“Thanks,” I told her after I was done, thinking she would leave again.
“Are you going to quit soon? You’ve been at it all day, and it’s getting dark.” Her voice was quiet and a little uncertain.
“Maybe later. I’ve got a flashlight. I’ll be fine,” I muttered, turning back to the work. I had too much left to do before I could quit today. I’d managed to get all the outer and inner wall supports up. But I still needed to get a roof on it to help protect all the exposed wood from the weather.
After awhile, she went back inside. I ignored the ache in my chest and kept working until it was time to start on the roof. Which was when I realized I needed a ladder, and we didn’t have one anywhere in the village.
I thought about going into town for one. But most of the building supply places would probably be closed for Christmas. So I gave up for the day and crept into the new house where Tarah and I had been reassigned to sleep.
The house was dark and silent. Everyone had already gone to bed, many of them on pallets on the living room floor, turning the place into an obstacle course. I barely managed not to step on anyone on the way over to the couch, where I found a section set up for me near Tarah’s head.
I took off my coat and boots but left everything else on as I eased down onto the couch.
As soon as I laid down with my head near Tarah’s and got comfortable, a soft, familiar hand slipped over onto my shoulder.
I fell asleep holding Tarah’s hand.
The nightmares hit me hard and fast and didn’t take a genius for me to interpret. Everyone in the village had turned into zombies, their skin rotting off them in contagious pieces I couldn’t stand to look at. In my dream I tried to drag Tarah away to safety.
“I can’t leave them,” she whispered.
In the dream, I looked down at her and realized she’d already turned into a zombie too, her once beautiful skin, pale as a moonbeam, now turned a mottled gray with death and decay.
And even then I was tempted to let her touch me, to bite me and turn me into a zombie like her, just so I could stay with her.
Saturday, December 26
Tarah
Hayden woke up with a shout. But I and several others in the house had been awake and watching him long before the noise.
Because he was floating, his body hovering several inches above the couch in the early morning shadows just like that day in the woods when we were kids and I'd learned for the first time that magic was real.
Hayden looked around him then down at himself. I tensed up, worried he would freak out. But he only closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and his body slowly lowered to the couch. As soon as his body made contact with the upholstery, he sat up, swung his legs over the side to the floor, and buried his face in his hands.
I reached for one of those newly blistered hands, wanting to remind him without words that he wasn’t alone. But he pretended not to see the attempt, reaching down to pull on his boots instead. He was probably embarrassed that he had been seen hovering in his sleep.
I touched his shoulder. He slid out from beneath my touch, grabbing his coat on the way out the front door.
I worked to breathe through the pain of the rejection. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. This was about him and his fears, not me.
Then I heard his truck start up a few minutes later, the engine’s rumbling quickly fading as he drove away from the village. An icy sensation rushed over my skin, which I slowly tried to rub away on my arms.
He probably just had to run to town for another tool or something. He would never leave the village permanently without at least saying goodbye to me.
I tried to get on with my day at the infirmary, focusing on one step at a time, never thinking beyond that. But my ears kept listening for the return of that rumbling engine.
The minutes ticked by. An hour passed. Then an hour and a half. Then two.
It was a long and winding drive on the scenic byway back into Spearfish. He must have had to drive extra slow due to the ice and snow on the roads. Maybe there had even been an avalanche or a fallen tree across the road to cause further delays. Maybe he got caught behind a snow plow or something too.
Had he slid off the road? The byway didn’t have a shoulder in most places. If his truck slid, he would either hit the sharply rising mountain face on one side or go down the occasionally steep bank into the river on the other side.
No, don’t think that way, Tarah, I told myself, taking out my anger at myself on the washcloths I was wringing out in the kitchen’s sink instead.
He was fine. He probably just stopped for breakfast in town.
I delivered clean washcloths to the healers, brought each of them fresh mugs of coffee, then took a mug of hot chocolate for myself out onto the steps. It was freezing outside and the cement steps chilled me right through my jeans. But the cold air felt good on my face and in my lungs, clean and pure, a badly needed slap to wake me up and pull me out of the fog of my thoughts.
And then Hayden’s truck came bouncing back up the village road, parking in its usual spot beside his work in progress on the flatbed trailer.
I wanted so badly to get up and go over to him, especially when those long legs unfolded out of the driver side doorway and he looked over at me. He hesitated, staring at me from across the many yards separating us. My leg muscles tensed, eager and ready to take me over to him.
But I stayed where I was. There was nothing I could say to him to change his feelings, and I refused to nag him about it. When he was ready to talk, he would come over.
He turned away, reaching into the back of the truck to pull out a metal ladder, which he set up on the trailer near what looked like the beginnings of wall frames. Then he went back to the truck’s cab to get a plastic bag of stuff I couldn’t make out from this distance. He took what looked like a pocket knife out of his pocket, unfolded it, and began to saw into the packaging of whatever he’d bought this morning.
He never looked my way again, not even when I got up and went back inside the infirmary.
Hayden
At noon, she showed up with two sandwiches and two cans of soda. I didn’t know which I needed more...the food, the caffeine or her company. We ate inside the truck, which I started both to warm us up and to keep the cordless drill’s recharger from draining the truck’s battery.
She was quiet today, fiddling with the stereo till she found a CD she liked from my limited collection. After we finished eating, she surprised me by moving the Christmas tree to the passenger side floorboard, then scooting over to lean back against me.