“I’m sure this place has a back door,” Blake said pulling us back behind the wall just as one of the sick looked into the clinic through the broken glass.
“Help us!” the sick called into the building. “We need help!”
I was almost positive they hadn’t seen us. But still, I could hear them trying to get inside.
They all started shouting for help simultaneously. Their words chaotically blending into one another.
We walked down the back hallway quickly toward a heavy door at the end with an exit sign above us. There were several doors down the hall, each one open. Inside the small rooms were little offices, each with a nameplate posted outside the door.
Before we got to the last office door, someone stepped out. Her pupils were dilated and the whites of her eyes were red. There was no mistaking that she was sick.
“Help me,” she said reaching out her arms.
Blake took a step to the side, making himself a wall between the sick woman and me. He held up his gun and didn’t hesitate to shoot the woman.
“Dammit,” Blake said cursing the loud pop that echoed through the clinic. He grabbed my hand. “Come on.”
We didn’t make it more than two steps before a man in a white coat stepped out of the door. His eyes were the same as the woman’s but he had a hole in the side of his face from a bullet.
“Please don’t,” the man begged with sad crimson eyes. It was like he knew what was going to happen. “It hurts so much.”
“Sorry,” Blake said as he pulled the trigger again.
We raced to the back door jumping over the two bodies that were lying there motionless. Blake opened the back door an inch and peeked out.
He froze in place.
“Blake?” I said and he didn’t move.
“Help me,” the voice on the other side of the door whispered. “You will help me, won’t you?”
Blake didn’t move. He was a statue just as Dax had been when he’d looked at one of the sick long ago.
I grabbed the gun from Blake’s hand and stepped in front of him. I pushed the door open a bit further. The sick was standing there, his eyes shifting toward mine.
I looked at his forehead and placed the end of the gun in the middle. I pulled the trigger without an apology.
“What the hell?” Blake asked shaking his head. “Why do you have the gun?”
“Don’t look in their eyes,” I said turning to study him.
He pressed his hand to his face and rubbed downward hard as if he was trying to make sure he was awake. Blake nodded.
“Sorry,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
I handed him his gun. “Make sure it doesn’t. I don’t like to do that.”
“No one does,” Blake said.
We ran out of the back door behind the buildings. It wouldn’t be long before the sick would start looking for us.
Everywhere we went, we made noise. Each gunshot was a signal to our location. We needed to find somewhere safe to hide so we could wait for them to lose interest and eventually go back to wherever it was they came from.
I followed Blake down the block, turning onto another street. We were rather well hidden behind a big red brick building with a large tree out front and lots of untrimmed shrubbery.
“Shit,” Blake said leaning forward.
I moved around him and peeked out around him. The crowd of sick was more extensive than before. They were all gathered around the front of the clinic and several buildings around it.
I could barely see the SUV through the crowd. “Yeah,” I said swallowing hard as I gripped the bag of supplies. “Shit is right.”
Chapter Fourteen
Blake leaned back against the building. He exhaled as he looked up at the sky.
“We need a plan,” Blake said.
“We have to get back to her,” I said looking off in the direction we’d come to town in.
There was a small part of me that wondered how long it would take me to run back to the farmhouse. A bigger part of me remembered how much I hated exercise and wouldn’t make it more than a block or two before running out of breath.
“I know,” Blake said. “There’s just so many of them.” He dug his fingertips into his messy hair. “Fuck!”
“It’s the sound that brought them here, right? We just need to make sound somewhere else,” I said.
“Right,” Blake said. After a minute, he pushed himself off of the wall and a half-grin crept onto his face. “Wait here. Do not make a sound. Or move… or do anything.”
I raised a brow. “Don’t have to tell me twice but what are you going to do?”
“Make some noise,” Blake said.
“Don’t get caught by those things,” I said grabbing his arm as he started to move away.
Blake stopped and looked into my eyes. He swallowed hard. “I’ll be back, okay?”
“Hurry,” I said letting go of his arm.
“I will,” Blake said before sprinting across the street.
I peeked around the corner to keep my eyes on the crowd of sick. They were still calling out for help as some of them entered the clinic.
Every few seconds, I looked over my shoulder to make sure the sick weren’t creeping up on me. Blake was out of sight and standing alone in the open without any sort of protection was terrifying. Especially because I knew that if something happened to me, the medicine wouldn’t make its way back to Maddie.
It wasn’t long until I heard the pops of bullets shattering glass nearby. The shots were one after the other but with a small hesitation between them. He wanted to make sure the sick heard the sounds.
I watched their interest in the noises grow. Some of the sick started walking away, shouting out their cries for help.
The sick looked at one another. Those that remained started following the others in larger groups. There were only five or so lingering behind when Blake came running down the sidewalk.
“It worked,” he said between quick breaths. His eyes shot over to the SUV. “We need to be quick.”
I nodded.
Blake grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the SUV. The hair at his temples was damp. His eyes were focused ahead on the few remaining sick. He was ready to do what needed to be done.
As we approached the SUV, Blake raised the gun and shot those standing around before they could even open their mouths. He was like a robot, programmed to destroy the sick.
Blake opened the passenger side door and closed it the second I was inside. He ran around to the other door and hopped in.
“Wonder how long it’ll take for them to come this way,” Blake said shifting into drive.
“We won’t be here to find out,” I said.
The tires squealed and we were making our way down the street. Blake found the road we’d come into town on rather easily.
“I hope I never have to see another one of those contaminated things ever again,” I said glancing in the side mirror as if I expected to see the mob running after us.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Blake said pulling his mask down, letting it hang down around his neck. “But there are far more of them than there are of us. And all of those I shot back there, well, they’re just going to pop back up.”
I sighed as I sunk into the seat. “Do you think this will ever change? Will we always be on the run?”
“I don’t know,” Blake said shooting me a quick glance. “It’s hard to imagine things will ever go back to how they were. At least not in our lifetime.”
“How can we survive this?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Kit.” Blake ran his fingers through his hair. He grabbed the steering wheel at ten and two as he pressed his foot down on the accelerator. “I just don’t know.”
At the farmhouse, I ran out of the SUV toward the front door. Jay pulled back the curtain as I was racing up the stairs. He opened the door and sucked in a breath as if he were the one that had just outrun a pack of the sick.
“Did you get everything?”
Jay asked.
“And then some,” I said.
“It was like she was at Target,” Blake teased. “She just kept finding more things.”
I charged up the stairs, desperate to see Maddie. I hoped she was better. I hoped she wouldn’t even need the medicine.
Whitney was sitting in the chair by the window. She was already staring at the doorway before I entered.
“How’s she doing?” I asked.
“About the same. She’s tired but having more trouble sleeping,” Whitney said. “Did you get the things on my list?”
“I did,” I replied holding the bag out to her. Whitney took it from me and looked inside. She raised her eyebrow at me, but I looked away.
I sat down on the bed and took Maddie’s hand into mine. It felt like a hot coal.
“I’m back,” I said softly.
She groaned a response.
“I don’t even think she knew you were gone,” Whitney said. “What is all this stuff?”
“Extra supplies,” I said waving my hand. “Just in case. Everything you asked for is in there.”
Whitney snorted. “I didn’t ask for the entire pharmacy.”
“Well, you got it,” I said. “What should we give her first?”
“Let me think,” Whitney said setting out the various items onto the bed. The bottles lined the empty space on the mattress. “I think we just have to wait for this to run its course for the most part but let's start with the anti-toxin.”
My head turned slowly, stopping when our eyes met. “Are you just guessing?”
“Yeah,” she admitted throwing her hands into the air. “If you have a better guess, by all means, go for it.”
“No,” I said after a brief hesitation. Even though it didn’t seem like it, Whitney had to know more about medicine than I did. “I just want her to get better.”
“Believe it or not, so do I,” Whitney said picking up one of the small bottles and a syringe wrapped in a plastic package.
Whitney removed the cap and carefully filled the syringe with liquid. She shook her head.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve never given a shot before? Isn’t that what nurses do?”
Whitney rolled her eyes. “It’s not that, I don’t know how much to give. Maybe the answer will be in that big book.”
I pointed at the big manual I’d taken from the clinic. Whitney bit her lip and replaced the cap over the needle.
She flipped through the book. It seemed to take forever but eventually, she stopped turning the pages and stared at one of them intensely.
“Okay,” she said removing the cap again. She turned to me. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”
“Do you think you have it right?”
“I do,” she said. “But I don’t want you to kill me if I don’t.”
“Check it again,” I ordered and she nodded. It didn’t take her as long to reread the page and checked what she had in the syringe. “Here I go.”
I drew in a breath. “Okay.”
She injected the medicine into Maddie but nothing changed. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“Okay, what’s next?” Whitney asked looking through the medicines. She wasn’t asking me, so I didn’t respond. “The antibiotic. It was really smart to get more supplies to keep the wound clean. Good thinking.”
“Thanks,” I said accepting the compliment I didn’t really deserve.
She didn’t need to know that I just threw everything I saw into the bag. It was only by chance I’d taken the items to keep the wound clean. At least, it felt like it had been.
I stood there nervously, watching Whitney as she worked. At some point, she became a nurse again and stopped questioning herself.
When she finished, she started putting everything back into the bag. She set it on the floor next to the door.
“In case we have to leave for some reason,” she explained standing in the doorway. “I’ll leave you two. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“I will,” I said sitting on the bed.
I knew it was going to take time but I wished there would have been a change in Maddie instantly. She needed to get better. She had to get better.
We shouldn’t have ever left Blake’s house. It wasn’t that Polly wasn’t important. It was but it hadn’t been worth losing anyone over. We’d already lost Dax.
I’d let Maddie make the choice but if we wouldn’t have left, Maddie wouldn’t be lying here in a stranger's bed fighting for her life. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I didn’t do anything to stop them. I let them drop onto my shirt and soak through the fabric.
I wasn’t sure what time it was when Whitney brought up some food but the sky had darkened. Whitney leaned over Maddie and placed her hand on her forehead.
“How’s she doing?” Whitney asked.
“No change. At least not as far as I can tell,” I said. “Every so often, she’ll wake but it’s just to grumble and roll over onto her other side.”
The mattress squeaked as Whitney sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear it right now.”
“I definitely don’t want to tell you,” Whitney said. “But I lost the bet, so I have to be the one to tell you. I’m kidding of course… about the bet that is.”
“What is it?”
Whitney exhaled. Her shoulders dropped at least an inch. “They want us out.”
Chapter Fifteen
Whitney stood and crossed her arms. “I’m sorry. They just told us a few minutes ago. Blake was going to tell you but I said I was coming up to check on Maddie anyway.”
“Why do they want us to leave? They know she’s sick.” I stood and pounded my foot on the floor.
“They said we can stay until she gets a little better,” Whitney said. “It’s not like we have to leave this minute but they wanted to make sure we understood that staying here was only temporary.”
“It’s not like we were going to stay here forever anyway,” I said my brow wrinkling as it tightened.
Whitney shrugged. “I guess they just don’t want to keep sharing. We wouldn’t have let anyone inside Blake’s house either.”
“Except you did,” I said looking into her eyes. “You all let Maddie and me in.”
“And you know I wasn’t comfortable with that,” Whitney said. “I don’t know I guess I can see where they’re coming from.”
“Whatever,” I said throwing my hands into the air. “We weren’t going to stay anyway. It’s just shocking that there isn’t an ounce of kindness left in the world. Why are any of us even bothering?”
Whitney sighed. “I don’t know.” She looked down at Maddie and pulled the blanket up to her shoulder. “Why don’t you try to get some rest? I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“I don’t want to leave her,” I admitted.
“You’ll be better suited to take care of her after some sleep. I’m wide awake. Let me take care of her for a bit,” Whitney said. “I’ll wake you if there is any change.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Whitney took several soft steps toward me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t want you to fall asleep when you should be watching her just in case something went wrong. Please, get some rest.”
My fists were balled up tightly. I looked at Maddie and exhaled. “Fine.”
“Take my bed,” Whitney said. “Then, you’ll be close by if she wakes and needs you.”
I nodded. I stopped in the doorway and looked at Maddie over my shoulder. Whitney was already on the bed next to her, with her hands folded in her lap.
There was no doubt Whitney cared about Maddie. She’d take care of her.
I walked across the hall and laid down in the bed. My eyes focused on a small imperfection in the paint on the ceiling.
For a long while, I didn’t move. I was certain I wouldn’t be able to sleep, at l
east not without the help from one of the pills I’d taken from the clinic.
But it surprised me when I blinked and opened my eyes. The sunshine coming in through the window was the start of a new day. It was morning.
I sat up and looked around the empty room. If Blake had been back to the room, I didn’t know it. He felt comfortable sharing a bed with Whitney but it was different with me. He’d probably found a couch to sleep on so he didn’t have to share a bed with me.
My arms stretched over my head and something in the middle of my back cracked. I was stiff and sore, which was either from sleeping in the unfamiliar bed or from the adventure of fleeing from the sick.
I stretched my neck to each side as I looked out of the window. The sun was so bright there wasn’t a single shadow around the farm.
The air in the house felt thick and hot. I needed to take in some fresh air but first, I needed to check in on Maddie.
I soundlessly walked across the hall and peeked into the bedroom. Maddie was still on the bed and Blake was in the chair by the window. He turned when he noticed me standing there.
“Where’s Whitney?” I asked.
“She went to get something to eat,” Blake said. “She’ll be back soon. Hope it’s okay that I’m here. Whitney didn’t want to wake you.”
“It’s fine,” I said softly. “Did she wake up?”
Blake shook his head. “Whitney thinks her fever may be coming down some, though.”
“You mind staying with her a bit longer? I need to freshen up a bit and get some air.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Blake said with a smile.
“Thanks,” I said tip-toeing into the room.
I leaned over Maddie and placed a kiss on her head. She was still warm but maybe it was a bit better.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered. She didn’t move or groan a response.
I walked down the stairs and out of the house without looking around. The second I was outside, I sucked in a deep breath fully filling my lungs.
My feet tapped each step until I was on the ground making my way toward the SUV. The fresh air felt good… almost as good as a shower or a bath would have felt.
“Hey,” Jay said as he walked around the side of the house. “What are you doing out here?”
What Remains Series (Book 3): Infected Page 7
