by Olivia Marie
“Most definitely.”
“She had the boils, Jake, but she hadn’t gone insane. I didn’t see the guy she married. I don’t know where he was, but she still had her mind to her. She’s the one that sent me to you. She told me where you were and that my best option of surviving was to get to you. She said you would know what to do.”
“That was a mistake. I have no idea.”
I laughed, then laughed harder at the look he gave me. “Do you seriously believe that? I would’ve died at that hospital if not for you. I wouldn’t have been brave enough to go on. I would have stayed right there, or maybe driven around in Norene’s car until one of the infected took a bite out of me or my exposure finally took me. You’re the reason I’m still going. She was right.”
I could see easily that he wasn’t wanting to hear what I was saying, but he couldn’t argue with me either. That was a good thing.
“By now, she’s gone.”
“Yeah, she is. It sucks. They’re all gone,” I told him then reached over and took his gloved hand. “But we’re not. You gotta remember that. You have a scratch. That doesn’t mean you should give up. I need you, Jake. I’m not up for doing this alone.” I said the words but had no idea if they would mean anything to him. We both knew what it could mean if he was infected. I could close my eyes and wake up to him attacking me. It was a chance I was willing to take though. “Get some rest, Jake. There’s no telling what we’ll face tomorrow.”
I laid down on the sofa, watching him as he did the same on his. I didn’t know why, but something inside me wanted me to be closer to him. If something came crashing through the garage door, I wanted to be near him so we could protect each other. I scooted over just a bit, then saw him lean away.
“Cammy, I don’t trust myself until I see what happens with this scratch.”
“I get that,” I told him then closed my eyes. “I guess it’s a good thing I trust you enough for both of us.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jake
I was floating outside of my body watching it all happen. Standing over Cammy, sweat dripped off my forehead and landed loudly in huge puddles on her ivory skin. Pus oozed out of the cut on my hand and saliva ran down my chin. A hunger sat in my gut that pulled so strong, nothing I did could have stopped what came next.
Bending down closer, I took in a deep breath of her hair and closed my eyes. Licking the side of her face, starting at her chin and going up to her ear, she tasted like the sweetest peach I had ever eaten.
My tooth grazed her by her lip as I licked again. Blood trickled slowly down her face and I needed to taste it. I licked her again and the metallic delicacy filled my tongue with joy. I needed more. One taste, one lick, it wasn’t enough.
With a grunt, I put my body on top of hers to pin her down.
That was when she woke up and screamed. It was music to my ears and my stomach talked back singing its own melody of hunger. Unable to fight it off anymore, I put my face on hers and bit. My teeth sunk into the side of her cheek like it was made of jello. Pulling it back, a thick chunk slowly separated from her and the blood, muscles, and flesh slowly ripped away from the bone.
I chewed it holding her gaze the whole time. When the first piece was in my belly, I went in for a better chunk.
Taking her tit in my mouth, I did the same thing. It wasn’t as soft as her face had been, but it tasted so much sweeter. I rolled the detached nipple around in my mouth as I chewed the rest. Her screams egged me on the whole time.
Pus began to ooze out of her fresh cut and mix with the blood pouring out. They landed on the off-white sofa in a pool of foamy pink bubbles. Looking back at her, I watched as her face melted and ran from the bone folding like a ribbon to the ground.
She sat up and began to bite me with her bare teeth, and I watched as pieces of me slid down her exposed throat.
“Jake, wake up,” she said over and over with pieces of me dangling from her mouth. “Jake, get up. You are having a nightmare.”
“Jake.”
“What?” I asked slowly, trying to get my bearings.
“You were having a bad dream. You were screaming and punching the air. Are you alright?”
“I think so. Are you?” I asked, remembering vividly what had happened. I grabbed her, pulling her into me, and started to look her over for any sign I had really hurt her.
“I’m fine. What was that all about?” she asked, ripping her arm out of my hand and sitting on the couch next to me.
“I got it and was coming after you.”
“Jesus, Jake. Well, you didn’t, and you look fine. A little sweaty, but you were fighting in your sleep. I don’t feel a fever.” She had her soft hand on my forehead, and I wanted her to leave it there forever.
She didn’t.
Once she was happy I wasn’t burning up, she put her hand back in her lap and sat a little further away on the same couch. Neither of us would say it, but it was only a matter of time before what I dreamt would become a reality. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to go first so I could make sure she was protected the whole time or if I wanted to go first in hopes she would make it alone until they found a cure – if they found a cure.
“It’s going to be alright.”
“Yeah,” I replied, but it was not convincing. Getting it was one thing, but if I went after her and I was the reason she was killed…I wasn’t sure how I would handle that.
“Look at it this way. If it did happen and you were the one that killed me, you wouldn’t remember it.”
I knew she was trying to make me feel better, but she wasn’t. I thought about my nana and all the other people I had known and how I hadn’t been able to do anything to save them. After my little brother got sick when he was four years old, all I wanted to do was be a doctor and help people. I was convinced I would make a difference and save lives in ways the doctors who took care of Johnathan couldn’t. I was going to do all I could to make sure a mom never had to lose her baby and hurt the way my mom had. If Jon would have been saved, my dad might not have left, and we could have had a happy home.
That was when Nana stepped in and took over. My mom couldn’t handle it for a long time, and I was only six when Jon died. She was the one who saved me back then and I had done nothing to save her from the horrible thing that was claiming everyone.
I wouldn’t let that happen to Cammy. I would fight for her with all that I had. She would make it even if I didn’t.
I tried to look at the cut on my hand in the dim light. I couldn’t see much, but she knew what I was trying to do and grabbed the flashlight to shine on me. I moved the bandage and it looked the same as it had when I wrapped it. I heard her let out her breath the same time I did.
“See,” she said and put her hand on mine, “you are going to be fine. We both are.”
I smiled at her and let her stay close. If I wasn’t getting worse, it was safe for a while.
Crash!
Glass shattered in the back bedroom and we both jumped.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Stay here.”
I pushed her back down and stood to make my way down the hall. Noises made their way around the room and circled back to where I stood. My heart was pounding so loud in my ears, it was hard to hear anything over it.
Boots hitting the wood floor echoed and made it impossible for me to hear where they were in the room. With the walls in there bare and the furniture all but gone, the sound had nothing to stop it from coming at me in every direction.
“Shit,” I heard a man say.
I slowly inched closer with my hammer gripped tightly in both hands. The way he was talking I was sure it wasn’t at the dangerous level of infected yet, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I peeked around the door frame and saw him rummaging through what little was left in the closet. There wasn’t much from what we had seen earlier, but our basement was there and with it, the food. I had to stop him before he found that. I wasn�
��t sure if he was alone or if there were others with him, but if he got out and brought more with him, Cammy and I would be outnumbered. That would be disastrous, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
The floor muffled my steps like it knew I needed to sneak up on him and it was willing to help. I was right on top of him when he turned around and saw me. Frozen in place, we sized each other up.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
“I am looking for anything I can use. My brother, he has it.”
“Only him? What about you?”
“No. I’m clean.” He hid his hands from me as he said it and I instinctively reached for them so I could see.
“Really? That doesn’t look clean.”
Blackened skin, boils that looked ready to rupture, and the clear stream of fluid that leaked out before they ruptured told me he was hours away from the full effects of the virus.
“It’s nothing,” he said and jerked away from me.
“Get out, now.”
“No. I need stuff and if you have it, you are gonna give it to me.”
“I am not giving you anything. Leave.”
“Only way I am leavin’ is with shit or in a body bag.”
He took a fighting stance and held his fists out in front of him. He was going to fight me. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I had to protect us and what little we had. He was infected and already a goner. We weren’t showing signs yet and I needed to keep it that way.
“GRRR!”
He lunged at me and I stumbled back. I wasn’t ready for him to jump like that and I knew I had to keep him from touching me. He had me cornered though and the only way out was to get past him. I was wishing for a weapon with a little longer reach at that point, but having only a hammer, I got ready to swing.
Boom.
The sound was so loud, my ears rang for a second. I realized it had been a gun I heard and immediately turned to see if I could feel any pain. When I couldn’t, I look back up and watched as the young man stumbled backward before crumbling to the floor.
I spun around and saw Cammy standing there with a shotgun in her shaking hands. She had shot him to save me and now what she did was hitting her.
“Cammy.” I ran closer to her, took the gun from her and led her out of the room. “Stay here. I need to make sure he is gone.”
Shaking, she leaned against the wall and didn’t move a muscle.
He was hunched over and the pinkish grey matter spilled from the hole she had put in his midsection. He was gone and while I was thankful for her help, I worried what the second kill she saw in a day was doing to her.
I closed off the room and picked her away from the wall. Taking her back to the living room, I sat her on the same sofa I had used and held her. The nightmare we were thrust in was only getting worse and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. It wasn’t a bad dream that we would wake up from, and the world we knew wasn’t going to be there when the sun came up.
That was our new reality and it was horrible. The only ones we could count on were each other. We would stay in the house for the day to rest, but after that, we had to go. Country or not, it wasn’t safe here either, and if he told his people where he was going and he didn’t come back, it was guaranteed they would come looking for him.
We wouldn’t be there when they did.
CHAPTER TEN
Cammy
The guy in the flannel shirt and boots had been the second man I’d killed in twenty-four hours. I could tell by the way Jake had held on to me for so long that he was worried about how I was taking it. The weird thing about it was, I was alright. There was a bit of initial shock at first. I had been on autopilot when I saw the guy ready to fight with Jake. I’d left my sickle in the other room and didn’t think I had time to run back for it. Instead, I yanked open a closet door and sure enough, there was a shotgun. I’d used one before, so loading and pulling the trigger wasn’t the issue. The problem had been seeing the size of the hole I’d blown in the man’s stomach and the nastiness that oozed out.
I’d sat there by Jake for a bit. The visions were dancing in my mind like a fucked-up ballerina on the worst drugs in the world. Finally, they started to fade away and when they did, I had a newfound fury in me. That’s when we devised our new plan.
Jake was right; we couldn’t stay in the house. Sure, holing up somewhere was a smart idea, but not a place so exposed. Not to mention, we needed information. Someone else had to be out there. In all the messed-up books I’ve read in my life, and all the zombie movies I’ve watched, there was always someone who was immune. Most of the time someone survived. That’s what we needed to find. We needed to find those who were surviving.
“We’ll use the daylight to go through the house and find everything we can use. We’ll pack it in the trunk of the car. We’ll take the food, supplies, and there’s two more guns and lots of ammo. We’ll wipe this place clean and keep moving.”
“But where do we go?” he questioned me, then looked down at his hand like he was waiting for the inevitable.
“Enough of that shit, Jake. Let me check you for the boils again if you don’t believe me. That scratch didn’t come from an infected. You’ve hurt it in some other way. If not, you’d be showing symptoms by now. Use your head, Doctor.”
The look that crossed his face told me I’d hit a nerve. I didn’t know if what I was saying was true, but it was the only thing I had to go on. I needed him to function. I needed him present in all this. I just needed him, one way or the other. He was the only thing I knew in the crazy world we were stuck in and I wasn’t going to let go of that easily.
“Fine,” he agreed. “But we need a plan. A solid plan. I can’t just take you out there with no idea where we are going.”
This would work. He was using his head. If I kept him thinking, Jake would be fine. That’s where he’d always been his best. “I’m not sure. Do you think the CDC is an option? I know they didn’t answer your call, but does that mean they’re gone?”
“Most likely. At least at the one nearest us. They have bigger facilities where others may be working. We could call around to hospitals and things in the area.”
“The National Guard?”
I watched as his eyes widened and a smile lit his face. “Cammy, that’s it. You’re brilliant. There’s a National Guard Armory at the edge of town. If anyone is still around, I’m sure they would’ve gone there. It’s honestly their best option.”
“Great, now we have the plan you say we need. Let’s pack this shit up and move.”
“Not yet.” His words stopped me dead in my tracks and I turned to look at him. I could see his big brain was still working. “We can load up, but I think we should wait until nightfall to move out. If we go in the daylight, people like him,” he said glancing toward the other closed room in the house, “will see us easier. We could put a target on our backs. I think we should wait.”
That was the downside of making Jake think too much. He came up with good points you really didn’t want to face. The idea of more infected out there sent shivers down my spine. They could try to take the car, all our supplies, or even take their hunger out on us. It wasn’t something either of us wanted. “Fine, but as soon as it’s dark out, we go. I thought this place would be good for us, so far, it’s not been.”
“Agreed. We go ASAP and see what we can find out there.”
The new confidence in him was a great thing to see. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the same thoughts. No, the only things that floated around in my mind were the bad things we could see. I knew a girl up the road a bit named Izzy. What if I saw her eating that dick of a boyfriend of hers named Logan? A random person Jake has treated at the hospital could be wandering around in the middle of the road chewing on their own arm. We had no idea what was out there, but we needed to face it. I could pretend I didn’t know what we were about to face to keep him motivated. I owed him that much.
“I’m going to start packing up,” I announced, know
ing I needed to do something to keep myself busy. I couldn’t wait around for dark or keep looking at his hands and arms to see if there were boils forming on him.
He didn’t have anything else to add, so I made my way out of the living room then stopped at the basement door. We’d brought a lot of stuff up, but there was so much more down there. I felt like a pig or something, wanting to take everything with us. What if someone else came here looking for help? Then again, what if they didn’t? That would mean everything down there would sit and go to waste. It wasn’t logical. It also wasn’t completely safe down there.
“Here, I have some boxes.”
I turned to see Jake hurrying toward me carrying two totes. “Those aren’t boxes,” I smirked.
“Close enough. Boxes, totes, whatever. We can carry a lot in them.”
I nodded in agreement then looked back at the door. “Maybe we should take the gun down with us this time.”
“To be honest, we shouldn’t both be down there. It leaves us vulnerable up here. Someone should stay up here and keep watch.”
Again, he and his overthinking wasn’t sitting well with me. I didn’t want to be in either place alone. “How do you want to do it?”
“I can carry more up. Why don’t I go down and you stay up here? You can keep the guns up here. I can’t use them down there with my hands full anyway.”
“Hurry,” I told him. “Load up one tote, fast. Then you can run down for the second one and that’s enough. If we don’t get it all, fuck it.”
He didn’t say anything else; instead, he walked over to the door and grabbed the knob with his gloved hand. I watched as he hesitated, then reached down and touched the hammer hanging from his side to make sure he still had it with him. When he felt reassured enough, he yanked the door open and descended into the darkness below.