I know it’s silly, especially since most of the survivors got rid of theirs when we eventually gave up on any hope of cell service returning, but I still keep my old phone charged whenever we can spare the power. All of my games and contacts and photos are long gone—no technology means no cloud and our devices went kaput months ago—but it still has its uses. Tapping the screen, I squint at the bright display. A makeshift glow-in-the-dark clock, even when the electricity is off.
It takes me a second to read the screen. When I do, I groan. It’s eight o’clock in the morning. If Jack’s here, he let me oversleep.
Again.
Before the Turning, my concept of passing time was a hazy blur at best; past or future, it was either coming or gone. I was twenty-five. A couple of years out of college, working a shitty retail job while I waited for my history degree to put me on the map, I was carefree. Having fun. The future could wait—and then, suddenly, it was January, the Turning happened, and, like everyone else, I was forced to change, too. That’s when I started to think of everything as “ago”, as in nine months ago the world turned to hell. It’s only gotten worse since.
Ago—
Two months ago, I still had my twin sister.
Seven weeks ago, I didn’t.
Seven weeks ago… it seems like a lifetime, but it’s only been seven weeks since the accident. Just seven weeks since I woke up in the triage area at St. Matthew’s, just like I’ve done nearly every morning since: panicking, afraid, and, no matter who was home, completely on my own.
I couldn’t remember anything at first, but everyone knows they only keep you in the church when they want you as close to God as possible. I saw the weathered wooden crucifix hanging over my head, witnessed the memory of the blazing fire coming back at us in my mind’s eye, and I instantly knew what had happened as certain as if I had seen Hallie’s ghost hovering next to my bedside. Sometimes I imagined I did.
I survived the explosion. Hallie didn’t.
Five weeks ago, I came home to an empty condo. Not entirely empty because Jack still calls our stolen condo ‘home’, but I hardly ever see him—and, well, that’s not really his fault.
It’s nothing like the two-story house my family shared about a fifteen-minute walk away from Oak Grove. From the layout to how narrow it is, the condo is just…wrong. After all these months of living in it, I’m still not used to that, and maybe I was still dazed after they let me leave St. Matthew’s, but after I accidentally, forgetfully,stupidlywalked into the room Hallie claimed—Tom Finch’s old room—my first night back, I took a hammer to the doorknob and mashed it in. I left it the way it was, a shrine to my twin and maybe my old schoolmate, too, and I know one thing: it’s a room I won’t ever enter again.
Four weeks ago, I decided it was time to start hunting again.
As much as it hurts, as much as I still feel like I’m only partially whole without Hallie by my side, I’ve never been the type to grieve and mope. All I wanted then… all I wantnowis to get to take out my anger and pain on as many lurkers as I can. Not even in Hallie’s memory will I spare them any mercy.
But, damn it, Jack won’t let me.
He seems to think it’s safer if I stay in at night when the threat of the lurkers is at its peak. He won’t come out andsayit, but he’s already rearranged all of the patrols so that I’m not needed for any of them. Whenever there’s a new mission and he calls for volunteers, he never sees my hand. If I try to head out with my gas can and a bottle, one of the other survivors always escorts me back to the front porch.
I’m fucking twenty-five and the whole community is treating me like I’m a kid.
I hate it. I absolutelyhateit. It’s driving me crazy. I tried to sneak out once, to prove myself, but when Camden skipped his patrol to bring me back home and Liza nearly got bit by a youngling, I promised myself that I wouldn’t do anything so foolish again. I won’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.
So now I’m nothing but a reluctant prisoner until Jack decides to let me be useful. Seeing as how he seems to think it’sbest if I sleep my life away, I doubt that will happen any time soon.
Leaning over, I grab the bat lying under this side of the bed and bang it twice against my floor. If Jack’s still home, he’ll turn the fuses back on so I can get ready. We’ve got to be an example, he says, to show the other survivors that we can get along without electricity in case it disappears like the television and the phones did months ago.
So he turns the fuses off purposely every night to conserve it, I guess, and I’m left to wake up blind every morning. Sometimes I wonder why, when everything else went to hell when the world Turned, we still even have power, but Jack tells me not to question it so I don’t.
In the beginning, I used to torture myself withwhy’s. Why did this happen? Why did everyone take the Injection? Why did the supposed miracle cure backfire, leaving most of the population little more than ravenous monsters? Why now?
Whyme?
But now all I think is: Why worry? Why wonder? I know firsthand it doesn’t help. All it does is cause heartache and grief. Fuck knows we already have way too much of that in the Grave.
It’ll take a few minutes for Jack to go into the cellar and reach the fuse box. I busy myself with picking clean clothes out from the mounting piles of soiled ones scattered on the floor. Laundry day was three days ago, but I haven’t gone to the community center where we’re encourage to share washers—and socialize—in two weeks. Eventually I’ll run out of fresh clothes—plus those that a spritz of perfume can’t cover up—and I’ll have to face the gossiping women that work there. Rifling through the clothes, I’m determined that won’t be today.
When I find a shirt that doesn’t make my eyes water, I throw it onto my bed for later, then head into the bathroom.
The power isn’t on yet. That’s nothing new. Sometimes Jack has an early meeting, or someone in the Grave needs him… theyalwaysneed him, and he’s always on duty. Oh, well. I’ve gotten used to taking showers in the dark. It doesn’t really bother me anymore. It’s only Jack’s concern that I might fall and hurt myself that keeps me from always leaving the lights off.
As long as the bathroom mirror remains hanging over the sink, I’ll take a hundred showers in the dark if it means I can avoid my reflection.
There are no mirrors in the bedroom. Once they let me out of St. Matthew’s, I took one look at the wall mirror upstairs and punched the glass. After that I smashed every mirror I could find except for the bathroom; and that was only because I was bleeding too much to work up the energy to take on that one. Jack didn’t say a word about my breakdown, not even when he had to bandage my hand up himself. He spent three hours picking shards of glass out of my hand, three hours when I’m sure he was needed elsewhere, and never asked me why. In return, I never explained why I lost control like that. I still think it’s obvious.
How can I stand to look in the mirror when all I see is Hallie staring back?