Apokalypsis Book Three

by Kate Morris

  She gave him a look letting him know he was an idiot and ran past him again. He grabbed her arm again and pushed open the door for the fourth floor, going through. The hallway was dimly lit.

  “Over here,” he whispered of the dark patient room. She shook her head, but he pulled her with him anyway. “It’s empty.”

  He shut the hospital room door and left the lights off. Then he dashed over and stuffed pillows under the blanket, making it look like a body was under there. He turned on the low, dim night-light above the patient bed. Then he pulled her into the bathroom and locked the door. He left the light off, though.

  “We need to get outta here,” she whispered and felt his hand cover her mouth. She got another ‘shh’ for an answer.

  Voices in the hall somewhere, loud and angry, sifted into the bathroom.

  “Just a couple o’ kids, man,” a man said.

  A woman replied, “Yeah? Then why’d Homeland Security call and alert us to someone in the family center hitting sites they aren’t allowed to be on?”

  “It was probably just a teenager watchin’ porn, Martina,” the first said.

  “I really don’t think Homeland Security would call the local cops working here in the hospital to alert us to porn, genius.”

  “Well, they’re gone. I don’t see anyone.”

  “I’m gonna keep looking. I bet they took the elevator to the ground floor.”

  “’Kay, I’ll watch out for a fifteen-year-old kid walkin’ around with a boner.”

  “You’re an idiot,” she replied.

  Wren exhaled when it stayed quiet for a long while. Her heartbeat finally slowed, and she relaxed after a couple minutes of waiting.

  “I don’t think anyone’s coming in here,” he said and turned on the light. “I’m going to see my brother. He’s on this floor. I’m not leaving until I see him for myself.”

  “They said you can’t.”

  “Too bad,” he answered, looking down at her with pure determination on his face. “I need to know he’s being taken care of.”

  Wren’s brow knitted together with worry. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you should leave, get out of here.”

  She lifted her chin with determination, “I’m going with you.”

  He must’ve seen something in her face that made him realize she wasn’t leaving without him. He could get arrested. He was the Golden Boy, but they weren’t in his town anymore. She wasn’t sure how far his celebrity status stretched. Probably the whole county, maybe the whole state.

  “We need some sort of layout of this hospital,” she said.

  “I know where we need to go,” he said. “The ICU is on this floor. This wing is for the ones who get out of the ICU and still need to be monitored for a few days before they go home.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “This is where my father was brought. This is also where my mother died.”

  “Oh, shit,” she said and shook her head. “Sorry.”

  Elijah looked down at her and pushed his face mask under his chin, leaving a red line behind in the outline of it. “Thanks for being here.”

  He stared down at her with intensity. There was something in his eyes, a soft yearning that scared her. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. Wren backed up.

  “Don’t do that,” she warned quietly.

  He looked disappointed but nodded. “Sorry. Ready?”

  They made their way to the ICU a different way this time and weren’t met by a guard. Elijah took out his wallet and held it up to the small scanner box beside the door. The double doors swooshed open.

  “I don’t know why I never threw that out. It’s weird. I know. It was just the last thing I had of my mom, of our last days together.”

  “It’s okay. I get it. You don’t have to explain.”

  Elijah looked down at her and frowned but nodded.

  He led her through a maze of rooms and hallways until they finally came to a nurses’ station. Pressing his back against the wall, Elijah peeked around the corner.

  “He’s in number forty-one-twenty-two. That’s this way,” he said, indicating they should go to the right.

  They found Alex’s room quickly enough, but there were nurses and a doctor in there. The whole place was bustling with activity. She wasn’t even sure they’d be noticed even if they walked right past a nurse or doctor. At this time of night, the hospital should’ve been a lot quieter.

  “Over here,” he said. “Let’s wait till they’re all out of there.”

  He took her into an alcove where a few waiting chairs and a vending machine were located. They hid on the other side of the soda dispenser. After about ten minutes or so, the team from Alex’s room went hurrying by them. He nodded and motioned for her to follow. They entered his brother’s room, and Elijah shut and locked the door behind them. When they turned to the bed, Wren gasped. Elijah made a strange sound beside her and approached the bed slowly.

  His brother, who’d seemed so full of life and vitality at his house looked like he was a breath away from leaving this world. A plastic mask was over his face, probably supplying him with oxygen. His body was covered in a light blanket, his brow was sweaty, and his hands were cuffed with leather restraints to the bedrails as if he were a criminal.

  Wren knew they weren’t treating him poorly. They had him in restraints in case he became violent like those others. Elijah, not cautious, walked closer and touched the cuff on his brother’s right wrist.

  “Elijah,” she warned and pulled at the back of his shirt. “Don’t touch him. That could be dangerous.”

  He turned to look down at her but seemed to understand because he allowed his hand to drop away. He nodded jerkily and turned to stare at his brother again.

  “This can’t be happening,” he stated softly. “Alex is only twenty-two.”

  “He could be one of the people who gets better,” she offered, trying to be hopeful. Behind her, someone tried the doorknob.

  “Hello?” a friendly woman’s voice came from the other side. “Hello? Is there someone in there? Open up, please.”

  Elijah turned and unlocked the door. Apparently, he didn’t see the point in sneaking. A nurse, probably in her sixties, walked in. Her nametag said “RN” and “Nancy” right above it.

  “How’d you kids get in here?” she immediately asked.

  “This is my brother,” Elijah answered. “What’s his status? What’s going on?”

  She sighed behind her own mask, which looked a lot more substantial than theirs. She was also wearing a head to toe, white paper-looking suit of some kind that covered everything but her neck. It even wrapped up around the back of her head.

  “Son, you shouldn’t be in here,” she explained. “Your brother’s very ill. Everyone on this floor is. You could both get infected.”

  Wren thought of something and blurted it quickly so they didn’t get thrown out, “We’re immune. We were tested already.”

  “You were? I thought the tests weren’t ready yet.”

  “My dad works for the CDC and sent home test kits,” she lied smoothly. She hooked her thumb at Elijah. “He and I are both immune.”

  “Oh, okay then.”

  “What’s going on with him?” Elijah asked immediately after he recovered from observing her cool fallacies.

  “He’s fevering as you can tell. Last I checked, he’s at a hundred and four. We’re keeping him hydrated and on fever reducers and antibiotics intravenously.”

  “Is he going to die?” Wren asked so Elijah didn’t have to.

  “We don’t know, dear. He’s young. That seems to help in some cases. He’s in a coma, but that’s not the worst thing. Sometimes the body does that to protect itself,” Nurse Nancy answered. “Go home. Get some rest. Give me your number, and I’ll personally call you if his status changes or if anything happens.”

  Elijah quickly dictated is phone number. Then Wren did, too. She knew that wasn’t allowed, but the lady seemed ni
ce, harmless. Plus, if Elijah missed the call, she wanted to make sure she was available to receive it.

  “Good,” she said and put the paper inside the front pocket of her sterile white suit. “Go now before security sees you in here. The police are all over this hospital. They’re arresting people for being in the quarantine zones.”

  “Quarantine?” Elijah asked.

  “Yes, that’s what this whole floor is now,” she explained and looked over her shoulder as if she didn’t know if someone were there. “Just be careful. Leave before they see you. They’ll put you in a forty-eight-hour holding cell to make sure you aren’t infected if they find you up here.”

  “Let’s go. Now,” Wren ordered and tugged at his arm. She didn’t want to have a run-in with the cops. Jamie would kill her. Then they’d have to move again. Tomorrow.

  He snapped out of it, and together they got out of the hospital without being seen, mostly because he had that swipe badge to use on the other exit for the ICU department. Then they skirted security and went to his car. Wren finally breathed again when they were driving away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elijah drove them to his house since he’d left her car there. Then she said her uncle wasn’t coming home tonight, so he invited her in. He didn’t figure she would want to, but she surprised him by getting out and following him to the back door. He opened it and waited for Wren to pass through. One of the neighbor’s dogs was going nuts barking and yipping, so he paused on the porch. He hated it when dogs barked all night. Sometimes a dog in the neighborhood would get worked up and then they’d all start. Then he heard a flock of birds start chirping and twittering. That was weird. Birds were usually quiet at night. The next noise sent a chill up his spine. It sounded like a coyote again or maybe a fox because it was doing a yip-yip-yipping call. A screech came from some sort of animal next, and he rushed in and locked the door behind him.

  Wren was already inside cleaning up the floor near the fridge with a handful of paper towels.

  “Wren, stop. You don’t have to do that,” he said.

  “We should sanitize your whole house,” she said without pause. “Got any bleach or Lysol?”

  “Yeah, both, but…”

  “Forget it. Let’s just do it. It won’t take that long. Alex is sick. You’re going to get it, too, if we don’t clean this place with some sort of spray or something. I may have lied to that nurse about being immune, but we both know we’re not.”

  Seeing his brother on that hospital bed in his mind’s eye spurred him into action. She hanged his borrowed coat on a hook in the mudroom while Elijah got out a bucket, some bleach, and a few bottles of spray cleaners and two cans of Lysol. He sent her upstairs to work because there was less to do. He told her just to shut Alex’s bedroom door and spray down the handle. They worked for the next two hours until his nose was burning from the chemicals in the air, but it felt clean when they were done.

  “Hey, we should wash our clothes in hot water,” he said, inclining his head over his shoulder.

  “It’s okay. I’m gonna head home,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t get in your car with contaminated clothes on.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Why don’t you take a shower, too? I’m gonna go out and spray down the interiors of our cars, especially your back seat. Throw your clothes in the washing machine, and I’ll throw mine in and start it when I come back in. You can shower in my parents’ bathroom upstairs and borrow some of my mom’s clothes. She was a little bigger than you, but it’ll just be till your clothes are dry.”

  She looked indecisive.

  “It’s okay, right?” he asked. “Your uncle’s not coming home tonight?”

  “No, he said he’d be home late tomorrow night, maybe Sunday now. He texted again when we were watching those videos at the hospital. I was supposed to babysit for Lila tomorrow morning, but she texted while you were at your game and canceled on me. Said the restaurant where she works is closing down temporarily. I don’t know why. Haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”

  “You…” he said and stopped.

  “What?”

  Elijah ran a gloved hand through his hair, then grimaced. “You should stay here until your uncle comes home. I know that sounds strange, but I don’t think you should go home to your place alone.”

  “Why? You know what I’ve got on under this shirt.”

  Elijah sighed and walked over closer to her, “Yeah, I know. It’s just that if someone like that person at the festival was waiting for you in your trailer, you might not get a chance to pull that gun. Then what?”

  “I would.”

  “Would what?”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Have time.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not so…”

  She whipped out the pistol inside her hoodie so fast that Elijah couldn’t do anything but stand there staring with amazement.

  “How’d you learn how to do that?”

  She smirked. “Practice makes perfect. Uncle Jamie practices drills with me a lot, takes me to the range or wherever we can find…”

  Wren stopped talking. Then her eyes narrowed as if she were upset.

  “What?” he asked and took another step toward her.

  She shook her head and frowned, “I don’t understand why I blurt things in front of you. It’s the damnedest thing, too. I’ve never had this problem before I met you.”

  He tucked a cluster of her dark hair behind her ear. It was unfashionably frizzy and not smooth like the girls at his school wore their hair. He liked it, though. He’d also heard other guys making comments and ‘guy talk’ about her in the locker room about how she was ‘hot’ or how they thought about banging her. It made him laugh inside. Wren Foster was not what any of them thought. She was hot, beautiful and kind of exotic, but there was also something dangerous and mysterious about her, too, and he didn’t want to get sucked into a black hole of a relationship with anyone right now.

  He suggested, “Maybe you just trust me more than any other person.”

  “No,” she responded. “That’s definitely not it. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anyone.” She paused and looked up at him and repeated it as if she were trying to convince herself. “I don’t trust you.”

  “I trust you,” he said quietly. He did, too. She stood by him tonight at the hospital, had helped him, and didn’t run away for fear of getting this sickness. She stayed with his brother, or at least at the hospital when he couldn’t. He wondered if she didn’t trust him just a little. She frowned harder at his declaration. “Get a shower. I’ll be back.”

  Elijah left out the back door with his bucket of cleaning supplies and hot water. He wasn’t sure if she was going to do what he’d suggested, but he didn’t have time to argue. And he certainly didn’t want her driving around in her car getting sick from germs he or his brother could’ve left there.

  It took him a while because he wanted to be thorough, but Elijah finally finished. Then he went back inside and double-locked the door this time. Some of the animals had quieted down, but he occasionally heard weird noises that he couldn’t quite peg. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t sticking around to find out.

  Just to take extra precautions, he went around the house and checked every door and window on the first floor before stripping down to his briefs in the laundry room and tossing everything in the washer. Her clothes were already in it. Black lace panties and a matching bra stared back at him from the machine. He longed to touch either but felt like a freak for even thinking that at a time like this. Instead, he added soap and softener and fired up the machine.

  On the second floor, he checked all the windows and the balcony doors leading out to his parents’ small second-floor deck. Good. The house was locked down tight. His father owned a shotgun for hunting, which they hadn’t done since Elijah was young, so he got it out of his father’s side of the walk-in closet and took the box of shells, too. When he turned the corner, he nearl
y ran over Wren, who was only wrapped in a towel. She screamed.

  “Sorry!” he apologized. “Sorry, I just came in to get this.”

  “Is something wrong? Is one of them…”

  “No, no,” he said and lowered his hand he’d held out to calm her. “I just thought it might be a good idea to sleep with this.”

  “Oh,” she said, her accent slipping. She clutched her towel at her chest tightly.

  “My mom’s side of the closet is over here,” he said and led her around the corner. “Their closets and the bathroom were both bedrooms at one time, probably around the turn of the twentieth century when the old place was built, so they needed more bedrooms for their kids than a master suite. Probably wasn’t any such thing as a master suite in 1919, when it was built.” Why was he rambling? Oh, right. Because there was a mostly naked girl in his presence, and he was in his briefs.

  He turned to find her staring at his bare back. Her eyes jumped to his. “You should shower, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, I was planning on it. Help yourself to whatever you find in here.” Elijah pulled the string on the overhead, antique light fixture to illuminate the room. “And whatever else you need from my mom’s side of the bathroom, too.”

  “Okay, thanks,” she mumbled as he retreated.

  Elijah exhaled a deep breath and took note of her pistol on the bed when he left the room. He grabbed a quick shower but made sure to scrub his skin until it was red and raw. For some reason, he was more worried about getting Wren sick than he was about getting sick himself. When he was done, he dressed in his room and went back to his parents’ bedroom to find her sitting on their bed. She was wearing black yoga pants and a turquoise sweater.

  “These both still had the price tags on them,” she explained and pointed down. “I thought it might make it easier.”

  “Make what easier?” he asked, wondering if she was wearing panties. Damn. He was turning into a pervert.

  “I didn’t want to wear clothes your mom used to wear. That would be weird for you.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so,” he said. “I just want you to be comfortable. They fit pretty well.”