Nodding, he reaches out, very slowly with one hand, and gently fingers my damp golden ringlets, shaking his head. I must flinch, because he quickly draws his hand away.
“I’d rather you didn’t touch me,” I say. He nods slowly and turns his head toward the wall.
For some reason, as he stands up and walks into the other room, I blush with shame. Perhaps I should have said, It’s nothing personal. But of course it is.
While he’s in the other room, I stand, experimentally putting weight on my injured leg. Pain shoots up to my hip, not quite bearable but nearly. In a few days, maybe a week, I could walk out of here. I’ll need clothes. Men’s pajamas will not do, and although it’s hazy, I’m pretty sure he cut my clothes to pieces when he was treating my injuries or . . .
My skin prickles as I remember the men’s boxers I woke up in. I wasn’t wearing them when I got attacked, which means he undressed me at some point.
The beginnings of a scream take root inside me. I catch it, pressing my lips together before it comes out and alerts him to my distress. I don’t need to see him now, and I don’t want him to see how the thought of being unconscious, half naked, with him hanging over me threatens to undo me. I need to focus.
Focus. I need warm clothes. I’ll snoop through the drawers and closets.
Find some kind of a bag, pack some food. Maybe try to purloin a weapon. Then I’ll leave.
I sit back on the sofa, leaning on the pillows. My eyes sting with frustrated tears.
It’s a ridiculous plan. I’ll freeze or starve, and where would I go? The base is hundreds of miles from here. I guess I could try to find human survivors, the ones we hoped were hidden in the labyrinthine parking garages under the city. I don’t remember seeing any evidence of them.
Maybe I could hide on my own. Maybe somewhere near that store where everything went so horribly wrong. There’s enough food in there to keep one person alive until spring. If I leave in spring I could hike over the mountains and head for the coast.
Nearly a thousand miles away.
I wipe my face. This is not how I expected it to turn out. I expected Topher and I would get away, kill some Nahx, and escape together, head west like Lewis and Clark. Or something. That was stupid. I know that now. Topher is probably dead. Just because this Nahx didn’t kill him doesn’t mean one of the other billion didn’t.
This thought makes me sob and sob until my ribs hurt. Topher can’t be dead. How could I have been so stupid to become so attached to him? Or to anyone in this world? We’re all going to die. Through the blur of tears, I see the Nahx, August, returning with a steaming bowl. He sets it down on the coffee table and kneels next to me again, putting his hand on my splinted arm.
“Please don’t touch me.”
He sits back, picks up the bowl and holds it out to me. Believe it or not, it’s actually chicken soup. What are the odds?
“I’ll eat it later. Can you leave me alone?”
He sets the soup down, hesitating, but finally walks down the hallway to the bedroom and closes the door.
Even in the state I’m in, I take note that he hasn’t tried to restrain me. Maybe he knows how hopeless it is too.
It feels like another life now, when I had so much hope. But if I take a second to tally it up, maybe it wasn’t that much after all. It was only ever faint glimmers, like satellites exploding against a dark sky. I hoped I might make it up to Mom and Jack, that I might find them again. I hoped we might escape from the Nahx, that Topher might help me forget Tucker, or become him even, just take his place the way he seemed destined to. What evidence did I have that any of that was even possible? All I ever had was hope. So many tiny pinpoints of hope.
Now I don’t even have that. This Nahx took it all away.
I can barely look at him. His touch makes my skin crawl. The thought that he sat and watched me lying there in nothing but underwear for more than a week horrifies me. I was so delirious he could have done anything, looked at me, touched me.
Maybe he thinks I should be grateful to him for saving my life, but I’m not grateful. I hate him.
Yes.
I hate him. I don’t care if he saved me. I’m a soldier. I’ll watch him, learn about him and his kind. Then I’ll kill him.
Maybe if I were more sure of this, I would feel less humiliated.
AUGUST
August is my name now. I’m still a rebel and a deserter.
I’m still a sentimental idiot. Weak-minded and stupid.
Defective. Disobedient.
The moment the human has the strength, she will do her best to kill me. Not that I don’t deserve it for the things I’ve done. But I doubt she’ll be able to. It’s the trying that scares me. It’s the things I could do to her in my own defense.
The room where she didn’t die smells of twenty different things, most of them not very nice. I tear the sheets from the bed, then another cover, but discover the mattress is soaked with everything too. I haul the whole mess out onto the terrace and throw it over the railing, watching it sail down and land with a satisfying crash. My mind relaxes enough, for an instant, to think how much fun it would be to throw things over the railing for the rest of the day. Or to set them on fire and throw them out all night. Who among my people thinks like I do? That’s ridiculous.
I’m very good at breaking things—that’s still the case. August can break things, like doors and locks. I have terrible aim with my rifle, but I don’t need it. She’s right there, helpless. I could snap her neck like a dandelion stem. Crush her like a fragile baby bird and throw the pieces over the railing too.
The thought of it makes me gag. I reach out with my left hand and find the cold brick wall of the terrace. Even walking away right now would be killing her. She’s too weak to survive alone.
I step back into the room and gather the piles of towels from the floor. Balling them up, I pitch them out the patio door, where they flap open and flutter on the wind, like giant snowflakes. Less pretty though. Snowflakes are so pretty. The thought of them skims a thin slice of misery away, and I feel light as air for an instant. But snowflakes make me think of the human girl. And why not? She’s in the next room, plotting ways of ridding herself of me.
Maybe I should tell her she can just walk away. Maybe she would believe that. Maybe if I concentrated really hard, I could let her go. I could go back to my people. I could beg them to fix me. They could close her behind the door in my mind with the angels and the other almost memories.
August. She gave me a name. It’s not what I meant to say to her. The names of the human months mean nothing to us, but we used their moon as part of our process. I’m from the eighth moon cycle. Eighth. Like all the others. It’s not really a name. It’s a rank. The ranks mean so much to us, but I guess they mean nothing to her.
August. Eighth Cycle of the Moon.