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He can’t hurt me anymore.
I hold my breath and lift my pointer finger off the handle of my knife, smiling as a smooth, metal trigger magically appears beneath it.
“Ahhh!” I sit up and swing my gun out in front of me, ready to shoot the face off that sweaty, worthless piece of shit.
But no one’s there.
I’m not in Ms. Campbell’s foster home anymore. I’m alone, on a couch, being assaulted by the sunlight that’s streaming in through a pair of dingy plastic blinds.
“Fuck,” I groan, flopping back down onto the sofa and throwing my forearm over my eyes.
Even though I woke up before that motherfucker had a chance to beat the shit out of me, it feels like somebody did. My head throbs like it’s been slammed repeatedly in a car door. My equilibrium thinks I’m on a dinghy in the middle of a hurricane. And I’m pretty sure everything inside my body has gone sour.
Hell, everything in my entire fucking life.
When I open my eyes again, I’m not sure what day it is or how long I’ve been here, but I know exactly where the fuck I am by the fading scent of death in the air.
I groan and rub my swollen lids.
From my sideways viewpoint on the couch, my eyes focus on an empty bottle of Grey Goose lying sideways on the coffee table, mirroring my miserable position.
I squeeze my eyes shut and pinch the bridge of my nose as I vaguely remember stomping through the rubble of Carter’s burned-up house and pulling everything salvageable out of the still-intact freezer.
Including a handle of vodka.
My plan had been to find a new place to crash—maybe a nice, abandoned bachelor pad with a fully stocked beer fridge and a pool—but the highway was only clear maybe another block or two past Rain’s house. With the riots in Franklin Springs still going strong, there was no point in risking a flat tire just to get another gun pulled on me in town by some jacked-up meth head who hadn’t slept in three days.
So, I came to the one place I knew would be empty.
It had nothing to do with the fact that a certain rag doll–looking, mindfuck of a girl used to live here.
I just needed supplies and shelter.
And a shitload of vodka.
The sound of a car engine has me bolting upright again. I haven’t heard a car on this road since I got here. I lean to the left so that I can see the road through the gap between the blinds and the window frame. The highway is only clear from here to the Pritchard Park exit, so whoever this is, they might be coming from the mall.
Staring into the sunlight only makes my head pound harder, but I hold my breath and squint through the pain. When the vehicle finally comes into view, I release that breath in the form of a snort. Slowing to a crawl in front of Rain’s house is the motherfucking mailman. Dude doesn’t even pull to a complete stop. He just throws a handful of envelopes at the mailbox lying on its side in the driveway and keeps on going.
Unbelievable.
So this is what, “You are encouraged to resume your daily lives,” looks like. Bury your dead. Barricade your front doors. Scavenge for food. But hey, we got the utilities up and running again! Your bill is in the mail!
I scrub a hand down my face, feeling at least a week’s worth of stubble beneath my palm, and decide to take advantage of those utilities before the county realizes the owners of this house are buried under two feet of red dirt in the backyard and cuts them off again.
I stand and wait a second for the room to stop spinning before I head for the stairs.
I spent the worst night of my life on the second floor of this house. The door on the right is where I found Mrs. Williams—or what was left of her after her husband blasted her face off. The door on the left is where I found Rain’s lifeless body after she took a fistful of painkillers, lying on a mattress with a shotgun blast through it, too. And this bathroom—
I flip the light switch and wince as the fluorescent light illuminates what feels like a scene from another life.
Rain’s pillow still sits on the floor by the toilet where I spent most of the night with my fingers down her throat. Her long, thick black braid is still lying on top of the trash can in the corner of the room. And vanilla-scented candles still cover every flat surface. I’d pulled them out of Rain’s bedroom that night to block out the stench of death from the rest of the house, but now, I’d take blood and brains over sweet vanilla.
Because it reminds me of her.
When we first met, Rain smelled like sugar cookies, birthday cake, vanilla frosting with rainbow sprinkles—things I wished my mom had baked for me as a child, things I smelled and tasted at other kids’ houses. Kids whose parents remembered their birthdays. Kids whose parents loved them.
That’s what Rain smelled like to me—the kind of love I always wanted but never had.
