Pros: He liked Matt. Gaby liked Matt. Matt was their friend. Is their friend.
Cons: Matt was bitten. He was probably infected. That was how it worked. Josh had seen it up close, more than once. When they bit you, they turned you. Wasn’t that how it worked? Though he didn’t understand why it was taking Matt so long to turn. Did it usually take this long?
Conclusion: Uncertain, because Matt hadn’t turned yet. He was still Matt. Mostly. Maybe Josh was wrong after all? Shouldn’t Matt have turned by now if he was infected? Could he risk it, though? Could he risk Gaby’s life on a hunch? What if he was wrong about everything? But what if he was right about everything?
Matt hadn’t gotten better since Josh had brought him back to the basement an hour ago. If anything, he looked worse, and even Gaby, sitting by his side, seemed to realize that. She continued wetting the towel and wiping the sweat off Matt’s forehead and face, but Josh knew it was pointless. There wasn’t a whole lot they could to do help poor Matt now. The bloodsucker’s tainted blood was inside him, coursing through his veins this very moment.
But why hasn’t Matt turned yet?
Gaby finally looked over at Josh, and he was struck by how tired she looked. “Why didn’t you guys take the truck?”
The question surprised him, and it took him a moment to understand it. “We didn’t think we would be going out that far. By the time we were a block away…”
She nodded. “Did you get anything from the store?”
“No. I was about to, but …”
“This happened.”
“Yeah.” Josh paused. “Matt was throwing a bunch of stuff into his backpack, but I forgot it at the store when we ran out. I can go back for it. It’s probably still there.”
“No. Not today. Maybe tomorrow, once Matt’s feeling better.”
“Yeah, once Matt gets better,” Josh said, not believing a single word of it.
Neither one of them said anything for a while, and the basement felt as if it were squeezing Josh. He started to perspire and wiped at a bead of sweat on his forehead.
“But just in case,” Gaby said.
“In case of what?”
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she got up and walked over to where they had stacked a half-dozen brown moving boxes filled with supplies. Whenever they found a new place to hide out, they always transferred their supplies from Matt’s pickup truck, which they had been using since Ridley. It was better than leaving the food outside, where anyone could just take it. And besides, it saved them the trouble of going back and forth, especially since they usually spent a lot of time in one spot anyway.
Gaby rifled through a backpack on top of the boxes. He recognized it as another one of Matt’s backpacks. She took something out. When she turned around, he was surprised to see her holding a gun — a silver chrome revolver.
“Is that yours?” he asked.
“It’s Matt’s,” Gaby said. “I think it’s his dad’s. He showed it to me once. I don’t think he’s ever actually used it.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
Gaby walked over and held the gun out to him. Josh stared at it like it was some third arm Gaby wanted him to have.
“Why me?” he asked.
“You’re the guy,” she said, as if that answered everything.
He stared at her for a moment, then back at the gun. Then over at Matt.
I’m the guy…
Josh took it. The gun felt big, unwieldy, and cold, and he didn’t think he could wrap his fingers around the handle, but when he tried, he found that he could. Josh looked down at the steel object and couldn’t shake the very alien feel of it against his skin.
“There’s a safety,” Gaby said. “My dad showed me. He had a gun for home protection, and when he bought it, he had us all gather in the living room and showed it to us. He wanted us to know what it was, how to hold it if we had to — if he wasn’t home and someone broke in — and things like that. Here.” She took the gun back and showed him a switch near the trigger. She flicked it with her thumb. “It’s the safety, see? And the red button? If you switch it there, that means the gun is ready to fire.”
She offered the gun back and looked at him, as if to say, “Here’s your second chance to turn it down.”
Josh hesitated. It was always Matt who led the group and made the major decisions. Matt was bigger, stronger, and older. It was Matt who went into the rooms first when it was too dark, or took risks that freaked Josh out. It was always Matt…
But Matt couldn’t do any of those things now, and Gaby was giving him Matt’s gun.
He understood what she was doing. She was trusting him. The very idea horrified him, and at the same time made him swell with pride.
I’m the guy…
Josh took the gun for the second time.
“It’s loaded,” she said, “so be careful with it.”
“Do I have to pull this back?” he asked, his thumb on the hammer. It was heavy, and he had to exert a lot of strength just to pull it back even a little.
“No,” she said, “but it makes shooting easier.” She looked at him closely for a moment. “Maybe I should keep it…”
“No,” Josh said quickly. “It’s a gun. Guns are simple things, that’s what makes them so deadly. Anyone can use them.”
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but nodded anyway.
Josh sat back down and placed the gun on the floor next to him. “Matt will probably be fine,” he said.
“Yeah, probably,” she said, and smiled back at him.
He could tell she was lying, too.
Around three in the afternoon, it seemed like Matt was getting better. Or at least, he stopped shaking, and for a moment Josh was afraid he had died. But no, he wasn’t dead. Matt had simply gone to sleep. His face, already pale for the last few hours, now turned an almost opaque shade of white. The only movement was the steady rise and fall of his chest.
Gaby felt Matt’s forehead. “It’s so much hotter than before. He’s really burning up.”
“What does that mean?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know, Josh. But it’s probably not good.”
“But look at him,” Josh said. He stood up and walked over to stand beside Gaby. “He just looks asleep.”
“He shouldn’t be this hot, though. This isn’t just a fever.”
“Maybe we should—” Josh started, but stopped himself. He looked down and saw he was holding the gun in his right hand.
When did I pick the gun up?
“What is it?” Gaby asked. Then she saw the gun. “Josh…”
He looked over at Matt, and he could feel Gaby watching him closely.
“Not yet, Josh,” Gaby said.
“When?” he asked, not even sure he wanted to know the answer.
“I don’t know, but not yet. He’s still…Matt.”
“But he won’t be for long. Look at him. You said it yourself. He’s not getting better, he’s getting worse.”
“I’m not a doctor, Josh. I could be wrong. I probably am wrong.”
But he didn’t buy it. She wasn’t committed to the answer. She wanted to believe. So did he. But he had eyes, and it was hard to believe when his eyes told him something completely different.
“Gaby,” he said, “you should step back.”
“Why?”
Because I’m the guy, he thought, but said, “Just in case.”
She seemed to think about it, then got up and began moving away from Matt.
She had gotten three steps before Josh shot Matt in the head.
He expected the gun to buck a little harder. There was a kick — a big kick — but not big enough to knock his aim completely off. Maybe he had actually expected it and was able to absorb it. Or maybe he felt so numbed by what he was about to do that when the kick happened, he hardly felt it.