What Blood Leaves Behind (The Poison Rose) (28 page)

Near this back office is a forklift left on its side next to a charging station, still plugged to it with a thick, black cable. A gunmetal green cash box has been smashed open on the floor of the office, useless paper money and receipts scattered around. With the toe of my boot, I nudge Benjamin Franklin’s face on a one hundred dollar bill.

The Elders must spend a good deal of time here. Maybe the Riders have left the place to them deliberately, along with other places like this across the east side of the city, stores and storage spaces still loaded with loot. Maybe it’s a kind of bone they’ve thrown to the Elders to keep them happy, keep them out of trouble. Make sure they’re quiet and obedient until they’re ready for the change.

My head clears a little and I start making my way around the desk but Emily backs toward the door immediately, keeping the distance between us. But her face softens a little as she’s doing this. Her eyes widen, her mouth falls open. She looks like she’s chewing on something, is on the verge of saying something but can’t force the words out.

I stop halfway to her, the palm of my left hand planted on the desk, supporting me.
So tired.
When will I be able to sleep? I wait but she says nothing.

I want to get outside. I want to reach the Orphanage while it’s still light out but feel so weak. I’ve let myself drift off to sleep for a while with my head on the desk but have no idea for how long. The light I see through the loading bay doors looks dimmer than it did but it could be because of rain, it could be that it’s nearly dusk—no way to tell from here.

This is such an odd place to keep me in, nothing like being locked away in the cellar of the Orphanage. Escape might be easy if I had the energy. It’s so quiet. I have no idea how far away the other Elders are.

The other Elders. Emily’s an Elder. You think of her as one of them now.

The Elders—so much like Riders already, even pre-change—crazed, childlike, always fighting. They forced me inside the warehouse with whacks and prods from sticks, twisted wire hangers, bars ripped from clothing racks. Up the stairs, along the loading ramp, in through an open door.

Taunting me the whole way.

Garbage. Look how dirty.

Worst one we’ve ever seen.

Doesn’t know how to keep herself clean. Doesn’t know how to dress herself.

Boys arrayed in sharp, straight jeans, pea-coats or leather jackets. Their hair cut short, neat.

Girls in tights and leggings and boots and soft multi-hued sweaters and even a few movie star-style fur coats. Hair not looking exactly like professionally styled hair did in the old days but hours must be spent working on it, helping each other cut and trim with fine barbering scissors. Dying and moussing and primping. And each face made up to glisten with powder and lipstick and rouge.

I kept looking for Emily but she was gone.

And the Elders kept pushing me deeper into the warehouse space. Some picked up discarded clothes from the floor and threw them at me.

Here you go, you putrid cow. If we didn’t hate you, you could have some of these. Clean yourself up.

She can’t clean herself up. That’s the way she is. She crawls out of a hole every morning.

Some laughed. Some spit at me. They tripped me up, watched me stumble, pushed me down.

Some started fighting with each other. Jabbing and shoving, tearing fabric apart and throwing things around.

And then I was put here, left at this desk, in this old chair with the stuffing ripped out of the armrests, springs coming lose in the seat.

I wait and I wait and Emily still says nothing, her face tight with suppressed emotion. I’m sure she wants to but doesn’t trust herself to speak.

I reach for the mug she gave me and take another long drink. I dip my fingers into the water and dab some on my cheeks, rub at the dirt that’s caked there.

“You look horrible,” Emily says at last.

I laugh, a snort more than a laugh, brittle and bitter.

“Why are you so hateful?”

I want to slap her—so angry that she won’t talk to me except to speak words as cruel as anything the others might say. Why can’t I reach her? The injustice of what she’s done—giving up on us, on DJ and Terry and Stace, for
this
—cheap clothes, ridiculous, useless makeup.

Maybe if Larkin hadn’t changed. Maybe if it was still summertime in Oxbow Ferry—

“Don’t you ever think of me? Of the kids? Is all this really worth it?” I sweep my hand at the cavernous warehouse draped and hung with unwanted clothes. I point at her face, at her smudged raccoon eyes.

Emily turns away sharply. I want to see her cry. I want to see her break down and admit that I’m right. There has to be a part of her that still cares.

But she won’t. Won’t cry. Won’t break down.

“You have to get out of here,” she says to me.

I look at her skeptically. “So now you’re helping me escape?” Then I look back at the open floor of the warehouse again. “This is too weird. Where is everybody?”

“I told them I was looking after you. But I’ll let you go. You have to hurry though.”

“Is this your own idea, or—”

“Oh, just come on.”

She slams back the door of the office—a door no one bothered locking—and starts to stroll briskly back to the loading dock, the outline of her body haloed by the daylight she’s heading toward.

I shuffle after, my leg throbbing again, the cold water I gulped down stinging my empty belly and reigniting hunger pains.

The bitterness of this thing just about kills me—that Emily isn’t responding, that I’ve accomplished nothing by crossing the river, that I’m barely capable of simply moving, of putting one foot in front of another. The promise of
freedom
—if that word means anything in this place—seems absurd. It’s another trap she’s leading me toward.

I shout out after her, “Was at least the water your own idea?”

She doesn’t turn around. When I’m outdoors again, blinking in the light, standing on the loading ramp, I see her waiting for me on the street below.

I clump down the stairs and stand beside her. She lets me stand close this time but doesn’t say anything.

I won’t touch her. Won’t interfere with her. I understand I can’t force her to change back to what she was.

And just being outside starts to revive me. Quickens my pulse, makes me think of what I can still accomplish. The daytime’s slipping away and I need to get back to the Orphanage. I’ve let my fatigue lull me into a stupor and for the first time in hours I now think of the name that just the night before was foremost on my mind.
Aiden.

Is he alive? Is Stace still waiting at his side?

“Will you go with me?” I ask Emily.

She can’t look me in the face. She gives her head a quick shake, kicks at a hunk of tattered Styrofoam.

I open my mouth to say something else. There so many, many things I could say. Infuriated things. Beseeching things.

But I don’t. I start off down the street in what I think is the direction of the Orphanage without looking back.

Small, phantom figures
are clustered outside the Orphanage.

It’s too dark to see clearly. Dusk is scraping the light from the atmosphere. Shadows blur into vague inky blobs.

Dropping down behind a school bus that lies on its side close to the front steps of the school, I peek around the roof of its cab, try to let me eyes adjust, try to let what these small figures represent come into focus.

And then I realize that these are the children. Five or six of the kids who are forced to live here milling around outdoors, right in front of the building, nobody keeping watch over them.

They don’t act like they’re frightened of being caught. They don’t look like they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

They aren’t trying to run, never moving past the rim of the school’s dense front lawn, their pacing back and forth flattening paths through long brown winter-grass.

A little starlight breaks through the clouds. I wanted to reach the Orphanage before dark, use the daylight left to me but I’m too late.

I started out counting the blocks it takes to get here. So many—twenty-five, maybe thirty? I gave up after a few wrong turns, a few blind alleys.

Keep heading south. Keep your mind on where the river is.

Block after block unspooled before me, blocks that lead through old neighborhoods. The usual sight of houses looted, stores pillaged, possessions and merchandise spilled over lawns and sidewalks and curbs.

Walking fast was impossible. My leg, my hunger, my head muddled with the need to sleep—I willed myself to walk fast but kept slowing down.
Slowing.

Thoughts in my mind not turning over like they should, getting stuck in the same tired grooves—endlessly speculating about Emily. About the Riders. About what I might find when I reached this place.

I kept thinking, the Riders are playing a trick on me. They will allow me to get to the door of the Orphanage, touch the handle, before they swoop in and haul me away. Never letting me know if Aiden is still alive. Never letting me see Stace or CJ or Terry again.

Only the daylight would have kept them away. For a while.

And yet it’s my fault I wasted time in that warehouse. I can see now how easy it would have been to simply get up and leave. Was anyone actually guarding me? I only assumed they were. They even had to send Emily back to prod me into leaving when it was time.

It’s so obvious to me now. They wanted me here right when I got here, not sooner, not later. Emily, the Elders—it was all a performance, a play they put on to manipulate me. And it worked very well.

But there’s no choice. I have to go inside. I have to try to see Aiden, Stace. If the Riders leap out of the shadows, I’m physically incapable of running away.

But these kids out in front of the school, are they part of a trap?

The more I watch them, the more I wonder.

They’re so timid. This small taste of freedom means nothing to them. It’s like they think that if they take one step onto the sidewalk or the street beyond something horrible is going to happen. And maybe it will.

I move out from behind the bus. I have to get inside the building. Try to get inside. I don’t know how much longer I can keep moving, stay upright before I collapse.

And then I see Finch. We notice each other at the same time. He’s standing at the edge of the lawn, maybe waiting for something. Does he know what’s coming? Can he warn me? His eyes widen but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to approach me.

He lets me get within a few feet of him. Some of the other kids have stopped their aimless pacing and are facing toward us, watching, listening.

How do I look to them? Like an eerie apparition. The reappearance of someone they never expected to see again, battered and bruised and bloody, ghost-pale.

“Finch, what’s happened to the school?”

He shrugs. “No one’s here. We were hungry, went down to the kitchen. Found some food. Then we went outside.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“I don’t know. All day.”

“You’ve been pacing around here all day?”

I can’t see if he nods or smiles or how he responds.

All day.

And they didn’t try to run away.
I’m amazed at how spineless they are, like rabbits bred in tiny cages unable to adjust to being suddenly released. None of them dared to cross the street. But then it occurs to me,
What’s out there for them to run to?
What would they eat? Where would they sleep?

Finch is still in the dirty blue parka he always wears. I watch him wipe a long trail of snot down the length of his sleeve. I realize that he is just as filthy as I am. He lets me come close enough to try to give his shaggy hair a tousle with my uninjured left hand but he flinches, acts like I’m going to hit him.

“I’m sorry, Finch. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What happened to you?” he asks and the way he asks makes it sound like he’s really interested, really cares.
Doesn’t like seeing me hurt.
I laugh to myself thinking that he’s showing more concern for me than my long-time companion Emily was able to muster.

This time I shrug. “I had a terrible night last night.”

I have to stop talking to him. I have to head inside. I feel like I could sink to the ground, to the cold damp grass, and fall asleep instantly.

The big metal and glass doors at the head of the front steps are unlocked. Just inside I make out in the gloom other children milling through the hallways, children probably too nervous, too frightened by this weird, inexplicable turn of events to venture outside like Finch did.

My nerves start to jangle the closer I get to the administration area of the school, to where the principal and the school secretaries once sat years ago. I’m moving slowly now not because I’m tired but because I’m suddenly very afraid of what I’ll find.

And then I’m right outside that back office where I left Aiden in his coma-like sleep.

I close my eyes and take a step inside. The room is heavy with bodily smells—trapped breath, sweat and dirty skin and something sickly-sweet like physical decay. And a smell of wax, of guttering candles.

I force my eyes open and there’s Aiden lying on the bed, exactly as he was before I left the night before. His face is pasty, troubled, bathed in a sheen of cold perspiration and he reminds me so much of—
Larkin, the last time I saw him
.

And I can’t tell if Aiden is dead or alive. It’s like the first time I saw him. I approach the bed, lower my right ear to his mouth and listen. I hear a shallow, faint intake of air. It gives me the courage to put my hand on his chest. I feel it rise and fall.

And Stace. Where is Stace?

I’m so focused on Aiden I don’t notice her, sleeping curled in a ball at the foot of the bed, like a large, furless cat, two pillows beneath her, one for her head and one for her back, huddling under a food-stained, moth-eaten blanket.

I don’t want to wake her but then DJ and Terry come clattering into the room. The news of my return must have spread through the school wildfire quick. They’re vibrating with excitement, faces flushed and they repeat Finch’s question in unison, “What happened to you?” They look me up and down, scared to touch me.