Love in the Time of the Dead

by Tera Shanley

  At the first row of cabins, Sean pointed out the room Mitchell and Guist had been assigned to. Guist gave her a squeeze on the shoulder, but Mitchell kept his distance when they parted ways. Both men from her team gave parting, comforting words in the form of colorful curses at Adam, and it made her laugh, despite the wretched clenching in her gut. Mitchell leaned up against his doorway until she and Sean had disappeared down a smaller trail that connected the newly built rows of cabins.

  Her cabin was only a few minutes’ walk from Mitchell and Guist’s room, and she and Sean went the rest of the way there in silence. Not even the crickets felt brave enough to interrupt their private, awkward moment. When they got to the door and checked the number to make sure she wouldn’t be walking in on some poor, unsuspecting family who had long been asleep, she hurried in to try to avoid conversation with him altogether.

  “Laney, wait,” he said, catching the door before it closed.

  She stifled a groan and opened the door back up, waiting.

  Sean hesitated. “There should be a lantern in there for you and some matches to give you some light. The sheets will be on the bed, and there is a row of outhouses through there.” He pointed to a small trail that led off through the trees. “The showers are back up by Mitchell and Guist’s cabin though.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks.” She could sleep for a week, and the bed was calling to her like a siren’s song.

  He spun to leave, only to turn back to her again. “I’m sorry about that, back there with Adam. It was pretty brutal and I wish it hadn’t happened like that.”

  She tried to smile at him through the dim light. “It seems we have both been holding on to people we shouldn’t have.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up sadly. “So it seems. Good night, Laney.”

  “Good night.”

  Good night. Right.

  Chapter Twelve

  A THUNDEROUS KNOCK ON LANEY’S DOOR made her lurch ungracefully from the bed she had been blissfully sleeping on exactly one second before. She landed with a thud on her hands and knees, the wooden floor proving itself a completely unforgiving companion. Another knock blasted in her ears.

  “What!” she yelled testily. It was barely even light out.

  “It’s Guist,” came the reply.

  She threw open the thick wooden door so she could better glare at him.

  “Eeek,” Guist said, taking a step back.

  Why in Sam Hill was he so surprised? She had never been a morning person.

  “What do you want?”

  “Nick came by and said he’d meet up with us at breakfast to give us our job assignments this morning. Said mess hall stops serving breakfast at eight, and work starts at eight thirty.” He turned to head back up the trail to his cabin. “Get ready,” he called over his shoulder.

  A quick look in the mirror brought the cause of Guist’s startled reaction to light. Nightmares had kept her tossing and turning through the short night, and her hair was sticking up in all directions. The thin pillow had left creases across her face, and in light of no pajamas to be found in her cluttered backpack, she had greeted him in her black tank top and a pair of red cotton underwear. Attractive.

  She took in the small room that was to be her home for the duration of her stay at Dead Run River. A mixture of exhaustion and laziness had kept her from lighting the lantern the night before so her view of her new home had been drastically narrowed. The little cabin Nick had assigned her was actually quite homey and warm.

  There was a table with a washbasin that came up to the height of her hips on the wall opposite the door. An old bucket just showing its rust had been placed beside it and the bowl where she had rinsed her face the night before was under the mirror. A simple pine bed took up most of the wall to her left, and the mattress had been accompanied by a stack of clean linens and a thick blue comforter. A small, old fashioned wood burning stove sat in the corner with a stack of firewood just below it. A silver pipe that vented smoke from the stove to the exterior of the cabin snaked up the wall. Opposite the bed was a small dresser with three drawers, and a chair and modest table beside it with a pen and a small stack of linen paper for writing. The dark metal lantern was on the wooden table waiting to be lit by the box of matches that sat beside it. The wooden floor was simple and bare except for a small, blue fuzzy bath mat that someone had thoughtfully placed just below the washbasin and mirror.

  It was perfect.

  She pulled her pants on and emptied the small amount of clothing she had in her pack into the top drawer of the dresser. She made the bed and stood back to admire the tidied room. When she was satisfied, she rifled noisily through her pack and pulled out the few toiletries she owned. She placed them in a large plastic baggie and headed for the door. On second thought, she turned and grabbed the disposable razor and bar of soap out of her welcome bag and tossed it in with her other shower supplies. When her new jacket was snugly in place over her shoulders, she left the room and dropped the wooden latch into place to secure the door. There was no lock. Apparently Dead Run River ran on the honor system.

  A wooden porch ran in front of the row of rooms, and she stopped to admire the scenery that surrounded her. She leaned against the crude wooden railings that encased the porch and felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Someone watched her. A girl in her early twenties stood to her left, giving her the foulest glare. What had she done to cause that look? Laney tried to put a finger on where she had seen the faintly familiar girl before. She waved and placed the face. The girl had been a witness at her little reunion with Adam the night before. She had been the one standing next to him and his wife. Laney shoved her hand in her jacket pocket to halt the awkward wave.

  The girl spun around and disappeared into a room two doors down from hers, slamming the door loudly behind her. She hated to make an enemy so quickly in a colony. Maybe if she apologized for…what? Existing while her boyfriend cheated? Whatever that girl’s problem was, she could keep it. Laney resisted the urge to flip off the door and set out for the trail that led to the showers. First impressions had never been her thing.

  The biggest and probably best surprise of her recent life was that the showers had hot water. She tried not to act too shocked, as it seemed very normal to the other women who were bathing themselves in the wooden stalls on the girls’ side of the shower room. “Room” was a loose term. There was a row of ten showers housed in wooden stalls out in the open. In between the fifth and sixth shower stalls, a thick wall divided them, and a hand-painted sign enlightened her that ladies were on the left and gentlemen were on the right. Laney tried her best to ignore the hairy legs under the doors of the gentlemen’s side and instead tried to focus on the beautiful steam that was rising out of the stalls as hot, moist air battled the morning chill.

  Her turn came up quickly when a stall became vacant. A line was forming behind her so she tried her best to hurry through her own shower, though it was tempting to stand under the blissfully warm water for much longer. It wasn’t until she was finished washing that she remembered she didn’t have a towel to dry herself off with. She poked her head out of her stall and looked around in desperation.

  “Here,” a girl said with a smile. She kindly held a towel out for Laney. “You must be new around here. The towels are in a bin over there.” She pointed to a green plastic storage container. “When you are done, just throw the dirty one in the black bin.”

  “Thank you so much,” Laney started. She didn’t get to talk to girls very often. Was she supposed to shake her hand?

  “I’m Eloise,” the girl offered.

  “Laney,” she said, taking the towel. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Same,” the girl said as she disappeared into the empty stall next to her.

  Laney dried off hurriedly. The cold air was slowly seeping into her bones, and she didn’t want to be wet and naked in it any more than she had to be. She redressed, wishing silently that she had something else to wear, and dropped her towel i
nto the black bin before she headed back to her room to stuff her shower supplies into the bottom drawer of her dresser. She asked directions to the mess hall and was rewarded with another kind response. The hike took her about ten minutes and was all uphill, but with the smell of eggs and bacon came new motivation to move. She gave her sore muscles a light workout and eagerly jogged to the door.

  She waited in line and picked up a tray of food before scanning the large building. Rows of long picnic tables held happy groups of acquaintances and friends talking softly as they ate their early morning meal. A hand shot up from a bench in the farthest corner, and she snaked her way between tables. It was Sean who had hailed her. Finn sat on one side beside Sean and Adrianna, and Guist and Mitchell were on the other. The back of a girl’s head bobbed excitedly by Mitchell as she talked to him over her meal.

  Laney frowned. Figured.

  She took a seat by Guist and dove into her breakfast. Sean watched her from across the table, but she didn’t feel like talking. She was agitated, testy even, but she couldn’t explain the exact reason why. So much had gone wrong in the past few days. She didn’t even know where to begin deciphering what she was upset about that morning.

  When Nick arrived with their job assignments, the girl hanging on to Mitchell got the hint and took her leave. When she stood, Laney got a look at her face. It was the same girl who had been there with Adam and his wife, the same one who’d slammed the door on her that morning. She waved as she sauntered by, but the look on her face made it clear they weren’t friends. The girl was thin and petite, with a swing to her gait that said she liked the way it felt when a man watched her leave. She had blond hair and crystalline blue eyes. She looked like Barbie—if Barbie was five foot two and pissed.

  “She’s really nice,” Laney said through a bite of scrambled eggs.

  Mitchell watched the girl leave with a thoughtful look on his face. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

  Maybe he had missed her sarcasm.

  “I’ve got your job assignments,” Nick said. “Sean, for now we will have you at the sawmill. Mel might have you helping her some days, though. Finn, you will be a guard but when Sean needs you, you will have leave to help him. Mitchell and Guist, you are both guards also. You’ll report to Steve Mercer at the front gate right after you are done with breakfast.” He swung around to her and wrote something on his clipboard. “Laney Landry. You are assigned to the gardens, but this morning you will meet with the doctor before you report out there.”

  “Whoa, what?” she sputtered. “But I applied for guard duty. I can’t be in the gardens. I’ll go insane!”

  “That’s where Mel wants you. Sorry.”

  “Can you check it again?” Mitchell asked him. “There has to be some mistake. Laney is a fighter. She’s more qualified for guard duty than any guard you have posted.”

  Sympathy lined the creases of Nick’s somber eyes. “Look, I get it. It’s not what you wanted, but it’s where Mel wants you right now. And what she says goes. My advice? Try it for a while, and if you really don’t like it, take it up with her. Maybe she could put you somewhere else.”

  Deflated, she took the offered work outline from his hands. There wasn’t a job in existence she would have wanted less than gardens.

  “I got everyone Fridays off, but the other day off I couldn’t swing with you all together. Sean, Finn, and Mitchell, you’ll have Mondays off, and Laney and Guist, you’ll have Wednesdays off. Since you are coming in during the middle of a work week, your credit will still hit the store on Friday, but it won’t be as much. It should still be enough for you to get some warmer clothes, though. Okay, good luck with your assignments and I’ll see you later. Laney, I’ll show you where the doctor’s office is.”

  He headed for an exit without delay, and she followed him without looking back at the table. She couldn’t handle their pitying looks.

  Though she had full intentions of ignoring Nick as punishment for bearing bad news, the mountain man had different ideas. He gave her exactly two minutes of silence on their hike back down the hill to the doctor’s office.

  “Did you like the warm water in the showers?” he asked.

  His excitement was infectious, and she was unable to be rude. “Yes, it was lovely. How is that possible? Seems like a waste of the generators.”

  “We don’t use the generators on them. I rigged up a way to use water power to heat the showers. It runs a bunch of our larger equipment too. Like our antique sawmill. It is up and running because of the work we did with miles of piping farther up the mountain. We use the river’s naturally strong current to power machines that conduct that energy to the areas we need it. Took me a year to get the kinks out, and even now the pipes get clogged and we have to do repairs often, but all worth it for a hot shower, I think.”

  “Agreed,” she admitted. “It was a really happy surprise. I don’t even remember the last time I had a hot shower.”

  She followed Nick down a narrow path that led away from a group of cabins.

  “What do you use the sawmill for?” she asked curiously.

  “Ahh, we use it to cut the boards for the cabins for one. We use the boards to build our fences as well and then we trade large loads of it with other colonies farther down the mountain that don’t have the resources of the mill. Here we are,” he said, hopping up onto a small wooden porch that bordered a medical building. “Knock, knock.” He opened the door a crack and looked inside.

  “Come on in,” an older gentleman called. He was wearing a baseball cap over thinning hair, and glasses perched firmly on his nose. He was short, barely as tall as Laney, and his dark and observant eyes seemed to miss nothing.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Mackey. You must be Laney.” He reached his hand out and shook hers vigorously.

  Nick excused himself and waved to her before he left. Dr. Mackey motioned for her to have a seat on the sterile-looking table in the middle of his office, and she did so. She shifted her feet in an attempt to get comfortable, but it was likely she’d never feel completely relaxed there. Whatever was coming was going to hurt.

  “All right, Mel has told me a little about what is going on with you, but let’s start from the beginning. How long have you known of your immunity to Dead bites?”

  “Don’t you want to see the bites first?” she asked him.

  “I’ll get to that. Mel is a pretty straight shooter and I believe what she has told me. How long?” he repeated.

  “Two years.”

  “And what were your side effects?”

  “Heightened sense of smell.”

  He pulled a small pen light out of his medical coat pocket and flicked them to her eyes. “Any vision loss or change in eye color?”

  “None that I could tell.”

  “Any dietary changes, or wants?”

  “None. I was always a meat eater, but I still prefer it cooked, and animal in nature.”

  On and on it went. Dr. Mackey seemed as if he would never run out of questions for her, and he jotted every answer down on a brown clipboard. When he was finished grilling her, he finally asked to see the bite scar on her leg and then the newer one on her side. Her wounds were all in different stages of healing, and Dr. Mackey cleaned them and bandaged the ones that needed it. Her new bite and the gash on her hand were the worst, so she sported sanitary looking white bandages on both.

  “Come with me,” the doctor told her, and he led her to a room in the back of the building.

  Inside, Dr. Mackey had set up an impressive lab equipped with microscopes, stacks of charts, and medical machines with functions she couldn’t even guess at.

  “I think the source of your immunity comes from both your blood and your living tissue. I will need samples of both.”

  Well, that sounded painful. She squared her shoulders and tried to wipe any emotion from her face.

  “We’ll try to take only small samples of tissue but you will have to give blood regularly until I can get us closer to figuring you out. I have a sma
ll team who will be assisting us. You will meet them later. They have a day off today unless we have an emergency. We’ll take some tissue samples and draw your blood before you leave here if you’re feeling up to it.”

  He said the last sentence as if he were asking her a question, so she nodded. Not even a little part of her wanted to do any of that, but she had promised Jarren she’d try. And she’d be damned if she was going to invite him back to haunt her for not following through with her promises.

  “Let’s get this done, Doc. I have a riveting day ahead of me at the gardens.”

  He chuckled and prepared a short row of medical instruments and a roll of gauze. “I take it you don’t appreciate your new job assignment.”

  “Let’s put it this way. If I had a choice between picking weeds or petting a porcupine, I’d pick the latter.”

  “Well, you are in luck then, because as per doctor’s orders, on the days you have to give blood I insist you lie down in my office for observation for at least an hour before you go to work there.”

  “Whoa, doc. You sure know how to charm a lady.”

  “I’m afraid my wife would thoroughly disagree,” he said with a laugh. “All right, Laney. Where would you like your scars?” He held a terrifying instrument that was shaped like a metal tube with a rectangular blade on the end.

  She looked away. Best if she didn’t watch. “Let’s keep the party centralized.” She lifted her shirt and pointed to the area directly beside the bite. It would look mangled even after it had healed so what would a few more scars hurt? It wasn’t like boys were lining up to ogle her bare body anyway.

  “Okay. You’re going to feel a pinch, but it will be over before you know it.”

  “Pinch, my ass.” Laney lifted her shirt enough to glare at four small red slivers that had been covered with butterfly bandages on her hip bone. Those little suckers had burned like a hot iron when Doc not-so-gently took them. They were large enough that they would scar, but small enough that over time they would be unassuming. The first of many. Dr. Mackey had been true to his word and insisted that she rest for an hour after he drew her blood, but the time had come to head to the gardens to start work. Goody.