Blood Soaked and Contagious

by James Crawford

  “I think so.”

  Charlie made an affirmative noise and put the wet cloth on my shoulder. I couldn’t help myself, I made little bliss noises... for about 5 seconds until the hot dripping water reached one of the stitched-up holes. I sucked in air between my teeth and tensed up in an effort to not make “meep” sounds.

  “Looks like it feels a little intense. Am I right?”

  “Yessssss,” I answered.

  “Is it the sort of intense you can cope with or should we find another way to handle this?” I had to admit, I liked her. She was cool under pressure but retained compassion, and I found that mighty impressive.

  “Keep going. I’ll adjust.” My answer was partly due to my own bravado, because I didn’t feel as if I’d made a good impression up to that point. Was it stupid of me? Yes.

  She was gentle, firm, and let me make all the “meep” noises I needed in order to get the job done. I got a bit of information from her about why it hurt so much. Not only did I take a punch from the concussion of the grenade going off and a pile of puncture wounds from shrapnel, I also got burned. When Nate and Flower picked me up off the ground, ass over teakettle, the back of my shirt was roasted through. Flash-fried.

  Charlie said it looked to her like a bad sunburn with patches that looked like they’d been blisters a few days before.

  Eventually, I did get used to the temperature and decided to give the tub a try. Charlie impressed me again, because she helped me up and got me into the water without making a single joke. That was kind, because I’d decided to give up on being worried that I was in the buff, and a joke would have made me tense up.

  To put it as simply as possible, leaving all the hyperbole and prose out of it: “Water is good.” My ofuro felt like what I imagined it must have been like to be a fetus floating around in the womb, minus the darkness and amniotic sac. Whether or not it was an accurate fantasy, I can say I felt restored by soaking in the tub.

  Charlie kept me company, leaning on the tub wall on my left. It was like having a disembodied head resting on arms and hands, but this particular head was much more attractive, funny, and pleasant to be around. She actually reached over at one point and messed up my hair.

  I looked back at her and she was smiling. It was radiant. That was the moment Shawn walked through the door.

  Chapter 16

  “Charlotte Marie Cooper! What the Hell are you doin’ in a towel?” It certainly wasn’t a yell. Shawn bellowed.

  “I was takin’ a bath, Knocker!”

  “Damn it! I told you not to call me Knocker ever again! Please don’t tell me you were BATHING with that pervert!”

  “No, Knocker, I just gave him a sponge bath and put him in the tub. Ya big lazy shithead!”

  “Um, ‘pervert’?” I raised my hand just a little. Both of them yelled at me to shut up.

  “Don’t you ‘No, Knocker’ me, little sister! If you’re gonna be a tattooed slut, there are other people around you can scratch your itch with. Don’t you be pawin’ all over him.”

  I heard her move and the sound of a penetrating slap before I was able to turn around in the water. When I got myself oriented in that direction, I saw Charlie’s back, towel still in place, and Shawn holding the side of his face. Looks like Big Brother mouthed off just a hair too much. That had to have hurt.

  “Listen to me, you overgrown hick. If I want to tear off this towel, jump in that tub, and fuck the shit out of that poor wounded man, it ain’t none of your business.” Charlie punctuated her tirade with meaningful finger stabbing in my direction.

  Quixote and the Panza twins formed a Mariachi band. I managed not to smile like a buffoon, but there was definitely a party starting in the subaquatic environment.

  “Charlie, don’t say things like that! That’s just nasty, hun!”

  “Shawn, you’re my brother, not my gun-totin’ chastity belt. I’m not 12 anymore.”

  “But. But. But. He’s already told me he wants to bang you!” I had never heard Shawn whine before. It was, in a word, awful.

  “Have you looked at his back?” She grabbed her brother by the hand, pulled him over to the side of the tub, and told me, “Would you turn around, please, and stand up if you can? This idiot needs to see for himself.”

  I did as I was asked. It really wasn’t a good time to get saucy with her, I could tell.

  “See that, you big goober? He couldn’t bang himself right now, much less me! I’d kill him by accident!”

  The Groin Mariachi Trio were caught in a maelstrom of despair at the truth in her words, but were immensely excited at the thought of a deadly roll in the hay. For myself, I just wanted to sit back down.

  “Hey, man? Does this hurt?” Shawn gave me a poke somewhere around my right kidney. I howled and collapsed into the ofuro.

  “Oh my God! Frank! Are you okay?” I gave the Big Man some credit for the sincerity in his voice, and then I ran the chances of me being able to strangle him in my current state. Nope.

  I turned around in the water, crouched down as I was, and looked him dead in the face. He went pale. I said very quietly, “If you ever do something like that again,” my brain ceased functioning for a moment, “I will marry your sister. I will have loud, fierce sex with her beneath your bedroom window every Thursday and Saturday night. She will bear my children, who will all look and act just like me. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”

  His eyes were huge. Charlie was smothering laughter behind her hand.

  “I will never do that again,” he said solemnly.

  “Thank you, Shawn.” I nodded at Charlie, noted how she restrained her mirth, nodded again, and turned back to my large, bleached-out friend. “Now that we have an understanding, I would like you to leave so I can finish this restorative bathing experience. I have no doubt I will see you again when my clothes are on, and we can catch up on things. That would be nice. Don’t you think so? Besides, you make my water cold.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Me too. See you later, then.”

  “Okay. Hope you feel better,” he said, and then he slowly turned around and made his way out of the room, closing the door as he exited.

  “What’s ‘Knocker?’” I asked the lovely lady still standing by the tub.

  “Oh. We used to call him that when we were kids. He’d get scared or nervous and his knees would knock together.”

  “Got it.”

  “By the way, Frank?”

  “Mmmhmm?”

  “Did you really say you wanted to ‘bang’ me?”

  Have you ever had a moment of complete social panic? You look around the room for anything to take the attention off the social gaffe you just made, hoping there is something more interesting than your embarrassment. I did precisely that. Tub. Water. Soap. Heater. Panic!

  “Gosh! Charlotte Marie. That’s a lovely name, and you’re wearing a rather splendid towel. Wherever did you find such a high thread-count towel in this day and age?”

  “I found it in the cabinet over there.” She turned and pointed at my re-purposed plastic yard storage cabinet. She was smiling and crinkling her eyes at me. That was worse than the original question in a way I couldn’t define. “And you, Mister Frank, are avoiding the question.”

  She didn’t walk back to the tub. Charlie strutted back to the tub. Her hips rolled and swayed. This was a woman who knew her body and her mind and had decided to mess with me using the tools the Divine Powers had given her.

  Quixote and the Panzas kept shouting unhelpful things like, “Arriba! Mira la rubia! RARRR!”

  “SHUT UP!”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, Charlie. I was talking to someone else... erm.”

  “I have to say, Frank, you’re a quirky guy.” By that point, she was in my face, and she said, “Lucky for you, I like quirky men.” Then she planted those lush lips on the end of my nose. It would have been a very chaste nose kiss if she hadn’t used just a little bit of suction.

  “Er.” My mouth wasn�
��t working properly.

  She pulled back, looked me dead in the eyes, and had a belly laugh at my expense. When she finished laughing, she tousled my hair again. “Let’s get you out of there before you turn into a prune full of stitches, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  Chapter 17

  Getting out was more difficult than getting in and I spent a little time holding onto the side of the tub, making sad groaning noises. Sancho Panza #1 got caught between the plank and my leg as we were trying to ease me up and over without annoying my back. Charlie didn’t laugh. She got so many brownie points for that.

  She got me a towel and suggested I get clean clothes from upstairs after I dried off. She’d handle finding food and Jayashri to look over my back and put new bandages all over me. I nodded mutely and started to dry myself off. By the time I looked up, she was half dressed.

  “You didn’t think I was going to run around in a towel, did you?” She was looking at me from over her shoulder while she pulled up her jeans. I looked away, in hopes of maintaining some sort of gentlemanly detachment while my brain catalogued every curve I saw and the back of her green lace panties.

  “You never know. You might be a towel fetishist for all I know.”

  “Oh? Little Country Girl me, a freaky, tattooed, exhibitionistic, bath towel pervert?”

  I tried to recover. “Hey! There’s something out there for everyone!”

  This got a laugh out of her while she pulled her t-shirt on over those colorful shoulders. Matching bra. Five catches in the band. Catalogued. There are times I hate my visual memory and other times when it comes in very, very handy.

  Charlie got me to assure her I’d be fine while she was gone and that I wouldn’t streak through the store on my way upstairs. I agreed that clean clothes were a must and promised her I wouldn’t put on a shirt until Jayashri had a chance to look things over. She waved and then sauntered out the door.

  Mmmm. Saunter.

  True to my word, after putting out the smoldering wood in the water heater, I did not streak through the store. Streaking implies a sort of gleeful, body parts waving in the bright sunlight-type of jog. I did not streak. I ran very carefully in the nude across the store and up the stairs.

  As I was opening the door to my space, I heard Charlie call out, “I bet that’s a great ass when it doesn’t have stitches in it, you big ol’ pervert!”

  I slammed the door behind me. Busted. Smiling, but busted.

  Maybe half an hour later, I heard her at the bottom of the stairs, talking to someone else. She definitely had the sort of voice that carried, especially when she laughed. I was just counting my lucky stars that I had such a good-humored person looking after me, that she didn’t want me dead for lewd comments made in her absence, and that she didn’t make too much fun of me. My ego is a fragile thing to begin with.

  I grew up as one of the geeky kids who didn’t fit in. I was too smart and too socially awkward, and I had too many unusual hobbies to be a typical kid. My father had me chewing through martial arts classes, not back and forth to team sports. I liked to make things out of other things I’d just disassembled, like the washing machine. Dating and traditional mating behaviors were something that escaped me for much of my early life.

  Jayashri might call me a hero, but I certainly didn’t have the superpowers or harem of stunning women following me around that a studly Zombie Killer ought to have. It could be Zombie Killers didn’t rate the same fringe benefits as Vampire Executioners. Since there are no vampires to blow holes in, I will never find out.

  Sigh.

  Charlie knocked on the door. “Are you decent, Franken-ass?”

  “I’ve got pants on and no shirt, Blond Passionflower! Come on in!”

  She opened the door and walked in, followed by a smiling Jaya and her medical bag. That would have brightened my day all by itself, but it got even better when Jaya came over and gave me a kiss on my freshly shaved cheek.

  “Charlotte tells me you’re squeaky clean and I should have a look at your arm and your back. Are you in the mood for such treatment, Mister I Run Naked Through The Store?”

  “Oh, fabulous! Now I get to have two snarky women gnawing on me in my own home,” I said, tongue in cheek and with an improbable facial expression to take any sting out.

  “Wait! Jaya, don’t big studly heroes get piles of snarky and demanding women following them around?”

  “Yes, Charlie, they do. Sadly, I am married to another man, so I can only be snarky and demanding as a guest. The rest of the harem is something you will have to organize,” she said and turned to me. “Turn around, Captain Studly, and let me see your back.”

  There are moments in a man’s life where he decides not to make smart remarks, and when a woman who controls your recovery makes a request of you that involves your progress toward being happy and healthy... that absolutely qualifies as one of those moments. What else could I do but turn around?

  She made little affirmative noises, which I took to be a good thing. I heard the snap of rubber gloves and instantly tensed up, fearing the pain of being touched, even if it was in my best interest to let the medical professional do her job.

  “Charlotte tells me you have not even looked in a mirror to see what you have back here. I am surprised. You are usually much more curious than that.”

  “After you told me I got shaved and stitched and that one piece popped out of me, I wasn’t really sure it was something I wanted to see. Charlie said I ought to feel lucky to be alive. That gave me a little pause.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything, and I wouldn’t have even known she was there if I hadn’t been able to see her out of the corner of my eye. It seemed uncharacteristic of her (as if I could really have an accurate opinion of someone I’d known for less than two hours!) to be quiet when there was something that could be commented on.

  “As I said when I last spoke to you, it was a very near thing. Does this hurt?” I felt a little pressure towards the center of my back, to the right of my spine.

  “No. I do feel some pressure, but nothing painful. Shawn poked me lower down on that side, near my kidney. I thought I was going to die.”

  “Ah. That’s not surprising. One of the fragments pierced your kidney, and it took a bit of finesse to remove it.”

  Charlie took that moment to ask, “Does ‘finesse’ mean you had to open him up like a fish, hunt for it really fast, and get him stitched up before he could bleed out?”

  “Ah. That would be an accurate, if blunt, way of expressing it.”

  I may have gone a little pale at that thought.

  “Oh, Charlotte! Would you do me a favor? I left dinner for the both of you on the counter in the kitchen at my house. Could you run over and get it while I finish up with Frank?”

  “You bet!” Charlie paused before she left, touched my shoulder, and said, “You take your medicine and don’t flirt with the pretty lady too much while I’m gone. Got it, Franken-ass?”

  “I hear and obey, Delicate Flower of My Recovery.”

  Jayashri laughed. “I think you must have made an impression on our Frank. I have never heard him agree that quickly to anything!”

  “It’s just good ole Southern charm!” I turned around to see her share a grin with my friend’s wife, and then she headed out the door and down the stairs.

  Jayashri turned to me and commented, “She is so much like her brother, but also very different. Don’t you think?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth. Shawn doesn’t have hips like those.”

  She laughed and guided me over to the desk, turned me around gently, and helped me sit. I offered her my forearm for inspection, which she dutifully looked over and pronounced ready for suture removal.

  “Have you had a fever or chills since I saw you last?”

  “No, just a strange dream or two.”

  “That is not a surprise at all, but I am happy to hear you have not had a fever. I did not expect it, since none of the impact s
ites show any sign of infection.” She looked up at me from assessing my arm. “I am concerned about one thing in particular, and I did not want to discuss it in front of Charlotte.”

  I had no idea what might be on her mind, since I wasn’t being very active or spurting pus. “Okay. What’s that?”

  “Your back is healing quite quickly.”

  “That’s a concern?”

  “Yes. If you told me you had experienced a fever or chills over the past few days, I would assume you had been infected with the zombie virus.”

  I know I went pale when I heard that. “Oh. Fever and chills. Healing too fast.”

  “Yes. Also, considering how close we are to a den of those bastards, I would also have expected to find you dead, or recently revived. Luckily for all of us, you’re still alive and apparently unchanged.”

  All I was able to do was nod in agreement. It wasn’t a small pill I needed to swallow, even if I hadn’t “changed.” My brain wanted to shut down and try to form a spunky or brave response. I have never liked surprises or being afraid.

  “What does this mean?”

  “Frank, I do not know. I spent a large part of my residency in a trauma unit and had a number of patients die on the table who were not as badly wounded as you were. Experience tells me you should have died, but you have not.” She shrugged expressively. “My experience also tells me you ought not to be able to walk or crack jokes this soon after major surgery. I would also have assumed, considering the lack of a proper sterile field for operating on you, that you would have had some sort of post-operative infection. You will note, as I have, that you did not.”

  “I’m at a loss here.” I threw up my other hand, because she had a firm hold on my left arm. “I’ve always healed pretty fast, but not enough to make a big deal about it.”

  “Some people do heal very quickly. That much is true. Still, I did not want to discuss this openly, in case you had a secret you needed to share. There is not a secret you need to share, is there?”