him, but nothing immediately presented itself. Even discounting the people memories, looking past the last two years was almost like looking through a veil. It was gauzy and difficult to really see. Maybe it was her mind’s way of protecting her psyche. Not wanting to recall things or else it would become too depressing.
“My life before this feels like a dream now,” she said honestly. “I already told you about the things I miss, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you tell me about things like food and places you liked to visit. You haven’t told me anything about you, not really. I know you don’t want to talk about the people. I get that. But there must be some things you can share with me. Things about you.”
“Well I already told you about everyday stuff.”
“Tell me about your job,” he asked. “You worked in a bar, right? How did you get that job?”
Jackson’s heart stuttered and a clamminess washed over her. Her eldest brother had found her that job and the memory of it was suddenly vivid… him walking her to work on her first day, them laughing… She pushed the memory back where it belonged and shook her head.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Because it’s too hard?”
“Because it’s pointless.”
“Jack—”
She scowled and tucked her blanket under her feet. Why didn’t Luke realize that if he pushed her down the rabbit hole, then a whole lot of nasty stuff would come spewing out and maybe it wouldn’t go back in? It was far easier to just live in the moment, think about the rest of the day, surviving for a little bit longer. It was what she’d done for the past two years. Taking each day at a time…
“No, Luke, serious,” she said, because it was important to her that he understood this and clearly right now he wasn’t. She was never going to be Alice tumbling down that rabbit hole.
Never.
“Thinking about the world as it used to be, the real world you called it, is stupid. I can imagine the food and the places I liked and the books I read, the movies I watched, because that stuff isn’t really important, not anymore. But the other stuff, the actual reality of that world—the people and the activities, and the everyday tick tock of it, does not fly. It’s gone and nothing we will ever do in our entire lives will ever change that. It is what it is now. Everything we knew, everything we loved, is gone. You have to let it go, too, let them go, and the only way to do that is to not think or talk about it.”
“Psych one oh one would say to let things go you
“Well, I was just a waitress and I never took a psych class or any other classes, for that matter. But I know what works in my head and you have to respect that. You have to give it up.”
“But you haven’t given it up, Jack, not really,” he insisted. “You’re still looking for a bit of normality. It’s why we’re heading south. Hell, you’re hoping for a fucking cure.”
Jackson shifted. “Because I have to,” she said. “And you know maybe it’s time to tell you why.”
“Okay…”
“One time, long before I met Tye or made it to Chicago, I was walking down some street. I can’t even remember where it was, but it must have been a city, because there were skyscrapers.”
He nodded for her to continue, probably imagining she was going to tell him something quirky or amusing. Jackson almost stopped right then.
“A city?” he prompted and she took a deep breath and nodded.
“I’d been alone by then for months, I was ridiculously lost and lonely, and I was…” She paused and shifted. “Having a moral dilemma.”
“What sort of moral dilemma?” Luke asked.
“It makes no sense now,” Jackson said softly. “Not considering the person I am today, but I was having trouble dealing with the whole murdering people issue.”
Luke inhaled sharply. “They’re not people.”
She shrugged. “But they were and I’d killed so many. It just came, comes, naturally to me, I don’t even know how it works, but I kill them so easily. What do you think that says about me, Luke?”
“That you’re a survivor.”
“Or something else.” She sighed, not wanting to think those thoughts again, because she hadn’t resolved them all those months ago and she probably wouldn’t be able to now. “Point is,” she continued, “I was not in a good place mentally or emotionally.”
“We’ve all struggled to accept the way things are,” Luke said.
“I know. Anyway so there I was walking down this street. I don’t even remember what I was thinking, but as I walked past I looked inside the bottom floor of the skyscraper, there was a big reception desk, and I just stopped. Right there in the middle of the street I just stopped. I don’t know why or for how long, but before I knew what I was doing I went inside. The front glass was shattered so it was completely open. It was so quiet, just so quiet. The only sound was my boots on the glass.” She pulled her blanket a little closer as that memory undulated through her brain, aware that Luke was perfectly still as she spoke. “I don’t know what was wrong with me for taking such a risk, but before I knew what I was doing I was walking up the stairs. There were so many, flights and flights of them. I think it took me over an hour to get to the top and if there had been any zombies, they would have got me. There was no way I could have fought them off in such a tight space. But for some reason I wasn’t thinking about the danger, not at all. It was like something was pulling me upward.”
“What?” he whispered and Jackson frowned.
“When I got to the top I found an observation deck. The type with little telescopes for people to look out across the city. It started snowing a few seconds after I stepped outside and it was so beautiful, so magical. The flakes were falling and swirling and I was enchanted. I stood there on the deck, and Mandy was in my hand, and I looked around and I realized why I’d come up. It seemed perfectly obvious to me then and I laughed. I laughed so hard my side ached. The snow got in my hair and whipped around my face and I stood there, all those floors up, and I just laughed.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I was going to jump off,” she stated.
Luke’s eyes widened and he reached out, maybe to take her hand, but he stopped just shy of where it was bundled under the blanket and shook his head. “You wouldn’t have.”
“You have no idea how close it was,” she whispered. “I went right to the railings and I looked down and every single part of me wanted to jump. It would all be over then. All the fear and the worry and the panic. I’d die but it’d be on my terms. It would be an end at last.”
“Then why didn’t you? What stopped you?”
She smiled a little as that memory blossomed. “I saw smoke.”
“Smoke?”
“From a fire I think. It was faint, in the distance, and I could only just make it out, but it was there.”
“Other people?”
Jackson shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it was just an exploding transformer. Regardless, something in my mind clicked and I realized that I had another option.”
She moved her hand through the gap in her blanket and took Luke’s. It was resting right there as if waiting for her, and as always it warmed her the moment their skin met. She shivered slightly even as their fingers interlocked, and she looked into his eyes as she said the next words, entreating him to understand. “I could keep walking and keep looking, that was my option. I could try and see if there was anything left, and if I died before I got there, it didn’t matter. Do you get that, Luke? It did not matter. Part of me died a little on that deck and I let it.”
“I understand,” he said, brushing a thumb along her wrist. “It makes sense now, why you’re so fearless.”
She laughed softly. “I’m not fearless. I’m always scared.”
“But not of dying,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “I accepted that a long time ago. A few months later I met Tye, and when he told me about the Laredo camp I knew that I had been right not to jump. That there
