In the morning, Tobe and I hand out breakfast while Reese and Naomi pack up our supplies. The two of them are tired and slow, and I feel bad that they both took turns keeping watch while I was curled up with Ryder all night. I should be doing more for our group. Tomorrow night I’ll stay up, and Reese can get some rest.
Ryder is still not well-enough to do much on his own, but he doesn’t seem to be in as much pain today. He allowed Reese to give him a couple of Tylenol, but I’m not sure if that really helps a gunshot much. His right arm has a limited range of motion, and I know by watching him that he won’t be able to lift his arm above his head anytime soon, if ever again.
When breakfast is finished, we all get into the jeep and Tobe drives while Reese climbs in back to get some shuteye. He and Naomi fall asleep pretty quickly, and I pass the time in the car by trading discreet glances with Ryder in the rearview mirror. Finally, Tobe can’t take it anymore. “Will you two just stop with the lover’s stares? You’re really starting to creep me out.”
“Why?” I ask, fighting the blush I know is rising in my cheeks.
“Ryder is a tough, badass, former Marine, and now he’s acting like a whipped little puppy dog.”
“Hey, I am not. I’m just…happy…for the first time in a long time.”
“How long has it been since you’ve gotten laid?” Tobe asks.
“Tobe!”
She chuckles. “It’s a perfectly valid question. Ryder is a grown man, and grown men need sex. And sex is a perfectly natural part of any relationship. Come on, Ryder. When was the last time you were with someone?”
He shrugs. “Does it matter?”
He doesn’t wanna answer with me in the car. That doesn’t sound good. That probably means he was with someone recently, like right before the infection spread. Is he on the rebound?
Strangely, the thought of Ryder having a girlfriend before all of this never even crossed my mind. Now I’m curious, and I need to know why he doesn’t want to answer.
“Come on, Ryder. Just tell us.”
He sighs. “Alright, fine. It’s been a while. I was living with a woman named Stephanie about a year and a half ago. We broke up about four months before the infection spread. I haven’t been with her for almost ten and a half months. There, are you happy?”
So, he’s been single for ten months. Is that long enough to get over one person and start to fall in love with another one?
He turns around and looks at me. “Hey, I know what you’re thinking, and don’t. Stephanie and I should have broken up long before we did. She wanted to keep trying to fix us, but I knew we couldn’t work things out, so I broke it off.”
I nod my head, slightly relieved. Part of me is still worried, because he didn’t mention how long they were together, but I don’t feel so paranoid now that he’s on the rebound. Can you even be on the rebound during the zombie apocalypse?
I want to ask Ryder more about his ex, but now doesn’t seem like the time. He’s injured, we’re on the open road, and we have no idea if we’ll be safe by nightfall. So, I keep my mouth shut, and study the view out my window. We pass a sign on the road, welcoming us to Washington, Iowa, and Tobe keeps going. A little red light shines, and Tobe sighs. “We need gas. Keep an eye out for gas stations that look empty.”
Reese wakes up, and he helps us look. Just as I’m starting to worry about the car stopping, Tobe spots a gas station just up the road. Our jeep makes it to the station in one piece, but just barely. Everyone piles out to stretch their legs, and I stick close to Ryder. The fresh air seems to do him good, and he even gets a little color back in his face.
Reese checks the pumps for available gas, and starts to fill up the car. Melissa sniffles once, wipes her nose, and walks off. “Melissa, stay close,” Naomi orders. Melissa ignores her, and just keeps walking. Naomi sighs, but doesn’t go after her. “If she wants to be stupid, she can be stupid. I’m not going to stop her.”
After Reese is finished filling up the gas tank, he takes the red gas can from the back and starts to fill it up. When he’s done, he caps it off, sets it in the back, and looks at me. “We’re ready to go. Where’s Melissa?”
Naomi and I look at each other and sigh. Aside from Reese, we’re the only two with guns right now. Ryder can’t lift one, and Tobe refuses to touch them. We’re the only ones that can go semi-safely looking for her.
She nods to me, and the two of us set off at a jog. The gas station isn’t huge, so Naomi and I both decide to stay together and search. We circle around the pumps, and head around to the front of the station. The door is propped open with a rotting body, and I try not to look at its face as we step over it.
Naomi and I walk up and down the aisles, looking or Melissa and any supplies we might need. She grabs a thing of toilet paper, since we’re running low, and looks at me. “I’m gonna take this back to the jeep. Are you ok to check the back yourself?”
I nod, and start to make my way to the back door. “If I find anything, I’ll yell, and you come running.”
“You got it,” she says, disappearing from view.
The back door appears, and I inch slowly toward it. It’s closed right now, but it’s the only place Melissa could have gone. I crack the door open an inch and call out for her, “Melissa. Are you there?”
No answer. But I hadn’t really expected one. I don’t think she’s spoken since she was rescued from the Warriors, and I doubt she’s going to start now. So I nudge the door open with my boot, and raise my gun, quickly scanning the area around me.
There isn’t much out here other than empty boxes, wooden pallets, and unpacked food that is now completely rotten. A box falls to the ground to my left, and I spin, and my gun comes up again. Melissa lifts her hands, her eyes widening in fear and surprise.
I sigh, and lower my gun. “Jeez, Melissa. What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?”
She shrugs, but doesn’t answer. She just walks toward me with a depressed, hopeless look on her face. When she’s about a stone’s throw away from me, I notice movement behind a stack of boxes. Too late I realize what it is.
“Melissa, look out!”
The zombie emerges from in-between two stacks of boxes and tackles her to the ground. She screams once before the zombie sinks its teeth into her forearm. She shrieks harder, and starts to kick and thrash. I couldn’t make the shot if she was perfectly still, and I certainly can’t do it now. So I drop the gun, take out my knife, and rush forward.
I grab a fistful of the zombie’s curly, light hair, and yank its head back. He’s still latched onto Melissa’s arm, and he comes away with a strip of her flesh locked between his jaws. Melissa backs away, cradling her injured arm, and I shove the knife hilt-deep into the zombie’s head.
He stops struggling and goes still. I drop him to the ground and back away, trying not to gag. I’ve killed zombies before, recently too, but never like this. Not with someone I know lying injured and infected nearby. She’s looking at me with a mixture of horror, pain, and understanding. She knows that she’s infected, and she knows what has to come next, but she won’t accept it.
The back door bursts open, and Reese and Naomi are standing there with guns raised. One look at Melissa and Naomi’s features crumple, and she looks away so nobody sees her cry. She spent quite a bit of time tied up with Melissa, and of all of us, she liked her the most. Reese looks from Melissa to me and frowns. “Are you alright?”
I nod. “But she’s not,” I say, looking at the bite mark on her arm. It’s wide, gaping, and bleeding heavily. “What are we gonna do? We can’t just leave her here to die.”
“We can’t just bring her with us and wait for her to turn into one of those things while she’s sitting next to us in the car. What do you want us to do, Sam?”
“I heard rumors that some people might be immune to the infection. If she’s one of those people and we leave her here and she dies, we’ll be murderers. I think we should find a place to stay for a couple of days, just until we know for sure. We
can lock her in a room if we have to, but we can’t just kill her or leave her.”
Reese sighs, and rubs his forehead. “God I hate being in charge. I don’t know how Ryder did it for so long.”
“Is he alright?” I ask, just now noticing that everyone except for Ryder and Tobe are here. “Neither of them can defend themselves. Should we just leave them alone like this?”
“They’ll be fine. Come on. We passed a house about a quarter of a mile back. The ground-floor windows were all boarded up, and the neighborhood looked relatively deserted. We can stay there for two days, not a moment longer? If she shows symptoms of turning, we have to kill her and leave, do you understand?”
I nod. “Yes. Let’s go.”
Reese and Naomi load Melissa into the back with our supplies, and Ryder pulls me in for a hug. “I was so worried. I heard someone scream, and I just hoped you were alright.” His arm is almost painful it’s so tight, and I pull away. “I couldn’t do anything except sit here and wait for you to hopefully come back. God, I hate being useless!”
“Ryder, I’m alright. Listen, Melissa’s been infected. We’re heading to a relatively safe house, and we’re gonna give her a few days to see if she might be immune.”
“That’s not a good idea, and you know it,” he accuses. “If she turns, which she most likely will, she might infect or kill more of us. We can’t take that kind of risk. Not when we’re so close to where we’re going.”
“Everything will be fine, Ryder, I promise.”
He shakes his head and climbs into the front seat beside his brother. I climb in back with Tobe and Naomi, and try to always keep one eye on Melissa. She doesn’t speak the whole trip to the safe house, and just keeps her head down and cries. Right now, she looks much younger than fourteen, and I can’t believe she’s going to die sometime in the next day or two.