Nolan cleared his throat and spoke. “Right. We need a plan.” He pushed his hand through his hair, taking a deep breath and seeming to regret the action as his lungs inflated with too-hot, too-dusty air.
“Plan?” Andy was over by his backpack again, sitting criss-cross on his wrinkled sleeping bag. “There was talk yesterday about the military moving us to a bigger camp outside Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas,” Barrett said in disbelief. “Home sweet home. What a fuck-ton moronic place to put a bigger camp though. Can you imagine?” He shook his head, crossed his arms. “There you got drunks, gamblers. The uncontrolled types, addicted to the scene and the neon. Now infect them all. It’s going to be a goddamn circus there.” He grinned darkly. “I mean, those are my favorites types of people an’ all, but it ain’t no place for a survivor camp.” Barrett’s expression was thoughtful after he stopped speaking and I wondered what was running through that criminal brain of his.
“Nah. They said it was really safe there.” Andy unzipped his bag and sorted around the contents until he found an olive-green rectangle. He ripped it open with his teeth to reveal a tan-hued food bar. “Hated this shit first time I tried it, but you know it sort of reminds me of barely sweet cornflakes now. Just need some milk. I’d kill for some milk. With ice.”
Nolan and Rose were sitting on the floor now, their newly acquired bags next to them.
“It’s safe there?” Rose said, sounding incredulous.
“Supposed to be safer than here. More…they used a word…” Andy munched on the bar, bits of it crumbling out of his mouth “…fortified.”
“I got a question.” Barrett moved, his large, meaty arms still crossed over his body. “How are they getting this shit established so fast?” He gestured around the tent. “It’s been barely a few days since all this shit started, right? Now they’ve got a larger, fortified camp outside one of the busiest, amoral towns in the US? I don’t think it adds up.”
“The military is an efficient machine, Barrett. Not that you’d understand something like that. You’re on the other side of things, aren’t you?” Even seated on the floor, Nolan seemed fierce. “Carrying around that backpack like it’s the most precious fucking thing in the world to you.”
Andy quirked an eyebrow and took another bite of cereal bar. “What’s in the backpack?”
No one said anything, but they didn’t have to. We all knew what was in the backpack and how important it was to Barrett. Even now, at the end of the world, he was still clinging to it like it would change things for him. Like money was still currency.
“Seriously, what’s in the backpack?” Andy asked again.
“Shut up, kid,” both Barrett and Nolan yelled.
For a second, Andy looked like he might be regretting asking to stay with the group, but then he shrugged and went back to chowing down on his bar.
“Am I going to have to spend all my time breaking up fights between you two?” Rose spoke louder than necessary, to get the men’s attention, no doubt. “Because it’s getting really old. Grow up or, just”—she made a random, irritated gesture in the air—“get out.”
“I second that.” I raised my arm slowly, like I was going to answer a question in a classroom, and then I let my hand drop back lazily into my lap. “You’re acting like teenage boys.”
For what felt like the millionth time, Barrett and Nolan were silently glaring at each other.
I stood up just as a voice from outside the tent called out, “Sleeping bags and evac sign-up!”
Both men stopped glaring at one another and turned their attentions toward the tent. I walked forward, and felt, more than saw, Rose get up quickly and stride toward me. I glanced at her, giving her a what? face. She gave me a knowing look, as if to say “you know exactly what.”
Barrett held out a hand to stop me. I wasn’t in the mood to be man-handled though.
“Barrett, move.”
He smirked, shrugged, but dropped his arm.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Nolan was up now, walking toward us.
“Oh my god. Did you hear what the person outside said? Sleeping bags.” I shifted and gestured at the room behind me. “Anyone like me and maybe not like the idea of sleeping the ground? Oh, and evac sign-up. I wonder if that’s about the Las Vegas camp? Maybe”—I paused for effect and made a get off my back face—“we should get some more freaking information instead of standing around measuring our dicks.”
“Good idea,” Nolan muttered. “I’ll go.”
“I’ll go too,” Barrett drawled out.
“Screw you both,” I mumbled, pushing through the tent flap. I glanced around, not caring if anyone had followed me out. It only took a few minutes to spot the man. The heat was less stifling outside the tent of course, but I was once again surrounded with living, breathing, human bodies.
Human.
It felt odd to be mentally separating myself from the rest of humanity. But compartmentalizing myself like that, it helped.
I walked quickly toward the man with the clipboard, who was hauling a pop-up-type wagon behind him filled with various-colored, somewhat stained, sleeping bags.
“Hey!” I called after him, waving my hand a little even though he was facing the other direction. Which I guess made me look a bit stupid.
He turned around slowly, checking something off on the papers he held. His eyes were shadowed beneath the brim of his camo hat. “Yes, ma’am. Can I help you?”
“Well, we need some sleeping bags.” I glanced down at the bags and wondered if they were going to be more comfortable than just sleeping on the hard-ass ground. They looked thin as a fitted sheet.
“How many?” He let the wagon handle fall away from his grip and he tucked the clipboard under his arm.
“Four,” I said as Rose joined me.
The man picked out four and handed two each to me and Rose. “There. Do y’all need anything else? Are you all set with your supply bags? Guessing you’re some of the new arrivals.”
“Yes. We’re new.” Rose rearranged the sleeping bags to be held with one arm so she could gesture with her other. “We were wondering about the camp in Vegas. We heard a few of the other survivors talking about it.”
“Yeah, we’re taking volunteers right now to move out to the larger camp. We’re getting past capacity here.” He untucked the clipboard and unclipped a pen from his lapel. “Want to sign up? It’s not based on arrival.”
“Oh, I don’t know. We need to speak with our companions,” I said. “Someone said the other camp was bigger and safer?”
The soldier nodded. “Yeah, that’s what they tell us. Sent my own wife and kid out that way.”
“But you’ve not seen it?” I bit my lip, hoping for the answer I wanted. I didn’t get it though.
“No, not seen it.” He cleared his throat and then leaned down to get the wagon handle. “If that’ll be all then, I need to keep moving.”
“Yes. Thank you,” I responded, shuffling my feet a little.
He had started walking away, when I thought of something else.
“If we decide we want to volunteer, how can we find you?”
He glanced back. “Just come to the main tent where the testing was. They’ll take care of you.”
I watched him walk away.
“Hey, come on.” Rose pulled my arm a little.
“Well, that didn’t give us any better information,” I sighed out.
“Nope,” Rose said, punctuating the P with a little pop of sound.
We hadn’t gone far from our tent, but as we passed a smaller one—the flap rolled up to reveal a family cuddled together around a book—I caught a whiff of metallic sweetness. Without meaning to, I stopped walking just past the entrance. Tension rolled up and down my body like ocean waves.
Rose must have recognized the signs, because she put a hand on my shoulder and told me to “breathe” and “think about your dad,” but her words came to me as if they were traveling through the sea that was
now my body, muted by each glassy ripple.
Outside of the water, all I could see and smell and even hear was blood. My legs moved me back until I was right outside their tent, until I could see inside. My eyes hungrily searched the family, who hadn’t noticed me yet.
And I found it.
The little boy, tracing his fingers across sentences in the book while sitting on his mother’s lap, had a nose bleed.
It wasn’t a severe one. A minor trickle.
To me it looked like a river.
I felt heat flood my face and the sleeping bags fall from my grip. A rumble began in my chest, low and deep.
“Think about your dad, Sam!” Rose was still trying to reach me, down in the darkness that was eating me away until I was nothing save for the desire to feed. Her hand was a vise on my shoulder. She was trying to pull me away, but my legs were stone, rooted in place. “Sam, he’s a little boy. He’s a baby.”
That last point broke through the barrier. I wouldn’t hurt a child. Not ever… Would I?
The mother looked up then, her fingers toying with her son’s ice-blond curls. She tentatively smiled.
That cautious, trusting smile finally broke the stone that was binding me. I pushed forward, bending over to grab the sleeping bags I’d dropped. I fought the bloodlust.
And I remembered dancing to my father’s violin.
Chapter Six
~ Rose ~
Sam’s attacks were getting worse.
I couldn’t deny it any longer, though I wished I could. I had no idea what to expect: Would she turn full zombie on us? Or could she fight it and get better? I doubted the latter, but I kept those dark thoughts to myself.
After the incident earlier in the day, we decided as a group that she had to stay inside at all times. At least for the time being. Andy was itching to ask what was going on, but for some reason I didn’t know yet, he hadn’t. I didn’t trust the kid. He was too innocent and too easygoing for my liking. If he’d asked a million questions or broken down crying for a video game and some ice cream I would have been less suspicious of him. As it was, he did neither of those things. He just seemed to accept everything; taking it all in his stride and going with the flow. It wasn’t normal.
At least it didn’t seem so to me.
But then, I surmised, I bet a lot of his reactions were down to him being in brought up in care. He wasn’t worried over his mum or dad, cousins or aunties. It was just him against the world—quite literally now.
I sort of envied him for that. My parents had pushed me from a young age, constantly enrolling me in extracurricular activities and urging me to excel at everything I did. My parents made my decisions and I accepted them. I knew it was wrong, but I was the kid that survived so I did my best to please them in every way so I didn’t disappoint them. I guess you could call it survivor’s guilt.
When my friends rebelled, I didn’t.
When they got boyfriends and went out drinking and dancing, when they were defiant and argumentative, I pulled further into myself and studied harder because my parents would look at me with such pride, full of gratefulness that their daughter wasn’t doing those things. And it was fine, really it was. I missed out on lots of things growing up, and it rarely bothered me. Until these last six months.
I’m not sure what changed for me, but I still clearly remember the day I woke up and knew I couldn’t live my life for my parents anymore. Because that’s what I was doing; I was living the life they wanted me to have, not the one I wanted.
I’d give anything to go back to that day and change things. Maybe then I wouldn’t be stuck here.
A guard walked past our tent and I followed him with my eyes. The sun had set a while ago, and though some small lamps had been lit, it wasn’t enough brightness for my liking.
Barrett and I were sat at the doorway of our tent, the flap to our backs. We’d all decided that someone should always be awake in case anything happened. None of us felt relaxed enough to put our lives in the hands of the army—no matter how big their guns were.
“What you laughing at, UK?”
I turned, startled, to look at Barrett, his eyes shining at me in the darkness. “Nothing,” I replied, embarrassed that I’d unintentionally laughed out loud.
“Sounded like a dirty laugh to me, and a dirty laugh means a dirty thought, and I love me some dirty thoughts,” he chuckled.
“You’re a pig, Barrett,” I bit out, but his smirk stayed in place, unfazed by my attitude. I shook my head. “Whatever.”
His smile grew wider. He pointed a finger at me. “Definitely a dirty thought.” He winked and I shook my head. “I’m not all bad, ya know.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Okay, so I’m mostly bad, but bad don’t always mean you can’t have a good time, if you know what I mean.” He patted his backpack and grinned.
I looked back inside, my eyes quickly scanning the darkness and finding the three human-shaped mounds of Sam, Nolan, and Andy still in the same position they’d been in an hour before. Soft snores carried out to me and I looked away. I was exhausted, my body aching and weary, my muscles sore from being tense for so long. It didn’t feel like my shoulders had dropped from around my ears since I’d literally crash-landed into the country. Yet no matter how tired I felt, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep just yet.
Several times during the day, Sam had started to zom out on us and there was no denying that I was getting more and more frightened by her as the days went on. I didn’t want to be. I wanted to put my trust in her that she wouldn’t hurt anyone, including me, but after the incident with the kid and the nosebleed I knew that total trust just wasn’t an option anymore—Sam was either completely turning into one of those zombie things or she was some crazy half-breed version of one, for whatever reason. Either way, she was dangerous, and I had no idea what to do about it since she couldn’t completely control herself yet.
“You got that serious look on your face again, UK,” Barrett drolled. He was chewing on a matchstick, the thin piece of wood moving from side to side.
“I’m a serious kinda girl,” I smarted without looking at him.
“I got that from your sour face. You and Nolan are perfect for each other like that.” He chuckled, and I scowled. “See? There you go again trying to smite me down with that beautiful glare of yours. You’d be a lot prettier if you learned to smile a little more.”
“She doesn’t need to smile to be pretty,” Nolan’s voice growled out from behind me, making me jump to standing.
I turned to look at him, my glare firmly in place.
Barrett’s laughter filled the darkness. “Jesus, UK, see now that’s exactly what I’m talking about; a man pays you a compliment and you look like you’re going to rip out his throat.”
“Shut up!” I snapped at Barrett. “You scared me,” I said to Nolan.
He frowned and I looked away, embarrassed at how childish I had sounded.
It hit me then what Nolan had said, and I was glad it was dark because I felt the heat rise up into my cheeks. I drowned out Barrett and looked back at Nolan, seeing that his attention was solely on me. I swallowed, feeling uncomfortable and entirely comfortable all at the same time. Nolan had a way about him that always did that to me. I felt safe, protected, yet also depended upon too. Like as much as he wanted to keep me safe from the many dangers surrounding us, he equally trusted me to protect myself.
“I’m guessing you’re here to talk about the fox in the henhouse, right?” Barrett said. “Either that or you’re after some alone time with little miss death glare over here.” He chuckled and both Nolan and I turned and glared at him at the same time, which only made him laugh all the more. He held up his hands. “All right, all right, fox in the henhouse it is then.”
Nolan came and sat down next to me, his hands clasped in his lap. His mood was somber and that worried me. Nolan was a serious man; for him to be even more serious didn’t spell out anything good.
“
She’s getting worse,” he finally said.
“She’ll be fine,” Barrett replied, his humor falling away.
Nolan looked up, his hard gaze landing on Barrett, who didn’t falter under the intensity. Barrett had seen and dealt with much worse than Nolan, that was for damned sure. The two men were alike in so many ways, yet they’d both gone down very different paths in life. Their life choices were possibly the only thing making them so different.
“I’m not talking about taking her out—”
“Good, because that ain’t an option,” Barrett growled, cutting Nolan off. “You go near her with anything other than a compliment and a birthday gift and I’ll shoot you in the head and make your girlfriend eat the leftovers.”
Nolan sat up straighter. “I just told you that’s not what I’m talking about doing. But we do need to be careful. She’s getting worse, and I don’t know what that means other than she’s unpredictable—and unpredictable in a world as screwed up as this…” He sighed, looking back down at his hands. “I don’t like those odds.”
“Odds have been stacked against me my whole life, yet here I am,” Barrett said, his arms open wide.
“Today was too close,” I said, my voice quiet but my meaning not. The truth of what I was saying was scary, and it was exactly what I’d been thinking myself not five minutes before, yet saying it out loud sounded traitorous to Sam. “She won’t be able to live with herself if she hurts someone.”
“So we make sure she doesn’t get the chance to hurt someone,” Barrett said, as if it were that easy. “Though I’m not sure why you’ve all got such a big hang-up about a little killin’.” He winked just as I was about to yell at him about the fragility of human life and how we can’t go around killing and hurting people just because we feel like it. “Down, darlin’,” he chuckled. “I’m just fucking with you. Sort of.”
If I was a cat, my hackles would have been raised, that was for sure.
“No one’s killing anyone,” Nolan interrupted.
“Speak for yourself,” Barrett responded seriously. “I’ll be doing what I need to do to survive. That ain’t up for discussion.”
Red Eye | Season 2 | Episode 1 Page 6
