Through Glass(58)

Now, though, I wasn’t so sure if that was the right choice.

Follow the blue.

“It’s all right Lex, you can tell me,” she soothed, her voice trying to take away the last of my doubt.

Follow the blue.

I swallowed slowly, my fingers uncurling from the rail.

I needed to trust her.

“They were written on the walls of a house that I hid in,” I said, careful to keep my voice level. My eyes never looking away from hers.

Her eyes widened for a brief moment before lowering back down to her lap. Her hands tensed around the can she was still holding, her reaction making me instantly regret telling her anything.

“I guess it’s a good thing you found them,” she said, her body leaning forward as she poked at the fire with a stick. “You would probably be in worse shape without it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the longer you are out in the dark, the more the Tar affect you, the more you become like them.” Her words were simple, but I couldn’t quite grasp her meaning. My jaw worked for a minute as I tried to find words to match my questions, yet nothing came.

She talked like simply standing on the street could turn you into a monster. I knew that wasn’t right. I had lived in the darkness of my house, walked down the streets, but I was still me. I shook my head quickly, dismissing the questions, and turned my attention back down to my beans.

“How long have you been roaming?” Bridget asked again as she leaned against a broken shelf, her combat boots stretching out in front of her.

“Roaming?” My eyebrows arched at the question. It sounded like a word for a tiger on the Savannah, not a girl wandering the streets.

“Yeah, living out in the open? In the dark?” She moved her fork around, signaling to the grocery store we were still hiding in.

Okay, so I guess it was the word for a girl wandering the streets. Although, I wouldn’t count this as being out in the open. On the street, yes. Here though? We had four walls and a roof. Not to mention the possibility of food. This was hiding, this was survival.

“I don’t know, a few days,” I said simply, still not understanding why she was so scared of being out in the dark. Not that I blamed her, but I didn’t fear it quite as much as she seemed to and I had nearly been killed only hours before.

Her eyes widened at my words and everything froze. A few days gets a reaction like that? I swallowed my beans slowly and set the can down, feeling suddenly scared for what her reaction could mean.

“Where were you before?” Her voice was awed, as though she had never heard the likes of someone walking around for a few days. My jaw clenched at her response, my body moving away slightly. I was torn between fear of being attacked and fear of a twenty question session. Judging by the look on Bridget’s face, she could easily manage either.

“In my house, on Nicolas Street,” I said simply, desperately hoping to have that be the end of the questioning.

It wasn’t.

“How long did you hide there?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew she had tried to make the question sound simple, yet it was anything but. I didn’t trust this.

“Two years, since the beginning.” I regretted answering the moment I did. Her eyes darkened again. The dark stare boring into me as I refused to look away. The look lasted only a minute and then it was done, the intensity making me feel violated.

“Interesting,” she said as she pulled out her phone and hit a few buttons. I don’t know why, but it made me feel uncomfortable, like she was turning me into the cops, as if I was a fugitive. The thought made me feel dirty. I didn’t know why she would view me that way. I was human just like her. I leaned toward her defensively, my danger radar prickling uncomfortably again.

“Why is that interesting?” I asked, my words drowned out by a loud noise that echoed from somewhere behind us.

I jumped at the noise, my fingers twitching around the rail. The sound continued to echo around us, lasting twice as long as it would have without the hollow space. It filled the air around us and sent my heart into a frantic pulse. Something was there. I wanted to say it was only a rat, but I had heard the feet from before, the creatures running at me from every angle surrounding me. Bridget’s reaction matched mine, suggesting it was something else, and her fear supercharging my own.

Bridget jumped up, her hands flying to her pockets as she pulled out a small, metal flashlight and what at first glance looked like a bright green water gun. It obviously held more than water, though. Why it needed to be florescent green though, I wasn’t quite sure.

Everything in my body tensed as I began to scan the dark grocery store around us. My nerves prickled angrily as she flashed the light into the darkness; shadows, broken shelves and garbage lighting up eerily. I looked from side to side as she did, our eyes desperately looking for something through the black, although I wasn’t quite sure what.

“We have to go,” she said into the emptiness that swallowed us, her voice trailing away from me and putting me on edge.

I didn’t want to dispute that. Although the sound wasn’t the screech of a Tar, it was too close to the attack from before. The quicker we got out of there, the better.

I secured my backpack to my back and grabbed one of the large pieces of wood out of the fire. Although more of a hazard than anything, it would have to do for now. After all, I still had to get my lighter back from commando Bridget here.