“Then what are you asking?” I shot him a glare. “Why are you even bringing this up?”
He looked hurt for a moment, and then shrugged it off. “I wanted you to know the truth. We’re going to be working together, and I wanted you to know that I’d never unnecessarily put you in harm’s way.”
I didn’t know whether I believed that. Daniels had never been malicious or cruel to me, but a lot of what transpired in the quarantine wasn’t pleasant. I had the scars to prove it. Track marks covered my arms, and a lot of my veins were wrecked from all the blood they took.
Daniels and a few other doctors thought the answer to my immunity might be locked away in some of my glands and internal organs. Scars from incisions were laced together all over my stomach, like my skin was some kind of bizarre patchwork, from all their probing.
One doctor had been convinced it was coming from some gland in the base of my skull. He’d wanted to cut open my head and dig around. Daniels had somehow gotten him to drop that idea, so I guess he had saved my life that time. Or prolonged it really.
If I hadn’t left when I did, I wouldn’t have survived that much longer. People can only go so long losing blood and getting cut open before their bodies stop being able to function.
“What’s done is done,” I told Daniels. “We’re out now, and we need to focus on surviving out here.”
“Right.” He nodded. “You’re right.”
He slowed then, dropping a few feet behind me. Nolita had been looking back at us a lot while we talked, and she stopped when she saw him fall behind.
“Maybe we should take a break,” she suggested. “We’ve been walking all morning.”
Boden seemed reluctant to stop. When he turned around, he kept walking backwards. He slowed down a bit, since Nolita had stopped, and Daniels, Bishop, and Teddy had been quick to follow suit.
“How far is it to the compound?” Boden asked me. We were now the only two walking, but neither of us was going that fast.
“I’m not sure exactly,” I admitted. “We drove last time. But I’d say it was at least another day’s walk.”
“This is some detour,” he muttered, but he stopped. “All right. Quick break everyone. I have some water in my bag but not much. Drink only what you absolutely have to.”
He dropped the duffel bag to the ground with a heavy thud. He unzipped it and pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to me first, since I was the closest to him. I wanted nothing more than to chug the entire thing, but I’d heard what he said and only took a quick drink before passing it on to Teddy.
After I’d gotten my drink, I sat on the road, lying back on the warm asphalt. Boden lay down near me, his legs bent at the knee and his arm draped over his eyes to block out the sun.
Nobody asked about food on our break, even as they got comfortable and passed around the water. We’d all been through this before. We knew how low provisions were and how sparingly we’d eat.
Our rest stop ended too quickly when Boden abruptly got up and said it was time to move on. Nobody questioned him or complained, which was nice. We all knew what needed to be done. We hadn’t survived this long by being weak.
As the sun began to set, we had to start thinking of a place to camp out. A farmhouse was about a quarter mile off the highway at the end of a long gravel driveway. Since it would be safer than sleeping out in the middle of the road, we headed toward it.
It turned out to be a real find. It was a huge two-story house, and the first-floor windows were all boarded up. When we got to it, I waited outside with Teddy and Daniels while Boden, Nolita, and Bishop went in to make sure it was all clear. I wasn’t used to being the one waiting outside, but I didn’t have a gun, so it made sense.
Once they were certain there were no zombies or anything dangerous inside, we all went in. While there might not have been zombies in the house anymore, there definitely had been at one time. Everything was torn up and destroyed. Blood, zombie and human, was splattered on the walls, the floors, and the broken furniture.
Bishop was in the kitchen when I came in, looking for food. It looked like it had once been a cute, cozy room, with a border around the cupboards of red roosters. But now plates were shattered on the floor, the fridge was turned on its side, and there was a rotting hand in the sink.
“This is such a waste.” Bishop tsked and held up a box of oatmeal for me to see. It looked fine, except the bottom corner had a small hole nibbled in it. When she shook the box, a few oats and several dark brown sprinkles fell out. “There’s mouse shit everywhere. If there was any food, the damn rodents got it.”
“Do you know what we have for food?” I asked.