Any sign of life, p.1
Any Sign of Life, page 1
Dedication
For Kristine and Sky
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
March 13
March 14
March 15
March 16
March 17
March 18
March 19
March 20
March 22
March 24
March 25
March 26
March 27? 28? I’m losing track
Late March?
Surely it’s April by now
April-ish
I swear this is the coldest, cloudiest April ever
April showers bring May flowers, or so I’ve always been told
Not even an alien shroud of greenish clouds can keep daffodils from blooming in Ohio. They’re everywhere now.
About the Author
Books by Rae Carson
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Copyright
About the Publisher
March 13
I LURCH UP FROM THE BED, GASPING FOR AIR. IT TAKES SEVERAL breaths, several heartbeats, before I’m aware how badly my head hurts. Like I have the worst hangover of my life. Which makes no sense. But my mouth is parched, my tongue swollen, my teeth rancid, like something crawled up in here and died.
What the hell? I try to swallow, but my throat snags on itself, making me gag. The gagging becomes coughing—hard, dry waves that feel like they’re splitting my ribs open.
Relax, I tell myself. Breathe through your nose. Relax, relax, relax.
The coughing stills, and I catch my breath, head tilted back like Coach D taught me. The ceiling fan of my bedroom is motionless. A single fly buzzes around the wooden blades.
I swing my legs over the bed and set my feet on the floor, blinking to clear eyes that are as arid and hollow as skeleton sockets. I try to stand.
Something bites at the back of my hand, and I lift my other hand as if to smack a bug, but I freeze, palm raised. It’s an IV. The entry site is swollen, bloodless, and aching, like a giant hive. The clear IV line stretches up to a 1000 ml bag hanging from a pole. It’s daisy-chained to several identical bags. They’re all wrinkled like raisins, empty of fluid.
I don’t remember getting an IV.
Everything is bright and hazy, silent except for that stupid fly. I peer toward my alarm clock, which is a small plastic basketball with a wedge cut out for the digital insert. My eyes don’t want to focus, but through sheer force of will, I make them.
4:17 p.m. I should be on the court with my team.
No, I remember now; I went to bed right after dinner. So I’ve been asleep almost twenty-four hours.
My throat had been hurting all day. Something about my depth perception had been off, too. At practice, I missed two bounce passes from Shawntelle; both times I put my hands out to catch the ball, but it sailed right past me. Hey, I hear the JV team has room on the bench, Shawntelle teased.
Later, at the table with Mom and Paul and Ryan, my whole body started to ache, and I knew with a sinking feeling that I was getting the flu. The one that had put half of Columbus out of commission. Even though I’m completely up-to-date on my flu shots. Mom had made my favorite, baked mac and cheese with garlic bread, but I went to bed without finishing dinner.
Mom must have hooked up the IV. She did that for me once after a grueling practice made my legs cramp with dehydration. But how did she get permission to bring so many bags home from the hospital, and why did she daisy-chain them together? Why did she let them go dry?
“Mom?” I call out in a voice so hoarse I hardly recognize it as my own. No answer. She’s probably working an afternoon shift.
I roll my shoulders, trying to get movement and circulation back. Lactic acid burns in my deltoids, and my head refuses to rotate to the right. I must have dropped off to sleep in one position and not budged the whole time. A hot shower will help. If I’m quick, there’s still time to make the last hour of practice.
Shower.
Suddenly, I’m craving water more than I’ve craved anything in my life. Cool, clear water. Gallons of water.
I rip the medical tape off my hand and yank out the needle. The pain makes the edges of the world close in around me—or maybe it’s the sight of yellow puss oozing out of the wound. I lurch to my feet and stumble toward my bathroom. I misjudge the doorway and bash my forehead against the jamb, but I don’t care. Oh, god, water.
I fumble blindly for the faucet, twist the knob. The sound of water flowing makes me stupid. I knock my skull against the spout in my haste to get underneath it, and I gulp like a wild animal. It slides down my throat, a waterfall of wonder, sweeter than honey, more filling than Mom’s baked mac and cheese.
My stomach squeezes like a vise, and I don’t even have time for a breath before I vomit all that glorious water back into the sink. It whirls down the drain, tinged with greenish bile but not much else.
I’m still so thirsty I could die of it, but I have to be smarter. I grab my rinse cup and place it under the faucet. It takes all my control to watch it fill up, to bring it slowly to my lips, to take only tiny sips.
My stomach heaves again, but this time the water stays down. I pull the cup away from my face and breathe, in for four, out for four. I take another sip. Breathe again. Another sip. Physical gains take patience, Coach D always says. Patience and pain.
I set the empty cup down, wanting more, more, more but knowing full well by the way the water sloshes around in my stomach that I need to give my body time to adjust. Later, Paige. You can have more later.
I reach into the shower and turn on the hot water. While it heats up, I glance at the mirror. I almost scream.
The face staring back is that of a stranger, with sunken cheeks and corpselike skin and blue eyes that are way too huge and bright. My lips are split and peeling, my chin scaled with flakes of dry skin. Something brownish yellow crusts the edges of my right ear; strands of hair are stuck to it.
And god, my hair is a matted, oily mass, unrecognizable in any way as blond. Half of it is plastered into a towering wall—must have been the side I slept on.
I refuse to look at my reflection as I brush my teeth. My gums hurt, but the cool mint of the toothpaste is heavenly. I rinse and spit out an enormous gob of toothpaste and blood. There’s so much blood that I stick my finger into my mouth to check my teeth. My finger comes out blood-smeared, but my teeth seem to be okay.
My stomach clenches again, a little with revulsion and a lot with wrongness. I know I’ve been sick, but something . . . something about all of this is off.
A hot shower always clears my head. I reach in to test the water and jerk my hand back. Still ice-cold.
“Ryan!” I yell. My little brother is thirteen, exactly the age when boys start taking embarrassingly long showers. “You used all the hot water again!”
No response. He usually thumps the wall—we kind of have this code worked out between us, ever since he was five and I was nine, when we left the Sperm Donor and Ryan started having night terrors. He used to thump the wall when he was scared, and I would thump right back, to let him know that my ear was right next to his, that he was safe. Two thumps from Ryan meant I had to get over to his bedroom right away because he was too scared to deal.
We’re past that, and a gorgeous connecting tiled bathroom now separates our bedrooms, but we’ve never stopped thumping to let one another know, I hear you. I’m here. Irritates the crap out of our stepdad.
I rap the wall with a knuckle, but still no answer. Ryan is probably downstairs.
I have two choices: wait for the water to heat up again and miss practice, or grin and bear it. The state tournament is next week, so of course I’ll grin and bear it.
I shuck my clothes—khaki pants, underwear, black tank top, and sports bra. Everything reeks of the sharper end of the musty spectrum. I must have sweated out a fever while I slept.
Taking a deep breath, I plunge into the shower stall.
I squeal as the cold sends shock waves through my whole body. The tile is icy against my bare feet. Shivering, I grab the shampoo and work it through my hair. The water isn’t the usual cold; it’s more like alpine snowmelt cold. Or maybe my dehydrated body is imagining things.
Still, it feels good. I can almost hear my skin slurping it up. I lather everywhere and rinse, paying special attention to the IV site. It’s obviously infected. I’ll ask Mom to take a look tonight, see if I need an antibiotic.
But right now I have to hurry, leave the house before Mom gets home from work and tells me I’m too sick to go to practice.
I don’t often use conditioner in my hair, but the knots are so bad that I have to. As I finger-comb, strands of hair drop to the tile and whirl away into the drain. The more I comb, the more hair comes out—and more and more.
I’ll worry about that later, because I’m already so late. Coach will make me shoot extra three-pointers tonight for missing an hour, but I don’t mind. My shooting has been weak from outside the arc this year—down to 36 percent lately, after shooting 40 percent my junior year—and I hate being weak.
Back in my bedroom, I start to squeeze into a clean sports bra. I brush my left breast with the back of my hand and gasp, flinching away from myself. It felt like touching a stranger. The skin against my hand was cold and limp, like a deflated basketball.
Carefully, slowly, I run trembling hands over my deflated breasts, my stomach, around my thighs to my butt. Without the ice-cold water and soap providing a distraction, the difference is obvious. I am thinner. Too thin. A wisp of a girl.
I must have lost ten pounds or more in the last twenty-four hours.
“Mom?” I whisper. Panic edges into my chest, and my legs twitch as if to take flight. Calm down, Paige. You’re a warrior. You can handle anything.
I plunk naked onto my bed and stare at nothing, the wrongness too heavy in my head to ignore any longer. In my peripheral vision, the red digits of my basketball alarm clock stare back. I turn my head to take them in fully, just looking for something familiar and bright and solid.
And I notice it, the thing I didn’t see when I first woke up. Beneath the time stamp, in much smaller letters, is the date: Mar 13.
I’ve been asleep for six days.
Suddenly I’m noticing other things too. The stale urine reek coming from my sheets. My ceiling fan, which is always, always on, perfectly still in the space above me. And barely audible but steady and overwhelming now that I’ve detected it, the sound of birds. So many birds, squawking, flapping, screeching.
I stumble over to my bedroom window and push aside my curtains for a better view. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, the colors crisp with early spring. The street is empty of people, but birds are everywhere. Crows mostly, some ravens, a few buzzards, hopping around in our front lawn, perched on top of cars, lining the gutters of rooftops. The wrongness blossoms into full-blown horror.
A bird crashes against the window, and I jerk back. It drops away as quickly as it came, leaving a brownish smear on the glass. Did it fall? It can’t have survived. I start forward, to look for it on the ground, but wait, I’m standing in front of my window completely naked.
I shudder, creeped out by my own weird responses as much as anything; it’s like my mind is swimming through sludge. I need to talk to someone, or at least hug my mom. I grab my robe from the peg outside the bathroom and put it on gingerly, trying to ignore the burn in my shoulders. I throw open my bedroom door and rush into the hallway. “Mom? Paul?”
No, no, it’s too early for Mom or my stepdad to be home from work. I open my mouth to call out again anyway when I notice the smell.
Sickly sweet, like fruit gone bad. No, it’s gamey, like warm, spoiled milk. With a start, I know exactly what it is. It’s the same smell that filled our house when a rat got lodged under the washing machine and died.
A whimper bleeds from my lips. Ryan. I have to find my brother.
I run, just two steps, but my weak knees can’t take it and I buckle to the ground. I drag myself along the hardwood floor, my knees getting caught in my robe, my heartbeat a drum in my temples. When I reach my brother’s door, I use the doorknob to pull myself to my feet.
I knock. “Ryan? It’s Paige.”
I stare at his Keep Out sign and the hazardous waste symbol beneath it. “Ry-guy?”
But I can’t take it anymore. I have to see him, family privacy pact be damned, and I swing open the door.
Screeching, flapping, black wings, yellow eyes, buzzing insects. A gust of ice-cold air and everywhere that overwhelming, sweet-sick scent. The window is open—no, broken—its jagged edges slick with blood and feathers. Denim curtains sway in the breeze.
My rebelling mind doesn’t want to put it all together, but it does, inexorably, and I fall to my knees all over again. I manage to look up, toward Ryan’s bed, and I see a small pale hand flung over the edge of the mattress. The pinky finger is a shredded, bloodless stump.
I crab-crawl backward as fast as I can until I hit the wall and then I crash into it again and again, scrambling to get away until by chance I find open air and tumble back into the hallway. I hook the door with my foot and slam it closed.
I’m shaking everywhere and I can’t stop. I can’t even think. I just grasp my knees to my chest and rock back and forth, back and forth, whimpering like an injured puppy.
Because the crows are eating my brother.
I’m not sure how long I’ve huddled here. But the haze is clearing, and with clarity comes pain, bone-deep and even more shocking than an ice-cold shower. My brother is dead. Dead dead dead. The kid I held in my arms and rocked late into the morning when his monsters kept sleep away. My little Ry-guy, who at eleven years old swore that someday he’d dunk over my head. The boy with the lightning flashes of anger who could go from fierce to gentle in the space of a hug.
Using the wall for support, I gather my feet and stand. Mom needs to know. I need to . . .
There’s that wrongness feeling again. I lean against the wall and take a few deep breaths, letting my brain work it out, even as I dread the conclusions.
Oh.
I move down the hallway, putting one foot in front of the other in plodding, wobbly resolve, toward Mom and Paul’s room. I half know what I’ll find, because Ryan has been dead awhile. Maybe days. Why hasn’t anyone taken away his body? Why did my IV bags go dry?
Why are there so many birds outside?
Double doors lead to my parents’ suite. We have a beautiful home, thanks to Paul, an engineering professor at Ohio State who shares patents for two types of windmills. A stream of light pours diagonally from the skylight above the hallway, bathing the crown molding and the doors below in pale yellow. Like it’s beckoning me home. I’ve been so busy trying to get my team to the state championship that I haven’t taken the time to appreciate what a lovely house I have. What a lovely family.
I don’t bother knocking this time. The door opens with a soft click, and I pad inside on bare feet. Just three steps is all it takes for me to find them. They’re atop the comforter, fully clothed, arms wrapped around each other. My mother’s blond hair streams across the bottom half of Paul’s face, snagged in stubble at least two days old. They seem peaceful, like they’re sleeping. Except that the comforter beneath them is stained and damp with . . . something. And Paul’s wide-open eyes are filmed over with white like curdled milk.
“Mom,” I whisper. “Momma.” But then I step back and close the door, finding my first comfort of the day, because at least they died together. I know it’s weird as soon as I think it, but I cling to the comfort anyway. Like it’s a lifeline. Like I might burst apart if I let go.
Gripping the oak bannister, I make my way down the stairs. Every movement is a little easier now, as my body remembers to pump blood and oxygenate my muscles. When I reach the kitchen, I glance around for Mom’s cell phone. I find it next to the toaster and grab it. Though it’s plugged in, the battery indicator is red. I dial 9-1-1 and hold the phone to my ear.
Nothing happens. Not a ringing sound, not a dial tone, not even a “please try your call again.”
I hang up and try again anyway. Still nothing.
My own phone is in my backpack in the entryway, where I dropped it after practice. Maybe it has some charge left. I stumble past the dining room toward the front door, and I ignore the squeeze in my heart as I kick Ryan’s Reeboks aside to grab my pack. I reach into the side pocket and pull out my phone, and breathe a sigh of relief to see the screen flash on. But the battery icon is red—I may only have a few seconds.
I dial 9-1-1 again.
Nothing. I peer at the screen. No voicemail or text notifications either.
When was the last time I went even a day without getting a text from Shawntelle? I can’t remember.
I look closer. Zero bars. A base station must be down. Must have been down awhile for me to not have a single notification from my best friend or my coach or anyone else on my team.
I dock the phone in the charger, but the charging symbol does not come on. I flick the light switch beside the outlet, but the light does not come on. Panic finds its way back inside me as I whip open the refrigerator door.
The smell of rotten vegetables hits my face, and I gag, slamming the door shut.
The electricity has been out for days.
I need to find help. Someone. Anyone. I need a friendly face or a friendly voice more than anything in the world. I’m starting toward the front door again when a wave of dizziness makes me grasp for the counter.
You need more water, Paige. And food.
The thought of eating makes my stomach turn, but I can’t let myself be this fragile. I haven’t eaten in almost a week. I’ll just have a drink and a few bites of something bland, and then I’ll find someone to help me with . . . I pause a moment before I’m able to say it, even silently to myself. The bodies. I need help with the bodies.
