PODs (34 page)

I turned and looked at the girls standing in the middle of the circle, doing nothing to protect themselves.

“Fight!” I screamed. They stared at me. “Fight or die.” I held out my handgun. A young girl grabbed it and took a place in the circle, firing on the infected. I used the shotgun, watching the infected advance on the camp, seeing their blue veins shimmer against their pale skin when they came into the circle of the firelight, hearing their grunts and screams as they tried to make it past our gunfire.

I also watched the men next to me, trying to learn how to reload the gun. Chris grabbed the gun from my hands and quickly showed me how to reload. He threw it back to me and took aim at an infected woman who’d wandered too close to our circle. She snarled at him, her blue gums grotesque against her white teeth.

The fight lasted more than an hour. The infected came one after another, pushing each other out of the way in an attempt to reach us. When their group was depleted, the survivors melted back into the tree line, disappearing through the darkened forest.

“What the…Evangelina, what did you think you were doing?” David yelled.

“Fighting. The same as you.”

“I told you to stay inside the circle,” he yelled louder.

“I know what you said. I don’t remember agreeing to it.”

Standing toe-to-toe, he looked down at me, his gray eyes shimmering in the pale moonlight—angry eyes.

Out of nowhere, he grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked my head back before kissing me hard. Pulling his face back just far enough that our noses touched, he stared into my eyes. “You scared the crap outta me,” he whispered, lowering his lips to mine, taking them gently, caressing them.

His hand let go of my hair and cupped my face. I stretched my arms around his neck, leaning into him, forgetting about the carnage that lay around us. I focused only on David.

At the sound of a giggle, I opened one eye. Jessica stood next to David and me. “Devlin said to tell you guys to get a room.”

David groaned and cursed under his breath, letting me go.

I looked around the destroyed camp. “You know, I could be teaching English right now.”

David laughed. “Always with the jokes.”

I wasn’t joking
.

Life outside the compound was much harder than I’d anticipated. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering if leaving the compound had been the right thing to do. Then, as always, I looked at David and I knew. Yes. I was where I was supposed to be—where David was.

The morning sun was just beginning to rise, the black sky turning purple and then cerulean. Puffy cotton-ball clouds dotted the blue. It was beautiful…until you looked down.

At our feet lay the bodies of the dead infected. Blood seeped across the hard-packed earth; body parts lay in unnatural positions.

Two camp members had been killed during the night—the boy who’d been standing next to me and another who’d been caught before he’d had a chance to make it to the protective circle. The camp felt their loss deeply.

I helped clean the remains for burial. I wiped their cold bodies with a damp rag, the blood smearing over their unnaturally white skin. The water turned pink from it, dripping on the ground like bloody teardrops. When we’d finished cleaning the blood and gore from the bodies, we dressed them in clean clothes and the two men were gently laid on their bedrolls.

David held my hand tightly as each camp member walked by the bodies and silently said goodbye. Some of us had silent tears rolling down our cheeks. Others sniffled quietly. One girl cried loudly as she said goodbye to her dead brother—the only family she’d had left.

When the ceremony was over, the bodies were gently wrapped in their bedrolls and buried. A small cross carved in the tree hanging over their graves marked their final resting places.

“I need to talk to you,” Devlin told David.

“What’s up?”

“Alone.”

“Whatever it is, you can say it in front of Eva.”

Devlin looked at me. “I don’t want Jessica to know.”

“Sure. I won’t say anything,” I promised.

“It looks like someone’s been bit.”

My heart did a nosedive. “Oh, no.” I covered my mouth with my hand.

David stood ramrod straight. His jaw worked, tightening and untightening. He ran his hand through his hair and looked at Devlin.

“Who?”

Devlin opened his mouth, and then closed it. Staring at the ground, he kicked at it with the toe of his shoe. “Dammit.”

Tears filled my eyes. “Oh, no. It’s not Jessica?”

“No, it’s not Jessica. It’s Chris,” Devlin whispered.

“Chris. Jessica’s friend?” I asked.

The boy Jessica called her ‘soulmate.’ The boy who helped me pick out a backpack the first morning I was with the group. The sweet kid who showed me how to reload a shotgun last night. No. This is going to devastate Jessica. And…what will happen to Chris?

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t say anything else. A lump had lodged itself in my throat. It felt as though it was growing, making it impossible to speak, cutting off the air to my lungs.

He’s only thirteen
.

David had remained silent—his face hard, a look I’d never seen. He was always so open, so friendly. I’d never seen him look stone-cold. A shiver ran up my spine.

“Do we quarantine him?” David asked, looking around the camp.

The members were gathering the gear that hadn’t been damaged in the attack. Their voices carried on the breeze. If I listened closely, I could pick out pieces of conversations. Tin plates and cups clanged together as they were shoved in a bag. The embers of the fire were doused with water, creating a smoke plume that burned my eyes. Across the camp, Jessica helped one of the other girls take down tents. They were laughing and talking, looking almost like normal kids—almost.

I tried to find Chris in the bustle of activity. He wasn’t there. My eyes scanned the perimeter of the campsite. I found him sitting on a tree stump, rubbing his arm and watching the rest of the people pack up the camp.

“No.” Devlin’s voice pulled me back to the conversation.

“No? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“No, we don’t quarantine him,” David said quietly.

Something lurched in my chest. “Hey, you said everyone was quarantined. It’s a bad move not to remove him from the rest of the camp until we know for sure he isn’t infected. Besides, the wound on his arm might not be from a bite, anyway. He’ll be back making googly eyes at Jessica in a week.”

David and Devlin stared at me, their faces hard and unreadable.

“He’s already showing signs,” Devlin said, looking at David. “He knows it, too.”

“What do you mean? I thought it didn’t show up this early?”

“It does when it’s a bite, Eva. A bite injects the virus directly into the bloodstream. The virus is spreading through his body quickly. He’ll show advanced symptoms in less than twenty-four hours. He’ll be completely transformed in two days.” Devlin jammed his fingers through his hair.

“Who?” David asked.

“I can’t. If it was anyone else…but this is Jessica’s friend. She thinks they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. There’s no way I can…I can’t have that hanging between us. She’d never forgive me.”

Birds sang in the trees. The soft swaying of the pines in the autumn breeze whispered through the air. Remnants of breakfast and smoke from the dead fire scented the air. It seemed so serene. But the conversation was morbid.

“I guess—”

“No, David.”

“Eva, someone has to.”

“Not you. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think I have a pretty good idea. Not you.” I couldn’t imagine looking at him the same way if he did what I feared was going to happen to Chris.

“Juan?” Devlin asked.

“Yeah. Juan will do a good job,” David agreed. “I’ll talk to him. You talk to Chris.”

“Eva? Would you distract Jessica?” Devlin started to turn away.

“Sure, but wait,” I called. “What’s happening?”

David cupped the side of my face with one hand, laying the other on the small of my back. He kissed me softly, just a whisper against my lips. “Please don’t ask too many questions, Evangelina,” he murmured before dropping his hand and walking away.

What was I supposed to do? How was I going to explain where Chris and Juan were going if Jessica saw them leave?

I wasn’t even sure
I
understood what was happening. What would I tell Jessica?

I watched as the two young men walked away, their shoes squishing in the thin layer of mud and stirring up the smell of rotting leaves. Alone in the small clearing at the side of the campsite, I wondered how they could talk about doing something so vile like it was something that happened regularly.

Although, maybe it did.

I
watched David from across the camp. His posture was stiff, the look on his face grim. His shoulder leaned against a tree, with his thumb hooked through the belt loop on his jeans. He was gorgeous, but he wasn’t my David.

Since Devlin’s news that Chris had been bitten, David’s demeanor had shown me that he didn’t like what was going to happen. And that’s how I knew. Two would walk away from camp today. One would come back.

He turned and his eyes searched me out. He tried to smile, but it looked forced. He walked to me and folded me in his arms, laying his cheek on the top of my head.

“He’s going to kill Chris, isn’t he?” I whispered.

“What happened to not asking too many questions?” His breath ruffled my hair.

“You asked, but I don’t remember agreeing. What’s going to happen?”

“No, they aren’t going to kill him. Not today.” He dropped his arms from around me. My body shivered from the loss of his warmth. He pulled back and looked at me, running his finger down the side of my face. Dropping his hand, he sighed. “Geez, Eva, why do you have to know every little morsel of information? I don’t want you to have to worry about things like this,” he said, running his fingers through his hair, the morning light making the dark strands look like shimmering silk.

“Why? Because I’m a girl? I don’t need protection, David. I need answers.”

“And that’s another thing. Why do you always assume I don’t tell you something because you’re a girl? I don’t tell you the ugly truth of life out here because I love you and I don’t want the ugliness to touch you. I want you to be safe, to be happy.”

“What?” I asked quietly.

“I want you to be—”

“Not that part.”

“I love you. I think I have since the day you first entered the POD. I knew I did the morning I kissed you. I still know I do because I’d lay down my life for you here and now.”

“I love you back,” I said with a smile. “But your declaration of undying devotion didn’t do its job.”

“What job?”

“You didn’t distract me enough to forget about what’s going on. I want to know, David. I
need
to know.”

“Fine.” His voice was clipped.

“Don’t get pissy with me, either.”

“Juan and Chris will stay behind when we leave today. Juan will watch Chris, and if he shows additional signs of infection, he’ll do what needs to be done. Chris wants it that way. None of us wants…the alternative.” He looked up and swallowed hard. “If Chris is symptom-free, they’ll follow us and we’ll meet them in the next town. He’ll do his week in isolation and everything will be fine.”