3 Days (15 page)
Authors: Krista Madden
Chapter 38
The next morning, I awoke to the smell of bacon.
Bacon
? That couldn’t have been true. I must have been dreaming. We hadn’t had any fresh meat since the solar flare knocked out the power grid and refrigerators and freezers were rendered useless. But opening my eyes, I saw that I was awake. Blaine lay to the left of me, sound asleep. I saw Jared standing at the wood stove, flipping strips of bacon in a cast iron pan. Dr. Cartwright was placing slices of homemade bread in a funny metal pronged contraption that he placed in the very front of the wood stove, where the fire was the hottest. He had preserves, eggs, and home fries already sitting at the table. The smell was wonderful. Only being able to sip broth the night before, the aroma of fried pork was calling me. I could hear the faint sound of the bacon sizzling in the pan.
Dr. Cartwright looked up from the table, saw that I was awake, and quietly motioned for me to come eat. Our communication began awkwardly. After awaking the day before, all I wanted was to focus my attention on Blaine, so the doc and I had not had much time to get acquainted. The room was small, and with Blaine sleeping only feet away from the table, we tried to keep our conversation limited to whispering and hand gestures so as not to wake him.
Motioning to the eggs, I looked at him, questioningly. He backed his chair from the table, tucked both hands under his pits and flapped his arms like a chicken, pretending to peck with his nose.
Well I know
where
they come from
. Registering my look of annoyance, he took my hand and guided me to the window. Behind the cabin sat a chicken pen, surrounded by three old trucks. That explained the eggs, but the bacon had me curious.
When we returned to the table, I leaned in to whisper, “What about the bacon? How do you keep it fresh without electricity?”
“Where does bacon come from?” he whispered, grinning.
Oh my gosh, really? Do we have to make this a game
? I thought.
Fine
,
I’ll bite
. I used my finger to push my nose up; resembling a pig’s and lightly snorted.
He nodded with approval, and then breathed, “Do you see a pig anywhere?” He grinned proudly when I put the pieces together and chuckled, shoving another piece of bacon into my mouth.
Poor pig
, I thought, while rolling the salty goodness around in my mouth.
***
Blaine slept through breakfast, and it was nearly the middle of the day before he woke, looking refreshed and slightly less worried. I sat at the end of the bed, watching him as he pulled himself up. He just leaned against the headboard and smiled, holding my hand in his. Although he was smiling, it did not reach his eyes. There was still a deep concern, and sadness, swimming in a pool of chestnut brown. I didn’t have to ask him what was wrong. I knew. Although I was healing, he was still worried about something. The doctor and Jared were outside now, tending to the chickens and his garden. We were alone for the first time in weeks. All we could do was stare at one another, thankful that the other was still alive. Blaine caressed the back of my fingers with his thumb.
The moment was broken, as Jared and Dr. Cartwright, or Hal as he has asked us to call him, came back from tending to the chores. Hal dropped an arm full of veggies on the table and tossed a book towards me. It landed on the bed, between me and Blaine. I picked up the book. It was covered in a light coat of dust, but otherwise was in very good condition. I read the title aloud, “10 Ways To Tell If You Are Psychic,” and looked at him, eyes wide, mouth gaping. A feeling of embarrassment coursed through me as I turned my gaze back to Blaine. He shrugged and gave my hand a slight squeeze.
“Thought you might want to do a little research,” Hal added. “Your buddies told me everything.”
He poked me in the knee with his elbow, wiggling his eyebrows up and down, and then winked before returning to the other side of the room.
I raised my voice so it’d cross the room and asked, “What kind of doctor are you?” I watched carefully for his response.
“Dentist, sweetie,” he said as he tapped his teeth, then winked again, and carried on with his duties.
I turned back toward Blaine and we exchanged a look of amusement. He was definitely not like any dentist I had ever known. This guy was certifiable.
Chapter 39
The days went on, and the nights were filled with worry of an impending Intruder attack. Hal explained how he had not had any attacks by the Intruders at the cabin. And, although they had been abandoned after the power went out, other homes on the hillside had been left untouched. He usually worried more about the possibility of other human beings looking to take over the cabin.
As night fell, I sat at the kitchen table in silence. Hal and I let Jared and Blaine sleep until their watch shift, as we played a wordless card game. Seeing that I had a winning hand, I lowered my cards to the table and looked up at Hal, expecting a bit of jealousy from him. But when I looked up, a noise called our attention to the door of the cabin.
Then our bodies went rigid. Hal dropped his cards, leaped up from his chair, and crossed the room to the door. I felt myself begin to panic. I crossed the short distance to the bed and shook both the guys awake. It took them a minute to register what was going on. Blaine asked Hal what was wrong, and that was when it happened. The window above the kitchen sink exploded, glass showering around us on the floor. Hal was holding the door closed now, while Jared sprang into action. Blaine used his body as a shield for me, shuffling me over into the corner opposite the front door. Grabbing his handgun off of the desk, he handed me the shotgun, his eyes locking with mine briefly before he ran to help the others. Blaine ran over to the window above the sink and fired two shots through the opening. He climbed up onto the sink to get a better look when I saw a transparently gray hand reach in and grab the front of his shirt. Blaine aimed his pistol at the Intruder, pulling the trigger to fire. When he realized the pistol had jammed, the color drained from his face. Frantically he began messing with the mechanisms of the gun to get it to fire, but with no luck. Finally, he tossed the gun behind him and began punching at the hand that pulled at him.
Jared ran to his side to help, grabbing a kitchen knife on the way. He lifted the knife above his head and proceeded to thrust it down at the arm. After slicing through the paper-thin skin, a strange diluted blood, almost orange in color, began to flow. The hand released its grip on Blaine, and Jared helped him down off the sink.
Meanwhile, Hal had been holding the door, and he was no longer strong enough to keep them out. He faltered, and the door swung open wide. Jared saw this and let go of his grip on Blaine to charge the door. I watched as Blaine lost his footing and his legs flew out from under him, sending him falling head first onto the corner of the kitchen table. He was instantly knocked unconscious as one Intruder threw Jared into a wall. As Jared struggled to breathe from having the wind knocked out of him, another Intruder had Hal by the shirt. It was lifting him up above its head. The Intruder opened its mouth as it let out the same screeching cry I had heard that night in the storage shed.
I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do. Tears streamed down my face as I witnessed a battle between the people I cared about and the things that haunted my dreams. It was a living nightmare, and I had no way of stopping it. A feeling of helpless anger overwhelmed my senses, and I balled my fists as tight as I could. But I couldn’t get my fists to clench. Something was in the way.
THE SHOTGUN!
I was still holding the shotgun that Blaine gave me. He had cocked it for me, just before folding my hands around it, it was ready to go. All I had to do was point and pull the trigger. I stood, keeping my back to the walls in the corner, and took aim. The Intruders hadn’t noticed me yet.
Good
, I thought.
Knowing I was not the best shot, I decided to take aim on the one that was holding Hal. I focused my target on the Intruder’s hip. I wanted to shoot to kill, but if I tried a shot at his head, I risked the chance of hitting Hal. Nestling the butt of the gun into my right shoulder, I pulled the trigger. The sound exploded in my ear.
It was a clean shot, or at least a lucky one. The slug hit the Intruder square in the hip and it dropped Hal and collapsed to the floor, clutching its wound. The other Intruder, thinking Jared was the cause of the shot, charged in his direction. Still clinging to the kitchen knife from earlier, Jared plunged the knife into the Intruder’s stomach. A gush of its blood poured down his arm.
I watched as Hal grabbed the handgun from under the table and fiddled with it for only a second before popping a shot into the head of the Intruder that I had shot, killing it. Hal then went to check on Blaine’s head injury.
Jared pushed the Intruder off of him. I stood in the corner, watching as the Intruder was taking its last breaths. Slowly, I made my way to it, setting the shotgun on the bed beside me. I knelt next to Jared, who was cleaning the Intruder’s blood off his arm and shirt. I searched him to make sure he had no injuries. He assured me he was okay and gave a thumbs up. “Just some scratches.” I then turned my attention to the Intruder, still alive, lying on the floor beside me.
It was strange. We had seen what they could do, destroying communities and killing people in their path. But at this moment, while dying, the Intruder seemed almost harmless. It was so vulnerable that I couldn’t imagine it hurting anyone. Just as this thought crossed my mind, the Intruder raised its hand, reaching for me. It was as though it was requesting that I comfort it as it died, one last touch before an eternity without breathing.
I don’t know what compelled me to reach out toward its hand. Curiosity, maybe, as if I had stepped out of my body at that moment and was witnessing myself lifting a hand toward the Intruder.
I looked away, toward Blaine on the floor across the room, still breathing, while Hal checked his pupils. Jared placed his hand on my back. “Kara, no. What are you doing?”
“It’s okay. It can’t hurt me,” I said to him, my eyes locked on the Intruder. I could feel Jared’s grip on the back of my shirt, his attempt at keeping me from doing something dangerous. But I ignored it. I couldn’t hear anything, my vision fuzzy around the edges. My only focus was the Intruder. Why were they here? What did they want? How long had they existed? I knew of only one way to find out.
Holding my breath, I clasped my fingers around the cold, moist skin of the Intruder. My heart was trying to escape my chest, adrenaline causing it to go wild against my sternum. Then it, no he, closed his fingers around mine, gripping tightly as the light surrounding me began to fade into darkness.
END OF PART I
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