Thicker than Blood (48 page)

“Leisel!” she screamed, her legs thrashing
wildly as she tried to reach for her fallen weapon. “Shoot it!”

I raised my gun, trying to aim for its head,
but my hands were shaking, and fear was causing my vision to blur.
I was a horrible shot, and my chances of shooting Evelyn were
greater than hitting the infected. As Evelyn screamed louder, I
dropped my gun, yanked my blade free from my belt, and rushed
forward.

Attached to her thrashing legs, the infected
was groaning and growling, flaps of rotted skin flailing from its
body like ropes of long hair. Evelyn let out another awful scream
just as I sent the tip of my blade into the back of the thing’s
skull. Everything went suddenly quiet and still as the infected
slumped heavily over Evelyn’s trembling legs. I yanked my blade
free, and Evelyn quickly shoved the infected off her, rolling to
her side before jumping to her feet.

“You’re bleeding!” I cried, dropping to my
knees as I reached for her leg.

She jerked out of my grasp and spun away,
giving me her back. She was no longer screaming, but still shaking,
trembling violently from her head to her feet.

“Oh God,” she whispered hoarsely. “Oh God, oh
God, oh God…”

Standing up, I touched her shoulder gently.
“You don’t get sick from scratches,” I whispered. “Not unless
there’s blood or saliva exchanged. It was an old one, no blood.
You’re going to be—”

Whipping around, Evelyn raised her
tear-filled eyes to mine. My gaze dropped to the leg she presented
me with. Bending down and with shaking hands, she lifted the bloody
material of her pants, revealing a crescent-shaped wound on her
calf, the flesh between nearly torn completely away.

My breath left me in one rapid burst of air,
my entire body seeming to deflate all at once. “No,” I whispered,
shaking my head as tears filled my eyes. “No…no…” My thoughts spun
and I raised my blade. “We’ll cut it off!” I cried. “Right
now!”

Wide-eyed, Evelyn jerked away from me,
taking several limping steps backward. “No,” she whispered. “No, we
can’t…”

“We can!” I screamed. “Before it
spreads!”

“And then what?” she screamed back, her
full-bodied trembling growing worse. “We’re not doctors, Lei! I’ll
bleed out or worse, it will get infected and I’ll die anyway!”

“There’s still a chance!” I protested,
knowing if we did nothing there was no chance. “We can’t do
nothing!”

“What good will I be to you with one leg,
Leisel? And injured for who knows how long. I’ll attract infected
everywhere we go. I’ll get us both killed and you know it!”

My mouth opened, but no sound came forth. I
closed it, gritting my teeth together, tears burning hot paths down
my suddenly cold cheeks. Turning away from her, I let my blade
clatter to the floor as I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my
hands into tight fists.

“No!” I whispered, shaking my head. “No, God,
please, no. Don’t do this, don’t do this to us. I can’t be without
her. Please, please, God.”

“You have to go,” Evelyn said, her softly
spoken, tear-filled words barely audible. “You have to get in the
Jeep and just go. Go back to Purgatory, go back to Fredericksville,
just go somewhere. Go, Leisel! You need to go!” she yelled, her
voice strangled and pained.

I turned to face her, feeling horrified,
shaky, desperate, sick to my stomach—a myriad of emotions, none of
which I could pinpoint or focus on. “How dare you!” I cried. “How
dare you even suggest that!”

“I want you to live,” she whispered, her eyes
wide and red-rimmed as tears fell from them. Reaching for me, her
fingers wrapped around my wrist, digging into my skin. Squeezing
me, she shook my arm. “You need to keep going, Lei,” she pleaded.
“For me, please, just keep going.”

I shook my head frantically, my pounding
heart nearly bursting in my chest. “Never,” I spat through my
tears. “I will never, ever leave you!”

“You have to,” she wailed. “You fucking have
to!”

Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward and
reached for her other hand. Threading my fingers through hers, I
tugged her closer to me. “Let’s go back to the bed and breakfast,”
I suggested, my voice shaking. “We’ll clean you up. We’ll think of
something, Eve, we always think of something.”

Still crying, Evelyn lifted her eyes to meet
mine. I could tell she wanted to say something else, to tell me
what I already knew, that there was nothing to do, not for a bite
from an infected. To tell me that this was all hopeless. That she
was going to die and once she died, she would turn. But instead,
she closed her mouth as more tears fell from her eyes, and she
simply nodded.

Truth be told, I didn’t have a clue what I
was going to do. There was only one thing I knew for certain—that I
wouldn’t leave her here or anywhere, not now, not ever. Especially
to die alone. Because without Evelyn it didn’t matter anymore,
nothing mattered anymore. She was my everything, and there wasn’t
anyplace else that I’d want to be but right here, with her.

I squeezed my eyes closed. There had to be a
way out, there had to be, there was always a way out. Evelyn had
proven that to me time and time again. We survived, that was what
we did. This couldn’t be the end. Not now, not after
everything.

But then, I opened my eyes and looked over at
her, looked at my beautiful, strong friend with her ruined face,
all bruised, bloody, and beaten down. Then my gaze fell to her
leg.

She’d been bitten. And as the bitter
realization of that truth finally sank deep inside me, it tore to
shreds everything it touched on. There was no way out of this.
There would be no surviving
this
.
No matter what, Evelyn was going to die from the infection that was
now burning its way inside her, eating away at every part of her
that I loved, and taking away the very last thing that I had left,
the only person I loved in this godforsaken world.

Feeling sick, shaking from head to toe, I
forced my body to move. Picking up our weapons, I handed Evelyn her
gun and she took it from me, staring down numbly at it like she had
no idea what it was or what to do with it. I tucked mine into my
pants and sheathed my blade with shaking hands, then once again I
grabbed her hand and turned us toward the exit doors, pushing
blindly through them, not seeing what I was passing by.

My only thoughts were on getting her back to
the bed and breakfast, getting her back to our room, cleaned up and
tucked in bed. Whatever happened next would happen, but I wasn’t
going to think on that yet. Because I couldn’t. If I thought about
it, I’d lose it. And I couldn’t lose it, not now, not when Evelyn
needed me the most.

“Always together, Eve,” I mumbled as I
continued to half carry her through the market. “Always.”

As we stepped through the broken entranceway,
the streets were quiet, seemingly even more so than before, as if
the entire town had stilled along with my heart, everything frozen
in fear of the doom to come.

We walked slowly down the walkway, Evelyn
leaning lightly on me as she limped along. Needing to focus, I
tried not to get lost inside my thoughts, tried to stay alert to
our surroundings. Yet I couldn’t help but think of Thomas and
Shawn. How long had they lived after being bitten?

Thomas had been ravaged, bites covering both
his arms, his stomach, and his back, large chunks of skin and
muscle having been torn from him, and he’d perished rather quickly
as a result. But Shawn, just as Evelyn, had been bitten only once,
and had lasted three days.

Three days…that was more than likely all the
time Evelyn had left. And, God help me, it wasn’t nearly enough
time for me. Not even close.

• • •

“Lei… Stop fussing.”

Propped up in bed, the bite on her leg now
cleaned and bandaged with gauze I’d pilfered from the first aid kit
I’d been lucky enough to find in the bed and breakfast’s office,
Evelyn wearily waved me away from her. “Just come sit beside me,”
she said.

I glanced down at her calf, blood already
seeping through the fresh bandage, and shook my head. I couldn’t
just sit, just do nothing. If I did, I knew I was going to lose
what little sanity I pulled together while taking care of her.
Without that, the edge of the cliff I was precariously hanging on
to would crumble, and I would free-fall into a pit of sorrow and
grief.

“Leisel?”

I looked up into her bloodshot eyes, noting
how flushed she appeared, and the sweat glistening all over her
body, all reminiscent of anyone I’d ever watched die from the
infection. Swallowing hard, I attempted to school my features, not
wanting to give Evelyn the added burden of my own fears, not when
she had enough of her own to contend with.

“Please come sit with me,” she said, her
voice small and afraid. “Please, Lei.”

Swallowing again, I nodded quickly and stood,
uselessly smoothing the wrinkles in my clothing. Slipping my bottom
lip beneath my teeth, I kept my eyes wide and trained on the floor
as I slowly made my way to the other side of the bed. I wanted to
cry, I wanted to cry my heart out, but I fought the welling emotion
inside me, knowing that it would be selfish of me to lose
myself.

“Are you thirsty?” I asked as I climbed into
bed beside her, careful not to bump against her injured leg.
“Hungry, tired, cold—”

“Stop it, Lei,” she said, inching herself
closer to me.

Her bare arm brushed against mine, her skin a
sweaty, sticky, veritable furnace of heat. I couldn’t remember if
Shawn’s fever had progressed this quickly, but I didn’t think it
had. I remembered him acting normally for a good twenty-four hours
before the symptoms began to show. The second day, he’d been
riddled with fever, the bloody pustules beginning to form, yet he’d
still been coherent. On the third day, he’d fallen into an agitated
sleep before slipping away entirely.

It had only been a few hours since Evelyn had
been bitten. What did this mean? Would I not even get three
horribly lacking days with her?

“It hurts,” Evelyn whispered, letting her
head fall against my shoulder. “It’s almost as if I can feel it
spreading. At first it was just the bite that hurt, but now it’s my
entire leg and my hip too.”

I didn’t know what to say or do, so instead
of speaking I leaned my cheek on top of her head and squeezed my
eyes closed, cursing silently when an errant tear slipped free.

“Promise me, Lei,” she said, her voice
strained with emotion. “Promise me you won’t let me turn. That
you’ll kill me before I become dangerous.”

“Shh!” I whispered, turning my body so I
could wrap my arm around her middle and bury my face in her neck.
“Stop it, Eve! We have time. We don’t need to talk about this.”

“We do,” she protested, trying to free
herself from me, but I only clung tighter to her, refusing to let
her go, in more ways than one. “If you let me turn, Lei, I could
hurt you, and you can’t do that to me. If I hurt you, I’ll have
failed. I promised—”

“Please,” I begged as more tears leaked free,
my resolve to stay strong slipping away. “I can’t talk about this,
not yet. Please, Eve, please don’t make me.”

Letting out a heavy sigh, Evelyn’s body went
limp in my hold. “Okay,” she said softly, sinking into my embrace.
Her hand found my back, her grip on my shirt fisting tightly to the
material.

“I love you,” she whispered. “And I’m glad it
was me who was bitten and not you.”

Ever the protector, my protector, was Evelyn.
Always putting me before herself, doing whatever was necessary to
keep me alive and safe. If there was ever a time that I needed to
be strong, it was now. To show her the same love she’d always shown
me.

“I’ll do it,” I choked out. “I won’t let you
turn, I promise you.”

Evelyn

“Do you remember that pretty yellow sundress Shawn
bought me for our wedding anniversary?” I asked, then coughed
pitifully. Phlegm and blood were building in my chest, clogging my
airways and making my breathing sound ragged and crackly while
Leisel hummed in my arms, acknowledging my words. “I loved that
dress. I wish I still had it,” I said softly, my eyes glazing over
as I let my thoughts drift back.

I didn’t know where the memory had come from,
but the image of wearing it, of feeling Shawn’s hands wrapped
tightly around my waist as we danced, the swish of the soft
material on my bare legs…it was almost as if I were there, back at
the small bar where we’d celebrated our marriage. I was back in the
past when everything in the world was right and good. I could
almost hear the music playing, the sound of the acoustic guitar in
the background, a gentle strumming, of skin moving down metal as
fingers ran along the strings.

“Eve?” Leisel asked, her voice a quiet echo
of its true self.

The world was blurry as I drifted along on a
cloud of numbness. The excruciating pain that had gripped hold of
every part of me had since been replaced as my nerve endings began
to die. I could feel them, dying an individual death one by one as
the numbness spread further throughout my body. The numbness was a
blessing, a small reprieve for such a painful and ugly way to
go.

Leisel’s hands were on my shoulders, I could
sense them, feel her slender fingers pressing gently into my hot
flesh. And I was trying, trying so hard to focus on her, struggling
to see her face instead of the blur that it now was. Because I
wanted to see her one last time. I needed to.

“Eve! No, not yet! I’m not ready!”

She was screaming at me, shaking me now, the
soft vibrations of her words dancing across my fevered skin. I was
still trying, dear God, I was trying with all my remaining strength
to pull back from the impending darkness, to give her more time.
Just a few more hours, minutes even. Because this was all happening
much too quickly. For her, and for me.