Undead Honeymoon (13 page)

We had been dropped off and admitted into Mercy Hospital in Miami, and we’re both still here. The only trace of the rescue team was a note that was delivered the day I woke up. It said not to speak of anything that had happened to us, and that we’d be contacted when things calmed down. 

That pretty much brings us up to the present. Lily is lying in the hospital bed next to me. She has an IV in her hand, and there are tubes sticking out in every direction. Her head is still bandaged, but the doctor said the swelling has gone down considerably. We won’t know if there’s any permanent damage or memory loss until she wakes up. I know when she wakes up she’ll say it wasn’t my fault, but I still blame myself for what happened. I was the one who wanted her to go first.    

Elliot made me wait a week before he finally called. Turns out it was him… he was the mastermind behind our rescue. I wouldn’t have believed it, not in a million years, but he organized the entire operation.

We talked on the phone for over an hour about how he’d been keeping tabs on the events in Haiti, which in turn led him to The Wellspring.

He knew the real story behind The Wellspring almost as quickly as Lily and I did. I don’t know how much he shelled out for the information, but my guess is that it was more than most people make in a lifetime. Government officials had been paid off, pilots were bribed in order to clear air space, and he even made sure we were admitted into the hospital under false names to throw anyone off our trail. 

“My contacts in Port-au-Prince say they’ve contained the infection for now,” he’d said, “but we can’t take any chances. I’ll be flying to Miami just as soon as I take care of a few things here. Once I‘m there we‘ll talk about you and Lily‘s options.”

I tried asking him what he meant by
options
, but he hung up.

“Will you be staying here again, Mr. Pike?” a nurse asked as she walked in to check on Lily.

I nodded without looking up from the journal. “Of course.”

“Okay, I’ll pull the futon out again. I know you want to be close to her, but remember you have your own room and bed, too. You need plenty of rest if you want to mend properly. If you keep walking around you’ll never heal.”

I shrugged and looked at my leg. I was due for another round of treatment in the morning because of the burns, and I still had a pretty impressive brace on my ankle and foot. I’ve had to walk with a crutch ever since they let me out of bed. I’ve got another couple of weeks before the bones are healed enough to walk without it. They say the ligaments will take longer.

The nurse looked up from her clipboard and tilted her head.

“What’s that noise?” she asked curiously.

“Noise?” I replied nonchalantly. My eyes darted to a storage closet where I’d put the duffel bag.

“You don’t hear that? It’s a strange clicking noise.”

“Probably my cell phone, it’s in our bag. I’ll put it on silent later.”

“We can‘t have it disturbing your wife, Mr. Pike,” she said as she made for the closet. “She needs to rest even more than you do.”

“Please.” I begged as I pulled myself from the chair. I must have looked pitiful, considering I still trembled whenever I tried to stand. “I’ll put it on silent in a minute, I’m just waiting on a call from my wife’s mother in about an hour. She’ll want to know her daughter is doing okay.”

The nurse stopped, “Fine, but don’t let me hear it again!”

I slumped back into my chair as she disappeared through the door.

The crew that rescued us must have been put together in a rush, because they weren’t very observant. After all the questions they asked, and all the caution about whether we were infected, they never once thought to look inside my duffel bag.

I knew no one would ever believe what happened, not without solid and undeniable proof. The Wellspring had been completely incinerated. The military had come in the day after we’d been rescued and used enough napalm to destroy it a hundred times over.

Ironically, my biggest fear is the fact that when Lily wakes up, I have to tell her I brought a friend home from our honeymoon. 

To be continued…

To the readers of this short novel…

One of the most satisfying gifts an author can receive is an honest opinion of their work. Writing a novel, however long or short, great or horrible… takes time. Authors can take years to write what will be forgotten in the span of a single afternoon of reading. I myself have a wife, two year old son, and a full time job working from sunset to sunrise. I do all my own editing and design all my own covers because I can’t afford to pay the professionals. My story is not an uncommon one (no pun intended!), and many authors have even more daunting obstacles that keep them from telling their stories.

My one request to those who finish my books is that they take thirty seconds of their time to rate my work. Reviews let other readers know how amazing or terrible my book is! If you spent money to read this book and want to prevent others from making the same mistake, let them know! If my story deserves a five star rating, then go for it!

Don’t just review my book (okay, I have two requests!), go through your book lists. Sift through all the novels you’ve read and look at the authors’ names. Each one of them devoted time away from family and friends in order to bring their story to you. How many of their books did you review? Do they know how much you loved or hated their book? Even if you didn’t like some of them, your comments will only serve to make them better writers, so let them know!

My short rant is over. Thank you so much for reading.