Ashes, Ashes

19 - Regroup

We dragged blankets back out to the shed to cover the bodies. The cold kept out the stench, which was one small mercy. It also made it hard to guess how long the manager had been dead. Days? Weeks? I was no expert in forensic science, but I knew that a body doesn't decay quickly in the cold. 

How long had Parker been planning this?

Had he known since Laurel's death? As soon as he got the phone call, had he been planning how he would kill us all? Had he known, when he'd so calmly assured me how he had the arrangements covered? Was the groundskeeper already dead by that point, chilled and sprawled forgotten on the floor? Or had he made a day of it, running down to dispatch the groundskeeper, then driving back up for us? 

It made my head spin to think of it. It felt like I was drunk again, like the floor had tilted under me, that swaying on-a-boat sensation where the world twists out away from you and your jaw aches from being clenched against the urge to vomit. I realized, stupidly, that I was freezing and filthy, that Abby's blood had soaked through my clothes, that my jacket was full of broken glass. 

"We have to get out of here." The words surprised me when they reached my ears. I didn't realize I'd said them out loud. My voice sounded flat and dead, like it was spoken in one of those sound-deadening rooms meant to stifle echoes. 

Dawn didn't say anything, just made a strange, choked sound like a whimper at the back of her throat. 

We didn't look at each other. I don't think we could have. 

When the bodies were covered as best we could, we stood huddled in the snow outside, shivering and frozen with indecision. I crossed my arms over my chest, rubbing the puckered gooseflesh of my upper arm and trying to bring some feeling back to my frozen skin. 

We needed to move. 

We were like sitting ducks, standing like a pair of sluggish idiots against a white backdrop, practically begging to be murdered. The sky pulled upward, away from us, and it was like a spotlight was shining down on the two of us, everything else going fuzzy and dark at the edges. Two bright bodies on a white field; two targets in the circle of a scope. Bang-bang, down we'd drop. 

But that was ridiculous. Parker wasn't the one with a gun. Richard was. And Richard was...somewhere. Where was he? 

"Logan?" Dawn looked at me strangely, and then she was reaching for me, and I couldn't figure out why. "Hey. Hey!" 

She sounded far-off, which didn't make any sense because she was grabbing my wrist. But I could barely feel it; my skin was numb and dead from cold, and her touch was light, weak, a barely-there grasp and then...

...I blinked up at her, confused. My ears were ringing, a steady high-pitched keen that filled my head. Spots floated in my vision, little dark starbursts. Dampness seeped up through the back of my shirt. 

"Logan?"

I was on the ground. How did I get on the ground? My fingertips tingled, pins and needles. My head felt fuzzy, like a TV tuned to static, and I struggled to piece my thoughts together. 

"What...?" 

"I think you...passed out, or something, for a second." 

My stomach gave a loud, gurgling squeal, something in it tightening in protest, and I could have laughed at the absurdity of it if I was still capable of laughing at things. 

"I think my blood sugar just bottomed out." I tried a shaky laugh, sitting up. I realized I was trembling. What time was it now? Of course we hadn't eaten breakfast. And considering how last night had played out, anything I'd eaten yesterday was probably puked up over the porch rail. 

Dawn gave me a weird look. "I didn't know you were diabetic?"

I shook my head. "I'm not. Just...y'know." Fat. "A little hypo-glycemic. It doesn't matter." 

She extended a hand, focusing hard on me, not letting her gaze travel to the shack or the lumpy blanket and red-stained snow where Abby had been. "It does matter." 

She pulled me to my feet, and my knees buckled and threatened to give way but I leaned into her and shivered. I was cold and hungry, and the adrenaline of terror had receded and left me aching and hollow. Shame, too, burned at me. Abby was dead, and Liza was dead, and Dawn's husband was missing and a rapist and probably a murderer -- but I was the one who could barely stand, I was the one swooning like a goddamn coward. 

I didn't think there was more survivor's guilt left to carry, but I guess a heart can expand infinitely when there's more pain to hold. 

"It matters," Dawn continued, "because there's no way we're going anywhere like this." 

She was right. We had no car, no phone, and no way to defend ourselves. 

I'd seen two dead bodies today -- I'd watched a friend die in front of me -- but the reality of it all was only then beginning to sink in. 

In the movies, adrenaline makes you strong. It makes you faster and clears your head and gives you the strength to lift cars or fight off the bad guys. But in reality, fear makes you stupid and sluggish. You can't think clearly, and you act on instinct, your body following only the brain's most basic commands. 

In the movies, you either know what to do in an emergency, or you die. There's no time wasted on the way fear gets boring, once the edges of your terror get blunted by exhaustion. 

Nobody talks about the grief, the dissociation, that feeling of being knocked out of your body and following behind yourself, the whole world operating on a time delay. 

The cold and the hangover and the hunger weren't helping, but I was familiar enough with the feeling. I had felt this way -- empty and terrified and stupid, frozen with my inability to do anything but follow through on what I had started -- and at that point, with Laurel's body going limp in my arms, I didn't have any mitigating factors to blame. 

Just myself. 

Just myself and my cowardice and a choice I couldn't take back. 

"Let's go back to the cabin," Dawn was saying, tugging at my wrist in an attempt to make me follow. "There's got to be some food somewhere. Warmer clothes. Something."

It wasn't safe, but nowhere was safe. I followed her back to the cabin.