What Little Remains (The Fallout Trilogy Book 1) (23 page)

June
1

“Please, Charlie, you haven’t
spoken to me in a week,” Ricky says, desperately.

I stare at the ceiling, doing my
best to ignore him. After he left that day, I haven’t spoken a word to him. He
saw what losing Danny did to me. He put me through that nightmare.
For what?
So he could keep me to himself. Look how well
that’s working out for him. I hate him. Him being in here and breathing the
same air as me makes me want to vomit.

“I understand you’re mad. I’ll
fix it. I’ll do whatever I can to fix it,” he says.

I roll my eyes. Nothing he can
say or do will fix what happened between us. I could have forgiven him for
anything else but this. Nightmares of Danny haunt my sleep. This morning’s
dream was particularly awful.

“Charlie, why
didn’t you look for me?” Danny asks, staring up at me from the ground. He is
covered in blood, and his glasses are broken.

“I tried,” I
answer, bending to touch him, but he starts falling away, my fingers almost
touching him, but missing by inches.

“You’re too late,”
Danny says, looking sad. “It’s all your fault. If you had looked, you could
have saved me.”

His final words
echo over and over as I try to grab him, but every time I’m close he manages to
slip through my fingers again.

I woke up sweating
and cried silently in my room for an hour. I see his face every time I close my
eyes.

My relationship with Ricky was
built on the fact that I needed him. He had to be strong for me, and I needed
his strength to get out of bed in the morning. I needed him to keep the
nightmares away. I needed him to survive in this new world.

He kept Danny away from me
because he knew that if Danny were in the picture, I would have been the big
sister that he would have needed. I would have focused all my energy on him
instead of on Ricky.

He couldn’t handle the fact that
I would have loved someone else.

He screwed up. He knows that.
There isn’t anything he can do to make it right, no matter how much he may try.

“I love you,” he says, standing
up. “I’ll be back later. Or if you need me, just send someone. I’ll stop
whatever I’m doing.”

He hesitates a second before
leaving. The day after he exploded at me, he apologized, like he always does.
It lasted a month and a half. That’s how long he could go before his true
nature revealed
itself
again. He was pretending that
entire time, pushing back that part of himself that he knew I would hate. He
was hiding it from me. John told me that he didn’t start scavenging again until
I was shot. I don’t think he planned on stopping altogether, but now that
doesn’t matter.

This whole thing, the lying and
deception, it has all been about me. It was his “love” for me that made him
decide it was okay to leave my brother out there, in the woods to die. He never
wanted to share me. That isn’t love. No one does that to someone that they
love.

Maybe Ricky and I still would
have been a couple if Danny was in the picture, but I wouldn’t have lived with
him. I would have lived with Danny. I would have spent most of my time with
Danny to make sure that he was going to get through this.
The
way Ricky saw it
,
Danny was an obstacle
.

He didn’t kill him because he
didn’t have to. Ricky knew Danny was too young to survive out there on his own.
If Danny is dead, even if Ricky didn’t pull the trigger, it is his fault.

“She still isn’t talking to me,”
Ricky’s voice comes through the door.

“What do you expect?” Daren asks,
an angry edge to his voice that I have never heard him use with Ricky before.
“You told her that her brother was dead. I’m pissed at you.”

“She can hear you both,” John
says.

The front
door open and close.
A few moments later my door opens. John leans against the doorframe.

“I hate him.”

“I know you do,” John says,
shaking his head. “He knows it too.”

“Good.”

“Charlie, you don’t understand.
He no longer trusts you at all. He knows how much you hate him. He thinks the
moment you can leave, you are going to walk right out that gate. He knows he
can’t stop you from hating him, but he can stop you from leaving him.”

“What does that matter? I don’t
trust him either.”

John gives me a look, pushing
back the strands of hair that have fallen out of his ponytail. “What do you
plan on doing now that you know everything?”

I falter, not thinking about
that. I want to leave and never have to see his face again. But that’s
extremely dangerous.
Especially in the shape that I’m now.
It could take me months to completely heal, and I don’t want to be here for
that long. The longer I’m here, the longer Danny is out there alone.

“I know you want to leave. Ricky
knows it, too. You and I both know that won’t ever happen with him here.”

“You’re planning to overthrow
him.”

“I am. Alec and I have a plan.”

“When? How?”

“We have to wait. We are still
recruiting people. Getting whatever weapons we can.”

“How long?”

“Three months.”

“Three months,” I say, closing my
eyes. “You want me to wait another three months. I can’t be here this long.”

“You aren’t just going to have to
wait. You’re going to have to make Ricky believe that you have changed your
mind about him. You are going to have to get him to trust you again. That won’t
be too hard if you play your cards right. He’s frantic for you to love him
again.”

“Why do I need him to trust me?”

“Because our whole plan depends
on you getting the key for the weapons container.”

“Three months and then what?”

“Three months gives your body
time to heal. Recover. Then we will take down Ricky.”

“I’ll stay. I will help you. But
you need to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I need to find Danny. You need
to help me get in shape so that I can find him on my own.”

June
15

John said I had to carefully
approach letting Ricky believe that I trusted him again. So for the first
couple of days, I acknowledged his presence, saying just a word or two. After
not saying much for a couple of days, I slowly started to speak to him more.

Most of the time I’d just let him
talk. He stayed away from talking about the scavenging, murder, and Danny,
talking more about his plans to expand the compound. It was hard to listen and
harder to look at his face.

Today, I timidly smile when he
comes in. It has been two weeks since my conversation with John.

“Hey,” I say, sitting up. “You’re
here early.”

“Am I?” he asks, pulling up a
chair. “I didn’t notice.”

“What’s been going on today?” I
ask, noticing the dirt under his fingernails and on the back of his neck that
he missed.

“Nothing much,” he says.

A soft knock on the door
interrupts us. Nicole pops her head in, ignoring Ricky.

“Hey,” she says, giving me a
smile. “You want to go get cleaned up?”

I look at Ricky, offering him a
sad smile. “I forgot that I asked Nicole to help me get cleaned up. I haven’t
felt clean in forever.”

Ricky stands up, smiling. “That’s
fine. How’s your shoulder today?”

“Still stiff,” I say, sitting up.

That wasn’t a lie. My shoulder is
still very stiff, but John’s been aggressive with the physical therapy. I need
to get in shape as quickly as possible; our whole plan depends on it. Since
I’ve started talking to Ricky again, he hasn’t been going out as much. He never
leaves for more than two days, and, as far as John can tell me, the death toll
has gone down.

Ricky walks with me to the door.

“Take good care of my girl,”
Ricky says, and I hear the forced friendliness in his voice.

“I always do,” Nicole retorts,
opening the other door for me.

Ricky puts a hand on my back,
stopping me before I go through the door. He kisses the top of my head. “Be
careful. If you need anything, just holler. The guards on duty should hear
you.”

“I will,” I say, keeping my voice
light. “See you when I get back.”

“How is the PT going?” she asks,
once we put some distance between the cabin and ourselves.

“John is really pushing me, but I
really am starting to see an improvement,” I say.

“How is it going with Ricky?” she
asks.

I smile at the guards as we walk
through the gate. This is the third time that I’ve gone through the gate since
I’ve been shot. The guards nod back, looking interested. I wait until enough
distance is between us before answering.

“You know how he is. It hasn’t
been easy. Every time he touches me, I want to crawl out of my skin.”

“Do you think he knows?” she
asks, barely above a whisper.

“No. He’s been playing it safe.
He hasn’t tried to kiss me except on the forehead. He thinks he is working his
way back into my good graces.”

We’ve made it to the river. She
helps me slip my sling off and carefully pull my shirt over my head. I undress
the rest of the way and wade into the river. She stands guard, making sure that
no one disturbs me as I bathe.

The cold water trickles against
my skin. I’m able to submerge myself up to my shoulders. The summer air is hot,
and the
water cools
my skin.

“How’s the water?” Nicole asks,
discretely keeping her back to me. She has no issue getting naked in front of
people, another reason I believe that she was a model. I like my modesty.

“Perfect for a day like today.”

I submerge myself completely
under water, running my hand through my hair. When I come back up through the
surface, I finish scrubbing myself off. I used to enjoy baths. I could take my
time, enjoying the water. Now I have to hurry if I want privacy. Men like to
come around this time to clean up after working. Though, when the guards know
I’m coming out, they keep the men away until I come back.

“Can you toss me a towel?” I ask,
coming out of the water.

Nicole helps me out of the water
and hands me a towel. She inconspicuously turns around again as I dry off. The
heat from the sun feels wonderful on my skin, reminding me of all the countless
soccer games I spent playing under it.

“I’m going to need help getting
my shirt back on,” I say, keeping my towel against my chest.

“I got you,” she says, grabbing
my shirt off the ground.

She pulls my shirt over my head,
and I slip my head through and then put my good arm through the armhole. I keep
my left arm against my chest, slowly putting it through the other side. I
grimace as I push it all the way through the hole.
 

“God,” I groan. “That hurts every
time.”

My arm is healing slowly, but
it’s healing. The wound itself is almost completely closed up now. The issue is
with the muscle. John gets on me about babying it, but I can’t help it. It
hurts to breathe when I push myself too hard.

The forest starts to spin, and I
close my eyes, sitting down on the ground. She grabs the towel from me and rubs
it carefully over my head, drying my hair.

“I talked to John,” she says,
patting the ends of my hair. “He says you’re moving along. He doesn’t think you
are going to be ready in time, but everything else is coming together almost
perfectly.”

“How are you doing with this?” I
ask, turning to face her.

She stops drying my hair and
gives me a sad smile. “I’m ready for this. I’m nervous but ready.”

I grab her hand, squeezing it
tightly. Violence is not in her nature. She will defend herself, as she has in
the past, but it is harder for her than it is for other people. I know that I
am not the only person who is having nightmares about what happened.

 
“I’m going to miss you. You’ve become my
family. I hate that this is what has to happen,” I say.

She’s about to answer when we
hear laughter on the path coming towards us. Two women stop short when they see
us, looking at each other. They turn away, heading further down the river,
towels in their hand. I glance back at Nicole who is making faces at them. She
looks back at me, smiling sarcastically.

“Let’s get you back home. I would
hate for someone to start missing you.”

I get to my feet. “Speaking of
someone missing you, how is Alec doing?”

Nicole’s smile slips slightly.
“Now that I know the truth behind what he does when he goes out with Ricky,
it’s put a strain on our relationship. I still love him, but he’s having a hard
time coping with what he’s seeing. He’s started having nightmares. We’re
getting through it.”

“You’ll get through it. He loves
you, and I know you love him.”

“But is it enough? Is that enough
to get us through this? I just don’t know,” she says. “Do you think it is even
possible to rebuild after the things that we’ve seen? Is it possible that we
are too scarred, too broken, to be able to live normally again?”

I shake my head, giving her hand
another squeeze. “I don’t believe that. I can’t. You are going to be able to be
okay. I don’t think that we can ever go back to what we were before, but that’s
what life is about. We learn to live with our past and do our best not to
repeat it in the future.”

With that, she helps me stand up,
and we head back to the village. We pass off-duty guards heading out to the
river. They all smile as I pass, nodding their heads. I smile back wondering if
one of them was the one who fell asleep that night I got shot.

Ricky meets us halfway back to
the house. When we see him, Nicole stops.

“I’ll see you next time,” she
says, leaning in and giving me a hug.

I return it with my one arm.
“Next time.”

As she walks away, Ricky walks
towards me.

“You look better,” he says,
falling in step with me.

“I’m sure I smell a lot better
too,” I say, smiling.

“Are you tired? Do you need to
rest?” he asks, placing a hand on my back.

“I’m fine. I’m refreshed from my
bath,” I answer.

He gets a couple of steps ahead
of me to open the door, heading for the table.

“Don’t you want to go to your
room?” Ricky asks, pulling out a chair for me. “Wouldn’t it be more
comfortable?”

“Probably,” I answer, sitting in
the chair he pulled out for me. “I’ve just spent so much time in my room that
I’m sick of it. Plus, I don’t think I was the only thing that smelled in
there.”

“Oh, I’ve already changed your
sheets,” he says, sitting down on the table next to me.

“You changed the sheets?” I ask,
amused. “I didn’t know you knew how.”

He makes a face at me. “I know a
thing or two.”

A knock on the door interrupts
us. John comes in with his bag of stuff that his tortures me with in hand. I
have to hide my smile. I do my best to plan my days so that I have people
constantly interrupting Ricky and me. I don’t know if I could do this
otherwise. “It’s time for Charlie’s physical therapy,” he says. “Ricky, you
should probably go.”

“What? Why?” Ricky asks.

“The last time you were here for
physical therapy you wouldn’t let me do my job,” John replies, standing behind
me.

“I don’t know what you are
talking about,” Ricky says.

“Physical therapy is meant to
push Charlie so that she gets better. You can’t stand it when she is in the
least bit of discomfort, and it makes my job very difficult. Especially when
you keep your hand near your gun.”

“Okay,” Ricky says, getting up.
He leans in and kisses me on the forehead. “I’ll come and see you after you
finish.”

I nod my head, and watch as he
walks out of the cabin. John meets my eyes.

“If you are going to be leaving
here on your own, we are going to have to step this up.”