* * *
If Josh had his druthers, were still capable of having druthers, they would’ve made it to a giant calved boulder called Split Rock. Josh has succumbed to physical exhaustion and the late stages of the virus. He is sitting on the ground in the clearing, half-propped against an oblong, couch-sized boulder. His eyes are closed. His breathing is arrhythmic and shallow.
They didn’t make it, but they are home.
Luis’s eyes are open wide, light-starved in the dark. His breathing is even and controlled. Luis is crouched next to his near comatose friend. Luis wonders where Ramola and Natalie are. He wonders how long ago Natalie ceased being herself. He wants to think that he and Josh did something good today, something that, if it doesn’t balance the cosmic ledger for the irredeemable sin of their past, it at least tilts the scale back toward their favor. But then he remembers the last time he saw Natalie’s face, and he fears their help might’ve been too late, might’ve been for nothing.
The irredeemable sin of their past: the inexplicable [even now, especially now] complicity in a brutal beating resulting in the death of an old man, and the silence after, and the terrible price of that silence: the disappearance and death of their best friend.
We will not intrude on Luis here, not for much longer. His past, particularly his regrets and recriminations, belong to him. We know enough and we will never know enough to understand what he will do next anyway.
Luis slips his hands under Josh’s head and unties the gag. The sopping-wet bandanna slides easily out of his slack mouth. Luis drops it to the ground. He does not wipe away or clean the crusting foam from Josh’s lips. Josh coughs once, a dusty memory of a functioning body. Luis rolls up his right sleeve. He cannot see his own smooth, unblemished skin in the dark. It’s hard to believe it gets this dark every night. Placing a thumb on Josh’s chin, Luis pulls down the lower jaw, opening the mouth. He takes his thumb away. Josh’s face and body tremors, but he doesn’t wake and his mouth stays open. Luis places the soft underside of his forearm into Josh’s mouth, the inside of which is as hot and damp as a sauna. Luis positions his left palm under Josh’s chin and pushes, closing the mouth, forcing his friend’s teeth against his skin. It hurts, but he doesn’t know if the teeth have broken through yet. He pushes harder and Josh convulses, perhaps because the body’s main airway is being blocked. There’s still a spark of life within the engine. His jaws contract once, and hard. The pain is an electrical storm, and stars explode in Luis’s vision. He retracts his arm. When he finds the dark holes in his skin, he wipes the area with his fingers, mixing the saliva and blood together. Luis sits with his back against the rock, shoulder to shoulder with his friend. He initially planned to run and rampage through the forest like the monster he will become, but he doesn’t want to leave Josh alone, even if he’s already gone.
Luis has sweat through his clothes and he shivers as the temperature continues to drop. His teeth chatter. He hugs his knees into his chest, trying to keep warm. His wounded forearm throbs with his heartbeats. The times between Josh’s shallow breaths expand until the final, infinite time. Luis is then left alone to listen to the forest’s night sounds he’s never really heard before, a beautiful and sorrowful secret he will not have the privilege of carrying for very long. Luis closes his eyes, leans into his friend, and waits for the fire to burn through his head.
III.
Do You Become a Rose Tree, and I the Rose Upon It
Rams
Police cars slowly creep away, their drivers unsure of direction and purpose beyond clearing a path for the buses to roll out of the clinic’s parking lot.
A brown-haired, middle-aged clinician wears a white lab coat over jeans and a dark-blue button-down shirt. She holds a clipboard against her chest. Without an introduction she says, “We’ve been holding the buses for you, but we weren’t going to hold them for much longer”; an offhand accusation, attributing the irresponsibility of their lateness to Ramola. It’s not fair, and it feeds the roots of a forest of shame, sadness, and rage that she is not able to save Natalie.
“Thank you, and sorry, we were in an automobile accident.” Ramola shakes her head but not because she says anything wrong. It’s an impatient tic of hers, one that was more prevalent when she was a stressed-out medical student. Ramola and Natalie are not yet on the black-and-purple bus. They are still standing in the street, looking up at the woman stationed between the bus’s folding doors.
She asks, “Are you injured?”
Police officers shout, “Let’s get rolling” and “Time to go,” and punctuate with car-door slams.
Ramola says, “No, we’re fine.”
“Have either of you been exposed to the virus? We cannot risk—”
Ramola places a foot on the bus’s first step and says, “We have not. May we come aboard? The officers are telling us we have to go.” She climbs onto the second step,
