The Infected, a PODs Novel

by Michelle K. Pickett

  “I can’t believe… I mean…” I squeezed my eyes closed, and shook my head slowly. “Poor Kelly.”

  I didn’t know why, but I felt something was wrong—more than just the horrible death of Kelly’s husband. I’d always felt like our perfect community was just a little too perfect. Like it was a precariously balanced house of cards and the slightest ripple in the breeze would topple it, and our peaceful existence would shatter like fine porcelain smashing against pavement.

  “Have you seen David?” Tiffany looked at me across her kitchen table. The sun filtered through her pale, blonde hair, grazing her shoulders.

  “No.” I picked up one of Tiffany’s daughter’s crayons and doodled on an open coloring book.

  “Mine.” Faith’s chubby fingers grabbed the crayon from my hand.

  “Faith, say please,” Tiffany said before turning her blue eyed lasers on me. “And? Are you planning to?”

  “Peas!” Faith shouted and scribbled on her paper.

  I smiled and made a goofy face at Faith. “I don’t know.”

  Tiffany turned her glass around in circles on the table, staring at it. “Eva, he’s such a great—”

  Oh, please, not this conversation again.

  “I know, Tiff. We just couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give each other what we needed.”

  Six months earlier…

  I sat on the side of my cot and rolled my head from side to side. My pillow was as thick as a piece of cardboard. The mattress wasn’t much better. I could feel every metal bar in the narrow cot.

  Arching my back, I stretched my arms above my head to work out the kinks. I twisted to one side and then the other. That’s when I saw him. He sat on his bed, watching me, a ghost of a grin played on his full lips. I smiled and gave him a small wave.

  Getting up, I moved my desk chair to the glass wall separating our observation rooms and sat. David did the same. He held up five fingers and mouthed, “five days left.”

  A huge smile spread across my face, and I felt a flutter deep in my stomach. I nodded. “Can’t wait,” I mouthed back.

  Over the six weeks in quarantine we’d gotten pretty good at communicating using hand signals and reading lips. We saved our notepads for more complex conversations. So I felt a twinge of something in my chest when David picked up his notepad and held it flat against the glass.

  I have a surprise for you, it read.

  I tilted my head and found a tiny spot in my nearly full notepad, and wrote: Really? What is it?

  Well… I can’t tell you or it wouldn’t be a surprise. He pursed his lips to keep from grinning. He lost the battle and his mouth turned up at the corners, pulling his lips over his straight, white teeth.

  I gave him my best you-better-tell-me-now-glare.

  I saw him laugh and wished for the millionth time since we’d been confined to quarantine that I could hear him. It was a deep, rich sound, unrestrained and contagious. It’d seemed like an eternity since I’d heard it, and I missed it. I missed him. His feel, his warmth, his sounds, touch, taste.

  I let my eyes soak him in as I watched him scribble a note. My gaze roamed over his face. His mouth held a slight smile. The tip of his tongue moved over his bottom lip, a little fuller than the top, with a freckle at the left corner—it was the first place my mouth was going when our time in quarantine ended.

  Then I read his note, and my stomach dropped to my toes, and the words swirled on the paper like water going down the drain.

  Okay, let’s just say it involves a white dress and a church.

  A wedding? I wrote.

  He nodded, still smiling. A bit of mischief played in his gray eyes.

  Whose?

  David looked at me and lifted a brow. Ours. Who else?

  Ours? I could barely write the word, my hand shook so badly.

  “Yeah. Ours,” he mouthed, a strange expression on his face.

  I licked my lips and tilted my head to the side as I wrote: Um, when?

  David scribbled his answer in his notepad, while my insides twisted. We bust out of here Friday and I’ve got it all planned for Sunday. Well, I had some outside help with the planning. But everything is all set. Dress, flowers, minister. I asked Tiff to stand up with you. Devlin is standing up with me. The only thing we don’t have are the rings, but we’ll get those later.

  I read, then reread his note. My heart dropped to my stomach, and then bungeed into my throat. I could feel it bouncing up and down between my stomach and throat, stealing my breath.

  What’s the matter? His skin creased between his brows.

  My hand shook when I wrote: I just wasn’t expecting this. I didn’t think we’d do it so soon. I thought we talked about waiting awhile?

  “Why?” There were questions floating in the silvery depths of his eyes and a vulnerability that I wasn’t used to seeing. A lock of hair fell over his forehead. I forgot where I was and reached out to smooth it back. My hand hit the glass and I flattened it against it. David placed his on the glass over mine. His notepad next to our hands. I asked you. You said yes. What’s the deal? It read.

  I watched his face as he read my note. There’s no ‘deal,’ David. I just thought we decided to wait a few weeks before we got married… not the second we got out of quarantine.

  Throwing up the hand that held his notepad, it fell and smacked his thigh. He turned his back to me, and ran his other hand over the back of his neck.

  A few seconds ticked by before he scribbled another note. He turned and slammed it against the glass. I jumped and my gaze locked with his stormy eyes. Gone was the sparkling silvery-gray. It was replaced with swirling, dark steel. He tipped his head at the notepad.

  Do you love me?

  My head jerked up and I pressed against the glass. “Yes,” I said out loud. “Yes.” I knew he couldn’t hear me, but he’d know what I said. “I love you.”

  Then marry me Sunday, he wrote.

  I slipped away from the glass and looked at the floor like I’d find the answer there. I wanted to marry David. I did. I’d never wanted anything more. But it was too soon. We both needed time to live a normal life. We’d discussed it and agreed. Now he was changing the rules, and it confused and angered me.

  I’m going to marry you. But not Sunday. We need time to be normal, David. We talked about this and agreed. Remember when we were in the PODs and you told me you wanted to take me on real dates? What happened to that? Six months. That’s all. Six months to be normal—as normal as we can be, anyway. Six months and then we’ll get married.

  He stood and turned his back to me, tossing his notepad across the room. I banged on the glass to get his attention. He couldn’t hear me. But still, I pounded and screamed his name.

  David dropped on his bunk. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hung between them. His head and shoulders sagged forward, like his spine was made of Jell-O and he couldn’t hold himself up.

  I’m not sure how long we stayed like that, him on his bunk and me pressed against the glass watching him. Finally David stood, swiped his notepad off the floor, and stalked to the glass wall. He wrote on his notepad. When he was finished, he held it up. I felt his eyes burn into me as I read it: I’m not waiting six months. Sunday or not at all.

  I felt the color drain from my face. The words slammed into me, knocking my breath from my lungs. The only sound I heard was the blood rushing behind my ears, which was odd because I was almost certain my heart had stopped beating.

  Don’t do this. Don’t make me choose. We have plans. Plans we made together. Please don’t change the rules like this. I put my hand on the glass that separated us. He didn’t put his hand over mine like he always had.

  I didn’t think there’d be a choice to make, he wrote.

  We need time to be normal people, I answered, searching his face as he read my note. He shook his head once, his jaw working. My mouth went dry. It felt like I’d inhaled all the sand of the Sahara desert, making my tongue thick, my throat swollen.r />
  Yeah, well, I don’t. I want an answer now. David’s face was set in hard lines. I’d never seen his expression so dark.

  Hot tears stung my face like acid. I love you. Don’t make me choose.

  I need you to make a choice now, he pressed.

  David, you know I love you. I can’t say it any other way. Please don’t force me to make a decision now. Let’s wait until we’re out of here so we can talk. When we don’t have to write everything on damn notepads.

  The strokes of his pencil lead were hard, angry. If you love me the choice should be easy.

  I’d looked at him, his face blurred and watery from the tears drowning my eyes. I love you. I’ll always love you. But if you loved me, you wouldn’t change the rules, David. It makes me uneasy wondering how many other changes you’ll make without talking to me. If you are going to force me to give you an answer now, the answer is no, I wrote. My breath stopped. It felt like a hand squeezed my throat shut. Tears, gigantic, eye stinging, face drowning, tears pushed out of my eyes.

  I wanted him to say something. Anything but what he wrote next…

  Then we’re done.

  He turned his back to me after I read it. He didn’t write another note or acknowledge me for the rest of our time in quarantine. And when we were released, he left without a word.

  Tiffany slapped the table and pulled me away from the crushing memories of that day. “Hey! Where were you?”

  “Sorry.” I shook my head to clear it. “Just haunted by old memories.”

  She gave me a knowing look. “When we were in the PODs together, you two were so happy. So in love.”

  I nodded, not looking at her.

  “You know, it’s usually the guy that’s scared of commitment,” she teased. “You said you wanted to date, but you sit around every weekend grading papers or reading. You aren’t dating any more than he is.”

  “I said I wanted to date him. I never said I wanted to date like I was going to go pick-up some strange guy at the damn bar. I wanted to date him. Just David.”

  “Geez, Eva. Can’t you see? I’m sorry that our living arrangement isn’t different. That I can’t take you out on a real date,” David had told me one day in the POD.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and fisted, pulling the blonde strands until my scalp burned. I thought, maybe if I squeezed hard enough, long enough, made it hurt enough, it would erase the memories. It never worked. “I didn’t want to date anyone else. I thought we needed a few months to be normal. To go on dates together like normal people. To get to plan our wedding together.” I dropped my hands and looked at Tiffany. She spun a green crayon in circles on the table.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Tiff. I love what you guys did and I love that you did it for me. But most girls dream about their wedding and I would have liked to have gotten to plan some of it, too.”

  Tiff looked at me and smiled. “I know. I told David that, but he was… insistent.”

  I smiled. “He can be that.”

  She cocked her head to the side and looked at me. “You still love him?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t hesitate.

  If being in physical pain because we walked away from each other so easily. If feeling like someone reached into my chest and pulled out my heart because we were too stupid—too stubborn—to give each other what we needed, is a sign of love, then I was drowning in love for David. Because my heart ached every time I thought of him. And that’s exactly why I couldn’t be with him. He had the power to soothe my pain, make it go away, make me happier than anyone else. Or the power to kick me in the gut and rip me to shreds.

  So far I was shredded.

  That one question, that one day, that one answer stuck a knife in my heart, ripped my very soul in two, and it twisted every time I saw him, heard his voice, heard his name.

  “It’s not too late to work through this, you know.” Tiff reached over and squeezed my hand.

  I nodded but didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure what there was to work through—if there was anything that David and I wanted to work through. He hurt me by giving me an impossible ultimatum and I hurt him by not agreeing.

  The back door opened and Tiffany’s husband, George, pulled himself into the house, ending our conversation. “Hey, Eva,” he said with a half-smile. He bent and kissed Tiffany.

  I sighed with relief. Tiff was my best friend and I knew she meant well, but I just didn’t want to talk about my relationship—or lack of—with David. I didn’t want to think about it. Because every time I did, I relived that day in quarantine and the pain that came with it. I felt like I walked around with my head in a plastic bag. Every day it closed a little more, cutting off my oxygen, suffocating me.

  “Hey, George. Pull another all-nighter at the clinic?” George looked tired. His face pinched, his eyes sunken and dull. Even his many tattoos seemed less vibrant than normal. The only thing still showing signs of life was his military buzz cut, but even that was a little limp.

  “Yeah. These twelve hour shifts are killing me.”

  “Just wait until the baby comes and is keeping you up all night.” I grinned.

  He dropped onto a chair. “Ugh, who invited you over anyway?”

  “Your lovely wife did.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s impaired by pregnancy hormones. She can’t be held responsible for her actions.”

  “Oh really?” I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Well, I’m outta here.”

  “Life in the fast lane, huh?” George raised a pierced eyebrow at me.

  Hardly. More like a life that’s stalled on the side of the road watching the cars zoom by.

  “Yeah, I have papers to grade and students to torture.”

  George groaned in relief when he kicked his shoes off. “Grading papers on a Saturday? You’re turning into an old lady.”

  “Yeah, nineteen, I feel so old. See you two lovebirds later.” I bent down and dropped a kiss on top of Faith’s head.

  “See you soon,” Tiff called. I turned and waved before pushing through the door.

  Two weeks after Kelly's husband died from an animal attack, two hunters went missing. Search parties were formed to look for the hunters.

  “You and David are going?” I volunteered at the check-in station. I wrote Devlin’s name down and handed him a packet of information.

  He stood with his hip leaning against the table and one thumb hooked through a belt loop on his jeans. “Yeah. Have you seen him?”

  Devlin and David worked well together. Best friends, they’d been through Hell and back. Devlin was a Topsider. When the PODs were opened, residents were shuttled off to their assigned villages. David and I were separated. So he left his village in search of mine. That’s when he ran into Devlin and the rest of his camp. They were all Topsiders, wandering from location to location looking for their families, and slowly making their way west to a rumored compound that admitted Topsiders.

  David tagged along and he and Devlin became fast friends. They fought the Infected together, and learned to trust each other with their lives. They built a level of trust most people never reached with another person.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. This is where the hunters were last seen.” I bent my head and pointed to a map taped to a table. “This is the area you are assigned to search.”

  Devlin looked down, his head so close to mine I could smell his minty breath mingling with my own. I jumped when he slowly pushed my hair over my shoulder. The tips of his fingers grazed the back of my neck. I held my breath and my gaze darted to his.

  “Sorry. I couldn’t see through your hair. It’s pretty. With the sun shining through it, and all.” He dropped his hand and gave a small shrug of one shoulder

  I gave him a quick smile. “Thank you,” I murmured and bit my bottom lip.

  He held my gaze a few beats, before dropping his to the map. “I know where that is.” He thumped the map before he turned to walk away. He’d only gone a few steps when he stopped and looked at me over his shoulder. “E
va?”

  “Hmm?”

  He turned to face me and ran his hand over his head, from back to front, mussing his hair. An image of him lying in bed, his hair messy from sleeping—or from someone tangling their fingers through it—flashed behind my eyes. He spoke and I blinked back to the present.

  “Geez, it shouldn’t be this hard. It’s not like I’m a teenager.” He gave a half laugh. “Um… dinner tonight?” His teeth worried his full bottom lip. It had the slightest pucker underneath the center—like a dimple—that I had trouble keeping my eyes off.

  “With you? Why? You’re David’s friend. Didn’t he get custody of you after the break-up?” One side of my mouth tipped up in a small grin.

  He blew out a breath and looked at the toe of his boot.

  He’s nervous. Why is he nervous? Crap, is he asking me out on a real date?

  “Six?” he murmured, his gaze finding mine again.

  My hands started to shake. “Oh, um, okay. Where do you want me to meet you?”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “No, that’s okay.” I cleared my throat and pushed my hair behind my ear. “It’s out of your way to come all the way to my house. I can meet you.”

  “I want to pick you up—”

  “Here’s David,” I whispered.

  Even though we were all adults, and David and I weren’t together, Devlin and I fell quiet.

  Three hours after the individual search parties left, I heard someone yell, “They found them!”

  I strained my neck to see the hunters through the commotion. People crowded around the search party and blocked my view. At five foot, five inches I wasn’t short, but I couldn’t see over the crowd. I took a step away from the registration table and leaned to the side to get a better look when I saw Devlin.