Till The World Ends: Dawn of Eden / Thistle & Thorne / Sun Storm. Julie Kagawa
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“We can share a bed if we have to. And I...I’d feel better not sleeping alone tonight, anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“Ben, I’m a doctor. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before, trust me.”
My voice sounded too normal, too flippant, for what was happening outside. I felt like a deflated balloon, empty and hollow. Numb. I’d seen patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, having lost a loved one or even their whole family, and wondered if maybe I was heading down that same road. If perhaps this eerie calm and sense of detachment were the beginning.
The door clicked shut behind me, plunging the room into darkness. I whirled with the flashlight, shining the beam into Ben’s face. He flinched, turning his head, and I quickly dropped the light.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” He looked up, and I saw that his stoic mask had slipped back into place. I shivered a little. If anyone was suffering from PTSD, it was probably Ben.
I turned from that haunting gaze, shining the light toward the bathroom in the corner. “I’m...going to see if the water still works.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and I retreated to the bathroom, leaving him in the dark.
Miraculously, the water still ran, though the temperature barely got above lukewarm. I told Ben I was going to take a bath, then filled the tub halfway, sinking down into it with a sigh in the darkness. The flashlight sat upright on the sink, shining a circle of light at the ceiling, turning the room ghostly and surreal. A tiny bar of complimentary soap sat on the edge of the tub, and I scrubbed myself down furiously, as if I could wash away the horror, grief and fear along with the blood. I heard Ben stumble outside the door and felt guilty for hoarding our only light source, but after a minute or two I heard the door open and close, the lock clicking as it shut behind him.
Uncomfortable that he was going somewhere alone, I counted the seconds, the silence pressing against my eardrums. After a few minutes, though, the door creaked open again. I heard his footsteps shuffle around the room before the bed squeaked as he settled atop it, and finally stopped moving.
I finished my bath, slipped back into my dirty, disgusting clothes, and left the room, keeping the flashlight low in case Ben had gone to sleep.
He hadn’t. He was perched on the edge of the mattress with his back to me, head bowed, slumping forward. His tattered shirt lay in a heap at the foot of the bed, and the flashlight beam slid over his broad shoulders and back. As I paused on the other side of the mattress, I saw his shoulders tremble, and heard the quiet, hopeless sound of someone trying to muffle a sob.
“Ben.”
Anger forgotten, I set the flashlight down and slipped around to his side, touching a bare shoulder as I came up. A nest of bloody gauze sat on an end table, next to a bottle of peroxide. His stitches had torn open, and the claw marks were dark, thin stripes down his back.
Sympathy bloomed through me, dissolving the last of the anger as my logical doctor’s brain finally caught up with my emotions. Ben was hurting, not from his wounds, but from the guilt that was tearing him apart inside. I wasn’t quite ready to forgive what had happened to Maggie, Jenna and my patients, but I knew, really knew, that the horrible night in the clinic was not his fault. And if he hadn’t been there, I probably would have died.
“Would you...help me?” Ben didn’t even bother trying to hide the wet tracks down his cheeks, though he didn’t glance up. He gestured to the peroxide and an open first aid kit on the nightstand. “I found those in the office, but I can’t reach it on my own.”
Silently, I picked up the first aid kit and scooted behind him on the bed. His skin was cold, but the area around the slashes was puffy and hot, though it didn’t look infected. I gently wiped away the dirt and blood, watching the peroxide sizzle into the open wounds, bubbling white. Ben didn’t even flinch.
“I don’t blame you, you know.” My voice surprised me, even more that I found it true. Ben didn’t answer, and I pressed a gauze pad to the wounds, keeping my voice low and calm. “What happened back in the clinic, in the lab with Nathan, that wasn’t your fault. I just...I freaked out. I reacted badly and I’m sorry for that, Ben.”
“You have no reason to apologize,” Ben murmured. “I should have been straight with you from the beginning, but...I didn’t know what you would think. How do you explain zombies and vampires to someone without sounding like a raving lunatic?” He scrubbed a hand over his face, and now I felt a tiny prick of guilt. If he had told me that in the clinic, I probably would have scoffed at the idea, or assumed he was on drugs. Whose fault was this, really? “But I should have told you,” Ben went on. “Nate...he was the smart one, the one who could explain anything and have it all make sense. In fact, I was hoping he would wake up so he could tell you what was going on. If that’s not a selfish reason...” A soft, bitter laugh, ending in a muffled sob. “It should’ve been me,” he said in a near whisper. “I should’ve been the one who died.”
“No.” I slid off the bed and walked around to face him. Crouching down, I peered at his face, putting a hand on his knee for balance. “Ben, look at me. This isn’t your fault,” I whispered again, as those tortured eyes met mine. “It isn’t Nathan’s fault. Ben, the virus is killing us. The human race is facing extinction, though no one is willing to admit it. Something had to be done.”
“Something was,” he muttered. “And now things are even worse. I don’t know if we can survive this. And just thinking that I was there when it happened, that maybe if I’d done something a little different, I could’ve stopped them from getting out—”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen.” I kept my voice calm, reasonable, my doctor’s voice. “And those scientists, they were only doing what anyone would do to save our race. We had to try something. It isn’t our nature to roll over and die without a fight.” I smiled faintly. “Humans are stubborn like that.”
He held my gaze, the light reflected in his eyes. Very slowly, as if afraid it would scare me away, he reached out and took a strand of my hair between his fingers. I held my breath, my heartbeat kicking into high gear, pulsing very loudly in my ears.
“I don’t know how you can stand to be around me,” Ben murmured, staring at his hand, at the pale strings between his fingers. “But...don’t go. Don’t leave. You’re the only thing keeping me sane right now.”
Maggie and Jenna’s faces crowded my mind, angry and accusing. My patients rose up from the darkness to stare at me, their gazes vengeful, but I shoved those thoughts away. They were gone. They were dead, and I couldn’t honor their memory with anger and blame and hate. The world was screwed, monsters roamed the streets and I had to cling to my lifelines where I could. I was sure everything would hit me, hard, when I had the chance to breathe. But right now, I had to make sure I—we—kept breathing.
Gently, I placed a palm on his cheek, feeling rough stubble under my fingers. “We’ll get through this,” I promised him, feeling, absurdly, that I was his lifeline right now, and if I left he might take that shotgun and put the muzzle under his chin. “I’m not going anywhere.”
For just a moment, Ben’s gaze grew smoldering, a dark, molten look that swallowed even the anguish on his face, before he straightened and pulled back, looking embarrassed.
Turning away, he gingerly bent to scoop up his shirt. “I’ll take the chair,” he offered in a husky voice, rising to his feet. I stood as well, frowning.
“Ben, you don’t have to—”
“Trust me.” He slipped into his shirt, grimacing. “I think I do.”
I didn’t think I would sleep, but I did drift off, listening to Ben’s quiet snores from the chair in the corner. I awoke the next morning to sunlight streaming in through the dingy curtains and Ben emptying a bag of junk food onto the table.
“Morning,” he greeted, and though his voice was solemn,