Page 9 of Genesis
“Yeah. Where’s Zan?” Andi asked.
My heart reminded me it was dead. “Uh, Cadoc is with me.” I turned around to find him.
Gone. My pack and Amelia’s pack were sitting there with a few extra guns, but Cadoc was gone. The dead heart in my chest felt weird. Itfelt. Now that I was safe with my crew, Cadoc knew he couldn’t be the one to protect me like Zan wanted. He leftbecause he couldn’t bear to be around me. I couldn’t stand being near him either, so I didn’t know why my heart was racing.
“Zan?” Andi asked again.
Still looking at the spot Cadoc had knelt, I said, “Dead. My sister, too. And my dad.”
All gone. Just like Cadoc now.
“Shit,” Sully cursed. “Fuck, man. I’m so sorry.”
Sympathy would kill me, so I wiped my nose and looked at Sully. “You have somewhere safe to stay?”
“The bombings died off a week ago. No planes left. They snuffed each other out and now it’s just a bunch of smaller rebel groups and outlaws in the grey area,” Sully said. “But there are a few bigger communities. Red River is down by that old chemical plant.”
“Yeah, we saw that one. You staying there?” I asked them, trying not to think of Zan. And Cadoc.
Andi shook her head. “We were going to stay in Pike Valley, down by the end of the river, but… we’ve been staying in Genesis. Used to be Branshaw. Some guy named Dante is running it, and he seems alright so far.” Andi squeezed my arm, and I refused to look at her. “Come on. It’s safe. You can… feel shit in safety.”
“Genesis!” I shouted to the forest, hoping Cadoc would hear it.
The rest of the crew took bikes back to Genesis to warn them they were bringing someone new, but Sully stayed back to walk with me. He left his bike leaning against a tree and said we’d come back for it later, and that my old bike was still in the shed we’d left it in.
“So, the wars are over here?” I asked. “We’ve been around, but we haven’t… we got injured. We’ve been kinda out of it.”
“Heavy bombs and foot soldiers about a week, week and a half ago, but they dwindled down.”
“Yeah, we were on the cliffs by Synner’s Lake when a bunch of bombs got dropped.”
Sully offered me a joint, and I sparked it up in hopes it’d shut me down or make me feel something other than anger and despair. “Yeah, after that, a few planes got shot down, and then… I dunno, things got quiet. Each community kind of guards the perimeter of the grey area, and there are a ton of smaller groups, well-armed and dangerous, keeping the military out of here. But to be honest, no one is really trying to get to us yet. We’re mostly just fighting with each other.” He took the joint from me. “Where have you been?”
“My dad had us in a bunker by the lake. But I had to get my sister out of there.” Would she still be alive if we’d stayed? “Anyway, it looked like that area got bombed, and then… Amelia… Amelia got shot straight through the head by a stray bullet.” I coughed to hide my cry. “She’s gone, man. Everyone is fucking gone.”
“I’m sorry.” Sully handed the joint to me. “What happened to Zan?”
He killed my dad and lost his life in the process. Stabbed my dad straight in the heart, but didn’t back away quickly enough. A knife slipped through his ribs like butter, deflating his lung and bleeding him out. Cadoc had gotten there and caught him before his body fully hit the ground, and I’d been a step behind him.
“You said you were going to tell Zade! You said you’d wait for us!”Cadoc cried over his dying body.“You said you’d wait!”
And if Cadoc had figured out that Zan wasn’t with me just one minute sooner, he’d still be here today. He planned that murder with Zan, and the two of them were going to do it together, but he made Zan ask me first. According to Cadoc, Zan wanted to ask me alone, and that’s the only reason he’d given Cadoc the slip. Cadoc was a pushy, possessive asshole, sohe’d followed behind, and when he saw me, his eyes widened in shock.
“Where’s Zan? Where the fuck is Zan, Zade?”
That’s when I knew something was seriously wrong. Cadoc had always been nonchalant and casually light-hearted despite his upbringing, and the panic on his face and anguish in his eyes sparked all my senses into overdrive. We ran. We ran to the cliffs.
We were too late.
“My dad killed him.” I inhaled the weed, waiting for it to lighten my mood. “And we were too late to save him. Cadoc… Cadoc was too late.” Tears dripped down my cheeks, and I let them fall unbothered.
Sully didn’t comment on that, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. This silence felt different from Cadoc’s silence, and no matter how many times I looked behind me, he was never there.
Would I ever see him again?
Was he killing himself right now?
Should I be saving him after he let Zan die?
