The last dated entry in Vix's journal is six days old.
No, reads the first line. No no no no no no no no no. Please, wake up. Wake up wake up wake up wake up.
I can't tell who she's talking about, or to. A journal seems like a weird place to respond to someone else's Sleeping or death... it's generally a place for talking to yourself.
Unless that's exactly what Vix is doing.
I need to leave, reads the next line. Please, God, if you exist, help me. They're going to kill me. They're going to KILL me.
Below this is a gap of several lines. I stare in incomprehension at the writing when it picks up again. It's a little messier, like it was written in a moving vehicle or under poor lighting conditions. But that doesn't explain what it says.
Seven was always second best. A person who tries to run is not ready to die yet, even if they're flailing. Isn't that what you said when it rained? She heard it, too. Everything is raining in the rivers, and nothing important lies in the rivers, you said while Cassie shoots apples like organizing makes any sense. Is nothing important nothing at all? What did Seven see?
I can feel the silence. Seven wanted the truth and you're running away. You can't and it doesn't make sense but it's not silent anymore and the sense is running away, lies down on the riverbed and drains all the life out of my little brother. Oil and water, Oreo, you need to burn. Everything and more was always second best. You dream about cities.
Vix is making sense without making sense at all. Her sentences only get more incoherent from there, like the raving of a person who fell to some mind-eating disease without losing the ability to write about it. Her handwriting gets messier. The gaps on the pages between lines and paragraphs grow in size. Her words stray off the lines, over the margins, and into one another by the end of the ninth page. By the time her stilted rambling ends abruptly eleven and a half pages later, it's illegible.
I flip back to the first page of it. Vix keeps mentioning rivers, hearing something, and someone named Seven. I can only assume they're a person.
A person who tries to run is not ready to die yet.
Seven wanted the truth and you're running away.
If this isn't gibberish, it doesn't sound like Seven is around anymore. And then there's the line about Oreo needing to burn. Oreo is the last person to text Vix's phone. None of this makes sense. Except the lines that do.
Everything is raining in the rivers, and nothing important lies in the rivers, you said.
What did Seven see?
I saw something in the river when I dove in to save Patrick. I convinced myself afterward that I'd imagined it. That the thick, dark sludge pooled along the bottom was just a trick of salt- and freshwater mixing, or a play of the light at the edge of my vision. It was so dark down there, I couldn't tell for sure. But Patrick sank to the edge of it. To the edge, but no further, and there at that boundary, I could have sworn the darker water reached up around him. Or tried to, anyway. It retreated again moments later. And then the current swept him up like a broken doll and carried him away.
I told Calico J about it because we tell each other everything, and I stick to that even when I think I might have imagined something. But the other two don't know. Ditzy because she fell asleep on the couch during the evening when we would have told her, and Patrick because the last time we talked about the river, it nearly put him into a panic attack. Now we avoid the topic when he's around.
It's not silent anymore.
I reread that fragment several times. Then I begin to comb through the rest of the page, then the next page, searching for more references to hearing or sound. There are plenty. Almost as many as about the river, and there's a lot about the river. Near the top of the third page, though, a solitary line stops me dead in my tracks.
It doesn't stop tapping, and I want to know what it says.
Some powerful instinct makes me snap the notebook shut. Ditzy behind me whirls around, her weapon tinkling.
"Well, then," says a voice in the doorway. "Looks like you beat us to our runaway."
Ditzy's light is turned away from me. I switch mine off and slip the notebook under my sweater before standing. Then I click my headlamp back on—to red light mode, like that was what I meant to do all along. When I turn around, there's a man in the doorway. He's older than us by a long shot: late thirties, if I had to guess. Beneath a black t-shirt and torn pair of jeans, he's whiter than Ditzy, with dark—even black—hair and a scruff of a beard that doesn't suit him. He leans in the doorway with arms crossed. I take a too-long moment to realize he doesn't have a light of his own.
"Who are you?" I say.
"You guys the Chesnet gang? We saw your friends in the car out there. Nice car, by the way. Real weapon of the apocalypse. I like it."
"You'd better not have touched them."
He holds up both hands. "Not a finger. We're as glad to see you guys as you seemed to be when we talked." He raises an eyebrow at me. "Unless that was my misinterpretation."
"You'll excuse me for not trusting someone who sneaks into a room behind us after stalking our friends in the parking lot. Also, I don't trust most survivors in general these days. Tell me who you are if you want a civil conversation."
He keeps both hands and his eyebrow raised. I hate how nonchalant he's being. Like I'm being a kid for suspecting him.
"Name's Oreo," he says, and all the hairs on the back of my neck rise. "Co-leader of the Anport Rescues, biggest survivor group anywhere around Cape Morgan. At least that we've found. And if I might turn your request for civil conversation back to you, I asked the same question. Are you the group from Chesnet? We were talking with one of you just yesterday. Was that you? Or one of you?"
"One of us," I say tersely.
"Which of you's the leader?"
"She is," says Ditzy, speaking for the first time.
Oreo's eyes skip to her. He takes in everything: her stance, her flail, and—with another twitch of his eyebrow—the spotless and obviously expensive clothes she still insists on wearing. I already hate him. And because he's looking at her and there's a part of me that hates that, too, and because Ditzy's starting to look at him like some kind of foreign excreta, I step in front of her and cross my arms. I'm trying to look tougher than I feel. I'm sure I look ridiculous, but I don't move. "Why are you here?"
At least that gets his eyes on me again. His face remains impassive. "We're not allowed to patrol our own territory?"
"What, after a 'runaway' like you said we beat you to?" I throw a pointed look at Vix's body. "Try again."
Oreo doesn't reply. He's still leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, and in the silence that follows, I find myself pinned by his dark, too-sharp eyes. This is another survivor. The kind who made it through the apocalypse with quick learning, response, and acclimation, rather than by hiding in a basement while the world fell apart. He knows what we do about the Redding, and probably more—he has to, if he's co-leader of a group so much bigger than ours. Sixteen people, he said in an early text, if it was him we were texting.
He's wearing a belt not dissimilar to Vix's. I can't see well enough to tell if there's a knife in the back of it, but I doubt he's unarmed. Not while walking alone, outside, after dark, in the middle of the forest south of Wakewater.
"Tough one, aren't you," he says at last.
I raise an eyebrow. "You said that yourself, didn't you? And then wouldn't answer when we asked what made Chesnet so special." I notice the way his eyes flick to Ditzy again as she shifts her flail over her shoulder. I finish, "Are you going to tell us that now, or...?"
"I'll send our female scouts in to screen you," says Oreo, turning away.
Anger flares in my chest. "We're not done talking—"
He's already gone. "Come on," I growl, grabbing Ditzy by the sleeve. "I'm not leaving the others alone with him or whoever he's brought."
She follows me wordlessly. Nobody stops us as we stride out of the room and back to the car. At least two shadowy figures hover near it. Both flinch away as I flick my headlamp back to white light and maximum brightness. Two women. One looks older than me by several decades. The other can't be more than fifteen.
"Back off," I say.
They do. Before I've reached the car, the door opens to discharge Calico J. He darts up beside me and catches my arm. I put a hand on his automatically.
"Who are they?" he whispers. "They appeared out of nowhere and surrounded us, but they've just been standing there. Patrick's freaking out."
"It's that other survivor group. Their leader's a white guy named Oreo." I turn as far as I can without breaking Calico J's grip. I can't see the asshole anywhere. "Did you see where he went?"
"The one who left the room before you guys? He's around the back."
I am suddenly, acutely aware of Vix's phone in my pocket, and her notebook hidden under my shirt. "Get back in the car," I say in an undertone. "I need you to hide something."
"From who?"
"Him. I don't trust him, J. And he said that woman in there was a runaway from their group. I've got her notebook and phone, and I don't feel like turning them over just yet."
I see conflict sweep his expression, and kick myself for pitching this to him and not Patrick. Calico J is a lot less anxious, but he's also more likely to compromise our safety for the sake of making friends. I don't have the words yet to describe exactly why I distrust Oreo so much. It's more than just Vix saying he needs to burn. But while Patrick wouldn't question my suspicions, Calico J said he's also freaking out right now, and he might not be smooth with hiding something if that's the case.
Calico J, though, just swallows hard and walks back to the car. I follow him. When we're standing by the open door, I make eye contact with Ditzy and tip my head towards the two women shadowing us. She nods back—she still looks pale from before—and swings her flashlight around to each of them. I turn mine off again. It's the work of a moment to slip Calico J the phone and notebook, and he's hidden them beneath the seats of the car by the time I've counted to three and turned my headlamp to red light mode again.
We're just in time. No sooner are the phone and notebook hidden than Ditzy taps something with a long fingernail on the handle of her flail. It's Morse code. He's coming back.
I spin around to see Oreo emerge from the darkness behind the motel, clicking off a very tiny light as he does so. So he does have a light. I eye up the two women who still lurk around our vehicle. If they're hiding small lights like that, it's as good as confirmation that their intent was not such an innocent patrolling of their territory as Oreo would have us believe. The fact that he said we beat him to a fugitive only abets my suspicions. They were trying to hunt down Vix after she left. And she left for a reason that, if Oreo's text was to judge, has to do with her cause of death.
We've walked into something I already know I'd rather be as far away from as possible. Only one thing keeps my mouth shut. This group has information we don't, and in an apocalypse like this, information is survival. I still don't know if risking our lives is worth it. And I still don't know if I'm willing to put Calico J's assessment of this group's trustworthiness ahead of my own. Not now that I've met one of their leaders. But Oreo knows things about Chesnet and whatever happened to Vix in that room, so I'm willing to play along until this completely goes to hell. If Vix's phone and journal reveal anything too sinister, meanwhile, I'm getting us out of here.
Or at least, that's what I tell myself as Oreo approaches from the motel again like he means to keep talking. Whatever screening procedure this group has for visitors, I suspect we're about to find out.
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Comment what you think Vix's journal entries mean. Wild theories are welcome! ✨