Logan glanced my way but didn’t respond until we were on our way up. “Apparently, some men came to the gate this morning.”
“What men?” I asked, feeling dread build in my gut.
“Men looking for two immune people, a woman and an Indian man.”
“Native American,” I murmured, barely able to get the words out. “His father was Kiowa.”
Shit. It couldn’t be Andrew, could it? Could he have really found us that fast?
“I’m only repeating what they said,” Logan replied.
“I know.” I swallowed. “Was it Andrew?”
“The guards didn’t get his name, but they also didn’t let him in. They said they had a bad feeling about him. He was asking too many questions.” Logan kept walking but paused like he was trying to remember everything he’d been told. “They said he was in his fifties, bald, and pretty sunburned. Oh, and he was wearing leather.”
Andrew.
My steps faltered, and I leaned against the wall, holding on to the railing for support. He’d been here, outside the gates, meaning he knew where we were. He had to or he wouldn’t have shown up.
“Regan,” Beth reached for me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m—” I had to swallow. “I’m okay.”
I wasn’t, though. I wasn’t okay at all because I felt like I was back at that farmhouse. Kellan was in front of me, on his knees with his hands bound. Helpless. There was a mixture of rage and terror in his eyes as Andrew’s hands moved up my body. Even now, I could feel them. Like it was happening all over again. The callouses on his palms rubbed against the sensitive skin of my breasts. His hands working on the button of my pants. He pulled them down, and I was naked, ashamed. The hot metal of the car’s hood burned my bare skin when I was forced against it.
I closed my eyes, willing the feeling and images to go away, but they wouldn’t. Everything got hot, and I found it difficult to catch my breath. My hands gripped the railing tighter, and I did my best to focus on it, to ground myself. To tell myself I wasn’t actually back at that farmhouse. It didn’t help. Nothing could.
“Regan,” Beth said again.
I swallowed, forced my eyes to open. Forced myself to look at her and lie as I said, “I’m okay.”
But I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t be until we were home or Andrew was dead.
We had to get that antibiotic and get the hell out of here. Fast.
5
I stood under the hot water, my eyes closed and my face turned into the stream. It was helping me calm down, helping me pull myself together, but not completely. They hadn’t allowed Andrew into the settlement, and they wouldn’t if he came back, which meant we were safe. At least for now, anyway. Not forever, because now that I was certain he knew where we were, a whole new set of problems had presented themselves. Namely, how the hell we would manage to avoid him so we could get back to Oklahoma? He’d be watching, waiting for us to leave the safety of this settlement so he could pounce. I was sure of it.
Once I was clean, I turned the water off and dragged myself out of the shower. Cool air blasted from the vent above my head, chilling my wet skin and making goose bumps pop up on my arms and legs. I wanted to wrap myself in a thick, warm towel, but when I unfolded the one I’d grabbed off the shelf, I realized how impossible that would be. Wrapped around my body, it would barely cover my ass.
Instead of even attempting to depend on the towel for warmth, I toweled myself off as fast as I could and pulled my new shirt over my head. Since my still damp underwear was hanging on the rack, going commando was the only option available, and I resigned myself to pulling my pants on sans underwear before leaving the bathroom.
My long hair hung down my back, heavy and still dripping, and I paused in the doorway to wring it out a little more, my gaze on Kellan. He’d been asleep when I got back to the room and hadn’t woken while I was in the shower, and I’d been torn between wanting to feel his forehead and not wanting to disturb him. Ultimately, I decided to let him sleep. He needed it, and there was literally nothing I could do about his fever at the moment, as much as it pained me to admit.
Voices greeted me when I slipped out of the room, shutting the door carefully behind me to avoid disturbing Kellan.
“I’m telling you, Logan,” Beth was saying, “that asshole did something to her. I’ve seen women freeze up like that. Remember Deb, the woman who escaped that casino in Vegas? She had that exact same expression on her face when you touched her arm.”
“What if he did?” Logan asked. “What can we do about it?”
“Make the bastard suffer,” Beth grumbled.
I took a step into the room, and they spun to face me. Logan’s expression didn’t change, but Beth looked like she’d been caught in the middle of badmouthing a teacher—by the teacher in question.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Beth turned her back on me. “Nothing.”
“How’s Kellan?” Logan said instead of answering.
“Sleeping.” I pulled a chair out and took a seat at the table in the kitchenette. “Any word from your friend?”
“No one has seen him yet,” Logan replied.
I nodded, but I was only half thinking about Kellan. As much as I hated to admit it. The other part of my brain was replaying the things Beth had been saying when I came out of the bedroom. Had she been talking about me? Probably. I hadn’t realized I wore the scars of what Andrew had done so clearly on my face, but I must have. Beth had only needed to look at me to see them.
“I’m sure he’ll show up by this evening.” Logan plopped into a chair across from me.
“I hope so.”
He was staring at me, his blue eyes intent and focused, and it made me jumpy. Nervous.
I looked away and focused on running my fingers through my wet hair, untangling it before splitting it into three sections. My fingers worked on muscle memory alone, braiding the sections as effortlessly as when my lungs sucked in oxygen.
“Andrew isn’t going to be able to get to you,” Logan said, breaking the silence.
“I know.” Right section over, left section over, right section over. Repeat. “The wall seems safe.”
“We’re going to make sure you’re okay,” he continued.
Left over, right over, left over, right over...
“Regan,” Beth said, making me jump.
My fingers froze, the strands of hair forgotten when I looked up to meet her gaze.
“It will be okay.”
“He’ll be waiting for us,” I finally said. “He’s watching the settlement right now, waiting for us to come out. We have hundreds of miles to cross before we get home. He’ll be there. I know it.”
“Home?” Logan sat up straighter.
“Oklahoma,” I said.
He blinked like my words didn’t make sense. “You want to go back?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I looked from him to Beth as I finished braiding my hair. “It’s my home.”
“I thought you might want to stay with us. Help us rescue other people.” Logan’s frown deepened. “Immune people are being preyed upon, and it’s up to us to stop it.”
“Up to you,” I said. “Not me, and not Kellan. We have a life and family back in Oklahoma who are probably worried sick about us. As soon as he can travel, we’ll be leaving.”
“You can’t be serious,” he said. “You’d turn your back—”
“Logan,” Beth put her hand on his shoulder, “stop. She has a life, and she has every right to want to go back to it.”
He pressed his lips together, eyeing me for a moment before shoving the chair back and getting up. Beth said nothing when he ripped the front door open and stalked out, leaving us alone.
Once the door had clicked shut, she sighed and slid into the chair across from me. “He’ll understand once he thinks it through.”
I honestly didn’t care if he understood, but I nodded anyway.
Still, I wanted to keep the conversation movin
g so I could focus on something other than the time ticking by, bringing Kellan one step closer to death with each passing second.
“Why is he so adamant about saving everyone, anyway?” I asked.
Beth looked down, focusing on digging dirt out from under her nails. It didn’t seem like she was trying to avoid my gaze—not exactly, anyway. It was more like she couldn’t look at me.
“You know how it is,” she said. “He lost someone he cared about and wants to be sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
“It’s almost an impossible task these days,” I said. “Isn’t it? No matter what we do, it’s never enough.”
She lifted her eyes, her hands frozen in the middle of the digging. “So true…”
The words were heavy, weighed down with a kind of grief that was all too common these days. It seemed that Logan wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone.
After a few seconds, Beth cleared her throat and went back to digging at her nails. “Anyway, you’re lucky we got to you before that asshole made it to Atlanta.”
“Is it really as bad as you’re making it sound?” I had to ask, because at the moment I was closer to the new capital than I was to home, and if we didn’t get that antibiotic soon, I was going to have a tough decision to make.
“It is,” Beth replied simply.
“Tell me what you know,” I said, firmer this time.
I was sick of these people beating around the bush about what was going on. It seemed like every time I had a question, they did their best to dance around the answer instead of just spitting it out, and it was getting old.
Beth let out a long sigh. “I can only tell you what I’ve heard because I haven’t been there myself, but from what I understand, the immune people who get taken into the city are never seen again. Whether that means they’re prisoners or they’re dead, no one really knows for sure.” She shook her head. “Not exactly true. The people in the CDC do, but they’re not talking about it, that’s for sure.”
I drummed my fingers on the table, thinking it through. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her; the scenario didn’t sound all that far-fetched. I just wasn’t sure if it actually mattered. If it came down to it and heading to Atlanta was the only way to get the antibiotic, I’d do it no matter what it meant for me. For Kellan, I would do anything.
“You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you?” Beth said, making me jump.
I shifted, hating that I was so transparent but unable to deny it. “I won’t lose him.”
“Look, I understand. More than you will ever know. When you’re on the verge of losing someone you love—” Her voice trembled on the last word, and she paused to swallow. “You’ll do anything. But the CDC isn’t a place you want to go. I promise.”
When she’d first started talking, I had assumed she was referring to Logan, but the tremble in her voice said differently, and the expression in her eyes wasn’t from thinking about what could have happened. It was grief over what had happened. She’d lost someone important, and more recently than nine years ago when the outbreak happened.
I was curious, but I didn’t ask. The pain in her eyes was too raw, her grief still too fresh.
6
I was half awake when I rolled over, and my eyes were still closed when my hand moved across the bed to Kellan, but they flew open the second my fingertips touched his skin. He was hotter than yesterday. Hotter than he’d been since the doctor drained the bite.
“Kellan,” I murmured as I pushed myself to a sitting position.
The room was dark, the curtains drawn to block out the sun. Light peeked around the edges at the top and bottom, illuminating enough of the room that I was able to look him over. His forehead was damp with sweat and his normally bronzed skin pale and sallow. I had to bite back a sob when I ran the back of my hand over his cheek. He was burning up.
“Kellan,” I said again, louder this time.
His eyes fluttered and opened, but he said nothing.
I didn’t talk either, focusing instead on unwinding the bandage so I could examine the bite. What I saw made dread pool in my stomach. It was inflamed again, swollen with pus and shiny around the edges.
“It started throbbing last night,” he said, making me jump. “I’m not going to make it.”
I lifted my gaze to his. “If you think I’m going to let you die, you’re crazy. I will do whatever it takes to get you well.”
“There’s nothing left to do, Regan,” he said. “I’m running out of time.”
“No.” I slid off the bed, refusing to look at him. “You’re not.”
He said nothing else as I charged from the bedroom.
Hickory was lying on his back, snoring, but Logan was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him and an old beat-up paperback in his hand. He looked up when I walked in, lifting his eyebrows, but I didn’t give him a chance to say anything.
“We’ve waited for your friend long enough.” I stopped in front of him, legs trembling from the fear surging through me but my words firm. “We need to go. Now.”
“Go where?” Logan set the book on the table, open and upside down so he didn’t lose his place. “I can’t predict where he is. We’ll never be able to track him down.”
“He could be dead, for all we know!” I shouted, and behind me, Hickory let out a snort. I ignored him. “We could wait for weeks, and this guy might never show up. Meanwhile, Kellan is dying.”
My voice cracked, and I had to close my eyes and fight off the terror. Kellan couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him.
When I opened my eyes, Logan was still staring at me, waiting.
“I want to go to Atlanta,” I said.
I’d made up my mind, but I wasn’t under any illusion it would be easy to convince the others. Not that I cared. I’d steal their damn truck and drive there myself if I had to. I’d do whatever it took to make sure Kellan got what he needed.
Logan half stood, his blue eyes wide with disbelief. “You can’t be serious. Didn’t you hear anything Beth and I said?”
“I heard all of it,” I replied. “But all you have are rumors. You’ve never been there. You don’t know anything with certainty, and I can’t sit here doing nothing. The CDC created this antibiotic we’re waiting for, and they’ve been actively working on vaccines, which means they have to want to preserve the human race at least a little. If we go, I can trade my cooperation for Kellan’s life.”
“They’ll lock you up.” Logan’s voice was steady, but behind the words there was a hint of fear. “Even if they decide to save Kellan, you’ll be a prisoner.”
“But he’ll be alive!” I shouted, not caring if I woke Hickory or Ash or anyone else. Not caring if I woke every person in the settlement.
I was so focused on Logan that I barely registered the click of the lock. Even when the front door opened, I didn’t look away from him.
“It’s worth it to me,” I said through clenched teeth. “Whatever the CDC has planned for me, it’s worth it if Kellan lives.”
“Nothing the CDC did to you would be worth it,” said a deep voice from the doorway.
I spun to face the door as Juliet, Beth, and a man I’d never seen before stepped in. He was in his mid-thirties, maybe a little younger—his tan, weathered skin made it tough to tell for sure—and attractive, but in a rough way. His blond hair was just past his chin and bleached from the sun, making his close-clipped beard a couple shades darker.
“What do you know about Atlanta?” I snapped.
“More than I want to.” His even tone gave nothing away as he studied me with icy blue eyes. There was a hard light in them that came across as almost deadly.
“Regan,” Juliet said, nodding to the man at her side, “meet Jim. He’s the source we told you about.”
Jim had already turned to Logan. “Where’s your guy?”
“This way.”
Logan stood and headed for the room we’d been sharing, and Jim trailed after him. I was only a few st
eps behind them, so I saw it when the newcomer slipped his hand into his pocket. When he pulled out a syringe and a vial filled with a bright yellow liquid, my heart pounded harder.
“Is that the antibiotic?” I asked, moving faster.
“It is,” Jim said, but he didn’t look at me.
Kellan’s eyes were closed and his breathing even more labored. Hearing it made everything in me hurt. What if it was too late? What would I do if this didn’t work? I couldn’t live without him.
Jim frowned when he looked Kellan over. “You never would have made it to Atlanta.” He plunged the needle into the vial. “Lucky for you, this shit is strong.”
“He’ll get better?” I moved to the bed and took Kellan’s hand.
Blue eyes flicked my way for a second, and in that moment, I saw a pain so intense it seemed to suck all the air out of the room.
Jim focused on Kellan again as he knelt beside the bed. “He’ll get better.”
I watched in silence as the man with pain-filled eyes plunged the needle into Kellan’s arm, between his elbow and shoulder, all the while clinging to his hand.
“Should work pretty fast,” Jim said as he depressed the plunger, forcing the yellow liquid into Kellan’s body, “but he’s going to be weak for a bit, still.”
“Thank you.” I looked up, my hand still in Kellan’s. “Thank you so much.”
Jim’s gaze moved over me, stopping on the scar on my forearm. The one from my most recent bite. “You’re immune.”
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.
He blew out a long breath, and the hair that had fallen over his forehead fluttered. “Then you need to stay as far away from the CDC as possible.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s going on there, and how do you know anything?”
“How?” Jim’s eyebrows lifted, and that pain flickered across his face again, there and gone so fast it seemed more like a ghost of a feeling than the real thing. “Because not only did I live in Atlanta, but I also knew Angus James.”
The name slammed into me. Angus James was the first immune person to make it to the CDC and the one whose blood helped create the first working vaccine. He was revered as the savior of the human race, and not just by The Church. The general consensus among the remaining population—myself included—was that he’d sacrificed himself to save all of us. Even if I didn’t subscribe to The Church’s crazy beliefs about him one day coming back to destroy the zombies for good, I couldn’t deny what he’d done. Thanks to him, a zombie bite didn’t always mean the end.
The Oklahoma Wastelands Series Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 62
