No Time To Bleed

Cece was forced to drive after that.

Our heads bobbed and dipped in the backseat as the night hours came closer. My eyes had been dragging down in their lids. Fogginess had reached me. Then the dreams came.

“You know she looks really sweet when she’s sleeping.” A girl’s voice came from ahead.

I felt my head against someone’s chest, their heartbeat thudded against my ears.

“Yeah. She does.” The chest vibrated against my eardrums.

A small chuckle. “So, you admit it?”

“Admit what?”

“That she looks sweet.”

“Um, well, I don’t admit anything then.”

The girl giggled again. “Why are you trying to be such a hard ass? Gosh, you’re a marshmallow on the insides!”

The person’s chest never vibrated.

“But, seriously, do you like her? Cause I’d want to know.”

A little boy’s murmur came at the side and I let out a whimper. A hand went to my hair, leafing through the flakes there.

“I bet you’re having a nightmare.” The fingers soothed at my scalp.

“Then, what’s the problem then? Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”

The chest moved up and then down. “It’s not that simple. I have other things to worry about.”

Something inside me twisted. This dream was weird.

“Why’d you punch Aliah in the face?”

“Why’d you save her?”

“She reminds me of someone. Being pregnant I mean.”

“You knew someone who was pregnant?”

The fingers played at my ear. “My mom when she died. I was supposed to have a baby brother.”

“Your mom died in this whole outbreak thing?”

My head sank into a shoulder, warmness reached my skin.

“No. She had leukemia a few years back and she was pregnant. A month before the baby was supposed to be born, she died in her sleep.”

“That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”

“I should be apologizing to you. You never had a normal childhood.”

“Growing up in labs takes that away.”

“You don’t remember your parents?”

“I don’t even think I have parents.” The girl’s voice sounded sad. “It sucks.”

“Life sucks.”

My dream filled with silence next.

“Do you think this Ryant boy will be worth it?” she asked.

The boy’s chest vibrated as he chuckled. “I’m actually jealous of him to be honest.”

What did the people in my dream know about Ryant?

“Why?”

The hands twirled at my hair. “Because he gets all of her attention. Look at all the stuff she’s done to get to him.”

“He must be one hell of a boy.”

That’s why I needed to get to him. He was the first of something I hadn't had in a while. A friend.

* * * * *

The weird dream ended and all I felt was the dryness of my mouth in the empty SUV around me. My bat lay on the car floor and the leather seats seemed to shrivel in the sun.

I checked the cooler in the back. Only three water bottles?

The keys to the SUV were gone and the sky was dark, black to say that the least. I hopped out the car through one of the four open doors and my feet meet the highway.

Bat in one hand and the water in the other. To my left was just the desolate stretch of highway in one direction. To my right was the other end of the highway road, but closest was a bridge. A camp had been made under it with tarps and sheets and something red there glowed in a barrel.

Some sort of alarm was going off inside me, telling me to run, but what option did I have. I had no idea how to hotwire a car, no idea where to go to get to Lexicon, and doing it all on foot was impossibly nonetheless.

So I puckered up all of my insides and began towards the undercarriage of the bridge.