“Oh God,” Evelyn breathed. “Oh no.”
My gaze traveled down his body, my heart skipping a beat in my chest.
In his arms, hanging limply and covered in blood, was the tiny body of a little girl.
Chapter Sixteen
Evelyn
“Hands up!” Alex yelled, dropping his knife in favor of his rifle. Quickly, he slung the weapon around himself and raised it, showing the man that we were armed.
The man’s eyes narrowed, his mouth pressing into a tight line as he lifted the little girl in his arms higher, closer to his chest. It was a protective maneuver, and seeing this, I placed a hand on Alex’s arm.
“He can’t,” I said simply, my eyes trained on the little girl in his arms, her hair bloody and draped across her face.
The man still hadn’t moved. His face, partly hidden behind a long, scruffy beard, was frozen in some emotion that I couldn’t place. Not anger, though he did seem angry, and not sadness, though considering the condition of the child in his arms, he should have been sad. Shifting from foot to foot, in obvious indecision as to how to proceed, he wrinkled his brow in consternation, as if trying to decide if we were yet another threat to him and the girl, who was probably his daughter.
“Is this your home?” Leisel called out, her soft voice carrying across the clearing.
The man grunted loudly in response, but didn’t vocalize an actual yes or no.
“I’m guessing that’s a yes,” I said quietly.
“We’ll leave,” Alex said loudly, lowering his gun and taking a step away from the door.
I responded immediately, moving to Alex’s side and readying myself to leave, but Leisel, ever the compassionate one, didn’t budge. She looked at me, frowning ever so slightly, and I knew exactly what she was thinking—that my lack of compassion for this man and this child made me a bitch. Yes, I couldn’t deny it; I was more than willing to turn tail and leave these people to fend for themselves. They weren’t my problem, and I didn’t want them to become my problem. The blood dripping from the girl’s tiny body would undoubtedly attract the infected, it always did, and I wasn’t emotionally ready to fight.
Not only that, but I’d seen enough death to last me a lifetime. I didn’t need to bear witness to more if I didn’t have to. This child was clearly going to die, if she wasn’t already dead, and I didn’t have the stomach to stand by and watch how this was going to unfold.
“Leisel,” Alex said. “Let’s go.” He reached for her arm, meaning to pull her away from the door just as the man, as if finally breaking free from his indecision, began walking forward. His gait was strong and determined as he moved across the small clearing toward us.
No one said a word as he came to a stop beside us, and now that he was near us, I could smell him, and the stench was awful. Whether it was coming from the little girl’s wounds or their unwashed bodies, I wasn’t sure, only that it was a struggle not to gag from the awful stink.
His clothes were filthy, his skin and hair greasy to the point of appearing wet, yet he didn’t seem like a vagrant just barely getting by. If anything he seemed well fed, his shoulders large, his biceps strong.
We looked on while the man balanced the little girl in his arms as he fumbled with the second lock, opening it with ease and then kicking the door open. He kept his back to us the entire time, obviously having decided that were weren’t a threat. That, or he simply didn’t care.
“We should go,” I said quietly. “If she’s bitten, she’s going to turn, and I don’t want to see that.”
Because no one in their right mind wanted to see that, to watch a child die, let alone turn. And if that poor little girl died and one of us had to put her out of her misery, then what? What would happen when this man—her father—flipped out and attacked us? Because he would; I’d seen it happen too many times to count.
“Woman!” the man yelled from inside, his voice gruff and impatient.
Leisel jumped, looking from the doorway to me and back to the doorway before quickly slipping into the cabin. I cursed her loudly, and Alex did the same. We shared a knowing glance, me rolling my eyes and Alex looking grim, before both of us followed her inside.
It was dark, and it took my eyes several moments to adjust, but when they finally did, I found myself shocked. The place was surprisingly clean, almost homelike, with shelf after shelf of jars and boxes in different sizes and shapes. The entire place was no larger than a ten-by-twelve room, with a twin-sized bed on one side near a wood-burning stove, and at the other end was a small wooden table and three lawn chairs. The man was kneeling beside the bed, the little girl lying on top of it. Her breaths were dry, crackling, as her little chest rose and fell at a rapid rate.
The man was attempting to bathe her neck, only succeeding in cleaning the blood away for a moment before the wound would gush again. I swallowed hard. I was right; she’d been bitten, and she would turn.
To my horror, Leisel was kneeling beside the man, tenderly brushing hair away from the child’s face. “What can I do?” she asked, her voice full of urgency.
“Leisel!” Alex said, his tone sharp. He was clearly not happy about her proximity to either the man or the bitten child, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. I felt the same, concerned by the entire situation.
“She’s just a little girl, Alex,” Leisel snapped, shooting us both a look of disgust. “She needs our help. They both need our help!”
I dropped my gaze, knowing she was right. This poor girl, she was only a child, a beautiful girl of maybe seven or so, with long blond hair and the lips of a cherub. She was sweet and innocent looking, apart from the bite on her neck. But it was that very bite that made her a monster to me, one I didn’t want to go anywhere near.
“She’s not going to be a little girl much longer,” Alex said darkly.
The man turned then, fixing his narrowed gray eyes on Alex, and if looks could have killed, Alex would have been dead where he stood.
“Say that again, boy,” the man growled, and slowly pushed himself upright.
Alex, unfazed, cocked his head to one side and looked the man directly in the eye. “I said, she’s just a child…for now. She’s been bitten, she’ll turn into one of them soon. Who knows how long she’s got,” he said, gesturing angrily toward the bed where Leisel was still kneeling. “And I don’t want her turning anywhere near my…”
His words trailed off as his gaze moved away from Leisel, but I knew what he’d been about to say, what he’d wanted to say and why he’d stopped himself. He and Leisel weren’t anything, no matter how much he wished they were.
Placing a hand on Alex’s forearm, I stepped in front of him, not to shield him from this man, but in an attempt to keep the peace. My heart was telling me one thing, but my head was telling me another. My head wanted me to run, get the hell away from this time bomb of a child, but the other part of me, a small voice buried deep down, told me that she was just a little girl and this poor man, her father, deserved our help.
“How can I help?” Leisel asked again.
Several more tense seconds ticked by while the man continued to stare over my head, his angry gaze on Alex, until finally he gave his head a small shake and turned away. He headed toward the small stove, his worn boots scraping noisily on the wood floor, then bent down and poked at the small fire glowing within.
“A bowl,” he mumbled. “Get me a bowl. I need to sterilize the water.”
Still sitting with the child, Leisel stared up at me, her eyes burning with an unrelenting pleading until I couldn’t take it anymore, the guilt she forced me to feel. I turned abruptly, going off in search of a bowl, bumbling along the shelves filled with odd bottles of liquid, rusty cans, and mangled boxes.
Eventually I found a bowl, a heavy metal pot with a thick handle. Pulling it down from the shelf, I crossed the cabin and handed it to the man. He promptly filled it with water from a canister hanging at his hip, and after setting it on top of the stove to boil, he busied himself with a
pestle and mortar that he used to grind some herbs. The entire time he was grinding, his gaze flicked between the child and Alex, as if he expected Alex to make a move when he wasn’t looking.
When the water began to hiss, bubbling over the top of the pot, the man carefully removed it and sprinkled in some of the crushed herbs, then mixed them together. When he seemed satisfied with his concoction, he headed back to the bed, grunting at Leisel to move out of his way.
Looking from the pot in his hand to the gaping wound on the little girl’s neck, Leisel shook her head, but reluctantly stood. Making her way back to me, her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. While I was sad for the little girl, and for her father as well, I was more concerned with our personal well-being. The pustules had started to form all over her body, big white blisters filled with pus and blood. Once that little girl turned, rigor mortis having not yet set in, she would be a quick and efficient weapon of death. And only sometime after, when her muscles had become stiff, would she slow down, until eventually she’d begin to decompose, making her movements still slow, but fluid once again.
“We need to go,” Alex said through gritted teeth.
“She’ll be fine,” the man said, not bothering to turn around. “Once I clean it, she’ll be fine.”
His voice was strained, shaking ever so slightly, and his shoulders were hunched, but his hands worked quickly at applying his homemade herbal paste. From what I could tell from where I stood, it seemed to have stopped the bleeding, but it would do nothing for the infection. If the CDC hadn’t been able to figure out a cure or even a preventative treatment, then I doubted this man’s herbal paste had succeeded where they had failed.
Though that didn’t mean I wasn’t hoping. That I wasn’t standing there waiting for the blisters to retreat, for her breathing to return to normal, for her eyes to open, to look up at her father with a smile on her innocent face.
But that wasn’t what happened. She took a sudden gasping breath, her chest heaving one last time, and then she fell still, her lips forever parted in a silent O.
“She’s dead,” Alex said, bluntly enough that I rewarded him with an elbow to his ribs.
Standing, his shoulders slumping even more so than before, the man turned to look at us. I waited with bated breath, imagining him turning feral, attacking Alex for his cruel words. Instead he faced us, a sad and defeated man, his long hair hanging around his face like a dark curtain of despair, his nostrils tightly flaring as he struggled to contain his crumbling emotions.
“She was my little girl,” he whispered brokenly, his eyes finally meeting mine. “She was all I had left.” His voice cracked over the last few words, and then he began to cry. Not the subtle, unassuming tears of someone we didn’t know, but the exhausted, heartbroken tears of a man with nothing left. His sobs were loud and pitiful, and the more he tried to control himself, the harder he cried.
The three of us stood frozen, unsure of what to do, what to say, and what was there to say? We couldn’t fix this—no one could fix this. This was what the infection did. It attacked, it killed, it destroyed all things, beautiful and not. It held no regard for the young or the old, for the color of their skin or religious beliefs, for social standing or perceived importance.
It just killed and killed and killed.
It killed everything.
Leisel began to cry with him and then, before I could stop her, she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around the man, this stranger. Pulling him against her, she cradled his large shaking frame while whispering soothing noises in his ear, much like she had done with me. One hand rubbed his back in slow, sure circles. The familiarity of her actions was almost choking in its awkwardness. We didn’t know him, not who he had been, nor who he was now. Yet she was treating him as if she’d known him her entire life. This was who she was—the caretaker, the peacemaker, the woman people went to when they needed comfort.
An odd thought struck me then, a painful realization. Leisel wasn’t weak, not in the true sense of the word. She might be fragile physically, she might be easily upset, always wearing her emotions on her sleeve, but out of the three of us—Alex, Leisel, and myself—she was the one who’d held on to her humanity the most, not an easy task in a world gone to hell. And all this time, I’d assumed I was stronger than her because I would easily—and gladly—walk away from situations like this, because I was prepared to kill and maim and to damn others to misery if it meant keeping the two of us safe.
Somewhere in the midst of my strength and courage, I must have lost a part of myself. The part that cared about others, even strangers. Somewhere, somehow, I had lost my humanity.
The thought was shocking, choking even, and I suddenly needed air and space from them all. I turned and stumbled outside, my eyes burning from the sudden brightness. I began to sob and retch, gasping for air, feeling as if I were every bit as bad as one of the infected, because I’d never felt or shown an ounce of remorse for anything or anyone that I’d killed or hurt. Just like the infected.
A noise up ahead startled me out of my pity party and I looked up sharply, seeing an infected on the outskirts of the clearing. It had come because of the smell of blood, just like we had expected. It was a man once, but Christ, this wasn’t a man anymore. It was barely dressed, with rags clinging to its bony, graying body.
Drawing myself upright, I gripped my knife and took a step forward, watching as he—it—looked up and toward me. Noticing me, it growled loudly and stumbled out of the trees and into the clearing, but I suddenly couldn’t move, as if my feet were glued to the earth. My knife was still firmly in my grip, but may as well have been a spatula for all the good it would do if I couldn’t find the will to act. I saw so much of myself in that monster right then, knowing I was no better than it was.
The infected continued its broken shamble toward me, growing closer with every limping step, yet I still couldn’t move. As it stumbled over a large tree branch in its way, I found myself snorting, then laughing. Laughing! Coughing, I attempted to clear my throat, but I was still unable to stop laughing. The infected seemed somewhat incensed by the sound, or maybe that was only me projecting my emotions on a creature that didn’t feel anything but hunger and the urge to kill.
Just like me. Hungry to live, and willing to kill to continue to do so.
It was within arm’s reach now, and I was at least able to raise my blade a little higher. But my damn arm was shaking and I knew—I just fucking knew it was going to bite me if I didn’t do something. But I couldn’t; I just couldn’t.
“Jesus, Eve!” Alex charged past me, barging into the infected just as it reached for me, and threw it to the ground. Dropping to his knees, Alex smashed the grip of his rifle into its head, the sickening sound of bones cracking and brain splattering under the impact causing me to feel even sicker.
Scowling up at me, Alex got to his feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded angrily.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out, not even air. I was literally at a loss for words to explain myself or my behavior.
Giving me a hard look, Alex shook his head and turned away. “Get your shit together,” he called out over his shoulder as he stormed back inside.
Dizzy and disoriented, I slumped to the ground. This wasn’t me. I didn’t do this. I always had my shit together; I’d had my shit together for the past four years. I didn’t lose it like this, yet my vision was tunneling right in front of me and still, I could barely breathe.
From within the cabin, I could hear the faint sound of arguing, and then what sounded like a physical scuffle. I knew I needed to pick myself up and get in there, to see what was going on, but I couldn’t make my legs work. Just the thought of standing felt strenuous, in fact everything felt strenuous. It was just too much, it was all way too much for me to cope with.
A short, sharp scream rang through the air but was cut off as quickly as it had begun, and then a mere moment later, the man stormed out of the cabin and took off running into the
woods. Another moment passed before Leisel exited the cabin. Her eyes found me and she headed in my direction, taking a seat beside me on the ground. Draping an arm over my shoulders, she rested her head against mine.
“Alex killed her,” she whispered. “She woke up and lunged for her dad. He wasn’t quick enough, but Alex was.”
Taking a deep breath as my vision cleared, I felt my lungs finally expanding fully, enabling me to take a much-needed breath of air. I glanced at Leisel, debating whether to respond to what she’d told me, but found her looking off into the distance as tears glistened on her cheeks, and decided for the moment to just let it be.
Eventually Alex joined us, his teeth clenched and his jaw locked. “Sort your shit out, Eve,” he said shortly. “You can’t screw up like that again.”
Sniffing, I nodded. He was right; I was being weak when I needed to be strong. But I also knew that this—his anger—was his way of dealing with what had just happened. That like me, he had his own coping mechanism, and right now he wasn’t coping well. He was mentally and physically strong, but everyone had their breaking point.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, blinking rapidly in an attempt to stop my threatening tears from falling. Because I was sorry. Sorry for losing it, for nearly getting myself bitten as well as putting everyone else in danger, and sorry because of the terrible thing he’d just had to do.
“Don’t apologize for being human,” Leisel said softly, squeezing me closer as she glared accusingly at Alex. “Don’t ever apologize for that, Eve.”
• • •
Hours passed before the man returned, and when he did he didn’t as much as look at us, let alone say anything about us still being there. Honestly, I didn’t know why we were. We didn’t owe him anything, yet we stayed.
Noises erupted from within the cabin, as if objects were being tossed around. The loud banging and clanging only lasted for a minute before the man reappeared with a small shovel in hand. With a defeated-sounding sigh, Alex joined him and together they took turns digging a small hole in the ground.
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