A Little More Dead (13 page)

Terror filled the glassy eyes staring
back at him.

He struggled for composure. “You’re
going to be fine,” he told her, chest palpitating with uneven breaths.

Dan slammed the trunk shut and hopped in
behind the wheel as Wendy jumped into the passenger seat. He turned the key and
punched the throaty engine, leaving swerving skid marks and white smoke behind.

“I’ll be alright!” Sophia insisted, her
voice cracking. “It’s just a scratch.”

Wendy opened a first-aid kit and poured
some peroxide onto some gauze before slipping it through the cage to Paul.

“Let’s get your coat off,” he said,
carefully helping her peel back the red
pleather
jacket.

Paul’s stomach fell when he saw the bite
mark with his own two eyes. He stared at the clear imprint of the pharmacist’s full
set of teeth, the car spinning around him. Sophia shrieked through gritted
teeth when the peroxide found the wound. They hadn’t seen anyone escape with
just a bite yet, and had no way of knowing if it was infectious or not. Paul
put pressure on the wound, slowing the bleeding and brushing his hand against
his gun.

Just to make sure it was still there.

Chapter
Nineteen

The farmhouse was nowhere near as old and
drafty as the one in Iowa and wasn’t a farmhouse at all. This was a house in
the country with
The Jacobsen’s
printed across a blue doormat out front. Inside, it smelled like candles and potpourri.
Beneath a vaulted ceiling and fancy chandelier, a mint-colored sectional sat positioned
to enjoy the fireplace, giant flat screen, and French doors leading to the covered
pool out back. Paul laid his wife on the couch, soaking it with her blood. He
sat down next to her and carefully peeled back the blood-soaked bandage. “Here,
let’s change that,” he said, fighting a grimace when he saw the ring of teeth
marks.

“I’m going to be okay, right baby?” she
asked, hanging onto his leg like he might get up and leave her forever.

Sweat ran down his temples. He tried on
a smile that didn’t fit. His heart thrashed against his ribcage. “Of course you
are,
hot-stuff. We sterilized it real good.”

“Why won’t it stop bleeding?”

“It will. We just have to keep some pressure
on it.” He poured more peroxide onto the circular wound and Sophia set her jaw
and squeezed his leg with a death grip. “Just try to hold still for me, okay?”

She nodded and let her eyes fall shut,
exhaling like she just set down a heavy piece of furniture.

Paul held the fresh bandage against her
shoulder and took a moment to survey their new surroundings filled with someone
else’s stuff. His eyes locked on the French doors. Outside, darkness had
settled in. Inside, Wendy stood behind him with a fist covering her mouth and
panic brimming in her eyes.

Chapter
Twenty

DAY TEN

Daylight slithered into the living room,
slowly pulling back the curtain on the grim reality staring Paul in the face.
He sat up in an orange armchair, heart sinking when he saw her in the morning
light. He hadn’t slept a wink all night – at least he didn’t think he had –
waiting for this very moment right here. A little time and daylight would tell
him loads. Throughout the night, Sophia mumbled unintelligible things in her
sleep while a vision of the pharmacist danced with the gruesome memories
already living inside Paul’s head, spinning this way and that, one would lead and
the other would follow. Raindrops beat against the roof and thunder rattled the
windows. Paul pushed himself out of the chair and it felt like he was wading
through warm tar as he crossed the room.

He sat down next to her and mopped sweat
from her ashen forehead with a clean kitchen towel. At his touch, her dark eyelids
cracked open. Shallow breaths made a raspy sound in her throat and this didn’t
look fucking good. This wasn’t what Paul had been praying for all night long
and he cursed inside his head.
Shit!

“How are you feeling,
babycakes
?” he whispered, giving her some water.

She took a tiny sip and sighed. “Better.”

“You look better,” he
lied
right back.

She laughed and coughed up some pink
fluid. Paul’s gut twisted into breathless knots and it took everything he had
to keep his poker face from breaking like his heart. Sophia settled back into
the sweat-stained pillow and took his hand, her skin cold and clammy. He bent
over and kissed her on the forehead, uncaring if he got
it
or not. If she had it, he wanted it. She drew in a deep breath
that Paul tricked himself into thinking sounded better. When she spoke, her
words were low and distant. “You remember when you crank-called your mom that one
morning, pretending to be a coworker named Mike?”

He smiled thinly, caressing her cheek.
“Everyone has a coworker named Mike.”

Her brave smile melted his heart.

“She bought it too, like she recognized
him,” she continued, filling her lungs with another wet sounding breath. “And
then you told her she looked nice that day and asked her out on a date.” Sophia
laughed and coughed into her hand.

Paul’s gaze narrowed, catching her trying
to hide the blood on her hand beneath the blanket. “Yeah, and the real Mike
ended up getting fired for sexual harassment.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“No, but that would’ve been better radio.”

She closed her eyes, smiling faintly. “She
was so mad.”

Paul brushed sweaty hair from her forehead,
panic settling in. He was no doctor but this wasn’t good. She was burning up.

Her eyes opened again and found his worried
gaze hovering above. “There you are.”

“I’m right here.” Their eyes met, a silent
understanding passing between them. He stroked her cheek. “I’ll always be right
here.”

She smiled and let her heavy eyelids
drop. “Your mom and I are going to be just fine.”

Paul felt the hair on his arms go up. “What’s
that?” he whispered.

Looking through slits, she pointed to the
French doors. “She’s standing right there.”

He turned.

A shadow moved outside, spiking his
adrenaline.

Paul rushed across the room and drew his
gun, whipping the door back and letting in the rain. A bird took flight and water
rippled across the pool cover. He looked around the deck and let out a deep
breath, shutting and locking the door. “Now you’ve got me seeing things.”

When Sophia didn’t respond, he turned to
find her asleep again. She looked so frail and Paul couldn’t stop his thoughts from
running away with him. The infection was spreading throughout her body. He
could see it in the purple veins set against her sickly skin. Suddenly, he felt
someone watching him and turned to see Dan standing in the kitchen archway with
a grave look seared into his face and a
Glock
clipped
to his belt. Dan looked from Sophia to Paul before turning to rejoin Wendy in
the massive kitchen.

☠

“I told you I’m not going anywhere!”

Paul jerked awake in the armchair across
the room, nearly falling to the hardwood floor.

“I can’t find my purse!”

He sprang from the chair and rushed to
Sophia’s side, stumbling over his shoes on the way.

“Just wait!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, pushing wet hair
from her face.

She shuddered beneath his touch,
sweating like hell even though she was cold as ice. “No!”

“Sophia,” he said, shaking her arm.

“Paul!”

He shook harder, heart stampeding like a
herd of wild horses. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since this morning
but she looked worse.

Thinner.

Smaller.

She stirred a little, incoherently
babbling words in a rash of run-on sentences, eyes rapidly moving beneath her
closed lids. Then she stilled. Her wet breaths stopped and Paul’s hope
plummeted off a cliff.

He shook her with both hands. “Sophia?”

No response.

“Sophia!”

This couldn’t be happening! Without her
he couldn’t go on.
Wouldn’t go on.

She sucked in a loud breath and opened
her eyes, a faint smile pulling at her dried lips when she found him sitting next
to her. “Where am I?”

“You’re safe, baby,” he told her, catching
a whiff of something unpleasant. They’d tried helping her to the bathroom but
she screamed as if she were made of glass. “Here, drink this.”

She sipped the bottled water and started
choking.

“Go easy.”

She pushed it away. “I had a dream we were
getting on a train and I couldn’t find my purse. Then you were gone too.”

He smiled and it was the hardest thing
he ever had to do in his entire life. “You’re not going anywhere without me, or
your purse.”

She smiled back, gums darkening around
her teeth. “Good.”

“Are you feeling any better?”

A soft nod was all she could muster
before shutting her eyes and falling back into a deep slumber as calm as a
morning lake. Tears fell from Paul’s eyes onto the blanket he pulled up to her
chin. He could still fix this. There was still time. After awhile, he quietly
traipsed back to his chair and watched her sleep, thunder booming inside his
head. He could fix this.

Chapter
Twenty-One

Wendy fed Sophia tomato soup heated up
on the camping stove they’d taken from the previous house. Sophia hadn’t kept a
thing down since the attack and, whether she liked it or not, it was time to
try again. Paul and Dan watched as Wendy slipped the spoon through Sophia’s partially
opened lips and pulled it out clean. Paul listened to her swallow, insides
tightening. She licked her lips and opened her mouth for more, lifting his
spirits until she leaned over and threw up in a bucket Dan found out in the
garage. Paul released the breath he’d been holding, lowering his broad shoulders.

She couldn’t keep anything down.

His mind raced.

Here’s the writing.

Here’s the wall.

“Come on, try a little more for me,”
Wendy urged, bringing up another spoonful.

Sophia pressed her lips together and shook
her head. “I can’t,” she panted, groaning as another bolt of pain shot through
her.

“It’s okay,” Paul said softly. “Take a
break and try to get some more rest.”

Wendy gave her a warm smile. “I brought
in some books in case you feel like reading something,” she said, patting a small
stack on the coffee table.

Sophia nodded and grabbed Wendy’s wrist.
“I want you to have my gun,” she said weakly, as if she were asking Wendy to
take care of her only child after she died.

Paul’s heart wrenched with sorrow. He
opened his mouth to protest such a ridiculous notion but Wendy beat him to it.

“You just hang on to that cute little
gun, girly, because you’re going to need it in no time.”

Sophia tightened her grip, dissolving
Wendy’s comforting smile. “I need you to take that gun and have my husband’s
back.
Dan too.”

Wendy glanced at the pink gun and
holster lying next to the books. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came
out.

“Promise me,” Sophia whispered.

Wendy patted her hand. “I promise,
sweetie.”

Paul rubbed his face and paced the room.
This wasn’t happening. At this rate, none of them stood a snowball’s chance in
hell of surviving this plague and he could give three
shits
.
It was over already.

Game.

Set.

Match.

He tried imagining a life without her
and doubled over in pain as she fell back to sleep. White spots speckled his
vision like old film. It would be hard enough in the old world, but this? He
felt a hand on his back.

“You okay, man?”

Paul slowly straightened up, avoiding
Dan’s worried gaze. “I’m fine.”

Wendy rose from the couch and gave Paul
a look he couldn’t read before taking the soup bowl back out into the kitchen
with its granite countertops and useless stainless steel appliances. Dan
hesitated before solemnly falling in line. Paul stared at his wife through
blurry eyes, wondering how he could he have missed that damn pharmacist in the
grocery store. Once again, it was his fault. The funniest part was, for a
minute there, he actually believed they stood a chance. He laughed at the
audacity of it. “
Sonofabitch
,” he whispered, swatting
a tear away with his hand.

“Baby?”
Sophia murmured.

“I’m right here,” he said, taking
Wendy’s spot on the couch and grasping Sophia’s bony yellow hand. She was no
longer sweating but she had a nose bleed that would not fucking stop.

“Do I look that bad?”

“You look great.”

“Get me a mirror then.”

“You’re going to be back on your feet in
no time but you need to eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

He cleaned her face with a wet towel. “You
have to keep trying.”

“Paul, I’m really scared.”

“Don’t be,” he told her, fighting the
tears building behind his eyes. He wouldn’t let her see him cry if it killed
him. “I’m right here and we’re in no hurry. It’s just a scratch.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Listen to me, you are not going to
die,” he said, stroking her matted hair. “You are going to be boogie-boarding
on the beach very soon. You just need another day or two of rest.” He glanced
at the hand running through her long locks and tried not to scream when he saw
all of the loose hair sticking to his fingers. He slid his hand to the couch
and leaned on it so she couldn’t see. If she knew she was losing her hair…

“I can’t wait to go swimming.”

The weakness in her voice tugged at
Paul’s heart, threatening to destroy his confident façade. But he needed to be
strong for her and bit his tongue until the metallic taste of blood filled his
mouth. The pain would keep him grounded, at least for another minute or two
until he could go into the garage and fall to his knees and cry in private.
Rebecca flashed through his mind and guilt ripped him from belly to sternum.

“Get some rest and we’ll try some more
food later, okay?”

She nodded, taking comfort in his words,
and drifted back off to sleep again.