“Why am I here?” I ask.
“I won’t let you die.”
Again, I don’t know whether him saving me is a kindness or a curse.
It’s obviously a curse, you dumb bimbo. He ain’t saving you to romance your ass.
“You shot me, then tied me up and dragged me through the snow.” Just saying those words forces a shiver through me.
His blue eyes are steady on me. “I did.”
I roll a shoulder, the joint achingly sore.
“My arm was pulled out of its socket,” I say, remembering the excruciating sensation.
He gazes at me for a long moment, looking every inch the damnable angel, then nods.
I glance down at myself. My shirt is gone, replaced by some stranger’s—a large woman with an outdated wardrobe, judging by the garish floral print of it.
Someone saw me topless. My eyes slide to Pestilence, who’s staring at me passively.
It was probably him, which means that he’s now seen both my vagina and my boobs.
Ugh. Why me?
I move my hand, the action feeling constrained. Pushing back a sleeve, I notice that my wrists are bound in soft white linen. I thumb one of the bandages.
Had Pestilence tended to me?
I remember the vicious way he yanked the arrowheads out of my back.
There’s no way …
My attention is distracted by the horrible throb of my back. I sit forward, to take some of the pressure off, and I feel cloth dig into the skin of my stomach.
Lifting up the edge of the shirt, I stare at my torso, which, like my wrists, is wrapped in layer upon layer of bandages.
I run my thumb over the linen. “Who did this?”
Pestilence levels me an unreadable look.
“You?” I finally ask.
I feel my blood burning beneath my skin with horror and embarrassment and … something else at the thought of him ripping away my clothes and mending me. I try to imagine him cleaning and dressing my wounds, and I find I can’t. I don’t want to.
His lips thin. “Remember my kindness.”
“Your kindness?” I say in disbelief. “You were the one who inflicted these wounds.”
And you’ll do it again and again and again until it breaks me.
Gah, he was right when he promised me suffering.
His upper lip ticks, like he’s fighting a grimace.
Pestilence stands, his large frame looming over me. “Don’t try to escape again, mortal,” he warns, and then he leaves the room.
“Pestilence!” I shout for the five billionth time.
I pause, listening.
Still nothing.
Of course he can catch me fleeing in two-point-five seconds flat, but when I actually need him, he’s nowhere to be found.
“Pestilence!”
In the distance, I think I hear a moan, which sobers me up real fast.
Is there someone else living here?
Heavy footsteps interrupt that thought. The door opens, and there Pestilence is, looking like a prince from a fairytale.
His eyes first go to the bed, where I should be, before dropping to the floor, where I am.
“What are you doing out of bed, human?” he asks, looking at me all suspicious-like.
Because I’m so ready to attempt escape again.
“I need help.” It hurts a good deal of my pride to say this.
His brows furrow, and he steps farther inside the room, closing the door behind him.
“You do understand that I am reluctant to offer you any such thing, given our history.”
Our history. He somehow makes it sound like there’s this whole saga between us.
“I know,” I say.
He waits for me to continue. But now that he’s here, looking like some airbrushed male model, I’m losing a little of my nerve.
“Um,” I say, fidgeting on the floor, my back screaming in pain, “I have to go to the bathroom.” This is technically no different than any other time I’ve asked him to help me to the bathroom, and yet it is, because now I’m injured rather than bound, and my frailty makes me feel vulnerable.
That’s why I’m sitting here on the ground. I tried to get out of bed and mosey over to the bathroom on my own. I just hadn’t factored in how weak I’d be, or how sharply my wounds would ache.
I made it halfway to the door before I gave up.
And now here we are.
For a long moment, Pestilence doesn’t react. Then, silently he comes over to me. I tense a little as he kneels at my side. I know I asked for assistance, but I can’t help even now remembering all the agony he’s inflicted on me.
It’s a horrible twist of fate that I have to depend on the very person who put me in this position.
Pestilence’s arms slide under my body and he lifts me up. I yelp at the sharp stab of pain that lances through me at the movement. To my eternal humiliation, I wrap my arms around the horseman’s neck to ease some of the pressure on my back.
The position puts me uncomfortably close to the horseman’s mouth, and I have the misfortune of noticing how his upper lip is fuller than his bottom one.
He carries me to the bathroom wordlessly, depositing me on the toilet, even though my pants are still on. I finger the denim covering my lower half. I’m wearing mom jeans, a.k.a., the minivans of the pants world. I most definitely didn’t dress myself in these.
Which means …
Ugh.
Horseman saw my lady goods again.
Said horseman looms over me. “Try to escape again—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pestilence scowls then steps outside of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He must know I’m in no state to go anywhere, or else I doubt he’d leave me alone in here.
That, or he knows he can just shoot you down again if you try to hobble away again.
I go to the bathroom, flushing the toilet behind me.
“Pestilence!” I call out when I’m done, leaning heavily against the counter where I managed to rinse my hands.
When he comes in, I all but collapse in his arms.
This time, when I wrap my arms around his neck, I feel too pitiful to even be humiliated.
He nudges open the door to my room and puts me back in the bed.
“I thought you forbid me to sleep,” I say, as he slides his hands out from beneath me.
This close to him, I can see the crystalline blue of his eyes. They’re the color of the sky on a clear day. Above them, his crown sits, the sight of it a grim reminder of who he is.
Those eyes of his narrow, and his already pouty mouth turns down. “Don’t make me regret my kindnesses.”
I really think he needs to reevaluate what that word means.
Before I have a chance to respond, he slips out of the room, and I’m alone once more.
It’s another two days before I’m strong enough to leave the bed on my own.
Until then, Pestilence has taken to feeding me (and judging by his food choices, he has no idea what people actually eat) and taking me to and from the bathroom.
In other words, it’s been a spanking good time.
Not.
When the horseman wasn’t tending to me, I spent my time sleeping. Sleeping and dreaming strange dreams where my parents hovered nearby, just out of reach, and they murmured to me, and sometimes they shouted, and in the end, they just coughed weakly before fading from sight.
Now I step into the hallway on shaky legs, thrilling at the feel of finally being mobile. Not that I’m back to normal or anything. Everything still hurts, even my lungs, and I shouldn’t be out of bed, but I need to pee, and I’m tired of having to flag down Pestilence.
It’s only after I’ve used the toilet and dipped my head to the bathroom’s sink to drink my weight in water that I decide to explore the home I’ve been crashing in.
When I leave the bathroom, I take a moment to listen. If the horseman is nearby, he doesn’t
make his presence known. But I seriously doubt he is. Now that the two of us have established some sort of routine, one where I shout and shout his name and he only sometimes comes, I’m beginning to think that the only time he’s actually loitering about in this house is when he brings me food and water or helps me to the bathroom.
Not going to think about the fact that he’s been tending to me. I’m going to remember that he shot me in the back—twice—then dragged me through the snow until the pain was so great I passed out from it. I’m going to remember that he’s still moving from town to town, bringing plague with him and towing me along for the ride.
We’re enemies, plain and simple. He hasn’t forgotten that since I shot him. I should make sure I don’t forget that either, no matter how helpful he’s been since.
A buzzing noise draws my attention to the ceiling. Overhead, a light glows softly. That’s the first I notice that this house has electricity, a luxury for a home these days. Lucky ducks. The apartment I lived in never did. It was oil lamps and lanterns all the way for me.
I walk down the hallway, moving towards what looks to be the living room and the kitchen beyond. Now that my most urgent needs are taken care of, I can feel the twisting throb of my empty stomach beneath the other, sharper pains.
Anything at this point will be better than the strange food combos Pestilence thinks to bring me, like mustard and uncooked pasta. I’m just spit-balling here, but if I had to guess, I’d say the horseman ain’t too familiar with human cuisine.
The air in this place has a stale taste to it, like it’s been shuttered up for too long in the heat, leaving perishable goods to spoil.
The images hanging alongside the walls on either side of me catch my attention. Family photos. My gut clenches. It’s easy to get swept away by the most obvious horrors of the apocalypse and forget that the people who’ve been affected have families just like me.
My eyes move from photo to photo, the images arranged in sequential order. First it’s embarrassing baby pictures—the kind where your parents pose you naked and think you’re absolutely adorable until you’re older and then they’re just the shit your friends make fun of when they stumble upon them.
These pictures are followed by sweet toddler photos, then toothless grins of elementary school kids. Inevitably, these morph into family photos which somehow look outdated, between the large lacy collar the wife wears, the giant bifocals that make her husband’s eyes all the more beady, and the mullet-like haircuts of their two boys.
I touch the frame, smiling a little at the sight. How old are these two boys now? In their thirties? Forties? Do they have families of their own?
The photos come to an abrupt halt with the end of the hallway, and I step into the living room.
I swallow down a yelp.
There’s a man lying on a navy sectional, clad in only a pair of boxers, and something’s very wrong with him. Everywhere that his clothes don’t cover, hundreds of small lumps press up from beneath the skin. To my horror some of those lumps have split open, revealing blood and pus and other slick things that have me tasting bile at the back of my throat.
I’ve seen a lot of disturbing things during my few years as a firefighter, but nothing like this.
There’s a cloying smell in the air, one I hadn’t noticed earlier. It’s the scent of infection—rot.
He's caught the Fever.
A shameful part of me wants to get as far away from this man as I can. He’s undoubtedly contagious.
You’re a first responder, Burns. This is what it means in the end. Sacrifice, and if need be, death.
My eyes move back to the man’s face. His hair is a dull brown that’s losing its battle to gray, and his face has that worn, stretched appearance that skin starts to get in a person’s forties. And his bloodshot eyes, they stare at me listlessly as his chest rises and falls just the barest amount.
Dear God, he’s still alive.
Chapter 10
Pestilence wanted me to see this. I know it as surely as I know my own name. Physically hurting me was only part of my punishment for trying to end him. This is the other part—to watch death at its most abhorrent.
No, not to just watch it. And not just to be powerless to stop it, but to accompany Pestilence like a co-conspirator, to make me play some role in spreading the disease.
I stare at the man, rooted to the spot, trying to remember all the stories I heard about this plague.
The news had mentioned the lumps. How they could swell and cover every inch of the body. And how, towards the final stages of the disease, they’d burst open like overripe fruit as the person’s body decayed from the inside out.
Necrosis they call it—the body rotting while the organism still lives.
The hairs on my arms rise. I should be suffering from this. No—I should be dead from it. Instead, I’m alive and healthy enough to watch this man succumb to it.
I take him in again, open sores and all. This sort of death has no business in the modern world. It’s the kind of thing that belongs in old horror movies and tales from Medieval Europe. Not here, where in recent memory, cars ran and planes flew, phones called and the Internet existed.
But the modern world is gone. Killed in the months that followed the horsemen’s arrival. And now everyone’s scrambling to get on with life in an age when we have lost almost everything.
Even though I want to run, I take a tentative step forward. I’m a firefighter, damnit. I’m used to seeing scary shit every day. Seeing it and fixing it.
I stride forward, noticing how the man’s listless eyes try to track me.
Alive and aware.
I crouch in front of him, smelling ammonia and human excrement. Pestilence might be helping me to the bathroom, but he hasn’t been so benevolent with our host—or whoever this man is.
Again I hesitate. A part of me worries that by trying to help, I’ll only hurt the man more. Not to mention that there’s a good chance I’ll catch the disease in the process, and this is not a good way to go. But then, I’ve been alongside Pestilence for longer than this man has. I’ve been restrained and shot and dragged through the snow and I’m still alive—alive and untouched by the Fever.
Somehow, it’s skipped over me.
But even if it hasn’t, even if I’ve simply managed to avoid it up until now, what’s the worst that’ll happen? I’ll be in pain? I dare the fates to give me worse than what I’ve already endured. And if I die? Well, then at least I won’t have to stomach more of the horseman’s presence.
I’m all for silver linings.
I crouch in front of the man, taking his hand. It’s hot to the touch.
He works his dry throat and makes a weak attempt at shaking his head.
“Shoun’t … toush … me … Siccc,” he whispers.
I squeeze his hand. “It’s alright,” I say gently. “I’m here to help you.”
He closes his eyes. “Allll … dea …” He moans this, his face grimacing. “I … lassst.”
My stomach plummets. That smell of rot might not just be coming from him. It might be coming from other people … people who are now just bodies.
And in all the time I’d been recuperating, I hadn’t noticed there were other people in the house.
You were asleep for most of it, I remind myself.
… And yet, maybe I had noticed. Maybe all of my fever dreams weren’t fever dreams at all, but the noises that were filtering into my room while I slept, noises my mind put faces to.
My attention returns to the man in front of me. He had to watch whoever else lives here fall ill, and then die. And somewhere at the back of his mind he might’ve been aware that he was going to die last, without someone to care for him.
I place the back of my hand against his forehead, then his neck. He’s burning up. And now that I look beyond the lumps and open sores that have transformed his body into a grotesquery, I can see that his lips are split and scabbed.
I stand suddenly and stride into the kit
chen. Grabbing a hand towel, I run it under the kitchen faucet. Then, flipping through the cupboards, I pull out an empty glass and a bottle of Red Label I come across.
After I fill the cup with water, I take the goods back to the living room, trying and failing not to think about the fact that I got a bed in this house, but this man didn’t. Was that Pestilence’s doing? Was that this man’s?
Setting my items down on a coffee table resting near the couch, I grab the wet towel and begin to gently run it over the man’s face and neck. Meticulously I move down his body, trying to avoid what I can of the lumps and sores, which look painful to the touch.
I grab the glass of water and the bottle of Red Label from the coffee table. Holding the two up, I ask, “Which do you prefer?”
There’s not even a second’s deliberation. The man’s eyes go to the whiskey.
“Good choice.”
I dump out the glass of water right onto the carpet—because no one’s going to give a shit about a puddle in a house full of plague—and fill it halfway up with the liquor.
Sliding a hand under the man’s back, I lift his body up just enough for him to swallow, ignoring my own aches and pains that awaken with the exertion. Using my other hand, I hold the glass of whiskey to his lips.
He downs the liquid in five solid swallows.
“More,” he croaks, and his voice sounds stronger.
Again I fill the cup halfway up, and again he downs it. And then once more.
It’s enough alcohol to send me to the hospital, but I guess that’s the point. There’s no beating this plague. The kill rate of this thing is a hundred percent. At this point all either of us can do is manage this man’s pain.
Once he empties the third cup, I reach for the bottle again, but he lifts his hand up, just slightly. No more.
“Thank you,” he wheezes.
I nod, swallowing down the thickness in my throat. I take his burning hand and I hold it between my own. “Would you like me to stay?” I ask. I don’t bother adding, for your last few hours. Even staring death down, I can’t seem to acknowledge it by name.
The man closes his eyes, his body already relaxing from the effects of the whiskey, and he squeezes my hand once, which I take for a yes.
Pestilence (The Four Horsemen Book 1) Page 5