Hilary & Deacon.
“I
’m cold.” I shiver, trying to stop my teeth from chattering.
Deacon hugs me closer, squashing any cold air away from me and wrapping his
warmth around me. “I know, baby,” is all he says.
There
’s not much more to say. It’s freezing. Even now after the worst of the winter is over, it’s still freezing, and it will be for the foreseeable future. I can handle the cold, though—most days, anyway—but today has been a bad day. Today we ran out of ramen noodles and Deacon has been grumpy all day, and I’m so hungry because he didn’t go hunting for any meat. I’ve hardly felt the baby move all day, either, and that’s a worry too.
Deacon
’s beard is rough against my head. I can feel it through the woolen hat I’m wearing to keep my ears warm. I can’t expect him to shave it off, though. For one he doesn’t have a decent razor, and for two he says it keeps his face warm.
“Sh
hh, baby. Try to get some sleep,” Deacon whispers onto my hat, placing a soft kiss after it to seal in his words.
I hadn
’t even realized I was mumbling out loud. Okay, go to sleep now, Hil.
Deacon
’s heavy breathing gets heavier, and I try to concentrate on his steady heartbeat, hoping it will lull me to sleep.
Boom, boom, boom, boom…
*
The sound of barking wakes me up, and I flinch as Deacon reacts quicker than I, flinging the covers back and diving out of bed. I lie there for a minute trying to work out what’s happening, until I hear the dog barking again and realize that I’m not dreaming.
I push myself up to sitting. “D? What is it?”
He’s standing by the window with the curtain pulled back as he peeps outside. He doesn’t answer right away, but I’m not sure if it’s because he didn’t hear me or because he’s concentrating. I wait a few minutes and then ask again.
“There
’s a damn dog somewhere out there.” He continues to stare out the window.
“Should we do something?” I ask, though I
’m not sure what I expect him to do.
“Maybe. S
tupid mutt is going to attract those things to us if I don’t shut it up.”
“It could be scared. M
aybe it’s fighting one. It could need our help.” I panic. Even though it could be rabid, I hate the thought of something being in trouble—in danger with no one to help it. My thoughts cast back to the old couple that Deacon killed—this is their house that we’ve been living in, and here I am concerned with a dog. I’m a sick individual.
“It could be lunch,” i
s all he says as he picks up his boots and shoves them on. He grabs his jacket and buttons it up, and then finally his gun. “Stay here,” he says darkly, and then he leaves.
I listen in the dark to his heavy footsteps down
the stairs and through the living room. I listen to the front door open and close, and then I hear the creaky
clank
of the metal ladders as he places them over the moat-type hole he dug in front of the house. I hear him climb over the steps, grunting into the dark as he does, and all the while the damn dog continues to bark.
Nina.
“Rach
el!” I dive over the cab to grab her, help her—fuck, I don’t know, it’s just a stupid instinctual thing that people do. Like, ‘Oh someone’s in trouble, here I come to save the day! Oh wait, shit, I can’t do anything!’
Nova takes out the gun from
her waist, aims, and fires. Rachel stops stamping and I look down at her. There’s blood everywhere; some is hers, but thankfully most of it is the sneaky fucking deader’s.
“Are you okay?” I
ask, jumping down next to her.
I kick the deader out of the way and crouch down to look at the damage. The damn th
ing chewed up her ankle and blood is still pumping from it, but if this was a battle, then Rachel clearly won. The deader’s head is fifty shades of crushed-to-a-pulp; rotten brain matter has exploded out of its ears and is slowly oozing out of the large crack in the back of its skull.
Michael pushes
me out of the way and lifts Rachel back up into the cab. He rolls her pant leg up so he can better see exactly what he’s dealing with. I mean, obviously that’s what I was going to do next. Nova comes to stand beside him, opening up a small black bag and pulling out bandages and liquids and shit. She hands a stick to Rachel, who puts it in her mouth and reaches down for my hand.
I stare at it in confusion, unsure what
’s going on, and then like the fucking clever girl I am, I decide to ask. “What’s going on?”
“We haven
’t got time for this,” Michael growls at me.
I grab Rach
el’s hand and look up at her, seeing tears streaming from her eyes. “Seriously, what are you doing?” I ask again.
I watch Michael
pull on some heavy black rubber gloves and then carefully begin to open a bottle of liquid. “We need to clean the bite out before it infects her and turns her into one of them.”
I no
d. “Right, okay.” I look at Rachel again with the wooden stick in her mouth, tears still running freely. “What the fuck is that?” I gesture to the bottle in his hand, realizing that something isn’t right with this situation at all.
“Acid. I need to burn the infection out of her.” He goes to pour the acid over her leg and I scream and knock it from his hand. “What the fuck?” He
reaches back with a heavy fist and I flinch and back away from him.
“It
’s not an infection. You could kill her with that shit,” I yell. My hand goes to my waist to grab my knife and I realize that I’m stupidly unarmed after taking it off in the truck and leaving it on the dashboard. I have no qualms about killing him if it saves my own skin, though it doesn’t look like I’ll get the chance. Nova pushes in front of him.
“Calm the fuck down, let her talk.”
“We don’t have time. We have to burn it out now, before it takes hold!” he yells into Nova’s face, but continues to cast glances in my direction.
“Stop fucking yelling at me, asshole.” She shoves him in the chest, ma
king him back up a step. “Speak,” she says to me.
“Flush out the
wound with a cleaning solution, stitch her up, and get her some meds to stop any infection from starting. That’s the best bet on saving her, but really,” I look at the bite marks again, “I don’t think it’s even all that bad if you clean away all the blood.” I look at Rachel. “Sorry, that sounds shitty, but it’s really not that bad. Suck it up.” I smile, trying to calm her down. “And take that stick out of your mouth, you’re not a dog.”
Nova puts a hand on my shoulder
and frowns. “Are you sure?” She says the words carefully, as if to make sure I understand exactly what she’s saying to me.
“Yes, Jesus, you people don
’t know shit about these things.” I roll my eyes. “Death is what turns you, not a bite mark, or saliva. I mean I’m sure it’s not good for you and could possibly lead to an infection and then maybe death, but a good bottle of meds should sort that out.” My words come out in a jumble. Michael is making me antsy with his googly-eyed stare. I take a deep breath. “Please, trust me. You don’t need to do this to her.”
Nova and M
ichael exchange nervous glances before both looking at Rachel. Neither of them say anything to her, and I’m all out of comforting words to convince them to not butcher this poor woman. That and I don’t have shit to protect myself or her with if they decide to take matters into their own hands.
“How certain are you?” Nova says
to me, her normal happy-go-lucky self still missing.
“Pretty damn certain. Like ninety-five percent,” I huff. “Look, I
’ve seen this shit happen before—the turning. It was an infection that got him, not a virus, so let me do my thing. You get your meds and we’ll both ignore Mr. Grumpy Pants over there.” I jerk a thumb in Michael’s direction.
Nova looks up to Rachel. “It
’s your choice. It’s your leg, life and shit.” I can tell she’s trying to appear easy about everything, but the tightness in her shoulders is hard to deny.
“I want to try what
Nina says. It’s my leg—my life—and I’m willing to take the risk.” Rachel looks at us all one by one. “She seems to know a lot about it—about the turning.” She eyes me curiously.
“After everything—everything we
’ve been through and seen, you’re going to take her word on this? Really?” Michael yells and storms off without another word and I turn around and look at Rachel, offering up a smile to her before turning back around.
“You heard the woman,
Nova. We need meds, stat. I always wanted to say that.” I chuckle darkly and reach for the fancy first aid kit that Nova has. She willingly opens it up but doesn’t surrender the precious kit.
“What
else do you need?” she asks.
“I need a cleaning solution to wash out the wound. We still need to clean it
, just not with something that will melt her flesh away,” I huff. “There’s nothing broken thanks to thick socks and bad-ass boots—oh, and our gummy deader.” I’m more talking to myself now than anyone else, nerves getting the better of me.
Nova reaches in and grabs a small bottle. “This should do it.”
I take it with a nod of thanks and then turn back to Rachel. “This will still hurt. You may want your stick thingy back if you don’t think you can contain a scream.”
I unscrew the lid and when I look back at her, she
’s got the stick back in her mouth. I roll my eyes again and grab the bottom of her foot. “On four.” I nod. “One, two.”
“Wait, who
goes on four?” Nova asks in confusion. “It’s always three, right?” She tilts her head to the side and frowns.
“Really, Nova, that
’s your biggest question in all of this?” Michael snaps as he comes back around the truck with a large rifle in hand.
“Fuck off!” Nova shouts and flips him
the finger. “You always go on three. It’s not a ridiculous fucking question. You always think you’re so smart, little Michael who always thinks he knows better than everyone else, but you’re not. You’re an asshole with PMT!”
“PMT?” h
e snorts.
“Perfect Michael T
ension.” She laughs in his face—a nasty, meant-to-piss-someone-off laugh. “You always think you’re so damn perfect.”
“Four,
” I whisper, deciding to ignore the argument and squirt the liquid into the bites. Rachel tenses up and groans behind the wood, but doesn’t scream. “Well done, just a little more.” I can see a tooth embedded in one of the deeper bites, but I figure that she’ll freak out if she knows that. “Don’t look,” I say, and watch as she closes her eyes, putting her total trust in me.
I want to feel grateful that she trusts me so much
, but instead I feel scared. Seriously, it’s a dumb move to trust me under normal circumstances—I don’t exactly have a good track record. With a finger, I dig inside the deep bite and pull out the tooth before throwing it to the ground. I shudder as fresh blood oozes from her and I quickly squeeze more liquid into the wound.
“I need a bandage,
” I mutter. The bites aren’t nearly as bad as they could have been. It looks like our sneaky deader had bad teeth in its previous life, so thankfully there wasn’t much in its jaw to actually chew with. A bandage comes into my line of sight and I point toward the deepest bite. “Right here, wrap it tight.”
I ho
ld up Rachel’s leg as Nova winds the bandage tightly around the wound. Rachel hisses every once in a while, but she’s a tough cookie, she can hack it. “Stop being a baby,” I joke.
The entire time Michael stands guard, watching for any other dead
er sneaking up on us. Five minutes later and we’re done, and Rachel hops down from the truck. She puts some weight on her ankle, testing it out.
“Aah,” s
he grumbles.
Nova pushes her shoulder. “Nina
’s right, you’re being a baby. I’ve seen you bleed worse on your period.” She laughs loudly and pulls out her smokes. She lights two and hands one to Rachel. “Fuck, that was intense.”
I grab my canteen, unscrew the lid with my clean hand, and tip some of the contents over my bloodied hand. It
’s not perfect, but it’ll have to do for now, since I used all the cleaning solution on Rachel’s ankle.
“You
’re sure that this will work?” Rachel says.
I nod. “Pretty much
, yeah.”
“How
do you know so much about it?” she asks, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. “Were you a scientist previously?”
I burst out laughing.
“A scientist? Really?” Nova and Rachel look at each other in annoyance. “I thought it was common fucking knowledge, if you want to know the truth. Death always brings you back. You only turn from a bite if it kills you. Your bite didn’t look bad enough to kill.” I shrug, feeling uncomfortable under everyone’s stares. I wish I smoked so I’d have something to do. “And no, I was no doctor or scientist or anything, but I’ve seen this happen before.”
Rachel looks away in thought, and Michael seems like he has the weight
of the world on his shoulders and keeps glancing at Rachel with worry. Nova seems like the only person unperturbed by it all.
“So what
’s the plan now?” I ask anyone and everyone listening.
“Well, we know there
’s nothing in the store, but we like to keep a clean house and make sure we kill any strays as we travel through here. Our objective is,” Nova starts, but stops as she hands Rachel some meds and water to wash them down with, “a small warehouse south of here. We think it will more than likely be ransacked, but it’s on the far edge of town, and was a holding-before-shipment warehouse. From the outside, it looks like a boring old metal building—or that’s how we were told it looked.” Nova shrugs and takes a final hit on her cigarette before crushing it underfoot. “We could get lucky.”
*
It turns out we are lucky after all. We drive past the turnoff for the warehouse three times before we realize that the small bridge going over a stream is the turnoff. Most of the road up to it is unmanageable even in this truck, mainly from falling debris and other vehicles that have either broken down in the road or the owners have abandoned. Michael and Nova have to keep getting out to clear the way for me, since none of us want to risk going off road and wrecking the truck. Michael seems to be getting more and more pissed off while Nova grins and bears it. I have a feeling she’s winding Michael up in the back of the truck, which is hilarious, but counterproductive to the mission. Night is falling and the rain is starting up again, and this does nothing to keep up everyone’s spirits. Yet the fact that the turnoff and the road leading up to it is a total mess is a positive thing: it means there’s a chance no one else has found it yet.
We pull
up to the gates of the building, finding them unlocked and swinging on rusty hinges in the wind. Nova jumps down from the back to make sure it stays open as I pull the truck through, and then she closes it after us. It creaks and groans as she clanks it shut, suggesting that it hasn’t been moved in a long time. Even more positive stuff, I decide.
A couple of deaders a
re shambling around the courtyard of the warehouse—old employees, by the looks of the tattered blue overalls they’re wearing. One even still has his little yellow hat on to protect him from falling boxes…or bullets, whatever.
Bet he never knew safety was going to be so important in his afterlife
, I muse.
Nova
walks alongside the truck instead of climbing back aboard, and she heads straight over to helmet dude. She swings the handle end of her knife against the deader’s head and the deader falls over. Before it can even get back up, she’s stamping down on its skull without mercy.
I pull the truck to a stop, and Michael jumps down and heads for another of the dead. A couple more seem to have been attracted to the noise we
’ve made getting here and are coming toward us, with more joining them by the minute. There’s at least ten of them, which is more than I like—hell,
one
is more than I like, so I guess ten just makes this whole day a write-off. Yeah, let’s scratch this day and start again in the morning, shall we?