She grimaces, "You okay?"
My cheeks blush, "Yeah." I'm whispering back for whatever reason.
"Where's Will?"
I bite my lip. I don’t want to tell her but I have to, "I left him with Leo."
She wrinkles her nose, "Yikes."
I nod, "yeah. I didn’t have a choice. He was puking everywhere and super sick, so we left him in the woods with Leo to guard him. We came here to get the cure to you."
Her eyes widen, "He's sick?"
I shake my head, "From the vaccine. He's not sick."
She looks worried, "Jake?"
"He's fine. He took the cure too. He was getting sick."
Her worried look doesn’t leave. She whispers, "This is my fault. I wanted to act brave in front of Bernie. I wanted him to think I was strong like you. I tried to fight them, but too many came."
I roll my eyes, "I'm not strong or brave… I'm an idiot."
Tears, with a slight pinkish hue to them, leak from her eyes leaving pink stains on her cheeks. I stroke her hair back, "Hey, I'm a mutant too. You’re smarter than me. It could have happened to anyone."
She shakes her head, "I kinda like him."
I grimace, "He's like twenty-nine or some shit."
She laughs and it makes a squeak like the infected. A raspy squeak. My heart is literally tearing from my chest. She isn’t going to make it. I know that.
I am useless to her. So I lay there and watch her eyes. The blue is so bright, compared to the pink blood-shot of the whites.
She smiles, "I like that he's smart and he cares about things we haven’t had for a long time. He's like Jake. He can remember the taste of the burger he ate when he was fifteen. He can remember the smell in the wind when he was at the beach."
I smile through the tears, "Suntan lotion."
She beams, "Exactly what he said. You could smell the sun in the lotion. It was summer and popsicles and grass and staying up late. He remembers those things and I like that."
I point, "He's too old for you."
She shrugs, "I'm too old for me."
I sniffle and nod, "You are. You're older than both your brothers."
She laughs the squeaky wheeze again and closes her eyes. I panic when she does it, but I see her chest rising and falling in jerky breaths.
The room goes dark. I keep my hand on her stomach and stay awake. Bernie comes in and sits in the chair next to the bed. He reaches over and grabs a hand to hold.
"She's got no throat left and pink tears," I whisper.
He whispers back, "We'll take her to the city. Your dad has solutions to things. I've seen him bring them back further than this."
I scowl, "He just picks and chooses?"
"Pretty much."
I shake my head, "I don’t care. She's worthy."
He sighs, "She's an amazing girl. She's so strong and kind of crazy. I should have protected her. I should have fought with her and I didn’t. I tried to get her to run away. She wouldn’t. Leo saved her and I hid."
I want to blame him but I can't. I know where the blame belongs, "This is my fault."
The sun rises as we talk. The room fills with pink light, like the tears she cried.
I see his face and sigh, "We should get going."
He stands and scoops her up. She sleeps still, snuggling into his arms.
I follow him from the room. When we get downstairs, we find Jake and Star sleeping on the couch, wrapped in each other.
Bernie glances back at me, "I told Star we would be back for them in a week or not at all."
My breath gets caught in my chest, like it's trapped in a sob. Jake's sleeping face is beautiful, as is hers. I want them to come. I don’t want to leave them behind.
"What if the bad people come?" I ask.
He looks back at me again, "I have bunkers, where the food is stored. They won't ever find it, you could burn the house to the ground and not find it."
We leave the house for the truck, "Good to know."
The drive is silent. I wouldn’t have noticed it before, but now that Jake has said something to me about it, I do. I am still wooden in so many ways. I still don’t talk for no reason and it never bothered me before.
I look back at Anna in the backseat; she's sleeping peacefully. Her skin is normal colored again, not so pale.
"I think she's getting better," I mutter.
He glances at me, "She needs medical help still."
I nod, "I know."
He taps his fingers on the steering wheel, "You and Will…you are… uhm…together?"
I frown and nod again.
"And Jake and Star are obviously together. Is Anna…"
I see him look at Anna in the rearview and feel my insides churning, "She's seventeen."
He looks shocked, "Is that all?"
I bite my lip to stop myself from saying something that would be bad.
He sighs, "I figured twenty."
I purse my lips, "You like her?"
He nods, "I do. I admire her, but she's a child."
I furrow my brow, "You wouldn’t want to be with her?"
He scoffs, "If she were a few years older, at the very least. I'm not a pervert."
A smile breaks across my lips, "I like you, Bernie."
He shrugs, "Okay. Thanks." He stops the truck as we near Will's spot in the woods.
I open the door and whistle. Leo comes running fast and then back into the woods. I know what that means. I look back, "You have weapons?"
He grins and gets out. He opens the back door and lifts the floor up. He hands me a shiny steel handgun. I almost hear angels sing as he passes it to me. I see him take one and scowl, "How good are you?"
He shrugs, "I'm alright."
I put my hand out. He makes a face, but I cock my eyebrow, "Will's possibly hurt. I'm better than alright. Stay here with her. Leave if you have to, just keep her safe."
He resigns and hands me the gun. I turn and follow Leo into the woods.
I hear the birds and insects. Everything is moving, as it should. We run over logs and bushes and suddenly the noises stop. Slowing my pace, I can hear ragged breaths. I wince and lift the guns.
I hear a high moan and close my eyes. He's turned. The vaccine never helped him, he's sick now instead. He's sick.
Leo stops and paces the spot where I am standing. He whines. I grimace, "Sorry, buddy."
He tilts his head just as I slide against a tree and feel something land on my shoulder. I look up as slime falls from a branch. I move out of the way, to discover a puddle of slime on the ground. Will is in the tree, clinging to it. The slime is his vomit.
He looks rough but manages to point. I turn in time to see it. I fire. The gun jerks in my hand, causing me to miss. I fire a second time, dropping the infected man to the ground.
I look up at Will in the tree and shake my head, "You aren’t one of them?"
He chuckles, "I'm gonna kill you and Bern when I get outta this tree, Em. Kill you."
That answers that. I look around the forest and realize how many there are.
"Oh shit," I mutter. The forest is filled. I am surrounded. I swallow and look down at Leo, "Stay low." He crouches and growls.
I nod and he's off. He takes the first one down, I shoot the ones coming for him. I hear something behind me. A tall man with bloody tears, and a shriek that could make my ears bleed like his are, stumbles at me. I shoot him between the eyes and then a shaggy looking man behind him. Leo yelps. I shoot the one that has him on the ground. I run closer and shoot the one grabbing at his back legs. He snarls, taking a lady down.
"Behind you, Em!"
I look where Will is yelling and shoot almost point blank. The lady drops to the ground and I fire at the one behind her. A small child rushes at me with blood dripping from her lips. She froths the yellow foam. I don’t like killing the small ones. I fire and look back at Leo. He takes a man down by biting his entire head off. The squishy crunching noise is nasty.
I don’t have the second to focus in on it. I blast one rushing me, she jumps a log and I hit her mid air. She drops, breaking the old rotten log under her. There are seven left. I shoot five as Leo takes the other two. Not fearing them touching or biting or infecting me, changes the way I fight them. I would have run after dropping the closest ones.
I look up at Will in the tree and wince, "All night?"
He nods and throws up again.
"Anna is sick," I say it and leave it out there to hang with his heaving that’s filled the whole forest. It's no wonder, really, that so many came.
He stops and glances up, "Did she get the cure?" he coughs.
I nod, "Not sure it's worked though. Jake got it too but we gave him the cure. He wasn’t far along…she had the fever."
He closes his eyes and breathes deeply. I look at Leo who is eating one of them. I grimace. But he makes his sloppy wolf face and chews away. I shudder, "You're riding in the back of the truck."
Will struggles climbing down. He stands uneasily smacking his lips together.
He points, "I have never been this sick in my life."
"You stink."
He nods, "I know, baby."
I put his huge arm over my shoulder and start the hike out of the woods, "They're starting to pack like animals," I look at the dead.
"Yeah, it's weird. Six or seven was a lot before. Now you can find ten or twenty together," he mutters and struggles with the walk.
"You're cold now. The fever is gone."
He nods and spits on the ground, "Thank God."
Leo catches up and nudges against Will. I smile and walk to the truck.
Bernie is still there. He's holding a shotgun, shaking sort of, as he stands there.
"What the fuck?" he shouts at me.
I shake my head, "Infected. They treed him like a cougar running from wolves."
