Doomed by Tracy Deebs Page B

bruises that currently decorate every inch of us.
    Though now that the adrenaline has stopped pumping quite so fast, the aches and pains I felt before have grown a hundred times worse. Judging from the way the others are moving, the same thing is happening to them. I reach up, gingerly feel the cut at my hairline. There’s a bump there, but at least it’s stopped bleeding.
    “So,” Emily says, turning to me once Eli finally quiets down. “What do we do now?”

10
     
    Time ticks by, and I don’t answer her question, largely because I don’t have a clue what to say. Eli does, though.
    He strides over to where what’s left of the Range Rover sits, lopsided and destroyed, on the pavement. Then he reaches in through the windshield and grabs my backpack and Emily’s purse, along with the massive flashlight from the tool kit. After tossing me a shirt from the front pocket of my backpack he slings both bags over his massive shoulder and says, simply, “We walk.”
    So that’s what we do, heading north along Heatherwilde toward my house, which is closer than Emily’s. We’re a bedraggled group—bloodstained and injured, tattered and weary—walking in pairs, side by side. A song I haven’t heard since childhood starts to beat fragile wings against the corners of my bruised and battered mind.
The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching two by two,
The little one stops to tie his shoe
And they all go marching down to the ground
To get out of the rain.
     
    I wonder if that’s what we look like, and more, if that’s what we are to the person who designed this nightmare, who did this to all of us. Just ants scuttling along the earth, annoying and unimportant, as we try to save our useless little existence.
    I think we must be, because how else could he do this? How else could he ruin so many lives so easily?
    Does he know? Wherever he is, does he see what he’s done to us? Is this what he planned all along, or has it taken on a life of its own? Are things worse than even
he
imagined?
    A car drives by too quickly for the conditions, and its tires kick up water from the puddles forming near the curb. It sprays all over us, and Emily curses, slips. Theo’s right there to grab her, his hand on her elbow, lending support. But the near fall hurts her already-damaged knee, and when she tries to walk again, her limp is much more pronounced.
    “I need to rest for a second,” she says, and I can hear the pain in her voice. I want to tell her it’s okay, that we can stay here as long as she wants, but the storm is getting worse. And what was a fifteen-minute drive is going to be closer to a three-hour walk, especially at the rate she’s able to move.
    In the end, I don’t say anything at all, just start to help her over to the retaining wall that edges the sidewalk. Before we get there, though, Theo and Eli stop us. “Grab onto my shoulders and wrap your legs around my waist,” Theo tells her. When she can’t pull herself up, Eli gives her a boost onto Theo’s back.
    “You can’t—”
    “Just do it,” I say. “We need to get going.”
    She finally does, reluctantly, but asks, “When did you turn into a Nike commercial?”
    “Right around the time the world went insane. You got a problem with that?”
    “No.” She grins at me. “Just checking.”
    Now that he doesn’t have to worry about Emily’s leg, Theo sets a brutal pace that has me scrambling to keep up. Which amazes me, considering he’s got Emily on his back plus his own injuries from the car accident. She doesn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, but still. Sometimes he and Eli seem almost superhuman.
    We walk for miles in the dark, for hours that seem to stretch on forever even with the steady beam of Eli’s flashlight to lead the way. Though the storm finally lets up when we’re about halfway home, by the time we make the turn onto my street, I’m ready to weep with joy, and from exhaustion. It’s after midnight,