“I didn’t see Martinez,” Isaiah said casually when we pulled up to the house.
“He didn’t make it.”
Isaiah looked down at Lex, lying broken in the back of the truck, and I knew he was processing this information. We hadn’t lost anyone in a long time, not since the beginning. We had gotten too used to our safety. We had gotten too comfortable. But the only way we could really be safe would be to stay locked away in our compound.
That was unrealistic. We couldn’t cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. We needed things out in the world. Unfortunately, the world was a mess and in that mess people got hurt.
Isaiah had thought ahead and brought his emergency stretcher. We helped him get Alexis on it, facing her down on her stomach so we wouldn’t disturb her back. She stirred, but didn’t wake as we carted her through the house and laid her in the bed.
Isaiah set up an IV drip and ran a line to her vein.
“I can only medicate her with a local right now. I can’t risk overmedicating her, you’ll have to hold her down,” he explained.
Blake and I hovered as he cut off her shirt and pants, revealing that she wore nothing underneath. She had lost even more weight than I thought and her back looked atrocious. Isaiah directed us here and there, boil water, grab towels, grab this and that and we did as he asked us to do.
Grace showed up during the middle of it and pulled Blake away for a little while. She tried to grab me but I wasn’t moving. I knew I was pacing and making Isaiah nervous, but I had to stay.
When he began to work on her back, Alexis came to and began shouting. She flailed and punched and bit and I had to hold her down. She got in a few good licks before Isaiah managed to inject her and knock her out. Her wounds were bleeding and I had to look away as Isaiah began fastidiously to stitch into her skin. No one should have to witness something like this.
When he was finally done, both of us sighed in relief. The wounds were jagged and nasty, but they weren’t that deep. She needed to be cleaned and I was ready to take care of it, but Grace forced her way back in.
“I’ll take care of cleaning her,” she bullied me out of the room. Claiming it was inappropriate and Lex wouldn’t like me to see her this way and a girl knew things and a whole bunch of bullshit. I left reluctantly.
Cole was in the kitchen with Blake. The Peters tag team at work. It looked like he had brought over a liquid coping method as a bottle of gin sat on the counter and Blake clutched a glass with clear liquid in it. He poured me a glass and offered one to Isaiah who turned it down.
“I gotta get back to the barracks. I need to clean my instruments. I’ll drive the truck back, Blake.” He took the keys from the counter and left us alone.
When the silence got unbearable, Cole said simply, “Martinez.” And all we could do was nod. In my line of work, losing a team member was unbearable, but it happened and unfortunately, it happened too often. In this world, the same rules applied, except now it wasn’t a bunch of religious fanatics, it was our own people turned into zombies that were taking us down.
I swallowed my glass down in one gulp. It was only a few shots in the glass, I don’t play around.
“He went out good?” Cole asked, looking at Blake and then at me.
“No.” I slammed my hand down on the counter. “He was bitten by a fucking zombie school girl, it turned him in minutes. There is nothing good about that.”
Blake pinched the bridge of his nose, hiding how emotional his reaction was to my words. They hurt. But Martinez’s death was a farce. The Major had led us right into a shit show. He had paid with his own life, but the guy fucked all of us. There wasn’t supposed to be students, it was the goddamn summer, what high school is up and running during the summer?
“But you got Lex out, that’s gotta mean something. He died saving her, Zach, no matter how he died, his death had meaning.” Cole and his fucking unicorn sprinkle mentality. I grabbed the bottle and poured another clear. I gulped it down and was rewarded with a warm fuzzy feeling that settled over my body. Blake followed suit and from the look of the bottle this wasn’t his second.
“Yeah, we got Lex out,” I said under my breath. We had. But she lay in our bed hurt beyond belief.
I looked up to see Grace coming down the hallway, smiling as always. She kissed her husband and her smile finally faltered when she took in our morose energy.
“She’ll be fine. The doc has her on a light painkiller, antibiotic cocktail. She’ll sleep for a day or two and wake up. She’s still the same Lex. Don’t treat her any different.”
Neither Blake nor I responded and Grace shifted on her feet uneasily.
“I’ll come back tomorrow and check on everyone,” Cole said and I nodded, acknowledging his statement. “Well, then, we’ll be going.” He put his arm around his wife and led her out of the house.
I reached for the gin and poured the rest of the bottle into my glass.
“We got more of this shit?” I asked Blake. He went to the pantry and pulled out another bottle.
“Plenty.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m going to get ripped. You game?”
Forty-Eight | Grow A Pair
BLAKE
Zach was true to his word. I’d never seen him like this. He was usually so tight-assed. I wasn’t trying to pace him, but I wasn’t far behind. I could still feel my fingertips, that was a good thing. Or was it? The same shit that was haunting Zach was clanging around in my head too.
“You know,” he said sitting down hard on the sofa, “I didn’t want to really say it out loud, but I think, this world, I kind of like it. Well, I liked it, now I don’t like it much.”
“You enjoying the apocalypse, Zach?” I laughed, and it was the first laugh in a long time that was actually fueled by amusement. What the hell was he talking about?
“I got this island. I got her, a crazy compound of people working together. No drama, no government breathing down our backs, no worrying about what stupid fucking reality star was doing what. It was just a group of people working together to live. You know what I mean? It was real.” He sighed and took a sip of his drink, at least he had stopped chugging them.
“I never took you for an anarchist.” I poured out a couple more fingers of gin into my glass.
“Libertarian, close. But it ain’t that. It was just more like freedom. Real freedom. I didn’t have to worry about fucking taxes. If I need something, I take it, or we grew it, or we make it. Yeah, there are fucking dead people trying to eat me, but nothing is perfect…and then Lex.” He giggled like a fucking kid, it was ridiculous, Zach shouldn’t giggle. I threw a shoe at him. I don’t even know where the shoe came from, but it was useful. He ducked just in time.
“You still have Lex, you douche, and you still got your tax-free living, you just realized that it’s a bit more fucked up than you had imagined. Why don’t you grow a pair?”
“You should fucking grow a pair, sniveling like an emo teen over leaving every five minutes.” He stood, knocking over half the stuff on the coffee table. “It’s all my fault,” he mocked in some stupid falsetto voice.
“I don’t sound like that.” I rolled my eyes. He was trying to walk over me to do God knew what, so I assisted him by sticking my leg out. It tripped him. It was a total accident. There went the coffee table for good.
“Shit, Lex liked that one,” he said, pushing himself out of the rubble. It was now a mess of splintered wood. I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh. Manly laugh, not girlish giggling.
“You’ll get her another one, you know, just go and fucking take it. And you might have a zombie try to eat you while you take it, but you’ll kill it. Just like we’re going to kill those motherfuckers in Lakeview.”
“I don’t want to, I just want to stay here in the compound. I don’t ever want to risk her again. I don’t want to risk anyone else from our group,” he whispered, sitting back down on the sofa, his task forgotten. He looked over at me, a frown on his face.
“
Okay, we don’t have to, we’ll just make sure Lex gets better, she’ll be back to normal in no time, you’ll have your girl,” it stuck in my throat just a tiny bit. Even though I told myself they were good together, it still hurt.
“She’s your girl too, Blake,” he said and I shook my head.
“Nah, y’all belong together. I fucked up. I thought, maybe, but I shouldn’t get in the middle.”
“She loves you, she never stopped. She loves me too, but we sort of all fit together. I’m willing to give this a shot, if it’s what she wants. I just wanted to tell you that, you know, I’m okay with it.”
“Things might be different now. We don’t know what happened, she could…” My voice wavered and I hid it by taking a long gulp of my drink.
“At least she’s alive,” he said looking around for his glass, which he had knocked over on the floor.
“There’s that,” I agreed.
“I’m serious, Blake, we’ll make this work. I want to make her happy and if it entails putting up with your ass, I’ll give it a go.”
“Don’t expect me to fuck you too,” I grinned and he grinned back.
“Well, I always did think you were awfully pretty.” I found the other shoe and this time I didn’t miss.
Forty-Nine | Progress
ZACH
My head hurt like a bitch. I hadn’t put down that much gin in a long time. My memory of the conversation with Blake was fuzzy, but I felt a bit lighter, like I had gotten some things off my chest.
After cleaning up the mess we made in the front room, I went directly into Lex’s room. I checked her IV, bandages, keeping busy. I had to keep busy.
I wasn’t in there ten minutes before the first knock on the door rang out. It was Grace Peters with breakfast. Thirty minutes later, it was Isaiah. Heather Murphey showed up with Baby an hour after that to talk strategy. She didn’t like any of my ideas. Fucking Army.
I went back to Lex’s bed. Blake paced back and forth. If he didn’t stop, I was going to punch him. I got up and walked out instead. Progress.
Fifty | Sleeping Beauty
BLAKE
After a few hours of watching Lex sleep, I couldn’t take the waiting anymore. She would get better, and my staying in here and staring at her wasn’t going to make things quicken any. I wanted to be there when she woke up. Zach kept coming in and out of the room all day long. The doorbell kept ringing and I didn’t want to deal with any of it.
Bubba got it into his head that he wanted to arrange a memorial for Martinez. We didn’t have his body. It was still in the classroom in that school, but we could say a few words, eat a meal, whatever. It was too soon for me. I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to think about any of it.
I stood up abruptly and marched into the front room, coming to a stop when I noticed Zach wasn’t alone. Tammi was there with Heather Murphey and they didn’t look too pleased with Zach.
“We have to act now, Zach, they are reeling with the loss of their leader. They are unorganized. As soon as Junior gets a stranglehold on that group, all bets are off. He’s nothing like his father, no heavy drug use, military background…he’ll be a formidable enemy once he flexes his muscles,” Murphey was saying when I walked in.
They all turned and greeted me with grim expressions.
“Just give me a few more days, ladies. That’s all I’m asking.” Zach ran his hand through his hair, which was growing out.
“We don’t have a few more days,” Tammi said.
“Well, then you’ll have to go in without us. I’m not leaving this house until I know Lex is better.”
“We don’t know when that will be!” Murphey exclaimed exasperated.
“Soon, it’ll be soon,” I said, butting into the conversation. “Not to mention, Lex is a great strategist. She’ll be a very valuable asset when it comes to information on the gang. She pays attention, she knows protocol. She’ll be able to tell us things that the other girls wouldn’t think of. It’s how she got out of there. Wait for her to come to. You’ll thank us later.”
“You think she’ll be up and about in twenty-four hours?” Murphey asked and I just nodded even though I wasn’t sure. Who knew what she had to heal before she could be up and about.
The two women left but not before a parting shot from Tammi. “It smells like a bar in here, gentleman. Might want to get your shit tight before Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”
“Fuck,” Zach cursed and made a grab for another bottle of gin. Not to clean up though.
“Zach, maybe you…”
“Shut up, Blake.” He went straight for the back deck and I went back to Lex’s bed.
Fifty-One | Playing Dirty
ALEXIS
For the first time, I awoke after blacking out and I knew exactly where I was. I was in my house; I could smell my sheets, the familiar softness of the bed and even the sound of the house around me was familiar. There was nothing like being home. I was finally home.
My back still ached slightly even though I was lying on my stomach. I was grateful that I was here and not in the infirmary. I could feel the pull of bandages, so Isaiah must have already been here to fix me up. I moved my shoulders to experiment with my range of motion, and there was only a twinge of intense pain when I pushed up. I had been afraid that my back had been split open, but from the dull throb it was obvious it was bruised badly, but maybe not ripped open.
"Fifty-six stitches." Blake's voice came from my left, and I turned my head to find him. He was sitting in a chair next to the bed. I expected a little warmer reaction to my waking, but he looked like a pot that that was about to simmer over. Anxious and worried. He reached out a hand and brushed my hair from my face.
"Isaiah played homemaker on your back for three hours. Zach had to hold you down until we finally just shot you up with the good shit. You've been out for two days."
"Two days, shit." I tried to sit up, but the pain shot through me again, and I held still too quiet down the roaring.
"You don't know the self-control it took to not storm into that place and kill every one of those motherfuckers."
"As long as you wait for me to get back in working order and then I'll be right there next to you."
"You aren't going near those men, Alexis. I can't...I can't sit here and look at you..."
"Damaged goods, huh, Blake?" I couldn't blame him. I had put him through a ton of shit and now I was all sorts of fucked up. He probably thought I had been fucked ten ways to Sunday...who knows what kind of diseases I might have. If I were him, I wouldn't want any part of me either.
"Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding me, is that what you think?" He leaned forward and grabbed for my hand.
"What else?" I said softly.
"I was supposed to protect you, but instead I brought in a person that hurt you. I should never have left. I should never have abandoned you. I broke my promises and all over a woman that wasn't worth my attention, much less my loyalty. I should have let Zach kill her.”
"No, we did the right thing, killing her in cold blood wasn't an option. I'm pretty sure she endured hell at the hands of the bikers." My voice hitched thinking about what she must have gone through, what Melinda went through long before we arrived. "They need to be taken care of, I couldn’t give a shit about Clara."
"If it weren't for her, you wouldn't have gone through what you did...what did you go through? Just the crap we went through to get you out. I can’t even imagine what they did to you. It makes me want to kill them all.”
"I don't want to talk about that right now. And what do you mean, the shit that happened trying to get me out?” He just shook his head, tight-lipped.
Live (NOLA Zombie Book 3) Page 17