by L. L. Ash
Oh God… How was I going to survive this?
Chapter Seventeen
Maxim
Every night.
Every fucking night that girl curled up into me and demanded warmth and I had to keep my hands off her.
Every fucking night.
The days were a drudgery of tiptoeing around each other, trying to ignore the explosive chemistry we seemed to have. It was mornings full of awkward, stilted conversations or just plain silence, afternoons where Mila took naps that finally let me get...well, I would have gotten something done, if there was something to get done. The evenings were the worst. That was the time when she was lit up with firelight, the shadows of the flames dancing across her face while she ate something from a package or a can. She didn’t like it, but she ate.
The girl might have grown up in a plush world, but she sure as hell knew how not to complain. She took everything that happened in stride. She might cry a little in the anonymity of the darkness, but then the next day her spine was steel and she was ready to do what it took to survive.
And damn me if I didn’t think that was fucking incredible. Despite what I’d thought about her, she’d proven to have grit, which she needed out in the middle of nowhere. Now, if only I could break her of her washing habits.
We were damn near almost out of soap already from all the washing of hair, bodies and clothes she’d done, not to mention how she had scrubbed the floors of the cabin down with water and a rough towel she’d found. The girl didn’t think at all about how the drops that went through the floorboards landed right on top of all my shit in the bunker.
It didn’t even matter though, because Mila had been so horrified when I came in and told her to stop because there wasn’t a layer between the bunker and the wooden floors above.
I laughed my ass off at her when she started shaking water out of everything, mumbling about how she’d just tried to help.
That was basically how the past nine days had gone.
No more hate sex, no more anything of that sort between us, and I was sporting a pretty damn constant boner when she was around. It was annoying as fuck.
I just needed some air. I needed something to put between us before I suffocated in the sexual tension filling the Goddamn cabin.
So, I went on a little walk.
Mila
The man was absolutely infuriating. Maxim whatever-his-name-is was impatient, unrefined, grumpy and rude… So many adjectives and not enough time.
Well, that’s not true. There was plenty of time because we were stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do except eat, sleep, and get on each other's nerves.
We did that a lot.
Max went on a lot of walks in the morning and mid-morning, but he usually wouldn’t take me with him. He wouldn’t let me go, but he refused to let me go on my own. So, the next time he went out, on day fifteen or maybe sixteen, I waited for him to leave before going my own way into the woods.
I didn’t want to go too far because it was easy to get lost, but I would be able to find my way back if I stayed nearby.
Even in the coldness of the winter, there were still plants around and holes in the ground that told me there were animals still awake.
No flowers bloomed, but things remained green, especially the evergreen trees and their spiky needles. So many lay on the ground below that the dirt was cushioned under my feet with the blanket of greenery.
I stayed there in that little pocket of heaven for a while, breathing in the fresh, woody scents around me until I heard the snap of fallen branches and pinecones behind me.
Turning, I expected to find Max ready to berate me for leaving the cabin. Instead, there was a deer standing behind me about twenty meters off. A smile broadened across my lips to see such a beautiful, majestic sight.
Until I heard the growling.
At the slight noise the deer shot off, but the low howl continued, sending all my hair to stand up on my neck.
I turned slowly, knowing that some sort of predator had me in their sights. There in front of me was a wolf, tan and grey and white, its mouthful of massive, carnivorous teeth gleamed white as it pulled back its lips to warn me of his impending attack.
A scream left my throat in that moment, louder and more piercing than even the screech I’d let out on the puddle jumper to Tibet from Bangladesh.
At the horrific sound, the wolf lowered itself to its haunches, looking like it was ready to spring at me just as three more wolves appeared from behind the thick foliage to the first wolve's left.
The chorus of aggressive growls sent a shiver of terror down my spine.
So, this was how I would die. Incredibly close to freedom and in the middle of the wilderness in a place I knew nothing about.
Well, at least I wasn’t going to die a virgin.
It all happened in a stream of slow motion pictures. The wolves flew forward, leaping and snarling with long, yellow and white teeth aimed right for my jugular.
The growls were cut short with the familiar blast of a gun, sending the thunderous sound echoing through the trees just as I was falling to the ground with a sharp pain in my shoulder. I hit the ground just as time began to speed up again, happening in real-time.
Max was there somehow. He was there with his gun in his hand, knife in the other as he fought off the beasts.
One lay on the ground, a bullet through its head, and another was whimpering similarly on the ground, trying to get up from its place to run away even though it was bleeding profusely.
Two wolves were on Max, biting at his arms as he tried to eliminate them with his vicious blade. His gun was lying on the ground behind the wolves, useless when he needed it most. I dove forward and caught it up in my hands before aiming and pulling the trigger.
One wolf lay dead and heavy on Max’s lap just as he got to the other one, sinking the huge knife into the poor animal’s neck.
Dropping to my knees, I panted in cold air as a panic attack hit me. God please, don’t let there be any others.
I’d never killed a thing in my life before, and it sickened me, animal or human, it didn’t matter.
But Max...
I managed to pull myself together enough to crawl to him, nothing hurting too bad on me except where I would have bruises from my fall. But Max...he had tears over both arms and a large bite mark on his shoulder, close to his neck. A few more inches and the animal would have torn out his trachea.
Max gritted his teeth and growled, throwing his head back into the tree at what must have been excruciating pain.
“I gotta get back to the cabin,” he groaned out through his teeth.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but when he tried standing, I went with him, helping him as best as I could to get his body off the ground and legs moving.
“My gun,” he whispered against the pain, his face screwed up in agony.
He leaned his good shoulder against a tree trunk as I dove for his gun again, then I tucked it into my pants and threw his arm around my shoulder. Thank God he wasn’t any bigger, or else I wouldn’t have been able to help him. As it was, he had to weigh close to two of me, not to mention the height he had over me. Compared to my slim frame, he was a giant.
He stumbled forward, not even slowing down to catch his breath against the pain until we got back to the cabin.
A couple minutes later we managed to get him into the cabin and down to the underground room. He climbed down the ladder with his one good arm—even though it was still shredded to ribbons—gritting his teeth the whole way down with eyes squinted from pain.
I clicked on a lamp as he pointed to a large black case and collapsed on the bunk.
“Med kit,” he breathed, cradling his shoulder as he laid on his back.
I nodded mindlessly as I reached for the box. The plastic case opened and I immediately saw gauze and tape and bandages.
“Get the saline. Right there in the big-ass bottle. That’s it.”
I went toward him with the big
bottle of what looked like water, but a label on it said saline on it.
“You gotta clean this out, kisa. C’mon. I need you right now.”
That was all he needed to say.
He did need me.
Stepping toward him, I ripped open his shirt and put a clean t-shirt along his arm to catch the extra liquid before starting to pour it over the wounds, cleaning them.
“They’re not bleeding too bad,” I said while watching the clear liquid mix with blood and turn a sickly red shade.
“Good. Means it missed an artery. Gauze and the stretchy bandage,” he said, face wrinkling as a particularly bad wave of pain hit him.
I went back to the kit and got what he asked for, but I found antibiotic cream too and brought that to him. Since the wounds were as clean as I could get them, I put the cream on and dropped the gauze on gently so I wouldn’t hurt him. Next, I wrapped his arms, but I wasn’t sure how to do his shoulder.
“I can’t wrap you with this unless you sit up,” I admitted.
“Just get tape then. Then put pressure on the wound until it stops bleeding.”
I grabbed some medical tape and did what he asked, making a subpar job out of my bandaging job.
He let out a yelp when I pressed down on the wound next to his neck, murmuring nothing but expletives as his eyes closed with agony.
Moments that seemed like hours passed as he tried to catch a full breath.
“I think it’s stopped,” I told him, lifting my hand away.
He’d bled through the bandage, so I lifted it off and put on a fresh patch of gauze.
“Tape it up,” he sighed, pressing his own hand over the wound.
I taped it, then backed away.
“We’re not done, look for the syringe.”
I shuffled through the thing, getting all the supplies all mixed up while I looked. I eventually found a black zipped case that had a neat row of them, nestled one by one. It looked like a drug addict’s dream.
“Is this it?” I asked, going to him with the book of them.
He looked at it and fingered a few, before tapping on one.
“Yeah,” he said breathlessly as he turned an arm to me despite the bandages on it.
I stood with it for a moment, not moving.
“You going to do it or do I gotta do it myself?” he gritted.
I popped off the needle cap and hovered over his arm with a sharp instrument that he didn’t look at all scared of.
“What is this?” I asked as I tried to line the tip of the needle with what looked like a vein on the inside elbow of his good arm.
“It’s rabis...Fuck!”
Jerking his arm away, he bit out another curse at the jostling movement before grinding out, “my arm. Prick my arm. You’re not a fucking nurse.”
“Here?” I asked, grabbing his bicep.
“Up, up, up,” he chanted as my fingers slid up toward his shoulder. “There. Stick it in and push the plunger.”
I did what he said, making him curse again when I put the needle in too hard because I was freaking out. Seriously freaking out.
He took a moment to regain his calm, then he pointed to the bag again.
“Get me something to kill the pain. There’s Oxy in a zip pouch.”
Oxycodone. I knew that one.
Unzipping a little black bag, I found several small bottles with the names of pain-relieving drugs, but I grabbed the one he asked for.
“How many?” I asked, twisting the lid with shaking fingers.
He grimaced, then held out his hand for the pills.
I handed him two, but he only tossed one into his mouth.
“Can’t get high,” he mumbled before swallowing the pill dry.
I moved over to one of the water jugs and poured some into a tin bowl I saw in a plastic container, then I brought it to him.
Max took it, swallowing with a weird face, then he laid back.
“Now, I need antibiotics. Same bag.”
I found what I thought he was talking about, Amoxicillin.
He looked at the bottle, then asked for two before tossing them back, then chasing with the last of the water from the bowl.
“Before I pass the fuck out, turn on a lamp and close the door down here. You stay right here until I wake up.”
I was already moving.
“There’s food you can eat without heating it up in that bag over there. Water you already found, and don’t turn on the gas lamp. Battery power only. More batteries are in that bin. There’s another sleeping bag there if you need to double up. Don’t start a fire, and put out the one that’s going right now. Then get back down here.”
His chest was heaving and each word came out in an exhausted pant.
“There are more animals out there, and people. Keep a gun with you. Don’t go out there unless you have no other choice. Stay right here.”
His eyes closed, and he tried to fight it, but with every breath it seemed to get harder until he was eventually asleep on the bunk, his arm hanging off the side.
I hurried to do as he asked, moving up the ladder to put out the fire in the little oven, then I closed the hidden door to conceal the entrance from outsiders. Luckily we were already using a battery lamp, so I just set it next to me and looked around.
We had water for a good long time, and while it wasn’t ideal, I had enough food to last me for days.
The thought of no fire or heat made my stomach curl in revolt, but after going into the woods against Max’s wishes and practically getting eaten, I was going to listen, even if it killed me.
Chapter Eighteen
Mila
The first few hours were the same. I stared at the shadowy wall with moments of checking to make sure Max hadn’t taken a turn for the worst, and then I went back to staring at nothing. Eventually the adrenaline wore off and I started getting tired, so I laid out a long sleeping bag underneath me, then wrapped myself inside another. Just as I got myself somewhat comfortable, I heard a long, deep groan.
Jumping up, I was at Max’s side in a moment.
“Gotta piss,” he whispered, his eyes still closed.
He couldn’t make it back up the stairs. Not in his condition. It took me a minute, but I managed to find a container with a lid on it that looked kind of like a water bottle, and I handed it to him.
Moving gingerly, he threw back the blankets and unzipped his pants, still laying on his side. I turned, of course, to try and give him some privacy, but the sound was loud in the small space and I still felt intimately involved in his bodily purge.
With a satisfied moan, he handed back the bottle, tapping my arm with it to get me to turn to him again. Gagging, I slapped the seal on it quickly before tucking it onto a shelf nearby. I’d have to go out at some point to dump it, but for now, I would stay put.
He tucked himself back into his pants halfheartedly before closing his eyes again. Max was asleep almost instantly.
Pulling up the sleeping bag, I zipped it around him again and made sure he was tucked in and his bandages were still ok before I laid back down to go to rest. There on the ground, I fought a restless sleep that had me waking up every time he whimpered in his sleep. Though, he didn’t wake until morning.
“You’re still injured!” I called to a stubborn Max who insisted on going outside.
“Unless you wanna pick up my shit like a dog, I suggest you help me instead of yelling at me,” he growled, nimbly getting up the stairs with one arm, his injured shoulder tucked into a makeshift sling he’d made.
I pushed him up by the rear end and he flopped onto the ground above before disappearing. Following, I got up just in time to see him round the corner of the door and into the wild.
At least he had a gun tucked into the front of his pants.
I waited for him for a moment, but I realized that now was my time to use the bathroom too. I’d held it for so long, almost getting to the point that I was willing to wee into a water bottle too, but luckily I held it and I was now f
ree to do my business.
I heard the rustling from Max on one side of the cabin, so I took the other, going just behind a tree to relieve myself like a wild animal. Humans were above such things, having invented indoor plumbing, but we had no other choice because it wasn’t like the little sparse cabin had a flushing toilet.
I heard Max rounding the cabin door just as I finished, so I hurried to get my clothes back on and join him inside.
Max dropped to the floor, leaning against the wooden walls and sighed, closing his eyes with what looked like pain.
“Do you need another pill?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“No. I can’t pass out like that again. The pain’s not too bad.”
“You’re paling, Maxim. Don’t be stubborn! You’ve had a serious injury!”
He grunted in neither agreement nor disagreement.
“Let me check your wounds.”
“They can use a bandage change,” he admitted, lifting up the cloth over one of his arm wounds. “Closing up nice though. Not as deep as I thought.”
“Deep enough to bleed,” I scolded.
“I’ve been through a hell of a lot worse than this,” he said with a sardonic chuckle.
What was he referring to?
I got the bandages from the supply area and brought them back up before washing my hands in water.
“We need antibacterial soap,” I told him.
“Washing with water is better than nothing,” he said, leaning back as if he was almost comfortable.
“It’s not enough.” I frowned.
“You worried about me, kisa?” he asked with an infuriating smirk.
“I don’t want you dying,” I admitted readily. “You die and I die.”
He huffed but didn’t deny it.
Checking his bandages, it did look unusually good. The wounds were red and angry, but they weren’t as bad as they had looked in the shadow of our underground refuge.
“The scratches aren’t too bad,” I told him.
“They’ll heal in days,” he told me, waiting for me to re-wrap them and put more cream on them to stave off infection. “It’s the bite here I’m more worried about. Those fuckers get infected faster than you can blink. That and rabies.”