That morning, Quinn knocked twice on that bedrooms' door, and Brittany took a moment to answer with a tap. As I had promised, I would follow along, but keeping my distance. I wanted to be with her, talk to her, sleep with her, kiss her. I wanted all of that, but I couldn't because I was more than aware of the gravity of the situation. Reapers were sick people, but they were sick people turned into cannibalistic monsters. I felt like crap about it. But as much as I loved Brittany, I didn't want to meet the same fate. I didn't have Romeo and Juliet-style romantic visions. At most, we'd be like Rose and Jack, fighting for each other as far as possible. Yeah, Rose and Jack was more our thing.
I followed as Quinn finally unlocked the door with breakfast for Brittany. No one else had food in their stomachs. Only Brittany would have that right, and Tina because she was pregnant. I stood at the door watching everything.
"Good morning my love." I smiled at my girlfriend. "Are you feeling better?"
"I think I have a hellish flu again." Brittany smiled a little wanly. "The storm got me hard..." She took one of the cookies, but couldn't manage to eat it. "This light is too strong, my eyes hurt."
I didn't want to cry in front of Brittany. I really didn't want to, but I couldn't contain myself because everything screamed the final outcome.
"What is it, San?" She said sweetly.
"Nothing, my love. It's just that I love you too much and I'm worried."
I felt someone coming up from behind. I turned my face and my peripheral vision accused Sam and Mike. They weren't there to see Brittany. They were there to watch over me.
"Shall we check the bandage?" Quinn said gently. She had on surgical gloves and a cloth over her face. I could see that Quinn tried to be cautious and, at the same time, sensitive. She took the bandage off the wounds. I saw the exact moment when she made a disappointed expression. She put Brittany's bandage back on without changing it. "It's all right, you must have the flu anyway. You need to rest, Britt."
Quinn left the room as quickly as she could while I felt Mike holding me away from that door. Quinn discarded her gloves and put them straight in the trash and locked the door. Then she cleaned herself with alcohol.
"What happened? Why didn't you change the bandage?" I demanded an explanation while trying to free myself from Mike's arms.
"The scratch is infected, Santana. Even though I give Brittany all the antibiotics we have left, even though we've treated her wound with every antiseptic we have available, the wound is heavily infected and won't heal. I'm sorry, San." Then she looked at Mike. "We need to make some decisions now."
"Don't talk like Brittany is already dead!" I wanted to hit Quinn, but Mike thankfully held me back. "You're a bitch, a horrible bitch. You're a frustrated bitch who could never bear to see other people's happiness because you're a miserable jealous bitch. Fuck you! Brittany is not dead yet. Fuck you!"
"She's not dead, Santana. She is transforming!" Quinn yelled back. "The infection won't kill her. But Brittany will kill us all as soon as the infection takes over her brain."
I wanted to fight Quinn so bad. I wanted to rip her head off her neck not because Quinn was wrong, but because she was absolutely right. Then, there was a knock on the door to the room Brittany was locked in. We stopped the fight. I noticed that the others in the house were approaching, but afraid. Then Quinn knocked twice on the door, and Brittany answered with a really loud one. Quinn cautiously unlocked the door and we found Brittany standing in the middle of the room.
"My headache is really bad and you guys are screaming like crazy." Brittany said with a tearful face, and my first instinct was to want to hug her, but Mike was still holding me back. "I take it this isn't just the flu, is it?"
"No, Brittany, it's not the flu." Quinn said in a mild voice, which was surprising since the second before, she had been screaming in my face.
"I can't think very well, but I think Santana needs to get out of here. I love you more than my own life, that's why you need to leave now. I don't want you to see this."
"But Brittany!"
"I love you, Santana. You are the love of my life and I am the love of yours. We were going to get married, but now it's not going to happen anymore. I'm very sorry." Brittany paused and grimaced, as if the headache was really bothering her. "At least we found each other and lived together until death do us part. Not many people can say the same."
"Brittany, please… don't give up!"
"It's too late, Sanny. I'm feeling so bad, this thing really hurts. I'm so sorry that I need to die and you need to live. They need you more than you realize."
"I'm sorry, Britt. I'm so sorry." I was in tears. "I love you so much… I'm sorry!"
"I don't want to turn that thing, so Mike needs to fix it, because I can't do it myslef."
"Why me, Britt?" Mike said still holding me.
"Because it's all your fault." Brittany said it straight and dry to the point where it hurt more than a slap in the face. "Go away now, Santana. I want you to keep the promise you made to your mother." When no one moved, Brittany let out a scream. "NOW!"
Sam and Quinn pushed us away, and I saw the others start to break camp. It was a very strange situation, because they avoided looking directly at me at the same time that I know they watched my every gesture. Mike took the road map and showed it to Quinn. He gave her some instructions, which honestly I didn't care to pay attention to. I kept looking at the stairs, tempted to go up to the second floor and say things to Brittany. I never shied away from saying I loved her, and at that moment, my regret was that I hadn't said it more often.
Brittany wasn't dead yet, but at the same time she was, and I couldn't reason about it. About 15 minutes later, I was literally being pushed into the truck along with Quinn, Rachel, Blaine and Tina. I looked at that house before we left. That was literally the grave of the love of my life, and I never got to say goodbye to her... not quite. But is it possible to say goodbye appropriately or emotionally like in the movies?
The people I loved slowly left me. I was never able to say goodbye to my father in Lima. I could never hug my mother at Indian Lake, I could never even kiss my Brittany. At least I was able to say goodbye to Abuela, even though her cremation was that despair due to the first attacks on the island. The bodies were lining up: Joe, Finn, Kurt, Father Hugo. Not to mention those whose fate we didn't know: Carole, Burt, Daniel, Aisha.
"Mike said to wait for him near a town called Norway. There is a lake before the city, and we must stop at some safe spot on that lake and wait." Quinn explained our route as we left that small town.
No one said anything else in 40 minutes of dead silence inside that truck. It felt like crying was only allowed for me. And all I could do was cry, just like Rachel and Carole had cried for Finn. Open loud ugly cry. Sometimes I felt Rachel's hand running down my back, because she was in the backseat with me, and because Blaine looked too afraid to touch me. But there was no consolation... only time could do that. Brittany was my love. I lost her.
…
Half an hour after Quinn parked the truck by the lake, we saw Sam and Mike's truck approaching. Mike got out of the car and began frantically kicking the truck's tire. Then he ran to the edge of the lake and screamed. If my reaction to Brittany's grief was pure sadness, his was pure anger. I started crying again and approached my friend.
"It's done." Mike said with tears streaming down his face. "I'm done with this shit."
"What she said… it wasn't your fault. It was mine. I didn't have enough balls to stay in the bunker and to make her stay with me. I should have let you and Tina go and make everybody else to stay, as was your plan all along. But now, all we have left is to move on and find the fucking island."
"What if we don't find the island? Or what if she doesn't turn out as we'd hoped?"
"Too late to have doubts."
…
After six hours of travel with nothing new to see, we crossed the border. In the old days, crossing the border meant stopping at a police and customs office, checking documentation and all that stuff in case someone wanted to enter any country legally. In the apocalypse, entering the first Canadian city was like entering any other. There were no barriers, there was nothing. There were barely any people, because yes, there was a small community in the town of Woodstook, which surrounded a peninsula made by the Saint John River. These people forced us to drive around 50km to catch a second bridge and continue on our way.
Mike stopped at a small village along the highway. There was nothing out of the ordinary there, and it looked a lot like the dozens of highway villas we had in America. We pulled up right behind and I swallowed my depression and grief for five minutes to do my job. The house was clean, and what followed was routine. Tina served our meal of the day. I didn't feel like eating, but I chewed that goo anyway, or I'd be too weak. I just sat on a dirty couch and was quiet, watching the world go by.
"We are not going to reach the coast with the fuel we have." Mike said clearly annoyed. "We have a maximum of 200km more to run with this tank."
"How far are we from the coast?" Quinn asked.
"About 280km."
"We'll have to walk the rest of the way. That simple. Unless we find a working gas station along the way." I said no emotions.
"It's not that simple, Santana. Blaine is having trouble walking and Tina is pregnant." Mike objected.
"Pregnancy is not an illness, Mike." I wanted to add that the fact that Blaine was limping was his fault. But I held back. Brittany had already said that, and it was obvious that the last moments between them were very strong and throwing those facts in Mike's face would not help at all. Sometimes I surprised myself with my own rationality. "You help Blaine with whatever it takes."
"What?"
"Yes, Mike. You help Blaine." I said more emphatically and I realized that the others were apprehensive.
"What if we got bicycles?" Blaine suggested, interrupting the beginning of a possible fight.
"It would be easy if we were in Netherlands." Rachel sighed. "During all that time, I saw very few bicycles in the houses."
"Blaine's idea isn't a bad one. We saw few bikes because we weren't looking for them." Mike was mildly excited. "We can scour this village for bikes tomorrow morning and put them in the trucks."
It was dark outside, but the weather was clear, hence the night chill. It was time for absolute silence. Rachel, Quinn, Sam and Blaine started to talk in sign language, but I made a point of not paying attention to what they were saying. Tina and Mike went into one of the bedrooms and closed the door. Rachel walked over and sat on the edge of the sofa where I was settling down to sleep.
"Need something?" She said in sign language.
"No." I replied. "I just want to be alone."
"This is impossible."
"Just stop asking if I'm okay. I am not!"
I stared at Rachel at that moment because I remembered our conversation, when she said that she dreams of a thousand and one ways to save Finn. Will I also be dreaming of a thousand and one ways to save Brittany? Time would answer yes, that I would have the same kind of longing. But I would also have the same melancholy response every morning that this happened: that we live in the present to build the future, but we can never change the past. It would take some time for me to realize that living in the past was of no use.
…
I didn't participate in the bike searches that morning. I was waiting for my friends to get six of them and a scooter. Meanwhile, Tina stayed with me near the cars. She looked afraid to approach, but at the same time she wanted to tell me something.
"What the fuck do you want, Chang girl?"
"It's… It's…"
"What? Are you stuttering again after all these years?"
"I was never a stutterer, Santana." She took offense for a second. "I was just acting that time."
"You're crazy."
"Anyway, I'm not going to fight you because I know you're in mourning."
"Thank you. Now stop staring me."
"I can't."
"I won't runway, Tina, or do something stupid."
"That's not why."
"So, what?"
"It's about the notebook. Britt's notebook." To my surprise, Tina went to her backpack and took out Brittany's notebook and handed it to me. ""You were pretty out of your mind when we left that house. Everyone was getting their own stuff, and I saw Brittany's backpack on the floor. It was mostly dirty laundry and her canteen inside. It had some stuff you gave her. But it also had her notebook, you know? I left her backpack at that house, but I took her notebook."
I opened Britt's notebook and flipped through a few pages. Brittany had a colorful world in her head. She liked to draw. Tina was a hell of an artist, but Brittany, in a normal world, if she wasn't a dancer, she would have been a comic book writer. The notebook had many illustrations telling passages of our story. She drew the island, moments of our escape, the bunker, and there was even a drawing of two little dolls having sex in a waterfall. I laughed out loud at the comment she placed on the page. "Sanny was hungry that day, and that made me happy".
"Thank you, Tina." I said with tears in my eyes. "That means a lot to me."
"I know. Brittany was my favorite person after Mike. She will be missed."
When the rest of the guys arrived with bikes and the scooter they found around, I put Brittany's notebook in my backpack and got into the truck. I was sad, hurt, in mourning, but there was still a road ahead.