Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  “But you didn’t. You didn’t. He’s okay. You’re okay.”

  “I’m not okay!” she yelled as she stood and barreled down on the snoring moron.

  “Vanessa, he’s pretty far under if that fall didn’t rattle him, and I don’t think you’re supposed to wake up a sleepwalker.”

  She straddled Steven and leveled Sean with the most deadly glare she could muster butt-naked and shaking from the cold. “Maybe that rule applied in fancy-dancy times before the outbreak. Nobody gives a shit about sleepwalker’s hurt feelings in a forest full of Deads.” And then she raised her fist and socked Steven in his slack jaw.

  He lurched forward with a yelp and looked frantically around like his eyes needed to adjust. When they landed on her, he ogled her exposed body and then frowned. “This is happening? Did I fall asleep while we were doing it?” His eyes landed on Sean. “Oh man this is getting weird.”

  “We aren’t having sex, you idiot. When you’re out on missions, did you not think it was pertinent information to let your team know you’re a freaking sleepwalker? I almost shot you!”

  “Here,” Sean said in a deep, exhausted voice. His gaze was averted as he handed her a pile of clothes he’d retrieved from her backpack.

  The emotional upheaval she’d endured between his rejection and almost offing a friend were just too much. “Awesome. Are you offended by the sight of my body, Sean? Well, I know I’m not hideous because Steven here won’t stop staring, so you don’t have to pretend.” Her anger boiled over and filled her head with shards of red fury. She gripped Steven’s jacket and pulled him in to lay the least intimate kiss on his lips that had ever existed. In fact, his mouth was likely bleeding. Then she stood, snatched the clothes from Sean’s outstretched hand, and jammed a big fat middle finger in his face before stomping off.

  “Now, that’s a woman,” Steven murmured as she left, and she fought the urge to turn and hurl rocks at the both of them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ONE MORE DAY. One more day of scavenging medical supplies, and they’d be on their way back to Dead Run River and she could pretend Sean-sexy-face-Daniels didn’t exist. She would get back to normal, where she didn’t feel as if she could cry or laugh at any second, and she’d be back with Nelson. Once she crossed those colony gates, she’d be back to her old, unafraid self again. Just twenty-four more tiny hours.

  “V,” Finn scolded. “Are you paying attention?”

  “Finneas, answer me this.” She ignored his groan and scanned the street in front of Saint Francis Medical Center for the hundredth time. There was nothing but a bold rat digging through debris. “Am I the only one who wasn’t told about Steven’s sleepwalking problem?”

  “For the fifth time, I said I was sorry. He came to me with it right after he was picked, and I thought I told everyone. I didn’t mean to leave you out.”

  “So if I would’ve pulled that trigger, if Sean hadn’t been fast enough, all of the guilt I lived with for the rest of my life would be your fault.”

  “Yes. I made a tactical error thinking the problem wouldn’t be as bad as it got. I’m sorry I put you both at risk. Though, as I hear it, Carpenter’s not sorry because he seems to have gotten an eyeful of you last night.”

  “Yeah, roughly half of our team saw my goodies last night, so next time he goes around bragging on it, please remind him he’s not so special.”

  “Sean said you knew people in the Denver colony. Back before it fell.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Does Sean tell you everything?”

  “I just wanted to give my condolences. It was my home, and I lost a lot of people in that uprising too.” He stretched his thickly muscled neck like his sweater was suddenly too tight. “And no, Sean doesn’t tell me everything, but I like to think he tells me a lot. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “How long is a long time?”

  “Uh, since about six months into the outbreak. I met him when he was looking for a place to set up a colony, and I helped him build the gates to the one he eventually chose. I was the first one to congratulate him when his daughter, Adrianna, was born, and I was there when his wife was taken. V?”

  She’d grown more and more uncomfortable during the touchy-feely speech Finn was giving, and she twitched suspiciously under the moniker. “What?”

  “Go easy on him. He’s been through some really hard times.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s the apocalypse, Finneas. Everyone’s been through hard times. Take that guy.” She gestured to a perfectly cleaned skeleton draped elegantly across a cracked curb. “He probably came in here for a routine colonoscopy and came out as someone’s lunch. Now that’s some hard times.”

  Finn didn’t say anything for a long time, so she pointed her attention back to her post. The others were inside, trying to find anything that would fill the last couple of boxes they could fit into the back of the Terminator.

  “Three and a half years you’ve known him, and that’s a long time. Isn’t that crazy?” she asked. “That three and a half years is a long time these days?” Every single thing had changed after the outbreak. Sometimes it still hit her just how much.

  “Three and a half years is a lifetime now,” he agreed. “Days seem longer when there’s not much hope, so the weeks and months drag on.”

  “Did your best friend Sean tell you he made out with me and then called me Laney?”

  Finn’s startled gaze snapped to hers, and he muttered an oath under his breath. “I didn’t think he liked her as much as all that.”

  “Hmm. Would you approve of me if I were her?”

  “That’s not a fair question, and you know it. Laney is good people. Sean is good people. They were not good people together though. They were like oil and water, always fighting each other, always keeping each other at a distance. He had no business going after anyone in the state he was in after Aria.”

  “What happened with Aria?”

  “That is something Sean is going to have to tell you if he ever tells anyone.”

  “Never mind then. I’m not talking to Sean after this is over. He makes me crazy and not in a good way. Besides, I have a strict I-don’t-date-boys-who-stab-me-and-call-me-by-other-women’s-names policy. Keeps the creepers away.”

  Movement across the street had both of them lifting their rifles to better see out of their scopes. Just another rat joining the first. The day had been so quiet, she almost itched for a little action just to rid herself of the humming tension that ran under the surface of her skin. She sank back against the painted side of the Terminator, flipped one of her blades up in the air, and caught it by the hilt as static crackled on the radio.

  “We’re about done here,” Sean said. “Are we still clear out there?”

  “Yep, we’re clear,” Finn murmured into the speaker. “Come on out whenever you’re ready.”

  He lifted the sliding door to the truck, did a perimeter sweep of the sides of the building, and joined her again. “And just so you know, Sean isn’t a creeper. He’s a good guy. I know, because I saw him with Aria.”

  She sighed and closed her eyes against the ache of denial. “That was three and a half years ago, Finn. A lifetime, remember?”

  A shot echoed from the building.

  “Sean?” Finn radioed.

  Static was the only answer.

  “Sean!” Uh-uh, screw that radio.

  “Vanessa!” Finn yelled as she blasted around the truck and through the front doors.

  Rifle up and finger at the ready to pull the trigger on whatever had caused the fear of loss that clung to her gut like moss, she barreled through the door and ran into Sean who was headed the opposite direction. She would’ve been relieved he was still upright if not for the sagging weight of Steven on his arm.

  Sean’s eyes looked somber and angry, and she moved out of the way as he brushed past her. “Load up, Summers. Deads will have heard that shot, and they’ll be on us soon.”

  Jackson growled as she nudged her wa
y in front of him and asked, “What happened? Is he okay?”

  “Ask Brandon back there,” he offered without missing a step. “And before you kill him, remember we need him to save Steven’s life.”

  The rifle clacked as she slid it to her back and dropped under Steven’s other arm to help drag him out. When she looked down, his dark sweater was wet. No, no, no.

  Finn stood ready beside the sliding door, and Sean barked for him to go grab the other two boxes in the supply room. “Be quick about it,” he advised.

  Between her and Sean, they got Steven laid out across the backseat, and she eased his head into her lap before yanking his shirt up to expose a perfect entry hole. Bile rode a wave of dread and threatened to gag her. “Steven,” she said a lot more calmly than she felt. “We need to see if you have an exit wound. Help us roll you over.”

  Jackson fired a shot at a Dead running around the corner of the building and Sean fell back to help fend them off. Brandon took his place.

  Her voice shook with anger. “What did you do?”

  His face was pale to match Steven’s, and when he opened his mouth to speak, his lips trembled. “It was an accident.”

  “Please don’t tell me you were messing around with your gun in there and shot one of your own team.”

  Air snuffled loudly to and from his nose as he looked like he might pass out. “I didn’t mean to,” he squeaked.

  The color of his eyes drew heavenward as he swayed, and Vanessa slapped him cleanly across the cheek. Without a moment’s pause, she clutched the front of his shirt and brought him face to face with her. “If you don’t save him, I swear, I’ll kill you to avenge his death.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded vigorously.

  With Brandon’s help, she rocked Steven on his side and lifted the back of his shirt. There it was. Right at the mouth of a red stream, the exit hole was buried and leaking. The bullet had mushroomed the second it hit Steven’s skin and the hole in his back looked much worse than the front. She could only imagine the kind of damage it had inflicted on his organs as it smashed through his body.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” Steven asked.

  Vanessa inhaled a great gust and set his head on the seat so she could retrieve the first-aid kit. Gunfire peppered the air around them. Where the heck was Finn with the last of the boxes?

  She spared a glance for Sean, who’d moved a ways off from the truck and was picking the growing numbers off one by one. His focus was complete and unwavering—he was a stone among the chaos.

  Ripping the red backpack open, she shoved it at Brandon and took over putting pressure on the shirt he’d found to push against Steven’s wounds. There was so much blood. How could anyone survive losing so much?

  Brandon tore through packages of medical supplies she couldn’t even guess at, and after giving him an injection of some sort of clear fluid, he pulled a pair of latex gloves over his hands and tossed her a pair too. While she pulled hers on, Brandon stuck his finger into the entry wound and felt around, eliciting a pained scream from Steven. With all of her weight, she held his shoulders down.

  “His liver is definitely nicked. Dr. Mackey is equipped to handle that kind of patch up, but we don’t have the supplies here. We have to get him back to Dead Run River, and we have to do it now.”

  “Sean!”

  “Yeah?” he shouted between rounds.

  “We have to go, now!”

  Finn jogged through the front hospital doors with two oversized boxes stacked in his giant arms. Under Sean and Jackson’s cover fire, he secured them in the back, and the door to the Terminator made a metal grating sound as he slid it closed. Jackson hopped up into the driver’s seat just as a trio of Deads reached that side of the truck and clawed at the freshly closed door. Finn and Sean piled into the passenger side and slammed the door, but not before Sean had to kick a scrabbling arm out of the way.

  As Jackson hit the gas, Sean spun around. “How bad is it?”

  Her silent answer seemed good enough for him because he leveled her with the saddest look swimming in the depths of his eyes.

  The truck jostled and threw them as Jackson ran over any Dead in the way of their escape. The grille was definitely going to have to be scraped clean after this little joyride. “Where to, boss man?” he asked.

  “Home. Get us back to Dead Run River as fast as you can.” He sunk into the cushion of the front seat and rubbed his eyes. “Brandon, you better hope you can keep him alive until we get there.”

  Vanessa was a warrior. Tirelessly, she’d held her finger against a nicked artery in Steven’s open wound. The common iliac artery, Brandon had called it. Even long after Steven had passed out from the blood loss, she’d worked to keep him alive. It ripped Sean up to see her so scared. Loss came with this life, but every instinct in him cried to protect her from the unfairness of the world.

  The muscles in her arms jerked and twitched, and her back spasmed visibly from where she leaned over to apply pressure. The trip back had taken hours. Steven had been shot in a hospital down in Colorado Springs, where they’d dipped to find the supplies they couldn’t get in Denver. They’d tapped it out and had to go further for the things Dr. Mackey needed—unfortunately for Steven.

  Vanessa’s skin had paled to the color of her dying friend’s by the time they pulled up to the colony gates.

  “Welcome back, sir,” the guard who opened the giant wooden barrier greeted.

  “Grady, I need you to make a call to Dr. Mackey right away. We have a bad injury.”

  Grady’s eyebrows lowered, and he leaned in closer. “What kind of injury, sir?”

  “Not a bite. He’s been shot. It’s obvious, entry wound and exit. He’s in bad shape.”

  “Yes, sir.” He jogged a small distance away, and his murmured order floated across the clearing.

  “Bite check,” Ramirez, an older guard, barked into the cab of the truck.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Vanessa gritted out.

  Sean jumped out with Jackson and Finn and pulled off his shirt. “There’s no time to argue. We can’t get in without being cleared, and we’re losing precious seconds.”

  He’d done a gate check a hundred times. Still, for some reason it bothered him to be so exposed in Vanessa’s direct line of sight. Cleared, he yanked on his pants and jumped the step into the Terminator. “Brandon and Vanessa, you guys are going to have to keep that pressure on while we take him in. There isn’t a road to Dr. Mackey’s that the Terminator will fit on, so we hoof it from here to the ATV the guards are bringing around. You ready?”

  Both nodded wearily.

  Between him and Finn, they managed to get Steven’s limp body out of the truck without cutting his lifeline in Brandon and Vanessa loose, but it had taken time. Time the fading man didn’t have.

  Waiting for Vanessa and Brandon to pass gate check was a test in patience, but thankfully Grady was the one up for the job, and he seemed to sense the urgency of the situation because he lifted their shirts and checked their legs and every other square inch of vulnerable skin by lifting clothes, not making them strip. Not exactly protocol, but fitting considering. Grady asked him not to tell Mel, and he assured him he wouldn’t.

  Finally loaded into the bed of a small trailer hitched to a four-wheeler, they jostled and jounced until they came to the medical cabin. Dr. Mackey was waiting.

  “I need everybody out so I can work,” Doc said in a somber tone.

  With Steven on the operating table in the small and poorly-equipped operating room, Vanessa finally pulled her finger away from the warmth of his slick injury. She stood there, white as a sheet and nearly as flimsy, with blood smeared up to her elbows and her bottom lip trembling as the door closed behind her.

  “Doc will let me know as soon as he has anything to tell us,” Sean promised, gripping the radio to stop himself from gathering her up in his arms and hugging her until she had color in her cheeks again.

  She dragged wide, shocked eyes to his and gav
e a curt nod. Her crimson forearms lifted under the window light as she stared at the drying color. “I need to clean up.”

  “Sure,” he said, dropping his hand. When had he even reached for her?

  She turned and ambled out the door, leaving a bloodstain on the handle where she’d let herself out.

  Brandon leaned heavily against the operating room door, and Sean rounded on him. “Don’t you leave here until you know something either way. You radio me the instant you have news. Whether he makes it or not, you call it in.”

  “Okay,” Brandon murmured.

  He wanted to see Adrianna. To hold her and let her know Daddy had come home safe and that she was protected. But on runs where there were injuries and deaths, other matters had to be seen to first. Keeter’s wife would already be looking for him, as the news of their arrival would spread like a grass fire on a windy day in drought season. He had to find her before she found out about her husband’s passing in some callous way.

  Steven didn’t have any family, or even a girlfriend that he knew about, but he’d have friends around Dead Run River who deserved to know he was fighting for his life. The man could use every ounce of positive energy from his loved ones they could muster.

  Adrianna would have to wait until the painful chores were done. He wasn’t really back yet. Not until he tied up all the loose ends of the jumbled knot that had been the supply run.

  For the tenth time in an hour, Sean turned the radio off and then clicked it back on and checked the channel. Still no news on Steven.

  “Daddy?” Adrianna asked as she flipped a handmade fly into the stream again.

  “Yes, baby?”

  “I asked Laney to be my mommy, but she said I have lots of moms. Her, and Mel, and Eloise. She said I’m lucky because everyone wants to take care of me. Maybe it’s okay if I have lots of mommies because Mel makes me cookies, and Eloise teaches me about flowers, and Laney shows me how to fish, and she even promised she won’t be too busy for me when her baby comes out of her tummy.”

  His mouth was hanging open, so he snapped it closed and counted to five before answering. “Why did you ask Laney to be your mommy? I thought we were doing okay, just you and me.”