Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1) (31 page)

              “Looks that way,” Jake said, wiping sweat from his brow. “Liv, Zander, anything on the radar?”

              “Nothing,” I shrugged and Zander nodded in agreement.

              “Good. Let’s set up camp until the brunt of this crazy-ass lightning passes,” Jake suggested. “We have like an hour until sunrise, anyways. With any luck, we will be able to head out later today.”

              “How nocturnal,” Falisha said, rolling her eyes.

              With a chorus of groans, we all shrugged off our packs and dropped them to the floor at our feet. I dug through mine, took a swig from my water bottle and retrieved a bottle of peroxide and the first aid kit. Riley’s hands and knees needed some serious attention and there was no way I was risking infection by waiting.

              Zander and Jake took off in search of a basement. Micah had disappeared at some point, intent on being of little to no help, so I sent Falisha to look for food and water. Bella stood guard by the door. She was tired, but too on edge to fully relax.

              “Jeez-usssss,” Riley hissed through her teeth as she peeked at her knee through the torn fabric of her jeans. “Okay, that is just beyond gross.”

              “Don’t touch,” I said, swatting her hand away as I dropped to my knees on the floor. “Let me take a look at that, okay?”

              The lightning throttled against the night sky, filling the room with back-to-back flashes. The strikes were even more frequent now and seemed to be brighter with every flash. The freak electrical storm appeared to show no signs of letting up anytime soon. The flickering light threw strange shadows over the strained features of Riley’s face. Her sad brown eyes searched through the shadows beyond the doorway.

              “He’ll be fine,” I said, not meeting her gaze.

              “I don’t know, Liv. I just—something’s not right,” Riley lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can feel it.”

              “He just lost his mom, Ry,” I said, averting my eyes.

              “Of course he’s a mess over his mom, but there’s more to it. Something is just
off
about him,” Riley said. “He’s hiding something, Liv. I can feel it.”

              “I’ll talk to him if you want, but let’s get you patched up first,” I said, shaking my head. “Lose the pants.”

              I tugged a crocheted blanket from the back of a nearby rocker and held it out to Riley. She grimaced as she slid her pants down past her knees and let them drop. With a sigh of relief, she wrapped the blanket around her waist and lowered herself onto the chair. Her knees looked like raw hamburger and her eyes filled with tears when she saw them.

              “Look away, Ry,” I said, patting her shin lightly. “I got you, okay?”

              I lay a towel below her legs and dumped the last of my water bottle over them. The pink water ran down and soaked into the cloth. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Her hands shook in her lap as she wrenched the blanket between her fingers. I uncapped the peroxide and set to work cleaning up the mess I had made of my best friend’s legs.

              “Talk to me, Liv,” Riley hissed.

              “What do you want me to talk about?” I asked, dabbing at the raw flesh on her legs.

              “I don’t care, anything. Please, I just need a distraction,” she ground out. “W—what’s it like, Liv? You know, being…um….”

              “Being infected?” I finished for her.

              “Yeah,” she said, looking everywhere but at my face or her leg. “What’s it like being
infected
?”

              “It’s—” I stopped, not even knowing where to begin. “Umm.”

              “Yeah?” She pressed me to continue, white knuckling the blanket as I pulled a piece of broken glass from her right knee. “Throw me a bone here, Liv. I’m trying not to scream like a little girl.”

              “Sorry, let’s see. This virus, or whatever it is basically invaded my brain, latched on, and started stirring shit up in there. It’s painful, it’s scary as hell, and there is nothing I can do about it,” I said. “But, Ry, it’s also kind of amazing.”

              “How so?” Riley asked, wincing as I dabbed maneuvered the torn skin on her knees.

              “I dunno,” I said, setting the roll of gauze in my lap. “I don’t really understand what is happening to me, Ry, but I feel like it means something, you know? Like it’s important somehow. Does that make any sense?”

              “Not really,” Riley snorted, “but then, nothing really does anymore.”

              “Amen to that,” I said.

              I tossed the last of the bloody cotton balls aside, uncapped the antibiotic ointment, and applied it to two large gauze pads. Riley closed her eyes and straightened her back. Her breath came in short bursts as I carefully closed the gashes on her knees with butterfly strips. After another quick rinse, I stuck a gauze pad to each one and gently wrapped them in bandages. When I was done, she finally released a shaky breath and sank back into the chair.

              “Liv, what you did outside,” Riley said, finally opening her eyes.

              “I’m really sorry about that, Ry,” I said, sliding the medical supplies back into my bag.

              “Don’t you
dare
apologize for saving my life, Liv,” she admonished, shaking her head at me. “It’s just that it all happened so fast, I don’t understand—I mean, how?”

              “I wish I had an answer for you,” I said, blowing a straggly hair away from my face as I gathered my supplies. “To you, it all happened in the blink of an eye. For me, it was like watching a movie in super-slow-motion. I was able to see things laid out in front of me, and I just knew what I needed to do.”

              “Sweet,” Riley laughed, pantomiming super-slow karate moves. “So, it’s like the Matrix.”

              “Oh my god, Ry,” I said, bursting out laughing at her antics. “You look ridiculous, but that’s
exactly
what it’s like!”

              She started striking dramatic poses in slow motion, and I totally lost it. It was hardly the time or place for improv comedy, but it felt good to laugh with my best friend again. In spite of all that had happened to us in the last few days, Riley was still a bright spot in my life. Even before the world ended, she had been my only constant during one of the most difficult times in my life. I would forever be grateful to her for that.

              “Okay,” Riley said, struggling to subdue her laughter. “So, you basically, you have magic eyes?”

              “I guess,” I shrugged, offering her a hand up. “Who the hell knows?”

              “You know, they look different,” she said, staring into my eyes as she tentatively rose to her feet. She leaned in closer and tilted her head to the side. “I hadn’t really noticed it before now, what with the running for our lives and all, but your eyes, they are brighter and they sort of shimmer now.”

              “Huh,” I said, feeling my face heat under her scrutiny. “Probably just the lightening playing tricks on you.”

              “Maybe,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “So how does that work, exactly? Jake said it’s like night vision, I think. Is that right?”

              I shrugged, zipped up my pack and tossed it over my shoulder, wincing as I (once again) forgot about the bruises. “You should probably put your pants back on.”

              “Probably a good idea,” Riley said, tossing the blanket aside, as she tugged her pants back up. “Well?”

              “Okay, I’m not Jake, so I can’t give you a scientific explanation, but I’ll try to make sense if I can,” I said, moving the chair out of her way. “To the human eye, darkness is no different than light; too much of either, and we cannot see, right? Our mind just cannot process it without a filter of some sort.”

              “Right, like sunglasses,” Riley said, wincing as her jeans slid over her bandaged knees.

              “Exactly like sunglasses,” I nodded, grimacing along with her. “For me, now, there’s a sort of blue haze over everything that filters out the shadows and the darkness that everyone else sees. So once my eyes have adjusted, I can see perfectly in the dark.”

              “Oh, I get it,” she nodded. “That’s actually pretty wicked, Liv. Wait, but what about the headaches?”

              “Ehh. The headaches come and go, but—” I chewed at my bottom lip.

              “But?” Riley put her hands on her hips.

              “The headaches I can deal with, Riley.
This
,” I said, clutching at my chest, “is what scares me the most.”

              “What do you mean,” Riley said, meeting my eyes with concern.

              “What if Jake and Falisha are right? What if those things, the
leeches
, really can sense me,” I asked. “What if they are drawn to others that were infected?”

              “We don’t know that for sure,” she said, sounding nervous.

              “But it’s possible,” I said, my heart beating wildly in my chest. “You saw Micah’s mom, Riley. She would have killed every single one of us if Jake hadn’t taken her down first.”

              “
Liv,
” Riley said, grabbing my hand.

              “There could be hundreds, maybe thousands, of infected people out there. Jake said they—
we
, would just naturally seek each other out, right?” My eyes bore into Riley’s until finally she nodded. “So, what if more of them come?”

              “Then you will feel them coming,” Riley said, not backing down. “And we will face them…together.”

              Her confidence in me was unwavering and in my opinion, undeserved. Despite my
magic eyes
, I felt as though I had been blindly stumbling my way through every obstacle in our path since Solar Storm Icarus had hit. It was luck more than skill, that had gotten us this far, and it seemed like ours may be running out.

              “How do your legs feel, Ry?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.

              “Like a crazed squirrel tried to bite them off,” she laughed, shaking her head at me. “I’m fine, Liv, really. And thanks again. You know, for saving my life and stuff. Of course, you
did
kind of owe me.”

              “Guess that makes us even,” I laughed, staring down at the fading trail of bruises on my arm.

              Bella’s ears perked up and she skittered across the room to one of the many doors into the parlor, her hackles slightly raised. Micah stepped in from the darkness and held his hands up in surrender.

              “Mind asking the rabid tripod to back off?” Micah grumbled, narrowing his eyes at Bella.

              “Bella,” I said softly.

              She sneezed her warning in Micah’s direction but backed away until she stood just a few feet in front of us. Her tense body created a living barrier between Micah and me, and I could tell she wasn’t any happier about his presence than Riley was. “Take it easy girl.”

              “Seriously,” Micah scowled at her. “Wasn’t enough to punch me in the face, now you gotta sick your broken mutt on me, too?”

              “Ry, can you take Bella for a drink and see if Falisha needs help with the water?” I said, not taking my eyes off Micah. “Micah and I need to have a little chat.”

              “Sure,” she said, avoiding Micah’s gaze as she hobbled from the room.

              “What the hell is wrong with you, Micah?” I said, stepping closer to him as soon as the girls were gone.

              “What?” He glared and tried to skirt around me, but I stepped in his path.

              “Why are you being such a dick?” My stomach was starting to knot up with anger. “I don’t care how sad you are, you don’t get to take your shit out on Riley. Despite all logic, that girl loves you and has never been anything but amazing to you. Yet here you are, treating her like dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.”

              “You don’t know what you are talking about,” he said, trying to shuffle around me again.

              “Bullshit,” I said, stopping him short with a finger jab to the chest. “Your mom died, and that sucks more than anything that has ever sucked before. Trust me, I get it, but—”

              “No, you
don’t
get it,” he barked in my face. “You couldn’t possibly get it.”

              “My parents—”

              “Your parents died in their sleep!” He screamed in my face, his eyes wild with anger. “It was a gas leak, or something, right?”

              “Yes, but—” My stomach dropped like a lead weight.

              “Exactly!” He poked me back, and I retreated a step. “Your parents died, peacefully, Liv! They weren’t burned alive, they didn’t get infected by a killer virus, and neither of them turned into a fucking monster.”

              “Loss is loss, Micah,” I said, as tears started spilling down his face.