Contain (5 page)

Only then was there blood. And a hell
of a lot of it.

“
What kind of
disease?”

But he refuses to say anything else.
He doesn't explain how he knows, and I don't press him on
it.

The erratic driving makes my nose
throb again. Thankfully, it's not bleeding. A lump has formed on
the side of my head where I hit it on the door jamb.

We drive for another thirty minutes,
taking side streets and avoiding crowds of people. Everywhere, the
power is out. Signal lights aren't working. There's surprisingly
little traffic on the roads. Apparently, everyone decided to walk
instead of drive.

Dad tells me not to look, but I can't
help it. What happened to them? How long will it last? How did it
spread so quickly?

The afflicted are in no hurry. They
just amble along. At least until we get close enough to pass them.
Then they run, and they all have that same loping, slithering gait
I first saw in front of the house.

At some point, panic finally sets in
among the unafflicted. People are beginning to understand that
something very bad is happening, that there's something very wrong
with these people. They start fighting back, which only makes
matters worse. That's when I see my first killing.

It's a horrible, bloody, violent
ordeal, over in a matter of seconds, though in my mind it stretches
out to an eternity. And when they're done, there's practically
nothing left of the victim but a few tattered strips of flesh and
glistening white bone.

“
Finn,” my father pleads
with me, “don't look.”

When I turn to him to beg him to wake
me up, when I see the tears on his own face, I know I'm not
dreaming. This is real.

We end up at the small regional
airport that services the tiny jets of the rich folks who live and
work in the valley. I ask where we're going, if we're flying out.
He sighs and says, “Don't worry.”

“
What about Mom? What about
Harper and Leah?”

“
We had a plan,” he
explains. “In case this sort of thing happened.”

This sort of thing?
I want to shout. This sort of thing is absolutely
crazy. How do you plan for
this sort of
thing
? But my throat has constricted. I
scramble for my inhaler before remembering I still don't have
it.

Through the fog of the asthma attack,
I hear him say, “They're supposed to meet us here.”

They never did.

Dad shakes me awake, and for a moment I'm back on the plane that
brought us to the evac center. I blink away the sleep as the
austere surroundings of our private quarters in the bunker return
to me, followed by the memory of the previous day's
accident.

“
Eddie?” I ask.

He nods, lets out a deep breath, and
sits down on the thin pad beside me. He's close enough to make this
feel personal, yet far enough away that we don't actually — or
accidentally — touch.

I push myself up and face him. Neither
of us seems able to look each other in the eye. We each focus on
something else in the room, which lately has been feeling more and
more cramped.

There's very little that's welcoming
about the place. I've tried to give it a homey touch, decorating
the walls a bit with drawings, but they're poor representations of
the things I remember from before. Bren tells me that if I tried
harder, I could be a lot better at art. She's tried to show me. But
my hands don't seem able to follow the instructions from my head. I
can't make them do what I want.

Maybe it's a good thing, because some
of those images are truly horrifying.

There's a sort of mat on the floor,
woven from strips of the material some of the food came in. It's
scratchy, but it's better than the permanent chill of the bare
concrete, especially in the winter. The light seeping under our
door glows dimly on my father's face, making it appear bruised and
pale.

“
What time is
it?”

“
Almost
morning.”

“
You didn't wake me when
you came back last night?”

“
I am just coming back. The
senior members continued discussing matters. We finished about an
hour ago. I decided to do my walkabout before retiring.”

I frown at him. “You met all night?
What did you talk about that whole time?”

“
We didn’t talk the whole
time. Eddie was having difficulty breathing, so we took a break.
Doctor Cavanaugh pulled me and Seth in to work the respirator and
to keep an eye on the IV lines. It was . . . .
Well, it was touch and go there for a bit.”

He takes my hand and squeezes it, and
I can see that his eyes are filled with tears. He so rarely cries,
even when we talk about the rest of our family.

“
That man is one tough
son-of-a-gun.”

“
But he's going to
die.”

Dad doesn't deny it.

“
He couldn't have known
that pipe was going to burst right then, Dad. I tried—”

“
Nobody's blaming
anybody.”

Does he mean me? Or
Eddie?

“
He just ran inside the
boiler room. It was filled with steam already. We couldn't
see.”

“
I know.”

“
I wanted to tell him to
stop.”

He straightens up and gives my hand
another squeeze, hard this time, then looks me in the eye. “No one
can manage the past, Finn, so it's no use trying. The best we can
do is to keep preparing for the future.”

I turn away, suddenly disgusted with
myself, with my own paralyzing fears. “What future?” I spit.
“Counting food stores until there's nothing left to count? What
then? Jonah says—”

“
Look at me,” he tells me.
“Finn, look at me.” But when I do, the steely gaze I expect isn't
there. Just the pain. “I hope it doesn't come to that,” he
whispers. “But right now isn't the time to be talking about
leaving. To even be thinking about it. It's a distraction.
Winter'll be coming soon.”

“
No one's seen a Wraith in
months, Dad.”

“
You think we should leave?
Is that what you're saying, Finn?”

He's throwing my fears back in my
face, and it enrages me, especially after all Bren said to me
yesterday.

“
I don't know!
Maybe.”

“
One touch,” he reminds me,
snapping his fingers. “One touch is all it takes, and you're gone.
Nothing you do can stop it.”

He means that the moment that touch
happens, you have a few minutes when you know you're dead. Or
whatever passes for dead on this side of the line. You know your
mind is leaving you.

There is no cure, no treatment, no way
to stop the inevitable decline. In those last few minutes before
your humanity slips away, you know it's happening. Those are the
worst moments, because you're still human enough to understand that
soon you won't be.

“
We can't risk it,
Finn.”

He studies my face. He knows I'll be
the last person to leave this place, if and when it happens. He
knows that it'll take a lot of convincing to make me go. I've tried
a few times these past three years to make him think otherwise, but
it's too difficult. I hate that he thinks of me as a
coward.

“
Your mother would want you
to stay safe inside, Finn.”

“
She's dead. She and Harper
and Leah.”

“
No, Finn. You can't
believe that.”

Now he's the one in denial. “You know
they're Wraiths.”

He strikes me across the face,
surprising me. It's not quite a slap, but not a real punch, either.
It's enough to get my attention, which it certainly does. He's
never hit me before.

I hold a hand up to my jaw and glare
at him.

“
I'm sorry. I shouldn't
have done that.”

I push the blanket off of me and stand
up. The hit doesn't even hurt, but even if it did, I wouldn't want
him to know it. Maybe at fifteen I didn't care enough that he
thought of me as weak, but now that I'm eighteen, I'd rather
die.

He gets up with me and crosses the
room, placing himself between me and the doorway. “Listen to me,
Finn. Just give me a few minutes. Things are going to change. Some
for the good, some . . . .” He
shrugs.

I study his face. What is he
saying?

“
Jack Resnick,” he says.
“He and a few others want me to step down. They want to replace me
with someone else.”

I roll my eyes. “You can't really be
considering doing it.”

“
I'm not.”

“
Because Jack would be
worse.”

“
I know. And nothing is
going to happen for the time being, not as long as Eddie is
fighting for his life. We've all decided to wait at least that
long. But, Finn, when it happens — not if, but when —
we'll need someone with some sense in his head.”

“
Such as?”

“
I want you to consider
taking my place.”

Tensions mount over the next three days as Eddie somehow manages to
cling to life.

Doctor Cavanaugh is worried at how
quickly our precious supply of bandages is dwindling. She's wrapped
him up like a mummy and is pumping intravenous antibiotics more
than a year expired into his veins. But even more than that, she's
beside herself with disbelief. How could anyone survive what he
went through? She tells my dad that if he doesn't pass on soon,
it'll just be harder for him afterward, when the inevitable
infections set in.

But nobody wants to be the one to make
the call to stop treating him.

Bren and Bix and I stop down there
daily, but we're not allowed to go inside the room, and we can't
see anything through the window from the hallway because of the
plastic curtain over the bed. Doc Cavanaugh tells us it's for his
own protection. I overheard her tell Bren's mom that his destroyed
skin is starting to turn white and slough off. She made it sound
like it wasn't expected. But then again, she admits she's never
treated anything like this before.

She was a pathologist and used to
studying her patients through the lens of a microscope, an
instrument she's been trying to build with Kari Mueller's and
Eddie's help. They’ve been cannibalizing parts from digital cameras
and screens. With Eddie injured now, I’m not sure if project will
ever get finished.

Dad has stopped doing his daily
walkabouts. He's stopped checking up on everyone to make sure the
chores get done. He spends many of his waking hours assisting the
doctor, as if he feels personally responsible for the accident. I
see him comforting Hannah and I can't help but feel a little
jealous of the attention he gives her, even though I know how
incredibly selfish that is.

What he does with the rest of his time
is a mystery. He doesn't spend it in our quarters, which is fine by
me. I take advantage of the solitude.

And yet the chores still get done. I
guess people need that routine, especially during stressful times
such as this. Nobody wants to see our little society break down, no
matter how unhappy we may be.