Reid dropped his pack on the floor by the sofa. “How’s your arm?” he asked as he sat down on the coffee table directly in front of her. He met her eyes like none of the others did and Ashley squirmed under his stare.
“Doing fine.” She showed him her arm where the needle had pierced. Not a trace remained. She then lifted her sleeve to show the graze from earlier that too had gone. All that remained was the smear of drying blood. “Don't know why I was so scared.” She laughed as though it would quell the tension between them but it didn’t.
“Gonna tell me to fuck off again?” He breathed the words so casually that Ashley’s jaw just gaped.
Her dry laugh returned. “Maybe. You gonna listen this time?”
A playful smirk dared to crease his lips, but only for a brief moment. “I have to say, didn’t think you could be scared of anything. Least of all a needle in an old man’s hand.”
Neither did I. Ashley shivered and tried to stretch away her nerves but they lingered just under the skin.
Silence swelled around them. Reid stood and rummaged through his bag but to Ashley is seemed more busywork than anything else. He walked around the room, his eyes scanning the objects, the doors and windows.
“Looking for something?” she asked.
He shook his head. “You thought about what I said back at the college?”
“You could run.” She remembered the words, their tone, the way he’d looked at her when he said it. The olive branch he pretty much shoved in her hands.
“Something about you not being trustworthy?” she deflected.
The silence returned but in it, she could feel his eyes on her. The hair on the back of her neck raised and it was like she was back on the highway strapped to the sled. Listening for clues, playing a part. Looking for an angle to play to control the situation.
That, and the blood on his lip. His scuffle with Laurence. He’d looked so frustrated then, furious that the plan was failing.
And I laughed. I used it against him. Her gut sank a little and Ashley shifted on the cushion uncomfortably.
“Look, you’re freaking me out with all this stalking around,” she finally said and Reid stopped. He didn’t come to sit, he just stopped.
“I pace when I’m nervous.” He sighed. “Or pissed off.”
“Okay, I get it. Joke wasn’t funny.”
“No, not at you.” He paused. “Not just you.”
Ashley smirked. “You could tell me.”
Reid rounded the couch and took up the seat Shannon had flopped in only a few tense minutes ago. “It’s Helena. This whole… trade. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was going to give Lancaster samples, not let him take a knife to you.”
Ashley shrugged. “She’s doing what she thinks is right. Trying to save the world or at least some people in it.”
He leaned back, arms crossed. “A lot of that going around.” His gaze didn’t let up when she refused to rise to his challenge. “I told you back in your room. You could run. You should run.”
Ashley averted her eyes and stared at the fireplace. “Just because I could-“
“You’ve had more than enough chances to make a break for it since I joined up. You could take my gun right now and no one would be able to keep you here.”
“Who says I won’t?” Her lips remained fixed in a frown. “Who says this isn’t my plan?”
“It’s a shit plan, whatever it is. And I don’t get it.”
A gilded fireplace screen protected the grate from the room where dusty logs sat waiting to never be lit. Ashley traced the lines of it trying to come up with a suitable response but there just wasn’t one.
“I’m tired, Reid.” His name rolled from her lips comfortably, more so than she thought it would. It felt personal. A little more real. Maybe it’s time, she thought with a sigh. Maybe this is the last chance to share it with someone who might give a shit.
“I’m tired of running. Of killing wendigos. Tired of helping people for them to die or kill each other anyway.” Ashley slouched into the couch cushion but it didn’t bring her any close to feeling relaxed. “It’s fucking exhausting. And the worst part? I’m more scared of people like Lancaster, of going back to…”
“Going back to where?”
She looked up and Reid was listening, waiting for her to answer. He met her eyes with what she could only hope was genuine concern. A far cry from the man on the highway.
“They’re right, you know. The posters. Those stupid cowboy bullshit wanted fliers they plastered everywhere.” She watched his eyes change, the concern slipping into disbelief and then finding recognition and horror. “The infection’s my fault.”
Reid said nothing. He stared at her for a moment, she thought maybe waiting for some joke or quip but when she said nothing else he looked down at the coffee table.
“Wendigoes are my fault.” Her eyes stung but she frowned and mashed the heel of her palm against her eyes. Wiping the tears away was easy. It’d become so easy.
“I don’t… understand. How-”
“Does that really matter?”
“Yes!” Reid sneered and rubbed a shaky hand through his hair. “It fucking matters if you meant to kill millions of people.”
“No, I didn’t mean to. But they’re still dead right?” Maybe it’s too late. Ashley pulled her legs off the coffee table and placed them flat on the floor. In her head, she prepared herself for his anger as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. The fight or flight.
Reid took a steadying breath. She found herself stealing glances of him from the side, trying not to look directly as he wrestled with what she couldn’t only imagine were awful thoughts.
“Explain it to me,” he said. “Tell me how.”
“It’s not really a story I like telling.”
“I don’t give a shit what you like right now. If you blame yourself, then you owe me and everyone who lost someone a fucking explanation.”
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“You’re right.” She inhaled and exhaled as he had only moments ago. Slow steadying breaths. “There was a fire when I was a kid. I don't know what happened, can't remember much other than coughing and the heat. And pain. I passed out and then when I woke up I was in a hospital.” She swallowed hard. “My parents and my brother didn’t make it. Sometimes I think I forgot what they really look like…”
She closed her eyes and tried to picture them but their faces were hazy, crackled and distorted. “The doctors said I suffered terrible burns, that it was a miracle I was alive. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t divine intervention. I should have been dead but I just… wasn’t.” Ashley opened her eyes. “Something happened to me and I came back different.”
Reid leaned away from her.
“I started to get better.”
“Like your shoulder?”
Ashley shook her head. “No. Not like my shoulder. I had fourth-degree burns over half my body. The next day, they were just scars. A day or so after that not even those. I… was a healthy kid. It was like the fire had never happened. It was so fast they… no one knew what to think or believe. They looked at me differently after that. Some of them looked so scared.” They were right to be.
“Then the researchers showed up. Doctors that didn’t really have much of a bedside manner,” she said with a bitter laugh. “I was moved from the hospital to some kind of facility and they started testing. Simple stuff, like what Lancaster just did. Blood, hair, saliva, stool, skin—the works. Nothing hurt and they tried to make me comfortable. They called it… fuck, what was the name… Megalemic Autoimmune… Diplioma. They said it so goddamn much don’t think I’ll ever forget. Just a disease.
“But they didn’t get the results they wanted and the researchers changed. A new group of people that didn’t even talk to me were in charge and the testing got worse.”
Her lip trembled and she shivered at the memories that flooded to the surface. “I didn’t have a name anymore. I was ‘Subject M.A.D.’. Maybe that made it easier to do what they did.” The scalpels, the cutting, the burning, the smells of disinfectant and alcohol and the bright lights in her eyes. In the distant background, she could still hear her own screams bouncing off the white walls.
“They wanted to know why I was special. Why I got better.” Their eyes had burned with indifference as they’d strapped her down. She would never forget them.
“I don't understand, what did they do?” he asked.
“Things I don’t want to remember,” she said. “Things normal people don't live through.”
She sighed in relief when he didn’t press her again. “I think they thought if they understood it, they could control it. Give what I am to someone else but I don’t think it worked. And I didn’t stay long enough to find out.” Her mind wandered to the hardest days where she ate, slept, and screamed under blazing lights.
“How did you get out?” Reid’s voice was a beacon pulling her back.
A strange smile found her lips. “A doctor. One of the first researchers. His name was Jason Specht. He’d been the only one to really press for humane treatment and when he found out what they’d been doing, he stole me. Destroyed his career, got shot, and nearly died to save me. He was…” The words caught in her throat and her chest tightened. “He was a good man. But he knew he couldn’t keep me so after we got out, he arranged for a new identity. He knew a nurse who worked in traumatic rehabilitation and arranged an adoption. Alma Cazalla. Hardass woman but damn, could she keep a secret.”
Reid frowned. He leaned forward again, his eyes locked on the table as if cataloging it all. “I don’t get it, what does this have to do with the infection?”
“I’m the infection.” The words felt weird in her mouth but in the air the idea became real. One she had never, not once in her life, said aloud. “Or at least the start. When the infection hit New York, Jason sent word warning me to run. The infection came from my blood, the samples they’d been taking while I was held. Over time and after testing and all the bullshit they tried, he said the samples mutated or degraded and became aggressive. Contagious even. And someone fucked up and it got out and…” She laughed with a tremble. “The world ended.”
Reid cursed softly.
“Yeah. One person’s all it takes, apparently. And of course, once shit hit the fan it was an all-out manhunt for me. Some asshole with a little bit of power probably thought bagging and tagging the source would solve the problem.”
“You think they’re developing a cure?”
“I don’t even think they give a shit about a cure. They just want to get back to doing what they were. Drain me dry and live forever kind of plans. I don’t know for sure though, but Jason told me to run for a reason and… I did. I wanted to get overseas but no passport and you know how fast they shut everything down. It took a lot just to get out of the city in the panic and I’ve just been keeping hidden as long as possible. Alone, mostly.”
And there it was, laid out before him. Like a weight had shifted from her shoulders to his chest, she waited for him to speak. To say anything. It’d been such a long time since anyone had listened long enough to hear it all. Even longer since she thought someone cared to know.
“So you’re willingly going back to that?” His voice raised as he pushed off the seat to pace again. “After everything you’ve gone through, you’ll just let a group of strangers trade you for a ticket out of here? You don’t even know that they’ll help anyone!”
She sighed. “If there’s even somewhere out there that’s safe… Yeah. You’re right. I don’t know.” She had her doubts.
“Then why-“
“How long do you think the people back at the college have?”
Reid opened his mouth to speak but stopped.
A grim thought shadowed her mind. “Do you think those kids will make it through winter?”
“You're not responsible for those kids or anyone back at the college. We'll make it just fine without a rescue.” Even as he said it, Reid’s face darkened. As though he knew how false his words sounded.
Ashley scoffed and rose from the couch. “You might survive, Tish and Shannon too. Maybe even Eric, Helena or Monte's boys but the others won’t.” She followed Reid as he paced the room, past the tea cart with pristine china right to the door of the marble bathroom. “You and I both know it's only a matter of time before those things make it inside or you all start turning on each other. Everyone there is living on borrowed time.”
He turned to face her. “We're not fucking animals,” he said, but he lacked conviction.
As Ashley looked up to meet his eyes, she found them to be pleading. For what, she couldn’t tell until, in her peripherals, he flexed his hand. Her own mimicked the action, a strange need to reach out surfacing.
Ashley swallowed and looked down to the ornate floor. “You think you’re the first to find me?” She clenched her fists until they ached. “The first people to try and make a stand out here?”
She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him until the shake in her digits steadied. “I’ve spent a long time trying to help people survive and I’m tired of failing them.”
The room suddenly felt empty and stagnant. No one had been here, no tours, no wedding, no school classes or children. A forgotten relic of a time long past even before infection and all that mattered was its strong empty walls. No more than a shelter from the rain and wendigos. Its purpose infected just like the people. Mutated beyond recognition.
“Maybe I can finally help someone.” From behind her, light poked through the curtains in rare warm beams. At her back, it chased off the chill. “Besides, if they respond to that message it means they'll come and raze this city looking for me. Better to get out with a deal.”
He hadn’t said a thing for what felt like too long. Reid breathed, his hands balled in fists much like her own, and he said nothing.
I should have known better. Ashley filled in his silence with doubts. What the hell was I thinking telling him, telling anyone what happened to-
“We could run.”
Ashley’s lips parted and her eyes flashed up to his.
“Right now. We could go.” His voice had dropped, his words a whisper. In a step, he stood before her, barely inches away. “We could leave the city tonight. They’d never find us.”
In his eyes, she saw there was no falter, no doubt, just honest conviction. He meant every damn word. His right hand reached out to her cheek, smoothing along the line of her jaw and his warmth radiated before her. So close, she thought, swallowing.
“But they’ll come-“
“They won’t find us,” he said, almost pleading. As if there was room between them, he stepped nearer, his breath soft against her cheek. “We’ll stay on the move for as long as it takes.”
We could make it, she dared to imagine. There’s more than enough supplies here that we could steal. Out the window and head north. Keep going until the frost. Find somewhere quiet away from the city.
Ashley closed her eyes and leaned into his hand. Be as close to normal as possible. Maybe even forget…
Behind her closed eyes, their faces swirled from the dark. The kids. Shane, Cooper, Cally, Nyssa, Wendy and Ethan. His face was clearer than the rest, the look in his eyes as she picked up his sister and the relief that washed over him when he believed he’d be safe.
She stepped back from Reid and the warmth of his hand faded. “They would slaughter everyone at the college.”
“They’re not our responsibility. And you don’t even know if they’ll come-”
“I can't take that chance,” she whispered. I'm sorry. Ashley wanted to say it all but the words caught in her throat.
As quickly as he had closed the distance before, he too stepped back. He nodded once, his eyes downcast, and made his way to the couch. In silence, he picked up his gun and pack and started for the door.
“I'll be outside,” Reid said without looking at her.