by Lake, D. K.
He flipped out the sharp end he wanted and poked it into the lock and jiggled it a little and the lock clicked and he turned the handle and pushed the door open but it hit a chain bolt on the other side. He stood up and stuck his hand inside the door and unhooked the chain bolt. They weren't exactly secure if someone with thin arms could do that. The door squeaked as it slowly opened into the house. I wasn't worried about what was on the inside, it was all locked up and I didn't think anyone had been here for years. I was more afraid of what was on the outside. I looked over my shoulder once more, checking the trees and looking for any strange shadows. Drew walked inside, the wood floor creaking under his boots. He flicked on his lighter, looked from left to right and just walked off to the right and disappeared. Lane, Nick, and I all looked at each other and I held my arm out inviting them both inside first. I followed Lane in and quietly closed the door and put the chain lock back across the door, and then I dragged a chair that was near the door and wedged it under the handle. Lane and Nick had found the kitchen by the time I found them. Drew was already in there searching the cupboards under the sink. He found some chunky candles and slid them onto the counter and I walked over to the window that was letting in only a slither of light because it was boarded up on both sides. The people that lived here before obviously made a few changes to the house to secure it but they must have eventually left for some reason. Drew stood up and lit all the candles. Lane and Nick each picked up a candle and wandered back into the hallway and went to explore the house. I stayed in the kitchen and started opening cupboard doors and looking to see what I could find. Drew did the same on the opposite side of the kitchen, reaching up to the cabinets on the wall that I wouldn't be able to reach.
"Find anything useful?" I asked, looking over my shoulder.
Drew lifted something out of the top cupboard but ignored me.
"Ignoring me now?"
"No, just haven't found anything useful, just some teabags."
"Nick will be pleased, he drinks his tea black, no milk or sugar."
"Ugh." Drew responded.
I searched the rest of the cabinets but pretty much everything had been cleared out. Most of the cupboards were full of plates, pots, and pans.
"Oh, I found some noodles! Noodles don't really go out of date do they?" I lifted the two packets out and looked at the date, they were two years out of date but who cared? Just add water, right?
"Yep, there's no one here. And, look we found a First-Aid kit and some whiskey." Lane said, walking back into the kitchen.
"Oh, good." I said, taking the bottle from him and unscrewing the lid.
"It's for your head, not to drink." Nick scolded, walking in with an armful of more candles that looked like scented candles that he probably found in the bathroom, and he set them down on the side.
He then whipped the whiskey bottle out of my hands and moved it away from me.
"Wh-"
"That's for your head." Nick scolded.
"Yeah, that was the idea, my head is pounding."
Lane lit the candles and started distributing them around the house. It wasn't a very big place but it was homely and had a cottage feel. The scent of vanilla soon filled the air.
"Alex, climb up onto the center island." Nick ordered as he started getting ready to stitch me up.
"I was gonna do it for her." Lane said, walking back into the kitchen.
"Well, if she wants a nasty jagged scar then sure go ahead." Nick pushed his glasses back up his nose.
"Sorry Lane, Nick's right, he'd do a better job, he has a steady hand and more practice at stitching things up. He did a great job on me."
Nick had patched me up after I arrived at the lab, a lot of my injuries needed stitching, especially the bite on my collarbone area. Now there was a pink scar but it wasn't lumpy so I trusted Nick to do a good job on me.
I climbed up onto the center island and Lane found me a small round pillow from the living room that he patted a couple of times to get the dust off and wedged it under my head.
"Can I have that drink now...for the pain."
"In a minute." Nick replied, pouring the whiskey onto a cloth and then dabbing my forehead without even warning me.
"Oww! Mother-"
"Language!" Nick groaned, he hated me cursing.
"You could have warned me you were going to do that."
"Why? It wouldn't make it hurt any less. Putting alcohol on an open wound is going to sting either way."
"Give me that!" I snatched the bottle and took a few mouthfuls.
"Now, hold still." Nick instructed and I tried not to scrunch my face up as he carefully poked the needle through.
I stared at the shelves on the wall which were crammed full with a collection of mugs and decorative teapots. Lane leaned against the counter with his arms folded, watching Nick sew me up, and Drew pulled out his cigarette box.
Seriously, that was like three already. He never used to smoke this much.
"Can I get one?" Lane asked.
"What, no! You don't smoke. You quit again, remember?" I reminded him.
"He shouldn't with his asthma." Nick shook his head.
"Asthma? You never said you had asthma! No wonder you find it hard to breathe some days when you're filling your lungs with that crap."
"Don't smoke that in here." Nick said, eyeing Drew as he was about to light the cigarette.
"Sorry." Drew said with a smirk, looking at Lane as he left the kitchen.
I tried not to fidget. I wouldn't have been so worried if it had been anywhere else on my body but I didn't want to look like Frankenstein with terrible stitching, and Nick was holding the needle so close to my eye which was freaking me out as well.
Lane cleaned up his ear with some antiseptic wipes watching Nick work his magic on me and fifteen minutes later, Nick stood back and sighed.
"There, that's the best I can do."
I sat up and straightaway went to feel the stitches.
"Don't touch it, you'll get it infected." Nick said, quickly covering my forehead with a large wadded pad and placing some gauze dressing over the top and wrapping it around my head until I looked like a mummy.
"Is this really necessary? You could have just used the tape to secure it."
"This way it won't fall off and it will keep you from scratching it."
I huffed and slid off the counter as Nick wiped up the little cut on his face and I helped him stick a Band-Aid over it.
"We should get some rest, we can clean up and search the house properly in the daylight. The upstairs windows aren't boarded but it's still dark up there." Lane said.
Drew walked back into the kitchen, the smell of smoke clinging to his clothes as he leaned over me and picked up the whiskey bottle and gathered up everything he needed to stitch his arm.
"Hey, I can do that for you." I offered.
"Nah, it's all right. I wouldn't want to be an inconvenience to you." he said close to my ear as he leaned back.
Lane and Nick didn't hear what he had said, but I realized he had been listening to us earlier. He disappeared out of the kitchen and I started to go after him but Lane stopped me.
"Leave him. If he wants to do it himself then let him."
I listened to the stairs creak as Drew climbed up them and locked himself inside one of the bedrooms.
Lane and I sat on the couch and Nick joined us on the armchair.
"I still can't believe Robin's gone. I'm used to her waking me up every morning with a cup of tea and jumping up and down on my bed like some excited five-year-old." Nick said, leaning back in the chair.
I didn't think the reality of what was ahead of us had hit him yet. There would be no more cozy comforts, clean bedding, fresh tea and coffee, sleeping through the night, hot showers, and electric. Nick fumbled around with the edge of the recliner looking for a lever and popped his legs up and laid back in the chair.
"I'm sorry about Robin." Lane said, rubbing my back.
"Me too, but there wa
s nothing I could have done. I'm just worried how we're going to make it there without everyone else. We needed Ross and Zoe, they were fighters, and Josh...wherever he is. If anything has happened to him as well-"
"Hey, I'm sure he's fine. He would have seen the helicopter take off and got the hell out of there." Lane put his arm around me and I leaned into him.
"He would have seen it crash as well. What if he's looking for us?" I said.
"I dunno, maybe. He knows we wouldn't have gone too far in the dark, just far enough away to get away from those madmen."
I glanced at Nick, I was worried about how he would cope with everything, he wasn't trained to fight off a mob of deadbies. He had his eyes closed, he always went to bed early, he wasn't a night owl and I was sure after everything that had happened tonight he was exhausted. I had grown fond of Nick, he could be a bit of a killjoy some days but he was incredibly smart and so kind to me.
"What are we going to do? Nick doesn't know how to fight, we'll never make it there. It's like babysitting a child, constantly checking on them, making sure they're not getting eaten." I whispered.
"Then we'll teach him how to fight."
"If Nick dies then we're screwed. I don't know anything about science or what he did to create the cure. No one would ever believe us that I have been cured."
"Do you still have that bite mark on your back?"
I frowned and spun around, lifting up my sweatshirt. Lane leaned over and ran his hand over my back.
"It's still there." he said.
"Yeah, but who's going to believe a deadbie did that? A crazy person could have done that. That could have happened fighting over a cracker. And Nick did such a good job stitching the one near my collarbone that you wouldn't know it was from a bite."
"Remind me never to fight with you over a cracker." Lane laughed. "Alex, it will be okay. We'll teach Nick how to survive, and as long as he has us, he'll make it. All we need to do is get there and find the right people to get us in and then Nick can...I dunno, share his work. You gotta look at the big picture here, we're trying to save the world."
"Did you really just say ‘save the world’? That's so cliché."
"Fine, we're trying to make a difference, salvage what's left of the human race."
"Nick knows everything that went into the cure, it's all in his head, if anything happens to him then that's it, it's over."
"Then we have to do everything we can to get him there safely."
"And me. He wants to take me and show me off like some show and tell."
"No, of course not." Lane leaned back and left his arm on the back of the couch. "Nick was never going to tell anyone that your blood holds the cure because you're right, they'd take you away and we'd never see you again, stupid."
"But you said I had to go like I had no choice. So what is he planning to do with me?"
"Nick said all he needs is a little of your blood and they can reproduce it, sort of like cloning your blood cells, using all the high tech stuff they have, he just needs it as fresh as possible. There would be no point taking some of your blood now and then trekking across the country with it. He was just going to take a few samples when he arrived and no one would ever know it was yours."
"What's he going to tell them about where he got it from? Oh, hi, I created a cure and I managed to cure this one person, but we lost her but hey, here's some of her blood."
Lane shrugged. "That the person died on the way."
"No one is going to believe us."
"Ross said there were already arrangements made for Miriam and Robin to arrive in Washington which means they're expecting them, it will just take us a little longer to get there now." A lot longer.
"But we don't have Miriam, she's probably dead as well, and Robin's gone."
"Stop overthinking everything. The plan is to get there and then we'll take it from there."
"Washington isn't safe. Robin was lifted off the streets and infected."
"I know, Nick told me everything, we'll just be extra careful."
"If they even let us in. I don't know what security they have or how many zones are shut down. We may never get in."
"Then we'll figure it out when we get there."
"I can't believe you're so laid back about this, we just lost half our group and we're just going to sing and dance our way all the way there."
"We will figure it out, but right now, you need to get some rest."
"Who's staying awake to keep a lookout?"
"I am, then Drew takes over at three."
"What about Nick and me?"
"You need your rest, and Nick wouldn't know what to look out for."
I glanced up at the ceiling wondering how Drew was getting on. Lane roamed around the small living room, opening cabinets and pulling out old VHS tapes and looking through the photo album that was under the coffee table. The candles created a small glow, just enough light to flip through the photo album. It was a big family, lots of children and grandchildren, photos of sunny days at the beach, day trips out, and parties.
"How were we going to travel all the way in the chopper anyway? It's too far." I asked, lifting a crochet blanket over Nick.
"They refuel at different stops, there's more than one place acting like the university with scientists and important people telling them what to do, we just never came across one before." Lane said, putting the photo album back under the coffee table and pulling out a crossword puzzle book.
"So we wouldn't have got very far anyhow 'cause we wouldn't have been able to refuel at any of those places." I sighed.
"Go and find a bedroom and get some sleep." Lane said, walking across the room and digging in one of the cabinet drawers.
"What about Nick?"
"I'll keep an eye on him." Lane found a pencil and came back over to me.
I stood up and he rubbed the sides of my arms. I looked up at him and smiled, and he leaned down and softly pressed his lips to mine. It felt so strange, we hadn't kissed for so long, and after I was bitten I wouldn't let him anywhere near me.
His hands fell to my hips and he pulled me against him. I slid my hands around his neck, almost robotically. I loved Lane in my own way, he was like my comfort blanket, a warm blanket on a cold night, he was my protector and my best friend, but there was no burning fire when our lips touched, something had changed. Maybe I was just tired and the night's events had taken a toll on me. I wasn't in the mood to do anything other than to try and get some sleep. Lane's hands moved under my sweatshirt and I pulled away and smiled at him.
"I'm tired. I should go to bed."
"No, you're probably right...sure you don't want any company?"
"You're supposed to be on the lookout, remember?"
"I just haven't seen you for so long, haven't touched you for so long." His hand dipped under my sweatshirt again and I tried not to laugh as he ran his hand over my ticklish spot.
"Stop!" I laughed softly.
"Ok, maybe later. How about an early wake-up call?"
"You're seriously thinking about sex right now?"
"You're not?"
"No, I'm thinking about sleeping and what we're going to do tomorrow. The first thing we need to do is find something to drink or we'll all die of dehydration."
"So hot when you go into survivor mode." Lane teased.
I heard the floorboards at the top of the stairs creak and whipped my head around.
"It's an old house." Lane assured me, but I had heard a door open upstairs. Drew no doubt. I pushed Lane's wandering hands off of me and stepped out of his reach, and turned to leave. "You can thank me another day." he said and it got my attention and I spun around again.
"Thank you for what?"
"Getting you to Colorado, so Nick could cure you. I told you he would help you."
I wanted to say that Drew was the one that really got me to Colorado but I refrained and bit my lip. I knew Lane would bring it up at some point.
"Night, Lane." was all I said.
"Sweet dreams, Alleycat." he threw over his shoulder as I climbed the stairs with a thick candle in my hand. I looked at the doors. They were all open apart from one which I guessed Drew was behind. I walked into the room on the right and blew out the candle as soon as I had located the bed. I didn't want anyone on the outside to see the candlelight. I snuck over to the window and peeked out, all I could see was the dark woods and the moon which was nearly a full moon but not quite. I watched the clouds drift over the moon for a few minutes before crawling across the dusty bed. I lifted the knitted blanket off the end and gave it a little shake before pulling it over myself. I laid down and used my arm as a pillow, facing the door. I really hoped no one would find us. All the time I spent underground with Nick had ruined my sleeping pattern. I used to wake up at the slightest noise, a twig snapping, a bird chirping, a tree creaking, but after weeks of listening to Robin snore and learning to block it out, and adjusting to the comfier lifestyle and sleeping in the luxury bed had changed me, I now slept for hours on end and a stampede of elephants wouldn't wake me up. I prayed Lane wouldn't fall asleep. I closed my eyes, waiting for sleep to take me, but every time I was about to drift off the image of Robin wearing her white dress, covered in blood, and surrounded by deadbies kept popping up. It was on replay. Over and over. I fidgeted around and changed positions about fifty times, and it probably took me over an hour just to fall asleep.
Chapter 11
The warm air brushed over my skin, like velvet, soft, soothing, welcoming.
I could stay here forever.
But where was here?
I could smell the sea air, feel the warmth of the sun on my eyelids, feel the sea breeze in my hair, the soft sand between my toes, and I could hear the sound of gentle waves nearby.
I opened my eyes and had to wait until my eyes adjusted to the light, and in front of me, there was a beautiful pink sunset. The beach looked like something you'd see on a postcard. Sand so soft, a sea so blue, a sky so pink, palm tree leaves swaying in the breeze, a hammock hanging between two of them. It was perfect. But I knew it wasn't real. Was I dreaming? I had to be, this was too good to be true.
