Deathly Contagious (51 page)

I nodded. “Good plan.”

Raeya laughed when I told her about Fuller’s comment during dinner. Then her face became serious and she agreed it would be a good idea. I raised one eyebrow to let her know that I hadn’t forgotten her hopes of me getting pregnant so I’d be forced to not go on missions. She joked around about it for a while before she asked a question that sent a chill through me.

“Do you think Fuller wants you two to have a baby so he can do testing on it?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Testing?”

“Yea, like genetic testing in regards to the virus. It’s almost as if he thinks you two will produce a super human. The way he pointed out your fast healing and Hayden’s resistance is creepy. It just makes me wonder if he’d want to do experiments on the kid.”

Suddenly not interested in my over salted vegetable medley, I pondered her acquisition. What
would
Fuller do if Hayden and I had a kid? Why else would he think it was a good idea? Padraic pointed out more than once that he felt bad for the few pregnant women here; we didn’t have any technology like ultra sound machines, fetal monitors, or a delivery room. And more concerning—to me at least—we didn’t have any drugs that were safe to give a woman in labor. Padraic was a surgeon but he had never preformed a cesarean birth before and voiced his concerns about doing a hack job. If anyone needed a C-section, they were fucked.

A week after they left, Alex and his team returned home. Three days after that, our team set out on a mission. Hayden, Rider, and I loaded our stuff into the truck and Brock, Wade, and Ivan got into a black SUV. Like usual, we couldn’t agree on what music to listen to.

 A nervous twist griped my gut when we headed west. I remembered exactly how to get to the field where Hayden had been shot. Out of all the horrible images that I have seen in the last few months, the memory of Hayden sinking to the ground after the bullet hit him was the worst.

I hated it and I never wanted to think of it again. My heart began to race every time I remembered the immense pain I felt when I thought he was dead.

Our journey started off without a hitch and the first five hours passed quickly. I had zoned out most of the trip until something caught my eye that I had to point out to Hayden and Rider. We passed an elaborately decorated yard, complete with plastic gravestones and bones sticking up from the ground. Most had fallen over in the wind and rain, but the overall effect was chilling.

The fake graveyard wasn’t scary in the least. It was unnerving to see the world months behind, as it forever would be.

“I used to like Halloween,” Rider huffed. “I lost my virginity on Halloween.” He smiled at the memory. “Maggie Williams. I had a crush on her since middle school but it wasn’t until I enlisted that she paid any attention to me.”

“You didn’t get laid until you were eighteen?” Hayden asked incredulously.

Not seeming embarrassed in the least, Rider said, “I was nineteen, actually. I used to want to wait until marriage; I was raised kinda strict and believed in that stuff. Then I enlisted and realized that the chance of that happening was pretty slim, since the chance of me getting out alive was pretty slim too.”

“Oh,” Hayden said. “That’s…that’s respectable.”

“Thanks,” Rider told him. “How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Seriously?” I piped up from the back. “That’s young!

Hayden shrugged. “Yea, I guess. What about you, Riss?”

Before I got a chance to tell him, Ivan’s voice came over the radio, asking if Hayden thought we should detour off the country road and explore a town. Hayden said after we crossed the Texas state line we would see what was in the first town we came across.

“Can I see the map?” I asked Rider. He opened the glove box and extracted the map, worn along the creases from being folded and unfolded so many times. It took a minute to figure out where we approximately were; once I did I traced the route to the street with the houses with the weird symbols. Hayden had marked a tiny ‘x’ on the map to remind us that something—though it was very odd—had been looked into in that town.

“Why don’t we go back here?” I asked, holding up the map and pointing to X.

“What’s there?” Rider inquired. “When did you go to Texas?”

I swallowed hard and looked at the passing terrain. “Before Hayden was shot. We came out here to get zombie blood samples for Doctor Cara and Padraic to look at.”

“You couldn’t find any closer to home?” Rider only half teased.

I temporarily forgot the reason to why we went to Texas in the first place. It was still cold then; frost iced over the blood spilled in this dead world.

“I wanted to go south,” I said. Suddenly, a red hot knife of guilt stabbed me. If I hadn’t requested to go south, Hayden wouldn’t have gotten shot. I clenched my jaw and tried not to think about it.

We stopped to eat before going to look for overrun towns. The air was warm and wonderfully dry. I sat on the hot liner in the truck bed and made peanut butter sandwiches on homemade bread for everyone.

Enjoying the nice weather, each other’s carefree company, and the possible last calm meal before a battle of living versus the dead broke out, we ate in silence. Something moved swiftly through the overgrown grass.

We all dropped our food and raised our weapons. When a large buck emerged from the underbrush, his nostrils flaring as he took in our human scents, I put my hand up to signal the guys to keep quiet.

Without taking my eyes off the deer, I felt around for my bow. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a mop of Rider’s red hair lean over and pick something up. The familiar shape of the bow graced my fingers. An arrow was given to me next.

Unobtrusively, I rose to my feet and slowly strung the arrow. The string creaked so softly only I could hear it. The buck blinked, turned and lowered his head, hiding it from my sight. I closed one eye and focused. I let out a breath, whistled a sort, high pitched whistle, and let go of the arrow as soon as the deer looked up.

The arrow flew through the air and sunk into the buck’s skull. His body dropped with a heavy thud, crashing into the lush, tall grass around him. I smiled triumphantly; pleased with both my skill and our luck of the buck wandering so close.

 “You make it look so easy,” Rider said with a laugh. I put the bow over my neck and swung the quiver over my shoulder.

“I’ve been doing it for years,” I reminded him. “I wasn’t always good.”

I jumped over the side of the truck, Hayden following suit.

“Nice shot,” he complimented.

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “It was nice to shoot something that wasn’t trying to eat me.” I shook my head at how wrong that was.

With Hayden’s help, we dragged the deer over to the truck.

“Should we take it back to the compound?” Wade asked.

Ivan shook his head. “It won’t last that long. And a dead body—human or not—will only attact zombies. I say we cook him and have a feast on some real meat.”

My mouth watered at the thought of venison jerky. Though, it wouldn’t taste as good without being marinated in anything.

“Do you know how to skin it?” Wade asked apprehensively.

“Yea,” I told him. “But I don’t have all that I need.”

“What do you need?” Brock asked.

“Rope to tie it up and a saw to cut off the head and the legs.”

Brock raised an eyebrow. “You’ve done this before?”

“Yea,” I repeated. “I’ve known how to hunt and how to prepare what I’ve killed for years.”

“Interesting,” Brock replied. “And I have a saw. I brought one just in case we needed to cut through fallen trees,” he said with a grin. “And I think there is rope in here.” He opened up a large tool box that was in the back of the SUV. “Yea,” he called, holding it up. “Is this enough?”

“Perfect!” I exclaimed. “Uh, can we find a tree? I can’t really string him up without one.”

We hauled the heavy carcass into the bed of the truck and drove down the road, stopping a half mile later once we spotted an accessible tree.   With less grace than normal, I set to work. I had become numb to sharp objects cutting and slicing. It didn’t stir any emotion in me when I cut the deer straight down the middle and let his insides tumble out.

Hayden, Wade, and Rider helped me cut up the meat and cook it over a small fire while the others kept watch. Under the shade of a small cove of trees, we sat in the tall grass and devoured our strips of cooked meat.

“It’s better when it’s been flavored,” I said with my mouth full. I hadn’t had meat that didn’t come from a can or bag since Kentucky. Despite its rather bland flavor, the venison was delicious. Hayden put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him. I rested my head against his chest and put my hand on his.

It was beyond nice, sitting around the small fire eating with my friends. Birds and bugs filled the hot day with the sounds of summer. A comfortable silence fell over us and we relaxed for a while longer until Hayden grudgingly sighed and got up to retrieve the map.

“Are we close to the symbols?” Ivan asked. It surprised me just a bit that he remembered.

“Getting there,” Hayden told him and flattened out the map. Wade and Brock curiously looked at the map.

“Symbols?” Brock questioned. Hayden quickly explained. Brock shrugged, not too interested. “It was months ago, do you really think whoever was using those houses are still around?”

“Nope,” Hayden said and folded up the map. “But it’s worth checking out, just for curiosity’s sake.”

I couldn’t help but feel excited. Stupid anxiety built up inside me; I tried to smash it down reminding myself I wasn’t going to get any closer to solving the mystery of who left the symbols and why. I knew—and I repressed the notion with a passion—that I hoped to stumble upon another large, organized compound. That small groups went out on missions and marked helpful locations. If another group of several hundred people existed, the chances of human survival went up.

“We should get the rest of the supplies from that camping store,” Hayden suggested to me. “We left quite a bit.”

“We did,” I agreed. “There was so much stuff I wanted.”

“Yea, we’re going,” he decided with a smile. We packed up our crap, stretched, and loaded back into the cars. Under black paint, the cab of the truck was hot. We weren’t supposed to use the air conditioning either. I leaned against the door so the air from Hayden’s open window blew in my face.

We turned left off of the country road we had been traveling on. The landscape became more and more barren the farther west we went. Everything was overgrown and browning from the apparent lack of rain.

A faded sign for a new development beckoned us further. Hayden turned up the radio and was singing along with Eric Church when we rolled to a stop.

“Holy shit,” Rider quietly said and looked around. He held his hand up to his face to shield the sun from his eyes. “There’s nothing left.”

The charred remnants of the neighborhood brought a chill to my skin despite the heat. New vegetation had yet to grow over the soot and ash covered ground. Blackened boards stuck up from the rubble, a sad shadow of what they used to be. Burned skeletons of cars littered the road. If we looked long enough, I’m sure we’d find
real
skeletons in the road as well.

“Carry on?” Ivan asked over the walkie talkie.

“Yea,” Hayden agreed. “There’s obviously nothing to see here.”

We drove for another few hours. When the sun was getting ready to set, we stopped to eat. We slowly looked in all directions; there was nothing but a long-forgotten, overgrown field with a giant, old oak tree a few yards from the road. I stripped myself of weapons and raised my hands above my head, breathing in and out as I stretched. My neck popped when I turned it from side to side. I reached down and touched my toes, feeling a relieving give in my calf muscles.

Not wanting to be completely weaponless, I stuck a sliver knife in my boot and wandered away from the guys so they wouldn’t see me squatting in the tall grass. A grasshopper landed on me as I was zipping up my jeans. I was about to flick him off but stopped myself. I kneeled back down and more gently pushed the insect off of me. I stood and shook my head, thinking I was losing it for not wanting to be mean to a stupid bug.

The breeze rustled the knee length grass and weeds, blowing the sweet scent of clovers in my face. Despite the sinking sun, the day retained its warmth. For the first time in a while, I felt optimistic. We had survived the winter. That, in itself, was a feat.

Something snapped behind me. I extracted the knife and whirled around in a swift movement. My eyes scanned my surroundings and saw nothing. I took a steady breath and waiting. My fingers tighten on the knife and I stepped forward.

He sprung up from the grass and ran. He was fast, but I was faster. I ducked out of his lunge, spun around and planted a hard kick in the center of his firm chest. The blow stunned him, but not from the pain. A blast like that to the heart is damaging.

With a lack of reeling from pain he countered quickly, snapping and snarling like a rabid dog. A build up of mud, blood or, more realistically both, caked his fingernails. His hands thrashed in the air, desperate to claw up my face.

When he reached out again, I was ready. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and yanked him forward; he didn’t have time to stumble in the tall weeds before the knife sunk into his temple. I let go of his arm and tilted the knife up so that it neatly slid from his head and he collapsed onto the ground. Crimson stained the earth. Head wounds were always messy.

I wiped sweat off my forehead and looked back at the truck. Ivan and Wade were rummaging through our box of food in the bed of Hayden’s truck. I couldn’t see the other three. Using the crazy’s shirt to clean the blade, I stuck it back in the sheath and concealed it once again in my boot. No one had seen the attack. I decided they didn’t need to know.

“I may regret asking this,” I overheard Wade saying to Ivan as I neared the truck. “But where are all the zombies? We haven’t seen any in a while. Sadly, that’s unsettling.”

Ivan laughed. “It is. I’d guess they go where the food is. If there’s no one here, they’d move on.”