I wish the story went like this:
The little girl was saved by her older sister.
Or like this:
The older sister was brave. She knew exactly what to do and she didn't scream. She carried her sister out of Walmart as zombies closed in, like a hero or a knight in shining armor, and everything was okay. She kept herself together the whole time while her sister bled out in her arms.
It actually happened like this:
The older sister had no idea what to do so she turned to ice.
Numb and horribly, horribly cold. Fragile as blood spattered and then gushed, gushed like a river rapid from the wound in Lucia's shoulder. Glass shattered in the distance, evidence that the bullet hadn't completely lodged itself into her shoulder, but it was a distant sound. Pieces of me fell, the ice breaking off in small, sharp fragments. Lucia fell. I caught her. The jugs of chlorine and brake fluid clattered to the ground.
Lucia's splutter belonged to a drowning little girl, and perhaps she was drowning in her own blood, or her shock. She crumpled over herself. Kept spluttering. Gasping.
My vision had gone black at the edges. I whispered, "Holy shit" as I picked her up and then grabbed the chlorine and brake fluid containers. It was a balancing act and it was complicated. I thought Oh shit oh shit oh shit until my mind froze over with my body, too.
Zombies appeared behind me, growling, staggering over broken shelves and food.
* * *
It was the summer before junior year; the sun glared white and hot on the pavement and everything smelled like chlorine and nylon swimsuits.
Heidi and I were lounging on plastic chairs beside the town pool. James and Markus were in the water, racing each other across the deep end with other almost-juniors from school. The busiest time of the pool was right after lunch, and the chairs around us slowly filled with people...mothers smeared sunblock on anxious kids, a group of college-aged girls were adjusting their chairs to face the sun, a trio of small boys splashed each other in the shallow end. Behind us, where a chain-link fence separated the pool from the outfield of a recreational baseball diamond, some prepubescent middle schoolers were playing wall-ball, much to the dismay of their parents.
Heidi leaned over, lifted up her sunglasses, and said, "See that girl over there? The one with the curly blond hair and the tankini?" She nodded towards the girl on the opposite side of the pool. I had seen her around school and vaguely remembered that she was in art class with me last semester, but I didn't know her name. She sat perched on the deep end, talking to another girl I didn't recognize, lifting her pale feet in and out of the water.
"What about her?"
"She's keeps looking at James. And smirking. And gesturing to him while she talks to her friend. Not subtly."
I closed my book, dropped it onto my stomach, and sat up. "You think she likes him?"
"Only one way to find out." Heidi cupped her hands around her mouth, sucked in a deep breath, and yelled, "Hey, James!"
James stopped his breaststroke in the middle of the race, looked at Heidi's direction, and yelled back, "I'm in the middle of something!"
"You just lost the race!" I called.
"Fantastic observation!" James swam to the other end of the pool, vaulted himself out of the water, and walked over to us. His skin was tanner since the summer had started, but that didn't stop the sun from attacking his shoulders and nose with a vengeance. With the sunburn, he looked like a summer-hyped young boy rather than a gangly sixteen-year-old obsessed with sci-fi movies. He snagged Heidi's towel. She protested, and he flicked water on her.
"I was losing the race anyway," he said with a shrug, dodging Heidi's desperate grab for her towel. "What's up?"
"See that girl over there?" I gestured to the girl in the black tankini. "Do you know her?"
"Alyssa? I've seen her around school."
"Do you like her?" Heidi asked.
"What, like as a friend?" James put his hands on his hips and turned to stare at Alyssa. I snorted; he was about as subtle as Alyssa. She saluted him when she caught him looking. He waved back and said, "She's got a nice smile."
"I think she's into you," I told him. I reached down into my backpack and pulled out a bottle of sunblock. "You should invite her to come to Rookie's with us. Tell her to bring her friend, too, if she wants."
James smiled. His smiles were bright and sweet, making his freckled, slightly-burned nose crinkle upwards and his eyes squint tight. Those smiles were not the half-smirks of guys who knew how to talk smooth or the tiny grins girls who knew the language of flirtation offered, but rather the smiles of a kid in a candy store: excited, hopeful, silly.
James-smiles were my favorite smiles.
"Do you think she'd want to hear my theory on aliens abducting government officials in the Bermuda Triangle?"
Heidi nearly choked on the swig of water she'd just taken. I tossed him the bottle of sunblock and said, "Only one way to find out."
He dropped his now-soaking towel on Heidi's belly, who screeched, "Don't you dare give me your pool germs!" after him as he jogged to meet Alyssa on the poolside.
I didn't realize it then, but that was safe. I didn't realize it then, with Luis Fonsi's Despacito blaring on the stereo over the pool, with the kids yelling "wall ball!" behind us as the tennis balls rattled the fence, with the little kids splashing each other in the shallow end, with Heidi muttering "That idiot is gonna blow it if he doesn't shut up about aliens," with Markus coming up to me asking whether or not I had brought any potato chips in my bag because I was the responsible one who brought all the snacks, with the college girls sunning themselves dark, with plans to go to Rookie's and the smell of chlorine and nylon swimsuits...but all that was the very definition of safety. No one was scared of Allison Corporalki's bioterrorist group or nukes or lost families or cannibals or little sisters who get shot in the shoulder in dilapidated Walmarts.
We were only scared of asking out the people we liked, scared of getting sunburned, scared of starting junior year. Scared and excited and wild-happy.
We were safe and we all took it for granted.
* * *
I staggered out of Walmart with Lucia bleeding in my arms. She wasn't crying or screaming, just gulping down the sulfur-thick air, wide eyes glazed over with shock. Her lips trembled.
I didn't make it very far.
Cannibals stumbled out behind me and a car flipped upside down mere yards from what used to be the entrance to Walmart was the closest thing I could find to a hiding spot. My knees were close to giving out and I had gone dizzy and I needed a plan, an idea, something, anything.
Everything happened in snapshots: Lucia bleeding on the pockmarked asphalt, leaned up against the car, trembling. Me peeling off my sweaty shirt and pressing it into the wound behind her shoulder because that was what I had seen in movies and TV shows and those were all I had to go on. Humanoid creatures banging on cars around us, searching, smelling like decay, pressing close. A very gray sky, a hot breeze, the stench dried blood and sweet decay of corpses from the parking lot, the taste of tears in my mouth.
Mutters. Mutters from zombies and mutters from me, making promises out of numb lips.
Four gunshots, exploding through the dull rhythm of the zombies. Zombies going from mutters to screeches.
I pulled Lucia close, cradled her head to my chest. "Shh," I whispered, even though she wasn't saying anything. She was breathing, her eyes were still open. I didn't know how to heal wounds or how to save her and that killed me so I just rocked her back and forth while holding my shirt to her wound, then held my breath for as long as I possibly could. When I couldn't hold it anymore I sobbed, inhaled a long and shaky breath, and repeated the cycle.
Rock. Don't breathe until it's not possible anymore. Sob. Repeat.
My bare stomach and bra were soaked, warm and slick and very, very red. Silence spiraled out around us after the gun shots had quieted the zombies. Had they gone back into Walmart, given up looking? Who wielded the gun in the first place—a terrorist? A cannibal that wasn't as mentally impacted by the radiation as other adults? Were they looking for us?
Rock. Don't breathe until it's not possible anymore. Sob. Repeat.
I found out a minute later.
A boy came around from the opposite side of the car. There was a silver pistol dangling from his long, knobby fingers. His other hand was clenched into a fist so tight that I could see the bones beneath his skin. He was slender and rather young despite chapped lips and three-day-old stubble. His jeans were grimy; he wore a Panic! At the Disco T-shirt and work boots scuffed at the toes. A backpack was slung over one shoulder.
The shooter.
I looked up at him over Lucia's head, utterly defeated.
We're never safe.
He whispered, "You're crying."
I looked down at my sister and this boy knelt, tucked the pistol in his back pocket, and ripped open his bag. He pulled out a wad of cloth and held it out to me. "It's the best I have. Apply pressure. Lots of pressure." He was still whispering. Why was he whispering?
I shook my head. My sister was dying in my arms and he was offering a way to help, but why? And why was I denying his help?
"It was an accident." The boy spoke a little louder. It sounded like he'd grated his voice against rocks and now it was in tatters. "I was watching you guys from one of the aisles and then one of those...those things came up behind me and I fell and the gun fired and holy crap, I'm so sorry—"
Lucia shuddered in my arms. She gasped. My bones rattled with anxiety.
"Just please help," I gulped.
He pressed the cloth against the bottom of Lucia's shoulder blade. Sweat glistened on her brow. She moaned. "I have some bandages in my bag, but nothing big enough to help. I stole some hydrogen peroxide from the medicine aisle, too."
I swallowed hard. Focus, I chided myself. I needed to thaw; I needed to turn ice into skin and warm blood again. Think. Make a plan, make a plan. Plans are your best friend.
"I have medical supplies I stashed in a car on the entrance ramp by the interstate. Several bags. It's the only red car on the right side. Bandages and antibacterial cream."
"Do you want to go grab it while I—"
"You can go to hell if you think for a second I'm leaving you alone with Lucia."
"Right." The boy rubbed his palms against his thighs. He looked small and fragile and very pale, and I wanted to break him, to shatter those bird-like bones in his cheeks and those wide-set eyes that glittered with scared tears.
Plan. Plan. Plan.
"Go!" I snapped, even though he had already spun on his heel. I could hear his footfalls slapping the asphalt, his uneven breaths.
With one hand, I shoved the wad of cloth into the back of Lucia's lower shoulder; with the other, I cradled her. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes still fluttering open and shut. How much pain was she in, that she couldn't even speak or scream? How did I make it go away?
"Don't die," I whispered. "Don't you do it. We've got to get to Mom and Dad. We need to make fun of Luka."
There was so much blood.
I sang her the Ancestor song and hoped the ancestors heard my plea.
Here's the reality: This world the bioterrorists thrust us into is real. You can't close the book when the chapter gets too scary; you can't wake up from the nightmare. But you can die knowing that your loved ones are most likely going to die, and those loved ones aren't going to have the future you imagined or wanted for them. You can die knowing that the world will go on because there are more important things than you.
Or you can watch the ones you love die instead. And the pain is just as agonizing as dying yourself.
You can't pull out.
You live and soldier on.
But sometimes—sometimes, you get lucky. And sometimes your ancestors hear you singing and offer to help.
* * *
The boy came back. I didn't expect him to because I was lost in the oblivion of waiting...waiting for Lucia to stop breathing, to bleed out, to die. Her eyes were closed, and I couldn't tell if she was unconscious or was simply locked in the numb shock of her pain. My hand had cramped up from holding the wad of cloth to her wound, and when I clenched and unclenched my fingers in order to bring back the feeling, the blood had significantly decreased its flow.
"It's a graze," the boy said in his signature whisper by way of greeting. He had my backpack and the other two bags slung over his shoulders, what little muscle he had in his arms bulging.
I looked up at him and nearly jumped. He knelt down, and I nodded at the bag with the first aid kit. He dug through it, pulled it out, and unwrapped a bandage.
"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice a little louder.
"You said that already." I gently propped Lucia against the car, then accepted the bandage from the boy. "Keep an eye out for cannibals."
He laughed, a quick exhalation of breath from puckered lips. "They won't come back. Trust me, after being locked in Walmart for four days, I know for a fact that guns scare the living crap out of them."
Lucia's shirt was torn from where the bullet had marred her lower shoulder. I worked as gingerly and quickly as I could by tugging at the fabric around the rip to make it big enough to fit the bandage. After rubbing a generous amount of antibiotic cream on the bandage from the kit, I pressed it onto her wound, then laid her down on her stomach so there was no pressure on the wound. She was definitely unconscious by now. If she was awake, she would have protested against sleeping on her stomach. She hated sleeping on any position but her side.
"You can leave now," I told the boy as I packed up the first aid kit. He was watching me intently, long fingers laced together and pressed to his lips.
"Where am I supposed to go?" he asked.
"I don't know. I don't care."
"If it wasn't a graze," he went on, gesturing to Lucia, "then she'd be dead right now. It would have hit one of those important arteries or something and she would have bled out and died."
"Thank you for sharing."
"Why chlorine and brake fluid?"
"Why are you still here?"
The guy rocked back on his heels, pinching his lower lip. Then he smiled a very small, conspiratorial grin, like the words Why are you still here were a special secret I had just shared with him. Next, he reached into his own backpack, pulled out a wadded up green jacket, and said, "A peace offering."
"It's like a million degrees out here."
"I haven't brushed up on my semi-nuclear-apocalypse knowledge, but I think clothes are still important. That bra isn't cutting it."
For the first time, I realized that my upper half was only covered with a grimy, sweaty bra that was sour with body odor. I wasn't particularly modest and often wondered why girls couldn't walk around in bras in shorts when guys could saunter around topless all summer long without society batting an eye, but I was caught off guard, and despite myself, I flushed.
I accepted his peace offering with trembling hands.
I sure as hell didn't forgive him for accidentally shooting my little sister, even if the wound was just a graze, even if she would survive it. I told him this. That conspiratorial grin just grew.
He said his name was Beckett.
I told him my name was Eliza and that I was planning on blowing up a terrorist Jeep using chlorine and brake fluid.
He said he'd love to help because he didn't have anywhere else to go.
I emptied a glass jar of pickles to start crafting my bomb and thanked him for getting my bags.
He simply replied that Lucia and I were very lucky; I like to think that it was more our ancestors than actual luck, and I made a mental note to fall on my face and thank them for saving my sister's life as soon as I had the chance.