing. Drew did the same and seemed satisfied that he was wound-free. “Or…there could be a genetic reason that some people get it and some don’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, could be anything really.” Drew got up and threw some more wood on the fire. “Could be something as complicated as a genetic abnormality that makes you and I immune, or it could be something as simple as us both having brown eyes. You just never know.”

  “Or maybe it’s just dumb luck.”

  Drew laughed. “That could be true too. If so, I’ll happily take it.”

  After about an hour of silence, they both curled up on the ground next to the fire and tried to go to sleep. But Poe had one more question for Drew, one that she knew he would probably not see coming. He may have not even known she knew what happened. Most difficult questions had a way of sneaking up on a person, like a shadow that falls over you like rain. “Was it your fault that the baby died?”

  Drew had been stirring, but right then he lay perfectly still. Facing away from Poe, he whispered. “I don’t know.”

  “Thank you.”

  At that, he turned to face her. “Not much of an answer. Why are you thanking me?”

  “Because it was honest. You could have told me no. You had no reason to tell me the truth, especially now. I would have never known. But you said what you believe to be true. You aren’t sure either. Thank you.”

  Drew seemed to consider his response then went with, “You’re welcome.”

  Poe wondered if her question hovered in Drew’s sleep, seeping into his dreams. In a way, part of her still hoped so, but most of her hoped he stopped wondering, and was sleeping with just a little bit of the peace she herself found so elusive. She looked up at the clear night sky, and as she picked out different constellations as she had only previously done with Connor, she began to wonder if the monster that he had created with his words was really just a man who made a terrible decision, one that cost her unborn sister or brother their life, but had cost him something too.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CONNOR (before)

  Every now and again, Connor would be just going about his day, whether that meant tending the garden, or reading a book on the back porch, when he would hear Kate’s scream from that day echoing in his head. It would ring out like a cry from an old forgotten battlefield, countless victims lying next to each other, their anguish being heard for miles yet heard by no one other than the dying. When the actual scream had taken place, he had thought for a moment that it was a bird caught in a trap somewhere on their land; until Poe came running out to the field where he was, her arms making fast, quick strokes at her sides. “Dad! It’s Mom! Come quick! There’s blood!”

  Kate never slept in their bed again. That night, Connor dragged their first marital bed, the bed where they had conceived all their children, out to the burn pile. He threw it on top of all the branches and dead things that he had planned on getting rid of after the pile got bigger, but instead, the mattress completed it. As he heard the snap of the match as he struck it, he took one last glance at the giant wave of blood that had enveloped the middle of the mattress. It was still covered in their sheets, but there was no question that it was soaked through. He knew there would be no getting the stain out of the satin linens, though knowing Kate, she would have tried if he’d let her. So instead, he had left everything whole, and threw the flame down on top of it. As the red disappeared in a flood of orange, he had two thoughts running through his mind. One was that Kate had been right.

  The other: the whole town could burn in hell.

  He had heard the good doctor the day of their appointment a couple weeks earlier, joining in with his staff as they made fun of his family. “The hermits thought they were pregnant? Of course they did,” that nurse had said. “Leave it to them to screw up a pee test,” another had piped in. “They can build a bomb shelter, but they can’t urinate on a stick properly!” one had laughed. “If you asked them how to kill somebody and use the body as fertilizer, I bet they’d know.” He remembered the snicker on Dr. Matthew’s face when he said, “Okay that’s enough. Get back to work.” That had been the extent of his scolding, and then he had gone on about his day. He didn’t even blink when Connor had reappeared to get his keys. The others though—oh, how their faces changed when they saw him, their masks put back perfectly in place.

  That night, Kate spent the evening lying in their new bed. The last thing he had wanted to do was go into town and pay anyone for anything, but he wanted to turn their room back to normal for her as soon as possible, and that meant not waiting for a mattress to be shipped. So begrudgingly, he went to the furniture store and bought the mattress, as well as new sheets. The look on the clerk’s face said that he was considering telling Connor he couldn’t shop there, but Connor’s expression told him he’d be taking his own life in his hands if he tried. So instead, he and another member of the staff carried the mattress out to his truck, tied it in tightly, and quickly ushered Connor off into the darkness.

  Connor spent most of the night sitting alone in the dark downstairs, thinking and wishing for things to rewind, to have turned out differently. When he finally pulled the sheets down to get into bed, he had thought Kate was asleep until he heard her soft voice: “Do you think…if we had been anybody else….would he have done the blood test? If we we
ren’t who we are I mean? Would the baby still be here?”

  “I…I don’t know.” The truth was, he did know. They had become victims of the mob mentality, the collective brain that had condemned them all. Somehow through the word of one little girl, he had become a killer in their eyes, or at the very least, someone who they thought of as less-than, someone who couldn’t be trusted. The humiliation he suffered when he had been banned from the bookstore, the one sanctuary he’d had in that place, was nothing compared to what those imbeciles had done to his family. He and Kate had two children who were emotionally brutalized, one who had been beaten, and now another was dead. All because their neighbors harbored a fear of what they didn’t understand. Connor knew that worlds had been built and destroyed by fear, and now his own world had crumbled alongside them.

  They weren’t the only ones to blame, however. He should have insisted on the blood test, he knew that in his heart. He had failed Kate, right along with Dr. Matthews, right along with the town. But if the opportunity ever presented itself, he would not fail her again. He made a promise to himself and to her that once the time was right, they would all pay for the child that no longer was.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CONNOR

  It was a strange and cruel thing to have the person Connor hated most in the world be the same person to save him from the precipice, to see the same person who destroyed his world make it whole again.

  Connor would not have believed that Drew saved Poe’s life if he hadn’t heard it from her mouth. Anyone else could have told him, even Kate, and he would have called them a liar. He would have assumed Kate was trying to make peace, putting the cohesiveness of the group ahead of the truth, prettying up a helpful hand into a heroic act. Anyone else in the group would have clearly had other motives. Cassius would have been trying to undermine Connor’s authority, and Darius, he would have just been doing his brother’s bidding. Harper or Gabriel would have just been exaggerating to prove they were right all along, using it as an opportunity to prove that they were grown up and had ideas of their own. But Poe…when she spoke of matters she knew to be so close to his heart, he listened.

  He couldn’t imagine it, watching her die; and he would have watched. The only thing more unbearable to him than her dying would be for her to do it alone. Before the internet had gone out, he had seen the pictures: faces devoid of humanity, flesh sinking into bone, all races becoming one pale, dead, tone: becoming the color of the dolls in Harper’s room, harboring the same empty eyes. Poe was supposed to be exempt from that; he had built the compound to guard against such a tragedy. And one simple slip on loose dirt had almost destroyed it all.

  When Poe and Drew returned from their quarantine and entered the compound once more, Connor promptly made his way to the opposite end of their property. As much as he wanted to see his daughter, after coming so close to losing her, he knew an important conversation with Drew was coming, and he simply wasn’t ready for it. He and Kate had planted a circle of Japanese maples and stuck a bench that Gabriel had made out of a fallen log in the middle of it. Whoever sat on the bench could not be seen from the house, and that’s exactly how Connor wanted it. He could look up at the crisp crimson leaves and lose himself, if only for a few moments before some responsibility called him away, and he was once again the organizer of the chaos.

  He had wondered shortly after Drew first arrived if he would be the one: much to his dismay. It had never crossed his mind, until he saw Drew lie in order to save Blake’s life. Connor hadn’t even made up his mind if he was going to give Drew a spot in the compound at all, and if he had decided to, the purpose would have strictly been for his medical knowledge, and for the opportunity to make him pay for killing their child with his criminal negligence. But Connor had seen time and time again that the only thing certain in life was uncertainty, and Drew had certainly surprised him.

  Drew had condemned another man to death in order to save one of his own, a man that he had probably known all his life. He looked into his reddened face, and listened to the screams of his wife, a woman who probably had never done anything to him at all, and said the words that were necessary to seal both their fates. That was the kind of purposeful cruelty that Connor would need, the kind that no one in his own family possessed.

  Though that had caught his eye, there was more than one criterion that he was looking for. And Drew had just checked off the most important one. It was evident that Drew was willing to do whatever he had to save someone he considered family, but would he do the same for Connor’s family?

  It now appeared that the answer was yes.

  Connor leaned forward, resting his forearms on his legs. The day before, Drew had crawled into a pit of the dead in order to pull his daughter out of it. Last they heard, the government still had no idea how the disease was spreading. With communication down to those who had ham radios and so many people with medical knowledge dead or dying, exposing oneself to the disease in any way was to dangle one’s own life off the edge of a cliff.

  Drew jumped into that hole to save Poe, not having any idea if he would make it home to see his wife that night. For all he knew, he could have gotten sick right then, and he wouldn’t have even been able to tell her goodbye. He would have had to leave his final words with Kate, and he would have been lost to the earth.

  Poe would have been gone too, his daughter becoming one of the many victims of the indiscriminant disease that didn’t care how much he loved her. It didn’t care that her favorite meal was spaghetti, that she nursed a baby bird back to health when she was five, or that Gemini was her favorite constellation. It didn’t care that her sister would be a hollow mass without her, wandering aimlessly without her compass to tell her which way made sense, so that she would know to do the opposite. A person needs a direction, even if it’s wrong.

  Her mother would have never recovered. Losing one child was impossible: losing another would have made her implode on herself, and he knew he’d never reach her after that. He would have spent the rest of his days watching Kate, afraid that if he turned away for a precious second she would use it to take her own life. He wouldn’t be able to leave her alone in the kitchen, worried that the minute his back was turned she would take a steak knife through an artery, or if he left her to take a bath she would sink down into the water, purposely inhaling it deep into her lungs.

  Drew prevented all of it. The man who had stolen one child from him had saved another. What did that mean for Connor? Was he now required to forgive? Not necessarily…but as with everything else, he had to make sure his family’s safety was at the core of every decision he ever made.

  Especially the next one.

  After dinner, Connor guided Drew away from the rest of the group. He found himself having to corner him, since Drew had been spending every minute since he had returned from quarantine talking with the rest of the group. Understandable, he supposed. He’d imagine that, at least for most people, excluding himself, when someone thinks they may die, they want to be around other people, partially from joy, and partially for distraction from what may have been. “Will you come walk with me? Alone?” He sensed Drew’s hesitation. “It won’t take long.”

  “I’ve been away from Vera for quite a while…”

  “Please…”

  Drew looked over at Vera. Though she looked anxious, perhaps Drew’s curiosity got the better of him. “Okay.”

  Connor often took a walk around the property after dinner, though almost never with anyone else. It was normally time he used to think, letting the sounds of nature soothe the anxiety that always lingered in his heart. He wondered what Kate thought as he and Drew walked out the door. Surely there would be some questions for him when he returned, but for now, he still took pleasure in the fact that Drew didn’t have the slightest clue what was about to happen. Of course in a way, neither did he. “You know, I built most of this place myself, out of things that no longer had a purpose. The house? Old shipping containers and wood. They all had som
e sort of perceived defect, so I got them cheap. They’re all still perfectly good though. The barbed wire on the top of the fence? Stole that from the abandoned prison a couple towns over.”

  Drew nodded cautiously. “What about those poisonous herbs? The ones you grow with the other normal plants?” His face appeared cautious as if even as he said the words he wasn’t sure he wanted to. The sun was turning the sky blood red, echoing the sentiment that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t really want to know.

  Connor smiled proudly. “Now that, that’s the real kicker.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, though there wasn’t anyone around to hear them. “Anybody will sell you anything for the right price. You’d like to think they wouldn’t, but trust me…even the most angelic person can be bought off with enough cash.” Connor tried to read Drew’s face, but Drew somehow managed to keep a vacant expression.

  Impressive, he thought.

  They reached the edge of the property and took refuge in the circle of Japanese Maples where Connor had spent that morning thinking about the next step. “Sit,” he said. He tried to keep his tone polite, but he couldn’t help his words coming out as a command. Nevertheless, Drew obeyed, sitting down on the one part of the bench that creaked under any form of weight. Connor noticed him look around self-consciously at the sound.

  For a few moments, the two men sat silently. Drew’s whole body had tightened as rigid as tree bark, but Connor remained loose.