17
Praha 5 Police Station, Prague, Czech Republic
November 28
“Eva! Eva, wake up!”
Her vision was blurry, and she coughed violently as if she’d nearly drowned. Blinking, she forced her eyes to focus, could barely make out the shape of a face above her, the green glow from the computer lighting his haggard appearance. She gasped, squeezed her eyes shut, tried to shake herself back awake.
“Pyotr…?” she wheezed, voice weak.
Pyotr smiled nervously, nodded, brushed her cheek with rough hands. His hair was cut short, patchy, like he’d done it himself. His eyes were ringed with creases, dark circles, tiny scars and the wear and tear of a living hell. They were still brilliantly blue, but the rest of him made the colour feel tired, not vibrant anymore. He wasn’t the wiry kid she’d known at school. He was lean and muscular, tougher.
“I’m sorry, Eva,” he whispered. “I didn’t know it was you. Are you okay? Can you breathe?”
“You… you choked me…”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. You look a lot different. I thought you were one of them. You might’ve found me.”
“Where are we?”
“The police station,” he said, checking over his shoulder nervously. “We’ve got to get moving. Can you walk?”
Eva got to her knees, her legs wobbling beneath her. She put a hand on the wall, and yelped at a pain in her wrist. She held it close, tight, felt it was swelling slightly.
“You hit it when you were fighting me,” Pyotr said, voice wavering with remorse. “Can you bear it for now?”
Eva nodded, cradled the arm and got to her feet. Pyotr stood next to her, supported her with a well-toned arm, craning his neck to see out into the hallway.
“It’s good timing, you stopping by,” he said softly. “Guess I’ll have some company for Christmas after all.”
Mention of the holidays dragged Eva back to reality, and she backed up suddenly, face blanching.
“Oh my god, Pyotr!” she gasped. “we have to get out of here! There’s a virus… an outbreak hitting here December first!”
“Shh! Eva, quiet or they’ll hear us!”
Eva lowered her voice, but her eyes were wide with fear.
“We can’t stay here. We need to get out before it starts. Please, you have to help me!”
“I will, but—”
“— we have to find my mother and escape before—”
Pyotr put a hand over her mouth, kept her quiet while he checked down the hall.
“I will. I promise. But for right now: shut up and move fast, or we’ll be rotting in jail when the city explodes. Got it? Now move!”
* * *
The windows were broken, shards strewn all over the weather-worn carpet. It smelled of smoke in the third floor bedroom, though it was uniquely untouched by the fire that had gutted the rest of the building. The floor creaked when Eva stepped on it, so she walked gingerly, followed Pyotr precisely.
“We don’t have time, Pyotr,” she called. “We need to start looking for my mother and finding food to travel and—”
“First things first,” he interrupted, reaching a solid portion of the room and kneeling down on a mattress, pressed up against the wall. “We need to check your arm and get you fixed up. The way things are out there, you wouldn’t last long like that.”
Eva didn’t respond, so he grabbed her arm and rolled up her sleeve. She bit back a yelp at the pain. Her wrist was purpling and noticeably swollen. He sighed.
“Looks nasty. Sorry about that.”
She shrugged, then cried out loudly as he tried bending her hand up and down. He let her go, started rummaging through his pockets, pulling out food packets, half a dozen marbles, a pair of pliers, and a bundle of beige elastic wrap.
“You come prepared,” Eva smiled.
“This isn’t what I usually use it for. But I think it’ll do…”
He reached out to the nearby window ledge and grabbed a handful of snow, and carefully put it on her arm. She was already so cold it barely registered, but as it melted it made her skin tingle, like tiny fiery pinpricks.
Eva looked up at him as he applied the second round of snow, shook her head.
“You look so different, Pyotr. Your hair is… it used to be beautiful.”
He shrugged, cocked his head.
“Don’t rub it in. It was getting too hard to manage without a bath. Took me days to get up the nerve to do it all in. With the edge of a tin can, no less.”
“It shows,” Eva smiled. “The beard is new, too. You were always the clean one. It’s just kind of strange to see you like this.”
“You look awfully new yourself,” he said. “But long hair suits you, I think.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I think it’s awful.”
“Goes with the wrist.”
“Yeah,” she said, and caught some of the water dripping off her arm with the palm of her hand.
Pyotr put another handful of snow on her, wiped his hands on his jacket, and picked up the food packet he’d removed earlier.
“You keep that up until the ledge is clear, and I’ll get us some dinner. A quick dinner. Yes?”
Eva nodded hesitantly. Pyotr tried to rip open the package, but it wouldn’t give.
“Stupid things never open right…” he grumbled.
“It’s so good to see you,” Eva said softly. “It’s good to know someone here.”
“Someone alive from the old days.”
“Yeah,” was all she said.
Pyotr did a mock roar and pulled furiously at the package, but it still wouldn’t budge. He stomped an angry foot on the ground and leaned into it with all his strength, the wrapper foiling his every move. Eva laughed, shook her head, and watched him a moment.
“You know, I used to have the biggest crush on you in first year,” she said.
This caught Pyotr off guard, and just at that moment, the package burst open and half the ration skidded across the floor, right to Eva’s feet. Pyotr stood there, stunned. Then upset, then shocked. He looked at the other half in his hand, sighed.
“That was sudden,” he said, then handed her the safe half of the ration. “Here you go. Eat.”
Eva took the food with her good hand, and gave a weak smile, which dissolved as Pyotr snatched the other part from the ground, dusted the dirt off its bottom. Eva reached out to him.
“Don’t.” she said seriously. “It’s not worth the risk.”
His blue eyes caught hers, he shrugged slightly.
“I’ll live,” he replied, but she grabbed his arm with her swollen hand, wincing.
“Don’t be stupid. You can’t know that. You can’t risk that.”
Their eyes stayed locked, and Pyotr dropped the food on the ground and flicked it away, under a chest of drawers. Eva handed him her own ration, and he snapped it in half for her, giving her a part back.
“Be careful with it this time,” she warned.
He smiled at her. She bit into the wafer, winced at the taste, how it sucked the moisture out of her mouth.
“Yum,” she sighed. “Stale strawberries.”
Pyotr laughed a big booming laugh.
“Stale strawberries would be a step up. This is old cardboard sprinkled with strawberry extract. I’d throw up, if I had anything in my stomach.”
Eva smiled, then almost gagged on her second mouthful.
“What are you doing here anyway?” Pyotr asked, swallowing the rest of his share. “Last I heard, you were going to stick it out in Paris. Where’s Rhodri? You two are still together, right?”
Eva clenched a fist round the wafer, but it refused to crumble.
“No,” she said, not looking up. “Not right now, no.”
“But you will be again? There’s hope for you two, right?”
She said nothing, closed her eyes.
“Maselle and I took some time off, after I left school,” he said, trying to fill the gap. “Thought we were done, but you know, after a few months, it worked out okay.”
Eva smiled, flicked a glance up at Pyotr, whose face had changed from hopeful to distant somehow. He was staring at the ceiling. Then he jerked out of it, took the elastic wrap and started bundling up her arm in slow, careful movements. She did her best not to show how much it hurt.
“You two were great together,” Eva said. “I don’t think I ever saw you apart, the whole time I was in Paris. Rhodri and I used to joke that we’d have to be surgically joined at the hip to even come close to your level of commitment.”
“Heh,” said Pyotr absent-mindedly. “Probably right.”
“How is Maselle?” Eva asked, and Pyotr shifted his stare to the window.
“She died a few months ago,” he said, with a dead expression. “Nuremberg syndrome. Out of nowhere.”
Eva blinked, looked down at the wafer in her hands. At Pyotr’s hands. At his sad expression.
“Pyotr… Nuremberg is… that’s highly contagious… and airborne…”
He didn’t face her, just stared at his hands.
“Yeah,” he said. “they warned me about that when they put me in quarantine.”