I force myself into some semblance of focus when, after sundown, it becomes obvious that we need to find a way to get to the other side of the stream that’s clogging up the road we’ve roughly been following, a mile or two into the woods. Since I’m more of a liability than an asset myself now, I relieve Martinez and Burns of Bree duty, but Romanoff won’t let me shake him off. Of course, things don’t quite go as planned, but we don’t lose anyone else, so that’s a win in my books.
Maybe we even stand a chance to survive this.
We crash for a few hours in a ravine, close to a stream that makes enough noise to, hopefully, hide any inevitable snoring sounds or whatnot. I can’t help but smile when I see that Bree is sleeping with her new best friend—her aluminum bat—right next to her. I don’t even try to fall asleep, although my mind dearly needs it. Staying still to let my body recover is all that’s in it for me, with my body still alight with agony. It gets better after some time without the pack weighing me down and constant motion aggravating the wound.
It gets better when, about an hour into our night rest, Martinez appears out of nowhere, another syringe in his hand. “Morphine,” he explains, and goes on before I can tell him the obvious—it won’t dull the pain. “I know it does shit for your pain receptors, but it will help your body keep pushing through.” He pauses. “I have two doses. Each should last you around seven hours. If I give you one right now and the next tomorrow at noon, you’ll be able to last for another day.”
“And if I refuse?”
He shrugs. “I give you a thirty-percent chance that you’re dead before ten in the morning.”
I feel like shit but not like I’m about to die. It’s easy to refuse, particularly since death feels like a relief. But I trust his assessment, and considering that’s likely the last heavy painkiller in his pack, he wouldn’t be offering it to me if he thought it was already wasted. At my nod, he peels away my shirt from my back and injects the contents into the thick muscles next to my spine. It hurts like a bitch but I manage not to make a sound. Breathing hurts worse, if I’m honest.
I don’t feel better, but breathing becomes a little easier and before long, I feel the other effects of the drug take hold. I’m not hallucinating per se, but the leaves of the trees above me shouldn’t look like they are ready to come down and eat me, I’m sure. It certainly helps with the dark cloud that has sunk over my thoughts for the past day. End of the world—who cares?
Come morning, Zilinsky badgers me into letting her check on the wounds, but there’s nothing she can do. The seal made up of the glue and patches underneath the bandages is holding well enough and will do for another couple of days. I’m aware that I need someone to take care of this before long, but from the estimate Martinez gave me, I should be good for another day. She cracks a joke about how the scars that will result from this won’t make me any more ugly. I can’t help but grin back. Yeah, that’s the least of my worries.
Counting the dark heaps on the ground, I know we’ve lost seven people of those committing themselves to follow me, but the overall death toll is much higher. Hamilton’s people killed a few. Way more died in the zombie incursion of the atrium and assorted hallways around it. Neither of us has a clue about how many we were able to dig out of the rubble after the explosions that might have lived a few more hours—or not, if they’d gotten caught on that bridge, injuries making them too slow to keep up with us. I try to console myself with the fact that Bree is still alive, but while I’m insanely glad for that, it doesn’t take away from the pain and guilt raging in the pit of my stomach. Whether I paid them for the mission or not, those were my guys. They were my responsibility. They trusted me to get them out safely—and I let them down. Not even the false levity coursing through my veins can take away from that.
I get a few quiet minutes of chatting with Bree, but then I need to address the elephant in the room. First, I’m in command, whether I look like I’m swaying on death’s doorstep or not. Second, where we are going from here. And third, what we’ll do with the two people currently hacking up phlegm, obviously infected with the fucking virus. Thankfully, Thompson understands and takes it upon himself to make sure neither he nor the college kid will become a problem for us. Still, another two names to weigh heavily on my conscience.
Somehow, I make it through another day—and across an infested highway. That was fun.
In the afternoon, I realize the reason why my vision is getting blurry and my stomach is heaving nonstop is because I’m running a fever. It’s been a long while since my body was capable of that—and I know there’s no reason to cheer. It could be another side effect of the shots, but more likely is that I have the mother of all infections growing in my upper torso, and it’s gotten so bad that even my iron-clad immune system is being forced to its knees. Or about to rally one last-ditch effort. I don’t really care what it is—but it’s bad. I don’t miss how worried Martinez gets, and he soon infects Zilinsky with more of the same shit. I’m tempted to simply put my gun in my mouth and take care of that issue for them, but then I’d miss out on so much terribly painful fun…
Then, I find myself standing in front of a small house in the woods, talking with a geezer who knows exactly what will happen to his wife and him if he doesn’t play ball. But I try to be at my best behavior, because gunning him down in front of everyone won’t help morale. My mouth is running on autopilot, but I seem to be doing a passingly good job pretending to be a decent guy because they let us stay the night. I try to help but Zilinsky soon shoos me into the house and out of her way, as usual more than pulling her own weight.
I wish I didn’t have to do what I’ll have to do next, but there is no way around it. As much as I trust all those idiots with my life, only Martinez is proficient in cutting people up and putting them back together, and he can’t do this on his own. I’m running on the last fumes of morphine, the inevitable crash right around the corner. And this time I know I won’t be rebounding if they can’t fix me.
Bree looks like shit when I step into the kitchen. Her eyes are red with dark circles underneath, very fetching indeed. Also, she looks mad as hell, which is actually quite appealing. Apocalypse-chique suits her. And that’s not just the drugs talking.
“Then you’re the perfect woman for the job,” Martinez tells her, then grins. “Plus, you have small hands. You’ll get way farther in with the scalpel than I would.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Bree protests—but it’s feeble, at best.
“He’s not,” I say where I’m leaning against the door frame, too weak to support my weight otherwise. Her eyes widen, but I doubt it’s from the magnificence that is me.
“Remind me again when I signed up for this shit?” she quips, but it’s token protest at best.
Some banter follows. Also some hedging on her part, but I can tell that she has already resigned herself to playing my nurse. Surgeon, rather, I snidely correct myself. Surgeon, because she’s going to cut me open and scrape me out like a goose. Do they do that to geese, I wonder? And what did the geese do to deserve that treatment?
It comes as a relief when I can finally shut up and get ready—until she realizes we’re fresh out on anesthetics, not that they would work on me. But she doesn’t know that yet. She also doesn’t know that I can only feel about half of what she’ll do to me, and I doubt it will get much worse than what is already going on inside my torso.
“Maude doesn’t have anything stronger than aspirin here, and I used up the last of Martinez’s morphine before we ran into the mob that chased us down to the Interstate,” I inform her.
Bree goes still, staring at me. I can’t help it and crack a smile, because—woohoo! Just spilled the beans about that. “Are you insane? You were high the entire time?!”
I want to clarify that this has only been going on for the past fifteen hours, but I doubt that’s the detail that makes her stare at me with fury in her eyes. I’m stupid enough to shrug, which hurts like hell. “How do
they say it? As a kite.”
Of course she requites that with another slew of rambling arguments, but that’s okay. I’m only lying here, likely bleeding to my death inside, with the infection spreading to my heart and limbs by the minute. No rush.
“I’ll probably pass out somewhere in the middle of it, anyway,” I tell her as she picks up the scalpel, finally done with saying her piece. The iodine swap that Martinez is using to disinfect my entire torso feels nice and cool. Damn, but I really must be burning up.
“That’s so much relief to me,” Bree mutters—and yup, that’s real fear in her eyes. I’m touched. No, really, I am. I’m sure that the other assholes in the room would miss me, but she looks terrified of losing me—and that without knowing what might happen to her if she actually does kill me here, on this makeshift operating table.
Avoiding her hand since she just sterilized it, I reach up and grab her arm just below her elbow. “Remember when I asked you to trust me?” She nods and lets out a shaky breath. “Well, that goes both ways. I trust you.” And I do. Absolutely, irrevocably. Maybe that’s the drugs talking, too, but deep down, I know that she will give it her all, and I know that she will save me. Quite poetic, that turn of events, but if I’d had a choice, I’d have chosen her to be the one. And now she is—or will be, if she finally gets her head out of her ass and gets to cutting.
She does, before I can say anything else and make it all worse.
And, shit, that hurts!
But even when my entire world goes white with pain and I’m losing track of what exactly she’s doing, it’s easy to hold on. It’s as if my hand is still wrapped around her arm, letting my touch reassure her—and her presence reassure me in turn.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything close to this for anyone.
All this is only possible due to one thing: the fucking zombie apocalypse. Because otherwise, I’d be in a hospital—military or civilian—handcuffed to the table with guys waving guns in my face. And she would be back home with that cunt of a girlfriend of hers, letting herself be comforted because of the ordeal she went through—ha!—soon to forget that, for a single day, she was courageous and strong and very much the woman she is supposed to be.
We’d never see each other again.
Thank fuck that didn’t happen.
What do they say? There’s a silver lining to everything—and I think I just found mine. And I’ll be damned if I ever let her go again.
Hero
Hero: “Don’t be a hero. You know that heroes get killed.” But does she listen? This woman will be the death of me. - Nate's POV, later half of GF#2: Outbreak
Hero
What annoys me the most about the zombie apocalypse? That would probably be the water situation. Sure, we lucked out, starting it all off with a sporting goods store mostly untouched, meaning we have actual water filters and don’t have to use some threadbare cloth for the purpose, but what exactly do you want to filtrate when two-thirds of all sources of fresh water have something dead in them? And hot, bottled water only tastes tolerable when you’re already neck-deep in dehydration.
I’m sure we all have our own personal gripes. Romanoff won’t shut up about us needing to hit larger towns so he can replenish his booze stash—what for, I have no idea, but his suggestions have started to become an inside joke between him, Zilinsky, and me. Burns is jumpy as fuck because our ammo stores are, at best, at half of what they should be, and we carry zero explosives. I’m not sure what Martinez is more vexed about—the fact that he has less than a handful of Tylenol, or that we don’t go out of our way to change that. I think Bates is about to shit a brick if he has to eat animal chow one more time. Half of them are starting to complain because it’s been a month of daily, overly long marches, and it’s obvious that even more of them are wrestling with some kind of withdrawal—nicotine being the least of it and easy to replenish. Surprisingly, Bree is the only one not constantly complaining about something—with Zilinsky being the obvious exception. I’d love to chalk it up to women being a tad more resilient, but the day Zilinsky complains about anything is the day I’m ready to hang up my guns for good, and Bree is still too scared anyone will dismiss her as fragile and whiny. Half of the time I’m feeling ever so slightly guilty for reinforcing those beliefs, but mostly I’m glad she doesn’t need a babysitter all the time anymore.
I’d much appreciate it if she stopped thinking that celibacy is a part of her new life regime, but I’m afraid I’m partly to blame for that as well. Maybe even two thirds.
A moment’s distraction thinking about that juicy ass I’d really like to grab right now is enough, and Zilinsky’s kick hits my left thigh perfectly, unbalancing me. Never one to miss an opening when it presents itself, she follows up with a punch—squarely into the knot of new scar tissue on my upper torso. I fold as the pain exploding through my chest is unbearable for a few seconds straight, and if I’d tried to resist, her next kick would have punched my lights out—at least for a little while. When I’m able to straighten and breathe again, Zilinsky is staring at me, a disappointed frown on her face. I have the distinct feeling that she knows exactly what I have been thinking about. I should likely thank her for not kicking me in the junk.
“You’re still too slow,” she grates out instead of admonishing me for actually being stupid.
“I’m recovering.” I’m not even using it as an excuse—it’s true. I don’t protest her assessment—the by-now no longer inflamed scratches along my left forearm are a constant reminder of that. Since it’s now day ten since I got them and still my hunger for brains hasn’t set in, I think I’m good. But not being able to properly clean the wounds for half a day and thus letting infection set in—that my body is slow to combat since it only just got rid of the last dregs of what the fucking rebar did to me—hasn’t helped. Under normal conditions, my arm should have healed up within three days. Since I still need regular bandage changes on my torso wound, that’s not about to happen anytime soon.
Zilinsky almost sneers in my face, reminding me that I’ve drifted off yet again. “You spend too much time lazing on your ass, and you don’t eat enough.” Well, good luck with changing that. All of us have lost weight—the inevitable consequence of limited food sources without preparation beforehand—but I refuse to eat a full share, or as much as she wants me to, when I’m not one of our heavy bruisers right now. I can carry the full weight of my pack, and I’ve been on a couple of raids—including the one that almost got me killed last week—but if things get rough, I’m still better off running instead of fighting, and that doesn’t warrant getting a good portion of what little protein we have available between us.
I don’t say any of that—we both know it’s true, even if she doesn’t want to hear it—and with a grim nod, she dismisses me. I sag against one of the nearby trees, wincing when even that makes the ache flare brightly again. While I do my best to ignore the pain, I look over to where Bree is sparring with Martinez. They are mostly goofing off now. Zilinsky looks ready to call them out for it but then lets it slide. Bree is a real trooper—walking endlessly every day, then standing watch, always doing the PT part as well, and never with a word of protest. She’s allowed to have some fun when her energy is drained for good.
I really wouldn’t mind if that included her jumping, buck naked, into a river again, but can’t have that every day now, can I? At least that clarified for me—three days ago—that my body was on the mend when my libido came roaring back out of whatever dark recesses of my mind it had retreated to while my body was not up to any extracurricular shenanigans on top of burning through every available resource required to heal. That was as much a relief as it’s still a cause for annoyance. Am I glad to know, for good, that I’ve made it? Yes, but being able to commiserate with the general air of “this sucks, and I can’t even get laid” that has spread over our group is only fun in theory.
I know I’m about to be accosted when I see Bree stiffen across our little sparring ground. Th
ere’s only one kind of incident that makes her freeze like that; a shambler incursion would have her duck for cover and her weapons. I’m sure that brick of a shotgun of hers is looking very tempting to her right now, but she doesn’t need the placating look Martinez gives her when she turns back to him. I can’t help a little smirk. Oh, Bree, spiteful little spitfire that you are—you have much to learn.
Do I enjoy the ensuing chat with Madeline? No. I’d much rather get up and let Zilinsky kick me into oblivion ten times over. Could I put an end to my ordeal with a single scathing remark? Yes, and I probably should, but since I realized just how aggravated Bree gets by the woman’s sheer presence, I’ve decided to wait and see what comes of that. Not simply to annoy her—although I readily admit, watching Bree stalk around camp like a bristling cat has become my second-favorite kind of entertainment, and the only one I have access to as long as the intrepid Ms. Lewis decides to keep her pants on—but because this is not my battle to fight. Bree wants to stake her claim? Then she better get on with it. Should she decide not to, then she needs to mold her behavior to that decision as well. But all that is my own vanity talking, and while that factors into my decisions, if it had just been that, I would have long ago told Madeline that her attempts at seducing me are useless at best and always unwanted. No, the reason why I suffer through this is because Zilinsky rightfully pointed out that Bree needs to deal with Madeline herself, or else she’ll never get over that raging insecurity that’s as bothersome as it’s hilarious.
I mean, I get it. The world went to shit, martial law and survival of the fittest suddenly wiping away what used to be the boundaries of acceptable social behavior overnight, which put all of us on edge. Now, if you’re a woman—all on your own, or, worse yet, trying to keep your children alive and safe—it’s smart to be cautious around any bunch of unwashed men. We had that initial talk with Madeline the first evening after most had tucked in for the night—that she initiated, which I hold her in high regard for. Sure, my ego didn’t like hearing her open suspicions toward us, but I appreciate candor over delusions any day. We were quick to dissuade her of the notion that she was required to offer herself up in exchange for protection—and to ensure that nobody even so much as looked sideways at her daughter. The fact that she felt it was necessary to spell that out as plainly as she could—“You can do anything to me, just leave her alone”—was sobering. She didn’t tell us what had happened to them before they threw their lot in with us, but it’s not hard to imagine she had a very good reason for not sugarcoat things. Of course we told her that she was safe with us, no actions required or expected of her beyond making sure not to get us killed and to follow any orders given in that spirit, but I know she still doesn’t believe us. Was I tempted to tell my people that I’d castrate any asshole engaging in any sort of barter with her, be it of a carnal nature or otherwise? Hell, yes, but laying down the law like that has never been my style. They know what will happen to them should they step out of line with her—and they are also aware that it won’t be me holding that knife. I’m sure it wasn’t me tolerating Madeline’s behavior but Zilinsky’s open ignorance of it that made a few of them chance it. I have my personal reservations about it, but on a moral point, I’m well aware that it will help rather than hinder their willingness to follow my command if I let them make their own decisions. I don’t have to like said decisions as long as they don’t cause more trouble.
Beyond Green Fields | Book 5 | Survive [A Post-Apocalyptic Anthology] Page 8
