by Nikita Eden
Audrey nodded, “You guys would never let me do anything but be the nurse.”
“Well, I miss that. You were always a much better nurse than these women are,” Peter informed her. “Although that Nora girl is pretty nice. She just really doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the future, when everything is back to normal and I have all the free time in the world,” Audrey mused.
Peter looked at her seriously, “You should. It would make my life better if it were you here taking care of me.”
Audrey smirked at him, “Do you know what they’re planning on doing to you when the doctor gets to town?”
Peter shook his head, “They haven’t made any definitive plans yet. I’m hoping they can just stitch me up and let me go home while the broken bones in there heal.”
“That would be great,” Audrey agreed.
“I guess it depends on how bad everything is. My mom and dad have come and talked to them, but they haven’t told me what’s been decided yet,” Peter complained with a yawn.
Dean stood up quietly and jerked his head to the door, “We need to be leaving now, Audrey. We have to head to Runner’s Field.”
“You’re not even going to cancel afternoon training in my honor? That’s a low blow, dude,” Peter laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m okay with it because I’m starting to want some more sleep and you guys should really be leaving.”
Audrey gripped his hand firmly for a second and then stood up, “We’ll come back later, then.”
Peter yawned again and grabbed a pillow from the top of his bed to lay under his heavily bandaged arm, “Alright, I guess I’ll see you later.”
Audrey and Dean left the house and rushed to training. They were late and within minutes were swept up in the new weapons training.
The man from Albuquerque who was training them was named Jakob and that afternoon was his first in Roswell. Half of the Runners went to target practice at a makeshift shooting range for the first half of training while the other half stayed with Jakob and started hand to hand fighting.
Audrey was surprised to hear from Jakob that the Elimination Squad in Albuquerque was teaching their members that having an actual weapon wasn’t as important as knowing how to turn regular items into effective weapons.
Dean had shovels, old lead pipes, and a few crowbars for them to use as weapons against the training dummies Jakob had brought.
“Just remember that you need to hit hard enough to kill it, not just knock it unconscious,” Jakob instructed them as they beat at the heads of fighting forms.
“Can’t we just turn the shovels to the side and try to cut the heads off with the sharp part?” Aadam asked and demonstrated what he meant.
Dean turned his shovel to the side and chuckled, “Yeah, I guess you can try to do that, too.”
The group goofed off and joked around with each other for the remainder of training.
Audrey was glad that it felt normal, even with Peter being gone.
“Is this what it’s like when I’m on a run down south?” She asked Dean when they were headed back to the house to visit Peter again.
Dean shrugged and nodded, “I guess so. We try to keep things running as normally as possible when someone is gone on a run. You can tell someone is gone, but everyone always comes back.”
“Do you think Peter will be able to come back when he’s healed?” Audrey asked.
She could see Peter’s mangled arm in her mind’s eye. The skin and flesh pulled away from bone, bent at a weird angle and oozing blood at every possible site.
“Of course he will,” Dean insisted and kept walking in silence to the medic house.
~~~
Audrey’s phone rang in the middle of the night. She jumped at the sound and fell off her head. She banged her head on her nightstand as she fell onto the ground and groaned. She grabbed her phone and saw Dean’s name on the screen.
“Are you kidding me?” She growled into the receiver by way of greeting.
“Audrey, you need to come to the clinic house,” Dean answered back firmly and urgently. “Now!”
He hung up without any explanation about what was going on at the house. Audrey stared at the phone for a minute trying to decide whether or not he would call her back.
When her phone remained silent she slumped over the side of her bed and grabbed her running shoes. She sleepily stumbled into the garage and grabbed her bike before peddling to the clinic house.
Dean was frantically pacing outside the house with his phone pressed to his ear. His hair stuck out at weird angles and his eyes were wide and wild as he listened to the person on the other end of the call.
“What’s going on?” Audrey climbed off her bike next to him and dropped it on the ground next to the flowers.
“I got a call from one of the night nurses that Peter got a fever that spiked and wouldn’t go away. They thought it might be a normal infection that set in really quickly from… but…” He trailed off and tears started flowing down his cheeks. “I headed here as soon as I got the call. They said it happened quickly after the fever started. He lost his color and started ripping the bandages off of his arm.”
A pit grew in Audrey’s stomach, “Is he okay?”
Dean shook his head and took a few steps back from her. He ran his fingers through his hair and hastily wiped the tears from his cheeks, “They said he changed, but it wasn’t normal. He was faster than the dregs, but when I saw him he didn’t look like a Howler. He was more—”
Audrey gasped and felt her stomach rise in her throat, “He mutated?”
Dean nodded, “He didn’t look like any of the ones that have been observed before.”
“Is he in there now?” Audrey looked at the house. There were people inside still. A woman could be heard talking hysterically and her shadow on the closed curtains showed her making grand gestures as she illustrated what happened with her hands.
“No, my dad is talking to the nurse with Peter’s mom and dad in there though,” Dean doubled over and took a deep breath. “When his fever spike they called in Gary from the regular clinic by the south gate. Peter killed him and one of the other nurses.”
“She’s the only one left from the night shift?” Audrey asked and he nodded.
There were only six nurses in Roswell. They rotated shifts and usually there were only two at the clinic house at night and two at the south clinic. Now there were only going to be four until the doctor from Artesia came to help.
“Where’s Peter if he’s not in the house?” Audrey looked around cautiously.
“He broke out. There’s a group of guys out looking for him now so he can’t hurt anyone else,” Dean stared at the ground. “They have to make sure he’s okay.”
“Dean,” Audrey said slowly. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
Dean pursed his lips together and glared at her, “You don’t know that.”
“Everyone knows that,” Audrey stepped toward him cautiously. “Dean, they aren’t going to keep him alive if they can catch him. He’d be a threat to everyone.”
“We can keep him away from everyone until he’s better,” Dean wept. “We can’t kill Peter.”
Audrey put her arms around him and pulled him into a hug. She tried to find comforting words for him, but none came. She felt could feel all the emotion in her falling into the pit in her stomach.
CHAPTER FIVE
The day of Peter’s funeral was grey. Thick, dark clouds covered the sky and a light rain fell peacefully to the ground. Audrey stood at the foot of Peter’s grave, but couldn’t bring herself to look up at the casket, so she looked at the people surrounding her.
There were many people dressed in black, standing solemnly around the graves of not only Peter, but the two nurses who had been maimed to death by him. Their ashen faces and shoulders drooped with sadness as they reflected on what had happened to the people they loved.
Peter’s mother was sobbing violently
at the head of her son’s casket. Her husband tried to comfort her in order to quiet her mournful wails, but his efforts were futile.
Dean stood next to Peter’s parents and stared at the plywood box which served as the casket that held his best friend’s body. His eyebrows were drawn together and he only raised his eyes to glare at his father who was giving his condolences to the mourning families of the people in the other makeshift coffins.
Audrey checked her watch and sidled around the casket towards Dean.
“Hey,” Audrey stopped by him and grabbed his hand gently.
His frosty blue eyes turned to her and his expression softened enough for her to know that he was still upset, but not at her.
“You must be cold,” he shrugged his suit jacked off and put it over her shoulders.
“A little bit,” she pulled the edges together. “I honestly didn’t think it would be this cold today.”
“Me either, the rain isn’t usually this cold,” Dean held his palm out and let the rain fall on it.
He rubbed his hands together and looked back at Peter’s parents when Mrs. Hunt started another round of loud wailing. He shot another icy scowl at his father and gritted his teeth.
“It isn’t his fault, you know,” Audrey said to him.
“You know there are ways to avoid them,” Dean said dismissively. “There are ways to avoid killing them. That’s all we’ve ever done as Runners. Avoid and catalogue. That’s all we do.”
“That’s not all we do anymore. It wasn’t enough this time. Besides, even if they could have caught him… You saw the way he tore up the bodies,” Audrey whispered. Her stomach turned when she thought of the site at the clinic house.
“They could have called us to help,” Dean argued.
“We’ve never seen a mutant that could strip a body that quickly,” Audrey persisted. “He wouldn’t have been any easier to avoid or catch for us, and we weren’t the ones who found him. Your dad isn’t exactly in peak physical condition.”
“Something could have been done,” Dean looked back down at the plain wooden casket mournfully and exhaled slowly.
“They should have done this yesterday,” Audrey motioned to the funeral set up.
Dean looked around with a sneer, “What do you expect from the most insensitive person on Earth?”
“It isn’t very well thought out,” Audrey agreed.
Dean raised a finger to her and turned to whisper something to Mr. Hunt. He spoke softly to Mrs. Hunt and gave her a hug.
“You’re always welcome at our place,” she sobbed over Dean’s shoulder. “Peter’s room will always be there for you.”
“I appreciate that, Mom,” Dean squeezed her a little tighter. “I have to go now because of scheduling, but I’ll come by later tonight, okay?”
The woman wiped the corners of her eyes with a white handkerchief and nodded, “Do what you have to, sweetheart. We’ll see you later.”
Dean walked away from them to rejoin Audrey and asked, “I need to go get ready for the celebration they’re having for the new residents. Do you want to come to the hotel with me?”
Audrey nodded and followed him. She looked over her shoulder and wondered how the community was going to recover from the loss of two nurses and a Runner. There weren’t many medical professionals left in the world and the loss of a Runner was going to effect the safety of the community.
She watched Dean as they walked. Since the Council had started preparations for the funerals his behavior had become erratic. He stayed outside the gates until it was almost too late to come back in almost every night, he missed training every day, and then he stayed out in the streets after curfew.
People grieved in different ways. Audrey hoped this was just his way.
When they got to the hotel Dean lead her down the hallway to the elevator, it dinged a few times, but it never opened.
“Stupid thing must be busted again,” Dean complained and punched the door.
The Davies family was staying on the third floor of the Fairfield Inn. Before the infection they lived in a big stucco and brick house on Onate Road, but when the economy collapsed and the Council decided to build the walls to keep everyone who was left safe from the hordes of dregs, they gave up their house and settled into a set of rooms in the Fairfield Inn.
Audrey followed Dean up the emergency stair well. He smiled at her and opened the door to the suite. Audrey recognized some of the home décor from their old house. Dean had retrieved it to help his mother transition and adapt to life inside the gates.
“Your mom always keeps it so nice here,” she looked at herself in a mirror and frowned. “You’d never know this was a hotel room and not an apartment.”
“Except for the missing kitchen, right?”
“There’s not really a need for a kitchen when you get your food at the mess hall though,” Audrey put her shoes by the front door on the shoe rack Mrs. Davies always asked her to use.
“Anyone here?” Dean said loudly and took his tie off.
They stayed quiet for a moment waiting for an answer, but no one answered.
“I like the house you’re in now,” Dean kicked off his shoes and tossed them at the door.
“It’s great. Nothing like having ten square feet with nothing but a bed and some clothes,” Audrey rolled her eyes.
“It’s not so bad,” Dean unbuttoned his shirt. “At least you don’t have to worry about a lot of stuff.”
Audrey poked his side and passed him to look out the window, “Some of us would like to have stuff still.”
“You can sit on the bed or at the desk,” Dean pulled his shirt off revealing his taut, muscular back. “Or whatever.”
Audrey took his suit jacket off and set it on the chair sitting under the window. She stared at his reflection for a second. The muscles in his back rippled and he opened the drawers of a tiny dresser that had doubled as a television stand before the Davies took up residence there. He looked through them and sighed in frustration when he couldn’t find anything to wear to the welcoming.
“I don’t have anything nice enough,” he mumbled.
“Does it have to be nice?” Audrey asked. “You’re going to be walking around sweating all afternoon while you help people move into their new homes.”
He turned around with a smirk, “Fair enough.”
She let her eyes wander over his body and wondered if he had noticed that his body was in amazing shape lately. She felt her cheeks flush and averted her eyes.
What did she care if he was covered in toned, lean muscle that danced beneath his skin when he moved?
She groaned and decided to lay on the bed. She dropped onto it on her back and put a pillow over her head, “Hurry up, you big dork. I need to go so I can get changed into my running clothes.”
She heard him snicker and continue ruffling through his things. He went silent and pulled the pillow off her face a second later.
She stared at him and then let out the breath she had been holding, “What are you doing?”
“Wondering why you’re hiding under a pillow,” he chuckled. “Am I really hideous enough that you have to hide?”
She looked down at his bare chest and noticed he had changed his pants and was wearing a pair of blue basketball shorts.
She shook her head, Nope. Nopitty, nope, nope, nope. Not hideous at all.
She was slightly annoyed by the fact that she enjoying the view he presented her with, but she was unable to say anything more than, “Uh. I-I… um.”
He leaned over her with an arrogant smirk and put his arm across her body, “So, you like the way I look?”
She swallowed hard. Her gaze traced curves of his biceps and she felt her cheeks heat up again. She pushed him back so she could sit up.
“I really need to go so I can get ready. I’ll meet you at the south gate to greet everyone,” she was talking so fast she could barely understand what she said.
“Audrey, wait,” Dean sat on the bed next to her.
“I really need to go, Dean,” she claimed. It just happened to be convenient that he would need to go to the south gate while she was gone.
His knee brushed against her thigh and the movement sent tingles up her leg. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s important lately—”
“Like food and water? That kind of thing?” She asked not trying to be obtuse, but she wasn’t thinking clearly.
She stared at his chest and licked her dry lips. She was not attracted to him. She told herself. He was her best friend. Nothing else.
He shook his head and chuckled. She didn’t wait for him to say anything and stood up abruptly. He caught her wrist and turned her around. He pulled her against him. He guided her hands onto his shoulders and put his hands around her lower back, “Audrey. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“What about me, Dean? I’m not that great,” she wasn’t trying to be coy. If she was important to anyone her life would be going a lot differently. She’d have more than a few friends around and of course her family wouldn’t be gone.
“You are great, Audrey. I think there’s a reason we’ve stuck by each other through everything that’s happened over the six months,” he said softly and stood up so he was looking down at her.
“I’m guessing it has a lot to do with my family being gone,” her voice cracked.
“Even if they were still here I’d want to be friends with you,” he smiled.
“We are friends,” she swallowed. “We always will be, Dean.”
“I want to be more than friends. I think I’m in love with you,” he was looking down at her with a tender smile, but even though his lips were curved up his eyes were cold and distant. His lips parted and he leaned in towards her.
She moved her head to the side and put her hand against his mouth.
She took a step back, “I have to go, Dean.”
“Don’t leave,” he pleaded, holding his hand out to her. “I need you Audrey.”
“I don’t know what to say right now, Dean,” she walked backwards toward the door. “This is—this is just too weird right now. It’s too much.”
