“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
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.”