A Wilderness Within

by Emma Castle

  Until he had seen her.

  He would have to figure out what her real name was. She probably wouldn’t like being called beautiful. She probably already thought he was some crazy, insane creep who just wanted to use her and kill her. But he’d show her he wasn’t like that. They were in this together now, and he had a strong desire to believe in her, if he couldn’t believe in anything else right now.

  Lincoln pulled into a neighborhood of expensive houses and drove down a series of streets. It seemed that looters didn’t like driving through a maze of complex neighborhoods and hit the easier targets in town. It was safer to embed himself deep into a neighborhood instead of choosing a house close to a city street.

  He parked the car and killed the lights. He left the woman in the car while he unloaded a month’s worth of supplies.

  On his last trip he had found a decent haul of medical supplies, food, and camping gear. After he put away all the supplies, he returned for the woman. She was still unconscious. Good. He’d given her a powerful cocktail of painkillers. She would probably hate him when she woke up in a few hours, but she needed pain relief for that ankle and for any pain she had from when the grocery shelf had collapsed on her.

  He carried her inside the house and up the stairs to one of the bedrooms. His room. Not because he was going to do anything he shouldn’t. He simply needed to keep an eye on her while she slept. She was a fighter, and no matter how badly she was hurt, she would try to escape, and he couldn’t have her getting hurt again. So the closer she was to him the better. Unluckily for her, he was a light sleeper by nature and by training.

  Lincoln set her down on the bed and turned on one of the camping lanterns. Bright light blossomed through the room, creating an eerie sense of daylight tinged with shadows on the edges. He moved one lamp closer so he could examine her leg. Carefully, he pushed her jeans up to her mid-calf. If she’d been awake, she would’ve been in agony. Her ankle was already swelling. He’d seen this type of injury before. A man in his unit, Jenkins, had been forced to jump out of a second-story window to escape enemy fire. He landed badly and popped his ankle out of place and popped it back in a second later when he righted himself. Their medic had later told him it would have been less painful to simply break the bone.

  Pressing gently around the woman’s ankle, Lincoln felt no evidence of a fracture. But until he could get the swelling down, he couldn’t be sure if there was a break or not. Christ, he wished he had a bag of frozen peas to lay on her ankle. He would have given anything for that. The best he could do was a cold towel. He’d broken into a sporting goods store last week and found a set of exercise towels that turned cold due when drenched in water to a chemical reaction. He’d seen the genius of it and grabbed three of them.

  Lincoln went into the master bathroom and to the sink, where he soaked one of the blue towels. Although the power was out in this area, the water was still running. He’d have to set out some barrels to catch rain soon just in case the water stopped running. Then he returned to the bed and removed her boot and sock before he wound the towel around her ankle. Then he slipped her backpack off, which was lying lopsided beneath her. After a quick check for weapons inside, and finding none, he set it on the floor near her. Then he peeled off her coat and covered her with several thick blankets. March in Nebraska was not usually warm, the temperature would fall to fifty-five degrees inside the house tonight.

  Lincoln checked her palm next, the one she’d cut when she’d stabbed him in the shoulder. It was a shallow cut, but he didn’t want her to get an infection. He retrieved some antiseptic cloths from his first aid kit and thoroughly cleaned the wound before he used a wound sealer like superglue to bind the cut together, and then he wrapped it securely with some bandages. As long as she was careful, she wouldn’t need stitches. He’d have to track down some antibiotics in a day or two to battle any potential infections.

  Once he was certain he left her in as comfortable a position as possible, he grabbed one of the lanterns and headed back into the bathroom. He set the lantern on the counter and tried not to grimace when he caught sight of his face in the mirror. He hadn’t shaved in at least three months. He looked like a fucking bear. No wonder she’d screamed when she saw him.

  He winced as he removed his sweater and turned his back on the mirror. He glanced over his shoulder. The piece of glass she’d stabbed him with had fallen out during their struggle. It hadn’t been deep, but blood dripped down his chest and was drying in dark black streaks. He cursed, grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and dabbed some over the wound. He let loose a string of curses his mother would have smacked him for, but he muttered through gritted teeth so he didn’t wake the woman in the bedroom. He worked quickly, cleaning the wound with antiseptic wipes and covering it with antibiotic cream. At least it wouldn’t need stitches.

  He pushed a single finger through the place in his sweater where his little beauty had stabbed him. Dried black blood had ruined the expensive fabric. It had been one of the last few military-issued pieces of clothing he’d taken with him, aside from his boots and shoulder holster. He pressed his palms on the counter for a moment, praying this all hadn’t been a huge fucking. No, this was right—he needed to help her. She was a survivor like him, and she wasn’t one of those bastards he’d heard from a few nights ago who were firing shots off in the nearby woods. He’d steered clear of whoever that had been.

  Lincoln brushed his teeth and drank a glass of scotch from a bottle he’d found in the basement. Then he lay down in the bed beside the woman and closed his eyes.

  God, he needed to sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw was Adam’s face before he pulled the trigger, and then the ruins, the bodies, the empty world left behind.

  He didn’t want to think about the two graves he had dug in the frozen backyard that contained the two bodies he’d found in the car in the garage. The house’s owners had killed themselves rather than face the agony of dying from the inside out. He had cleared out the garage, carefully moved the people to the backyard, and buried them. Two simple wooden crosses marked their graves. He’d never been a religious man, but he’d looked up into the cold, wintry gray skies, listened to the sound of wind whistling down empty roads nearby, and whispered a prayer.

  The home they’d left behind was a good one. Two main stories and a basement that opened up to a backyard that sloped down to a creek. It wasn’t a bad place to settle temporarily. He would have to move out eventually, but for now, he could make trips deeper into the city and still find decent supplies. He’d found his beauty, after all. She had been worth the risk. He didn’t have a clue what to do with her once she was healed, but he didn’t want to let her out of sight. It wasn’t safe out there.

  Lincoln slept fitfully for a couple of hours, then headed downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed a few bottles of water. When he returned, he set them by the side of the bed closest to her. The meds he’d given her would dehydrate her. Then he lay back down. Waiting. Waiting for her to wake up, waiting to fall asleep…waiting for this nightmare to end.

  Nightmares had to end eventually…didn’t they?

  November 2019

  Caroline was trapped.

  She stood in line at the Chicago O’Hare airport, trying to find out why her flight home to Joplin, Missouri, was canceled. All around her people were shuffling in lines or were camped out in the uncomfortable rows of connected airport waiting area seats. The man behind her coughed, and she winced. If she got a cold now, she would be super pissed. She’d spent the last week practically bathing in hand sanitizer at work to keep from picking up the illnesses her boss usually brought. Her advertising firm sometimes felt like a petri dish of bacteria and viruses.

  Her boss, Jill, had three kids ages three, five and nine, which meant at least two or three times a year Jill became what was jokingly called by her coworkers a carrier for the “super cold” that her kids picked up at school. Caroline tended to catch them most because she worked in a small cubicle just o
utside Jill’s corner office. Close proximity to the boss did her in every time.

  “Passengers of flight 1502 to New York, we’re sorry to inform you that the flight has been canceled. All flights to and from LaGuardia are grounded until further notice. Please see your gate attendant to schedule a new flight.” The employee who made the announcement sounded mildly stressed. Carolyn didn’t blame her. Dozens of flights had been delayed or canceled in the last three hours, and people were getting restless.

  The woman in front of Caroline turned to face her.

  “LaGuardia’s closed? You suppose they had a terrorist issue?” The woman slung her Prada purse over her shoulder and peeked around at the other passengers nearby.

  “Could be.” Caroline set her heavy backpack down, placing her feet on either side of it while she stretched her neck. This line wasn’t moving at all, and she’d pinch a nerve in her neck if she had her backpack on for another ten minutes.

  “I’ll google it.” The woman began to type on her phone. Caroline was sure the news wouldn’t report anything about a terrorist threat until it was dealt with and everyone was safe.

  The woman cleared her throat, tucked a strand of hair that was threaded with silver behind her ears, and the color drained from her face. “Oh…”

  Caroline leaned forward, worry starting to form knots in her gut. “What is it?”

  “Um…” The woman scrolled down on her phone, her lips moving slightly as she silently read the article. She slowly raised her head, her gaze sweeping the somewhat cantankerous crowd of people around them.

  Caroline reached out and touched the woman’s arm, trying to get her attention. “Is it bad?” The touch seemed to electrify the woman. She pulled away from Caroline, grabbed her bag and purse, and abruptly left the line at the gate. She practically sprinted down the terminal and vanished.

  “So much for airport camaraderie,” Caroline muttered, but her chest was tight with worry. The woman was clearly spooked by something.

  Caroline inched forward in the line, nudging her backpack forward with her boot before she retrieved her own cell phone so she could look up LaGuardia on the internet. The headline that jumped out on the first page of results startled her:

  Man on Paris Flight Collapses at LaGuardia Airport. Signs of Infectious Virus Reported.

  She read further on, seeing that the terminal was closed and a medical team had been brought in to examine the man. The passengers at the terminal were currently quarantined. Caroline scrolled past some annoying pop-up ads about kitchen utensils. The rest of the article discussed how the airport was going to close down the other terminals, and all flights would soon be grounded. There were no comments as to what the virus was.

  Maybe it was Ebola? The 2014 scare had been a little frightening. A girl who worked with Caroline had been on a cruise with a nurse who had treated an Ebola victim in Dallas. The nurse had then gone on her vacation. Once it was revealed she was on a cruise ship, the CDC had contacted the ship and requested the nurse quarantine herself inside her room. The entire ship panicked, but the cruise company offered free drinks and when that didn’t work, a full refund to all passengers. The Ebola scare ultimately calmed down and seemed to be neutralized, at least in the United States.

  Caroline wondered if the man in New York who had fallen ill had come from Sierra Leone, Ghana, or South Africa. It shouldn’t be cause for concern, though. They’d stopped him from getting on another flight, so he shouldn’t have infected anyone, right? Unless…

  Caroline didn’t want to think about “unless,” but her brain couldn’t stop itself.

  What if it was already too late? What if he had met and touched a bunch of other passengers on his flight, and then they had boarded planes an hour so before this man collapsed? Those other people could be going anywhere.

  The terminal suddenly seemed very stifling. The man behind her coughed again, and Caroline fought to banish a wave of panic.

  “Next!” the gate attendant called, Caroline rushed forward, desperate to get away from the man behind her.

  “Name?” the woman asked.

  “Caroline Kelly.”

  “Headed to Joplin?” the attendant asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay…” The attendant perused her screen for available flights. The PA crackled, and the voice from earlier came on over the sound system.

  “Code Bravo. Repeat, Code Bravo. Employees, please make your stations ready.”

  The woman behind the blue-and-white striped counter froze for a split second. Then she very calmly looked up at Caroline.

  “I’m so sorry. The terminal is going to be shutting down. Please find a seat nearby. We’ll be making an announcement soon.” The attendant placed a Closed sign next to her post and hurried down the crowded terminal to an office about fifty feet away.

  “Hey, what the hell?” the man behind her snapped.

  Caroline turned, picked up her backpack, and tried to get around him. He coughed right in her face. She wiped her face with her sleeve, trying not to freak out. Maybe they were closing the terminal for some other reason. She went straight to the bathroom to wash her hands and pulled out a travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer. She applied the sanitizer to her hands so she could smear the sanitizer around on her face.

  Maybe I’m just being super paranoid.

  But she wasn’t. Two hours later, the man who’d been behind her in line collapsed, and everyone at Chicago O’Hare was trapped. The man who had fallen ill had come in on a flight from LaGuardia. When he was carried away on a stretcher, the paramedics wore masks and thick gloves. Police offers, also wearing masks, blocked anyone from leaving after they had removed the ill man. Caroline had collapsed in a corner, clutching her backpack, and pulled out her phone to call home. Her older sister, Natalie, answered.

  “Caro, what the hell? Shouldn’t you be on a plane?”

  “Yeah, I should.” She sighed, the sound a little shaky. “Is Mom or Dad there?”

  “Uh-huh. What’s going on, sis? You sound funny.” Natalie, her older sister by four years, always knew when something was up with her.

  “Well, they closed down O’Hare. I’m stuck here.” She tried not to let her sister hear the fear that was radiating inside her.

  “What do you mean, stuck? They won’t let you leave?”

  “Yeah. No one can leave. A man got sick, and they shut everything down.”

  “Caro. Wait…” Her sister paused, her voice lowering on the phone. “Is this connected to the man at LaGuardia? Rick saw it on the news. He and Dad have been glued to the TV all morning.” Natalie’s husband was a news junkie like their father.

  “I think so, but I’m not positive. They’re not telling us much.”

  “Oh God, Caro, this is so scary. I’ll have Rick figure out what’s going on. He has a friend that works in airport security in Kansas City. He might be able to learn what’s happening up in Chicago.”

  “Don’t let Mom and Dad freak out, okay? Once I have a chance to leave, I’ll rent a car and drive.” That was assuming they’d let her leave the airport…and right now that felt like a really big if.

  “Sure, got it. We’ll be waiting. I can’t wait for you to meet Ellie. You’re going to love her.”

  Ellie, her sister’s baby, had been born two months ago, and Caroline hadn’t been able to leave work to fly to Missouri and see the new addition to the family.

  “Can’t wait,” she said, her throat tightening as she fought off a fresh wave of anxiety.

  Everything was going to be okay…wasn’t it?

  Caroline woke as the last bits of the dream faded around her. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her head felt foggy, and for a moment she didn’t remember where she was or how she’d fallen asleep. She was warm, not toasty, but she wasn’t really cold. Not like she had been in a long time. It was dark, and when she shifted, she felt a pillow, an honest-to-God pillow behind her head. She moved her hands, which were tucked beneath the thick fleece blanket. She was l
ying on something soft, and she could hear the cold wind whistling from outside. She wasn’t sleeping outside?

  She struggled to sit up and bit her lip as pain shot up her leg. Just like that, the memories from the grocery store came rushing back. Blood pounded in her ears as she turned her head and saw a man lying in bed beside her. His body was more shadow than anything else in the dim moonlight coming through the wide windows opposite the bed.

  Oh God, he had drugged her and probably brought her here and raped her. She touched her clothes. Her jeans and shirt were still on. Had he put her clothes back on after assaulting her? Surely that would have taken too much effort.

  Her wounded ankle felt cold, so she carefully pulled the blankets back and saw something blue and damp wrapped around her ankle. Some kind of compress. The man had treated it?

  Caroline was confused. Why had he tried to help her? No one did that anymore. The kind people, the ones who thought of others, were long dead. They had been the first to go because they had rushed to help the sick or stop the looters. She’d seen many of them killed on the news, either by the disease or by other people who thought they needed to kill to survive. Now only the immune who were violent and tough survived, at least so far as she could tell. But she ran into so few survivors these days, and the ones she did meet scared her. There had to be good people still left in the world. Statistically it had to be possible, right?

  I’m not tough, just immune. She had been inches from the man who died in O’Hare. He’d coughed right into her face, and yet she was fine. The employee who had worked the desk had been rushed from the airport only two hours into the lockdown. That was how the world ended.

  She’d never heard where the man from Paris had caught it, or if it originated from China like the CDC said. The CDC hadn’t revealed any information, assuming they even knew. Not that it mattered now. Hydra-1 was unstoppable except to a small portion of the population. Caroline tried not to think about that most days, but now she was facing it. She was more alone than ever, despite the shadowy stranger lying beside her in bed. She curled her arms around her body, hugging herself as she tried to dream of better days. But all she could see was the bearded face of the man next to her, and she worried about her future and the future of the other survivors.