The Girl in Red

That was the last one, the last breath, though Red stayed there for she didn’t know how long waiting for another one, her eyes fixed on his mouth and clinging to the hope that it would move again, that there would be another word, that they would be able to say a proper good-bye.

She wiped angrily at her wet face but more tears kept appearing, even though she was not crying and her chest wasn’t racked with sobs that made her lungs burn.

“Stupid,” she said, and she didn’t know if she was saying it to him or herself.

They shouldn’t have separated, not even for a few minutes, not even under the threat of the military. Mama told them to stay together and Red had meant to do that. Because Red knew, had always known, that separation meant Something Would Happen. And it had.

Something had happened to Adam, and to Regan, for the other man wasn’t to be seen. Red had to assume that Regan, as a trained soldier, would have shot at whatever it was that chewed Adam’s legs to pieces.

For all the good it did him, Red thought.

He was probably behind the door that Adam guarded, and given the lack of noise coming from inside there was a pool of blood in the freezer, too.

A pool of blood, and something that Adam wanted to keep from getting out. He’d stayed there to protect her. His last words had been an order to not open the door.

Red didn’t much care for orders—direct statements tended to make her want to do the opposite of what she was told—but she wasn’t dumb. Her curiosity was not going to make her push her brother’s corpse out of the way and find out what put him in that condition.

If it were a horror movie she would have, because in movies people were always doing things that made no sense. But this wasn’t a movie. This was her life. Adam had wanted her to live, and Red wanted to live, so she wasn’t going to open that door.

That mystery would just have to remain a mystery forever.

And it was important now to get out without being snared in whatever was happening outside. This little burg had basically no tree cover, so she had to get through the town and to the other side without being seen, being caught, or losing her supplies (which were more precious than ever now that Adam wasn’t carrying half the gear).

Her practical brain took over, and it was a good thing that it did because it helped her not look at what was left of Adam.

She didn’t see his pack anywhere, and hadn’t spotted it in any of the aisles as she searched for him. That meant it had been dropped inside the room he was blocking.

Whatever is in there is gone forever, she thought. Not even the promise of what he carried in his pack could have encouraged her to open that door.

Adam had told her not to open the door. And for once, she was not going to argue with her brother.

But she needed to get out. She pictured the town in her mind—the little valley, the state road running through the middle of it, the rise that she must climb to exit on the other side. No trees, really, except a few dotted here and there on the landscape. And once she was out of the town there would be no cover at all until she reached the forest again, and that was a few miles away.

It sounded like there was a war going on outside. Somehow she’d have to cross this war zone by herself and reach the woods. Somehow. First she had to find a rear exit to this building, because the explosion had occurred at the front and she didn’t think it was a great idea to go out through all of that black smoke again.

“Wh-what happened here?”

Red turned around, furious and scared, and her hand went to the axe at her belt. Sirois stood there, his face white as chalk, staring at the blood at Red’s feet.

He could have snuck up on you and shot you, Red. If you want to remain the last surviving member of your family, then you need to start using your ears as well as your eyes.

She wasn’t going to cut herself a break just because she was standing over her brother’s corpse, either. Adam was dead, but she was alive and she needed to stay that way or else Grandma would be alone forever.

“One of your ‘tapeworms’ got my brother, and probably Regan, too,” Red said.

She felt her anger building, and wanted to take it out on this man who represented everything she hated—lies, opacity, pointless bureaucracy, men with guns.

Men with guns killed my parents. And a man with a gun couldn’t save my brother.

Red gestured at the thing that used to be Adam on the floor.

“Still going to tell me that information is classified?”

“Where’s the lieutenant?” Sirois said.