Contagious (42 page)

“
Great. Now we will both be infected. Ten dollars says I kick your crazy ass first.”

“
Psh! No way. I’d out crazy you any day! And neither of us are infected. I most likely didn’t get any zombie parts on my cuts and you—”

“
Had teeth sink into my arm,” he reminded me.

“
You’re fine.” I did my best to wash the crusted blood off my face. Not caring who saw me, I took off my sweater and then the turtleneck, throwing them on the ground.

The bandages on my hands made it hard to ruffle through my bag. I should have gotten the new shirt out first. I yanked a brown sweatshirt over my head and plopped back in the truck. Wade suggested we find a place to hide for the night before we ran out of sunlight. Hayden instantly disagreed. He wanted to get back to the compound right away.

I knew why: he wanted to get himself in the quarantine. He drove the first half. The conversation was sparse. Having pulled a muscle or two in my back while climbing (and falling from) the tree, I was sore and very uncomfortable in the seat of the truck. Hayden was tense, gripping the steering wheel tightly, sitting straight up.

Before the sun completely set, we stopped for what would hopefully be the last time before entering the safety of the compound. I got out to stretch, thinking Hayden would join me. When he didn’t get out of the car, I went over and opened his door.

He was resting his head on the steering wheel, sitting very still.

“
You alright?” I asked, unnerved.

“
Yeah. I’m tired.”

“
Me too. Come on,” I extended my hand. “Walk around with me.”

He took my hand. “It’s cold.”

“
Yeah, it has been for a while.”

“
It didn’t bother me before.”

“
Uh, congratulations?” I squeezed his hand. “You sure you’re ok?”

“
Yeah. I think. I’m really tired.” He stopped short. “Is that a symptom?”

“
Of the virus?” I whispered. “I don’t think so. Padraic told me that patients came in complaining of bad headaches. Your head doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“
No. Wait, yes. No, no it doesn’t.”

“
You’re fine.” I let go of his hand when we neared the other soldiers. After quickly eating, we left. I drove the rest of the way. Hayden was worried he might go crazy and run the truck off the side of the road. Roughly fifteen hours had passed since he had gotten bitten. Only ten more until I could breathe easy.

Unlike last time, Hayden didn’t waste time getting into the quarantine room. Fuller wasn’t there to greet us, which was a relief to me since Hayden wanted to tell him that he had been bitten—again. I went up into our room to get clothes. Ivan hobbled into the hall at the sound of my footsteps.

“
How did it go?” he asked before taking a good look at me. “Whoa, what happened to you?”

“
Half jumped, half fell out of a tree,” I said with a shrug. I was eager to get back to Hayden. Someone needed to make sure he didn’t go crazy. “We brought back six people,” I told him quickly.

“
You’ll have to explain the tree thing to me tomorrow,” Ivan said with a smile.

“
Sure will.” I hightailed it into my room, grabbed comfortable clothes for myself and Hayden and jogged down to the quarantine room. Since I was the bloodiest, I took the first shower. I toweled my wet hair and pulled it to the left and into a braid.

“
Do I look crazy?” Hayden asked me.

“
Kinda,” I replied. And he did. He had my blood all over him and his brown hair, which was in need of cutting, was messy. His eyes were wide with fear and lines of stress wrinkled his forehead. “You are fine,” I repeated firmly.

“
Ok, I’m fine.”

“
Hayden,” I whispered, putting my hand on his shoulder. “Stop it. You’re freaking yourself out and you’re starting to freak me out!”

“
Right, sorry. You said the virus can change and I-I’m…”

“
It’s ok.”

“
Yeah. It will be.” He sprang up. “Hungry?”

“
Sure.” We went into the kitchen area and warmed up the dinners that had been prepared for us. Brock joined us at the little table, making small talk about random, non-zombie related things. After everyone had showered, changed and ate, we decided to gather around the TV and watch a movie. Hayden and I sat next to each other on the couch. I pulled a blanket over the both of us, whether or not it looked suspicious to Wade, Rider, or Brock, I didn’t know or care.

Halfway through
The Dark Knight
Hayden fell asleep, his body limply leaning in my direction. Not wanting to wake him, I carefully got up after the movie ended, resituating the blanket to keep him warm. They boys, trying to be chivalrous, said I could have one of the twin beds while they bickered over the other. It felt good to lie down and stretch out. My eyes had just closed when someone sat at the foot.

“
Orissa?” Hayden whispered. “Are you asleep?”

“
Not yet.” I sat up. “You ok?”

“
Yeah. I’m cold.”

“
Come here,” I said without thinking, lifting the blankets for him to crawl under next to me. He did, and his skin was anything but cold. I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead. “I think you have a fever,” I told him. I could feel his body tense up.

“
I need to get out of here before I snap,” he pleaded.

“
No, Hayden, you’re fine.”

“
Not if I have a fever!”

“
That’s not a symptom. You’re sick. Just regular sick.”

“
How can you be sure?”

“
I-I don’t really know. But it’s what I want.”

“
You want me to be sick?” he teased. I could imagine his cheeky smile through the dark. He let out a deep breath and settled down, pulling the blankets closely around him.

“
Of course not. But I’d rather you be regular sick than zombie sick. And,” I said, remembering the times when my grandma would take care of me while I was sick. “You shouldn’t bundle up if you have a fever.”

“
But I’m cold,” he protested, sounding like a stubborn child. “And maybe your hands are just cold so that’s why you think I’m hot.”

“
No,” I said, checking his skin again. “You’re feverish.”

“
I do kinda feel sick.”

“
Well, uh, I think you should just rest then. Until we can talk to Padraic.”

“
Should I get him now?”

“
No. After we get the all clear.”

“
Ok. Thanks, Riss.”

“
You’re welcome, Hayden.” Once Hayden was back asleep, I moved to the couch. I didn’t want to explain to the others why we were snuggled in bed together and I didn’t want to draw attention to Hayden being sick.

People got sick all the time, I reminded myself. Just because we were on a mission didn’t mean anything. I drifted in and out of sleep, waiting for the sun to come up, not that it would do any good since I couldn’t see the sky.

When the digital clock finally showed it was eight in the morning, I woke Hayden up just to tell him he hadn’t turned into a raging lunatic. He smiled weakly, told me his throat hurt, and went back to sleep. I played a game of cards with Brock, watched another movie, and paced around the room.

“
You look like shit,” Wade told Hayden when Hayden finally got out of bed.

“
I feel like it,” Hayden agreed, plopping down in a kitchen chair. He put his head in his hands.

“
You know,” Rider chimed in. “I’m surprised we don’t get sick more often. With all the stress and dirty shit we deal with. I guess it was only a matter of time before one of us came down with something.”

I internally sighed. No one was going to accuse Hayden of being infected. Feeling rather domestic, I made Hayden breakfast. Ok, I didn’t make him breakfast. I put cereal and milk in a bowl and brought it to him.

I went through one Sun Salutation before giving up, my muscles too sore. Rubbing my shoulder, I sat on the couch.

“
You ok?” Rider asked.

“
My back hurts,” I complained. “But I’m fine.”

“
Want a backrub?”

“
I would love a backrub.”

“
Come here,” he said, beckoning to the floor in front of him. I sat, closing my eyes as he massaged my sore muscles. “You have a lot of knots,” he stated, painfully working them out.

Though the backrub from Rider wasn’t sexual in the least bit, I couldn’t help but wonder if it bothered Hayden to see someone else’s hands on me. I felt considerably better and, since I didn’t sleep much or well last night, I cuddled up under the blankets of the twin bed and fell asleep.

When we were released, Hayden was obviously sick. I accompanied him to the hospital ward. A young B3 was on duty; she smiled and blushed when she saw Hayden.

“
Is Padraic around?” I asked.

“
No, he’s off tonight.”

“
Shit,” I swore, looking sideways at Hayden. “Do you think you can get him? It’s official A1 medical stuff. He wanted to document any injuries we had personally and,” I held up my bandaged hands, “I have a lot of injuries. They’re pretty deep too, won’t stop bleeding.”

“
Oh, my, yes! I’ll go get him.” She scuttled away. Something told me she wasn’t too keen about blood. And she was a B3. Great. I rolled my eyes.

Hayden rested his head on mine. “My head really hurts. I can say that now,” he admitted.

“
How long as it been hurting for?”

“
Since we got here. I didn’t want to worry you.”

“
Oh, thanks for lying to me,” I teased.

He half smiled. “You’re welcome.”

We made our way to an examine room. I sat on the foam bed next to Hayden. He leaned against me with his eyes closed, resting his hand on my thigh. Only a few minutes later, Padraic came through the door. He was dressed in navy blue pajama pants and a black T-shirt, having come from his room.

“
Orissa, are you alr—” he stopped mid-sentence, looking at Hayden with a bit of surprise.

“
I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Close the door.” Padraic obliged, though his confusion was apparent. I rolled up Hayden’s sleeve.

“
I got bitten,” he said weakly.

Padraic recoiled. “When?”

“
We went through the twenty-four hours, Padraic,” I snapped. “Don’t be dramatic. He’s sick.”

“
I can see that,” Padraic said, going back into doctor mode. “Can you move aside, Orissa? I need to examine him.”

“
Sure.” I jumped off the table. “I tried to disinfect the bite, but I didn’t get to it right away.”

Padraic unwound the gauze. The bite marks were red and puffy, definitely looking infected with bacteria. “I can’t imagine the mouth of a zombie is very clean,” Padraic said seriously.

The sentence was so odd that it made me laugh. Padraic raised an eyebrow, shutting me up. He left the room and returned with a little case full of medical stuff. He injected something into Hayden’s arm, had him lie down and set to cleaning it, which seemed utterly painful. Then he did a full exam and concluded that Hayden had some sort of flu-like virus. He was worried about how rapidly his fever had gone up.

Padraic thought it would be best to keep Hayden in the hospital ward until he was better. He would receive more care down here and wouldn’t expose the rest of us to whatever he had gotten from the zombie. Hayden seemed too tired and too weak to care at the moment. I said I’d stay with him and keep him company, but Padraic objected, saying I needed to let Hayden rest and I should rest myself, especially after a mission.

I was lonely by myself that night, which reminded me of what Raeya said about privacy, which reminded me, of course, about my best friend. Though it was late, I slipped down the stairs and quietly knocked on her door. She was over the moon excited that I was back. We tiptoed to the cafeteria so we could talk.

She was ecstatic that we had found more people. It gave her hope that more were out there, just waiting to be rescued. To her, the more time that passed, the better chance people had at surviving. If they had made it this far, she said, then they surely can last.

I thought the opposite: if they had made it this far, they were lucky. And luck runs out. I told her minimal details about the narrow zombie escape and nothing about the mall looting. I wanted to surprise her in the morning with a Coach purse. I walked her to her room, hugged her goodnight and went farther down the hall to find Argos. Happy to be with me again, he didn’t leave my side all night.

I slept through breakfast the next morning. Hungry, I stuffed myself with junk food. Raeya was doing some sort of overseer project so I hung out with Sonja for awhile before visiting Hayden. He was hooked up to an IV, which looked scarier than it was. He was feeling better already, he promised, though he still seemed so weak and tired. Word had gotten out that he was sick, and, like Ivan, his hospital room was filled with homemade get well cards.

Training picked up right as it left off the following day. After working out, I was put in the group that trained the A3s. We ventured out into a large field for target practice. I had to work to keep my patience and remember that not even I started out perfect.

“
But I was never this bad,” I muttered under my breath, having to walk away from a teenage boy named Jay. He was cocky, thinking that all his glory days playing Call of Duty made him know a thing or two about how guns work. He was horrible and completely unwilling to learn or take any advice from me.

Jason wasn’t all that bad. He tried, really tried, and took everything I said to heart. Not all of the A3s took me seriously, since I had no military or law enforcement background. Little did they know I had been shooting since a younger age than pretty much everyone here.