“Wow, at least they were organized,” Sam said, her voice just like hers again and not the monstrous one she’d had outside.
“Yeah,” I agreed, moving to a pile of clothes. I picked through it until I came across a pair of shorts and a plaid button shirt and I quickly stripped out of my clothes. I found a gray T-shirt and put it on before tying the long-sleeved shirt around my waist. It would come in handy later, when the temperature dropped.
“What size feet are you?” Sam asked.
“Five.”
She threw a pair of trainers to me, but they seemed way too small. When I looked inside them though, sure enough, they said 5. I tried to squeeze my foot in but there was no way they were going to fit.
“I think these are a kid’s size,” I grumbled. “Or my feet have grown.”
I headed over to where she was rummaging through a pile of shoes and pulled out some random ones, trying them on until I found a pair of brown cowboy-style boots that fit. They read 7 ½ inside, but they fit perfectly.
“This doesn’t even make any sense,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’ve always been a five.”
“Maybe UK sizes are different from the US.” She shrugged, eyeing my outfit.
“Yeah, I guess.” I grabbed a bottle of water out of a box and drank almost all of it in one go and then looked around for the supposed food Nolan had said was in here. There was cans of food, beans, SpaghettiOs and dried pasta, but nothing that I could quickly eat right then.
“Jackpot!” Sam said from the other end of the RV, and I stood up and headed towards her. She had torn open a brown box and we both stared down at the chocolate and crisps inside. “There must have been vending machines in the store.”
“Oh, thank God,” I said, grabbing for a Reese’s peanut butter and tearing it open. It was like heaven on my tongue as I tried in vain to savor the taste before swallowing it. But it had been weeks—if not months—since I’d eaten anything so good, and I was famished. I devoured it in two bites and dove into the box for another.
Nolan knocked on the door and we both looked up, our mouths filled with chocolate as he came inside.
“You found the food then,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“And new boots,” I said, feeling something akin to happiness for the first time in far too long. I lifted my foot and flashed him the cowboy boots, a small smile on my face. My cheeks heated as his gaze lingered on my bare legs before moving up to my chocolate-stuffed face.
“You look great, Rose,” he said, his voice thick with something, and my cheeks went redder still.
“Thanks, Nolan.” I smiled and continued to chew a little more politely instead of the pig I’d been moments earlier.
“We don’t want to stay near here,” he said, his tone dark, “for obvious reasons. We’re going to grab what we need and move somewhere more out of the way.”
“Good idea,” Sam said almost shyly, and Nolan gave her a quick glance before returning to look at me.
“That good with you?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Sam and I can pack up anything worth taking from here.” I watched Nolan as I spoke; his expression was hard to read.
Something had changed between us all, I realized. Sam being welcomed back into the fold wasn’t something I’d expected, and Nolan and I had made plans to leave together, and from the look on his face, he still wanted to do that.
He still wanted it to be me and him against the world, and I adored that, but he also knew that I couldn’t just leave Sam behind—not now. So where did that leave our plans?
Chapter Six.
Sam
Nolan turned and left quickly, as if he couldn’t be out of the RV fast enough. He’d barely glanced at me, focusing instead on Rose.
I can’t say I blamed him. After what Rose had told me had happened back with the Sins, it was going to take more than a hug to make things right with him. Barrett had screwed everything up and I hated him more than ever. My mind kept on coming back to the simple point of why he wanted me for himself though. Why would he go to such lengths to keep everyone away? From the way his Sins brothers had talked, he never wanted in the woman department.
“Pretty sure he’s not happy with…” I gestured all around us, indicating…just everything. The world. Our situation. Me…me being part of the equation again. It would have been better for Nolan, probably better for Rose too, if I’d just stayed persona non grata and disappeared.
“It’s not you,” Rose said quickly. Too quickly. She bit her lower lip and then let out a sigh. “We had plans to get away. Just the two of us.”
“And now that I’m back in the picture, it’s not so easy,” I added for her, since it was obvious she couldn’t bring herself to say more. “If I could, I’d go back in time and find a way to realize what was happening sooner. I’d change it.”
She nodded, arching up on the balls of her feet and testing out the cowboy boots. “I know you would, Sam. But you can’t keep focusing on that.”
I sighed, knowing she was right, and then I watched her bounce up and down in the boots. It was sweet, and playful. A moment of her letting her guard down.
“They’ll crease.” I pointed at the brown leather. “I had a pair years ago. I was so used to going up on tiptoe and practicing random moves and stretches that within a month they had permanent wrinkles.”
“Only you would do ballet in boots.” She smiled, the expression reaching her eyes, and that fact made a little spark come to life in my chest.
I shrugged noncommittally but also gave her a slight grin. “Once a dancer, always a dancer.” Looking around, my gaze fell on the pile of clothes Rose had already sorted through. “I suppose I should change too.”
There wasn’t much in my waist size or made for my height. All the pants were petite or far too large, so I ended up taking a pair of unmarked khaki slacks that nearly fit and found scissors in the tiny kitchen to slash them into uneven Bermuda shorts. They frayed almost instantly, causing little bits of string to hang down and tickle my knees. It was a terrible look, made more unfortunate by the oversized hard rock band shirt and clunky biker boots.
“Well, I’m not winning any beauty contests in this.” I held the hem of the shirt out from my body. It was larger than necessary by a foot of material at least.
“You could wear this.” Rose, who’d been rummaging in a storage cavity beneath a dining bench, turned around to reveal a new shirt option. Not a band this time, but an advertisement for beer. It was smaller, and would probably fit me better, but heavy metal was preferable to low-calorie piss water.
“Yeah, I think I’m sticking with the face paint tongue-sticker-out guy.” I dropped the shirt and tied it at the waist. “I mean, who doesn’t want to walk around in a shirt that looks like some dude is licking your boob?”
We laughed together, loudly and awkwardly, until we were both bent over and clutching at our chests in pain. Relief washed over me, and even Rose seemed to feel better after we regained control of ourselves.
“I needed that,” she gasped out, still catching her breath.
“I feel like it wasn’t even funny, we’re just so damn exhausted from so much awful shit that everything’s hysterical.” I leaned against the cabinet behind me, shoving my hands into the pockets of my badly altered shorts.
A look flashed across Rose’s face and I frowned.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” she murmured before turning to finish searching the bench storage.
I closed the small gap between us and gripped her shoulder to nudge her back in my direction. Her eyes were watering, but she wasn’t crying. Not yet. I cupped her chin gently.
“Are you thinking about the Sins? About what happened to you?”
She shook her head, her chin lifting a little like it did when she was being stubborn or trying to be strong.
“Then what?” I pressed.
Now a tear did slip down her cheek, clinging to the curve of her jaw for a moment before givin
g way to drip onto her collarbone.
“Just, everything. All the awful shit. Knowing we can’t erase it. Knowing there’s probably more of it ahead of us. Wondering about my parents. Worrying about you.” She stopped herself talking after the last, as if she’d said something she hadn’t meant to.
“I’m going to be okay, Rose. So don’t worry about me. Okay? As long as I’m still mostly human instead of mostly monster, I’ll keep fighting. And then when I’m not able to hold on to myself, when I lose what makes me ‘me,’ well then…”
We both stared at one another for a moment, and I dropped my hand from her face. It was easier to ignore what might come later. Easier to put on blinders and only see the here and now.
“Are there any bags that we can pack stuff in? I’m sure the guys are getting impatient.” I changed the subject because I think we both needed to focus on something else. Something that we could actually control.
“Yeah. Here.” She turned away from me once again, reached into the storage space, and pulled out two duffel bags. “These’ll fit a lot.”
I nodded, taking one from her. “Focus on food?”
“And see if there’s any medicine-type things.”
“Like from a druggist?”
“A druggist?” She looked confused. “Like chemist stuff, Sam. We’re not hunting for crack cocaine, my friend.”
My hands were poised to curl around a can of soup, but her words made me quirk an eyebrow in confusion.
“Chemist? Like…umm. Mercury chloride or nickel nitrate or…bombs? Do you want to see if there’s anything here we can use to blow stuff up?” Genuinely lost, I forgot about food and my mind began to reel with all the possibilities. I hadn’t taken chemistry since high school, and I would have failed if Mr. Penski hadn’t thought I was pretty. How hard could it be to make something that would go BOOM?
“You Americans.” Rose rolled her eyes with a grin. “Just look for some bloody paracetamol and plasters.”
“Aaaah, medicine,” I clarified, making sense of her words. “You want to see if there’s any first aid?” I marveled for a moment. “Why in the world would you call a pharmacist a chemist?”
“Because that’s where you get medicine from.”
“Y’all are confusing,” I retorted with a shake of my head own head and a laugh.
Rose smirked. “You call that confusing? ‘Pissed’ means you’re drunk out of your face, but it also means you’re angry. Also, why even have a piece of clothing called a wife-beater, hmm? That sounds awful—we just call it a vest or a tank top. And I heard an American tourist use the word ‘druthers’ once while shopping for trinkets. I had to ask what it meant. FYI, it’s a ridiculous word. Not even a word really, or it shouldn’t be.”
“‘Druthers’ is a word,” I argued, though I couldn’t remember ever writing it or saying it or even reading it in a book. I was just instantly protective of a word used by an American. Which was almost as ridiculous as the word itself.
“Really? Use it in a sentence then,” she countered, crossing her arms.
I thought for a moment, and then smiled triumphantly. “If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t be in the middle of a freaking apocalypse right now. Oh, and I wouldn’t be turning into a flesh-hungry zombie mutant.”
Rose appraised me, looking thoroughly unconvinced. “Or you could just say ‘if I had my way.’ Druthers sounds like…something you’d cover in gravy.”
“That would be biscuits, Rose.”
She looked offended, her eyes going wide. “You do not put gravy on biscuits.”
“Are you two just about done?” A voice startled us, cutting into our argument.
Glancing over to the RV entrance, we found Elias standing on the lowest step looking annoyed. He looked around at the state of things, the clothes tossed haphazardly and the top of the dining bench leaned against the table. Pieces of the khaki pants I’d cut were littering the carpet too.
“So are you guys just tearing up the place or are you actually packing shit we need, like Nolan said you were?” He ascended the few steps and walked over to the kitchen, opening a cabinet we hadn’t touched yet and revealing a clearly marked first-aid kit.
“Hey, look.” I pointed, turning to grin at Rose. “A chemist set. Bombs away.”
She rolled her eyes and walked over to Elias, reaching up and taking the white box with the curved handle and flicking it open to reveal all your basic medical supplies.
Dropping it into the duffel bag she was filling, she stared pointedly at Elias. “We’re packing, and we’ll be done whenever we’re done.”
“Just hurry the hell up. You both should realize that leaving Barrett and Nolan together for too long is a recipe for trouble. And we don’t fucking need more problems.” At that, he stomped out of the RV, causing it to shake and protest.
I didn’t really know Elias, so it was hard to give a crap about what he thought. Yet I knew he was right. And by the look on Rose’s face, so did she. Nolan could hold his own if he wasn’t injured, but the fact was that he currently looked like roadkill, and Barrett was itching for a fight after having been shot.
“Maybe patching up Barrett’s arm will make him less of an asshole.” I paused. “For a little while.”
“Doubtful,” Rose grumbled, continuing to move around the RV and toss in food and a few clothing items that looked about her size. I followed suit, though I was out of luck in the extra clothing department. “You know he’s going to try and kill me now, right?” she said, her tone filled with worry despite the nonchalant look on her face.
“I won’t let that happen,” I replied firmly, and she glanced up a gave me a single nod.
When we finally stepped out into the hot, oppressive air, we saw Barrett and Nolan standing as far apart as possible without going out of view of the RV Rose and I had been inside of. It was sort of funny, how the two men were manning their stations and resisting the urge to engage with one another—which likely would have led to an all-out bloody war.
“Took you long enough,” Barrett drawled, sauntering toward us and beelining for me, as if nothing had happened and I was still his woman.
I shot him a sharp glance and he frowned.
Moments later, instead of stopping at my side, he brushed past me and disappeared between two RVs nearby. “Follow me or not. Don’t matter to me one bit.”
His voice carried back to us, and Elias was the first to walk after Barrett’s shadow.
“We could just go the other way. Be done with him now,” Nolan commented, moving close enough to Rose so that he could reach out just a few inches and touch her, if he wanted to. And I could tell that he did want to. Desperately so.
“The Sins are still out there, Nolan.” Rose reached out and placed her hand over his heart, looking up at him so tenderly that I looked away, because it felt like such a private moment. “He knows how they operate, knows how to avoid them. As soon as it’s safer, then we leave him. Period.”
Nolan hesitated, and then ran a hand through his hair, which was still matted with dried blood, making his fingers catch in stuck-together strands. “He’s a loose cannon on a good day, but now he’s an injured loose cannon. And he’s lost the only thing that might have kept him in check.” Nolan tossed me a quick glance, the same cursory treatment as in the RV.
“If you mean me,” I butted in, irritated now, “no one could keep that man in check. I could be the holy mother carrying the baby Jesus and Barrett would gun me down to get to drugs on the other side if it made him money.”
Again, Nolan flicked me a look, and then focused back on Rose.
I was beginning to lose my temper with him. I got it, I mean I really did. He had a plan to keep Rose safe, to take her away from complications, and then the biggest complication came back into the picture and screwed things up. But dammit, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I mean, outside of being infected with some weird undead virus.
“Rose, I just think—”
“Hey, Nolan.” Again, I fo
rced my way into their sphere. I was done with whatever his attitude was toward me.
Come out to play?
No!
Hungry. The beast inside was sullen, pouting almost, nestled in a corner of my conscious mind.
“What?” He said the single word, keeping his focus on Rose, his expression hard and unyielding.
I stomped forward, stopping a foot away because I didn’t want to scare and crowd Rose in the process. “Look, I did nothing wrong before. In fact, I was willing to give myself to Barrett for-fucking-ever so that you and Rose could get away from the Sins and have a chance. Think about that. Would you be willing to barter your body and soul to save someone you love? Would you be willing to be violated over and over again? Because that’s what I was willing to do for Rose and for you. For you. And now you’re treating me like I’m a piece of garbage stuck to your shoe.”
Pink vision.
Red world.
Roller coaster rushing down and down.
Play now.
It wasn’t a question this time.
Eat now.
Not a question either.
No!
I closed my eyes, communing with the monster, trying to control my pulse, trying to come back to humanity.
It took me longer than I would have liked, but I did it. When I opened my eyes, the world was mostly normal again.
Nolan, for the first time ever, looked taken aback, and maybe even a little guilty, but then he said, “Yeah, you looked real torn up about being Queen of the Apocalypse, Sam.”
Feeling deflated now, I gave Rose an apologetic look and whirled away from them. I ran in the direction Barrett and Elias had gone, and I tried to breathe past the lump that had formed in my throat as I’d yelled at Nolan.
I found Barrett and Elias near the fence on the far side of the gated lot, as far away as one could get from where the cannibals had been. Elias was helping Barrett tear off his shirt sleeve over the injured arm. I watched as Barrett’s tanned, muscled arm was revealed, and I hated how the sight of it made me remember how it felt to be with him. How it felt to be held by him and touched by him. Nolan was right, I realized; no wonder he still didn’t trust me.
Red Eye | Season 3 | Episode 4 Page 5