Chapter 2 BEE
TWO
BEE
The silence comes with a numbness and a ringing in the ears.
Face twisted, I cringe against it.
How much time has passed, I don’t know. I can’t even guess.
Huddled between the trucks, crouched and braced against any possible misfooting of a deer that might collide with my skull, it felt nothing short of an eternity.
That was the fear that cringed me the whole time. That a deer’s hoof would slip on the truck, or it would miscalculate its frantic steps, and that hoof, or even that whole deer, would come crashing down on me.
I straighten to sit against the door of the truck, my gaze piercing into the red one opposite me, and I feel nothing, not a bite of pain, not a nip or a whisper.
Lips trembling around shaky breaths, I run my hands over myself, head to shoulders, down my sides, all the way to my boots.
I’m not hurt. Miraculously.
If Tesni hadn’t put herself at risk to jump off the truck and run to get me, to drag me out of the push and pull of the crowd, then…
I shudder at the thought, the image of my mangled body out there on the dirt.
But I’m here, safe.
My rescuer stirs beside me.
Tesni starts to peel away from my side. She feels over her own body for any hint of injury.
Like me, she’s unharmed.
Her breaths are wobbly as she angles her chin to look at me.
Those faint, beige freckles that usually dust her cheeks are distorted beneath a raw crimson flush and tear streaks. If I didn’t see the evidence of sobs on her cheeks, the reddened hue of her piercing glass eyes would betray her.
It’s only now that I’m looking at her, at the panic of her complexion and the tremble of her damp lips, that I feel the thickness in my own throat, the wetness on my own cheeks.
Words should come. We should speak. Say something. Anything.
But we just stare at each other, eyes brimmed with horror, glossed with silent tears.
The stampede has passed, but the dirt was too disturbed, kicked up in all the chaos, and it’s still a reddish mist clouding us.
Tesni loosens a trembling breath, and it sounds an awful lot like, “The girls.”
The girls?
What girls?
Oh.
Fuck.
It takes my mind a shameful moment too long to remember them.
Ramona, Louise, Ruby.
The urgency should strike through me. It should drive me to my feet and push me into a run. It should even ring my throat with a call for them.
It doesn’t.
I’m stuck.
Frozen against the truck, listening to the haunting quiet that drapes over the earth.
A quiet that is disturbed.
Gone are the charging beasts, the flocks of birds—and now, all that is left, is a gentle symphony of moans that could pass as the song of the wind moving through the creases of the desert. But now that I listen, I know what those moans are.
Not everyone got out the way.
Some people out there—beyond this safe nook between two tightly parked trucks—were caught in the stampede. And they were left behind in the panic of the fleeing mob.
Dread spills through me, ice trailing down my insides.
My reluctance is betrayed in the long, choppy breath I suck in and the swerve of my gaze aside to the dirt.
I can’t bring myself to get up.
Tesni wears that same unwillingness in the hunch of her shoulders, curving inwards, as though if she tries hard enough, she can sink into the door of the truck and disappear.
I speak the truth neither of us are ready for. “We need to find them.”
Tesni grimaces, pressing her cheek against the chipped paint of the truck door. Her lashes snag on tears. The dull stare she gives me is nothing short of dread.
Thing about Tesni is, to others, she comes across as a cold, heartless bitch. Like right now, that stare can be misread by so many as reluctant, or hollow, or even an unspoken, ‘Do we really need to find them? We could just get outta here.’
I see it for what it really is.
Fear.
Horror.
Absolute desolation.
Tesni isn’t ready to leave the safety we’ve tucked ourselves into, and she’s nowhere near prepared to see the damage beyond.
And there is damage.
We both know it.
The moans of the wounded reach us both.
So as she turns her cheek to me and drops her gaze to the dirt on the toes of her boots, I know she isn’t going to be the first to move. Her courage fails her—so we lean on mine.
The breath I loosen comes with a renewed stir of dread in my belly.
My boots slide over the hard ground. Hand splayed on the side of the truck, I lean forward and peer around Tess to the dirt field.
Not long ago, it was packed full of people swinging around, kicking, jumping, hollering, smiling and laughing and dancing.
Now, the dirt is a fog clinging to the earth. Beneath it, there is litter: smartphones, handbags, plastic cups, scrunched paper bags.
The debris of the chaos.
I shift forward.
The wobble of my legs is instant.
My hand, flattened on the curve of the truck, doesn’t tremble, but the anxiety is a pit of worms slithering from my belly all the way to my toes.
My breath comes out shuddering as I step around the hood of the truck.
Tesni shifts on the dirt behind me.
The rustle of her jeans comes before the gentle touch of her hand on my back.
I don’t look over my shoulder at her.
I look only at that lump on the ground, shrouded in a dirt mist.
My lashes flutter, and I realise I am staring at a mangled man, sprawled on the dirt, just some feet away from the truck.
His jaws sags.
It’s something I’ve seen before.
Death on a face.
In all the films I’ve watched, all the portrayals of death on a screen, it’s never been entirely accurate. Death slackens the face. It doesn’t part the lips, the jaw slips aside, the mouth hangs open.
It is always ghastly.
A violent shudder wracks me.
Tesni’s breathy question comes from behind, “What?” The rustle of her jeans and crunch of dirt beneath her boots, it tells me she’s inching closer before her next words are a warm breath on my shoulder, “What is it?”
Words are trapped in my throat, a ball that’s lodged and thumping with the beats of my heart. I swallow, thick, but it does nothing to dislodge the lump.
I just stare at his face.
A familiar one.
The same guy who was pawing at Tesni on the hood of the truck.
Tesni’s boots are soft on the dirt as she pushes onto her toes to look over my shoulder, and down at the lump just an inch or two from the toes of my boots.
The cut of her breath is sharp, a gasp that’s too short, too harsh.
She sees him.
Recognises him, even in the slackness of his face, his hanging jaw and mangled limbs.
I flinch as her touch grazes my wrist.
I blink at her, at her stunned freckled face, as her hand forms a grip on my wrist.
The sharp, hollow gleam of her stare spears down at the man. Blue eyes, pale like crushed glass, flicker with the flutter of her long lashes—and she watches, transfixed, motionless, as the dust settles over him.
Again, her lashes flutter, then her gaze slides to the source of a wheezing sound, something that sounds so close to a moan, but one that’s losing its power.
I trace her stare.
Like this guy at my boots, the one over there is mangled.
Only this man is older, larger, stronger.
And he’s still alive.
Grip on my wrist, tight like a shackle, Tesni draws me closer to him. Her steps are uneasy, nervous, her shoulders set as firm as mine, but she approaches him like he might spook—or she might.
And I am in a daze.
I blink, I see death.
I breathe, I taste blood.
I listen, I hear moans.
I follow Tesni, and I see the veil parting for this man.
His breaths draw through him like a serrated knife, gargling at the end, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.
His pleading gaze is fixed up at Tesni.
She stares down at him, stuck in a horrified trance. The dazed emptiness in those glass eyes, the slackness of her dumb expression, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen on her before.
“Tess,” I say, gentle, soft. “The others. We need to find them.”
Her brows thread together.
The words are slow to sink in.
But they do.
She nods, firm, and rips her gaze from the dying man.
Her hand slips from my wrist and slides down to thread our fingers together.
A heartbeat pulses between us.
The man on the ground gurgles. His blood is spilling out onto the dirt and the frayed, dried grass. He twitches, his hand flinching, as though to reach out for us, to reach out for help.
But Tesni has eyes only for me.
Her soft, pink mouth parts—but no words come. She just stares at me for a long moment before her words come whispered, hushed, a confession, guilt, “I don’t know where they are.”
My mouth turns inwards.
The bite of my teeth clamps down on the flesh as I look across the dirt field. “I might.”
My fingers tighten around Tesni’s, tangled, before I tug her into a run across the field of dirt.
Bodies are scattered around like litter. Most are motionless, quiet. Some moan and twitch as our boots skitter by.
Tesni has the thought to fish out her smartphone and lift it, checking for signal. There is none. Not out here.
Hours ago, I had to climb the hill to get some signal bars and text my dad.
Help will be coming anyway, with or without us.
There might be dead and mangled people peppered around the dirt field, but enough made it out, most made it to the rows of cars and trucks parked uphill.
At least one person has managed a dispatch call.
I won’t be surprised if I hear helicopters shuddering the skies any moment now.
But my worries aren’t for the injured or the dead.
My concerns aren’t for the purses and wallets and phones that my boots are crashing down on as I race for the row of portable toilets. It’s for my friends, and only them.
So the closer we get, and the thinner the dirt mist becomes, the more my heart sinks.
The portables are scattered all over.
Once a row of a dozen blue, plastic toilet frames, lined up against the barren horizon; now, a mess—like giant hands have reached down from the scorching sky and thrown them around in a violent rage.