I’m trapped in my cocoon.
Dr Goodnight carries me outside into the warm, damp dark of the forest.
The ceiling fan goes woop-woop.
Gina is lying next to me in bed at the hospital. We’re both looking up at the fan, watching it spin.
‘That’s far,’ Gina says, judging the distance to the fan.
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘David was crazy tall, though.’
‘Yeah, but still,’ Gina replies doubtfully. ‘He must have really wanted to die. It wasn’t your fault, you know.’
‘Maybe not. But I still feel like it was.’ I turn my head to face her. ‘I’m sorry I got you killed, too,’ I say.
‘You didn’t get me killed,’ she replies, rolling her eyes. She turns her face to mine. ‘Whatever you used to be, you aren’t that any more.’
‘I’m still a killer,’ I say. ‘Which is too bad, because now I’m dead and I can’t kill any of the right people.’
Gina laughs. ‘You aren’t dead,’ she says. ‘Goodnight has never tried to kill a junkie like you before. You recognize that taste in your mouth, don’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ I say vaguely. ‘Phenobarbital. I was on it for weeks at the hospital after I killed Zlata. To keep me from screaming.’ I look around. ‘So that’s why I imagined us here. The taste reminded me.’
‘Yeah,’ Gina says, looking around. ‘Your body built up a tolerance. It would take more than what he gave you to kill you.’
She turns her head to face me again, but now she’s Rachel.
‘But you’ve got to wake up or Bo is going to die,’ Rachel says. ‘Wake up!’
I open my eyes and see Gina lying next to me.
Her face is streaked with blood and phlegm, and her eyes are filmed over with death. She rests on her side, her cuffed hand next to her face, like she’s sleeping. There’s dirt under her cheek. There’s dirt under my cheek, too, and all around us.
I flex my hand. It moves.
I listen. I can hear some motion above me, and the sound of someone grunting. Something heavy and warm lands on top me, nearly crushing me. I do not react when it rolls and flops across me.
Maria.
There’s a bullet hole in her forehead. I dare to move my eyes enough to see walls of dirt around us. We’re in a pit. And now I can smell them. The bodies rotting under me.
I hear footsteps moving away from the edge of our mass grave. I wait. The smell is unbearable. The spongy feeling of decay beneath me is unthinkable. But I wait.
When the footsteps have gone, I turn my head to make sure there’s no one standing up there. Then I start to push Maria off me.
My body doesn’t work very well. My vision keeps blurring, but that’s a blessing. I can’t really see what’s under me, covered by only a few inches of maggoty dirt.
My stomach heaves. I swallow the vomit down and stand. The ground beneath me rolls and shifts like logs on water. Legs, arms, torsos, turning under me. I steady myself against the wall of the pit. The edge is just at my head’s height.
Slowly, I raise my eyes over the edge and look. I see no one.
I have to stand on top of Maria to climb out. The effort makes my heart pound and my ears ring. I crawl away from our grave on my hands and knees. I’ll never make it to Bo’s in this condition. I need a jolt. I’ll have to crawl back to the barracks where Gina died to get it. So I crawl.
My back and my neck feel vulnerable. Any minute as I crawl, I could be found. I wait to feel the shot or the stab that will kill me as I put one hand forward, then a knee, then the other hand.
I force myself to go faster. By the time I’m inside the barracks, I’m sweating. The counter. I see the stainless-steel dish on top of it, and the syringe still inside it.
I haul myself up and grab the adrenaline shot. There’s about an inch of fluid left inside. I don’t know how much is too much, or how much is enough. I turn the syringe towards my breastbone and feel for the hole it made before.