“Trust me,” I said turning towards him. “I know what I’m doing.” He hesitated only a moment, before nodding and backing away.
The two soldiers continued to scream at us to lower the gate. “They’re coming,” one of them shouted out hysterically. “What are you waiting for,” the other one yelled at us.
They were right at the moat now. Exactly where I needed them to be. “Open up. They’ll turn us like the others if you leave us out here,” the first one cried out at us. They certainly were believable. The panic felt very real; however, they still weren’t looking at us. If you really were pleading for your life, wouldn’t you look at the person you wanted to save you?
I turned to the commander. “Do you have a pocket-knife?” I whispered. He reached into his pants pocket producing a fancy looking Swiss Army knife and handed it to me as I returned his binoculars. I could feel Jack’s eyes trained on me. I doubted he would like what I was about to do. Heck I didn’t like it either. It was going to hurt, but Billy could stitch me up later.
I opened the knife and before Jack could react, I slid the blade down the palm of my hand. While I didn’t cry out as the blood spilt from the tear. I certainly did wince from the pain, which I tried so hard to avoid. It was a searing pain, that was bound to feel so much worse when I was forced to get it stitched up. “What are you doing?” Jack yelled, with his eyes full of concern grabbing my hand.
“Testing a theory,” I replied, calmly pulling my hand out of his. “Trust me, Jack. I know what I’m doing.” I dug into the wound, producing as much blood as I could. I held my hand over the stone wall allowing my blood to drip down it. Their reaction was almost instantaneous. They couldn’t help themselves. They both looked up towards me, or rather towards my bleeding hand. Their eyes were too far away for me to see the ring of red around them, that had surely started to form already. But I didn’t need to see that to know they were infected. The look of blood lust on their faces gave them away. They were practically salivating at the smell of my blood.
One of them let out a blood piercing screech, before he managed to catch himself. He quickly covered his mouth, but it was too late. The murmurs on the wall spread, bringing about a much different sound to the night air. The soldier who’d given me the stink eye earlier, was now looking at me with awe and admiration.
The second infected soldier on the ground hit his fellow infected friend hard in the throat. “You idiot. You screwed everything up.” The other soldier gathered his wits back, smashing his fist into his companion. The two began grappling on the ground as the sound of running, panting, and screeching came closer. We could see them now. The infected were rushing forward. It was like they knew their plan had failed and they were desperate to find another way to get to us.
The two newly infected, pulled themselves together as the more mature of their kind approached. The screeching came to a sudden stop. I was wrong about the number. There were more than two dozen of the monsters lined up just at the edge of the moat. Most of them were already completely transformed, but there were a few who looked like they were midway through transformation. They still looked almost human, except for their eyes and claws and teeth. Okay they weren’t so much human anymore as they were beast. They scared me even more than the fully transformed. They were too familiar and a reminder of how easily we could become just like them.
The fully infected looked more like rabid wolves, than humans anymore. Or maybe more like werewolves from the pictures in my favourite Myths and Legends book I used to read. They had wolf like snouts with sharp k-9’s pointing out. Even from the wall, I could see their blood red eyes. Unlike the newly infected, their eyes were a piercing red that sent shivers through my spine. Even worse, was the look of hunger on their faces. I knew they wanted nothing more than to tear into my flesh.
There was one amongst the group of monsters, that looked to be in charge. He at least seemed to be barking orders, though it was hard to tell. The infected lost the ability to speak like we did. They spoke instead in screeches, howls, and grunts. This one was grunting at the others. He stood tall on all four of his transformed limbs. There were no traces of clothing left on him, like there were on the ones still transforming. He must have been like that for a long time. His entire body was covered in hair and his snout was barred with all its pointy teeth showing. His body was all muscle, like the body builders of old used to have. I could see his fangs glistening as the snow fell on his hair.
It had been a long time since I’d been this close to one of the monsters, and it was just as terrifying as it had been when I didn’t have a wall and a moat full of flammable liquid. I felt Jack squeeze in close to me. He grabbed my good hand for reassurance. It was then, that I realized I was shaking. “We’re safe here,” he whispered.
The leader of the monsters looked up in our direction. He may not speak our language, but he understood it and his hearing was much better than ours. He grinned up at me, bearing his fangs. I saw the saliva drip off them, landing on the light bed of snow beneath his claws. Jack held my hand tighter. I wasn’t sure if it was for me or for him. It didn’t matter. I squeezed his back and tried not to let the beast see my fear.
The monster shifted his attention to one of the newly infected soldiers. He grunted at him. To me it sounded like indiscernible noise. But the infected understood. He nodded at his new leader and then pulling himself up off the ground, he addressed our commander with a sickening grin.
“Commander, the leader of our group only wishes to offer you the same gift he’s given the two of us.”
“To be torn to shreds,” one of the soldiers on the wall remarked. The commander shot him a death stare and he backed away from the wall.
“They don’t do that. It’s just one small bite. That’s all it takes and then everything is better. There’s no fear, no doubt. You can hear better, smell better, run faster, you’re stronger and…”
I wasn’t sure what else his little recruitment speech was about to entail. All I knew was that in the middle of his appeal, I noticed the commander pulling something out of his belt. It only took me a second to realize what he had and what he was planning on doing. I grabbed Jack and pulled him to the other side of the wall in an instant.
“Don’t look,” I whispered. Instinctively, he needed to know what I was talking about. Before he could ignore me, turning back to see what was about to happen, I reached up with my good hand and held onto his face. He was staring at me both confused and if I wasn’t mistaken, a little bit excited. Then the gun shot rang through the air, ending the recruitment speech and the infected’s life.
Now Jack knew what was going on and curiosity made him want to turn around, but I held his face in my hand. “You don’t want to see this. It’s not something you can get out of your head. Trust me.” He obeyed me this time as another shot rang through the air, followed by screeching and running, and more gun fire. A lot more gun fire.
Chapter Sixteen
We left in the middle of the shootout. Not that it lasted much longer. By the time the elevator set down on the ground, the gunfire had ceased. The soldier on the ground looked like he was ready to climb the wall, to get in on the action. He practically pushed us out of the way, so he could get on the elevator, but before he could get the elevator moving, the commotion was over. The look of disappointment on his face made me sick. His people had died. I hadn’t been here long enough to know them, but he had. And all he could think about was having the opportunity to shoot something.
Jack took off his scarf and wrapped it painfully tight around my hand. I cringed as he tied a knot in it. “It wouldn’t hurt, if you didn’t get the insane idea to slice a knife through your hand,” he said with annoyance as we walked towards the clinic.
“I told you it was necessary, and I proved my point.”
“But did you have to cut your hand open like that? Couldn’t you have just pricked your finger? At least then you wouldn’t need stitches and more recovery time.”
�
��It wouldn’t have worked. They would have smelt it for sure, but it wouldn’t have been strong enough to cause them to react. They were working very hard to stay in control and maintain their façade. One tiny drop of blood wouldn’t have broken them. But them being so newly infected, I knew they couldn’t resist the blood I managed to spill by slicing my hand. Trust me, if there’d been another way, I would have done it. I’m tired of the clinic and your brother. He’s mean.”
Billy wasn’t mean. It was only when he was torturing me with rehab, that I really didn’t like him. But this made Jack laugh, relieving the tension. He didn’t like what I’d done tonight or what had happened to his people. He was still learning about the way the world worked. I only hoped I could help his learning curve increase as well as the rest of the people here. The longer I was here, the more I saw April’s point. These people were spoiled, and that made them weak.
The clinic was closed by the time we came to it. There was a guard posted on the inside, just in case of an emergency. Jack grabbed a walkie talkie out of a little wooden box attached to the wall. He radioed for us to be let in. And once I was inside the building, he took off to get his brother. His brother wasn’t the only medic they had. They had a couple of doctors, but Billy seemed to be the one who did the most work, being the youngest. I guessed that was how it worked in the world before, as well.
I sat in the same curtained off room I’d called home when I’d first arrived here. The soldier had been kind enough to raise the bed for me so I could lay back and he’d exchanged the scarf for some gauze. My hand was really starting to sting, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see Billy. When my leg was injured, I’d needed stitches. They’d come out only a few days ago and here I was getting new ones. The difference between these stitches and the previous ones, was that the first set I didn’t really remember going in.
The anticipation of having someone jab a needle into my hand and then slide a needle and thread through my skin was causing me to shake uncontrollably. I’d lived through surgery…awake, but I couldn’t handle a needle. Even I knew that was just ridiculous. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my shaking under control and my breathing was just as bad. I needed to get a grip before Jack came back. I could handle sliding a knife down my hand, but not a few little stitches. You’re tougher than this, I told myself.
With my eyes closed, I took in several slow controlled breaths. That wasn’t enough to calm me. I needed to go somewhere else, to think of something else. I went back to the most recent, most happy memory I had. And that was sitting out on my porch with Jack, feeling his lips pressed against mine. The memory was just what I needed to let go of all fear. It was like wrapping myself up in a warm blanket. That moment had ended way too soon. We’d barely had time to acknowledge how it felt. I hoped we’d get a chance to try it again soon.
Jack was back only a few moments later. The guard closed the clinic doors, locking them tight. When Billy came walking into my room, he just shook his head. “You must really like me or something.”
I shook my head in return. “Only slightly more than my sister does.” He snorted at that as he pulled a stool up beside me.
“Wow, you don’t do anything small do you? Couldn’t you have made a smaller cut?”
“That’s what I said,” Jack replied. I rolled my eyes at him. “She claims they needed to smell a lot of blood, to lose it.”
“That early into the transformation they do,” I replied feeling a little annoyed. We’d already been over that. He wasn’t convinced that what I’d done was completely necessary. If it weren’t for the other soldiers advocating for letting their newly infected friends back in, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But I was desperate to prove what I knew deep down. And I was right. But I didn’t gloat over that fact. It wasn’t something to be happy about. Those men had been a part of this community and they’d died trying to secure supplies. It was something to be sad about.
After assessing the damage, Billy took off to get what he needed to repair my handy work. The nerves were coming back. Again, I tried to distract myself. This time I had Jack in the room to help with that. I drank in his features as best I could without him noticing. At this time of night, he had a heavy dark shadow going on around his face. I didn’t mind it. It was kind of sexy. Though it probably wouldn’t have felt so prickly when kissing him if it had been earlier in the day. His brown eyes kept looking at me, taking me in when he thought I wasn’t looking. I liked the way he looked at me.
Billy returned too soon and when he did, it was like Jack and I snapped back into reality. Reality for me was having a needle jabbed around my already painfully cut skin. I tried not to cry out as he dug the needle around, but I couldn’t help it. Jack was by my side in an instant, holding onto my good hand. I squeezed his hand tightly both for comfort and to distract myself from the pain. With my eyes half shut, squinting through the pain, I saw Jack smiling at me. “Stop enjoying this,” I said.
He laughed. “You weren’t such a wimp when you were sliding the blade through your skin…but a little needle?”
“This is worse.” Billy set the needle down and began sewing me up. I could feel the tugging as he pulled my skin back together. It didn’t hurt, but still, I couldn’t help shaking. “Have you ever had stitches?” I asked him, trying to distract myself from the tugging. He shook nodded.
“Remember,” he said pointing to his chin.
“You were a kid, that doesn’t count. They probably numbed you up well. Stop laughing.” He laughed again, as did Billy.
“I tried to warn you about dating a redhead,” Billy said to Jack.
“She’s a strawberry blonde,” Jack corrected. “There is a difference.”
“My temper may only be lukewarm, but push me and I will boil over,” I warned them both. This earned me more smiles.
“Why can’t your sister be more like you?” Billy asked as he cut off the end of the final stitch.
I sighed as he wrapped a loose bandage around my hand. “She’s been through too much. I don’t think she knows how to bring her wall down anymore.” My sister used to be so lighthearted. She’d laugh all the time. She may have laughed now from time to time, but it was a far rarer occasion. When she laughed now, there was something missing. It was like she couldn’t really get into the joy of any moment. The sadness was always in the background, dampening whatever good was going on in her life. I hoped that maybe someday she’d meet someone to pull her out of the darkness, but if she kept scaring away potential suitors, that wasn’t likely to happen.
I waited for Billy to make some sly remark in response to what I’d said, but instead he looked thoughtful. It was like he was considering the possibility that there was a real reason April was the way she was. Something about that night I’d fought with April had changed the way he looked at her. He still got irritated with her, a lot, but I think he saw the fragile side of her and realized she wasn’t all bad. April, in a lot of ways, was weak. She didn’t have the strength to own up to what she felt. Her wall had crumbled just a little that night and he’d seen a glimpse of the real her. I could see that in his eyes.
He opened his mouth to say something, but his words were lost amidst the banging on the front door. Maybe he would have said something nice about April, but I’d never know seeing as she had to kill the moment by ranting and screaming at the front door. I couldn’t hear what she was saying from my room, but I could certainly hear the ruckus she was making as she slammed her fists into the door and screamed at the guard. And it didn’t take much guessing to figure out she knew I was in here. She knew I was injured, and she wanted in.
Why couldn’t she just try remaining reasonable for more than five minutes? Billy’s earlier look of thoughtfulness vanished as he rolled his eyes, grunted, and headed off to deal with my sister’s drama. I went to cover my face with my injured hand, thankfully stopping myself just shy of putting pressure on my stitches. My hand was still numb, but I didn’t want to mess with that.
After some more arguing, the door opened, and I could hear April’s boots banging against the concrete floor as she made her way down to my room. She grabbed the curtain, forcefully shoving it to the side. Her face was beet red as she looked at Jack. I braced myself to defend him. She was probably about to blame Jack for the whole thing when he didn’t even want me there in the first place. But she didn’t yell at him, instead she looked at him, then me and then our hands, which were still intertwined. I hadn’t realized that I was still holding his hand. I let go, heat flooding to my cheeks. I shouldn’t have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood to discuss my budding romance with April, especially with how she was acting. And she’d promised to stop this.
Her moment of shock wore off as she opened her mouth to what was sure to be a rant, but I stopped her. “You’re going to listen while I talk this time,” I said forcefully. She stared at me, looking thrown off by the firmness, in both my voice and mannerisms. “I chose to follow Jack to the wall when the monsters started howling. He tried to stop me, and I refused. He tried to stop me from cutting myself also, but you and I both know that the newly turned will only have a strong reaction to a significant blood source. If I didn’t do it, they were talking about letting them in. If they’d done that, we’d all be dying or turning by now. I’m not sorry for what I did and it’s no one else’s fault, but my own. You don’t get to be angry with anyone. Got it.”
She didn’t look like she liked that response at all. I was injured yet again. And this place wasn’t looking as safe to her as I had originally said it was. I still felt perfectly safe, especially after tonight. The rest of the witnesses had learned a valuable lesson, and I had a feeling that we could teach them even more. They needed us every bit as much as we needed them. And after what I’d done, I knew that Commander Tate saw my value. He already knew that April and I were a package deal. Ever since I’d learned about Michelle’s obsession with Jack, I’d worried that maybe she would use her influence to get us kicked out. Now I didn’t need to fear that or her. She was powerless, just like she’d always been.
Seeking Hope: Book 2 in the Seeking Saga Page 15