Chapter 115: I’m sorry

“Well don’t you think maybe I want more than a cramped up drywall apartment in Englewood!?!?”

I remember that night like it was yesterday.

The headphones over my ears did nothing to block the shouting downstairs. Their voices carried straight through the walls like they always did.

I lay back on my bed and stared at the band posters on my wall. Some of them were peeling off at the corners. Others were wrinkled where the tape had stopped holding.

“This is all we FUCKING have, Sheila! You don’t just get to fucking—..fucking walk away from this shit like it’s a choice!!”

I never even listened to the bands.

I just liked how the room looked with them there.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going???” my dad yelled.

His words dragged together. I could tell he was drunk again.

“Away from all of this. Away from you,” my mom snapped back. “I don’t deserve this shit.”

“And what about your son, huh!?!? What do you want me to tell him?”

There was a pause.

Then my dad laughed bitterly.

“That you’re some cheating whore who wants to run off with a yoga instructor in New Jersey? Fine. Be my fucking guest.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“YES THE FUCK I DO—!!!”

I slowly got up from bed, it creaking slightly under my weight as I rubbed my eyes.

“Wanna travel the world??? Spread your legs for every Mexican and Australian you see!?!? Real world’s gonna come bite you in the ass real soon.”

“Dad?”

My voice cut through the argument.

I was standing halfway down the stairs, one hand resting on the railing. My eyes burned from lack of sleep.

I had tried listening to music to get myself in the mood to study, but they were being too loud. Eventually I had to come down and deal with it.

My mom stood near the door with a suitcase in her hand. Her makeup was thick, like she had put it on in a hurry.

My dad stood in the middle of the living room with a bottle hanging loosely from his hand. He was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and underwear.

It was way too late for this.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

My mom forced a small smile.

“Mommy’s just going on a little trip for a while,” she said softly. “Go back to bed, sweetie.”

My dad barked out a laugh.

“Why don’t you tell your son the goddamn truth, huh!?”

Back then, I wasn’t trying to save their marriage. That had already fallen apart years ago. Probably around my fifteenth birthday.

What I cared about was being able to study. I cared about the constant noise complaints from neighbors. I cared about the eviction notices taped to our door.

But the moment I saw him grab her arm, something in me snapped.

After that, everything blurred together.

I remember shouting.

I remember trying to pull him away from her.

And I remember the bottle.

Glass exploded across my head. Then everything went dark.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital bed.

—

I blinked and forced the memory away.

Why the hell was I thinking about that now?

My fist rested under my jaw as I stared out the bus window. Chicago passed by in flashes of gray buildings and broken streets.

The city looked worse than I remembered.

The bus rattled as it moved down the road. A few familiar faces sat scattered through the seats. People Julia had brought along when we left the city.

Damien was one of them.

I noticed him sitting a few rows ahead, staring straight forward. He hadn’t said a word the entire ride.

I didn’t care that he was there.

Back then I feared him because he always had a plan I wasn’t always part of. The strength in numbers only made things worse.

But now I know he has no one. All of those friends of his were dead. He seemed smart enough to stay out of my way now.

I leaned my head back against the window.

The plan was simple. I would go back to the compound one last time and say goodbye.

Terri. Hale. Carl. Cherie. Adira. The others.

If I was serious about leaving for Canada with Lila, then this was probably the last time I was ever going to see them.

Lila found my hand resting on the seat between us.

I hadn’t even realized how tense it was until her fingers closed around it.

She rubbed the back of my hand slowly with her thumb. It wasn’t a big gesture, but it was enough to make me glance at her.

She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were on the road ahead through the windshield, calm as always.

Still, the way her hand stayed around mine made it feel like she already knew what was going on in my head.

Like she was trying to steady me without saying a word.

—

“You did all you could, Izzy.”

Aubrey reached over and took Isabella’s hand.

Isabella had been sitting stiffly the entire ride, staring down at the floor of the bus. Aubrey had noticed the shift in her mood a while ago.

“Josephine probably just missed them,” Aubrey added quietly. “Maybe the camp had some left and we didn’t know.”

Isabella didn’t even look at her.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor.

She didn’t believe that for a second. Aubrey didn’t either, if she was being honest with herself.

They had searched every shelf in that pharmacy.

Not a single bottle of ACE inhibitors.

Isabella’s jaw tightened slightly.

She felt like she had let her father down.

But the bus kept moving, and thoughts like that didn’t have much room to sit and grow.

—

“Everyone get ready,” Julia muttered under her breath from the front.

The driver suddenly pressed harder on the gas.

The engine growled as the bus picked up speed.

For a moment I thought we were about to crash into something.

Then I saw it.

The checkpoint.

It was the last one on the road out of Chicago.

The place where we expected trouble.

Every time someone tried to leave the city, that was where the fights usually happened.

But as we got closer, something was gravely off.

There were no trucks blocking the road. No barricades. No armed guards waiting for us.

Nothing.

The bus rolled straight past the cracked “Welcome to Chicago” sign without slowing down.

No one stopped us. No one even appeared.

I leaned forward slightly in my seat, staring through the windshield as the empty road stretched ahead.

My stomach turned.

Something about it felt wrong. I couldn’t explain why, but the silence made the back of my neck itch.

Maybe things really weren’t as bad as I had thought.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

And right now, I had no idea what it was.

—

Hale kept one hand on the steering wheel.

The other pressed against the side of his head.

The compound burned behind them.

He had looked back once when they first pulled away. Flames had already swallowed half the buildings. Smoke rolled up into the sky in thick black waves.

He hadn’t looked back again.

Terri sat in the passenger seat with a brown paper bag clenched in her hands. She stared at the road but her mind was somewhere else entirely.

The pills.

In just 7 months, they had been so close to figuring it out. A real treatment for the infected. Something that might have actually worked.

Now the lab was gone.

All of it burned with the compound.

Her thoughts drifted to the people who had been there.

The ones she saw every day.

Half of them were probably dead now. Dr. Tekashi most likely among them.

Terri swallowed.

There were still patients in the infirmary when the attack started. Some of them couldn’t even walk on their own.

They had been left behind.

She imagined the building collapsing around them. Fire spreading through the halls.

Bodies burning like it was nothing.

“Hale…?”

He didn’t answer.

His jaw stayed tight as he stared at the road.

“Hale, where are we going?” she asked again.

The car sped down the empty highway. Wind rushed past the windows.

After a moment she spoke again.

“…Shouldn’t we try to look for the others? Some of them must have escaped too. It might be better if we—”

“Look, science girl.”

Hale’s voice snapped through the car.

Terri flinched.

“Why don’t you just stay quiet and let me focus on getting us farther away from this mess?”

His hands tightened on the wheel.

The frustration in his voice filled the car.

Terri frowned and brushed a curl away from her eye. She leaned back in her seat and said nothing.

There wasn’t much point in pushing for answers you were too scared to find yourself.

And somewhere deep down, Hale was just as afraid of the answer as she was.

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