Page 4 of Calico Descending

“On the contrary. You passed with flying colors.”

“What? How the hell do you determine compatibility after what just happened?”

Her brows wing up with the slight cock of her head. “He didn’t kill you.”

Chapter 3

Four years ago

Intense heat warms my face, and the smoky scent of burnt wood fills my nose. I squint my eyes open against beams of sunlight pouring in from the window, and lift a hand to shield my face. Still heavy with sleep, I raise my head and find Bryani clutching me, while she sleeps beside me. As flashes of the night before filter into the dark haze, my heart pounds a heavy thud of anguish. Dread sinks to the pit of my stomach, and for one moment, I hear the sound of my mother’s scream reverberate through my skull.

My muscles tighten as I gasp. Momma.

I glance up toward the window above me and listen for the clicks and growls of the Ragers, but all I hear is the deceptive happy chirping of birds. There’s a need for me to stay right here with Bryani, but staying anywhere too long is dangerous. We also need food and water.

It’s better to travel at night, when it’s cooler, but that’s also when the Rager’s are most active. The day is when they seem to move slower, their bodies just as prone to the heat as ours.

With a light shake to her arm, I wake Bryani.

Her brows pinch to a frown, just before her eyes shoot open, and she jolts upright. “Momma!” As though momentarily disoriented, she looks around.

There’s an emptiness on the air, a thick, suffocating cloud of anguish and fear that we’re forced to breathe in this morning. My sister pushes to her feet, and stumbles through the building, calling out for our mother, like a lost little lamb. Denial, I’ll bet. If she really wants to know what happened, all she has to do is look out the window at whatever remains.

I gather up our packs, which hold minimal supplies--an empty canteen, four sticks of jerky that won’t last beyond tomorrow, and a knife. Ignoring my sister’s crying, I roll up the blankets and stuff them into the packs, before handing one off to Bryani.

“You don’t even care that she’s gone?”

“I do care. But we need food and water soon, or we’ll be dead, too.”

“I’d rather die a thousand times from dehydration than go out there again with the monsters!”

“They’re gone, Bryani. We can head west. Maybe we’ll hit another hive before nightfall.”

“You don’t care! If you did … you’d at least try to bury her!”

“Bury what!” My anger snaps before I can reel it in. I spent the entire night on a razor’s edge, waiting to crack and break down, and here it’s my sister who’s finally prodded my rage. “They probably took her bones!”

Tears stream down her cheeks, and she drops her gaze from mine, accepting her bag with the same apathy that she’s undoubtedly accepting her circumstances.

“Save your tears. You’ll need the fluids when the sun is at its hottest.” I don’t want to be cold to her, but my mother’s death made me the unfortunate shepherd of my sister, and I refuse to fail her. Pausing a moment, I do my best to remember life at ten years old, the innocence and naivete of such an age, but four hard years of surviving has turned my heart far too stony to empathize with her. Still, I will myself to be softer. We both lost a mother, after all. “We’ll see what’s left and bury her.”

Offering a tearful nod, she wipes her wet cheeks and slides her arms through the shoulder straps of her pack. Taking her hand, I lead her toward the door and set my palm on the knob, pausing to catch my breath. Whatever lies on the other side is what’s meant to be, and I can’t go back and change anything.

I couldn’t stop her.

The door is heavier than before, and my arm nearly buckles under the weight of it as I push it open onto dust carrying on the wind. One quick sweep shows no signs of Ragers, and I pad quietly along the side of the building, until I reach what was once the main road through Palm Springs.

About twenty yards away lies a carcass, ravaged to the point where I can only identify small patches of skin and flesh over the bones of it. Auburn waves of her hair, matted with dirt and blood, flutter with the breeze. Air hitches in my lungs, each breath sawing in and out of my dry throat, as the two of us approach it. Bryani whines behind me, tugging back on where I clutch her hand, like she can’t bring herself to get closer.

I don’t force her, and let her go, but I keep on. With a sob knocking at my chest, I allow my feet to carry me closer, until I’m standing over what’s left of my mother. Beside her mutilated arm lies a broken string of beads--the bracelet Bryani made her a year ago.

Before I can stop it, my knees hit the dirt, palms flat in front of me, while the acid burn of bile pours from my mouth and splashes onto the ground. My stomach pulses with the threat of more, in spite of my head telling me to stop. Another round shoots up into my sinuses, and I heave, as it exits my body. A cold and clammy sensation settles over me, and both my chest and stomach feel hollow. As empty as my heart.

Breathing hard through my nose, I push up and resign myself to the task of burying her.

Glancing around the rubble and ash of buildings that surround us, my sights land on the broken half of a fallen street sign. I hustle across the faded lines of what used to be a road to retrieve it, and tap it along the ground, searching for soft sand, until I find one in a small patch just outside of the halo of my mother’s blood.

The metal bites into my hands, while I dig away at the dirt, but an hour later, I’ve managed a mostly shallow grave. Blood coats my palms where cuts and blisters burn from the dusting of sand and grit there.

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