No Time To Bleed

The tented in area filled with all sorts of smells and odors.

Willa, the mother of their family, was cooking happily over the Sterno stove that I’d seen earlier. We were all sitting to the floor on a giant area rug with rewashed plastic plates before us and plastic utensils.

“Haha. This outbreak’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to our family, brought everyone closer.” The father declared of them declared. His name was Richard.

He pulled his son heavily into his side. “And Reagan right here loves it too!”

Reagan had his father’s black hair, although his dad’s was thinning. They both shared the stony black eyes as well. Louis, their oldest son was in the corner, playing with a ball of rubber and mumbling to himself.

“Remember our shack out in the woods over the summer? Oh, good times, killing all those deer and using the venison.”

I looked to Cece and mouthed. “Are you ready to leave now?”

Cece giggled and just sat. “Where’s Eli anyway?”

Reagan answered. “Who knows? Maybe they got eaten.”

“Not funny, dude.” Alex replied.

As if our words were a cue, Eli and Kevin came back from their outing. Kevin walked ahead of them and Eli looked pale.

Cece grabbed onto Eli and rubbed his back. “Eli, what’s wrong, buddy?”

Kevin went over to Reagan and sat before his plate. “Eli didn’t like my hideout. He told me to go to hell.”

“No, I didn’t!” Eli argued back.

I internally wanted to giggle, little kid drama.

“You better tell your boy over there to be nicer to my son or we’re gonna have more issues.” Richard shot out to Clarissa.

Clarissa just went back to braiding her hair, ignoring the man’s defiant tone towards her.

“Eli, come over here. Sit next to me while we eat.” Clarissa was to my right and the empty space next to me was for Eli.

Flashlights glowed and one of them flickered til it went out.

“You guys are gonna need to go for a battery run.” Alex suggested.

Reagan shook his head. “We’ve got enough. Robbed some houses when the outbreak stuff went down.”

Willa let out a throaty laugh. “Oh, the meat is cooked! I hope you guys like it! Don’t have enough seasoning here to save my life.

We all sat in a circle and Willa went to the middle as she held the steaming pot before her. She dropped it over a large towel and began to share the meat out to our plates. I examined the mixture in my plate. The meat appeared to redder than I had seen in any professional restaurant and I didn’t even recognize the bone that was the attached to it.

“What type of meat is this?” Cece asked, nose twitching.

Willa seemed offended. “Does it matter? It’s food. You’re all too skinny. Eat up.”

Eli was breathing heavy and didn’t even budge for the plate before him.

I leaned down to him. “Eli, aren’t you hungry? You haven’t eaten anything in a while.”

His guilty expression went on as he swallowed. “I can drink water. I’m not hungry.”

His eyebrows wretched and etched closer together, he was even sweating.

“You okay?”

“My tummy hurts.” His face looked more and more pained.

Clarissa rubbed his back and excused both of them from the eating area.

Alex was busy slurping away at his plate until he noticed me gawking at him. "You're not gonna eat yours?"

Alex was seated directly my left. Some of the brown mixture had made its way onto his lips.

“Have you ever heard of a napkin?! And do you even know what’s in this stuff?!” I hissed.

His face turned all sorts of red. “I ate it because it’s polite.”

“Well, they haven’t exactly been polite to us.”

“Hm, letting us spend the night with them-“

“Which I’m against!” I interrupted.

“Giving us food.”

“Which could be some type of strange meat.”

He sighed. “Jasmine, come on. Everyone needs rest. We’ve been through a hell of a lot. Don’t you just wanna relax for a few days?”

Once again I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and it also felt like a personal slap in my own face.

“Aw, come on Jasmine. Don’t give me that look…”

I turned away from him, staring straight ahead. “What look?”

“The ‘I’m disappointed in everyone and I can’t believe you’re all doing this and I wanna be out of here.’ look. You had it when we saved you.”

“You guys never saved me.” I felt safe to make a sip of water.

He laughed. “So, you think you could have survived on your own? Find Ryant on your own?”

This was annoying me. Especially since it felt like a lot of the old Alex slipping back in. The new Alex was a lot nicer. The old Alex was hurting my feelings.

“You wouldn’t have been able to make it without us. You know that.” He turned even more in my direction, smirking as if he’d won some victory.

“Just don’t talk to me right now.” My heart felt like stone in my chest and I suddenly wished I was asleep, ready enough to forget this day. I felt betrayed.

Dinner soon ended, me passing the rest of my food to Alex while the Psycho Family went along with their antics. Clarissa soon came back into the tented area with a sleeping Eli in her arms.

“Shh. I had to sing to him to get him to sleep. He was crying.”

Reagan and his mother helped us set up our on the floor beds, a tangle of sheets on the asphalt highway. I began to wonder how they’d survived so long out in the open, but then again, this wasn’t exactly Zombie Land.

Hours and hours seemed to pass in that absolute darkness. The bat at my side was my only comfort in the harsh day that I wasn’t sure I’d totally escaped. The bat at my side made me think of Jesse and Amanda and William and Ryant and Uncle Trevor and Aunt Meg and even my dad.

It was strange to say, but I missed them all. Life had changed so much in this little bubble that the outbreak had formed. I forced to find protection in people I hardly had known, but now they almost felt like family. Almost. I didn’t wanna double cross everything we’d done to survive together, but I couldn’t help, but think how things would be in the end and how we’d all make it out of this alive. It jarred me to think of a time in the future where all of this could all be a long gone memory instead of an embaying present.

“Jasmine…”

Cece was sleeping with her head above mine, but we were still both on the floor in our tangle of musty blankets. I didn’t feel like speaking, but she did for me.

“Do you like Alex?”

Honestly, I was becoming sick of this being most of the conversation in my life lately.

“You’re not sleeping. I can hear you breathing and you’re not breathing like your sleeping. Can you answer me?”

I would have expected her voice to be forceful, but in the pitch black darkness it was nothing, but softness.

“Can you answer it please?”

This made me wanna crawl into a shell and I exhaled. “Do you want an honest answer?”

“I do.”

“I don’t know. He’s weird a lot of the times. He was a jerk at dinner tonight. I didn’t like it.”

A long quiet followed. It was as if both of us were checking to see if anyone was listening.

“I wish I had a boyfriend.” Cece said.

Alex wasn’t my boyfriend.

“It’s not always fun. I had friends whose boyfriends used to hit them, tell them they were worthless, cheated on them too.”

“Not all guys are like that.” She excused.

The words came out effortless. “My dad was.”

“What’d he do?”

It felt like a long, complicated question to answer in only the silent darkness. I felt the tears slide down my face to the sheet below me.

“He cheated on my mom. My step mom.” My voice was cracking. I’d never told anyone this before. The pain was so fresh.

“What happened to your real mom?”

I wondered where Aliah was, but I remember Willa saying something about how tired she had looked and the tea she’d given Aliah to drink to let her sleep.

“I never knew her. My dad said he loved her though. He said I looked just like her.”

Cece’s voice was softer, attentive, but at the same time as soft as a whisper. “Must be weird looking like someone you’ve never met.”

“He doesn’t have any pictures of her either. He just keeps saying ‘You look just like her. That’s why I love you so much’.” I nestled my cheek deeper into my hands.

“Then how’d your step mom come in?”

“They got married when I was eight or nine, made me think I actually had a family.”

“I’ve never had a family. Other than Shatoya.” Cece answered back.

When Cece’s hard shell was dismantled, you could see the cracked up girl inside. I guess we were a lot of the same that way. We ached for a lot of the same stuff.

“I’m sorry Shatoya died.”

Cece yawned. “I’m hoping she’s not dead. Maybe they have her captured somewhere, trying to get information out of her.”

I was suddenly feeling sleepy, like this conversation had lifted some weight off of me somehow. Cece said all sorts of more things, but I didn’t remember much after that. I just allowed myself to dream and hope that things would move on.

But these days, nothing was certain anymore.