Nate and Pia still had some discussing to do while the rest of the gang lined up to take their leave. Burns didn’t hesitate for a second, barf-breath all but forgotten, to hug me, tight enough to make my ribs hurt. Martinez did the same, if somewhat less ferociously, ignoring my repeat protest that he shouldn’t get too close. The others left it at somewhat more reserved shows of affection like fist bumps and the odd slap on my shoulder. I suffered it all as graciously as I could, my throat so tight that coughing wasn’t an issue for the moment. Pia was up last, and she completely took me off guard when she leaned in and hugged me as well, if briefly.
“I will make sure that he doesn’t kill himself,” she whispered into my ear, almost too low for me to catch. I just had enough time to squeeze back before she was gone, turning away to shoo the others to their cars. My Glock she left on the dashboard.
Nate remained standing outside of the car, watching as the others took off into the darkening gloom of dusk. There was barely any red in the sky left, and the light evening breeze made me shiver. He noticed, finally tearing himself out of his momentary stupor.
“Let’s get you up there. We already got bottled water and some provisions set up.” I would have loved to glare at him, just out of principle, but the simple act of being picked up was too damn uncomfortable to let me get away with nonsense like that. He tightened his grip around me as he felt me tense, but there was no way around it. Maybe I could have tried hopping on my good leg but only with heavy assistance, and I doubted that would have gone down any better. Thankfully there was a flight of stairs right there at the end of the building, and Nate pushed open the door to the last room. It was just as dingy as I’d been afraid, but after how rough we’d been living for the past year, it was practically luxurious. He made as if to deposit me right on the bed, but I protested. I was so not going to die in a heap of bloody, gore-splattered gear if I could prevent it. He ended up leaning me against his front while he helped me peel myself out of my jacket. My pants were so sticky with blood—mine and Cho’s—that he gave up and cut them right off. I tried to avoid looking at my left thigh, but even in the near darkness it was easy to make out just how savaged my leg was. Nate ended up depositing me in the one rickety chair there was in the room so he could use some water and one of my back-up shirts to wipe away the worst of the grime. I’d never felt less sexy being completely naked in front of anyone. As soon as he was done, he bundled me back up in sweat pants and a hoodie before he carried me over to the bed. While I was busy beating the pillow into submission, he dragged the chair outside and got another one from the room next door, making a second trip for more blankets when he realized that I was still shivering under those already provided.
And then he settled in for what I guessed must easily be one of the longest nights of his life. Mine, too, because if I could help it, I wouldn’t waste a single second I still had with sleeping.
Chapter 2
It didn’t take long for my fever to spike, and I was out cold maybe an hour later. Not that sleep brought me any rest, or relief for that matter. Memories merged with fever-induced hallucinations, and then didn’t even disappear when another violent coughing fit tore me awake again. Exhaustion and pain soon got unbearable, wiping away any mental concerns I might have still been hanging on to. Nate was right there, trying to feed me water, then hot tea when I couldn’t swallow that any longer. He tried to keep me warm when I was shivering with chills and did his best to cool me down when sweat broke out all over my body. He didn’t flinch when I was too slow to lean over the edge of the bed to hurl up more blood, and told me to suck it up when I whined that he didn’t need to remain crouching by me to keep me upright when I had to use the toilet.
An eternity later, the sky lightened again, the day dawning bright and hot. Electricity wasn’t working so no air conditioning, which promised to make us both even more miserable, if that was possible. I wasn’t completely sure but I thought that Nate made one or two trips down to the car, fetching a few more provisions.
The hallucinations got worse, as did the pain and exhaustion. Even my teeth, nails, and hair were hurting, about the last parts I could—or should—have felt discomfort from. If I’d still had enough strength to reach for the gun on the nightstand, I would have shot myself, but I was too weak to push away the blankets. Nate pointedly ignored how I kept glancing that way.
We didn’t really talk much. What was there left to say? I knew that any oath I could have badgered out of him was moot the moment I took my last breath. Besides, I wasn’t the kind of woman who would tell him to go out there and seek comfort in the arms of another.
My grasp on reality continued to slip. Lucid moments got few and far between. At one time I thought I felt the bed dip beside me as Nate climbed on and hugged me to his body, but the next moment he was back in his chair, staring at me with sad eyes. I reached out for his hand, but when I blinked I was on my back, staring at the much darker ceiling before he rolled me back into a stable side position, the soiled sheets forgotten on the floor.
Then a different pain started, deep down in my abdomen. It was strange but also kind of familiar, not unlike my period cramps. From one moment to the next it was a lot like that, only stronger, sharper. A thought fluttered across my scrambled mind, not even well-formed enough to be called an idea. A possibility that was all but impossible. One more opportunity missed, not that it should have existed. And that was the moment when I decided that I was so done with this shit; that I didn’t need any more grief to heap on top of all my regrets—and I just let go.
The last thing I was vaguely aware of was Nate grabbing my head and shouting my name. Darkness closed in on me, wiping my mind clear of thought.
And then, nothing.
Chapter 3
It took a long, long time until I became aware of something again.
A touch, soft enough not to even stir the fine hair on my arm.
Nate’s voice, talking in low, soothing tones, reading to me.
Light chasing darkness away, only to be swallowed up by lengthening shadows.
Seconds passed. Centuries.
And through it all, he was there, a constant at my side. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve that. I certainly didn’t know why I was still alive.
It was some time after I became aware again that I finally stopped waiting to bite the dust, and forced my eyes to remain open. The room still looked as I remembered it. Drab. Brown. There was an undefined stench in the air that I was afraid was coming from me. I idly wondered if I had already started to decompose. I definitely felt bad enough that dying would have been a blessing, but that in itself probably meant that I was very much alive. I was weak, so fucking weak that just keeping my lids from fluttering closed took effort. Turning onto my side was impossible, and even shifting slightly made the agony in my lower abdomen flare up again, same as with my left leg.
So it hadn't all been just a dream.
Staring straight up at the ceiling, I wondered if I could simply suffocate myself if I stopped breathing. Too bad that my lungs kept expanding with every slow, labored breath that I tried not to take, but I was too frail to retain control over that. A tear slid down my clammy face, causing another blinking fit. Yet this time my mind remained alert—or as alert as it got—sweet, sweet oblivion denied.
I must have made some kind of sound because Nate startled awake from where he’d been dozing, still in that chair, but his head pillowed on his crossed arms on the bed. From the thick stubble all over his face alone I could tell that some time had passed since I’d last had the mental capacity to retain anything. I just stared at him, holding my breath. He blinked sleep out of his eyes and managed a small smile, but his eyes remained clouded, troubled with concern.
“Do you want some tea?” he asked, already reaching for the thermos on the nightstand. “Should still be warm from last evening.”
My eyes were drawn to the windows, but I gave up trying to gauge the time. Something was off about the li
ght filtering into the room, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It didn’t matter, anyway.
Ignoring his question, I asked the much more pressing one. “Why am I still alive?”
My voice was unrecognizable as my own, scratchy and broken. How he made out the words was incomprehensible to me.
His gentle smile widened, but the sadness in his eyes about doubled. “Because you’re a damn tough bitch, that’s why.”
A lie. Maybe not entirely, but I could tell that it wasn’t the answer I was looking for. The answer that I needed to hear. The knowledge that I never wanted confirmation of, but suddenly had to have more than anything in the world. Memories swam up through the haze of pain and exhaustion. Memories of him picking me up, my body getting jostled this way and that. Of him frantic with panic; stoic with dread. Of blood—on his hands; the yellowed tiled wall; the torn shower curtains.
“Nate,” I warned, then had to swallow thickly as my voice threatened to give out. “Don’t lie to me.”
Grief took over his face, but he reined it in so fast that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking straight at him.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, his voice pressed and low.
Exhaling forcefully, I shook my head. “No. But unless you can reach into my mind and just wipe my memories…”
I didn’t need to finish that sentence. His bit-off curse was confirmation enough. Rather than answer right away, he reached for my hand, pressing his lips against my knuckles while his gaze held mine.
“You’re still alive because you were pregnant.”
Past tense, but that part had been impossible to miss. My heart seized up with a new wave of pain, and it took me a while to swallow past the lump in my throat. I had to look away. Seeing the grief in his eyes became unbearable. Nate’s fingers twined with mine, his grip tightening when he felt me squeeze right back.
“How—“ I started, but really, that part was inconsequential. Then something else tugged on my mind, making me catch his gaze again. “You know that it’s yours?” I croaked out. Was.
A hint of annoyance crossed his features, but it was gone before it could take hold. “Of course I know,” he whispered. “I may be ribbing you about your infidelity when I want to really get under your skin, but I know that you’d never cheat on me.” His next breath came out harsh but he was regaining his grip on his emotions faster than I could have. “Besides, you would be dead if it hadn’t been mine. Unless you and Burns took your sibling-like spiel to an entirely new level, I can’t think of anyone you’d rather jump than me.”
I felt the corner of my mouth twitch, but I wasn’t quite capable of humor yet. A slight shake of my head was enough for a reply.
Using his free hand to rake his fingers through his hair, Nate cleared his throat. “If you want to know how… I don’t know. They always told us it was impossible. But when I talked to the guys at the Silo, Sunny told me that they have about ten confirmed cases now. Wives, girlfriends, all either too faithful to be questionable, or without another possibility. You can likely better make sense of his raving about how fantastic isolation is for case studies.”
My mind skipped right over his ramblings, still too focused on the important shit.
“So the only reason I’m alive is because I killed our child,” I murmured, my voice losing any strength it still had left toward the end.
Sudden anger blazed in Nate’s eyes, making me want to shy back, but he was right in my face before I could even think about turning my head away.
“Stop this shit, right fucking now! You are not responsible for any of this!” Exhaling hard, he looked away, but his eyes zoomed right back to mine, his voice softening. “You would never have carried that child to term. That’s the one common denominator Sunny mentioned. The longest were about seven weeks, probably closer to six.”
Somehow that didn’t lessen the pain at all. I tried to remember when I’d last had my period. It had come at such unreliable intervals since the shit hit the fan that I’d all but stopped paying attention to it. I remembered two instances—just before Christmas, and in that one warm week in February when the Chinooks had thawed part of our porch slope within hours. But that was it. With the—now proven false—knowledge that Nate couldn’t knock me up, I’d considered it mostly a blessing. And it wasn’t like lack in frequency hadn’t been balanced with true sucker punches where cramps had been concerned.
My throat seized up again when a different reason for why the flow had been so heavy occurred to me. The very idea that I hadn’t miscarried just once, but several times was just too much. Try as I might, I couldn’t completely swallow the whimper that made it out of the depth of my chest, deepening the pain and concern on Nate’s face.
“Bree, talk to me. Please,” he begged. “I know there’s nothing I can do to make it any easier, but you don’t have to eat this all up. You don’t have to carry the burden alone.”
I didn’t want to, but when he kept on looking at me like that, I just couldn’t keep my trap shut. Yet as soon as I voiced my concern, he vehemently shook his head.
“I don’t think so. Sunny asked if you’d been showing any signs. Apparently, even in the mildest course the woman was bedridden for days after days of bad cramps and excruciating pain.”
That sounded too familiar not to guess out loud. “Was it just that? Me just losing…”
Nate shook his head, a hint of a smirk crossing his features.
“Oh, no, don’t even start like that. You got bitten, and you were infected. Maybe still are. You all but died. I spent four entire days not knowing if you were actually still breathing or whether I was imagining things. The fever. The bruising. I didn’t just imagine all that. I still can’t quite believe that you made it through all that. If you factor in the aftereffects of the booster and—“ The miscarriage. No need to say it out loud again. He resumed talking after a few convulsive swallows. “Until you were talking in your sleep earlier I still wasn’t completely sure if you hadn’t turned and were locked in some sort of vegetative state. Congratulations. You’re the first confirmed case of someone being infected and not dying from it.”
Not a triumph I felt like celebrating—and not just because of the extenuating circumstances.
“Doesn’t make any sense,” I murmured.
He shrugged. “You tell me. You’re the one who keeps insisting that you went to college not just to land a girlfriend.”
My mind was wiped enough that thinking, at all, was hard, and it took me a while to understand what he was getting at. But once he said so, it was impossible not to see.
“The antibodies,” I whispered.
Nate inclined his head. “At least that’s my guess. We already know you had some in your blood from screwing me. Sunny explained that all of the others also had massively elevated levels. That’s how they confirmed it happening in two cases. That’s what I meant when I said that you wouldn’t have had the baby. From the first moment on, your body was fighting the child that was growing inside of you. I know that this sucks, but losing the baby was still the best outcome.” I just looked at him, letting my eyes tell him that I didn’t agree, but he shook his head again. “One of the women died. Two more insta-converted, just like we do. Apparently, that somehow transferred from the child’s DNA to the mother’s blood and made her turn from one moment to the next. As painful as the knowledge is that you lost the baby, I’d rather not lose you, too.”
He had a point, but it hurt too much for me to admit it now.
Thinking about that made another epiphany happen.
“They knew,” I grated out, coughing several times until my voice started working again. Nate raised his brows after making me sip some absolutely tasteless tea, waiting patiently for me to explain. “Bucky and his soldiers. They knew. That’s why they wanted me. That’s why they set the trap.” And that was why Bailey and Cho had died for nothing.
The utter lack of surprise on Nate’s face wasn’t exactly comforting.
“That thought has occurred to me,” he admitted after a small eternity. “Question is how, when none of us had a clue.”
“The blood sample. In Aurora,” I said. He mulled that over, but I could tell that he’d thought about that, too.
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” Nate replied. “Do you really think they would have let you go if they’d known? I have no fucking clue what they intended to do with you had they caught you, but even for completely willing cooperation they would have tried to sweet-talk you into staying.”
If my body had worked a little better, I would have shrugged. “Maybe they only tested for that later.” My mind skipped ahead, remembering a particular detail of my departure from Aurora. “Maybe it was my stupid comment about the antibodies being there because we were having sex that made them run the test.” Which just came down to it being my fault all over again.
“I doubt it,” he said. “No idea whether what Sunny told me is common knowledge or more something that the traders have been sharing among them, but I don’t doubt for a second that Stone had them run a full blood panel on you. Besides, that was close to two months ago now. I don’t think there was anything to test for yet back then.”
There was nothing I could have replied to that, so I didn’t bother. In the end it didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered right now.
“Think you can keep anything to eat down yet?” Nate asked. “Hungry?”
I shook my head, to both. “Not really.”
His eyes skipped to the thermos again. “I think you should drink some more. You must be dehydrated.”
Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 Page 2