The Host_ A Novel - Stephenie Meyer [182]
The Host
CHAPTER 41
Vanished
Ian sat with me for three days in the darkness.
He left for only a few short minutes at a time, to get us food and water. At first, Ian ate, though I did not. Then, as he realized that it wasn’t a loss of appetite that left my tray full, he stopped eating, too.
I used his brief absences to deal with the physical needs that I could not ignore, thankful for the proximity of the odorous stream. As my fast lengthened, those needs vanished.
I couldn’t keep from sleeping, but I did not make myself comfortable. The first day, I woke to find my head and shoulders cradled on his lap. I recoiled from him, shuddering so violently that he did not repeat the gesture. After that, I slumped against the stones where I was, and when I woke, I would curl back up into my silent ball at once.
“Please,” Ian whispered on the third day-at least I thought it was the third day; there was no way to be sure of the passing time in this dark, silent place. It was the first time he’d spoken.
I knew a tray of food was in front of me. He pushed it closer, till it touched my leg. I cringed away.
“Please, Wanda. Please eat something.”
He put his hand on my arm but moved away quickly when I flinched out from under it.
“Please don’t hate me. I’m so sorry. If I’d known… I would have stopped them. I won’t let it happen again.”
He would never stop them. He was just one among many. And, as Jared had said, he’d had no objections before. I was the enemy. Even in the most compassionate, humankind’s limited scope of mercy was reserved for their own.
I knew Doc could never intentionally inflict pain on another person. I doubted he would even be capable of watching such a thing, tender as his feelings were. But a worm, a centipede? Why would he care about the agony of a strange alien creature? Why would it bother him to murder a baby-slowly, slicing it apart piece by piece-if it had no human mouth to scream with?
“I should have told you,” Ian whispered.
Would it have mattered if I’d simply been told rather than having seen the tortured remains for myself? Would the pain be less strong?
“Please eat.”
The silence returned. We sat in it for a while, maybe another hour.
Ian got up and walked quietly away.
I could make no sense of my emotions. In that moment, I hated the body I was bound to. How did it make sense that his going depressed me? Why should it pain me to have the solitude I craved? I wanted the monster back, and that was plainly wrong.
I wasn’t alone for long. I didn’t know if Ian had gone to get him or if he’d been waiting for Ian to leave, but I recognized Jeb’s contemplative whistle as it approached in the darkness.
The whistling stopped a few feet from me, and there was a loud click. A beam of yellow light burned my eyes. I blinked against it.
Jeb set the flashlight down, bulb up. It threw a circle of light on the low ceiling and made a wider, more diffuse sphere of light around us.
Jeb settled himself against the wall beside me.
“Gonna starve yourself, then? Is that the plan?”
I glared at the stone floor.
If I was being honest with myself, I knew that my mourning was over. I had grieved. I hadn’t known the child or the other soul in the cave of horrors. I could not grieve for strangers forever. No, now I was angry.
“You wanna die, there are easier and faster ways.”
As if I wasn’t aware of that.
“So give me to Doc, then,” I croaked.
Jeb wasn’t surprised to hear me speak. He nodded to himself, as if this was exactly what he’d known would come out of my mouth.
“Did you expect us to just give up, Wanderer?” Jeb’s voice was stern and more serious than I had ever heard it before. “We have a stronger survival instinct than that. Of course we want to find a way to get our minds back. It could be any one of us someday. So many people we love are already lost.
“It isn’t easy. It nearly kills Doc each time he fails-you’ve seen that. But this is our reality, Wanda.