Chapter Four
Knuckles dragged herself onto the sand, coughing and panting. Had she known she would get lost and have to swim a lot longer than thought, she'd have waited until morning instead of leaving in the late afternoon. Nevertheless, she had left in the evening and ended up lost and nearly been eaten by jellyfish, but she was alive and on solid ground once more.
DJ helped her to her feet. He was merely damp rather than soaking- he'd arrived nearly half an hour before. Morgan was similarly damp. This was a bit of a blow of Knuckles' ego, but nothing she couldn't survive.
"Get here all right?" DJ asked. "I lost sight of you a few hours back."
Knuckles nodded, trying not to cough. "Yeah. A bit bedraggled, but I'm alive."
"Good. Let's get looking for these friends of yours, then."
Knuckles nodded and pushed DJ away. She started up the beach, ignoring the cold, focusing only on finding her friends—if they were even in the city and not scattered across the globe like so much chaff—and warning them. What good it would do she didn't know, beyond salving her conscience, but she felt it had to be done.
Knuckles took a deep breath and set to her task.
* * *
The sun was just creeping up over the horizon, seizing the opportunity to shine through a rare chink in the heavy cloud cover.
Levi relished that touch of gold, the slight warmth that made her ache for her homeland. For the mountains and forests, the cliffs and oceans, the sky reaching up forever. For a tiny little home tucked into the roots of a giant cypress, the one place in any reality she ever truly felt secure and safe.
No one else was awake. All were huddled together within tattered, dirty blankets, shivering and snoring. Scrabble was murmuring something about flapjacks. They had found a temporary solace in sleep; one Levi hadn't been able to give herself.
Her old fears had resurfaced, fears of Time, fears of death and darkness. Not physical darkness, but oppressive, heartbreaking emotional darkness. The kind that drives men to madness.
She wrapped her own blanket tighter about her shoulders, being mindful of Griffin's head in her lap. He didn't even stir at her movement, still blissfully unaware of the world as only a sleeping child can be.
Levi smiled to herself, absently stroking Griffin's hair. She sometimes wondered if she was completely mad- she didn't feel like she was any older than sixteen, even though by all rights she should be twenty-something. What business did a teenager have with being a mother? It became even weirder when she looked in the mirror. To anyone outside Never-Land, Griffin could have been her brother, but never her son.
Her child. Those words always brought her thoughts back to a small town in Greece, a tiny rough hut where she had scraped out a living for the better part of a year with only her elder brother for company. Where she had died. Where she had last seen her little girl, the little infant with eyes so blue it was almost unnatural. Her Autumn.
Levi sighed and focused back on Griffin. Autumn was gone- gone for millennia, grown up and died without ever knowing her mother. Levi had a family now, and she shouldn't dwell on the past, no matter how much it hurt.
Griffin's eyes fluttered open and he sat up, yawning and stretching comically. He rubbed his eyes and looked blearily up at Levi.
"Sleep good?" Levi asked. Griffin nodded absently and stood, doing his typical shaking-out-the-grogginess dance, which involved bouncing from one foot to the other, shaking his arms, and bending at the waist in all directions. Then he pushed his hair off his forehead and looked at her inquiringly. "What's for breakfast?"
"No idea. I don't know if there's anything around here to eat."
Griffin's face fell. "But I'm hungry!" he wailed. "I wanna go home!"
Griffin's pint-sized sob fest awoke the rest of the group, most of whom sent the boy and his mother dirty looks before getting about their morning as best they could. Of course, Griffin neither noticed nor cared- he was too preoccupied with his growling stomach and the fact that he was cold.
"What's the yelling about?" Peter asked sleepily, sitting up and running his hands through his ruffled sandy hair. "It's too early to be caterwauling like that."
"But I'm hungry," Griffin pouted, folding his arms and stamping his foot. Levi sighed and stood up.
"Let's see what we can find, then. It'll be an adventure all on its own."
This placated the formerly irascible boy and they headed off down the street hand in hand. A cluster of other children followed them, all eager to get their hands on whatever Levi might find.
Peter shook his head as he watched them go. "Stay in shouting distance," he hollered after them. Levi waved over her shoulder to show she had heard, and then the motley crew disappeared around the corner.
"This is madness," Amanda said irritably from her now permanent position at Dean's right side. "Have you any idea of how to get home, Peter?"
Peter stood, wrapping the jury-rigged blanket slash poncho around his slender frame. "No, I don't. I have an idea, but we need to find some local kids first."
An expression of confusion flickered across Amanda's sharp face. "Whatever for?"
Peter shrugged. "Not sure. We'll find out when we find someone under fifteen or so."
The rest of the kids exchanged looks of confusion and frustration amongst themselves, but said nothing more. They simply picked up their blankets, wrapped them about themselves, and headed off in a pack after Levi and the younger children.
* * *
Knuckles knew she was being mad.
She didn't care.
With every turn, with every empty street, the desperation grew stronger and stronger inside her until she was almost choking on it. All DJ and Morgan could do was follow after her, shaking their heads at her futile search.
"You'll never find your friends," said Morgan. "If they're still alive, they won't be here anyway."
"You don't know that!" Knuckles snapped at her over her shoulder. She was beginning to get rather hysterical. "You don't know anything!" She turned another corner and DJ ran after her, yelling for her to stop.
Morgan didn't follow. She stood alone in sudden silence, clutching her ragged jacket around her thin frame. The snow had stopped, but it was still cold. So cold her hands were aflame with it.
A sudden clatter made her jump. She whirled about. A young boy was running away down the street. Morgan didn't quite know why she ran after him, but she did. Apparently her quarry was unused to sprinting, but she was very well acquainted with it and easily caught him by his collar and the pair skidded to a stomp in the slushy street.
"Who are you?" Morgan demanded. She shook the boy—who was only about twelve--fiercely.
"Scrabble," he said tremulously. "Don't hurt me!"
The name sounded familiar. "You know a girl named Knuckles?"
The boy eyed her with increased suspicion. "Yeah. Australian, blonde, barking mad. Why?"
"Come on."
She hauled him back down the street, around the corner, and down the road. DJ had caught Knuckles and the pair was sprawled on the sidewalk, arguing between heavy breaths.
"Knuckles!" Morgan bellowed, to get the other girl's attention. "Says he knows you." She shoved Scrabble towards the blonde, who jumped up with an expression of complete elation.
"Scrabble! Are you okay? Have you seen the others? Do you know what happened yet?" She spoke so fast DJ and Morgan couldn't understand, but apparently Scrabble did.
"I'm fine. They're about half a mile away, looking for food. We don't know yet," Scrabble said doggedly. "There's about twenty of us. I don't know where the others are."
"Which twenty?"
"Peter, Levi, Griffin, Amanda, Dean, Jasmine, me, Curtis, Nibs, Slightly, Ike, Laura, Mouse, Fox, Pockets, and a few others I don't know."
"Let's go, then," Knuckles said, her elation replaced by iron determination. "There's some things everyone needs to know. You two come as well."
The four trudged off through the slush.
* * *
"I'm hungry," Griffin moaned. "I'm cold. I'm thirsty. I wanna go home!"
Levi clenched her fists. She understood, she really did, but Griffin's wailing combined with her own frustration was grating her nerves. Soon she would be an absolute hag if someone drastic didn't happen.
"Levi!"
Levi jumped, whirled, and her eyes widened. "Knuckles!" She ran down the road towards her friend. Knuckles laughed when Levi nearly knocked her down.
"Where've you been? Who's that? Found a way home? Why have you got ice in your hair?" Levi kept on at about fifty miles a minute. Knuckles giggled and peeled Levi's hands from her arms.
"Calm down."
"Are you all right?"
"For the moment." Suddenly Knuckles' pixy-like features darkened. "I need to talk to Peter."
Peter handed Griffin, who was sniffling still, off to Amanda and stepped out of the cluster of youth. "I'm here," he said, swiftly joining the smaller group. "Who's this, Knuckles?"
"DJ and Morgan," Knuckles said, pointing to each teen in turn. "They saved my bacon. They also know what happened."
Morgan stared with wide eyes at the strangers. In particular the new boy, who was about eighteen and very tall. Poor non-family-male-company-deprived Morgan also found him highly attractive. She flushed darkly when his gaze met hers. Levi sent her a death glare.
"Lovely." Peter smiled darkly. "Why is Central Miami a moonscape, then?" He addressed the question to DJ, who, apart from being older, seemed to have a few more of his wits about him than his sister considering the present company did.
"We don't have a real name for it," DJ said. "We just called it the Plague. Basically almost everyone under fifteen is dead and all the grown-ups panicked. All the big cities are like this; everyone's hiding now. Far as I know Morgan and I are the last. Either the Plague got all the other kids or the hovers got them."
A look of dark understanding settled on Peter's features. His hazel eyes, normally full of laughter, now only reflected the death throes of those children's past innocence. "All?"
"All," DJ said grimly. "Even little kids."
His words sent a jolt through Morgan and she squeezed her eyes shut. Kendell and Janice, her little brother and sister, so pale, their skin paper thin… a dry sob worked its way from her, with a wracking quality that you only hear from someone who has no tears left to cry. DJ automatically wrapped one arm around her rail-thin shoulders.
"What sort of Plague?" asked Levi, suddenly wishing Griffin was with her. She expected DJ to answer, but instead Morgan spoke.
"It starts out like a cold," she said dully, as if it were nothing more exciting than a weather report. "The skin dries out and cracks badly. Then the motor systems shut down, one by one. They're dead within a day when that starts. From start to finish it takes two weeks, and they're extremely contagious even before symptoms start. There's no cure."
A scream tried to work its way out of Levi's throat and a tense, cold feeling settled in her stomach. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to keep from whimpering.
Knuckles bit her lip. She saw the terror reflected in Levi's tortured blue eyes, saw her fear, and knew with a terrible certainty that there was nothing she could do. Nothing, and that more than anything struck her to the core.
"They know the terrain," said Scrabble, until then ignored and unnoticed. "They can help us. We need their help- we won't make it otherwise."
Peter looked at DJ. The two boys exchanged a single glance- one that was unfathomable to the others, but one that seemed to settle an understanding between them.
Peter sighed heavily and surreptitiously grasped Levi's cold hand. "I don't think we'll make it anyway."
* * *
The sun was setting.
Never had that filled Levi with such utter fear, not since her return to Never-Land. It was a deep-seated, animalistic terror that she vaguely thought the ancient people must have felt knowing predators lurked. A sight that would have made them grasp their weapons.
Griffin was curled up in her lap, a ratty blanket wrapped tightly around him. They had finally found some paltry food and he was finally able to rest easy. Levi did not have that luxury.
Peter, sitting beside her, was silent, but she knew he knew that anything he could say would only worsen things. She did not mind his silence, but was intensely grateful for the arm he had wrapped around her. If he hadn't been there with her, she would never have been able to watch the sun vanish.
The others were all curling up in groups, to share body heat and try to stay alive during the long cold night. They hadn't told the others about the Plague yet, which was the only reason that no one else felt the same fear as Levi.
"Do you think we'll be all right?" Levi whispered as the first stars appeared. "Don't lie, Piotr." Her voice dropped further still into a desperate murmur. "Do you think we'll be all right?"
Peter met her eyes. The total defeat there crushed her more than any words ever could have. One glance, and she knew- their chances of living, of getting home, were about as good as their chances of flying to the sun.
He smiled gently, sadly. It was a smile she hadn't seen him wear since the night Jasmine died.
"Maybe."