Wake To The Dead, page 15
“Ah, yes, about that …” Father Gordon paused at the bottom of the metal staircase and turned. “Sarah is fine, but …”
“But what?” Marcus demanded.
“Well, a lot happened while you were gone and …” The priest burped as he started plodding noisily up the first flight of stairs. “… well, I think that it’s best that you speak to her yourself.”
“She’s awake, then?” Marcus picked up speed, almost forgetting that Skye was attached to his arm.
“She is awake, and seems to be in good spirits,” Father Gordon said as he rounded the top end of the first flight of stairs. He grabbed the railing to keep his balance before he started upwards again. “Yes, very cheerful indeed,” he added. “Perhaps – a little too cheerful.”
“I’ll take cheerful over depressed any day of the week,” said Marcus. “As long she’s healthy, that’s all that matters.”
Marcus broke away from the preacher as soon as they reached the second floor. There was enough light from the flashlight for him to see the entrance to his own bedroom. He paused before opening the door, and waited for Father Gordon to catch up.
“Is Caleb still here?” Marcus asked, wondering if the biker had managed to repair the motorcycle.
The preacher shook his head sadly as he approached.
“No. He left shortly before you arrived. I asked him to wait until morning, but he refused. He’s a stubborn young man. Once he gets an idea in his mind, he—”
“Fair enough.” Marcus didn’t need to hear anymore. The biker was gone. That was all the information he needed.
“I’m putting Skye in my room for tonight,” he said, dismissing the whole Caleb conversation. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Marcus opened his bedroom door and guided Skye towards the bed.
“It’s not as comfortable as the bed upstairs,” he told her, “but you need to get some sleep. It’s been a long night.”
Skye made no objections when Marcus pulled the covers back and lifted her onto the bed. Her eyelids were already drooping, and she yawned as Marcus covered her with the doona. As soon as Mr Sleepy was in the bed beside her, she rolled over and cuddled the bear, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.
“Such innocence,” Father Gordon whispered as he appeared in the doorway. The light from his torch crept slowly over the sleeping girl. “The poor child must be horrified at what the world has become.”
“Yeah, well if it wasn’t for Sarah, this girl would be dead right now,” said Marcus, lowering his own voice. “Maybe she would’ve been better off if we left her where she was.”
“Nonsense!” Father Gordon said staunchly. “You did the right thing by rescuing her. There is something special about this child. I can feel it.”
“Just another mouth to feed,” Marcus turned away from the bed and sighed. “And if by special you mean completely messed up, then you’re probably right.”
Marcus took the flashlight from the preacher and pushed past him into the hallway, then marched toward the staircase to the upper level.
Father Gordon stumbled after him. “She’s in the kitchen,” the old priest huffed from behind, doing his best to keep up as Marcus mounted the stairs two at a time.
“I believe she’s making you some dinner, to welcome you home.”
“Good,” said Marcus. “I’m starving.”
“Wait!” Father Gordon suddenly lunged up the stairs and grabbed Marcus by the arm before he reached the top. “There’s – something else.” The old man clung to the railing with his other hand, trying to catch his breath.
“While you were out, there was an incident.” The priest rocked back and forth as he spoke, reeking of wine. “An incident with Sarah.”
Marcus frowned and removed the preacher’s hand from his arm.
“And?”
Father Gordon, finally gaining his composure, lowered his voice to a whisper.
“She tried to take her own life.”
Marcus took his foot off the top stair and turned. “What?”
“Yes,” Father Gordon said grimly. “I was watching from the kitchen when it happened. I saw her climbing out of her bedroom window. She was going to jump. I got there just in time to stop her.”
“Jesus!” Marcus whispered. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
“I wanted to tell you privately, without worrying the blonde girl. It was all very strange. Sarah didn’t even seem to understand that the fall would kill her. It may have been side effects from the drugs she took, but I fear there is something worse going on.
“I think that knock on the head has done more damage than we suspected.”
“But you said she was okay, right?” Marcus could feel the tension finding its way into his voice. “You said she was cheerful.”
The priest nodded slowly, his face glowing red. “Yes, but isn’t that strange?” he countered. “Considering everything that has happened, shouldn’t she at least be a little bit sad?”
Marcus was speechless. He stood there silently for a few seconds, digesting what the priest had just told him. This new information put him into a different gear, and his anxiety began to rise again.
“Alright,” he said eventually, handing the flashlight back to the priest.
“There’s another room beside mine with a single mattress on the floor. You can sleep there. It doesn’t have any pillows or blankets on it, but it should do for tonight. Thanks for watching over Sarah for me. Looks like I have two people to thank for saving her life now.” He forced an awkward smile. “I’ll take it from here.”
Before Father Gordon could respond, Marcus turned and headed for the kitchen. He could already smell the food Sarah was cooking. The dim glow of candles got steadily brighter as he approached the doorway, and he could hear the soft humming of her voice, as she sang quietly to herself.
Marcus took a moment to prepare himself before he stepped through the doorway.
Just be supportive, he told himself. Just go with the flow. The truth will come out eventually. Don’t break her.
Sarah was busily chopping an onion when Marcus finally stepped through the doorway. She was wearing a tight green t-shirt that showed off her mid-section, and a pair of equally tight, white jeans. The bandage had been removed from her head, and her hair was tied back with a pink ribbon that she must have borrowed from Skye.
She wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks on her feet, and her lips had a pink shine from some kind of lip gloss, or lipstick. Her whole outfit was a contradiction to how she usually dressed. Sarah had never been one to go for the whole ‘girly’ look, and Marcus caught his breath in surprise.
Sarah looked up and saw him as soon as he entered the room. She broke into a wide smile and wiped the onion tears from her cheeks. She put down the knife without saying a word, slipped away from the kitchen bench, and then ran to greet him. She crossed the living room with a few quick strides, then threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek.
“You’re back,” she said softly. She kept her arms locked tightly around his waist and snuggled into his chest. “I missed you.”
Just go with the flow.
“I missed you, too.” Marcus patted her gently on the back, and used the hug as an opportunity to check the back of her head, but couldn’t see anything because of the way she had tied back her hair.
“You took the bandage off,” he said casually, prying her gently from his body so he could look at her face. “How’s your head? Does it still hurt?”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Sarah waved the question away like it was a fly buzzing in front of her face. “Just a little bump. Nothing serious.”
She turned and walked lazily back to the kitchen, giving her hips a little more sway than usual. “I’m making a nice meal for us, tonight,” she said in a chirpy voice. “Pasta, with my special home-made sauce. I hope you’re hungry.”
“I am.”
Marcus stole a quick glance at the ingredients on the kitchen bench and tried not to wince. Sarah had used up nearly all of the remaining food from the kitchen cupboard, including the last onion, and several cans of preserved vegetables. But now wasn’t the time to tell her how low the food supplies were, so he bit his lip instead.
Go with the flow. Don’t break her.
“Looks great,” he said with fake enthusiasm. “I can’t wait to try it.”
Sarah opened two packets of pasta, then emptied both of them into a large pot of boiling water on the makeshift stove. She then resumed chopping the onion, humming the same tune that Marcus heard when he first walked in.
“I found Skye,” Marcus said out loud before he could stop himself. He watched Sarah carefully for a response, while cursing silently and wishing he could eat his own words.
Sarah stopped chopping and looked up at him slowly, but her expression showed nothing more than mild surprise, as if Marcus had just reminded her about something trivial she had forgotten.
“Oh, gosh, that’s right,” said Sarah, leaning on one hip and gazing at him thoughtfully. “I completely forgot about Skye.”
She put her hands on her hips and glanced admiringly at the spread of empty cans and ingredients on the bench. “Luckily, I made plenty for all of us. Poor girl must be starving. I’ll go and get her.”
Marcus stepped in front of Sarah before she could walk through the doorway, putting a hand out to stop her.
“No!” he said, a little too abruptly.
Sarah took a step back, looking puzzled and slightly hurt.
Don’t break her.
“I mean, she’s already asleep,” Marcus added with a weak smile. “She’s pretty tired. We should let her rest. We can save some for her to eat in the morning.”
Sarah nodded thoughtfully, pondering his words, then quickly brightened again.
“You’re right, of course,” she said merrily, making her way back to the kitchen.
“Skye needs her beauty sleep. She’ll get a nice surprise when she wakes up tomorrow, and see’s what she has for breakfast.”
Marcus sighed inwardly, being careful not to let Sarah see how affected he was by the way she was behaving. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up this charade forever.
Sarah’s sudden change in personality was beyond disturbing.
There were only three possibilities that Marcus could think of as to why she was acting like this, and none of them were good.
The first, and less disturbing answer was that the side effects from the medication she had taken earlier were still in effect, and may not subside for several hours yet. If that was the case, and Marcus hoped that it was, then all he would have to do is take control of her medicine, making sure that she only took small doses for her pain.
The second reason could be that Sarah had decided to put herself into a state of complete denial. Instead of facing the pain of losing Jamie, and dealing with the horror of the world around her, she may have voluntarily shut down reality, and chosen to see everything through rose coloured glasses. The solution to that particular problem would require a great deal of patience and understanding on his end, but ultimately, Sarah would have to be the one to snap herself out of it.
The last possibility made Marcus shudder when he thought about it, but he couldn’t rule it out. The blow to Sarah’s head may have caused some permanent damage to her brain, and if that was the case, there was nothing that Marcus or anyone else could do to help her. There was no chance of getting the kind of medical help she would need to fix that sort of problem. Hospitals and surgeries were a luxury that no longer existed. Not in Port Angela, anyway.
Not anymore.
Marcus knew that he would need to get answers soon, but for tonight, he would have to be content with putting other wheels in motion. He decided that he would go along with the situation as best he could, and wait for Sarah to fall asleep. When that happened, he would go and wake Skye to explain the situation, whether she wanted to hear it or not. He had already told the teenager to keep her mouth shut about Annabelle, but now he would have to tell her to keep quiet about everything else as well.
After that, he would need to wake Father Gordon and have the same conversation with him, while trying to learn anything he could from the priest about what happened while he was away.
When all those things had been taken care of, he would spend the night in Sarah’s bedroom, sleeping on the floor if he had to. He needed to keep her under close observation, especially after what Father Gordon had told him.
It wasn’t an ideal plan, but it was all he could do for now.
Until the answer to Sarah’s problem became clear, he would have to sit by patiently, and wait.
Marcus made his way over to the leather couch by the window, and sat down on the edge of it. He was completely exhausted, both mentally and physically, but he was careful not to get too comfortable. He couldn’t allow himself to fall asleep. Not yet.
Instead, he waited patiently for Sarah to finish cooking their dinner, smiling back whenever she grinned at him, and responding politely whenever she threw random comments his way.
He would get all the rest he needed eventually, but right now he had to keep his mind alert, and his focus on Sarah. At some point in the evening she would get tired and wander off to bed.
The way she was buzzing around the kitchen, though, full of conversation and energy, gave Marcus the impression that point was a long way away, and he resigned himself to the fact that tonight was going to be a long night.
A very, very long night.
14
White Trash
It was the smell that woke her.
A vile, fetid stench that seemed to violate all of her senses and jerked her from a dreamless sleep into a second darkness.
She blinked several times to make sure her eyes were open, but everything remained black. Am I blind?
The surface beneath her body was soft and slippery. It clung to her skin as she wriggled herself up to a sitting position. She extended her arms laterally and touched greasy metal walls on either side of her.
What the fuck…?
She reached up to search the dank, moist air above her head, but a sharp, stabbing pain in her ribs brought her arms down quickly, and made her suck the air through her teeth. She touched the spot beneath her left breast where the pain was the worst and discovered two things. Firstly, the whole left side of her torso was swollen, and secondly, she was topless. She ran her hands carefully over the rest of her body, wincing as she hit more sore spots, and realised that she wasn’t wearing a single scrap of clothing. Why the fuck am I naked? Shivering as torrents of nausea swept through her, Miranda leaned to one side and vomited, an action that caused so much blinding pain that she squealed. She wiped her mouth when she finished, blinking furiously to clear the water from her eyes. When she was finally able to lift her head again, she began to see soft grey shapes forming around her, letting her know that she still had her vision, and that her eyes were gradually adjusting to the dark.
Miranda sat very still and breathed deeply. She waited patiently for her eyes to fully adjust, holding down the urge to vomit again.
It took a few more seconds before it finally dawned on her.
The gut wrenching smell.
The greasy metal walls.
The slippery plastic mounds beneath her.
Dumpster.
I’m in in a fucking dumpster. Miranda lifted her arm again, biting her lip against the pain that shot down her spine, and pressed a hand to the slimy metal ceiling. She shoved upwards with a grunt, but nothing happened. The roof didn’t budge.
Twisting her body around, slowly and painfully, Miranda managed to find some purchase on one of the larger trash bags and got to her knees. She raised both hands to the roof this time and pushed with all the strength she could muster. The dumpster lid flew upwards with a high pitched metallic squeal, swung out, then crashed into the wall beside her with a deafening CLANG!
Light came flooding in from the sky above, which was a swirling mass of bright colours.
She blinked at it stupidly.
A cool wind blew into the dumpster, lifting loose paper and plastic bags around her. She took a deep gulp of the clean air, letting the fresh breeze play over her face and hair.
Miranda sat there a while longer, on her knees in the garbage, trying to grasp the reality of her current situation.
How the hell did I end up here?
No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t recall anything from the past twenty-four hours, or the last few days for that matter. The last memory she had was walking out into the street from the hovel that she now called her home, searching for supplies. Everything after that seemed to be missing, as if someone had snuck into her mind and erased it.
After what seemed like an eternity of trying to piece together the blurry fragments of her memory, and still coming up empty, she gritted her teeth, put both hands on the edge of the container, and pulled herself up to take a look at her surroundings.
The dumpster was one of three, pushed up against the brick wall of a small, dirty laneway, behind what appeared to be an Asian restaurant. A long vertical sign that hung above a rusted metal door was written in letters that she couldn’t understand, but a smaller sign in English had been added beneath it, reading; Taste of Tokyo- Sushi Bar and Karaoke.
To her right was an open garage with a red delivery van parked inside. The bonnet of the van was propped open, and the engine had been stripped for parts. Another small alleyway turned left, disappearing behind the restaurant, and appeared to be the only exit to the main street.
A glance above the rooftops gave her a much clearer picture of where she was. She recognized a few of the larger buildings in the distance, and some of the faded billboards squeezed between vertical neon signs. But it wasn’t until she panned her vision left and spotted a giant black and white bear – wearing sunglasses and a silver vest – that she realised exactly where she was.
That bear was the rooftop mascot of a nightclub called Electric Panda, a place she spent many of her Friday nights, when she was buzzed and needed to get lost in the music. The Panda made it very clear where she was. The backstreets of Little Tokyo, and not too far from the abandoned apartment that she now called home. But what was still painfully unclear, was how she had been stripped of her clothes and thrown into a dumpster. There was no way she would have done this to herself. Even on one of her wildest, drug addled Friday nights – before the world became a living horror movie, of course – she would never have undressed and climbed into a filthy rubbish bin.
