Void

Ch. 10- Empty

"Each day death corrodes what we call living, and life ceaselessly swallows our desire for the void."  ~Jindrich Styrsky

Chapter Ten- Empty

July 30th 3012, 5:00am

Letting go of someone I want desperately to hold onto is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  We spent the entire night on that roof, after sneaking a few more pills out of Brantley’s office of course, not that he would mind.  We talked about random things that had no significance; all the possibilities but never once did we mention the possibility that he could not come back.  He would come back, he had to.  When it came time for him to get ready to go we climbed down the staircase and walked to my room.  He would be tired all day and undoubtedly sleep the entire way out of the state.  The route they were traveling would take them west then down south and eventually back up to where we were.  Jaxon guessed that they would be back in about five days.  I nodded numbly despite the pill that was coursing through my bloodstream.  Then he left, and I was left feeling cold and lonely.  Eventually the feelings faded away, like all the countless other times, and the absence of him was replaced by the absence of me.

Claire woke me with a gentle shake.  I sat up mechanically.  I waited for her to hand me the little white pill but nothing came for me.

“Come on.”  She said softly.  “Let’s get you some new clothes.”  I nodded and stood.  We walked over to her room.  “It’s so quiet with the boys gone.”  Claire stated.  “Work has been put on hold for a little while.  There’s no food left to grow anyway and there’s only a few slabs of meat left, and they have already been salted so they stay fresh.  The only thing left for the fifteen of us to do is cook and wash dishes.”  She finished.

“Fifteen?”  I asked.

To my knowledge there were only fourteen resistance members left here.  Claire nodded with her back to me as she shifted through her closet in search of something that would look good on me.

“You’re a part of this group too, Danny.”  She stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Sure Claire felt that way but with the boys gone the scale between people who liked me and people who didn’t, had tipped.  Now only eight people were on my side while six were against me, and with Ian, Jonathan, and Rayleigh being three of the six original founders that remained the bad guys could easily over power the good.  Had that been Ian’s plan?  Is that why he sent Jaxon on the trip, so that he could get rid of me without his son getting in the way?  Perhaps Ian found out that Jaxon and I were getting closer.  I wouldn’t put Ian above it.  I wasn’t worried though.  It’s not like I cared anyway.  I just didn’t want to die.   There was an instinctual feeling inside me to not die, one of the things that the gene hadn’t changed.

“Here, take these.”  Claire said softly as she handed me some new clothing.

I took them and stripped off the jacket I was wearing.  Claire turned pulled out a folding changing screen and I took my place behind it.  I briefly let my eyes wander my healing bruises.  Some of them had faded completely while others were a brownish coloring.  I slid on the new clothes, which were slightly looser than the others I had previously been wearing.

“You don’t have the pill do you?”  I asked as I stepped around from the screen.  Claire shook her head.

“Sometimes I feel like the people here keep you doped up so they can deal with you.  I don’t want you to think I’m like that.”  She explained.

“I just figured they did it to see if giving me the pill enough times would do something.”  I stated as I lowered myself on the edge of her bed.