Chapter 16
When Nurse Patrick nudges me awake, I’m on my feet in seconds.
“It’s okay! It’s okay! I’m just waking you for your watch. I’m not sure I can stay awake much longer, and if I’m being honest, I need a break from Jan.”
Exhausted as I am, his words send a bubble of laughter through my chest. Most of the staff would never even hint at anger or annoyance while on the job.
Especially Nurse Patrick. I always saw him as someone with infinite patience and emotional control, but it turns out January can wear down even the strongest ones.
“Sure. Of course,” I say, with a chuckle. “What time is it?”
Nurse Patrick checks his watch. “It’s about two in the afternoon. Here.” He takes off his watch and hands it to me. “Wake me at six at the very latest.”
I nod, fastening the watch around my wrist. It’s loose and heavy, and having it on my wrist feels like a big responsibility.
Keisha hasn’t moved, and as much as I want someone else to keep an eye on January, I let her rest. Nurse Patrick curls up near her and begins breathing the deep, even breaths of sleep almost instantly.
I walk over to what’s left of the fire and find Lucia trying to teach January how to play hopscotch. She’s scratched boxes into the hard-packed dirt on the shore of the river.
“Quinn! Do you want to play with me and Lucia?” January begs, her eyes hopeful.
“I’m standing watch, Jan. I need to keep an eye on our camp.”
“Oh.” She pauses. “Do you think those people will find us?”
“What people?” I ask, not understanding.
“The ones like from yesterday. And like what happened to Ms. Michelle,” she explains.
“Oh. The carriers. Jan, those aren’t really people anymore.” I realize no one has actually had this conversation with January yet. When Mr. Josh explained it he was pretty vague, so I look for the words to explain what’s happening in a way that her mind can process.
“Remember what Mr. Josh said? There’s something making people sick, Jan. When they get sick, they die, but after they die, they wake up as something different. When they wake up, they’re not people anymore.”
“That’s why it’s okay to kill them,” she says.
“Yeah. We have to kill them to protect ourselves,” I confirm.
“Were Mr. Josh and Ginger sick too?” she asks.
Ugh. I don’t want to have this conversation. Lucia stops mid-hop to look up at me, waiting anxiously for my answer.
“No, Jan. Mr. Josh and Ginger weren’t sick like the carriers.”
January sniffles, and her eyes take on a telltale shine.
“January, don’t cry. Mr. Josh needed to die because he turned bad.
He was going to hurt Lucia. And Ginger died because she was too slow.
If we had waited for her, the carriers would have caught all of us.
But when the carriers caught her, she distracted them.
That’s how we got away. That’s why we lived. ”
“So, Ginger helped us? Like a superhero, sorta?” She sniffles again, but her tears don’t fall.
“Sure. Like a superhero.”
Lucia continues her hops, and Jan turns to rejoin her. I breathe out, relieved. I don’t feel guilty about killing Mr. Josh or Ginger, but I also don’t want the others to look at me that way. I don’t want them to be scared of me. I know I’m not like them. I don’t feel the right things.
It’s been like this for as long as I can remember.
When I was ten, I was placed in a Catholic group home for a few months.
One of the older girls stole a pair of my socks—the fuzzy kind I got for Christmas from my last foster parents.
I didn’t tell on her or even let on that I had noticed.
I found them in her drawer. I waited a whole week for her to wear them.
When she finally pulled them on, she screamed.
A few nights before, while she was sleeping, I had put tiny pushpins from the bulletin board into the bottom of the socks, and the sharp ends sank deep into the pads of her feet.
One of the group home staff pulled them out one by one and, after much questioning, figured out what had happened.
That night I overheard her whispering to another staff member about me.
“God forgot to put a soul in that one,” she said.
“There’s no light behind her eyes.” I lost privileges for weeks.
I don’t really believe in God or souls, but I can’t argue that something in me is missing.
I’ve read about love and intense emotions in books and seen it played out in movies and on TV, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt those things.
At least not like that. It’s not that I’ve never cared about anyone, but I don’t really understand people’s need to show emotion or explain themselves to others.
I don’t need to feel connection like that.
I don’t need to be cared for. Other people seem to orbit around one another effortlessly.
I usually have to force myself to think of anyone but myself, to make the right facial expressions at the right time, and to react the way others do.
I’ve gotten better at it over the years, though.
I think being friends with Keisha has helped the most. She makes that stuff feel easier.
As the afternoon wears on, I check Nurse Patrick’s watch.
Four o’clock. The sun moves across the sky, and the riverbed stays quiet.
Keisha finally wakes up around four thirty and joins me near the dead fire.
She busies herself with rebuilding it. Why, I don’t really know, but it gives her something to do.
I keep myself busy watching the surrounding trees for carriers, but nothing comes.
I wonder how close we are to a town or a highway, but it’s no use wondering.
We might as well be on another planet out here.
At six, Nurse Patrick’s watch beeps, and I startle out of my daydream. Meds flashes across the tiny screen on my wrist. It’s time to wake him.
I walk over to the tree where he sleeps and kick his boots.
“Hey. Hey! Six o’clock,” I say, forcing him awake.
“Jeez, Quinn, ease up,” he complains.
“Here. The meds alarm went off,” I say, dropping his watch onto his chest.
He straps the watch back onto his wrist. “Any action while I was out?”
“Not a peep. We must be pretty far from any towns. There doesn’t seem to be anything out here.”
“We’re safe from carriers for now, but we’re going to need food and shelter if we want to stay alive.”
“Right,” I say, kicking at a rock in front of me. “So do you think we should keep going downstream or walk inland and see if we can find a town?”
“We follow the river,” Keisha says from behind me. I didn’t even realize she was listening. “The river is the safest place for us,” she says.
“All right then, we’ll stick to the river for a while longer. I’ll pass out meds and get some dinner going. We should stay here tonight, but we need to be ready to leave if we have to. Can you two look for more firewood?” Nurse Patrick asks.
I nod. Keisha and I walk the riverbank looking for sticks and large branches.
There’s not much left. We burned just about everything nearby trying to get dry.
We walk deeper into a wooded area and continue the search.
The trees grow close together, and high grass comes up to our knees, making us fight for each step.
We search in companionable silence. It’s something I’ve always appreciated about Keisha.
She’s never been one to fill the space with unnecessary chatter.
I sneak glances at her, trying to read her thoughts, but she still gives nothing away.
Her words from this morning echo back in my mind.
“What if I had been the slowest one?” She couldn’t really believe that I’d sacrifice her, could she?
When our arms can’t hold any more, we walk back to camp.
Nurse Patrick has packed all the items we aren’t using into the boat and has the fire blazing.
Lucia and January sit near the base of the fire and wave when they see us.
Nurse Patrick smiles at our armloads of firewood.
“That’ll work! Set those down and come over to the fire.
We’re learning how to purify water!” he says, slapping his thigh with a goofy grin.
I roll my eyes at his enthusiasm, but I’m eager to learn.
He’s already filled the small tin pot with river water.
He uses his shirt sleeve to grab the handle of the pot, then pushes it into the edge of the fire, right into the hot coals.
“Now we wait,” he says, rubbing his hands together with a big smile.
“What are we waiting for?” Lucia asks curiously.
“Well, the heat of the fire is going to warm up the water until it starts boiling. When the bubbles are about the size of a quarter, we start counting. When we reach sixty, we can pull the pot out of the fire and let it cool down. Then, voilà!” he says with a flourish.
“Clean, drinkable water! Never, ever drink water from the river unless you’ve boiled it first, okay? It could make you very sick.”
We all nod. For the millionth time, I’m grateful Nurse Patrick is with us.
As the sun goes down, we work out a watch schedule. Nurse Patrick will take the first watch, then me and Keisha, then Nurse Patrick again. The idea of sleeping in the dark, out in the open without even a sleeping bag, makes my skin crawl. So many bugs. But we don’t have much of a choice.
We kill the fire, find a soft spot in the grass, and use our extra clothes as blankets. Jan and Lucia find sleep easily. Their even breaths join the crickets and frogs as the sounds of nature overtake the night. As I wait for sleep, my mind swirls. I reach over and touch Keisha’s arm.
“You still awake?” I whisper.
Keisha sighs deeply. “Of course.”
I pause, unsure of what to say and how to say it. Finally, I decide to just say exactly what I’m thinking.
“I’m going to make sure we live. You and me. Okay? No matter what.”
Keisha is silent. Then, finally, her whisper breaks the tension building in my chest. “I know.”
In the dark, her hand finds mine. She gives it a soft squeeze, and the tension melts away.