Chapter 29
When the screeches and moans of the carriers are far enough behind us, I finally set my paddle down and turn around to assess the damage.
Lucia is curled onto Keisha’s lap, and Keisha holds her tight in her arms, still whispering in her ear words I’ll never hear.
Lucia’s eyes are closed, her body lifeless, and her clothes soaked in blood.
Her curls lie limp against her shoulders.
Her tiny mouth hangs open slightly. There’s no doubt in my mind.
She’s gone. Suddenly I feel like I’m intruding on something very private.
I don’t know what to do or say. I can’t leave the boat, so I do the best I can. I look away.
At my feet, a puddle of blood has stained the soles of my boots a deep, dark red.
Lucia’s tiny fish lies still, eyes wide, mouth open in the pool of blood.
I pick it up and angrily throw it into the river with a violent splash, then let my hand glide through the water, washing Lucia’s blood from my fingertips and into the muddy water of the river.
The silence drags on until I can’t stand it any longer.
“Keisha, I’m so… I’m…”
“Shh,” she hushes, not taking her eyes off Lucia.
“I should have—”
“SHHH!”
She rocks gently, holding Lucia close, and continues whispering to her. I pick up my paddle and channel my energy into getting us as far away from the bridge as possible.
* * *
Hours pass. My skin stings with a fresh sunburn, and my muscles ache from rowing. I’m hungry, thirsty, and utterly exhausted. In just a few hours the sun will set. We need to find a safe place to rest. We also need to figure out what to do with Lucia’s body.
“Keisha,” I practically whisper. I know she’s not ready, but it’s been hours, and I can’t keep rowing forever. “We need to get off the river. Look up ahead there. What do you think about that spot?” I say, pointing to a low slope in the river’s edge.
She sniffs, then nods, but she doesn’t look up, so I begin steering us toward the shore. It looks isolated enough, but if I learned anything today, it’s that isolation doesn’t mean shit. With enough noise, the carriers will find you, wherever you are.
When we reach the shore, I use the strength I have left to pull the canoe out of the water and over the uneven ground.
I hold out my hand to Keisha, offering to help, but she doesn’t take it. She tries to stand on her own with Lucia in her arms and nearly loses her balance. I grip her arm and her waist to keep her steady, and she steps out of the boat, laying Lucia down next to the water.
I don’t want to be here for this. Luckily I have a great excuse to bolt.
I take a lap around our new campsite with my machete to make sure we’ve picked a safe spot, but I draw out the patrol way longer than necessary.
When I finally go back to Keisha’s side, I see she’s cleaned Lucia’s body, washed the blood from her hair, and dressed her in clean clothes.
I can’t imagine why she would bother, but I know enough to know I shouldn’t ask questions. Instead, I build a fire for us.
I busy myself by boiling three pots of water and filling up every bottle we have, then digging around in our packs for something to eat.
I find another box of cheesy potatoes and pour the ingredients into the boiling water.
When the soggy mess is as good as it’s going to get, I walk over to get Keisha.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Let’s get something to eat. Then we can say a few words for Lucia together.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got some fresh water too.
Come on,” I say, holding out my hand. She takes it, interlocking her fingers with mine.
She looks over her shoulder at Lucia, then follows me to the fire.
We sit in silence. I hand her some water and a bowl of cheesy potatoes, and I’m grateful when she takes a few bites, then a few more, hours of exhaustion and hunger winning out over her grief.
The sun has nearly set by the time we finish eating. I break the silence with the practicalities of our situation. I know I wouldn’t say the right thing even if I tried.
“We should sleep here tonight. We could do shifts, just to be safe,” I say.
Keisha nods, a new set of tears pooling in her eyes.
When I go to hide our canoe in the tall grass, I notice the pool of dried blood inside.
Rather than face Lucia’s funeral, I take our supplies out and get to work scrubbing at the stains with water from the river, but soon, the boat is clean, our things are repacked, and the sun is nearly gone. There’s nothing left to do. It’s time.
I walk over to where Keisha is kneeling next to Lucia’s body.
“Are you ready?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.
“No,” she whispers.
“How do you… I mean, what should we do with… Do you think Lucia would like what we did for Nurse Patrick?” I ask, trying to find the right words for this.
She nods, and an uncomfortable silence follows. I’m not sure what to do, so I just say what I think Keisha would want to hear.
“Lucia was so small and so quiet. Back at the Pegasus Center, I hardly gave her a second look, but when everything happened, she kept a cool head and had good ideas about what to do next. She pulled her weight. She fought for her life. I’ll never forget when she pulled that screwdriver out of her pocket and stabbed Mr. Josh on the roof of the center.
That’s when I knew she was a fighter. I wish I had thought to ask her where she got that screwdriver from,” I say with a chuckle.
“I guess I’ll never know. But I’m proud of her.
And I’m sad it had to end like this. She deserved to live. ”
I expect Keisha to cry. I expect her to start with a speech of her own. I do not expect her to start laughing. She claps both hands over her mouth, trying to muffle the sound, but it’s impossible. She can’t stop. What the hell?
“It was Ms. J!” Keisha says, gasping for breath between fits of giggles.
“What?” I ask, worried that maybe we should find Keisha some meds after all.
“The screwdriver. I asked her how she got it when we were back at the Pegasus Center. She took it off Ms. J’s cleaning cart the first week she came to the center. She hid it inside her shower curtain rod for months!” A new peal of laughter rings like a bell, and I can’t help but join.
“That’s brilliant,” I say, giggling too.
Smiling now, Keisha starts her speech. “Lucia’s creativity kept her alive and helped us find a way to get this far.
We wouldn’t have thought to follow the river without her.
She was a fighter when she had to be, but she was also gentle and kind.
Sometimes I worry that only the worst of us will survive all this, but she gave me hope that good could exist at the end of the world.
And the world will be worse off without her. ”
I don’t miss Keisha’s implication. Pretty soon, all that will be left is a world full of people like me. I can’t argue, so I don’t try. I just wait. Soon, Keisha looks up at me, her eyes brimming with tears again.
“Will you help me take her to the river? I think that’s what she’d want.”
“Of course,” I say.
We strip off our jeans, boots, and socks and lay them on a fallen tree near the shore.
The last thing I want is to go into that river in the dark, but I grit my teeth and do it.
As we wade into the river, carrying Lucia, my toes sink into the slimy mud below, and I just hope nothing touches my legs.
I control my breathing, and finally, when we’re about waist deep, Keisha pauses and lowers Lucia into the water.
“Goodbye, Lucia,” Keisha says, pausing to kiss her forehead.
We give the weight of Lucia to the river. The current carries her body above water for a few feet, then swallows her whole.
Keisha grabs my hand and squeezes it tight, then lets go.
It’s just the two of us now. This is how I wanted it to be all along, but somehow it feels emptier than I thought it would.
We wade through the water and back toward the shore.
In silence, we dry off, get dressed, and douse the fire to avoid attracting attention.
We lay out our blankets, tuck a pillow under our heads, and lie down.
With each minute that passes, new stars appear, way too many to count. I think back to the night this all started and how excited Keisha was to escape to the roof of the Pegasus Center. She’d marveled at all the stars. That sky couldn’t even begin to compare to this one.
As if thinking what I’m thinking, Keisha says, “I’ve never seen so many stars in my life.”
“It’s pretty,” I say lamely. I want to reach for her hand. I want her to kiss me again. I want her to tell me it’s okay that it’s just us now. I want her to forget anyone else existed.
“I remember when all I wanted was to be able to go outside and look at the stars whenever I wanted. I still can’t believe we got away with sneaking out that night. God, it feels like a lifetime ago,” Keisha says with a sigh.
“We had that place wired,” I say with a little laugh. “We make a good team, Keisha. We’ll be okay out here. Just us.”
“I know we will.” Her voice hardens. “Whatever it takes, right?”