Through Glass(62)

I couldn’t help but laugh at her, the real meaning behind her words clear. I ate like an animal. Sadly, I didn’t regret it.

“I forgot how good food tastes,” I whispered, my eyes unwilling to move away from the tray, wishing more would magically appear on its surface.

“When was the last time you had real food?” she asked, but this time her voice didn’t echo as much, the sound sounded more stable. I looked toward the sound, everything in me tensing at seeing her standing in the room.

Or not her, a projection of her. An image of Bridget stood before me with the same high ponytail and battle worn clothes except I could tell it wasn’t her. She was a shadow, a hologram; the translucent image wasn’t strong enough to obscure the wall behind her.

I looked at her, my eyes narrowing again as she walked forward and moved to sit beside me. She smiled, the image looking real and sincere. I wanted to say it was true and, in some ways, it might have been, yet seeing her only reminded me that she had shot me. The thought only made my blood boil more.

“I didn’t think you would want to talk to a disembodied voice for this,” she said simply, her arms resting on her legs as she leaned toward me.

I tried to smile snidely at her, but nothing came, so I just stared at the odd, three-dimensional image of a girl, my hand clenched against my sides.

“Were the green beans at the grocery store your first food after you left your house?” she asked, her hand gesturing toward the now empty tray.

I hesitated. I had eaten the food as requested, hoping to gain information about what was going on, though now, seeing her here, I had a sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to be getting many of my questions answered. I exhaled and looked away from her, not seeing another option than to answer her simple questions and hope they led me toward the answers that I wanted.

“No,” I said, my eyes focused on my hands. “I found a can of beef stew in the room where I found the rules.”

I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye, her lips a hard line.

“And what did you eat before that?” she asked.

I exhaled and laid my head back against the cement, this was only getting better and better. I didn’t want to answer, I wanted to refuse and ask my own questions—demand my own answers—but I already knew it wouldn’t work that way. I had walked into a trap or rather, eaten the school lunch in a cement box.

Like a rat in a trap.

I sighed and looked away from her, knowing I didn’t have another choice.

“The food they brought for me,” I said simply, not wanting to elaborate. Besides, I had a feeling she already knew exactly what I was talking about. I could tell by the way her shoulders tensed. The way her breathing became shallow like she was trying to hold in her fear or anger.

It made me uncomfortable, watching her react like that. I wanted to say it was probably nothing, but I knew better. I still had vague memories of movies, of books, she was looking at me like I was dangerous. I simply wasn’t sure why I would be.

“Eight years ago, the sky went black,” Bridget began, my head whipping toward her as she actually began to give me the answers she had promised me; something I hadn’t expected. Her body tensed as she talked, the tension making me nervous. “It happened everywhere, not just here. Creatures erupted out of the ground in the middle of farmlands in Montana. They flew into the air and covered the sky around the earth in a matter of minutes. They wiped the sun from the sky and then they began to eat everything they could.”

“Eat?” I asked my mind attaching to the one familiar word. I asked the question without thinking. My frayed nerves were still trying to make sense of everything she had just said.

“Yeah, well at least that’s what we think they do. It’s hard to tell, they move so fast. They are in the darkness all the time, most of the time you can’t see them. They suck life out of everything, infect you with their poison, and if you get too close, they eat you, leaving behind only the ashes of your bones.”

My hand flew to my mouth, the memories of all those ash circles clogging my vision. The hundreds that lined the streets, Cohen’s grandfather, that adorable family, my family.

Everything tightened at the thought, the reality hitting harder than I would have expected.

“What are they?” I stammered out, the question getting lost in the stress that rippled through me.

“We don’t know,” she said quietly and everything inside of me stuttered. “There are lore of monsters; vampires, zombies, demons, but these are none of those. Inside, they are human, stained by tar that was manually placed inside of them. As far as we know, they were science experiments. Science experiments who have done the same to you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my nerves cringing at the possible answers.

“The food,” she said simply. “That’s how they control you—change you—through the food.” Her voice was heavy, dangerous. The tone on its own scared me, but her words cut through me like a blunted blade.

“What do you mean, control me?” I asked, my nerves prickling in a panic.

“It’s how they make you sleep, make you stop aging. There is something in the food that makes you slow down. Everyone who eats the food falls asleep at the same time, they sleep for months before they wake up, like clockwork. Everyone at the same time.”

“Everyone?” I gasped, still not really understanding.