Savage

by Jade C. Jamison

  He nodded but said nothing. As we got closer to the deck, he pointed at a spot in the snow with the tire iron. I saw it too. It wasn’t big, and if we hadn’t been looking down, we probably wouldn’t have spotted it, but it was blood.

  Had someone infected found our hideaway?

  Kevin brought the hand holding the tire iron up to his face and managed to stick his index finger up in front of his lips, indicating to me that he thought we needed to be quiet. I nodded my head to let him know I understood. Then, we walked the last few steps to the deck, and Kevin placed the jug of water on its flat surface, followed by the backpack. I followed suit, putting mine down on the deck as well before picking up the axe once more. Then he signaled me to follow him as he walked toward the front door that led to the living room of my aunt’s house. He didn’t go to the door, though. Instead, he walked to the big windows of the living room and pressed his hand against the glass, shielding the outside light, and then pressed his forehead against his hand. I joined him and also looked inside. Everything seemed still but…not quite right.

  Kevin stepped away from the window and turned around to survey the land about the house. Then he whispered, “Well, I guess we head inside. You okay with that, or you want to stay out here?”

  “I’ll go in.” In fact, I was starting to feel a little silly, because—other than the spot of blood in the snow that could have been almost anything—there were no signs that anything was wrong…other than a funny feeling in my gut.

  He opened the door and stepped inside. The only sounds were the crackling of the ever-present fire. He glanced back at me and I followed him in. “Hello?” he called, and I half-expected either Vera or Larry to holler back from upstairs or the kitchen, but as we continued making small steps farther into the house, there were no answers.

  It wasn’t until we’d closed the front door and walked all the way into the living room that we saw her. Vera was splayed out on the floor in front of the chairs we’d thought of as hers and Larry’s. She was bleeding from a wound or wounds in her stomach, and the bottom half of her t-shirt was colored red, drenched. “Oh, my God,” I said and released the axe from my grip, moving toward her.

  “That’s not a good idea, Nina,” Kevin cautioned, but it was too late. I’d already dropped to the floor beside her.

  I was convinced she was dead, and I wondered if maybe she’d become infected while we’d made our journey to the creek. If so, Larry had likely done the deed and, for all we knew, was off somewhere mourning. But as I sat there trying to sort through my emotions, I saw the slightest movement of her chest. “Vera?” I whispered.

  Her eyes fluttered until she opened one of them to look at me. I saw her mouth move a little but she couldn’t say anything. “Oh, God.” I looked up at Kevin. “She’s still alive.” I looked back down at Vera. I would have thought I would have seen nothing but pain in her eyes, but instead, I saw weakness, numbness, and acceptance. “Can I get you anything?”

  She mouthed no and I took one of her hands in mine. I hoped I wasn’t hurting her, but I knew that, at the end of my days, I’d probably want love and comfort—if not from a loved one, at least from someone who might have cared something about me. At the very least, I was no stranger. From the time we’d spent together over the past several months, we were practically family.

  Vera answered our unasked question. “Larry,” she said, her voice barely audible, more a rasp than anything else. I shook my head and felt a tear fall from one of my eyes, and I had no idea why. Then the woman found some hidden reserve of strength, just as I expected her to give up the ghost. “He doesn’t want to go back. The car…”

  She blinked a few times and closed her eyes once more, and I thought then that she had definitely passed. In spite of her proximity to the fire, her hand felt like ice in mine, and I knew she didn’t have much time left on this earth. Kevin came and knelt beside me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “What’s she saying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vera’s eyes opened again and she tried to focus on Kevin. “Keep an eye on her.” She said it, but her words came out raggedly. “He’s danger…”

  “Larry?” Kevin asked.

  “Yes.” She pulled in several slow, deep breaths before continuing. “He broke the car, spilled the gas on…” She seemed to fall asleep, but then I knew she’d slipped away. Except she hadn’t. How she managed to continue holding on, I’d never know, but she had more to say. “Wants to stay here, wants to kill.” This time, she looked like she drifted off to sleep again, and I waited patiently for her eyes to open once more.

  Only they didn’t.

  Kevin reached over and felt her wrist, and then he touched my hand. His voice was quiet and gentle when he said, “She’s gone, Nina.”

  My eyes squeezed out two tears and I blinked them away. The sadness was quickly replaced by anger toward the man accused. “Why?”

  Of course, he had no answer for me and he didn’t even try. Instead, he pulled me into an embrace after helping me stand. After a few minutes, he said, “We should probably get out of here.” His voice was low as I blinked. “If he really did this, then we’re not safe. Let’s get some water and food and head to our place.” I nodded so he knew I understood him. I got the feeling he wasn’t convinced that Larry wasn’t somewhere in the house…but the blood outside and the heinous thing he’d done made me believe he was long gone. I looked down at Vera one more time and touched her hand, trying not to look at all the blood. How someone could do something like that to someone he loved…but I knew Larry was gone—something had happened in his head, and he was not the man I’d known back in Winchester. Something inside him had snapped, and this final act of murdering his wife proved it.

  Kevin was already standing when I shifted my gaze away from Vera’s empty shell, and I took his hand and stood. “I can go get the food if you want to—”

  “No way, Nina. We go together.”

  I looked in his eyes, full of sincerity and concern, and I nodded. I followed him outside first, where we gathered up the water supplies we’d left on the deck and brought them inside. He led the way to the kitchen, and we put everything on the table, but he proceeded to remove the bottles of water from his backpack. Then, after he grabbed the flashlight off the end table in the living room, we headed downstairs to the pantry.

  Even in the darkness, I could sense Kevin’s tension. This had bothered him as much as it had me. I knew it wasn’t the sight of blood, because there had been so much more the time we’d met the Bransons in the forest and had to defend ourselves against them. No, I believed it was at the sight of seeing the brutality that someone who purported to love his spouse could do. It had been psychically scarring to me, but I hadn’t thought of Kevin and how it would make him feel.

  I could sense his strength beside me, but he held his tire iron at the ready. His hand was down but poised in front of his torso, ready to raise and strike at a moment’s notice. I had the axe as well, but I didn’t know how effective it would be in that tight stairwell. I’d likely injure Kevin or myself as easily as any assailant who came after us.

  But we reached the bottom unscathed, and Kevin paused there, turning all the way around once quickly, scanning for anything unusual. Then he did it once more, slowly this time, ensuring that we were alone. Once he felt sure that we were safe, we walked to the pantry area. We wasted no time, grabbing a few canned and boxed goods that would take care of two or three meals if needed as well as a couple of apples. We put them in his backpack and, once he had it back on, we exited the pantry. He scanned the room again before we crossed it and headed back up the stairs.

  He paused at the top, once more looking around the room before stepping inside, but then we walked over to the table. “You okay with carrying all that water in your backpack back down the hill?”

  “No problem.”

  “Actually…where we’re going, we don’t need water, so let’s not take all that.” I smiled in spite of the situation. H
e was right. The whole point of “our place” was that many of the comforts of the modern-day life we missed were available in that little cottage, running water being but one. But just in case I was right and someone had returned home, I wanted to take some water with us so we didn’t have to return to the house. I emptied the bag, leaving just a few bottles.

  “Want me to put some of that stuff in mine?” I asked, indicating his backpack. The canned goods had to be heavy.

  “Nah. But why don’t you put the flashlight in there?” I furrowed my brow. “We have no idea what we’re gonna need. Better to be safe than sorry.” I nodded and set the flashlight on top of the water bottles before zipping it. Once I had it on my back, I picked the axe back up off the table and looked over at him. “There’s one thing I want to check before we go…something Vera said.”

  I know I looked confused but I followed him into the garage. He was poised to strike when we entered there too, not knowing what to expect. Nothing was amiss, though, and he walked around to the driver’s side of the car. He opened the door and sat on the seat, looking around. It was a few seconds before he found the release for the hood, but he popped it when he did.

  I turned around just to look back through the house. I was feeling paranoid and unsafe, and I didn’t know when I’d feel relaxed again. Maybe never.

  Kevin peeked and poked under the hood and then said, “Motherfucker.”

  “What?”

  “That son of a bitch…he took all the wires off the spark plugs.” I kept quiet. I thought I knew what he was saying but it didn’t seem possible. Larry had plotted and maneuvered so that we would be stuck here? Larry had caused it? Kevin looked up at me and I could see the anger in his eyes. “But it doesn’t matter now, because he spilled all the gas everywhere, making sure if one of us figured that shit out, we still couldn’t get out of here.”

  “Larry did this? Are you sure?”

  “Who else, Nina?” His eyes looked dark. “It wasn’t you, was it?”

  If I hadn’t been so tense, I might have laughed. “No. I don’t even know how to do that.”

  “What a sick fuck.” Kevin slammed the hood down, I hoped letting go of some of his frustration, and let out a long sigh. “Ready?”

  I nodded in response and we left the garage, walking through the kitchen and then heading toward the door. I looked back one last time at Vera before her body disappeared behind the couch and I said a mental goodbye. Kevin and I walked out the door, closing it behind us, both of us gripping our chosen weapons before walking back down the mountain.

  When I’d dreamed of going back home, I hadn’t thought we’d be leaving this way.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  “Invincible” – Adelitas Way

  KEVIN AND I walked back down the mountain, the same thing we’d done for months, only this time, we had a completely different goal—to get the hell out of there. Once we were halfway down, we spied Larry’s truck in the road where it had sat since we’d arrived.

  Kevin looked at me and said, “Hold on.” He tried to open the door but then he realized that Larry had locked the doors. “Just wondering if he really ran out of gas.”

  I stood beside him looking at the window. “I think so. I mean…we were going to gas up before he nearly ran over you.”

  “So the survivor bullshit came to him after we’d settled in.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  He walked alongside the truck and said, “You mind waiting a minute?”

  “That’s fine.”

  Kevin lowered the tailgate and removed his backpack, setting it in the bed of the truck. Then he set his tire iron down and hoisted himself up and stood over his bike, examining it. I was growing bored and still felt tense, so I began looking around. I thought I heard something in some nearby scrub oak, but Kevin was making all manner of noise. I turned back to the truck to see what he was doing, and he was rolling the bike off the truck. “Do you need my help?”

  “No. I got it.”

  Once he had it down (and it was questionable as to if he was going to seriously injure himself doing it), he was messing around with the handlebars, scrutinizing them from multiple angles. It was in the middle of his examination that I heard the swift sloshing in the mud and slushy snow behind me.

  I turned just in time to see an infected woman with stringy blonde hair charging after Kevin. She was running like her ass was on fire and he was a lake, and I felt my hackles rise. There was no hesitation, either, as I moved forward to place myself between her and him, and I raised the axe, bringing it down at an angle so that, just as she moved into my range, it punctured her shoulder right at the neck. The axe must have been sharp because it sliced her like a chef’s knife through a carrot—quick and clean with just a little effort. Her eyes appeared to bulge, although I think, in retrospect, that my imagination had a little to do with it, and then she dropped to the ground, blood spraying and dripping and mixing with the mud at our feet.

  Kevin had stood by the time I faced him, and he smiled. “Damn fine job, Davis.”

  I grinned back. Still using my maiden name. “That’s Hardwick to you, mister.”

  His smile didn’t completely fade, but it lost some of its luster. “Oh, yeah.”

  Dumb move on my part. I let out a sigh. I felt adrenaline coursing through my veins, and my hands were shaking, but I’d done it, and I was proud that I’d done it without thought, without hesitation. I saved the man I loved decisively. “So what have you been doing over here, Savage? I mean…while I’ve been saving the world and all.” I realized I was feeling a little giddy; after all, I’d just killed something—again—and it was starting to feel commonplace, something I’d never wanted to feel in connection with destroying a life, no matter how much that other life had wanted to kill me. It made the act cheap and removed all reverence for life and the soul, and I hated that I’d done that…so, instead of hanging on to my earlier fear and caution, I was playing around a little too much.

  Fortunately, Kevin seemed to sense that and went easy on me. He simply answered my question. “We never really checked out my bike. My thought was that it was fucked up and I’d need some heavy-duty tools to repair it. But I’m looking at it now and I think I can have it drivable in no time.” I nodded as I felt my friend hope flood my core. “Maybe we can leave tomorrow.”

  “Wow. That would be great.”

  “The question is where can I find what I need to fix it, and do I want to walk it to wherever that is?”

  “What about Aunt Lou’s outbuildings?”

  He frowned. “I guess that’s a possibility, but I really don’t want to stay up there. We’re inviting trouble, Nina.” He searched my eyes. “We’d have to do something with Vera’s body…and clean up the living room carpet.” Oh…yeah, I didn’t think I could handle it. Fortunately, Kevin already knew that. “Here’s what we do. We hunker down in our place.” I thought that was cute, that he really was referring to it that way. “Eat dinner and sleep, and then get up in the morning and take my bike up to your aunt’s. Not even go in the house; just go straight to the barn. It’s big and there’s some kind of workshop. Hopefully, I can get it done early and we can be home before this time tomorrow.”

  So we headed down the mountain, leaving his bike on the side of the road, propped up on its kickstand, a tiny ray of hope in a bleak landscape.

  * * *

  Kevin had been right. Ordinarily, I disliked being wrong, but I was fine with it in this case. We walked back through the back door of the little white house behind the trees. The door was still unlocked, but what made the prognosis official was that my note was still on the kitchen counter, untouched, unmoved.

  Unread.

  We made dinner early, while it was still light out, and I enjoyed the hell out of using a stove to cook. We’d considered testing out the television and DVD player after washing the dishes, but we wanted the house to continue to appear dark and unused. If Larry were on the prowl, a glowing light inside would be an
invitation. So we closed the drapes to the master bedroom and went to bed, but not after enjoying the shower first.

  This time felt even better than the last.

  And I slept well, better than I had in months. I felt warm all night long and I’d forgotten what it felt like to awaken without a cold nose.

  We made love in the early morning light, and I could tell by the glow in his eyes that he too had grabbed onto hope hard. Today was the day, after months and months of isolation and desolation, that we were going home.

  We ate the apples on our trek back up the mountain, and even though they’d been showing signs of age—tasting mellower, feeling softer, beginning to pucker—they were probably the sweetest fruit we’d ever eaten. The sun warmed our backs, and I noticed an eagerness in our steps.

  As we approached the bike, I noticed the body of the infected woman I’d slain the day before. I hadn’t paid much attention then, because I’d merely focused on making sure it was her instead of us, but I said, “I’m not much for fashion, but her clothes and shoes look expensive.”

  Kevin shrugged, his eyes all about the Harley. “Maybe she’s the one who put the tracks all over that gated place. She finally found a way out.”

  My mind slid back to that time, when we’d seen all those tracks around the high fence, signaling someone searching in vain for a place to escape. I wondered if that indicated some sort of rudimentary intelligence, that maybe she’d found a tool or figured out how to climb.

  It wasn’t impossible. After all, these beings had once been human—not just people loved by others, but members contributing to society, learning things, building things, growing things, doing things, some of them probably doing things lots of other people couldn’t.

  The idea spoke to a loss I couldn’t fathom.

  Kevin uprighted the bike and rolled it over to where I stood in the road. Spots were still muddy, but they were now a hard, drier mud as opposed to sloppy and watery, and he was able to push his bike on it. “Ready?” I nodded, still lost in thought. “Keep your eyes peeled.”