The Marigolds

A person knocking on the door was nothing to fear.

A person pounding on the door was a little more worrying.

One of the Diseased on the other side of the door, trying to get in and kill you was terrifying.

“What do we do?” The tall, handsome guy I was stuck in the barn with looked at me, his dark eyes wide. I desperately wished I had a good answer to that question.

When the pounding started, I was braiding my long red hair, so I finished and then thought hard. I was a smart woman. Surely I could come up with something.

We were in the hayloft of the barn and there was a Diseased outside, trying to get in and kill us.

The Diseased are humans that have been affected by a virus that attacks both the brain and body. When the virus is done with you, you’re a mindless person, who only wants to survive. And the Diseased survived by consuming animals — or humans, if there were no animals available. They weren’t too picky.

It was vile. And I was absolutely petrified.

I couldn’t reason beyond one thought.

“We have to get out of here,” I said, going to the little doors that opened about twenty feet in the air on the opposite side of the barn.

She had slept overnight but once the sun came up, she became determined to get to us.

“What do we do? Jump?”

“We need a rope,” I said, running to the ladder. He helped me put it down and I got in front of him, descending quickly, grabbing a rope from the ancient supplies, and getting back up to the hayloft as fast as possible.

The door was rattling with every blow, probably loosening the hinges a little more each time. And this barn was old. The door wouldn’t last much longer.

“I could have gone for it.”

“It’s done now,” I said, not having time for his ego.

I tied the rope to a post, my hands remembering a knot I didn’t realize I knew.

“As long as we can hear her hitting the door, we know she’s busy.”

“Right.”

“You first,” he said and I didn’t argue because I had a feeling he would insist. I grabbed the rope and went down, hand over hand, another familiar movement.

I admired his strong body as he came down the rope after me. The tall, dark and handsome guy wasn’t awkward in the least, despite his height. My intense attraction to him made me uncomfortable. After all, I only met him yesterday.

Then I recalled the odd experience we had last night when we touched, the memories that came back. The particular memory of us kissing. Then I flushed, remembering it wasn’t only some odd shared memory. Because then we had kissed. Now. And it had been amazing.

“Where to,” he said, as the rope broke and he dropped the last four feet, landing with a grunt and bringing me back from my daydream.

“Good question.” Why hadn’t we considered that when we were still safe in the barn?

“Shit,” he ran a hand through his short, black hair. “I don’t know. Back to The Citadel means miles of open fields with nowhere to hide. And everyone knows the Diseased can outrun a normal person.”

“Fuck,” I said, listening to the rhythmic sound of the Diseased throwing herself bodily at the door.

“Well, let’s head for those buildings in the hills,” I suggested feeling frantic. “We can outrun her till we get there. I think. Then we can hole up. Make a better plan. But we better go if we want a head start.”

He nodded and we fell into step, running easily together, like we had done this many times before.

As we ran, I admitted that, while I was relieved to get away from the never ending toil of The Citadel, I would gladly get back to work if it meant we could be safe again from the Diseased.

This was why people were willing to enslave themselves in The Citadel, I realized. I probably would too.

Or I supposed that I had. But I didn’t remember doing it.

The sound of the thumping stopped.

“God damn it,” he said, speeding up. I kept pace, though with my shorter legs it was difficult. The Diseased must have seen us run into the forest because not long after we heard her crashing along behind us.

Soon we were both breathing hard. My legs were heavy and my throat raw. Eventually, we exited the woods and ran into a field. Then we stopped dead, I stumbled and he grabbed my shirt, yanking me back hard. Thank God.

Before us was a small wasteland. Not the Wastelands with a capital W that went on for hundreds of miles north of here. But a small patch of the same nasty stuff that gave you chemical burns on your skin and poisoned your lungs — any patch of wasteland was bad news.

They were scattered all over the healthy land where people still lived. Every living thing gave the patches a wide berth because of how deadly they were. You could cross them but whether you would survive or not was questionable.

“We can’t cross this,” he said, pivoting. “We have to go around.”

It stretched all the way to the horizon on our left, so we went to the right. I glanced back at the forest where the Diseased had yet to emerge.

We arrived at a cliff and exchanged a look of despair, then turned as one, putting our backs toward the cliff. Wasteland stretched away to the right, a rock wall behind us, thick brush to the left, and…

With a roar, the Diseased burst out of the forest. She spotted us and charged, getting closer at an alarming rate.

“Oh God.”

In sync we backed up, hitting solid rock. I stared across at the green foot hills on the other side. We had seen the hills from the vantage point of the barn but the wasteland was hidden by the forest.

I looked around for a weapon.

“We’ll fight. Together we can defeat one Diseased.”

He gave me a look like I was stupid.

“If we touch her, we’ll get the virus.”

He had a point there. We couldn’t fight her.

She tore on, yelling in frustration periodically. My heart drummed and I shifted my weight from side to side, feeling more and more trapped.

Afraid, I turned my eyes away from our approaching doom and gazed at the hills.

“I’m losing it here,” I admitted. He grabbed my hand.

“We need to stay calm. See those buildings up there?”

“Yeah?”

“Focus on those. Panicking won’t help.” He took a deep breath.

“Okay," I said. “Imagine it’s a farm house with a garden, cows, and flowers. Yellow and orange flowers.”

I stared at the buildings, making it all up on the fly, the way my brother used to when he told me stories.

“What kind of flowers,” he asked, his eyes on the hills. We ignored the wild woman we could see in our peripheral vision running madly toward us.

“Orange and yellow."

“Yes, but what kind?”

“What kind?” I imagined the flowers like little half balls and the word came to me. “Marigolds.”

“Marigolds,” he repeated and then it happened again...

***

“And we have to have marigolds, Grace,” he said, pulling me onto his lap and kissing my cheek. “My mother wants a traditional wedding. So marigolds are a must.”

“Like a bouquet of them?”

“No, for decorations,” he told me. “They string them everywhere.”

“Sounds beautiful, Shiv,” I said.

“You’re beautiful,” he informed me, kissing me this time on the lips.

***

And like before, when I retreated from the memory, we were kissing again in real life, like he was a drowning man and I was his last breath of air. I wanted to pull away but at the same time it was too damn good.

Shiv. It was nice to know his name.

A growl from the Diseased, made us break off. He didn’t let go of my hand, though. By this time, I could see her round belly and purple eyes with no whites.

I turned back to him. Our eyes locked.

“We were engaged… Grace.”

“We don’t know if those are our memories,” I argued.

“So you saw it too.”

“It might have been someone else’s wedding…” I pointed out. Then tried out his name, too. “…Shiv.”

“The names seem familiar,” he said, then added with a shrug. “Well, we probably would have been glad we were dying together, anyway.”

No.

I didn’t want to die when I didn’t even know who I was, who he was, and how we had been separated when we were once so close.

The Diseased dashed toward us, never seeming to tire. I had heard the virus caused some problem with too much adrenaline, which is what killed them long before the virus had a chance to destroy their brains — but it also gave them superhuman strength and endurance while they were alive.

Not good for us.

I started to panic, so once more I focused my mind on the hills, thinking in detail about the farm. It was peaceful there. A garden. A pond. Cows. And marigolds.

I latched onto the image of the marigolds, holding it in my mind as the Diseased closed in.

“Nice knowing you, Grace.”

No. I wouldn’t let us die. I wouldn’t let us die. I wouldn’t let us die.

I closed my eyes as the Diseased reached her hands out to grab us, then stumbled as my feet unexpectedly hit rocky ground. Shiv was still holding my hand and he yanked me close, so I wouldn’t fall.

I hit his chest and he wrapped his arms around me. I hung on tight to him, not sure how we escaped the Diseased, only glad that we had.

We were standing before a… farm house? I reached out a hand to steady myself and noticed there was a bull and some cows grazing in a paddock nearby. Not far away a large garden grew with enough food to last a small family through the winter. This was someone’s farm.

When we let go, I glanced at the ground.

“Shiv?”

“Yeah?”

“Are those what I think they are?” I asked, staring at the ground.

“Marigolds?” Shiv blinked as if trying to clear his vision. “Looks like.”

“They’re my mother’s favourite,” a voice said from the door of the farm house. She had a rifle pointed at us. “I brought them down from Sipwesk when I came.”

Sipwesk. Why did that sound familiar?

“We don’t want any trouble,” Shiv said and we held our hands up. “We just…”

He looked at me and I realized that he knew our escape had been unusual too. How had we arrived here?

“We just… escaped… a Diseased and we could use a place to sleep. Maybe in an outbuilding?

He didn’t ask for food and he didn’t mention that we were from The Citadel, I noticed.

“Did it touch you?”

“The Diseased? No. Absolutely not.”

She gave one nod.

“What’re your names?”

“I’m Shiv and this is Grace.”

“Grace and Shiv?” The woman was so surprised she let the end of her rifle drop. “I haven’t heard those names in a long time.”

“Do we know you?” I asked.

“Step into the light,” she ordered.

“Yep. Same faces from the drawing my mum has,” she confirmed.

“How do you know us?” Shiv asked.

“You saved my life when I was a baby. But…” She hesitated, muttering to herself. “This is so strange.”

“But what?” Shiv asked.

“But that was thirty years ago.”

I glanced at Shiv. Neither of us was thirty years old.

“How could that be?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “But you better come inside because it sounds like we need to talk.”