He looked down at me and I felt compelled to meet his dark gaze. Only a lone lantern lit our space and his face flickered in the dim, golden light. “I’m not always evil,” he said with emotion through a voice gravelly.
I recognized his words as a question. He was asking me. He was hoping for an answer that he couldn’t believe.
“No,” I told him. I reached up and laid my hand against his jawline. “You’re not always evil.”
His head jerked forward a half inch and I felt him war with himself as he debated whether to kiss me or not. I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t have.
It wasn’t as though I wanted to kiss Kane just then, but I couldn’t hurt him. I had been through too much. My feelings were scraped raw and my soul split open. If Kane had kissed me right then, I really would have kissed him back.
And I didn’t think I would have regretted it.
It almost felt like it needed to happen, that I needed to kiss Kane and get to the bottom of whatever current of electricity ran between the two of us.
But he didn’t kiss me. He let me have the fullness of his gaze while he watched my face and looked for something I couldn’t understand. Then he pulled back and shifted his body.
“You should try to sleep some while Page is out. She’s going to get worse before she gets better. She’s going to need you when she wakes up.”
I sat up, realizing he was dismissing me. I didn’t blame him but that didn’t stop the ripple of confusion travel down my body.
It was then that I noticed that not all of the heat I felt came from the ceiling. Page was burning up in my arms. Her little body was on fire with the infection.
“I should clean her before I fall asleep,” I told him.
He agreed and while she slept the two of us tackled her back bite. We cleaned it, disinfected it and disinfected it again. Kane didn’t want to waste the few supplies we had, but I wanted to make sure that bite was as sparkly clean as possible.
Then I washed as much of her as I could without taking any clothes off. I did the same to myself and dealt with the scratches and gashes I’d accumulated. I set Page down for just a few minutes so I could help Kane with his various wounds and washing.
The other cot hid several long plastic tubs of clothes- one for each member in the Allen family. I was fortunate enough to raid Tyler’s stored clothes and find something clean to put on. I finished cleaning myself in the bathroom and changed into some simple sweatpants and a long-sleeve tee. Kane went in next and I took the opportunity to change Page into some of Miller’s clothes and finish cleaning her, too.
Then I carried her over to the other cot and laid her down. As much as I wanted to keep holding her, I knew she shouldn’t be so wrapped up in my body heat right now. She needed space to cool her fever. My touch would just make things worse.
I stripped the bed of the scratchy blanket and let her lay on top of the cold sheets. She slept through the entire ordeal and I knew that was a bad sign but there wasn’t anything I could do at the moment.
I was just so thankful that she wasn’t a Zombie. I had a hard time looking at the fever as a bad thing because it gave me unprecedented hope. She could be all right. If she beat this thing she could be just fine.
And this was a girl that had stood up to death and tilted her chin defiantly in the face of a loaded gun. A fever would be nothing to her. She could conquer anything.
Kane emerged from the bathroom and nodded his approval at Page on the bed. Without another word, he walked over to Page’s cot and slunk back to the floor near her feet. I stood awkwardly near the head of her bed while he stretched his arm out along the edge of the small bed.
He looked up at me from under those thick lashes and tilted his head in a gesture of beckoning. Without hesitating for even a second, I crawled in next to him and leaned against his solid body.
I would feel different tomorrow.
Tomorrow I might stab him in the eye for being the responsible party that allowed all this to happen.
But right now I had nothing left to be angry with. I had no fury, no flame, and no spark of life. Right now my body had all but shut down in order to heal itself from the trauma and shock of today.
So when I finally convinced myself that Page would survive the next few hours and closed my eyes, I snuggled into Kane and decided not to worry about this or what message it sent to him.
I would worry about him later.
I would worry about everything later.
I slid my hand along the cool sheets until I found Page’s tiny hand and I wrapped my fingers around hers.
I said the first non-panicked prayer I’d uttered since my parents were killed. It wasn’t a desperate plea in the middle of a battle or some panicked oath I made while fleeing for my life. This prayer was spoken with complete clarity of mind and sincerity even if the same despair and helplessness existed in the tone.
I prayed for Page and for her health. I prayed that she would live. That she would survive this with that same fearless spirit she survived everything else. I prayed for the rest of her family and Haley. And I prayed for Tyler, Miller and Gage.
And then I prayed for the man I cuddled into for the night.
I had thought so many times that he was lost for good, that he was nothing but the embodiment of evil, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse.
But he was not all gone.
He was not all evil.
There were still good pieces to him. There was still goodness in him.
Maybe he wasn’t completely lost.
And even though I could never be the one to save him like he wanted, I could be the one that told him he was worth saving… that his soul was worth saving.
Maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference because we would die down here.
But then again, maybe he would listen.
Maybe he would believe me.
By the time sleep took me, I didn’t know whether to be more afraid than ever or just thankful that I made it through another day. I didn’t know if Page would make it or not, but I was going to do whatever it took to save her.
To keep saving her.
I meant what I said earlier; this world was ugly and filthy, desolate and hopeless. But she was bright and lovely; she was worthy and real. And I would do whatever I had to in order to make sure she stayed with me, with her family.
I wouldn’t let the Parkers lose another loved one.
I wouldn’t give Hendrix another reason to leave me. My feelings for Kane were softening but that was it. Kane didn’t hold my heart and soul in the palms of his hands like Hendrix did. Kane wasn’t my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. Kane didn’t get to own every piece of me and intertwine our futures into unbreakable bonds.
Hendrix did. Hendrix had all of me and he always would.
And I would never willingly cause him pain. Most of all that included his sister. As soon as she woke up we would start fighting this and we would not stop until she was healthy again.
After that, I was reopening the discussion about going south because I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Matthias anywhere near Page after this day.
None of us was safe anymore. Maybe that had always been true, but Matthias had never been more of a threat than today.
Today I realized that there really could be a cure for the infection.
Episode Seven
Chapter One
865 days after initial infection
The hand that I cradled felt hotter than fire. The small, dainty fingers curled into pained vises of agony. The slight tremors that shook the fragile bones would sometimes jerk with a harsher kick that made my stomach lurch.
Could this be the moment she stopped fighting?
Would this be the moment her little body gave up and succumbed to the horrific fever that held her somewhere in the balance of life vs. death?
I sucked in some air and breathed out a prayer.
No, I swore to myself. Not this time
. Not today.
Page had held on for three days so far, but her fever had heated to the highest it had ever been. Or at least that was how it felt. I couldn’t be sure. There wasn’t a thermometer down here and my sleep-deprived body couldn’t remember all the details exactly.
She felt hotter than ever before, and that was the only logic I could go by.
I pulled myself to kneel beside her when she whimpered against her pillow. My sore knees dug into the hard concrete, but I found it easy to ignore my own pain in the light of the battle Page faced. I swiped my hand across her forehead and shivered against the heat of it. Her skin appeared even whiter than the eggshell pillowcase she pressed her cheek into. I brushed some stray strands of dark blonde hair from her face and whispered those same prayers again with as much force as I had strength.
I was careful not to accidentally bump the oozing sore on her back. She had to lie on her stomach so that her wound could breathe. Besides, I imagined the Zombie-bite that hadn’t killed her yet still hurt more than anything she’d ever experienced before. The almost-perfect-circle-shaped gaping hole oozed a white puss and almost constant trickle of thick, coagulated blood. The skin around the wound had turned an ugly, angry shade of red. Thin, black lines zig-zagged outward from the epicenter of the bite, almost like her very veins were fighting the infection. Her breathing had quickened and rasped for the last two days and she hadn’t woken up since the night it happened.
But she was alive.
And so I held onto every fragile strand of hope I could muster.
There had been moments when I thought surely they were her last. There had been other times when I had let myself begin to believe she would recover.
No matter the emotional state of my desperate soul, she still hadn’t recovered enough for me to believe that recovery could be possible. Or that we would be rescued.
Three days had passed according to Kane and Linley. I was too hysterical to really pay attention to things like time and sleep. Three days and still there had been no sign of someone finding us.
Maybe they thought we were dead.
Maybe the fire had made it impossible for anyone to break through the forest and stumble upon our now cindered hide-out. Maybe we had been forgotten.
When I voiced my opinion over the last few days, Kane had been quick to shut me down.
He promised that someone was on their way and that help would be here soon.
And I had no choice but to believe him.
Or at least choose not to argue.
We briefly discussed leaving the bunker, but we couldn’t find enough reasons to make that argument stick. So far, we still had enough food so we weren’t starving and we were safely secured into the ground. There was an air/oxygen ventilation system that I didn’t understand, as well as plumbing like the cabin. Zombies couldn’t get to us and while Page teetered at the brink of death, we couldn’t move her.
So here we sat.
And waited.
And went out of our minds just a little bit more with each hour that ticked by.
Or I did.
Kane had lost his mind a long time ago and Linley wavered between complete hysteria and dictatorial psychosis.
I’d started to doubt my theory that Kane turned out just like his dad. It could easily be his mom that the crazy gene passed down from.
Then again, I’d stopped judging the Allens and all their laundry list of faults days ago.
How could I blame them for their insanity when my own sanity felt so delicately pieced together? My mind had become an hourglass and my reason the sand that sifted through it, biding its time until the last few grains dropped into the abyss below.
And worse than the confusion and fear, the so-consuming desperation I felt as if my mind were utterly lost from it; was the loneliness.
I was alone.
So soul-shattering alone that I could barely feel the myriad of emotions pounding at my heart’s door, begging to be paid attention to.
My boyfriend, my best friend, the family I’d fallen in love with and the little girl that dictated every action and motive in my life had been removed from me. I had Kane. And his mother.
And this dark, silent tomb I’d been buried in.
Kane had to talk me down from more than one panic attack over the last few days. I would get so worked up that I couldn’t remember how to breathe properly. My entire body would react to the stress and trauma with a refusal to continue surviving. It was as though I’d had enough and my body wanted nothing more than to escape this concrete prison and the hellish world I’d been exiled to.
If it hadn’t been for Page lying just inches from me while I kept guard over her brittle life, I wouldn’t have made it. I would have found some way to give up within the first few hours. At least her illness gave me purpose and occupied some of the time in my never-ending train of depressed thoughts.
But then again, if Page hadn’t been so frantically fighting for her life, maybe I wouldn’t have felt such a desolate need to run from this in any way that I could.
I smoothed the sheets beneath Page and examined the wound some more. It didn’t look worse… but then again, it didn’t really look better either.
Kane had been taking care of it with some antibiotic cream that his dad had stashed down here years ago. We’d kept the area as clean as possible using our limited supplies and we’d made sure Page was as cool and comfortable as possible.
Still, there had been no break in the fever. We’d tried to keep her hydrated, but she’d barely responded and I was too afraid to aspirate her and be the reason she died anyway. I’d at least kept her mouth wet and her lips moistened.
I knew a person could go so long without food and water, but we were nearing the edge of those limitations. Plus, she was only eight. She didn’t have the stamina or the body weight of a grown person. I worried that whatever boundaries the human body had, Page’s had been cut in half.
She whimpered again and I felt the tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I pressed a kiss to the back of her head and breathed her in for long moments.
I wouldn’t let her die. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let something so purely innocent and lovely leave this world. She was all I had left. She was it.
And while logically, I knew that I still had Hendrix, Haley and the rest of the Parkers, I also knew that not one of us would survive this unfair loss. If something final happened to Page, we would all be torn apart by grief. Our hope would be ripped from us and our resolve scraped raw.
Especially if it happened under these circumstances.
Especially if it happened at Kane’s hand.
Even the retribution her brothers handed out would not be enough to mend our permanent hurt.
And that was the other thing.
Kane.
Could I let him hurt suffer after this?
If I could find the rational part of my brain, I knew it would demand “yes.” Yes, that we hurt him. Yes, that we kill him. Yes, that I was the one to pull the trigger.
But rationality had gone to the same place as my sanity these days and everything “right” inside of me warred with everything “emotional.”
I should hate Kane, but I was beyond hatred. I had reached some Zen place that wouldn’t let me hate such a broken, hurting man.
And so I’d learned to hate that part of me more than I could ever hate Kane. Which in turn, diminished my ill feelings for him.
Besides that, every time I pictured myself holding a gun to end his life, my memory would flash back to him running in front of Page and saving her from me. I kept picturing those desperate moments when he’d saved her life… if even for a short time. He had convinced me to wait, to hold off from ending her life prematurely. I pictured him begging me, felt him taking the gun from my hand, saw him as he shielded Page with his own body.
He was an evil, terrible, horrible man.
But he’d saved Page. He’d saved the most important thing in my life.
At the very l
east, I needed to return the favor once.
And yet, then what? If I spared his life again, how would he retaliate this time?
How would he use my generosity to abuse my trust and forgiveness?
This time he’d taken me from everything and everyone I loved and allowed Page to get bitten. Those were the very worst scenarios I could imagine.
What would happen if he attacked again? How many more unthinkable scenarios could he plague me with?
More tears poured from my eyes as my heavy indecision ate at me from the inside out.
In another month, I would turn twenty-one. I felt impossibly young to have to make these decisions or wrestle with the kind of uncertainty that gnawed at me.
Why did I have to decide Kane’s fate? Why did I have to be the judge and jury to a human life that had at times saved me and at other times been the reason I flirted so closely with death? Why did I have to weigh in at all?
I had never felt such desperation to hand over my will to someone else than at this moment. Not that I was in danger of going with Kane anywhere and letting him live out his sick, twisted, Reagan-as-a-Stepford-wife scenario. But this was too much for me.
I was not strong enough to handle the decision, the action or the repercussions.
Maybe that made me weak. Maybe that even made me pathetic. But I knew myself. I knew the guilt I struggled with when I killed anything, even Zombies. Integrity and humanity were burdens that I carried around every minute of every day. How much more so was I when a man who had been equal parts dangerous and comforting trusted me with his heart and worked actively to protect me from every evil but him?
Ugh.
I would never find the right answer to this internal war. And maybe I wouldn’t have to. Maybe Hendrix would barge in here and immediately take the decision away from me.
Another dichotomy of feelings… would I be relieved? Or guilty?
Instinctively I knew I would not find out until it happened. I couldn’t even predict how I would behave until the time came.