Exodus (23 page)

Morning crept silently into the room through the dirt-speckled windows of the hotel.

Emily had sat for the remaining hours between darkness and light and waited, her head a jumble of thoughts and dark emotion. Second-guessing her actions was not in her nature, but she had wondered over and over whether there was something else that she could have done, some other way for her to have saved Ben, cured him, fixed him. Every thread of thought led back to the same conclusion: no. There was nothing she could have done. The choice had been clear: wait and put both Rhiannon and herself in mortal jeopardy, or do what she had done.

But her actions hung around her heart like a millstone, and at this point, with Ben’s body cold and still, not six feet away from her, she did not think that weight could ever be lifted.

Rhiannon had barely moved during Emily’s vigil over her, and, other than the occasional moan or murmured dream word, she slept silently through the night.

Emily had never watched someone wake before. It was oddly fascinating, the way the body started to shift and move as their consciousness began to swim toward the surface of reality. Rhiannon had started to move beneath the comforter, her legs pushing the cover off her torso as she shifted position. One hand was wedged between her cheek and the pillow; the other was cocked over her head, toward the bed’s headboard.

Rhiannon’s eyelids began to flutter and her hand slipped from beneath her cheek and reached to meet the other above her head in an almost feline stretch. As a yawn signaled the young girl was close to waking, Emily laid her head against her arm on the tabletop, closed her eyes, and pretended that she was sleep.

“Emily!”

At the sound of Rhiannon’s shrill cry, Emily slipped into the role she knew she would have to play from this point on.

Her eyes sprung open. “What is it?” she said, with as much surprise in her voice as she could muster. Rhiannon was standing at the head of Ben’s bed, she had pulled back the comforter and exposed his upper torso, pale in the morning light.

“Ben’s not moving,” she said, her voice filled with panic. “I don’t think”—her voice cracked midsentence, and tears flooded her cheeks as she choked out the last few words—“he’s breathing.”

Emily leaped from her seat and was at Rhiannon’s side in two quick steps. She placed the back of her hand against the boy’s head, then tried to lift one thin arm in a show of measuring his pulse, but rigor mortis had set in and the boy’s arm was rigid and unmoving. Emily could see the deep-purple discoloration of lividity along his arm, where it touched the bed. She had expected that, but what she hadn’t expected was that the change she had seen last night had continued to progress even after the boy’s death. Although undoubtedly slowed, the network of black veins had grown in the hours since she had ended Ben’s life, creeping inexorably across the boy’s face and chest.

Emily took both of Rhiannon’s hands in hers, forcing herself to look the girl in the eyes. “Sweetheart, I am so very sorry but—”

“No!” Rhiannon yelled, trying to pull her hands away and push past Emily to get to her brother’s corpse. Emily blocked her with her own body and gripped her hands even tighter, determined not to let her see the full extent of the destruction the alien invader consuming Ben’s body had wrought.

“He’s gone, baby. Ben’s gone.”

“No! No! No!” She repeated the single word over and over, as if it were some kind of magic incantation that by sheer force of will would bring her brother miraculously back to life.

Emily pulled the weeping girl to her, pressing her to her chest, enveloping her with her arms, as she struggled to break free. Finally, Rhiannon collapsed into Emily’s embrace, her tears soaking into Emily’s shirt, damp and cold against her chest.

“Shhhhh!” Emily cooed, her cheek resting against the top of Rhiannon’s head as she gently stroked the girl’s hair.

Emily didn’t think she had ever experienced such manifest anguish; it was as though the child’s very soul had fractured and now spilled from every cell in her young body. It was heartrending and terrifying in its raw despair.

As Rhiannon’s tears turned to a choked sobbing, Emily held her tightly to her and allowed the child’s pain to pierce her.

They buried Ben in a rose bed near the entrance to the hotel.

Emily searched for a shovel but couldn’t find one, so she broke the wooden back support from a chair she found in the foyer and dug the shallow grave using that instead. By the time she had finished, her hands were blistered and cut and a light drizzle had begun to fall, dampening her already sweat-soaked body.

Emily carried Ben from the room, still wrapped in the comforter that would become his burial shroud. She placed him in the grave she had dug just as puddles of rainwater began to collect in the bottom of the hole. The exposed earth around the opening was quickly turning to mud underfoot.

Rhiannon stood at the edge of the grave and helped Emily push the dirt over the body of her brother, until, finally, all that
remained was a mound of wet earth to mark his final resting place. They picked the few remaining blossoms from the rosebushes and laid them on the grave beneath a cross that Emily had fashioned from the wooden legs of the same chair she had used to dig the grave.

Emily could not tell if Rhiannon cried. Her face remained emotionless as the drizzle rained down over them, covering any evidence of tears she might have shed. As the shower turned heavier, a crack of distant lightning was followed seconds later by the low rumble of thunder.

Emily placed her arm around Rhiannon’s shoulder. “Time to go,” she said as gently as she could and led her slowly back to the hotel room to change out of their sodden clothes, a disquieting thought playing over and over in her mind.

Although she could not be sure, as she had laid the boy’s stiff body into the cold wet earth, Emily thought she had felt something move within the comforter.

She parked them for the night at a highway gas station somewhere just north of Flint. Rhiannon had remained curled up on the backseat for most of the drive after they’d left the motel, silent and morose. She refused to eat, and Emily had to gently chide her into at least taking a few occasional sips of water. She was asleep in the back of the Durango now, Thor watching over her while Emily left the SUV and walked out of earshot.

Emily had promised herself that she would not cry when she spoke to Jacob; she had even considered not telling him about what had happened to Ben. She was sure Jacob had more than his fair share of problems to worry about, and she was not convinced
she would be able to vocalize exactly what had taken place anyway. It was all such a mess.

That plan lasted right up until Jacob answered her call, his voice rigid with concern. “Emily? Thank God. Are you all right?”

At the sound of his voice, she began to sob, unable to even reply to his greeting for several minutes. The words just couldn’t make it past the paralyzing pain she felt. When finally she was able to speak again, she managed to slowly recount the story of Ben’s rapid transformation after the attack.

“I…I had to…” Emily was ready to confess what she had done to Ben, but Jacob interrupted her before she could fill in the remaining words.

“Emily, stop. I don’t want to know,” he said, his voice calm, comforting even. “For no other reason than I understand that you did what you had to do. This is not our old world—that one is dead and gone. The rules have changed for us all and we have to do whatever it takes to survive. All of us, Emily. Whatever it takes.”

“I had no choice,” she said, more for herself than for Jacob.

“I know,” he said. “It’s the past. You have to focus on the future now. You have to survive.”

When she clicked the Off button half an hour later, she felt somewhat more at ease with what she had done. But as she walked slowly back to the Durango, she wondered whether that acceptance would come with a price that she was willing to pay.

They passed through Saginaw (population 51,230, and the home of the Saginaw Sting), Saint Ignace (population 2,435, with the best view of the Mackinac Bridge, this side of the US border), and tiny Rudyard (population 1,315, named after the English poet and writer, Rudyard Kipling).

By the time they crossed over the US–Canadian border for the third and final time, the towns and villages along their route had become smaller, sparser, but no less empty than every other place they had driven through. They spent nights in hotels, homes, offices, and the back of the Durango. In Prince George they stopped for the night at what had been a railway museum, sleeping in the relative luxury of a refurbished coach car.

Gradually, with each new day and every mile farther north they traveled, Emily and Rhiannon began to feel the temperature outside the air-conditioned SUV drop, and the alien forests that had become so prevalent begin to grow thinner and sparser, a final indication that Jacob’s theory was correct. And yet, despite
the slowing of the alien incursion, they saw no one and nothing to indicate that anywhere north of the border between the two countries had suffered any less of a tragedy than the rest of the continent, or the world.

The space between towns and cities began to grow larger the farther north they traveled.

And they saw not one other soul.

For the majority of the journey, Emily and Rhiannon had sat in relative silence, each numbed by their own despair, a sharp splinter of pain buried deep in each of their hearts.

When they reached Calgary, Emily pulled the SUV to a halt in front of what had once been a store of some kind but was now just a burned-out ruin of blackened beams and melted glass; the soot-strewn interior was littered with the unidentifiable skeletons of what could have once been furniture.

Emily climbed from the driver’s seat into the back next to Rhiannon, staring at the young girl, who seemed to be patently avoiding her gaze.

Emily paused as she collected herself; she wanted to get the words in the right order before she spoke them, so Rhia understood exactly what it was that she was saying. So there could be no mistake in her intent, because she knew she would only get one shot at this speech, so it had to be right.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save your dad. And I’m so very sorry that I could not save Ben. If I could have traded places with them, I would have. But I promise you, Rhiannon, that I will never let harm come to you. I promise that I will always be there to help you, and that I will never leave you. We’re all each other has now. We are each other’s family, and we have to protect each other from now on.”