Page 44 of Hunted By Fae
“You’re alive.” My voice is a breath, is a whisper, a weeping sound; chased by the heavy thuds of my steps as I stagger for her. “You’re alive.”
I’m on her in a heartbeat.
Tesni grunts under the sudden siege of my arms sweeping her into me. The clamminess of her cheek is flat against mine, her frail figure a twig in my hold, and the blood all over me is quick to stick to her.
Hungry, weak, sick, she rasps at my ear, “Is that your blood or mine?”
NINE
TESNI
Tealight candles are all around me.
The little flames do their best to pierce through the darkness swallowing this basketball court, turned quarantine, turned graveyard; and the heat of the flames, however small, burns through the wax quickly.
The last of the LED lanterns died a few hours ago, and with no power to recharge them, candles are our only option.
Bee is constantly lighting more.
Almost every time I find her with my cloudy gaze, she is lighting more and more of them.
But right now, she organises her latest loot on the bed next to mine, her bed for those few moments she manages to find some sleep.
Mostly, she uses it as a table, like she does now.
Her loots don’t bring much back to this place of the dead. But since she goes alone out there, in the blackout, with a single torch and no weapon beyond a kitchen knife, she can’t venture too far.
I hate that I can’t go with her.
I hate that I have no choice but to let her go.
Without the tins of tuna and refried beans and canned peeled tomatoes that she spreads out over the plastic-wrapped mattress, we’ll starve.
The last of us still breathing, that is.
I faintly remember Bee dragging me in here.
It’s a murky memory, edged with hallucinations, like my dad, dead on one of the sickbeds, and my mum sweeping a bloody mop over the floors.
I knew it wasn’t real when I saw it. But all the logic in the world can’t soothe a racing heart.
Through those hallucinations, I saw the sheer number of sick. Every bed was taken, but two.
I took one.
Ramona took the other.
I don’t remember much after that.
So, now, to see all beds empty but our five is such a harrowing truth staring us in the face, that each one of us is so fucking lucky to be alive, but that we are alive in a graveyard.
We hide from that ugly truth.
All the unoccupied beds are pushed aside to one end of the court. Only five are huddled by the other doors, the exit to the carpark if we need to make a quick escape.
Just five of us, the survivors still standing, still breathing. Me, Emily, Ramona, Ruby, and Bee.
Survivors of the black plague—but still so sick.
