Seconds ticked by, but they might have been hours. My mother was screaming and my father seemed to be completely frozen in shock. Calix was crying over my sister, and my sister was still on the ground, desperately struggling to breathe. Whether it was from the illness or from panicking, I wasn't sure, and I certainly wasn't thinking logically enough to calculate it.
I rose to my feet and stepped backwards, moving as far away from my infected sister as possible. I could hunt, invent, and do nearly any odd job assigned, but sickness terrified me. It might have been all the medical and scientific books I'd read, or perhaps it was the fact that in sickness, I lost control of the situation. Regardless, I couldn't bring myself to touch her.
"Help her, Nova. Help her," my little brother sobbed. How could I make him understand? I couldn't. There was no way he could understand my terror.
My father finally snapped to attention and moved to my sister, lifting her carefully and carrying her into the house. I followed at a distance until I saw him place her one our bed. I felt like I was going to be sick. I inwardly swore I would never sleep there in that bed again. I simply refused to.
I turned around and ran as fast and far away as I could: out the front door, down the stairs, and across the drive. My heart pounded in time with the thudding of my footsteps and I flew across the open ground, attempting to escape the nagging voice in my mind telling me I would never see my sister again. As the realisation settled, I worked my knife out of its holster at my waist and threw it as hard as I possibly could. I planted my feet into the ground, coming to an abrupt stop so I could watch it fly through the empty air before lodging itself in a tree nearly sixty feet away.
I finally collapsed to the ground, exhausted, demoralised, and mentally spent, but impressed with the distance the knife had travelled. Strengths often revealed themselves when one was forced to be weak by themselves. All the energy, power, and stress had been directed into that one knife, forcing it farther and farther and leaving me… quite empty.
I returned home to find the house quiet. My father was not there, nor was my sister. I imagined her laying under a tree, her head propped up on her hand, playing with her hair: that silly smile on her face. I imagined her flirtatious laughing, and the way she'd blink that begged for attention. I imagined that she was strolling down Main Street, clinging to the arm of and kissing her beau of that week. That was where she was. I saw it in my mind.
I shook my head: I knew better.
I knew more than an hour had passed, and I knew she was gone. I hadn't gotten along with Melanin, but now I hated her for dying. The house was mostly silent: mourning the loss of its happiest tenant. My brother slept in his cradle, sucking four fingers and making unsettled noises; my mother sat in the rocking chair, moving at an even pace. Her eyes were blank, her upper body completely still. The perfect picture of shock.
I carefully approached the cradle and kissed my Calix's forehead. I pulled the covers up to his chin and then left the room, moving into the bathroom to wash my face, which would give me time to think. Melanin was the angel child, my mother's first daughter: her pride and joy. Mother had depended on her, even as I secretly saw it as a foolish thing to do.
Maybe I'd always suspected something of this would happen.
I had no idea what would happen now. To my father, losing his eldest was horrible, but I knew he appreciated me, because I more or less ran the house, and my brother, because he was the son he had always dreamt of. I had to step up now, I knew. I needed to play both parts. But how to be someone you would have given anything to change?
I made a small fruit salad and sandwiches for dinner and tried to get my mother to eat some. She wasn't cooperating - somehow managing to be more difficult than my two-year-old brother and harder than waking up my eighteen-year-old sister in the mornings. I wasn't enthusiastic to force-feed her, and so I easily gave up.
I tentatively woke my brother, coaxed some food into him, and then put him back to bed. I left the food to stay warm, sitting down at the table with my own plate. Presumably, I was going to eat it, but my mouth was dry, my hands didn't want to hold the sandwich or the fork, and my stomach was begging to remain empty. I had put my food away, untouched, by the time my father came home: hands dirty, face tired and sweaty.
No words were spoken between us. He ate some food I set before him and then he took my mother to bed with a, "let's go, Maggie."
I was left completely and utterly alone.
I paced from one side of the kitchen to the other, and then from the dining room to the front door, and finally from one side of the front porch to the other until I was ready to pull all of my hair out. I needed something to do. I didn't care what it was: something pointless, something crazy, or something stupid. It made no difference to me. It occurred to me that I hadn't retrieved the knife from the tree I'd launched it into earlier that day. It was pointless - except that it was my favourite knife - it was crazy - running off on my own in the middle of an epidemic - and, as I was soon to find: it was stupid.
I grabbed a crossbow from the coat closet and my cloak, being sure to close the door quietly behind me. It was silently that I made my way just adjacent to the town, praying I didn't run into anyone. I didn't want to run into "friends," of which I technically had only one, or enemies, of which I had several, or generally anyone I simply hated.
There were hundreds of them: kids I knew from school, the senators of the vicinity, and the guards, to start with.
One guard, in particular…
I breathed out and frowned, coming to an abrupt halt: inspecting the image before me. The knife was deeply embedded in the tree. How had it gone that far in? I pulled on the knife hard, to no avail, and then yanked on it a few more times. It was loosening… slowly… so I kept at it for the following five minutes. I had almost pulled it out completely when a voice made my heart drop.
"What would a young lady be doing out here… in the middle of the night?"
With strongly developed reflexes taking over, I raised my crossbow and fired a deadly bolt directly at whoever had spoken, but the figure merely laughed spitefully and stepped into the light so that I could put face and voice together. Not that I needed to: I'd known immediately who it was.
Everett Scoutfield was the youngest member, by far, of the government force in Seattle, the vicinity we lived in. He was around twenty-seven in age, his hair was dark blond, and there was a sharp scar that marred the forehead of his beautiful face. I had the honour of having caused this imperfection. His eyes were ocean-blue, regularly sparkling, whether that meant he was in a good mood or ready to take out every person within a ten-mile radius. He had impossible timing - always seeming to show up at the least opportune time - and appeared to have a direct interest in me. He was, in summary, a know-it-all copper who had decent looks, by some people's standards, an insufferable expression, by most people's standards, and an impossible disposition, by all people's standards. He was nosey, annoying, and the definition of a jerk. He was the brattiest, the most sarcastic, the most annoying person in the world, and had the biggest head in the country.
He stared over his shoulder casually, seeing my crossbow bolt still vibrating, stuck in a tree over his shoulder where as it had been intended for a much prettier target.
"Terrible manners," he chided in a voice that made me long to pull his hair out.
An entire list of possible responses filled my mind, half of which would probably have resulted in some kind of legal action against me. Reluctantly, I settled with the lame excuse of: "I'm getting my knife."
I said it as though that was the end of it.
"Ah, but why is it here?" Scoutfield asked haughtily, as though I'd had some personal plan to run into my greatest nightmare that evening.
"Because I threw it there," I said bluntly, seriously attempting to keep the sarcastic lines flooding my head from spouting out of my mouth. I added: "My sister died today."
There was something about saying it that made it final. I flinched a moment later and waited for his response, having no idea what it could possibly be.
"Yeah, I'd heard."
I started in incredulity, staring at him in amazement as he examined his perfectly manicured fingernails and let out a small sigh. "Funerals are such a bore…" he looked up at me as though gauging my response. "I'm glad your father decided to bury her on your own property, though, instead of wasting public burial plots. God knows we'll be needing plenty of those in the next few weeks for the other citizens."
How bold of him to assume I wouldn't be putting him in one of them.
My mouth was hanging wide open, but before I could make a move, he went on.
"Your sister was probably the most irritating person in the vicinity," he mentioned conversationally, as though my expression wasn't murderous. He chuckled and shook his head passively. "Little flirt."
Good Lord! He wanted another scar!
In a single motion I wrenched the knife free and swung it at him as hard as I could. I could feel the adrenaline in my veins, saw in my mind what I was about to do to him, but he grabbed me by the wrist almost lazily and spun me around. It took me a moment to assess my situation, but when I had, I found my arm twisted behind my back and was forced to freeze.
"Go home, Miss Nova." he told me in a calm, stern voice, "We can't have your parents losing another daughter due to her own stupidity now, can we?"
He dropped my sore wrist and stepped back, watching cautiously as I rubbed it. It was slightly numb, but had full mobility. It'd be fine. I let my hand drift back to my side and looked up at him spitefully, preparing my next action, but he made the first move. He took my shoulder a little less harshly and turned me towards where I had come from, pushing me the first few steps.
I took a step, and then another, and then I glanced back at him. He was staring at the ground, seemingly in thought, but glanced back at me as my footsteps stopped. Then he nodded to me, just once. It was brief, curt, and then he turned around and walked away.