by Sky Winters
I had one hope of not being all alone and he was clearly not interested in being my apocalyptic plus one. It was hard to understand his aggression. He had gotten hurt trying to save me, I was sure that wasn’t part of his plan, but I had been trying to make up for it ever since. I left him to sleep for a while as I got the rest of the supplies gathered together. The hospital had been rummaged through by several groups of looters and former employees, but there were still treasures to be found.
I walked all the way up to the eighth floor to start my search. I was checking every closet, cart, and cupboard as I made my way down through the hospital. I was filling backpacks that we had found during our first week living in the hospital. They had been stuffed away in a storage room on the seventh floor. “St. Bonneville’s Hospital loves Nurses!” The message was printed in bold white letters on pink, brown, orange, and white backpacks. It was a part of an employee appreciation initiative, but the dust on the boxes made it look like they had been ordered at least ten years ago.
There had to have been thousands of them. Each group had taken several backpacks with them when they decided to leave the hospital. I had the last seven with me as I loaded them down with supplies. Of course most of the leftover bags were brown. It had been the least popular choice. I had grabbed an orange one when we first found them and then there were two white. I was packing the white ones with bandages and medical kits. The brown ones were being packed with linens and clothing, which was mostly scrubs, but I had only been wearing scrubs for months now anyway.
My orange bag was for food. The bags were a good size and they could hold quite a bit. There was still a bit of food left in the cafeteria. I had started squirreling it away when I made the decision to wait until dad died to leave. I knew that the others were not going to wait for me. Even my best friend Becky. We went through nursing school together. We got hired onto the floor at the same time. We had been through so many things together, but I knew what I was asking her to do was impossible. There was safety in numbers, but those numbers had to be higher than two.
The food was mainly pudding. I had a feeling I was turning into pudding. I had been living on a mainly pudding diet or the past month. It was mainly tapioca now. I had eaten all of the chocolate. I had granola bars saved as well, and a ton of the fruit cups that I hated. I forced myself to eat two a day, because according to the label there was real fruit inside. I was sure they were lying. Fruit didn’t taste that bad for any reason.
I had to bring the bags down one at a time they were so heavy. I wasn’t sure how I was going to take them with me. It was not as if I had a car. Even a car wouldn’t do you any good as there were no gas stations. I tried to look out the windows to see what was available, but I wasn’t even sure what to look for. There weren’t many ox carts around these days. I put all the bags onto a stretcher and went to go check on the patient.
When I got back to the treatment room the bed was empty. He had left. I sank down to my knees without saying a word. I wanted to scream and shout, but I was too tired. It was like an anger coma. I was so mad, sad, and just upset and I just shut down.
I don’t know how long I was down for, what I do know is that there was drool on my chin when I stood up again. I didn’t know what had woken me, but I stood up and went to the bathroom. The lights were out again, but the backup generator, which worked occasionally was casting a very dim light over the building. The mirror was dirty and the light was awful, but I could tell that I needed to brush my hair and find some water.
I walked out to the stretcher filled with supplies. It was time to go. There was no reason to stay any longer. My plan as I walked up to the stretcher was just to push the whole bed through the streets. The streets were very clear, and it was the best I could do until I found a better way to carry all of this stuff. A bed is never a bad idea, I told myself.
“Thanks for packing it all up for us,” it was a voice I sort of recognized. It was the fat young man from earlier in the day. I had no idea how long he had been watching me, but as he spoke I saw others moving in the shadows. “I think you should come with us. What do you say boys?” His boys all seemed to love the idea. “The boys and I haven’t seen a women in…well, too long anyway.”
“I don’t think so,” I said trying to keep my voice steady. I was trying to seem confident. “I have the bear to keep me company.” I lied. I saw a flash of fear dance across the young man’s eyes.
“We watched him leave,” He smiled trying to hide his fear. “He’s long gone by now.”
“He’ll be back soon,” I was trying to look tough which must have seemed completely ridiculous. I am 5’3” and 100lbs on a good day. I don’t intimidate many people. I was trying to channel my inner gangster, but I was sure that I looked more like an angry smurf. “And he won’t take kindly to people stealing our stuff.”
“Is that so,” the deep voice seemed a little unsure of himself, but not scared enough to leave right away.
“Yeah, it is so,” the voice came from behind me. Dallas was towering over everyone in the room as he strode past me and got about an inch from the face of the much smaller man. I could see the other shadowy figures moving fast as they left the building. I think it was likely more intimidating that Dallas was still naked. His dick swayed as he walked, and because of the height difference it was fairly close to the fat man’s face as he stared him down.
“You should likely run,” I whispered to the fat man who had become paralyzed with fear. I tried to hold in the laughter as I watched him try to find his friends. I knew that we needed to get far away from this hospital. Those guys were definitely going to come back. “I thought you were gone.”
I didn’t wait to see if he approved as I buried my face in his stomach and wrapped my arms around him. I felt his arms coming across my shoulders. I was so relieved to see him. That was when I noticed that his scar had healed. “The moon,” he said before I could ask the question. I ran my fingers over the perfect skin that had been a stab wound.
“I thought you left me,” I said. It came off way more desperate than I wanted it to, but I was just so happy to see Dallas. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t think…”
“You don’t think what!” I heard myself shouting at him. He was going to try and leave without me for real and there was just no way I was letting that happen. “You see what happens every time you walk away, and now you want to leave me?” I didn’t even know what I was doing, but I just started pushing the stretcher toward the door.
“What are you doing?” He growled at me.
“I am going it alone,” I yelled without looking back. “I have no one to help me and I am leaving to take care of myself.” I was being overly dramatic, but I didn’t know what else to do. I had no idea whether it was working or not until he grabbed the door for me.
“Let me push it,” He snarled as he almost threw me out of the way. I walked along beside him trying to watch the sides of the street for signs of life. I could only see shadows. I had no idea if we were being followed, but I could tell we weren’t the only ones out here on the streets. We stuck to the middle of the roads. Dallas said it would give us more time to react if we got attacked. “There are people in every alley and building just waiting to slit your throat.”
“Or perform lifesaving surgery,” I reminded him. I was actually starting to enjoy the scowls that I was getting from Dallas, but this time I got a tiny little smile instead. I looked him right in his honey-brown eyes and gave him a wink.
“What was that?” He laughed.
“It was a wink,” I said, astonished that he would even ask. I considered myself a fairly slick winker. It was a skill that I knew a lot of people struggled with. They winked with both eyes, or they pulled a total Popeye face when they tried to wink, but I was adorable when I winked. Everybody had always told me so.
“I know it was a wink, but on the other side of your face it looked like you were having a stroke.” Dallas’s long brown hair fell over h
is eyes as he leaned down to give me the full effect of his mocking imitation. “Errrrr,” he mumbled as he winked at me holding his arms out like a mummy. I slapped his chest as hard as I could. He pretended to be hurt, but he couldn’t stop laughing.
“You aren’t funny,” I said, but a smile was already creeping across my lips. We laughed as we walked through the streets. I was still on the lookout for danger, but I was just enjoying having someone else around. We found a park near the edge of town and pushed the stretcher into a small circle of pine trees that would provide at least some cover for us. It was in a little residential neighborhood, and it didn’t seem like any of the houses were being occupied.
The night air started to get a bit chilly. I looked over at Dallas and I let out a little laugh. He looked at me and I threw my hands up, “It’s nothing.”
“What are you laughing about?” I tried to walk away, but Dallas picked me up and set me down on the stretcher. I had put my arms around his neck when he first grabbed me and decided to leave them there. His skin was still warm to the touch. “What is it?”
“I just noticed that the night air was making you shrink,” I laughed.
“Oh really,” his face was getting closer to mine.
“Yeah, and I was just thinking that it is kind of like a thermometer.”
“I can fix that,” he said as he kissed me deeply. I was off the stretcher as he lifted me into his arms. His strong arms wrapped around me and held me tight against his muscled chest. He was holding me up with one arm as he took off my scrubs and continued to kiss his way down my body. I felt like a doll in his strong hands. That was when I found myself upside down and staring right at his thermometer. It was no longer getting smaller.
He was driving me crazy with his tongue and teeth as I tried to deal with the amazing sensations and the blood rushing to my head. I decided to focus on pleasing him. I used my hand on the shaft and teased the head with my tongue. It felt amazing, but I was so glad when he finally put me down on the stretcher. I was up on my knees, and he was standing beside the stretcher with his hands on my waist. He was teasing me with the head as he lightly touched along the edges.
His skin was so much warmer than mine. I could feel the difference as he pushed forward and started gently moving back and forth. I rocked my hips to try and feel him deeper inside of me. I wanted to take everything in. The gentle breeze was covering my skin in goosebumps. Every inch of my skin was alive. It was the mix of cool air and hot skin and the rhythmic motion of our hips. I gripped the tiny rubber mattress and screamed with my whole body.
A large hand clapped itself over my mouth as Dallas grunted and let go deep inside of me. I turned around and kissed all over his sculpted chest and abs. He laid down on the gurney and I pulled myself together. I wrapped myself around him as we tried to share the tiny bed. I was idly running my fingers over his smooth skin.
The stars were amazingly bright. Without the light pollution I could actually see them. Dallas pointed out the constellations. “I grew up on a farm,” he explained, “There have always been this many stars.” I was sure that he was wrong. There was no way a sky had ever seemed this beautiful.
“I thought I had seen stars,” I said as I followed a shooting star along the edge of the horizon. It was too magical to be ordinary. We laid there and talked about life and the world.
“I have always wanted a family, but not a shifter family,” Dallas said. He was watching the skies, but I thought I saw a tear welling up in his eyes. “I don’t think it is right to bring a kid into a world he doesn’t belong in.” I was surprised to hear him talk like that, but I realised that I didn’t know much about him.
“How can you say that? You are the most amazing person I have ever met,” it sounded corny, but I meant it. He had already saved me twice. He could heal instantly, and he was ridiculously strong. I was amazingly hot. I was having trouble seeing the down side.
“But I am not a person,” Dallas sat up and looked me right in the eyes. “I am a monster.”
“You can’t think that,” I was crying and I didn’t know why exactly, but it hurt me that he felt like this. “You are not a monster, those guys in the hospital, those guys are monsters!” I was almost mad at him for talking about himself that way.
“Sshh, oww!” He shook the hand that I bit. He was trying to cover my mouth again. “Don’t bite me!”
“Why you’re a monster, aren’t you used to being bitten?” I said without really thinking about if it made sense. I was just mad at him for feeling this way. He was just shaking his head, and then he started to turn away. I playfully bit his nipple as he tried to turn away. I had never felt like this before. He had awoken an animal inside of me. I felt brave, and brazen, and I wanted him to feel that way too. I wanted him to know how he made me feel. Somehow that made me bite him. Maybe it was the trees, or the night air, or that he could turn into a bear, I felt wild.
“What was that for?” Dallas looked more surprised than mad.
“I am feeling monstery,” I laughed. A smile finally cracked through his sullen expression. It was a little smile, but I had worked so hard for it I counted it as an accomplishment. “For the record I would love to have kids like you,” I said as I laid back down to gaze at the sky.
“Well, I guess we will never know,” Dallas said to the sky.
We didn’t talk for a long time. I was just lying there enjoying his presence. I stretched my arms and legs and let out a yawn. “I will take the first watch,” Dallas said as he stood up. “I am about to fall asleep,” he explained as I begged him to stay beside me.
“I just need my teddy…”
“Cut that out!” His tone was playful, but I could tell that he meant it. He didn’t like the bear cracks, but that only made me want to say more of them. I watched the naked man as he moved off into the moonlight to check the perimeter.
The pine trees made pretty good cover, and I was sure that if there was anyone around they would have heard us earlier, but Dallas insisted on checking. I went to the brown backpacks and got out a bunch of hospital sheets. It was chilly, but not cold, however the linens were so thin I knew I would need about a hundred of them to be warm. I thought it would be hard to fall asleep, but that was before I stopped moving. As soon as I got comfortable I could feel sleep taking over. It had been months since I had really felt safe. Right now it didn’t matter who was out there or what was going on inside of me. I had a protector. I looked up at the sky one last time and then everything went dark.
The light broke through the trees. It was a bit disorienting at first. I was not sure where I was for a split second. The chilly morning air had numbed my senses. I looked around to find Dallas, but he was nowhere to be seen. I got my clothes back on under the thick layer of thin sheets that I had piled on top of myself. I was a little worried as I was only supposed to be taking a nap and then I was supposed to take a turn on guard duty. Why didn’t he wake me up?
I walked through the trees to find Dallas going through the supplies. “We have to make ourselves more mobile,” he said as he turned to see me coming around behind him. There was a fear in his eyes that I had never seen before.
“What’s going on?”
“We need to get out of this city,” he was scanning the streets around us as he talked. “It isn’t safe here.” It was something that I already knew, but I could see that something had happened to him last night. “They ate her.”
“What are you talking about?” I put a hand on his shoulder, but I was sure that he couldn’t feel it. He was in some kind of shock.
“I thought it was group sex,” he was taking things out of each bag and putting them into the orange bag. “Or something weird, but she was heavily drugged, or delirious and they were eating her alive. I had no idea what was going on until it was too late.”
He stood up and put the back pack on my back. “I am going to rejoin my family,” there was a look of sincerity in his eyes. “Will you come with me?”
“Of
course,” I was surprised he felt the need to ask. I thought I had made it clear that I wanted to be with him.
“Alright, we are travelling fast, we don’t need to worry about all this stuff. Once we are in the woods I can take care of the rest,” his skin was already rippling before he changed. The fur was popping up all over his body in clumps. It was so amazing to see the transformation. I climbed on his back and we ran.
“Whoa! Easy there,” I yelled as he took off. It was hard to hold on at first. I joked that he needed reigns. It was hard to tell how he felt about my joke in bear form. Although he had seemed impossible to read in human form as well. I could tell he was shaken up. He did not stop running until we were well clear of the city.
When we reached an abandoned farm house he came to a stop. “You know that fur is attached to me right?” He asked his eyes still wide from the shifting. His face looked ferocious during the transformation and it made everything he said at those times seem angry and savage. I tried not to smile.
“I’m sorry, where am I supposed to hold you?” I was surprised to see a smile come across his face again. I had thought we were back to angry Dallas.
“I don’t know, I have never been used as a mode of transportation before.” Dallas opened the door to the old, red brick farm house. I decided to hang back and wait for him to give me the okay. I had done very little exploring since the outbreak.
I had gone in for a twelve hour shift and I just left the hospital last night. My mother had been among the first to die of it. Dad had come to tell me, but by the time he made it to the hospital he was too weak to ever leave again. I didn’t look in on them before I left for work, and I would always feel guilty about that. It was not that I could have saved my mother, but I could have had more time with her. It was also hard to deal with the fact that it was likely me who gave them the virus. My mother always did my laundry and it was likely my scrubs that infected her. These thoughts always flooded my brain whenever things got too quiet.
