by Reese Rivers
“Ha! I knew nothing when this all started. Like, you know nothing, John Snow level nothing. Ryan and Tommy had the overall plan but the actual knowledge of doing a lot of this stuff came after the fences went up and we could relax a little bit and learn. I don’t know if you remember back then but a lot of the internet stayed up for almost a month before crashing. Tommy figured that’s when backup systems and towers finally started to go dark. Anyway, around the end of week three, we hit libraries and when the guys were messing around with some of the computers in the first one we got lucky and saw they could access a bunch of websites. They went nuts printing off information. Tara, Lisa, and I spent half a day hauling out entire reference sections into the trucks while they geeked out. There’s an awful lot of hours in a day now that all the noise has been stripped from the world and I had just spent years with my nose in textbooks for med school - so I already had an edge on the studying part.” She shrugs one slim shoulder. “You can only spend so much time watching DVDs in your downtime so I just studied and then I studied some more.”
Kelsey moves over and leans against the table beside me, shredding the dead leaves with her fingers. “After … after I was alone, it helped a little. Helped to just eat away some of those hours with studying and work, you know?” She asks, turning those big grey eyes up to me.
This woman is an oxymoron. It should bother my analytical brain but instead it intrigues me. The more I learn about her story, the more I’m awed by her strength. But it’s written all over her face and in her eyes just how fragile she is. I don’t think it would take much to shatter what’s left of her. Even though I know we will have to be extremely careful not to add cracks to her, the way she’s looking up at me right now has me turning towards her and my hand coming up to cup her cheek. Those haunted eyes of hers widen at the touch and I’m ready to drop my hand at the first sign of panic that comes into them. Instead, I feel her lean slightly into my palm and it’s all the sign I need to move closer to her so that our bodies are only separated by the slimmest margin. When I run my thumb over her sharp cheekbone I feel her tremble in response. My head lowers down to hers as she tilts her head back to offer her lips to me and her eyes flutter half-closed …
“There you guys are! I’ve been looking for you.”
She jumps back like a scalded cat and now the panic flashes into her eyes. I clench my jaw as I turn away and nail Grayson with a death look that promises excruciating pain in the very near future. The bastard shoots me a satisfied grin and then focuses past me on Kelsey.
“Gavin’s not doing so great. He’s thrashing around and moaning quite a bit.”
“OH, oh no! I can’t believe I forgot to check on him! I’ll go right now.” She gushes out as she rushes past me for the door. Her headlong rush slows for just long enough to shoot me a big-eyed, confused look over her shoulder before she’s through the door and gone.
I stare at the empty door for a few moments until Gray laughs.
“Well, that looked therapeutic.”
I step away from the table to walk past him towards the door and slam my fist into his stomach as I step past. “Here’s your therapy,” I mutter. He folds over with an “oomph” and then just laughs even harder between wheezes. As I leave the greenhouse I can’t help but wonder how much easier life would be without my brothers around to mess everything up. Much easier, but I wouldn’t trade any of them. Not even for the last chili mac MRE.
Kelsey
Irush down the row between potato plants with my heart pounding and it has nothing to do with how fast I’m moving. We almost … he was going to … oh my god! What the hell am I doing? I’ve only known him for hours … HOURS! I know I was desperate to not be alone anymore but, come on, Kelsey! Nope, ain’t going to happen. I need to lock down my lips. Put a damn chastity belt on them or something. No matter how much Oliver’s calm gaze soothes my crazy or how many butterflies flutter around in my belly when he looks at me like I’m the most important puzzle he needs to solve, I can’t go there. It would only end up causing trouble. Nope, friend zone it is.
I hit the patio and bounce up the stairs of Tara’s, er, the men’s camper and find Devin and Linc glaring at each other inside in tense silence. I freeze and dart my eyes between them but settle on Linc’s when the anger on his face slides away and a smile replaces it. I swallow past the worry I’m hit with at the tension in the air.
“Um, is everything ok? Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I guess I should have knocked now that you guys have moved in here.”
“You don’t have to fucking knock, Kelsey. This is your place. We’re just fucking guests.” Devin snaps at me, causing me to flinch back for a second. Argh! He’s such a jerk but strangely enough, his abrasive attitude towards me is almost easier to deal with than when the other three are being super nice to me.
“No, you are not!” I snap right back at him. “I let you in so this could be your home. If you want to be a guest, if you don’t like it here, then grab what you need and check the fuck out of this hotel.”
We glare at each other for a few beats but a loud moan from the bedroom pulls my attention so I just shoot him a solid middle finger salute and whirl around to race up the stairs to my patient. I ignore Linc’s chuckle but almost trip up the stairs when I hear him quietly say to Dev, “That was fucking hot.”
No time to think about that because Gavin is in serious trouble. He’s moving around restlessly on the bed and he’s deathly pale except for two bright spots on his cheeks that tell me his fever hasn’t backed down at all. I move over and change his fluid bag out with a new one and just stand looking at him, frowning while I rack through my med intern brain trying to come up with what else I can do to treat him. I have a lot of medical supplies stocked away from the med clinics and urgent care centers we looted but there are still a lot of things I don’t have access to anymore. A nasty shiver goes through me at the memory of the horror house level of carnage we had to wade through to get them.
Linc steps into the room and I stare at him without really seeing him thinking, thinking, thinking.
“Kelsey? Are you ok?”
“Hmm? When did you say he got this wound and what caused it again?” I ask.
He looks at Gavin and then back to me. “I think it was four or maybe five days ago. Sorry, the days kind of blend together when you’re on the run. Um, he was dodging a zombie and he got too close to a wrecked truck. A sharp jagged piece of metal sliced right into his side. What are you thinking?”
Before I can ask my next question, Gavin’s body snaps straight and stiff and he starts convulsing. I dive forward to reach him and try to turn him on his side but one of his arms jerks up and I get an elbow to the face, sending my head rocking back.
“Dev! Get up here!” Linc roars and seconds later Devin flies into the room. He looks at me hanging half off of the bed, sees Linc trying to hold Gavin down, and slams his body down on the seizing man’s legs.
“Turn him on his side! Recovery position!” I yell at them as I get back on the bed and try to stabilize his neck.
“Kells, back off!” Linc yells at me but I ignore him and get two hands on either side of Gavin’s jaw as they turn him. His neck and jaw are rigid under my hands as the seizure goes on for what feels like forever but is probably only a minute or two. When it finally slows and then stops, we work together to turn him back onto his back. Linc and Dev step back as I run my hands up and down Gavin’s neck and jaw. His muscles should have relaxed with the end of the seizure but they’re still stiff. I think I know what this is and it pisses me off.
“Shit!”
“What were you thinking? He could have hurt you worse.” Linc demands to know.
I give him a “what are you talking about”, annoyed look.
“Your eye is already swelling up!” He says in exasperation.
My hand goes up to my face and I press the tips of my fingers against the ache I can now feel and wince but then drop them and shrug as I focus on Gavin aga
in.
As I straighten the kinked IV tubing I answer. “Three black eyes, one swollen jaw, eleven stitches, and that was just the first six months of my internship. Sometimes, being a doctor hurts.” I lean back and sigh before looking at them. “Does one of you have a knife on you?”
Devin nods slowly, “I’ve got one in my boot. Why?”
I look back at Gavin sadly. “Can you stay here with him for a few minutes? I need to run to storage for something but I won’t be long.”
He shares a confused look with Linc but nods. “Yeah, of course, but why the knife?”
My eyebrows shoot up at the dumb question but I answer anyway.
“In case he dies. Why else?”
Again with that shared confused look but this time Linc speaks. “He wasn’t bit. We checked him to be sure.”
Now my eyebrows really shoot up in surprised disbelief. “Doesn’t matter. The dead don’t stay dead. Bit or not. How do you guys not know that?”
Gavin starts moaning again so I scramble off the bed and move over to stand in front of Devin and take his hand.
He tries to snatch it back but I narrow my eyes and snap at him, “Stop it!”
Then I pull it up and bring it around to the back of my head and move his fingers to the soft spot just under my skull.
“Feel that? Right before the bone of my skull starts? A hard swift thrust right there with the blade. It’s fast and less messy.” I drop his hand and turn away to go get what I need. “If he stops breathing, don’t wait. Sometimes, they can turn really fast.”
I slip away before they can ask any more questions and jog over to the cavern, past the hen pen and all the way to the back to a rock wall that isn’t real and use both hands to push on the spring-mounted door that blends into the fake rock wall. There’s no power back here because running cords or wiring to it would give away the hidden room so I click on the powerful battery run lantern and go to the shelves with the medical supplies. I grab what I need and an extra bag of saline and head back to my doomed patient. There’s a small chance he might recover but it’s a slim bet.
Oliver and Grayson are just returning from the fields as I reach the men’s camper, ha - got it that time, and of course, Oliver’s shrewd eyes zero in on my face and narrow. He stops me with a hand on my arm as I try to slide past him.
“What happened to your eye? It’s swelling up.”
I step back and move around him. “It’s nothing. Gavin had a seizure and his elbow caught me as I was rolling him. It’s fine, honest!” I say as I go back up the steps and climb to the bedroom. Linc and Devin are right where I left them so I nod and wave them out.
“You guys can go. I’ve got this.”
Linc crosses his arms over his wide chest with a hard look. “You stay, we stay.”
It’s sweet but it also kind of makes me want to roll my eyes at him. Instead, I just load the syringe with morphine and inject it into the port. I set the vial and the recapped syringe in a drawer and by the time I look again, Gavin’s body has relaxed and he’s resting easier. The steady rise and fall of his chest tell me it’s safe to leave him for a while. I wave my two over protectors out of the room and we join Oliver and Grayson on the main level.
“What did you give him?” Devin asks with a hint of suspicion in his tone.
I’m tired, like really fucking tired so I snap at him sarcastically. “Cyanide. It’s all part of my evil plan to take you guys out one by one.” He throws up his hands in defense and steps back so I gently probe at the swelling on the side of my eye while giving the real answer. “Morphine and no, not enough to kill him, just enough to keep him comfortable until …” I trail off not wanting to say it. Not wanting for yet another to leave.
“You don’t think he’s going to get better, do you?” Linc asks, so I heave out a breath and shake my head.
“I’m ninety percent sure that it’s tetanus. His neck and jaw are already stiffening and eventually he’ll suffocate. There’s a small chance he might recover but that combined with the infection in his wound makes that doubtful. I only have antibiotics in pill form so if he can’t swallow them the infection will lead to sepsis, that’s if tetanus doesn’t … kill him … first. There’s nothing I can do but keep him comfortable. I’m sorry.”
A wave of exhaustion hits me so I lean against the kitchen island and close my eyes, rolling my neck to try and ease the stiffness and knots in my shoulders. “Is it still today? It really feels like we’ve had three todays and we should just move on to tomorrow by now,” I say, trying to lighten the gloom I’m feeling. When I open my eyes there’s a chest in front of my face and an ice pack lifting up towards my eye. I frown at it and then look up at Linc’s determined expression.
“Come on, Doc, treat the injury.”
He says it cajolingly so I give him a stubborn pout but swipe it from his hand and gingerly apply it to the swelling.
“That’s Doctor-intern to you, mister,” I tell him in a mockingly stern tone, causing him to chuckle as he takes my elbow and leads me over to the couch, taking the seat beside me. I can only see out of one eye because of the ice pack but it’s enough to see that they’re all looking at me - again. It’s a little too much attention all at once so I drop my gaze down to my lap and pick at the frayed threads in one of the rips in my jeans and try and think what else I can do, if anything, for poor Gavin. There’s no way of knowing if he’ll even live through the night. That thought has me sitting up straight and dropping the ice pack from my eye.
“You can’t sleep in here!” I blurt out. I see confusion at that so I clear my throat and clarify. “Gavin. If he dies in the night you will all be in danger when he turns. Um, there’s three extra beds in my place and the couch folds out into another one. You guys can sleep in there until, um, until. I’d put you up in the motorhome but it’s packed full of stored supplies and it would take a lot of work to move it all out.”
Linc lifts my hand with the ice pack back onto my eye. “It’s fine, Kells. We can sleep anywhere. Don’t worry about it.”
I sigh and lean back. “That’s nice. Kells, I mean. My friend…friends used to call me that. It’s nice to hear it again.”
“You should take a nap. It will do you good.” Oliver pipes up, causing me to smile at his sweetness but I shake my head.
“I am tired, long night of partying and all,” I say, shooting Devin a look with my one good eye. “But there’s stuff to do. I still have to give you guys a tour and plan something for supper. Oh! How about spaghetti? Do you guys like spaghetti? That’s a good group meal. I’ll have to go pick some romaine for the salad but that’s easy.”
Oliver moves to stand in front of me while shaking his head. He reaches out and nudges me sideways until I’m practically leaning against Linc, who lifts his arm and slides it behind me. He smells so good and there’s warmth coming off him that makes me even drowsier.
“We all know you weren’t partying all night, Kelsey. You were getting things ready to welcome us in.” He takes the ice pack from my eye and sets it aside and then squats down in front of me and takes my hands in his. “The tour can wait. We aren’t going anywhere so you can show us around later and we told you earlier, you don’t have to cook for us. We can fend for ourselves. Close those pretty eyes and have a nap, please.”
He’s so sweet. My eyes drop to his mouth and I remember how close we came to kissing in the greenhouse. If I just lean forward … no, bad, friend zone! I do as he says and close my eyes because it’s just easier but I scoff. “Spaghetti’s easy. I can do spaghetti in my sleep. It’s no big deal.”
I feel him tuck a stray piece of my hair behind my ear. “Ok, you do that. Go to sleep and make spaghetti.”
My lips curve up at how silly that is but then Linc’s arm drops down to my shoulder and he pulls me a little closer. He’s so warm and did I mention how nice he smells? As I doze off I hear Devin say something about the last chili mac MRE and wonder if I should make chili for supper instead.
K
elsey
Asnore and rumbling under my ear have my eyes popping open. I stay perfectly still and just revel in the warmth of Linc’s body for a few minutes. God, it’s been so long since I’ve had arms around me and even longer since it was in a man’s arms. This is nice. This is way too nice and it’s giving me feels that I have no business feeling. Hours, Kelsey. They’ve only been here hours! Speaking of hours, how long was I out? Stuff to do - so I slide, wiggle, and shimmy until I’m free of Linc’s arms and can we just stop for a minute and look at those arms? Forearms and biceps and muscles and is that a tattoo peeking out of his shirt sleeve? Argh, stop Kelsey, just stop!
I get to my feet and ignore Tara, who’s giving me a smug grin and wiggling her eyebrows. “First Oliver and now Linc. Ooooh, girl, you are a total hussy! Who’s next? Can it be the broody dickish one? Think about that hair of his. You could totally hold on to it with both hands while he’s on his knees …” I grab a salt shaker from the counter and shake some at her. She stops talking, looks down at the salt that fell to the floor, and then gives me that idiot look. We both know she’s not a spirit to be chased away with a little salt but she’s gone in between blinks so whatever. I pull my phone from my back pocket and check the time. I’m guessing I was asleep for about two hours. Cool, cool - four hours' worth of naps in one day. That’s almost as much as I get in a night, nice.
I look around and notice all the toiletries and stacks of clothes are gone so I hope that means that they moved everything over to my camper. I quietly move up the stairs to the bedroom and do a quick check on Gavin. He’s still breathing and resting quietly so I move out but this time I close the bedroom door, just in case. Zombies can’t generally open doors. I creep out of the camper so as not to wake Linc. If they’ve been on the run for a week, then he needs a nap way more than I do. None of the guys are outside so maybe they’re all napping. I head out into my gardens and pick some romaine lettuce and some young garlic bulbs and carry it into the cavern kitchen. I don’t mind cooking in the camper but this room gives me more space to spread out and most of the supplies are out here anyway. Tara, Lisa, and I would make our group suppers in here so all the larger pots and serving dishes are here.
