She had a thick accent and pronounced it dayud.
Chong licked his lips. “Delighted to hear it,” he said. There was a cool cloth across his eyes, and he had no desire to remove it. If he did, then he would have to face the reality of where he was, and he was not quite ready for that. He felt absolutely terrible. Weakness was the worst part, and it seemed to go all the way down to his bones. He wanted to sleep. Not here; at home. The best thing in the world would be to be curled up in his bed on the second floor of his family’s A-frame house. Maybe Mom would come and tuck the blankets in around him and kiss him on the head in that way she always did, even when he was too big to be tucked in. Moms are moms, they did that sort of thing. It would be nice, too. Being tucked in by his mom would chase all the monsters away. A little kiss to make the pain go away too; to help him drift off to sleep.
That would be real nice.
But that was a different world. Mom probably thought that he was dead by now. Her skinny, bookish son lost out in the Rot and Ruin. Would she be sitting on the edge of his empty bed right now, crying, her heart broken? Would she be praying that her son wasn’t a zom shambling forever through the decaying wasteland?
“Hey,” said the girl, poking him a second time.
“Please stop doing that.”
The cloth was whipped away, and Chong reluctantly opened his eyes.
Riot sat beside him. She had cleaned the blood from her face.
“You asked if I was dead,” he said. His voice was thick. “Should I be dead? Am I dying?”
“Well,” said the girl, “you got shot, boy, so put that in the pot and see if it’s soup.”
“Ah,” he said, bracing himself for the return of his memories. Brother Andrew, the archer. Carter and Sarah.
The black-tipped arrow.
“Riot . . . ?” he said slowly. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Well,” she said, “look at you being sharp as a new blade of grass.”
She studied him with eyes that were older than the face in which they were set. There was wisdom there, and a cunning that looked every bit as sharp as Lilah’s, but there was something else, something that Chong always saw in Lilah’s eyes. Sadness. Not new grief, but an older sadness that ran so deep it was as much a part of this girl as her skin. A sadness that was aware of itself and knew that it had nowhere to go.
They were inside what looked to be an old shack. Bare walls, a wood beam ceiling draped with spiderwebs.
“What else do y’all remember?” asked Riot.
“All of it, I suppose.” Then he gasped. “Eve! What happened to her? Please, tell me that they—”
“She’s here,” said Riot quietly. “Keep your voice down. She’s sleeping.”
Chong turned his head and saw a tiny figure curled up under a thin blanket in the far corner. He made as if to sit up in order to see her better, but a meteor of pain slammed into him. He started to scream, but Riot instantly clapped a hand over his mouth, stifling the sound before it could escape. She bent close and whispered in his ear.
“If y’all wake that little girl yonder, I’ll give you something to scream about, boy. We clear on that?”
Chong took in a ragged breath through his nose. Even that was an effort. He felt thin, hollow, like he was more ghost than person. He stared into her eyes and saw that there was more fear than threat there.
He nodded.
Riot studied him for a moment, returned his nod, and slowly removed her hand. She sat back on her heels.
Chong very carefully gasped in a lungful of air. The pain subsided slowly.
“Poor kid saw her mommy and daddy cut down in front of her,” murmured Riot. “Hasn’t said a word since. Not a peep. She ain’t ever gonna be right after something like that, but at least we can let her sleep some. It’ll be a mite easier trying to grapple hold of things when she’s not dead-dog tired.”
Chong nodded. “She’s still young . . . maybe she won’t remember all of it.”