Haven by Laury Falter Read Free Book Online Page A

it.
    Harrison didn’t offer me the keys to Old Boy and I didn’t ask for them. He was doing a good job. No reason to switch drivers now. That was what I told myself, anyways. The truth, which I eventually admitted to myself, was that he was comforting to watch. He handled the gears with precision, knowing just when to shift, bending with the ebb of the car as it skirted corners. In the midst of the chaos, he seemed so calm, self-assured, like he knew what to expect every time he turned onto a new street. It was encouraging. He was encouraging. Even when we pulled down Mei’s street and found it choked with the bloody roamers.
    Their heads were aimlessly swiveling in search of Old Boy’s motor when he pressed the brake and their attention zeroed in on us.
    “Go! Go! Go!” Doc yelled. Harrison threw Old Boy into reverse.
    Our bodies were flung forward as he slammed the gas and then sharply turned the wheel to the right as he breached the corner. He was forced to stop and shift into drive, giving Mei just enough time to protest.
    “Wrong way! You’re going the wrong way!”
    “I saw a back alley,” Harrison said under his breath, focused more on punching his foot into the gas and the mob coming at us than on Mei’s complaint.
    “Let him drive,” I said, and Mei shot me a glare.
    She listened though, and he got us safely down the alley before turning off the motor. We sat in the quiet, the ticking of Old Boy’s engine barely audible, as the mob ran past the alley’s opening and continued on down the street.
    “Huh,” Harrison remarked, “I have better hearing than them…”
    Doc, Mei, and I had been staring out the rear window but I turned to face Harrison after realizing that was a strange thing to say. Doc and Mei, however, didn’t pick up on it.
    As the two of them shimmied out the door, Doc declared, “Of course you do. You’re human.”
    Neither of them noticed Harrison’s reaction to Doc’s assumption, but I did. It was a twitch just below his eyes, a nervous snap that told me, very clearly, that he didn’t necessarily agree with Doc’s assessment of him. Harrison and I were preparing to follow them when Harrison noticed I was watching him, swinging his gaze from Doc to my face just in time to see me tilt my head while trying to figure him out. His jaw tightened and I saw that his nervousness shifted for another reason, disappointment. Now, I knew he was keeping a secret, too. This realization seemed to immobilize both of us.
    In the quiet of the car, with Doc and Mei inside, we stared at each other, neither of us willing to move until one of us addressed what we’d seen. He didn’t implore me to just give it up or get angry with me. He remained reserved, waiting on my reaction, as if nothing else mattered to him. He seemed to have forgotten the psychotic people roaming around outside or the fact that Doc and Mei were inside the house now. I got a sense that my presence, right there in front of him, and my perception of him, was all that was important at the moment.
    “You don’t need to worry about me judging you,” I said.
    “Because you’ve already formed an opinion?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ll change it.”
    I was a little taken aback. “What makes you think so?”
    “Because you don’t know me, Kennedy, when you do-”
    A sequence of thuds reverberated from inside the house and Harrison’s head turned sharply in that direction, his face finally stirring into apprehension. He had opened the car door and was ready to bolt for the back door when Mei flew down the small concrete rear steps, through the small vegetable garden, and across the toy-strewn yard. Doc was right behind her.
    Their faces told us that nothing good was coming out behind them.
    Using his now-infamous phrase, Doc shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”
    Harrison already had the engine started and his foot on the gas by the time they were in their seats and the stream of blood-stained people began flowing out the back door. Our