Dry by Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman

Author:Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

20) Jacqui

I find the bathroom, shut the door behind me, and reach into my pocket, pulling out one of the two orange containers of antibiotics. I can’t remember which one I started with, but why does it matter? I examine the little two-tone green capsules. Astonishing to think that these tiny pods rolling around in the palm of my hand mean the difference between life and death. I’ll bet they’re worth their weight in gold a hundred times over right now. Then again, you can never put a price on human life—so it’s down the hatch they go.

Next comes the bandage. I find the first-aid kit right where Basil or Herb or Dill, or whatever the hell his actual name is, said it would be. The bandage sticks to my arm as I peel it off, the wound healing into the cloth itself. Well, at least it’s healing. I clean it thoroughly, and painfully, with alcohol swabs, careful not to touch anything that might infect me, then redress the wound. Good as new.

I wander a bit upstairs, checking the place out. This is some house. The kind I wouldn’t mind squatting in under different circumstances—although the decor is a little too prissy for my tastes. Basil’s girlfriend must be the doily and lace type. What was her name again? Should be Rosemary, I think, which makes me chuckle.

I make my way back toward the staircase, passing the double doors to the master bedroom, and notice that one is slightly ajar. Through the crack, I can make out the silhouette of a woman lying motionless in an all-white bed. There’s an acrid smell wafting from the room. Dark and decrepit. Where anyone else would walk away, I’m pulled closer, drawn to the scene with a gravity I find hard to resist. The Call of the Void. I push the door open wider and take a single step over the threshold. It’s like leaning into the wind at the edge of a cliff.

Over the bed flows one of those decorative mosquito nets fit for a queen, but here, it seems to be keeping disease in rather than out. Daphne—that’s her name. This ailing empress must be Daphne.

The silence in here is overwhelming. And then I realize why.

The woman isn’t breathing.

Now it’s more than just the void pulling at me. It’s the scene of a car crash. It’s the rubble after a tornado. I have to get closer. I won’t touch her. I won’t cross the barrier of that net, but I have to see. I have to look at her chest to see if it rises and falls. I need to know. And the smell now, it’s terrible. Bile and sulfur and all the fetid organic stenches we fight all our lives to keep at bay.

Then, before I’m close enough to get a good look, she moves, shifting slightly beneath the covers. My heart pounds in my chest so loud that I think she hears it, because she slowly lolls her head in my direction, and when she looks at me, her eyes are dark and glassy.

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