Fractured (16 page)

Even when she was living in a nightmare, Bash still dreamed in color. And like all of her dreams since she’d stop taking her antiepileptic medicine, this one was very lifelike.

In this dream, she was sitting in the back seat of a car. She blinked in the morning light, thrown into an unfamiliar world of sight. She grimaced, turned towards the interior of the car, and froze.

There was no way she would have recognized it by sight, but she knew where she was by the smell and the touch of the cloth interior. She had spent a lot of her childhood here.

It was her mother’s 2002 Honda Accord.

She hadn’t ridden in it since the accident that took her dad’s life and incapacitated her mother. She shivered, wanting to disappear from this dream. There were too many painful memories being brought up in her mind.

“What?” an all-too familiar voice asked. “Eric, I don’t understand...”

Her mother was in the driver’s seat, her head turned to look at the passenger. Silhouetted against the morning light, her mother looked pale. Seven years younger. In this version of Cheryl, her stroke hadn’t ravaged her intellect and paralyzed part of her face yet. She did look shocked however.

“I’m sorry,” Bash’s father was saying. His voice cracked on “sorry”. He seemed distraught and haggard, while her mother looked confused and angry. He ran his hand through his thinning hair.

Bash looked at the two of them, quickly memorizing the way each of them looked at that moment. Even though it was just a dream, she believed that this was how they truly looked in real life.

“But...how? Why?” her mother demanded. “How is that even possible?”

“Mom, Dad,” Bash whispered, although her voice sounded too loud in her ears. They didn’t even glance back at her. It was like she was watching a movie where whatever she did had no bearing on the outcome of what happened.

Suddenly, she realized what she was witnessing. She instinctively knew.

“I made a horrible, horrible mistake Cheryl,” her dad replied. He was so pallid and looked so scared.

This was the morning of the accident. The one that killed her father and put her mother in a rest home. She didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to be dreaming about this.

“Get me out of here!” Bash yelled. She grasped the handle, trying to open the door, but the door refused to budge. She started banging against the door. “Get me out of here!”

Yelling and throwing herself against the door didn’t do anything to help the situation. She covered her mouth with her hand and screamed into it.

“I don’t understand,” her mother said. “How could that...? Bash and Lily...How...?”

I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to see this.

“No, I don’t understand,” Cheryl demanded. “What the hell do you mean you—”

A loud, ringing sound overtook all of Bash’s hearing. She cried out in pain and covered her ears, trying to block it out. That didn’t help at all. Instead, the tinnitus increased in intensity until it was agonizing. She was screaming for it to go away, scrunching her eyes up in pain.

Then, as sudden as it started, the ringing stopped. Instead of her hearing coming back, it left her in silence.

Her most trusted sense gone, Bash reached out with closed eyes, trying to get her bearings. She opened them again, and while she could still see, everything seemed too bright and too blown out.

Her parents were arguing in the front, her mother screaming at her father, Eric trying to talk to her in a defeated manner. They had rarely ever argued when they were together, so seeing them fighting in full blown color was too real for Bash. It was awful. They both looked frightened, like they were dealing with stuff that was bigger than themselves.

The strangest thing happened. Her mother’s eyes flashed in the rear view mirror. In the reflection, their eyes connected. While Bash had only been a ghost in this dream, suddenly her mother was
seeing
her—or someone else—there in backseat. All the color drained from Cheryl’s face when that moment of contact was made. Bash could see her mother’s wide eyes searching her face.

“Who are you? Why are you here, old woman?”

Bash’s hearing suddenly came back into focus and she could hear everything.

Then Bash noticed that her mother’s nose was bleeding. Cheryl’s entire face went slack and drooped, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.

“Cheryl?” Eric yelled. “
Cheryl!
”

The car swerved, jumping over the median and into an oncoming semi that was frantically honking at the little car to get out of its way.

Bash was screaming, holding her hands up in an attempt to block her from the impending crash. The car crumpled against the bumper of the semi and all of their bodies were flung from their seats. Bash heard her father’s voice in her head.

“I did everything to make you happy.”

Bash closed her eyes, bracing herself. Heartbeats passed without the impact. She winced once more, but when nothing happened, she chanced opening her eyes.

Surprisingly, she was standing on the side of the road, like she’d been ejected from the car right before the crash. A fog had settled, obscuring everything that was beyond twenty feet from her. Bash could see the busted up hulk of the car, the broken and scarred tree that the car hit after smashing into the semi. She gulped, seeing a mangled mass that must have been her mother, still strapped in the driver’s seat. Her head was cracked through the windshield. In some weird twist of fate, the airbags hadn’t deployed.

And her father...

She couldn’t see him. He must have been thrown from the car, out into the fog

Bash’s cheek was cold. She must have been crying.

“Everything,” a voice said beside her. “Everything...for her...”

She turned her head, and was shocked to see her father standing next to her. He looked pale, shaky. She could only see the left side of him as he looked at the wreck, but he was bloody, beaten up.

“Dad,” she started, reaching out to him. He turned his head at the sound and she screamed when she saw the other side of his face.

A shard of glass had been driven through his right eye. It was imbedded into the socket, and blood and some kind of clear liquid were freely dripping down the side of his face.

He shouldn’t be able to be standing. Hell, he shouldn’t be
alive
.

“I did it all,” he whispered, tiredly. “All for her. All for
you
.”

“What do you mean, Dad?” she asked, her voice breaking.

He reached out to her, a bloody, shredded up arm. He stumbled towards her, one lumbering foot after another. She reeled backwards and started screaming. And she continued, even as his hand clasped around her wrist.

“Bash!” a voice was yelling. The grip on her wrist tightened and she was shaking. “
BASH
!”

She opened her eyes and was thrown into the world of darkness that was her reality. She was no longer asleep. She was no longer dreaming about her parents’ deaths. She was back in the nightmare of her real life.

“Seth,” she croaked. Her throat was dry. Her lips were cracked.

Seth’s hand was in a vice-like grip around her wrist. She twisted in it to wrench her hand from him. He let her go. Before she had fallen asleep, she’d stopped crying long enough for them to argue about what to do next. And then she started crying again and couldn’t stop. She finally fell asleep, huddled up in a corner away from him. Now that she woke up and after her horrible dream, she felt conscious that she had fallen asleep angry at him, which she had promised herself she would never do.

She leaned into him, hugging him to her. It took him a moment to respond, but he finally wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“For what?” he softly asked.

“For...” She paused, thinking. She wanted to tell him sorry for their argument earlier. She wanted to tell him sorry for getting them into this mess. Sorry for losing his friends. Sorry for not being strong enough. She frowned, letting herself absorb those thoughts and fought back a shiver. “For not hugging you sooner.”

He ran his fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry too,” he murmured.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, simply holding each other.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“We still don’t know,” he answered. “No one’s watches or phones are working. And there’s a haze over the windows, so we can’t even see what we could earlier. We can’t even tell if it’s light or dark. Just twilight.”

“Are the lights fixed?” she asked, trying to hear some good news.

“No,” he said bitterly. “It’s really dark, but we can see.”

Bash shivered. She had never been afraid of the dark before. It was amazing how quickly that could change. When you didn’t know what was hiding in the dark, you tended to be afraid of it. “What’s going to happen, Seth?”

“I don’t know, Sheba,” he said. “I don’t know.”

She closed her eyes and melted into him, wanting to forget the world.

“I had a dream,” she mumbled. “It was about my parents’ accident.”

“It was just a dream,” Seth replied soothingly.

She frowned. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. She took a deep breath, knowing Seth wasn’t going to be happy with her. “I’ve been having weird dreams since I stopped taking my antiepileptic medication two weeks ago.”

He stiffened. “You what?”

“I
—
”

“Bash, why the
hell
did you stop taking it?”

She bit her lip, not wanting to tell him the real reason, that they could possibly be expecting a baby. She didn’t want him to worry even more now that they were in this nightmare. “You know it’s always given me a weird, loopy feeling. I just wanted to remember this weekend without that.”

He didn’t say anything, so she continued, hoping that her reason had assuaged him.

“My dreams have been very weird. I saw Mom and Dad right before the accident. They were...arguing about something.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. My dad told me he’d done something for Mom. And me.” She sighed. “That’s not all. I’ve been
seeing
stuff. And not just in my dreams.”

“Like what?”

“Faces...” she answered. “An old lady...She’s
—
”

“That’s what Rick meant by you not taking your medicine,” he muttered. He didn’t sound happy. “Bash, you could’ve killed yourself.”

A voice groaned, and Bash recognized it as Scott, who sounded not too far away from them. “How’s he doing?” she asked, changing subjects. There were bigger things to worry about.

Scott was asleep, although it seemed like a fitful rest. His arm must have been killing him, but exhaustion had taken over and he had passed out while Bash was asleep.

It took a moment before Seth responded. “Not too well. I think he went into shock...” He paused. “He needs medical help.”

Bash reached out towards Scott’s groan and found his cold, clammy skin. He
did
feel like he was sick. Bash didn’t know much about medicine, but she knew that he was taking a turn for the worse.

“Do you know if there’s a doctor or anything?” she asked, her voice cracking with worry. As much as he was a bright-eyed, innocent kid, she really liked Scott and didn’t find him annoying like everyone else did. She wanted him to get through this.

“No,” Seth answered. “I’ve already checked. There’s no one. Only a veterinarian assistant who tried her best.”

Hope fluttered in Bash’s chest. “What did they say?”

He uttered a short, bitter laugh. “That he’s not a dog.” He sighed worriedly, and she heard him shift against the wall. “She says that he needs some antibiotics.”

“No one here has any?” she asked, already knowing the answer. She was ready to look for any sort of hope for him. She didn’t want to lose any more people, after Darius and Rick and...

And Lily,
she thought, her heart sinking. She forced herself to focus on the here and now, because Scott needed all her worry.

“Could we go get some?” she offered helplessly, although she knew the answer to that as well.

“I don’t want to risk it,” Seth answered resignedly. “With that fire...I don’t know what’s out there. We could get killed. Or worse...”

“‘Scuse me?”

It was a voice Bash didn’t recognize, an older woman. Bash turned her head at the sound, curious. Since they had been cut off from the rest of the world, everyone else had been avoiding their little group like the plague, Maria included. Aside from a few questions, introductions and addressing spacing issues, they hadn’t really talked, so for someone to come over unannounced surprised Bash.

“Yes?” Seth asked her.

“I might...” the woman said, hesitating, “I might have some information about what that thing said.”

It took a few moments for Bash to realize what she meant. She was meaning Rick, who had miraculously come back from the dead and spouted off some scary warnings.