The Price of Humanity

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I wake up the next day with my head being repeatedly stabbed by some unknown object. I manage to sit up, resting my head in my hands, my forehead pulsing and my stomach wanting to throw up it's contents.

Zane's footsteps on the stairs and in the hallway alert me to his presence and so I sit up, resting my back against the headboard. He comes into the room me and Mia have claimed carrying a glass of water.

My brother, ever my saviour.

"Thought you'd want this." I take the water greedily and start to gulp it down, trying to parch the Sahara Desert that is my mouth.

"Slow down." Zane chuckles, taking the now half empty glass from me and putting it on the bedside table. Mia stirs from the other side of the bed and I head towards the door.

The house we chose has three bedrooms but both Zane and I thought it would be better for Mia to stay in a room with one of us.

Unsurprisingly she chose to room with me. Even with our persuasion, I think she was glad she didn't have to stay in a room on her own.

"How's the hangover?" Zane questions as I rub my temples.

"Like I've been thrown into the pits of hell and had to fight off Tyson as initiation." Zane stops, turning to look at me with an amused expression on his face.

"And why is Mike Tyson in hell?" I shrug my shoulders and brush past him, snuggling into the cushions on the couch.

"How should I know?" He chuckles again, leaving me alone in the room for a minute while he heads into the kitchen.

"Here." He says handing me some paracetamol.

"Sometimes the way you horde things annoys me and sometimes it's a lifesaver. God, why did Gale do this to himself?" I say swallowing the pills without water, which is a somewhat difficult task.

"Glad I can be of assistance." He replies, lifting my legs so he can sit on the couch. He returns them to their original position so they're resting on his lap. "He did it because he didn't know what else to do. That's my guess anyway."

I pull a horribly patterned cushion to my stomach and cradle it there, resting my chin on it. Zane looks over at the map still laid out of the coffee table.

"It's a big city." I mumble, my eyes scan over the wide spread map and the small section covered in Zane's symbols. It's not enough to make even the slightest dent in the vast area of the city.

"We'll find him." I look up at Zane with sceptical eyes.

"Weren't you all for letting them go as soon as they got better?" He shrugs.

"We have an eight-year-old that doesn't belong to us and Adam's shoulder could barely be described as 'better', especially not in his situation. They've probably made it worse actually." I smile at him, trying not to think of the possible things the men could do to Adam's shoulder to 'make it worse'.

"I think they've grown on you." I say referring to Mia and Adam. I nudge his shoulder with my foot and he rolls his eyes.

"Maybe a little bit." I smile up at him and he returns it with a small grin. That small grin gives me hope, it's the first time I've seen him slightly happy since those bastards turned up.

I pull him into a hug, the cushion falling to the floor, taking him by surprise, but he recovers quickly, pulling me tight against him. I fight back tears once again as he pulls away.

I'm just going to be one walking bomb of tears from now on, about to burst at any moment.

I sit over by Mia again, taking up the chair opposite her, wanting to cheer myself up and there's only one thing I can think of right now, one thing that will make me feel slightly better about this entire situation.

"Tell me more about Adam." She sits up straight in the dining room chair, exited to tell me more. The innocent and ecstatic smile on her face is enough to make me feel better already.

"Alright." She furrows her eyebrows in concentration, trying to find some interesting story no doubt.

"He used to tease me when we were younger." I frown. Not exactly the brilliant story I was expecting.

"Don't all brothers do that?" I ask, recalling the multiple times Zane and Gale have annoyed me to the brink of a mental breakdown.

"Yeah. But Adam was sneaky about it." I lean forward, resting my chin on my hands and waiting for the rest of this more intriguing story.

"He'd never do anything noticeable. He'd move my toothbrush or turn off my alarm clock. Nothing that I could blame him for because it wasn't obvious that he did it." I smile at Adam's phycological warfare, it's something Gale used to do to me and I took pride in doing it back.

He never knew it was me, always blaming Zane or Mum. It was hilarious to find him bursting out of the bathroom because he couldn't find his hair wax. Or blaming me for hiding his favourite jacket.

I obviously had no idea where it was. It was not in the back of my wardrobe.

"Me and Gale used to do that." I reply, smiling sadly to myself. Her small hand takes mine and she gives me a wide reassuring smile. I smile back, incapable of not feeling better. Her smile is contagious.

"My parents died too." She says, a little too brightly for the morbid sentence. "They died protecting me and Adam." She looks down and fiddles with the doily on the table.

"It's not your fault." She looks up and nods, although I'm not entirely sure she believes me. She looks over to Zane and a worried expression comes over her face. "Is he really going to kill them all?"

There are some awkward situations around children when you're not entirely sure what they've been exposed to and what you can say. For example do they know Santa isn't real? Or in my situation, have they seen someone kill another human? In these situations, it's best to contact the parents or guardian and double check.

However, with nobody to ask I decide to be brutally honest with Mia, it's the end of the world after all and it won't pay off to hide the truth from her.

"I think he will." I pause briefly, thinking it over. "And I will too. They killed Gale and have Adam, they aren't getting away with it." She's shocked before looking deep in thought.

"Let me help."