Thicker than Blood (47 page)

“I know,” she said softly, dropping her gaze.
“I am too.”

She turned back to stare at the road and we
lapsed into silence, just as the eagle above let out another loud
squawk. Shielding her eyes, Leisel turned her face toward the sky,
watching as it hovered, its great wings outstretched, and her smile
began to slowly return. Seeing this, my own smile came back to me,
and I refocused on the road with a sigh.

“There’s a sign up ahead,” Leisel announced,
leaning forward to peer out the dirty windshield. “For lodging, I
think.”

Another mountainside loomed up beside us,
giving us a brief reprieve from the sun. Slowing down the Jeep, I
pulled up alongside the surprisingly still intact road sign that
boasted a variety of fast food restaurants and hotels.

“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating. “Looks
like it was some kind of ski resort town. Towns mean people, and
people means—”

“Infected,” Leisel finished. “I know. We
could drive through, have a look around. If we see any infected,
we’ll just get back on the highway, right?” She looked at me, her
brow lifted in question.

Biting down on the inside of my cheek, I felt
my stitches pull, pain shooting up and down the nerves in my face.
“Shit,” I muttered, knowing I needed to clean and dress my many
wounds. If only Alex were here with us, I wouldn’t have been so
apprehensive. Though the infected were a huge threat, the living
were more so, the men especially.

“Eve,” Leisel said, touching my arm.
“Eventually we’re going to have to stop somewhere. We don’t have a
lot of gas left.”

“I know,” I whispered, glancing at her. “I
just—”

“We’ll be okay,” she said firmly, giving me a
strong smile. “I promise.”

Her resolve cemented it. With a brief nod of
my head, I pulled the car forward again and back onto the road.

“Since when did you become the voice of
reason?” I muttered.

“Since you decided to be the pessimistic
one.”

Grinning, I looked back at her. “Ready for
some skiing?” I joked.

“I hope you brought your snowsuit,” she
quipped back. “According to the sign, they have the best
manufactured snow in the South.”

We were both laughing as I turned onto the
exit ramp, a strained sort of laughter, but laughter
nonetheless.

• • •

“I can’t believe it,” Leisel said, drawing out her
words slowly as she glanced around the room in wonderment.
“It’s…it’s virtually untouched.”

Much like the rest of the town, the small bed
and breakfast we’d chosen to check out was exactly that. Entirely
untouched and with no infected to speak of.

We’d chosen this particular building for two
reasons. It was a two-story bed and breakfast sitting well off the
main drag, on top of a steep ravine, hidden by a thick stand of
trees, and it hadn’t been looted. In fact, there were no signs of
any violence having occurred. Aside from a few broken windows, the
layers of dust coating everything within it, and the small forms of
wildlife that had made their nests inside, the structure had held
up rather nicely. Fully furnished, each of the four bedrooms
boasted queen-sized beds, and although filthy, were still made up
with their original linens. Towels remained folded neatly on
shelves, and several water bottles sat untouched inside the small
refrigerators.

Picking up a brochure lying on the dressing
table, I skimmed over it. “There’s a sightseeing tour at noon
today, Lei, down a ‘naturally crafted 164-foot ravine bursting with
nature and wildlife,’” I said, waving the dusty pamphlet in the
air. “I know how much you love that shit.”

“We could stay here for a while,” she
whispered, ignoring my joke. Her eyes filled with tears, and there
was a slight tremor in her voice. “Until we figure something else
out.”

“We should,” I agreed. “But before we do
that, I need to wash.” Gesturing at my clothing, I made a face. The
smell of myself was making me feel light-headed and downright
queasy. Grabbing a plastic jug full of water from the pile of
supplies we’d hauled inside, I headed toward the bathroom.

Not bothering to shut the door behind me, I
quickly stripped out of my ruined clothing and inspected myself in
the mirror. The cuts on my face looked even worse than they had
this morning, swollen and red, fluid leaking from between the
stitches.

Grimacing, I closed the stopper in the sink
and poured half of the jug of water into the basin. Grabbing a
small hand towel from the rack, I shook it free of dust, then
dipped it in the water and began the painstaking task of cleaning
my wounds.

• • •

Hand in hand, we stood by the lone window, watching
as the sun began to set on another day. Our bellies were full of
peaches, dried rat meat, and complimentary chocolates from the bed
and breakfast’s office, and the scent of wildflowers blew in
through the open window, breezing through my damp hair.

It was a truly perfect moment, and I couldn’t
help but envision us staying here, maybe even living out the rest
of our lives here.

“I’m going to go to bed,” Leisel said,
pulling away from me with a yawn. She smiled. “If that’s okay with
you?”

I nodded. I hadn’t felt this safe, this
secure in our surroundings since we’d left Fredericksville. “While
you were cleaning up,” I said, “I moved some more of the furniture
downstairs. The doors are blocked. If anyone,
anything
, tries to get in, we’ll hear
it.”

As she padded softly over the hardwood floor
and slipped into bed, I turned back to the window, wishing the
eagle would have followed us here, hoping that, like Leisel and me,
it was someplace safe. It was almost surreal, the view of the deep
ravine, the dimming sky full of muted shades of pinks and blues.
And so peaceful.

This was all we’d wanted. After leaving
Fredericksville, this was what we’d hoped for, what we had aimed
for. So many people had died just for us to get to this point, so
many sacrifices had been made, that it was hard not to be a little
morbid about it. But Alex and Jami, Shawn and Thomas, they would
have wanted this for us. They’d given their lives to keep us safe,
and now we were. And I felt like I’d finally kept good on my
promise to Thomas.

I had kept Leisel safe.

A wave of exhaustion tumbled through me,
causing me to reach out and grip the windowsill. I blinked several
times, my vision doubling and clouding over, yet I didn’t want to
close my eyes just yet. I wanted to let it all soak in for a little
while longer.

“
Thank you,” I whispered to the sky. “Thank
you.”

Leisel

I was dreaming of screaming. Shrill, high-pitched,
blood-curdling screaming that was so very familiar to me, it
sounded as if it were my own. I searched wildly for it, running
through the darkness, tripping over shadows of arms and legs all
reaching for me, yet couldn’t seem to find anything. Only more
darkness and constant screaming.

“Lei! Lei! Wake up!”

More arms grabbed at me, a hand wrapping
around my wrist, nails biting into my skin, shaking me
furiously.

“Leisel!”

I jolted upright, blinking with confusion at
Evelyn’s distorted features.

“What?” I cried. “What’s wrong?”

“You tell me!” she said. “You woke me up
screaming!”

My mouth fell open as I looked around the
room, taking in our surroundings. “I…uh…” I managed a sheepish
smile. “I’m sorry, I was dreaming.”

Shaking her head, her red curls bouncing, she
smiled. “It’s fine, it was just loud. Are you okay?”

I nodded, then reached up to gingerly touch
the angry red wounds on her face. “Are you? These look better than
yesterday. They seem to have finally started scabbing.”

She made a face. “They hurt like a bitch. The
scars are going to be awful.”

Lying back down in bed, she pulled the musty
bedcovers up to her chin and grinned. “But what good is surviving
an apocalypse without the battle scars to prove it?”

“I always thought you were too pretty,” I
said, laughing as I lay down beside her. Wrapping my arm around her
middle, I pulled myself closer.

“Thanks,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes even
as she turned her face against my chest.

Snuggled against Evelyn’s warm body, my eyes
began to close. It was astounding how relaxed I was, given
everything that had happened. Considering our run of bad luck, it
was unreal to find a place such as this one—entirely overlooked. I
couldn’t imagine that it was going to stay that way forever, but
for now this was exactly what we needed. And it was the little
things, like finding a slice of safety in a world gone mad, that
made the rest of it not seem quite as horrible as it had.

Nearly asleep once again with a silly smile
on my face, I heard it, the telltale groaning growl of an infected.
My eyes popped open, and I turned my head to find Evelyn looking
back at me, her eyes wide.

“Fuck,” she mumbled, untangling herself from
me. “I knew this was too good to be true.”

Yanking the covers off us in a huff, she
swung her legs out of bed and strode quickly across the floor
toward the window. Pushing open the haphazardly hanging shutters,
she peered down below.

“There’s two,” she whispered, glancing back
at me. “They’re by the Jeep. Probably heard you screaming, and now
they smell the blood.”

“If it’s only two,” I said, feeling guilty
for drawing them here, “we can handle two easily.”

Rolling myself out of bed, I moved quickly to
stand by her side. Like she’d said, there were two shambling around
the exterior of the Jeep, wildly turning their heads back and forth
and reaching for nothing. Off in the distance, near a thick stand
of trees, I noticed more movement.

“There’s three,” I said, pointing.
“Dammit.”

“That’s a deer, Lei,” Evelyn said, narrowing
her gaze. And just as she said it, both of the infected noticed the
movement. With a growl, they went stumbling off after the deer. It
leaped out from behind the tree that had been hiding it and took
off running, the infected still following.

“Well,” Evelyn said as she turned to me, a
smirk on her face. “That solves that.”

“What if there are more?” I asked, worried
that our arrival here might have disturbed an entire town of
infected that we’d somehow missed on our drive through.

“There are going to be infected everywhere,”
she said. “It’s unavoidable. And this is too good of a place to
pass up. I think all that really matters is how well we can fortify
it.”

She pursed her lips together, wincing as the
movement pulled on her stitches. Reaching up to touch them, she
rolled her eyes and sighed. “Let’s go check out the town some more,
see what can be salvaged. Finding a drugstore would be great…some
painkillers, antibiotics…” She touched her stitches again,
grimacing. “Before this gets infected.”

• • •

The town was quiet. Aside from the water rushing
through the nearby gorge, the chirping of small birds, and the
sound of our feet as we walked down the center of the road, there
was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. We passed by several
lodges, and a lot of vacant lots in between. On the main drag there
was little else to be found—a bookstore, a movie theatre, a
five-and-dime type shop, a shoe store, and a small department
store.

When we didn’t find a pharmacy, I gestured to
the grocery store we’d passed only minutes ago, and Evelyn made a
face. “I could smell that place from across the street,” she said.
“Ten to one, it’s crawling with bugs and rats.”

“But they probably had a pharmacy.” I
shrugged. “It’s worth a shot, right?”

“Yeah.” She made another face. “I’ll just
hold my nose, I guess.”

Surprisingly, the grocery store wasn’t filled
with rotting food. Everything had long since rotted, and what
hadn’t been looted had simply petrified. The smell that remained,
though, having probably permeated the walls and floors and
everything within reach, was downright awful. Worse than awful.
Even holding our noses, I could still taste the stench in the back
of my throat.

Side by side, our weapons drawn, we walked
cautiously down the dark, empty aisles, the floors covered with
sleeping bags, suitcases, even tents.

“We could take some of this stuff,” Evelyn
suggested quietly. “The clothing, at least.”

Grimacing, I shook my head. “I’d rather check
the store one block over than try and wash the smell out of these.
God, what happened here? Was the entire town camped out here? Where
did they all go?”

“Nowhere good, I’m guessing,” Evelyn said
darkly, kicking a tattered sleeping bag over, revealing a dark
stain on the tile beneath it. It was that moment that I noticed the
bloody handprints. They were nearly indistinguishable amongst the
dirt and dust and stains left from the rotted food, but once I
noticed them, it seemed to be all I could see. Handprints,
splatters, drag marks, places where blood had pooled heavily.

A sharp
tap-tap
sound had us spinning around, raising our guns,
only to find a raccoon standing at the end of the aisle. It stared
at us in the dark of the supermarket as all three of us froze in
place, its eyes appearing to emit an eerie yellow glow.

“
Shoo!” Evelyn shouted, kicking the
sleeping bag and startling the creature. It made a
whoop-whoop
noise before skittering
backward and disappearing.

“Pharmacy,” I said, gesturing with my gun to
a sign still hanging from the ceiling. “Though, all things
considered…” I looked around at the many makeshift beds. “I’m not
holding out much hope there’s anything left.”

We continued on, passing by more personal
belongings, a row of knocked-over shelving, until we reached the
far end of the building where a long countertop fitted with
Plexiglas windows was labeled
Pharmacy
.
Finding them securely locked, we peered inside. The small room
seemed pretty well picked over, but there were still plenty of
bottles lining the bottom shelves, along with baskets full of
unopened pharmacy bags that remained untouched beneath the cash
register.