Disarming Read Free

had been a good student, long division, fractions and grammar were not my strong suits and I hated it.
    It made me resent her a bit. She had abandoned us already, even if she was still here physically. How could she let herself go like this? How could she leave us behind as she withered inside her self-imposed prison? I wanted to slap her at times and shake the old Helen out of her. I held out hope that she was still in there somewhere, just lost in the crevices of the endless fields in her mind.
    But how could I find her? What would make her return to this place, so empty, hollow and filled with loneliness. Maybe she had found peace some other way, deep inside the vast nothing inside her. Maybe she didn’t want to return at all. Even though I understood her reasons for escape, how could I make her see what this was doing to us?
    The thing was, I didn’t think I could save her. Maybe no one could.

Chapter Two
    Promise Me This
     
    April
     
    “ WE FOUND MORE of them.” Rye slipped down onto a park bench that sat just at the edge of the property where our bunker-slash-cabin was situated. He looked tired and rubbed his face as his gold-rimmed, grey eyes hovered near my face. He was devastatingly handsome and constantly made me avoid his gaze for fear that I’d get lost in his disarming looks. I didn’t want to be in love with anyone. Love was a foolish, pre-epidemic notion. Love was not a necessity; it was a luxury I refused to indulge in.
    Rye made it so hard, though. The way his presence sent shivers through me was irresistible and impossible to ignore. Sometimes I wondered if pushing him away would be foolish, especially when he looked at me with those steel-colored eyes of his. How could someone make me feel like an idiot with no words whatsoever? It made my chest arrest for a moment before I’d violently shake it off. No time for that. No time ever.
    “More ferals?” I stopped cleaning my weapons as I waited for him to continue. “Were they burned up?”
    “Yep. Not so many now, but a lot. They were lining the streets in heaps, like they had been pushed out the windows of some of the hotels.” His lips thinned into a firm line, making him appear overly serious. I sighed, turning back to sorting my blades out across the table I had set up outside. There were ten blades, all sizes. Sharpening and cleaning each one took time, but it was an activity I saved for days like this, when too much was tumbling in my head and peace avoided me like a plague. It was soothing and calmed my frayed nerves.
    I felt his fingers slip over my shoulders, giving them a tentative squeeze. My skin tingled with his touch, sending tiny sparks down my arms. I closed my eyes, and tried to control my breathing as he slowly kneaded my muscles, melting my tension away.
    “What do you think is causing this?” I flung my eyes open, feeling slightly dazed yet relaxed. I continued to wipe down one particular machete, the one that I had chosen to replace my two favorite and now long lost weapons. I had grieved the loss of those blades, lost over the precipice of the Stratosphere Tower. It helped me turn my focus back to the conversation before I became a stuttering idiot from his touch.
    “I’m not too sure. It’s the weirdest thing.” Rye’s hands slid away as he propped himself on a chair across from where I sat, his eyes twinkling as though he knew how distracting he was. “Who would go out at night to shove the wildlings out the windows? It’s suicidal.” He ran his hand through those thick, black locks that never seemed to stay put. “And it’s not like the windows are shattered. They look they were either never opened or shut after they did the deed.”
    “Hmmm,” was I could muster as I thought things over. I wouldn’t dare hang out in a hotel after dark. The risk of becoming dinner to hundreds of ferals was way too high. Who would be that crazy? The possibility of there being something else at work was unnerving, Despite the