She smiles.
I lower the food to her again, but this time, she shakes her head vehemently. “I can’t,” she says. “It hurts so bad,” she says, squinting her eyes in pain.
I try to think of what else I can do for her. All I can think is to keep her comfortable. Maybe I should give her another sleeping pill.
I hurry over to the fire and grab the glass bottle with the melted snow in it, now water. I bring it back to Rose. “Drink,” I say, as I slip a pill onto her tongue. She does.
I sit beside her and stroke her hair. I see her eyes already closing and feel like in a few minutes she’ll be asleep.
I look over at Bree and see she hasn’t touched her food.
“ Bree, eat,” I say. “Please.”
“ You’re not eating,” she says.
She’s right.
“ I will if you will,” I say. “We need to. Our not eating won’t help Rose get any better.”
I reach over to the fire, grab my stick of meat, and take a bite. The meat is tough and plain, but I’m not complaining. It may not be that tasty, but as it fills my mouth, I realize how ravenous I am. I take bite after bite, barely able to slow down. I feel the nutrition spread through my body and can’t remember how long it’s been since I had real, fresh cooked meat.
Bree’s hunger gets the best of her, too, and she finally eats. After every few bites she stops and peels off a strip for Penelope, who snatches it from her hand. In the past, Bree would giggle; but now, she remains somber.
Ben sits on the far wall, opposite me, and quietly chews. I see the remaining stick on the fire and look over and see Logan, still sitting guard by the mouth of the cave. I look down and see Rose is asleep beside me, so I get up, grab his stick and walk it over to him.
“ Come sit by the fire,” I say. “Staring into the dark isn’t going to do anything. No one’s on this island, and no one’s touching the boat. We can barely see two feet in front of our face. Come on. Your not eating and not sleeping isn’t going to help any of us. We need you strong.”
Reluctantly, he gives in, standing, taking the strip of meat, and following me back to the fire.
I sit beside Rose and Bree, our feet to the fire, as Logan joins us. He sits and eats.
We all settle in and sit there for a long while in silence, the only sound the cracking of the wood and the whipping of the wind outside. For the first time in a while, I feel relaxed, as we each sit there, staring into the flames, each lost in our own world. I can’t help but feel as if we are each just waiting to die, each in our own way.
Rose suddenly grunts and cries out in her sleep. Bree hurries over to her and grabs her hand, as Penelope whines.
“ It’s okay, Rose,” Bree reassures, stroking her hair.
I can’t stand to look; I can’t stand to see her suffer.
“ If we don’t do something, she’s going to die,” I say quietly to Logan.
He grimaces. “I know,” he says. “But what can we do?”
“ I don’t know,” I say, feeling desperate and hopeless.
“ That’s because there’s nothing we can do. We’ve covered hundreds of miles, and there is only rubble. You think if we head out there now, at night, in a blizzard, we’re going to find a town in the next few miles, before our fuel runs out? A town that has the medicine she needs?” He slowly shakes his head. “If we go out there now, we’re all just going to get stranded. If I thought we had any chance of finding what she needs, I’d go for it. But you know as well as I do that we don’t. She’s dying. You’re right. But if we go out there, we’ll all die, too.”
I listen to his words, indignant, but at the same time, I’ve been thinking the same thoughts. I know he’s right. He just saying what’s on all of our minds. We’re in an impossible situation. There’s nothing we can do except watch her die. It makes me want to scream.
“ Not that I want to sit here,” he says. “We need to keep moving. We need weapons. We need ammo. And food. A lot of food. We need supplies. And fuel. But we have no choice. We need to wait out the storm.”
I look at him.
“ You’re so sure we’re going to find this place we’re looking for in Canada?” I ask. “What if it doesn’t exist?”
He frowns down at the fire.
“ You find a better alternative to what we’re looking for along the way, you tell me. You find a safe place with plenty of food and supplies, I’ll stop. Hell I might even stay. I haven’t seen it. Have you?”
Slowly, reluctantly, I shake my head.
“ Until we do, we keep moving. That’s how I see it. I don’t need to find paradise,” he says. “But I’m not planting myself in a wasteland either.”
Suddenly, I find myself curious about Logan, about where his survival instinct came from. About where he came from. How he ended up where he did.
“ Where were you before all this?” I ask softly.
He looks up from the fire for the first time, looks me directly in the eyes. Then he looks away. A part of me wants to get closer to him, but another part is still unsure. I’m still not quite sure what to think of him. Clearly, I owe him. And he owes me. That much is a given. We need each other to survive. But whether we’d hang around together otherwise is a different matter. I wonder if we would.
“ Why?” he asks.
That’s him. Always guarded.
“ I just want to know.”
He stares back at the fire, and minutes pass. The fire cracks and pops, and I begin to wonder if he’s ever going to respond. And then, he speaks:
“ Jersey.”
He takes a deep breath.
“ When the civil war broke out, I joined the army. Like everybody else. I went to boot camp, training, the whole nine yards. It took me years to realize I was fighting somebody else’s war. Some politicians’ war. I wanted no part of it. We were all killing each other. It was so stupid. For nothing.”
He pauses.
“ The bombs were dropped, and my entire unit got wiped out. I was lucky-underground when they hit. I got out, made it back to my family. I knew I needed to go back and protect them.”
He pauses, taking a deep breath.
“ When I got home, my parents were dead.”
He pauses a long time.
“ They left a note,” he says, pausing. “They killed each other.”
He looks up at me, his eyes wet.
“ I guess they saw what the world was going to be like-and they didn’t want any part of it.”
I’m taken aback by his story. I feel a heaviness in my chest. I can’t imagine what he went through. No wonder he’s so guarded.
“ I’m so sorry,” I say. Now I regret having even asked. I feel like I pried.
“ I was more sorry for my kid brother than for me,” he says. “He was 10. I found him at home, hiding. Traumatized. But surviving. I don’t know how. I was about to take him away somewhere when the slaverunners showed up. They had us surrounded and outnumbered. I put up a fight, wasted some of them. But there was nothing I could do. There were just too many of them.
“ They made me a deal: they’d let my brother go if I joined them. They said I’d never need to capture anyone-only to stand guard at the arena.”
He pauses for a long time.
“ I justified it to myself. I wanted my brother to live. And after all, I heard that there are far worse arenas out there than Arena One.”
The thought fills me with panic: I had never imagined anything worse could be out there.
“ How is that possible?” I ask.
