Besides, it wasn’t like they had a line of volunteers lined up around the block.
“We ran into some of your associates,” I explained. “Bobbi Jo? We met them in the States.”
His breath of relief whooshed through the air, causing the static in the speaker to spike. “So they made it?” The hope in his voice hurt me in ways I didn’t expect. I had major ill feelings for Bobbi Jo and her band of betraying bastards. But they had been this guy’s friends. They had been on a mission to fix humanity.
They’d just messed with the wrong people.
That was something I could relate to.
“They made it to the States,” Hendrix confirmed grimly.
The guy must have heard the change in Hendrix’s tone, because his British accent came back more desperately, “But they won’t be coming back?” He asked a question, but it wasn’t one. He knew the answer before the words ever left his mouth.
“We’ll tell you about them, about what happened. We’ll show you that we’re immune to the infection and could possibly help you find your cure or vaccine or whatever else you’re trying to do. We came here to help. And we came a very, very long way. We just need you to let us in.”
Silence answered Hendrix’s plea. I started to lose hope. We’d made it. We finally stood in front of the finish line. Our goal had been reached. Our mission completed… almost. We just needed these gates to open and our feet to cross the threshold.
I flat out refused to go back with Santi. I could not take another night of eating dog and having this happen to my insides.
I could not do it.
It would kill me.
In fact, I was pretty sure Santi and his friends had evolved into some form of super humans since they seemed completely unbothered by the razor blades now scraping through my intestines.
Lennon screamed behind me. I wasn’t sure that Haley had eaten enough to nourish him and now she was in just as much pain as the rest of us. Page started crying too and King made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a pre-puke.
Hendrix pushed the blue button again and dropped his head in desperation. “Please,” he begged. “We’ve come a very long way. We’ve sacrificed a lot to get here. We just need… we need help. But we promise that whatever you give us or do for us… we promise that we can repay you. We will assist you in whatever way we can. We’ll help you cure this goddamn disease and fix this world. That’s all we want to do.”
“That’s all we want to do, too.” The sharp British accent spoke just two feet away from us, on the other side of the gate.
I jumped, not expecting someone to be there or so close. My hands clutched my stomach and I forced myself to stay standing as I took in the disheveled but clean appearance of the mystery voice.
A lithely muscled man with dark hair and tanned skin watched us from his side of the wall. He had the hard look of a frustrated person, but I was encouraged to see that his body was filled out and his defined muscles had meat on them. He wasn’t starving. He was taken care of. He might be out of his mind with unanswered questions, but he had somehow preserved a sustainable life behind his walls.
I wanted that life. I wanted to stop worrying about where my next meal was coming from and whether or not I would survive the night.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the man pointed out. His cunning eyes swept over our sickly group with obvious disapproval.
“We came a long way,” Hendrix explained, “and we didn’t know if this place was real or not. It’s really nice to see that people live here.”
“Not many people,” the man replied.
“We want to change that,” I said with a smile… or something that was supposed to resemble a smile. Just at that moment, pain cut through my lower belly so sharply, I flinched and stumbled. I would have fallen over if Hendrix hadn’t caught me.
The British guy took a step back. “You’re all sick.”
“We’ve been poisoned,” Harrison groaned. “Food-poisoned.”
Adela stepped forward. “They ate a dog,” she explained. “They’re not doing well. But it’s nothing contagious.”
“I can’t know that for sure,” the man said, taking another step back.
“It’s just food poisoning,” I gasped out. “We’re not sick in any other way.”
He shook his head, ignoring me, “We can’t take that chance. I’m sorry you came all this way.”
“No, wait,” Hendrix barked. “See for yourself. My sister was bitten and survived. My brother was bitten and even though he died, he didn’t turn into a Zombie. We have… there’s something in our blood.” He turned around and with heavy breaths ordered, “Page, show him your scar. Show him where you were bitten.”
Page stepped forward immediately. Her face was pale and sweaty. She shivered and bent over awkwardly, but she turned around and pulled up the back of her ginormous t-shirt.
The man took a step forward again to investigate, but I heard the resignation in his voice when he said, “That could be a bite from anything. I can’t know that was a Zombie and I can’t know she survived an attack.”
“Then check her blood!” Hendrix shouted. “You’ll see that it’s different!”
“Do you understand how any of that works?” the man scoffed. “I can’t just put her blood under a microscope and see answers we’ve been searching for for years. That’s not how it works. I’m sorry, but we can’t risk our safe-”
Hendrix lunged forward until his hands gripped the metal gate and his knuckles turned white. “It took us months to get here. Months. We fought our way through the Mexican territories and an actual Mexican war. We escaped cannibals. We survived Mexico City. We are starved, we are exhausted and we buried my brother. You don’t have to trust us, but you need to know what we’ve sacrificed to get here. To get right here. To get to you so that you could do something. So that you could find a goddamn solution to this infection. We have given up everything to be here and you will look at us. You will let us help you. You will let us in and let us work with you. Because that’s the only thing that’s getting me through each day. That’s the only reason we’re still alive. And believe me when I say that we’re just barely alive. We came to help you and by God, you’re going to let us.”
I had the small pleasure of seeing the guy genuinely surprised at Hendrix’s speech. I wanted to cheer him on and stand up to the pretentious scientist on the other side of the gate. But more cramps pummeled my insides and I bent further over.
We’d made it all this way and now I was going to meet my untimely end at the hands of bad dog meat.
This could not be how it ended for me. I refused to be the victim of food poisoning.
I had survived too much and come too far to let this kill me.
I tried to stand up out of sheer defiance to the pain, but more cramps racked my stomach and my sudden movement worked against me. With a high-pitched hiss, I doubled over and tried to swallow against the immediate need to puke.
I didn’t mind vomiting, but I needed to wait until the guy let us in the gates. I couldn’t start throwing up in the middle of our negotiations. I was pretty sure that sent the opposite message of what we were trying to convey.
“Reagan?” Hendrix’s voice sounded concerned… distantly concerned.
I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine. But instead everything went black.
Chapter Three
“Hey there.” The warm voice floated over me and heated something profound and tingly inside of me.
I pressed my face deeper into something fluffy and clean-smelling and let the hallucination take a deeper hold of me.
A heavy hand rested on my back and slowly rubbed up and down my spine. I smiled beneath the cool feel of sheets and the heat from the hand. I loved the contrast between the two temperatures. I loved the familiarity of the hand and the softness of cotton against my naked skin.
That was how I knew I was hallucinating. I could count how many times I’d been fully naked in the last thr
ee years on one finger.
Granted that time had been exceptional… albeit sandwiched between agony and grief.
This was a different event than that time though. This mattress was clean and soft. These sheets smelled like soap and felt incredible. This hand wasn’t shaking with concern for his brother or exhaustion from a hard life. This hand was confident and strong.
This hand had stepped back from the cliffs of despair and found some room to breathe.
I stretched my legs, flexing my feet and digging my bare toes into the bedding. Mmm… maybe I could upgrade this hallucination to a fantasy.
Bare feet had never felt so good.
“Reagan,” he murmured next to my ear. His scruffy beard tickled my cheek and I squirmed, unwilling to leave this nirvana to find the sad reality that waited for me.
And the stomach pain.
I would sleep for the rest of my life to avoid the stomach pain that knocked me out to begin with.
His deep chuckle brought me to life in ways that only he could. I smiled wider and bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing.
“Don’t wake me up,” I pleaded sleepily. “I like this dream.”
Hendrix’s body stretched out beside me and his heat pressed against my length, even though he remained on top of the sheets.
The sheets.
That didn’t disappear even though I’d woken up completely.
I turned to face him and peeked out from behind a curtain of heavy, dark hair. “This isn’t a dream?”
“It’s not,” he confirmed. His fingers trailed over my back, continuing their soothing rubdown.
I pushed up on my elbows and surveyed the room… the room that was real. Immediately I saw that we had privacy. Our room had no windows and was relatively small, but it was all useful space. We lay on a double bed made up with white sheets and two pillows. Dim lights ran on a track overhead but were turned on, fueled by electricity I didn’t understand.
A door had been left open across the room and revealed pieces of a bathroom. I could make out the corner of a shower, the base of a toilet and a full-length mirror mounted on that door. A dresser and armoire stood side by side on another wall. And a small loveseat took up the space next to a second door. I presumed that was the way out.
The air smelled fresh and clean. I had already decided the sheets were clean. The walls were solidly metal and reminded me of something out of a military base or bunker or something.
How was this possible?
“Is this the research station?” I asked in a terrified whisper… terrified because I needed it to be. I needed so strongly for it to be that my bones ached with hope and tears pricked at my eyes.
“It is,” he repeated. “In fact, this has been designated as our room inside the research station. Ours, Reagan. We have our own space. We have our own permanent space.”
I gave into the tears when I heard the relief in his voice. I had never heard him sound like this. I had never known Hendrix when there wasn’t perpetual fear running through him or when he didn’t have to be constantly and consistently on alert for his family and the safety of others. This was a side of him I had never known before.
And frankly, I couldn’t wait to explore it.
“What happened?” I demanded breathlessly. “How did I get here? And how did I end up naked?”
He smiled mischievously at me. “I might have taken some matrimonial liberties with that last part.”
I shook my head in wonder at this man… my husband. “Matrimonial liberties?”
“You were dirty,” he pointed out.
“And you helped me get… clean?”
He leaned in and dropped a sweet kiss to the tip of my nose. “Only so I can help you get dirty again.”
I ducked my head and hoped to hide my blush. I wasn’t used to this part yet, but I couldn’t wait until it was normal. Until it was our normal.
I just hoped we got the opportunity to make it that way.
“Later,” he promised in a rumbly voice. He leaned in for a savoring kiss, sealing his promise with a heady show of his intentions. When he pulled back, I was breathless and buzzing with his desire. “You fainted.”
I shook my head in an effort to clear it of the lust, “What?”
“You fainted.” He ran his hands through my tangled hair and pushed it back from my face. “Then Harrison nearly shit his pants. Everything kind of fell apart after that. To be honest, it was rock bottom for me. We were out of options. That little bastard abandoned us and Oliver wanted to leave us there too.”
“Oliver?” I interrupted. “The little bastard?”
“Oliver is the lead scientist here. The one on the intercom that came out to meet us. The little rat bastard is Santi. He slipped quietly into the night and left us stranded at the top of the hill after he fed us dog.”
“Ah.”
He smiled at me. “Ah.” He sucked in a deep breath and continued. “So, there we were. Lennon was screaming at the top of his lungs, Page started crying too. My brothers were sick, Tyler was… is… catatonic and you fainted. I think it was at that point Oliver stopped believing we were trying to steal the research facility from them. Since we were all basically incapacitated, it didn’t make sense for us to attack them then. He stopped waiting for us to pull out guns and listened to us. I finally convinced him that we needed his help, but that we could help him too.”
“He believed you about Page? About your blood?” Hope ignited inside of me, blazing through my blood and digging down to my bones. Could we really stay here? Did we really, finally, hopefully have a future?
Hendrix shrugged one shoulder, “I don’t think he believed me, but he wants to see for himself. He’s thrilled I said we would let him run tests on us. He’s all for that. But he’ll have to see for himself whether we’re all that we claim. That’s fine with me. We’re good for it.”
“Do you really think it’s in all of you?” I had never heard Hendrix claim this before and while I had wondered it myself, I was surprised to hear him declare it to complete strangers.
“Out of six of us, two have been immune so far. The odds are in our favor at the very least.”
“That’s a good thing,” I whispered. I ran my hand down Hendrix’s bare chest and marveled at the work of art before me. He needed to gain weight and there were scars from shoulder to shoulder telling the story of our journey, but he was still beautiful. He was still an incredible sight to behold.
And he was mine.
“I’ve made it very clear they can’t touch Lennon yet. Not for a long while. I’m just as curious as they are to see if it’s genetic through generations, but we’re not in a hurry. The rest of us have plenty to donate to the cause until he’s of a better age.”
Tears welled in my lashes again. “Is he okay then? And Haley?”
“They’re fine,” he whispered. He tried to hide the brokenness in his voice, but I caught the catch in his throat, the glistening in his eyes. “Everyone is alive and well.” We were silent for a minute as we acknowledged that not everyone was alive and well. Not everyone made it.
I closed my eyes and fought the shuddering sob as it vibrated through my chest. Hendrix scooped me into his arms and held me tightly to him. We cried together then. We cried from sweet relief and from the torture of missing Vaughan, of knowing he was so close, but didn’t finish the journey with us.
We lay like that for a very long time. Hendrix’s hot tears landed in my hair and I soaked his chest, but neither of us moved.
There was a part of me that knew how sacred this moment was between us. My husband wouldn’t always keep his emotions this close to the surface, but he needed me until this heartbreak receded and I needed him.
Eventually, we found control again and Hendrix pulled back so he could look at me. “We’re safe for now, Reagan. We’re truly safe. They’ve run out of Feeders. Oliver says they’ve migrated elsewhere or they’ve been used in their tests. They were at their wit’s end until we showed up. They were
ready to give up and we’re hopefully offering them a breakthrough.”
“They’re going to let us stay?” My heart fluttered with the idea. Granted I didn’t know anything about these people. I didn’t know anything but that they had clean sheets and electricity. And that was enough for me.
If Matthias could have offered me those things, I would have been a lot less likely to kill him.
Just kidding, I still would have killed him.
He was a psycho.
“There are only three of them left,” he explained. “There’s Oliver, whom you met. Then there’s Shay. She’s Australian, I think? She’s not a big talker, but I think that’s what her accent is. Then there’s Fang, who is from Hong Kong.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Fang, geez. I didn’t expect you to say Hong Kong.”
Hendrix smiled at me. “Were you expecting me to say werewolf?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“He’s okay, Reagan. All of them are. Maybe a bit neurotic and paranoid, but I can’t blame them for that. They seem to really want to save humanity and that’s what we came here to do. I think they can help and I believe that we can help them.”
“You trust them?” I heard the fear and doubt in my voice, but there was no point in covering it up. I knew Hendrix had gone through or was going through this same thing. We had learned the same lessons.
Maybe in different ways.
But the outcome was the same. We didn’t trust anybody but each other and our family. That was it. There were no exceptions. Ever.
“No,” he answered like I knew he would. “I don’t trust them, but my instinct tells me we’ll be all right. I trust that.”
“I trust that too,” I promised him.
He leaned down and kissed me again. He worshiped my mouth with his intimate knowledge and expert tongue. I found myself pressing into him, scratching at his bare skin and fighting the sheet that separated us.
“Not yet,” he whispered against my lips. “I told them I would introduce you when you woke up.”