Age of Z: A Tale of Survival (27 page)

He learned the laws of survival. He learned to appreciate and hold on to the little moments of happiness. Most importantly he learned to cherish the relationships he'd collected with his friends, respect them for their strengths and experiences and emotions.

But there were still days, and moments, and little things, that reminded him of that disconnect. That no matter how close he grew to the people around him, how much better he got at understanding the world as it was now, he was still not completely a part of it all.

Alexa's illness was one of those things.

At first he hadn't really understood what was going on. He knew vaguely
of
sickness, of course. But he'd never been sick himself, none of the databases force-fed into his mind included medical care beyond basic first aid, and as far as he knew he was immune to the majority of the things that caused illnesses to begin with.

He'd seen people in less than perfect health at New Avalon, but had never bothered to visit the medical facility. And while eavesdropping on Blake's meetings and reports regarding New Avalon's medical care had been both enlightening and disturbing, most of the things he'd overheard had been more psychological than physical.

So Casey wasn't exactly familiar with the well-known warning signs most people were familiar with. The week of rain had been a nuisance, making travel more difficult and destroying their visibility, but the worst it had done was get their clothes wet as far as he was concerned.

He'd caught Alexa's shivering, but Alexa always did that when she was cold, so Casey didn't think much of it at first. And Alexa had seemed a little more lethargic than usual, but rain always seemed to do that to her anyway, affecting her mood, quieting her chatter, smothering her cheerful optimism, so he didn't think that was unusual at first, either.

But he did notice other things, things that were not as common and stood out sharply. The coughing was first–Alexa never did that, and Casey didn't like the pained look on her face every time she finished a round of hacking. He asked if Alexa was okay, but the teen shrugged it off and said it was nothing.

Casey wasn't entirely sure he believed Alexa at first, but she had never lied to him before, and she'd always been straightforward and often enthusiastic whenever she'd taught Casey anything in the past. In the rare instances in which she didn't want to talk about something, she usually became more subdued, and answered the questions shortly and quietly, indicating her discomfort.

Casey learned to back off from those subjects quickly, like that time Alexa had gotten withdrawn after they'd entered New Avalon and Casey had asked about what happened to the infected people. But Alexa didn't do that this time, and she'd never outright lied to Casey before, so Casey begrudgingly admitted that maybe he was just overreacting after all the bad days and nights they'd been having while traveling.

But he started having doubts again soon after, because the nightmares were a pretty good indication that something was very wrong.

Alexa had nightmares a lot. Casey had learned that not long after he'd escaped Gentech, when he took his guard shifts at night and his companion slept. He could sometimes even guess what they were about, the way the teen whimpered in her sleep for her family, cried out for her friends not to be hurt, and shied away from grasping, hungry monsters in her sleep.

Some of them were less obvious, and Casey suspected those were memories, when Alexa's mind decided to replay some of the sick and horrific things she'd seen during the apocalypse over and over.

Watching and listening to Alexa's unconscious distress always disturbed Casey more than a little, but not nearly as much as when Alexa woke up, because Alexa never commented on them, ever. Casey had eventually realized that it wasn't because Alexa was trying to avoid talking about the bad things she'd seen; she'd just gotten so used to bad dreams and worse memories that it was normal.

It was like it wasn't even worth waking from them or talking about them anymore because it didn't change anything and they wouldn't go away, so a person just learned to deal with them–end of story. Casey couldn't claim to be an expert on emotions or psychology, but he was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen, and chalked it up to yet another way the apocalypse had twisted the world.

Although Alexa had had bad dreams pretty frequently, she didn't have them all the time. Even when she did Casey could usually give her a gentle nudge and quiet her down a little, make them retreat. Not so now; Alexa was starting to have nightmares far more often, was unresponsive to Casey's attempts to help, and woke from them the next day far less rested than usual.

She still never said anything about them–Casey actually thought she remembered nothing at all–but she was starting to look the worse for wear from it. Something about that didn't sit right in Casey's stomach, and it felt ominous.

That was why he started keeping a sharper eye on Alexa after that, which was how he noticed the other things. The way she'd gotten paler and shivered more often, even though the rain had gone away by then and it was bright and sunny out. The way her breathing didn't sound quite right, like there was a wet, minute crackling coming from her chest that Casey couldn't recall ever having heard from Alexa before.

He'd tried calling Alexa on these things, and had been deflected once again, but now he knew something was wrong and resolved to keep a close watch, just in case.

He was glad he had, because the next day Alexa collapsed, and his friend had fallen downhill ever since. He'd been stunned at how fast a human body could degenerate from something like illness, once he'd begun to witness it firsthand.

In the space of a little over a week Alexa went from being a physically fit, strong, optimistic young woman to a physically weak, exhausted kid that could barely retain any strength for more than a few hours and swam in and out of coherency with alarming regularity. Her temperature rose, but she shivered constantly. Her coughing and breathing became harsher.

She barely even noticed when Casey carried her anymore, even though she used to throw such a fit over being 'babied' and valued her own independence highly. Casey had been appalled at just how little Alexa started weighing after a while. He wished it was just because he was getting used to carrying his friend and knew that it wasn't the reason at all.

It scared Casey. A lot. He hated admitting to it, because he hated being scared of anything or too weak to fight anything, but in this case it was true. It scared him to watch his friend, his...
sister
, Alexa had called them family... turn from a vibrant example of a human being to this shell of a person that was almost as dead as the zoms they were constantly running from.

It scared him more to know that for all his power and his knowledge, there really wasn't a single thing he could do to help Alexa fight this, other than to keep her alive long enough to find real help.

Since that was his only option he threw himself into it whole-heartedly with every shred of determination he owned. Alexa was his friend, his family, and he was not letting his friend go down without a fight.

So he did everything he could to keep them moving, and to keep Alexa as healthy, safe and comfortable as possible while he did. He memorized the maps, poured over them by firelight when Alexa slept on the safer nights, repeated the route and the destination over and over in his mind.

He helped Alexa keep moving in the mornings, and carried her when the teenager was too drained and exhausted to continue on her own. He scavenged for the both of them, and when he couldn't find enough for two, he made sure whatever he did find went to Alexa first.

He could ignore his own growling stomach for a day, but if Alexa didn't get enough nutrition her sick body wouldn't have enough energy to stay in the fight until they made it to the base. And while it worried him to leave Alexa behind so often in such a vulnerable state, he was careful to always ensure he left his friend behind someplace safe, while out looking for supplies.

As much as he badly wanted to destroy a few zoms, to get his own frustration, anger and worry out of his system, he avoided it when he could. If he got in over his head it would cost Alexa, and even if he did win the fights, the noise was certain to attract more zombies, which his sick friend definitely didn't need.

He kept his dead head killing to a bare minimum, only what was necessary for keeping their campsites safe, and did it as quickly and stealthily as possible to keep the monsters from moaning and drawing in others.

Sometimes it wasn't quite enough, and twice now Casey had grimly been forced to abandon his scavenging attempts to retreat, collect an exhausted, barely-conscious Alexa, and beat it out of there before a large number of zoms swelled into an entire horde.

Casey knew he was putting one hundred and ten percent of himself into his efforts to protect his friend, and he knew he was doing everything he possibly could for Alexa already. So it angered him to realized it still wasn't enough.

For all his efforts Alexa was still deteriorating rapidly, losing weight, drifting in and out of fitful sleep and bad dreams, and breathing worse than ever before. She wasn't even protesting against Casey handling everything by himself anymore, or complaining about having to be taken care of, and she was so out of it these days Casey was starting to wonder if she even noticed these things were going on around her.

She was sinking fast, and it frustrated Casey to his core, because he was supposed to be better than this–he was supposed to be tough, strong and reliable, a natural protector of the people, so why couldn't he save one single teenage girl?

When Alexa started eating less, and then refusing to eat altogether, Casey was pretty sure they were in trouble. And then Alexa admitted in that shuddering, hoarse voice that she was doing badly.

She almost desperately insisted that Casey really didn't owe her anything and that wet crackling in her chest seemed the loudest since Casey had first heard it... The chill that ran up Casey's spine in that moment told him in no uncertain terms that they were definitely in trouble.

He redoubled his efforts. There wasn't much else he could do, but Casey had not liked that note of finality in Alexa's voice, when she'd asked that simple question, and knew he had to push himself harder if Alexa had any chance left at all.

He tried to increase their speed during travel time, carrying Alexa from the beginning instead of letting her waste her energy by trying to walk. Pushing for greater speed was also pretty exhausting on Alexa, it seemed to make the teenager feel worse and took its toll on her body, but at least Casey was getting more mileage out of it.

They still had over a hundred miles left of travel, but if Casey pushed himself, was careful about avoiding zoms, and made sure to let Alexa rest and get food and keep warm, he figured they could make it in about a week.

Then the rain hit, and Casey felt like knocking a few trees over in sheer anger when he realized that things were not going to go nearly so well as he'd hoped. Because that would be far too
easy
.

He'd had no choice but to retreat far earlier than he'd wanted to for shelter. Casey was fairly sure by now that the illness–while not helped any by their extreme travel conditions and lack of food and medicine–had been sparked by the heavy week of rain they'd had.

Casey was certain that Alexa would deteriorate even more rapidly if caught out in another storm. So he'd found someplace safe, started a fire, wrapped Alexa up as warmly and comfortably as possible in all the blankets they owned, and tried to wait out the storm.

Which resolutely did not go away, to Casey's intense frustration.

He did the best he could considering the circumstances, which was make the place safer and use the extra time to scavenge for anything useful they might need for the trek. If he could find enough food to last more than a day, it meant he could travel for longer tomorrow, especially since Alexa would have plenty of time to rest with their break today.

Urgency clawed at the back of his mind as he searched for food, water, and any medicine that could possibly help his friend. He pushed it to the back of his mind. Casey knew they had to hurry–he knew Alexa didn't have much time left–but there wasn't anything he could do about it right now other than prepare.

He knew that, and yet that unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away. In fact it got worse when he realized the wind and the rain was causing too much interference with his hearing, meaning he couldn't hear his friend at all like he usually could.

But she'll be fine,
Casey told himself sharply.
I made sure the place was completely safe. Unless the zoms start practicing gymnastics they're not getting up to where Alexa is. The fire was contained, no risk of it spreading. And Alexa's been so weak lately I doubt she'd try to help scavenge or anything. She stopped insisting on helping ages ago, anyway.

The worry in his chest didn't go away, but at least he was able to focus more completely on his goal. By the time night was truly falling, and the storm-cast darkness grew deeper and more defined, he'd found a surprisingly decent cache of dried goods in a collapsed shop, and with the rain there was no shortage of water.

It was a good haul; he should be able to squeeze out a few extra hours of running time tomorrow after all, now, without having to worry about finding things to eat. His satisfaction turned to dread when he returned to the abandoned factory and found it precisely that: abandoned. Alexa was gone.