If I wanted to manipulate him that was the word to use. This was a man who had stripped himself of all pretense, all sentiment. Realism was his only philosophy. He nodded, once. I tried talking to him about what I needed to do and how he could help but he was done with that conversation. He just shut down, conserving energy maybe. He was the hardest man I ever met. It gave me hope, though. If anybody could get me to the UN building it was Jack.
We sat in silence for quite a while. I thought about heading back up to the concourse, to Ayaan and the other survivors but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t handle the way they looked at me-as if I was a tasteless joke, their fondest hope dangled before them after weeks and months of being told that nothing good could ever happen again. I couldn’t face their weird games based on a popular culture that had ceased to exist.
The silence was just starting to really get to me-I was ready to start talking to myself, just to hear something-when it was broken by Carly. We couldn’t see her, she stayed to the shadows but we heard her footsteps echoing on the deserted platform. Jack raised his shotgun to track the sound. That felt callous to me but then we both knew that she might be coming back changed.
“I threw up,” she said from the darkness. “That’s bad, right?”
“Probably. It might just be nerves.” Jack rose slowly to his feet, the weapon still in his hands but not necessarily pointing at her anymore. “Come here. You’re probably cold and hungry. I can help with that.”
Ifiyah had been cold and hungry after she got bit. I wondered how many times Jack had sat this horrible vigil. Carly came up to the bars and we saw at once she was going to die. Her face was covered in a sheen of sweat and her eyes were completely bloodshot. Her arms, where the cat had scratched her, were puffy and dark with congested blood. Jack offered her a blanket and a can of chipped beef. She took them both without comment. I watched her face as she ate. The braces shredded the sensitive inner skin of her lips as she wolfed the food down. She noticed me staring and stopped for a second. “Get a good look, perv,” she said. “I’m not going to get any prettier.”
I looked away, flushing with embarrassment. I’d been thinking about Sarah, wondering if she was going to need an orthodontist soon. I couldn’t very well explain that to Carly, though. She wouldn’t have understood.
We sat with her all through the night. I dozed off now and again but I would always wake to find Jack sitting perfectly still. The shotgun never strayed from its position athwart his knees. Each time I looked Carly had taken another turn for the worse. She started panting, her lungs struggling to keep up with her body’s demand for oxygen. Her fingers turned into painful-looking sausages, so thick the skin split around her nails and they bled dark blood. She started raving about four in the morning-begging for water and her mother and, more and more frequently, for meat.
Twice Jack offered to end her suffering but both times she refused without a moment’s hesitation. “I think I’m feeling a little better,” she said, the second time. Her breathing had, in fact, calmed down. Her eyes fluttered closed and I thought maybe she would actually make it-maybe her immune system would win this fight.
“Lay down if it’s more comfortable,” I told her. “Keep visualizing how much better you’ll feel tomorrow. If you can sleep, you probably should.”
She didn’t respond to me. We waited a few minutes and then Jack kicked the steel gate, hard, with his boot. It clanged loud enough to hurt my ears but she didn’t so much as wince. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to do it. Stand back.”
I shook my head. “No. No, she’s just tired-”