The heat from the fire nipped at every hair along my body as the moon ticked across the starless sky like the second hand on an analog clock, consistently gnawing at the little time we had like termites. My gaze was enraptured by the flames that waltzed along the long-dead but dry wood that Anna and I had managed to find scattered around the desolate city, but out of my peripheral vision, I saw Anna staring just as intently as I was at the fire. I was still alert for out of place sounds that would warn of potential threats – or worse, Infected – even if the snapping and clicking of the wood would cover most of it anyway.
Anna needed to be alive, and I would make sure she would be when we got to the destination.
Broken and shattered buildings had given into the wear and tear of the malicious weather that accosted the nation once the outbreak, well, broke out, and offered Anna and I sufficient cover to rest and keep the light from our fire contained, but also restricted our access to the road and, in turn, the exit of the city. Concrete dust covered the city like a dirty cotton blanket, making breathing even more dangerous than it already was, and caused a horrid irritation of the eyes at times. Wooden and metal spears stuck out at odd angles, providing a sense of protection while simultaneously giving an aura of risk if you tripped or even scraped the objects, like underwater mines in diving zones. There was only one true opening that a humanoid shape could comfortably and quickly fit through, located across from me on the opposite side of the fire. Cars littered the road that it opened up to near and far, dotting out into the disgustingly gray sky, implanting a sense of imminent doom into my heart.
Past the doom and the fire and the threat of skewering myself on pretty much anything in the near proximity, I noticed Anna shivering slightly, like an agitation had settled into her, and I wondered if she was too far from the fire. Slowly, without looking at her, I extended a hand to attempt to guide her closer to the fire. Within a second, however, a rusty blade was pressed to my throat, just barely grazing the hair that had been nipped at just a few minutes before by something that was as inanimate as Anna had seemed.
"Now where in the world did you get that?" I asked, honestly curious but also deathly afraid of whatever the knife had crawling on it. What can I say? FEMA had been slacking on handing out tetanus shots since the outbreak, especially to people who didn't matter. People like me, for example.
"Don't touch me." Her eyes were cold, a sharp contrast to the heat that had encompassed me just moments earlier, and pulled into slits so thin, the rusty switchblade she held wouldn't be able to get through.
"I was just trying to get you to get closer to the fire." My hand dropped to the ground, seeing as there was no way I would risk having an eighteen year-old plunge a sharp object into my jugular.
"Does it look like I need to be closer to the fire?" The knife teased my skin dangerously.
Slowly, I realized that the knife was pressed against my throat at an angle, roughly 130 degrees against the front of my trachea. Her arm was bent straight out, and if we were in any other situation, I would've assumed that she was extending her hand for a dance. "You were shivering, so I would assume so." Keep the conversation going as per normal as you piece together how to do this.
"So don't assume, idiot." As the last of her venomous syllables graced my ears, I snapped my hand up to her wrist, bent it forward, away from me, slid the point of my elbow into the crook of hers and pressed down, effectively bringing her torso into the backpack that sat between us and knocking the knife out of her hand. I quickly took up the blade and switched it closed, releasing her wrist as I did so.
"I'll keep that in mind, idiot." A grunt and a muffled growl was my only answer as Anna righted herself, this time bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around herself instead of sitting Indian-style.
"Whatever," she growled, returning her gaze to the slowly dying fire.
I sighed and put the switchblade on the backpack. A peace offering for the one without peace. I kept my eyes on her to see what she would do, and when she completely ignored my movement, I sighed again. "Have you ever heard of Charles Dickens?" If we were going to travel this far, we had to get to know each other. There was no way I could keep a complete stranger alive. I needed to know how she would react, I needed to know how she fought, how she thought, or else she would die under my hand. I can't work with something I don't know.
"He was an author or something, right?" She still sounded disinterested, but I could hear a hint of curiosity leaning its head towards me.
"He was an English writer of the 1800's. A Tale of Two Cities is one of his works. He's one of my favorite writers." Silence was my only reply. "You like to read, right?" Nothing still. "Come on, I'm trying to open up a conversation."
"Trying and failing." I rolled my eyes and lay down. My eyes met the rough gray texture of the concrete ceiling above. Shadows were splayed across it, dancing in tune with the fire like they were performing some complex waltz. I watched them while listening for out of place noises.
Anna and I had been at this for a week now, and we were only halfway to our destination. I was supposed to take Anna to some kind of facility on the east coast, up in Old New York, where they would then find out how her immunity worked. At first, I was all for it. A vaccine to the virus would mean we were one step closer to a cure. Having a cure means being one step closer to having my family back.
"I can't do this." I said suddenly, scaring myself and Anna both.
"Do what?" Her eyes were wide but still glued to the fire.
"I can't take you to these people. Not if you're going to act like you're too good for me. You can take yourself if you're going to be that way." I stood and grabbed my backpack, knocking the knife off as I put it on my shoulders. "If you want to be a loner, be my guest." I completely ignored her mumblings and stutters and made my way to the only opening in our makeshift concrete cocoon.
I was almost halfway through the "door" when a sharp, high-pitched voice echoed into my ears.
"Please don't!" I stopped and gulped, the halfway fresh air hitting my nose and clearing my head. "I…" when the pause dragged on for about a minute, I began walking again. "Elsa! You can't leave! I don't know what I'll do if you leave!" Tears sprang to my eyes and I knew they weren't from the never-ceasing dust.
"Go to Old New York, I suppose." My voice cracked roughly and I scorned my emotions from being so clear to her.
"You don't want that," her voice was now deep with sobs that weren't quite there. "I don't want that, and you don't want that. So please just stay. I'll tell you whatever you want to know." I didn't want to turn and face the young woman or see her tears or let her break my walls, but when she again muttered 'please' in such a soft, vulnerable tone, every stronghold I had built were immediately destroyed into dust.
"Fine," I turned and returned to my spot, again laying my backpack between us. I prodded the fire with my foot to get it going again before turning to Anna. "Look at me. A conversation is a process between two people who are performing active listening skills." At first, she seemed confused, but she faced me either way. "What's your last name?"
"Radcliffe," she answered. Her eyes were steely and cold.
"Where are you from?"
"Texas."
"Where in Texas are you from?"
"Dallas."
"How'd you get mixed up with Kristoff and them?"
Her shoulders tensed and I realized I hit a sore subject. "They found me after a small group of mine got ambushed by some Infected. I was the only who survived."
"Who were you with?"
"A friend of mine."
"Anna, tell me who."
"My friend Hans."
"Friend?"
"Friend."
"Not boyfriend?" I knew I was getting a little too personal, but I didn't care. I needed to know. Why, I don't know, but I just needed to know.
"No, Hans wasn't my boyfriend." She cringed and her shoulders twitched up towards her ears. "Well, he was at one point, but after everything hit the fan, we decided it was better to not have romantic affiliations with anyone." Her eyes fell to the ground, and I knew it wasn't something that they had both agreed on.
"Did you love him?" Why was I asking so many personal questions? Was I not raised any better than that?
"No," she answered immediately. She twitched again. "Maybe?" Her head shook and a frown pulled at her mouth. "Yes. No." A few more moments of indecision passed before I raised a hand to stop her.
"Yes. You loved him. It wasn't that hard of a question." I scowled before turning away. So what if she loves him? Infected probably eat the little shit for dinner anyway. I stopped myself and took a moment to properly breathe. I apologized to her before facing her again. "What happened to him?"
She scoffed and turned away. "What do you think?"
"Oh," I whispered. "I'm sorry." Anna simply ignored me.
A silence swallowed us as the fire finally turned into bright embers. I tried to think of something, anything, that would cure the palpable awkwardness and pressurized silence, but my mind could think of nothing.
"Would you like to hear a story to pass the time?" An audible huff filled our makeshift cave and I could tell that I was getting nowhere, but with nothing left to lose, why not? "Okay then," I muttered cheerfully. "Once upon a time –"
"Oh hell, no one of these; what are you gonna recite? Little Red Riding Hood? Goldilocks and the Three Bears?"
"Oh, do be quiet. I'm not a Brother Grimm," I chided, waving a hand at her lightly. Again, she sighed. "Once upon a time, there was a young child named Elena. She didn't grow up in too good of a home. Her mom and dad were actually kind of assholes."
"This is a crappy story," Anna groaned as she prodded the fire with the handmade bow she'd had since I met her.
"Shut up and maybe it'll get better." I glared at the side of her head and resisted the urge to flick it. She quieted herself before I could do anything else however. "Okay. Again then. Let's see… her parents were assholes… ah, yeah. Day after day, they'd find something or another to blame Elena for. Her dad would get drunk, her mom would get pissed about her dad getting drunk, then her dad would hit her mom because she was pissed, then her mom and her dad would hit Elena because they were pissed at each other, and it was just this big huge fiasco and crap fest." Her head bent towards me, though her eyes were still focused on the embers, and I knew that while I was gaining her attention, there was still a chance that I'd lose it forever. "So one day, Elena got fed up with all of it, so she packed a bag and she left."
"Where did she go?" There it is. There's the attention I needed.
"Into the woods," I answered plainly, making complete eye contact with her. "But you see these woods were different from any others. They were filled with enormous trees, the biggest in the entire world, bigger than the redwoods that used to be in California." Her mouth fell open into a shocked 'o'. "And there were amazing creatures. Like tortoises that burrowed in the ground at night and flew in the sky at day, or tigers that were the color of the sun with stripes like the moon. She fled to the forest, and she was amazed." Anna turned and faced me, her legs crossed Indian-style and her elbows on her knees. "She knew that if she could stay there, in that forest, that she would be safe and happy indefinitely." Anna leaned closer to me, intrigued by the story I was making up as I went.
I couldn't think of anything else though, not with that incessant clicking in my ears.
"Elsa? What happened to the little—" I slammed my hand over her mouth and listened closely, not that it was necessary, since it was growing louder and louder. Anna's eyes grew wider and wider as she heard it too. I slowly reached for my pistol and pushed Anna towards a part of the shelter where one could hide and be surrounded by metal and wooden pikes. A crackling and rumbling filled my ears, along with the clicking of the Infected.
Everything went by so fast after Anna situated herself in the cove. I honestly can't remember a single minute of it all. A flash of gray, numerous gunshots, the whizzing of my blades, shrill shrieking, and raucous yelling of an inhuman were the only thing that filled my ears before the cave was once more quiet, the Infected leaving as quickly as it entered. The only sound afterwards was the sound of my heaving breaths and a soft moaning. Who's moaning? Is it me? No, the moaning is off from my own breathing. A moment of thought before it clicked. "Anna!" I turned and shuddered at the sight that met my eyes.
Anna sat on her knees, a small metal pole sticking crudely out of her abdomen. It was dark with blood, and bits of muscle and organ stuck to it in some places. Her clothes clung to the metal spike as if they were attempting to push it back through the whole in which it came. "Anna! Anna," I could do nothing but scream her name as I ran to her, maneuvering around the other poles. "No, no, no, no, no. You're not… you're not… you're okay. You're okay!"
A soft hand was placed against my cheek. It was warm, but clammy, cold, but soothing. "Elsa," she groaned, her stomach twitching around the pole.
"Stop-Stop talking, Anna, shut up. You're going to hurt yourself worse."
"No, Elsa. Just let me." Her hand went to my neck and pulled me to her quickly paling face. She pressed our foreheads together, and tears picked at my eyelids. "I'm sorry I've been such a bitch to you. You don't deserve it, not after everything you went through for me."
"No, no, Anna, it was my pleasure, really. I enjoyed the time we spent together." She closed her eyes. I couldn't bear to do the same. "I'm sorry I failed you, Anna. I'm so sorry I failed." I placed both of my hands on her cheeks and held her as close as possible.
"You didn't, you didn't." I could hear her slipping away from me, even though she was still touching me. "Trust me, Elsa." The rest of her sentence was interrupted by a fit of coughing, which was accompanied by globs of blood. I caressed her face and neck in my hands, pressing my body as close to hers as I could without skewering myself on the same sharp pole. Once she was done, she continued. "You didn't fail me, you never did. But Elsa," she opened her eyes and I was drowning in her teal irises. "Can you tell me the end of the story?" Anna's voice was growing weaker and weaker, and this time the tears fell without hindrance.
"The story about the little girl?" She nodded and I had no choice but to comply.
"Did she live happy indefinitely?" Her eyes closed again and the lack of blazing blue eyes bore a hole inside of my chest the size of Manhattan.
"Um," I again fought the tears, even though they were already there. "Well one day, she met one of those tigers I mentioned before."
"The ones that were the sun," she added, and I smiled. She was still alive. For now at least.
"Yeah, Anna, the ones that were the sun. And the tiger was nice, so nice to her, that she befriended him, since she was lonely in the forest. Her and the tiger, whom she named Amber, they ventured the forest together, laughing and playing, hopping from Burrowing Turtle shell to Burrowing Turtle and playing among the long-tailed Color Squirrels, and having the time of their lives with each other."
Her breathing became weaker, as did her grip.
"One day, Elena tripped and fell from one the Burrowing Turtles while they were flying. In a frenzy to protect her, Amber jumped and pushed her into a tree hammock."
"What happened to Amber?"
"She fell and hurt her leg." I angled myself just right so that I could tuck my side softly into hers. Her head fell on my shoulder and a sharp exhale left her mouth. "But she got better after a while, and they quickly returned to playing with the turtles and squirrels and tigers."
Anna's breathing was shallow enough I had to work to focus on its irregular puffs.
"Did they live happily ever after?" she asked, her voice raspy and soft-spoken.
I knew she didn't have much time left. I could feel it where our skin touched. I could hear it in the rumbling of what was left of her voice.
"Indefinitely," I whispered into her ear. "Just like you. You're gonna go to that forest."
"…trees bigger than redwoods…" Her face was growing cold. Her whole body was growing cold actually. And the colder her body grew, the larger the hole in my heart got.
"Yeah, honey, trees bigger than redwoods. And you're going to play among the Burrowing Turtles and the Sun Tigers and the…?"
"… Color Squirrels," she whispered. Our hands found each other between our bodies. I squeezed her fingers, trying to warm them as if it would change her fate.
"And you're going to live there." Her head fell to my shoulder, the full weight of it shocking my. My shoulder shook with silent sobs, though I tried to keep it still. Tears freely fell from my eyes, and my mouth was turned down in a crude way. I still heard her breaths, however miniscule and weak they were. "And you're going to play with the tiger and turtles and squirrels." Her grip loosened, yet puffs still tickled the hairs in my ears. "And you'll be happy indefinitely." The breaths stopped. Her grip was nonexistent. She was slack against me and my own body was cold. "Aren't you?" I sobbed. "You must be. Heaven is a great place, isn't it?" My hand came to her cheek and pressed it further into my shoulder. "Maybe I'll go there, to Heaven. Maybe God will have mercy on me." I reached down with my right hand, searching for my pistol. Ejecting the magazine and noticing there was one more bullet exactly, I reloaded it and put it in the chamber. "He must know that anywhere is better than here though. He knows everything right?" My hand didn't shake, my finger didn't hesitate, and I had no regrets.
The forest is tall, and the trees are most definitely bigger than any others on the earth. There are more animals than anyone can count, and each is different from one another is such grand ways. Anna's smile glows brighter than any of the Sun Tigers, and together we fly higher than the strongest Burrowing Turtles can even dream to reach. The long-tailed Color Squirrels fill the trees with a plethora of breathtaking colors, ones that were on earth and ones that weren't. It's always day, but only when Anna wants it to be.
Every day I spend with her is one that I spend with a whole and beating heart.
Every day I spend with her is one that I spend with no pain and no tears.
Every day I spend with her is one that I spend in love.
And we are happy.
Indefinitely so.