Massive neural damage sounded a lot better than not being entirely alive anymore. “I think I’ll manage.”
“Sure you will. Tomorrow things will look a little better than today.”
That I doubted. As it was, I felt dead inside, and I doubted that would change any time soon. Glancing away from him, my gaze fell on the windows again.
“Can you draw the blinds? All that light is making my eyes hurt.”
Rather than get up and do so, Nate frowned, looking from me to the window and back. “The light… is too bright for you,” he said, as if that needed confirmation.
“Do you really need an extensive explanation of how sunlight can affect the photoreceptors in your eyes?” I snarked back.
He flashed me another quick grin, clearly relieved at me being able to offer barbs like that once more, but didn’t stop acting weird.
“Bree, I hate to break this to you, but the sun’s not shining.”
“So it’s a little overcast,” I murmured. “Whatever. It’s bright.”
Another pause followed, and before he answered he checked his watch. “It’s three in the morning. That’s not the sun shining out there. And it’s not even a particularly bright night. We’re ten days past the full moon.”
Ah. That changed things.
“Shit,” was all I was able to offer in response to that. “Guess that explains why the fuckers turned nocturnal.”
“Exactly how well do you see?” Nate asked, reaching for the book that lay discarded on the floor by the chair. The book that he’d been reading to me from, I vaguely remembered.
Casting around, I tried to come up with a good answer. “Good, I guess? I can see colors but they are dull and muted.”
He held out the book to me. “Read that line.”
I squinted, but mostly because I had trouble focusing in general. “‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,’” I read. “I could have remembered that from yesterday,” I reminded him.
Nate glanced at the book but closed it after a second. “Might come in handy. Don’t worry about it now.” He finally got up to pull the flimsy blinds down. It didn’t get much darker, which unnerved me quite some. But he was right. That was the least of my worries right now.
Nate returned to his perch on the chair. “Why don’t you sleep a bit? We have all the time in the world to explore just how much of a freak you’ve turned into tomorrow.”
I huffed, but he was right. And while I wasn’t exactly physically tired enough to sleep, my head was hurting enough that letting my lids droop closed was a small blessing. And it wasn’t like I had a world of things to think about.
I was just about to doze off when I heard the chair creak as Nate got up again. When I glanced up, I found him looking down at me, watching me with an unreadable look on my face. “Mind if I crawl under the blankets with you? Promise, I’ll keep my hands to myself.”
That teasing statement hurt rather than made me smile, as I figured he’d intended. “If you have to,” I replied, my voice cracking again. “You’re normally not that much of a cuddler.”
How that hit rather than glanced off him I had no idea, but we were both clearly not in a good place right now. He hesitated but then crawled onto the bed, yet kept the thick blanket between us. I suddenly couldn’t stand that weird look in his eyes so I rolled over, moving very gingerly. Yet as soon as my back was turned to him, he slung his arm over my middle—high up, over my ribs—and scooted close, his face ending up at my neck. I felt myself relax even before I could make myself. His arm tightened around me, but he didn’t say anything. It was just as well. Some things didn’t need to be explained. It was enough that they just were.
Chapter 4
As quick as my physical decline had been, getting back on my feet, even unsteadily, took a lot longer. It probably would have helped if I’d had any incentive to ingest food, but my body didn’t seem to think it needed any. I gingerly ate a few morsels Nate tried to feed to me, but after chewing on the same piece of jerky for a full five minutes without feeling inclined to swallow, I gave up. Nate, proving that just because I’d almost bit the dust didn’t change anything, offered to go out and find some delicious brains for me to chomp down on. He got his stupid book thrown after him for that. Weak I might still have been, but not weak enough not to express my ire in a physical manner. The important fact was that I was getting better, even if it took me a few more days until I could get up on my own and chance staggering toward the bathroom. That was one creature comfort I was intent on getting the most of as long as we were staying here.
The sunlight—when it eventually did blaze through the gaps in the blinds—proved to be a problem, though. I woke up as soon as the first rays tickled the ceiling, consequently hiding under the blankets until Nate had finished boarding up the windows except for a small gap on the opposite end from the bed. The industrial strength flashlight wasn’t much more bearable. It got a little better by the time I was able to start moving around on my own, but the hours between dusk and dawn were definitely easier on my eyes than the other half of the day.
It was in the early hours of day five, after my first successful solo trip to the bathroom, that I finally asked the question that had been plaguing me since I’d woken up the first time but had been too chickenshit to ask. “What did you do with… it?”
The pain in Nate’s eyes let me know that no explanation was required. “I burned everything,” he replied, his voice low. “Also your clothes, the towels. I buried the ashes by the tree in the backyard.”
I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t need to know.
But what I did need to do was to get out there and see it for myself, even though I rationally knew that there was nothing to see. I tried quenching that impulse, but by late afternoon I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Nate watched me mutely as I tried to pull on a fresh pair of pants, and for once didn’t lift a finger to help. It was only when I grabbed for the gun on the nightstand that he spoke up.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
Raising my head, I stared at him, wheezing from the effort of getting dressed. “Visiting the grave of my child.”
He didn’t protest, but plucked the Glock right out of my hand as soon as I’d lifted it, my fingers barely managing to retain the grip on it. “Gimme that,” he murmured as he slung his other arm across the small of my back. “Patching you up once was enough for this month. The last thing I need now is for you to accidentally shoot yourself in the foot.”
“If you don’t shut up I will not-accidentally shoot you in the face,” I grumbled, but was quite happy to lean into him.
It took us a small eternity to leave the room and get down the stairs to the ground floor. Nate had fetched me the darkest pair of sunglasses that I’d collected along the way, but even they didn’t keep my eyes from streaming tears nonstop down my cheeks. The sun was beating down on us hard enough to make me break out in sweat all over within seconds, but at least it didn’t instantly scorch my skin. Walking actually helped, but I still felt weak as a child as we rounded the corner of the building and moved on to the back. At least the added exhaustion helped push back the dread rising inside of me with every subsequent shuffled step.
The tree Nate had mentioned turned out to be a surprisingly large oak, its branches almost reaching to the ground. There was a patch of turned earth to the left of it, with stones stacked above in a small cairn. Seeing it, I felt my heart seize up, my throat tighten. I knew that it was stupid to get this sentimental over what was barely more than the bunch of cells, but I couldn’t change it. It was potential wasted, an impossible chance gone. It was everything I had never dreamed about, now lost. Buried there lay the child I’d never have. Decades worth of knowledge and logic did nothing to dull the pain.
As driven as I’d been to see it, now that I was here, hovering at the edge of the building, I was hesitant to come any closer. My survival instinct came alive, screaming at me to scan the area, set up a pe
rimeter, make sure that nothing was lurking in a ditch to come right at us should we get too close—but those thoughts barely skimmed across my mind. I just couldn’t find it in me to care. Part of that certainly came from my trust in Nate—he would never let me walk into the open jaws of danger, I knew that. But I couldn’t have said for sure that had a bunch of zombies come for me right now I would have tried to defend myself. I felt dead inside, barely more than a lifeless husk. It was as if the virus hadn’t just leached my physical strength from my bones, but also my very soul.
Nate’s hand, soft on my upper arm, finally got me to tear my gaze away from that heap of stones to look up at him. “We can come back tomorrow,” he suggested, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You don’t have to do this today.”
But that was where he was wrong. I had to. I knew that if I waited, I wouldn’t find the courage to return tomorrow, or any other day after that. It was now or never. So rather than reply, I forced my limbs to move and carry me across the patch of heat-scorched grass and over to the shade the oak tree threw.
It was a relief to be out of the sunshine that had been piercing my eyes even through the heavily tinted glasses, but that was about it. I couldn’t say what I had expected; how standing mere feet away from the grave would change anything. I’d kind of anticipated tears, or at least some internal tormented wailing, but the reality was much more bleak: nothing.
A good five minutes passed in which Nate and I just stood there, silent, side by side. I really didn’t feel like saying anything, and was grateful that the same seemed to be true for him. But I also didn’t find it in me to just turn around and leave. On some level I knew that this was my one chance. My one chance to say goodbye. My one chance to acknowledge what had happened—and then find the drive to move on.
What I did instead was just stare, my mind blank, my will to do anything all but nonexistent.
That was, until Nate opened his mouth and shoved me right out of my dull state of indifference.
“Marry me?”
For a second, I considered the possibility that my fever had surged once more and I was having auditory hallucinations. But when I turned my head and looked at him, I saw him watch me with tense anticipation—not quite dread—that made it obvious that he was waiting for my reaction.
A million answers zoomed through my head, but what I finally settled on saying was, “You seriously have the worst timing ever.” What a tale to tell the children that we would never have.
A hint of a frown made it onto his features, but he reined his ire in before it could set his eyes ablaze. “I watched you die. I spent days filled with regret of all the things I never said, never did, never would get a chance to say or do. But you didn’t die. Today is the first day where you seem moderately lucid—“
He cut off at the sudden shake of my head.
“You could have waited, you know?” I suggested. “For when we’re not standing over…”
Now it was my turn to not want to finish the damn sentence, but he obviously got what I meant. Only a complete and utter idiot wouldn’t. And while Nate was lacking a certain number of finer qualities, sense wasn’t one of them. Rather than turn this into one of our endless bickering bouts, he wrapped his hand around my shoulder and pressed me against him, forcing my body to turn around so that all I could see was the motel at his back. I didn’t raise my arms to wrap myself around him, but feeling his body so close was comfort in and of itself. Comfort that I hadn’t realized I’d been wanting, but suddenly needed with all I was worth. I knew that I should have started to cry then, but the tears wouldn’t come. There was only that deep, dark hole at the very bottom of my soul that felt as if it would never go away again. But what I did manage was a low, murmured, “Okay.”
Yeah, we definitely deserved each other.
We remained standing there for an undefined amount of time. The sun finally set, but I could tell that neither of us cared about the vivid colors of the sky, nor the refreshing cool of evening setting in. My body still ached. Eventually, just remaining upright was starting to become a battle of will versus fatigue, and when Nate realized that I was about to keel over, he loosened his grip around me and steered me back toward the front of the motel. I tried to protest when at the bottom of the stairs he made as if to pick me up, but he would have none of it. So much for me being back on my feet.
Once he’d deposited me at the edge of the bed, Nate went rummaging through what was left of our provisions for something suitable—or at least edible—for dinner. He’d clearly not planned on staying over a week, and the food having to last for two rather than one. Why that suddenly amused me to no end, I couldn’t say. I’d never had the best kind of humor, and almost dying certainly hadn’t improved that.
He ended up opening a can of tuna in spicy sauce, but after a bite or two I turned the offered food down. He gave me a weird look and took another few forkfuls before he pushed the can at me once more. I continued to push it back toward him each and every time, until he lost our silent battle of wills, offering a grunted, “You need to eat. So, eat.”
I gave him a flat stare, aware that he likely couldn’t even see it in the perpetual gloom of late dusk that had settled over the room. “I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t give a shit whether you’re hungry or not,” he replied. “Eat.”
“Or what, you’ll make me?” I hazarded a guess.
The gleam in his eye made my spine turn from noodle to iron. “Wanna find out?”
The next time he shoved the can at me, I took it and speared one of the remaining pieces of fish inside, but only ended up swirling it around for good measure. At his harrumph I finally put it in my mouth, but felt no pleasure in consuming it due to its utterly tasteless quality. “Happy now?” I quipped, handing it back.
Nate looked ready to check under my tongue whether I’d actually swallowed, but refrained—for now. “I know that you’re not exactly fond of tuna after last year’s run—“
“It’s not that,” I interrupted him before he could remind me of just how monotonous our diet had been last summer. Not that it was that much more varied now.
“Then what is it?”
I wondered how to explain, except for the obvious. It shouldn’t have been something that needed an explanation. “I’m just not hungry,” I said.
“Bullshit,” he ground out, then got to his feet. “I know that things aren’t exactly rosy for you right now…”
“Understatement of the century,” I murmured, mostly to myself. I got a glare from him that I chose to ignore.
“…But you can’t give up like this.”
“Who says I’m giving up?” I shot back, waiting for heat to creep into my voice, but there was only dull acceptance. “I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to drink. Doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get up and face the world come tomorrow.”
Nate stared down at me from where he had stopped pacing at the end of the bed, then let himself fall onto it right next to me, staring at the ceiling. I doubted that he could make out much more of me than my outline, while I had no problem seeing the frustration etched into his features.
“Not saying it has to be tomorrow,” he finally replied, his voice soft. “But we can’t be sure what getting infected did to you. If you really have faster healing now, you have to eat more. You won’t get your strength back unless you give your body the sustenance it needs. Trust me, I get it. Eating, or sleeping, or taking care of yourself in any way is the farthest thing from your mind right now. You don’t have to worry about any of it. Let me bear that burden. As it is, I’m already about as useless as a cock on a zombie, so let me at least have this. Please?”
He probably meant his new, more considerate approach sweet or some shit, but what it actually did was annoy me. My grunted answer made him crack a smile, if only for a second, but he seemed to take that as affirmation.
“So we’re married now, huh?” I asked. “Or engaged. Or whatnot. How does this even work? Do we hunt down some
one to officiate that? Does consummating our marriage do the trick?” The entire idea sounded so ludicrous now that I thought about it, I didn’t know whether to object or just laugh it off.
Nate blindly groped in my direction until he caught my hand, his fingers warm and rough against my skin. “I’m not that stupid. I know that you still need to heal—“
“Gee, thanks,” I interrupted, more to add some levity to the conversation than anything else.
“Because you only just got off your death bed I’ll make an exception,” he joked, squeezing my fingers. “As for the rest… no idea? I frankly don’t care. I just want you to know that I intend to spend the rest of my life with you. That’s it.”
“So no getting my name tattooed on your ass?” I ventured a guess. Sadly, the light was a little too low to really see the look on his face clearly, but his soft laugh told me what I needed to know.
“Not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” he remarked. “Even if I lose every single thing I own, that’ll stay with me.”
“Oh you shut up,” I advised. When he held out what remained of the tuna to me, I hesitated, but then took it and forced myself to finish it. The hand he’d been holding mine with dropped onto my knee, but I shook it off after a few moments. When finally the abysmal tuna was gone, I dropped the can and fork on the nightstand before I stretched out next to him, studying his features in the darkness. He really needed to shave soon if he didn’t want that beard of his to start getting longer than his hair.
“How long are we going to stay here?” I asked, not sure why I felt the need to disrupt the silence stretching between us.
Nate shrugged. “At least as long as it takes you to get better again. As harsh as it sounds, you’re of no use to me out there if my entire attention is taken up by keeping you alive.”
“You say the sweetest things,” I muttered, but of course he was right. I couldn’t even comfortably walk down stairs, let alone run for my life. Not the best prerequisites for surviving out there.
Green Fields Series Box Set | Vol. 2 | Books 4-6 Page 36
