Arclight. Josin L McQuein
her bare hands and shirttail. I unbutton my jacket and bunch it up under his head to help him breathe while she strokes his hand.
“Someone’s going to have to set his nose,” she says. “I don’t know how.”
“Doctor Wolff will fix it,” I answer. Besides the nose, Jove’s lost a couple of teeth. The rest of his face is swollen; he winces when I touch his side.
“But what if they lose Doctor Wolff?”
“They won’t.”
“I think I should get help,” she says. “Don’t you think I should get help? Someone needs to know what happened—or is happening—or could happen. I don’t think Toby meant it. Oh . . . how did this happen?”
She ends up gasping. Anne-Marie always seems to forget that she needs air.
“And how do you plan on getting out of here? The door’s locked.”
It’s the wrong question to ask.
She starts in on the horror of being locked in a small space—which she never thought was small until now—straying from one extreme to the other until she comes to the conclusion that we’re all going to run out of oxygen and collapse.
She’s abandoned her gloves, and the only two of her fingernails that managed to survive the run brush over Jove’s swollen eyes. She pats his hair down over his forehead, but all that does is leave it tacky against the drying blood.
“I should have made him stop,” she says. “Jove’s really not this bad . . . at least he didn’t used to be, but he lost his dad three years ago, and now his mom . . . I didn’t know he’d gotten so—I’m sorry.”
“It’s the Fade’s fault, not yours,” I say quietly, but her attention’s still on Jove.
“He’s bleeding on the floor.”
Untold years have left the cement surface cracked, and each spidered line acts as a thin channel for Jove’s blood to travel. Anne-Marie shakes her shoe to clear what’s pooled by her toe.
“I never thought he’d do something like this—Toby, I mean. He only ever hits walls, and I thought he’d stop that when the last one wrecked his knuckles.” She worries the edge of her sleeve with her teeth, leaving it with tiny holes along the cuff. “I should have stepped between them, not you. But I—”
“Anne-Marie, stop!” I cup my hand over her mouth. “Help me get Jove’s jacket off. He’s too big for me to maneuver on my own.”
Keeping her busy is the only way to stop her from talking, or at least change the subject.
“Are you sure?” she asks nervously. “We could make him worse. Marina, I don’t want to kill anybody. Please don’t make me.” Her hands are ice-cold and sweating over mine, trying to keep me from working his buttons.
“I want to make sure the blood’s only coming from his face. Otherwise, we need to stop it.”
“Yeah . . . okay. That makes sense.” Anne-Marie bites her cheeks to cut off whatever automatic protest she wants to make. I’d laugh at the effect if we were anywhere else.
“I can do this,” she chants as we roll Jove to one side and free his arm from his jacket. “I can— I can— I can’t— I can’t do this.”
Anne-Marie rocks back on her heels as soon as we lay him back down. It’s not fair that Jove caused the problem, Tobin did the damage, and we’re the ones with blood on our hands.
“Is he all right?” she asks, chewing on her sleeve again.
“We got lucky. Jove doesn’t know how to do laundry.”
It’s a black shirt day, but Jove’s wearing his khaki one. If he was hurt, the whole thing would be caked as red as his face. How can a person bleed so much from just his face?
“We should keep him still until Doctor Wolff can take him in the morning.”
Anne-Marie nods, shrugging her jacket off to drape over Jove’s body.
“We need to wash him off, and he needs water. See how much the dispenser will let you have.”
Anne-Marie hugs her arms around herself, grumbling about the lack of plumbing as she picks her way over to a tall black box in the corner. She holds her bracelet out to the sensor on the front, prompting a single canister to roll into her hand. No matter how many times she shakes her bracelet, that’s all the box gives her, and kicking it doesn’t change its mind.
Our bunkers aren’t meant to be lived in. They were storerooms initially, then converted to short-term shelters when the need arose. They’re nothing but a dash-away hole where we can hide until the Fade retreat into the Dark at dawn.
Cinder block and steel dampen our scents and voices, but if pipes ran through here, or power lines, the Fade could follow the sound of flowing water and humming cables. We have to make do with a night’s rations and a twelve-hour generator.
“It’s all I could get.” Anne-Marie returns with the one slim can of water, huffing from her assault on the dispenser. “Maybe we can use the babies’ bracelets for more.”
“Did you ask it for bandages?” I ask.
“I want a shower,” she sniffles. “And my own room. And my mom. And I really, really, really want Jove to not have so much gunk on his face I can’t see his skin. I can’t believe my stupid brother hasn’t even offered to help! I’m telling Mom exactly what he—” Her voice hitches as she scans the room. “Marina, have you seen Trey?”
“Maybe he fell behind and had to go in with the adults. Did you see him in the hall?”
“I don’t know,” she cries, searching for anyone the right shape or size to be Trey.
“He doubled back.”
I peer up at Tobin, smoothing away the white hair that falls in my eyes when I turn my head. I’m not sure if I should be angry with him for what he’s put us through or grateful for his help during the run.
“I saw him as we were coming in. Trey turned around as soon as you were inside, Annie.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?” Anne-Marie’s voice barely makes it out of her throat.
The only reason Trey would have gone back is to help on the line. That means he’s out there—with them. Anne-Marie heaves on the floor, but there’s nothing in her stomach to come up.
“Drink this,” Tobin says. “The adrenaline’s wiped out your blood sugar.”
He holds out two bottles of pale amber liquid, but she refuses them. She sets her jaw and glares like she wants to replay the fight with him in Jove’s place and her in Tobin’s.
“It’s apple juice,” he says, showing off three more in his other hand. “It’ll dry sticky, but you can wash your hands and face with it. The acid should help loosen the blood. Save the water for if Jove wakes up.”
“You’d better not be lying about this, Tobin Lutrell.” Anne-Marie snatches one of the bottles out of his hand.
“It’s just juice, Annie. I gave half of it to the ankle-biters.”
In their corner, the youngest children sit in a circle slurping drinks and wiping their noses with their sleeves. Somehow, in the last ten minutes, Dante’s been elected jungle gym and a couple try to climb on his back, bottles and all.
“Where’d you get it?” I ask. Glass bottles are used for the younger kids because they’re easy to sanitize and the tops screw on and off without needing a can opener, but they’re stored in the kitchen coolers, not down here.
“This place has a lot of secrets, you just have to know where to look.” Tobin sets the last bottles on the floor, taking a seat on Jove’s other side. “It’s the same kind of dispenser