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 light 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 jus
t 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.”
“And I think you should leave me the fuck alone,” I rasped out, then bit my chapped lips. “Sorry. It’s just—“
“All too much right now?” he guessed.
I nodded. “Yeah.” The scratching in my throat got worse. Tea was likely a good idea, even if it tasted like tepid water. “Or not.”
Nate allowed himself a small smile as he let go of my hand. “Wanna try sitting up? Not that I mind changing the sheets, but it’s so much easier if I don’t have to.”
I was too tired to feel embarrassed, and after a moment’s hesitation told him to go ahead. Any mortification I might have felt at needing help to drag myself up into a somewhat more upright position was wiped straight from my mind when pain exploded through my body. This time my leg was worst, but my lungs also hurt, and I generally felt tender—or rather, tenderized. I was still wincing as Nate handed me a steaming cup. I drank a few sips, wondering what was in that shit that it made my tongue and lips tingle. When I was done, Nate took the cup back, cursing as he almost dropped it back onto the nightstand.
“Shit, that’s hot.” He gave me a weird look. “Wasn’t that too hot to drink?”
I held his gaze for a moment, then stared at the cup. Moving slowly, I dipped my left index finger into the liquid. Nothing. Well, it felt wet, but not like something that made my skin darken immediately. Looking from my finger back to him, I couldn’t help but snort. “Huh.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said, frowning. “Exactly how do you feel right now?”
“Like death warmed over,” I replied, not quite joking. “Please tell me I’m not decomposing already.”
He snorted. “Not as far as I know. But I’ve already suspected that the virus screwed up your pain sensation.”
“How? Did you suspect that, I mean.”
“When I accidentally banged your head against a door and you barely gave a grunt?” When I narrowed my eyes at him, he gifted me with a self-deprecating smile, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “It wasn’t that much of a bang. More of a slight bump rather than a full-on slam.”
“When did that happen?”
“Last time I changed rooms.” At my bewildered look, he explained. “I don’t know how much you remember…”
“More than enough.” I groaned.
“Anyway. This is the fifth room. We have about twenty more for spares, if you don’t like this one, but there’s not much chance for improvement.”
“It’s okay.” That was not the part I was worried about. Fumbling for the blanket, I tried to pull it away, but my fingers were too weak to get a good grip on it. Holding the cup had all but exhausted me. Nate laid his hand over mine, stilling my motion. At my glare, he squeezed my fingers again.
“Give it a few more days,” he advised.
“Off. Now,” I commanded. He hesitated but then relented, pushing the blankets away. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but there was a thick bandage covering my leg from my hip down to my knee. The fact that there was still a complete left leg was a good sign, though. I started fumbling with the bandage, and after a few moments of watching me fail, Nate brushed my hand away and gently removed the tape that held the gauze in place. What lay underneath wasn’t pretty, but looked nothing like it had… about a week ago. There was scar tissue—a lot of it—but it was all healed over, if still that angry red of recent wounds. No scabs, certainly no pus, and not even any swelling left. It looked more like a month rather than a few days had passed since the factory.
“Just how long was I out?” I asked, gingerly running a fingertip along the very middle of the main scar. It was easily as thick across as my thumb.
“Today is the seventh day that we’ve been here,” Nate replied. At my doubtful look, he shrugged. “Guess we’re even now. You patched me up once, now I got to repay the favor. Sorry that it’s not exactly a dainty scar but I did the best I could with what I had to work with. As great as the glue is for keeping you from bleeding to death, it’s not gentle to the surrounding tissue.” He must have realized that he was stalling, and finally skipped to the important pa
rt. “The first day you were comatose, your injuries were still getting worse. There was no wound healing, and I must have drained about ten ounces of pus. I stopped checking on it when you stopped breathing for minutes at a time, figuring that if, deep down, you could still feel pain, I should just leave you be in those last moments. On the second day I decided to carry you on to the next room because…” He paused, but there was no need to sugar-coat anything. “Your intestines were still working so I figured you weren’t quite done dying yet. When I cleaned you up, I also changed the bandage. The wound had started to heal. And when hours later you were still not dead, I decided to bite the bullet and cut the wound open to clean it and stitch you back together. Two days later, the last of the scabs flaked off. You should keep it well-moisturized for the next couple of months so that the scar tissue remains elastic, but that’s about it.” He snorted as something else occurred to him. “Two of the bullets were still in there, too. I removed them. You’re welcome.”
“Gee, thanks,” I murmured, too bewildered by his explanation to react otherwise. “So what does that make me? Half a zombie?” The hesitation in his answer was enough to make me deflate. “Shit.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” Nate remarked, grinning at the face I made. “You heal, and as far as we know, they don’t. Actually, I’d even go as far as saying you heal just as well as I do. But your pain sensitivity is much lower than mine.”
I let my next breath escape me slowly, trying to make sense of all this. “I still feel like shit. And that’s definitely not just discomfort from not moving for a few days.”
His ambivalent shrug could have meant anything. “I still feel exhaustion even if I don’t feel sharp muscle pain from overexertion. Bruises and sprained joints, too. Maybe the guys at the Silo have a better explanation. Brandon Stone likely does. Question is, how much do you need to know? I’ve always been quite content with accepting the benefits and ignoring the rest. You just have to get used to paying a little more attention to what you do to your body.”
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 35