by Coralee June
“Payne should be waking up any minute now. You slept for a while. How’s Maverick?” Cyler had his forehead pressed against the glass, and I could tell that it was killing him not to be in here with his brother.
“His blisters are worse. And his fever is critical. Do we have anything to help with the pain?” I asked.
Kemper started digging through a box nearby and pulled out a vial and syringe. Within seconds, he was passing it through a compartment under the door. I grabbed it and made quick work of filling it up with the pain killer. Easing over to him, I hovered the needle over a vein in his forearm, and the moment I injected the needle into his skin, chaos erupted. Maverick’s eyes slammed open, and he shot up into a seated position. I gasped as he clasped his hand around my neck, squeezing so tightly that a dark pressure began to build in my skull.
Kemper fumbled with the door, and I held my hand up to stop him. It was already bad enough that I was in here, risking contamination. The more the door opened, the more opportunities blood had to get on the others. I looked at Maverick before placing a hand on his chest. Cyler came over the intercom once more. “It’s Ash, Maverick. You’re hurting her.”
Mav swayed as his grip loosened some, and I sucked in air the moment I could. His hand was still there, though, and could cut off my air at any second. I looked Maverick in the eye and saw the exact moment clarity started to break through his flushed face. He completely loosened his grip before crashing me to his chest in a hug. He tried to speak, but only a whisper could come out. “I’m sorry.”
Since he attacked before I could finish administering the pain medicine, I pushed the last bit of medicine into his body before yanking the syringe out of his arm. Maverick sobbed into my hair before falling asleep, and I eased his body back down to the pallet.
“Ash, you need to sterilize and get out of there. We don’t know if Maverick is going to be an aggressive walker,” Cyler said. It sounded like his throat was closing in on himself as he spoke, emotion bubbling up through his chest.
I walked over to the glass and placed my palm against it. Patrick put his hand on the other side, aligning his fingers with mine. “I’m not leaving him alone.” There was no way in hell I’d leave him in this stupid quarantine room by himself. “He won’t hurt me,” I said with certainty.
I watched all of their expressions slip into varying forms of pity as they stared at me. I knew what they were all thinking. It was risky. “Maverick wouldn’t want you in a vulnerable position that could get you hurt,” Kemper said in a no-nonsense tone.
“I don’t want you getting hurt, and I don’t think I could handle storming in there and defending you against Maverick, Babe,” Cyler said.
I knew I was being stubborn. Staying with a temperamental person suffering from X was reckless. They moved in a mindless haze and attacked without reason. “He’s not at that point yet. He stopped just now, and I startled him mid-sleep with a needle. I’ve seen Jacob wake up throwing punches because I giggled.”
“Shit, Ash. I thought we weren’t going to mention that,” his mindspeak said, making all of us grin a bit. Jacob pressed his forehead against the glass. “I don’t think I could handle it if you got hurt.”
I let out a huff of air, which fogged up the glass. Using my blood-stained sleeve, I wiped it clear before speaking again. “I promise to leave before it gets to that point. If he starts showing any signs of aggression, I’ll get out of here as soon as possible,” I eventually promised. I could understand their point, and deep down, I knew that Maverick wouldn’t want me to be in any sort of danger, especially if that danger was him.
“Thank you, Babe,” Cyler said. Patrick blew me a kiss, and Jacob glanced at Maverick.
“We’re gonna finish the prep for when Payne gets here. We’re going to make sure that we have everything ready according to Maverick’s instructions,” Kemper said before going back to work wiping down countertops. I knew that they had been ready hours ago. Hell, the clinic looked better now than it did before the riots. They were making sure to cover all the bases during this critical waiting game we were playing.
I glanced over at the shower in the corner. It was one used in labs in case of emergency, but I was so covered in grime and soot that I didn’t care that it didn’t have a door. The only people here were my men, and I was anxious to get clean. Keeping my back to the door, I stripped from my shirt and pants, then slowly removed my bra and underwear. With every layer of clothing gone, it seemed like another pound of emotions was lifted from my shoulders. I could feel my guys’ eyes on my back. And when I looked down the drain, I saw Maverick’s blood.
I covered my hand over my mouth and sobbed. My chest was shaking as I poured the hopelessness I felt into my palm. Everything hurt. My heart. My brain. My muscles and soul. I could feel the loss of the last few months like a ton of bricks, and nothing could ease the pain.
“Ash,” a whispered prayer said. Soon, two blistered arms wrapped around me as I shook. Maverick.
“You should be resting,” I said before turning around. I nuzzled his neck as his clothes got soaked.
“I’m...ok. The pain meds…” I knew what he wanted to say and nodded. The pain medicine was working at least. Just a little longer. I worked the buttons on his shirt. It wasn’t a sexual act. I just wanted to wash his feverish body. I turned the temperature to cool and helped him out of his pants, tossing the drenched fabric to the side before grabbing a nearby washcloth.
“Love you,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.
“I love you, too,” I replied. I ran the cloth over his arms with tenderness, gently washing the multiple blisters covering his body. There were so many I couldn’t count them. Some were oozing, but his skin wasn’t nearly as feverish. That was the thing about X, the symptoms were what made a person’s last days so torturous. The best way to make a person’s passing easier was to manage the fever as best you could and keep the infected blisters clean.
He hugged me, and I dropped the washcloth. We stood there like a shaking mess in the freezing water as his skin cooled off. “You’re going to be okay,” I promised, though I didn’t honestly know if he would.
The compartment under the door opened, and I turned to see that Kemper had slid a fresh change of clothes and two towels under it. I quickly went to it and helped Maverick get dressed, watching as his eyes flickered in and out of awareness. It was hard, watching such a vibrant and compassionate man slip into that state of nothing. That was the worst part of Influenza X, it claimed the mind long before it claimed the body.
Once Maverick was lying down on the pallet, I made my way over to the glass door and started pacing. I kept glancing at the entrance to the clinic, waiting for Payne and Huxley to walk through. I knew that Huxley would get him here as quickly as possible.
“You hungry?” Cyler asked over the intercom. My stomach was in knots, and I wasn’t sure I could actually stomach anything, but knowing the guys would shove nourishment down my throat if I didn’t say yes made me nod my head anyway.
A protein bar was slipped under the compartment for me, and I opened the wrapper to eat. “Should we try to give Maverick something?” I asked before glancing over at his sleeping form.
“Probably not,” Kemper said while flipping through a tattered notebook. “Once we have the cure, we don’t want anything in his stomach that could counteract it. It says here to keep his sores clean to slow the spread of infection, which you’ve already done.”
“Does it say anything else?” I asked. This I could do.
“Just that he needs to be hydrated.”
Cyler slid a canteen full of water under the door, and I walked it over to Maverick. Using my hand, I propped his head up and tilted the edge of the drink into his mouth. He swallowed a few sips but started coughing, so I stopped.
After wiping his lips clean and checking his sores for puss, I went back to the glass door and paced again. “How is the cure going to work?” I asked Kemper. Knowledge made me feel empowered, a
nd I wanted to soak up all the information.
Kemper set down the notebook and pointed at a machine in front of him. “This is supposed to extract the immunity from Payne’s blood. I put the sample in here, and it’ll pick out the sequence.” Kemper then walked across the room to a larger machine mounted on the wall. “This machine will develop fourteen different vaccines. There are apparently multiple formulas that will have various odds of success. Just because we have the cure in Payne’s blood, there’s still different variables. Maverick wrote down which ones would probably have more likelihood to work, so we’ll just have to...try them all.”
That sounded dangerous. “What if he has a bad reaction to one?” I asked.
“We don’t really have time for tests, Ash,” Cyler whispered. He already knew the dangers. Already knew that this could very well be a hopeless cause.
“We’ll go according to probability. Start with the one calculated to be the most accurate and work from there. It’s all we can do.”
I paced the floors more. Maybe knowledge wasn’t power.
Chapter Twenty
The door to the clinic slammed open, and Huxley rushed in while carrying a sleepy Payne. He was awake, but his eyes were drooped, and his body seemed lethargic. I pressed both my palms to the door, aching to be as close as possible to Payne. I gasped when Huxley laid him down on the table, and Kemper made quick work of extracting his blood.
"Is Payne okay?" I asked Huxley. I was standing so close that my breath was fogging up the glass, and I wiped it away with the sleeve of my ratty shirt in annoyance.
"He's a little weak, but I think that's normal," Huxley replied before walking over to me. He placed his hand against the glass before flipping his gaze to Maverick.
"How is he?" Huxley asked. I turned my gaze back to Maverick and took in his sleeping form. His breathing had increased rapidly.
Turning back to Huxley, I answered him. "He's not doing very well. You got here just in time," I said.
Kemper quickly drew blood from a sleepy Payne. He put the vial into the first machine and set the timer as Patrick picked up Payne and eased him over to a nearby couch to rest some more. "It'll take fifteen minutes," Kemper said before cursing.
Cyler was standing nearby and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I watched Payne on the couch as he rolled over and folded in on himself in the fetal position. I wanted to go to the young boy and offer him support. It'd been so long since I'd seen him. Despite how pale he looked and the fact that he was much skinnier than the last time we saw one another, he was okay. You had to take the little victories when you could.
Jacob was standing near the second machine, arms crossed over his chest while Patrick tried to give Payne more water. I realized then how efficiently our little team worked. We were a well-oiled machine, finding what needed to be done and acting on it. It was hard to stand there just waiting, so I went back to Maverick to track his fever. Since our cold shower, it had gone down some, but he was a raging inferno now. It almost hurt to touch him.
When I pulled my hand back, he let out a hiss. It was almost like me touching him had soothed him somehow. So, while Kemper waited for the machine, I reached out and grabbed his hand.
"How much longer?" Cyler asked. His voice cracked over the intercom.
"Five minutes," Kemper said.
In an instant, Maverick shot up in bed. I was jostled for a moment and put a little bit of space between us while staring at him. "Maverick?" I asked. I looked in his eyes and didn't see the man I loved. He was completely empty. "Maverick, it's me," I said. I couldn't tell if he was going to start being aggressive again. But I was surprised when he stood up and started staggering around the room. He walked into the wall and banged his head against it before turning around and walking the other distance. He was a Roamer. Walkers got their name because of the mindless way they roamed the streets when they were infected. The virus made his motor skills go hazy. It's how the disease spread so quickly. Their boils would burst as they walked through crowded places, infecting anyone their blood touched.
The others saw him wandering, and I watched their expressions slip into hopelessness. It wouldn't be long now.
How could we possibly be so close yet feel so far from the cure? My entire life had been leading up to this moment. Influenza X had claimed my family. It destroyed the empire. It stole Cyler, Maverick, and Jules’ parents from them. It waged wars. It ruined families. I couldn't believe that we had, so far, lost so much, and still, Influenza X was clinging to the last bit of love that I had and was trying to tarnish it in a last ditch effort of claiming everything I cared about.
"It's done!" Kemper said. I watched how his fingers trembled when he removed the samples from the machine. Kemp fast walked over to the secondary machine and carefully placed each one in its designated spot. Holding the notebook up that Maverick had filled out, he started putting in gene sequences, carefully pressing each button while checking it over.
Jacob stood behind him, and his mindspeak started listing off the different numbers he was pressing as if to double check that it was correct. All of us were silent, listening to them work as Maverick paced the room. I felt a hand on my hip as I stared out the glass door, and soon I was spun around and slammed into the partition. From the corner of my eye, I noticed that the loud noise had forced Payne to wake up from his daze.
Maverick's breath smelled sickly, it floated over my body as he gave me an empty stare. He trailed his hands up my body, leaving trails of blood as he tilted his head to the side. I knew he wasn't seeing me. It was an X delusion, and I couldn't help but wonder what he was seeing behind that brilliant mind of his.
"Hold on just a little longer, Ash," Patrick said. He was right on the other side of the door, ready to open it should Maverick try anything. So far, Mav just seemed out of it. He wasn't necessarily aggressive, but he had me pressed against the glass, his entire body leaning against mine as he breathed down my neck.
"It's almost done!" Kemper yelled. I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining him running his hands through his blond hair and the apple orchard where we shared our first date. I imagined Maverick and me in the clinic, working side-by-side as he studied the cure. I thought of the tree house as I looked at Cyler. I thought about the showers in Ethros with Huxley. I imagined sitting in Black Manor with Patrick. I clung to each moment with my men as Maverick pressed his bloody forehead against mine.
"Just a little bit longer, Maverick. Hang on just a little bit longer," I said. One of his blisters burst, causing a splatter of blood to cover my face. I felt it on my lips, and my lashes stuck together from the gore. “Almost there, Maverick.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched Kemper tap his foot while staring frantically at the machine. “One more minute!” he screamed.
I lifted up my hand and stroked Maverick’s cheek, keeping my eye on him as his chest grumbled with a growl. He swayed as I whispered reassuring words to him. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay,” I cooed.
Maverick sunk to his knees and placed his head against my stomach. Blood smeared along my shirt as he nuzzled me. “Kemper!” I screamed as a pounding on the glass door echoed around me.
Cyler was there, watching Maverick as he sunk entirely to the floor. I crouched down and watched the door as Kemper sprinted forward while holding a syringe. The moment it was passed to me through the compartment, I picked up the needle and shoved it into his forearm and pushed the liquid into his arm. Once the syringe was empty, I pulled the needle from his vein and watched the steady movement of his chest going up and down. “Did it work?” I asked in a shrill voice while spinning around to look at the others. “When will we know that it works?!”
A thudding sound on the ground drew my attention back to Maverick, and I watched in horror as he thrashed. “Maverick!” I screamed. His body seized as he rolled over onto the carpet, blood spilling from his mouth as he coughed. “What do I do?” I asked as I tried to hold him down, but it was no use.
>
Cyler was yelling through the intercom at me to back away, but I couldn’t. I refused to leave Maverick like this. His body finally stopped convulsing, and I watched as every muscle in his body relaxed. He almost looked lifeless.
I checked his pulse. “His heart is faint, but he’s still alive. What if we take him to the time capsule while we test out the other cures?” I was already lifting him up by the armpit, prepared to drag him all the way to Stonewell Manor.
“I’ve already thought of that. We’d need more of the time capsule serum, and all of it was used for Payne.”
I sobbed as Maverick tried to breathe. This couldn’t be it. The cure had to work. What the fuck were we doing if, at the end of it all, we still ended up at some morbid conclusion? “No, no, no,” I sobbed while pressing my cheek to his chest. I listened to the steady, slow, beat of his heart and ignored the smell of filth, blood, and sickness on his body. I just wanted to hold him, just wanted to be here.
“It could still work,” Cyler said. I glanced at the glass partition where his fist was clenched. “We don’t know how long the cure takes. Let’s wait.”
I nodded and continued to lie down on Maverick, letting the tears from my eyes wash away the blood as I sobbed.
Chapter Twenty-One
I felt a wet washcloth rubbing along my skin the next morning. I was struggling to open my eyes and greet the new day. It was like my soul was heavy, and I couldn’t break myself away from the exhaustion and overwhelming emotions fighting to bring me back under.
I creeped an eye open and stared at the gentle hand washing my skin with warm water. I then opened my other eye and twisted up to look at who went into the quarantine room to care for me, but then quickly squeezed them shut to try and prepare myself for the pain of knowing Maverick didn’t survive.
