I turned and splashed cold water onto my face. Goosebumps flitted across my skin as rivulets ran down my cheeks. In my wavy reflection, my cropped dark hair went out in every direction. I used the water to try to tamp it down, with little success. As I washed up in the cold stream, I dreaded what winter would be like. Even the outhouses being built by each cabin were already cold. Sitting in one when it was ten degrees outside would be absolute torture.
On this brisk morning, we shared the stream with three other bathers, but they were all a hundred or so feet away at their personal stations. Only those at a higher risk for infection, like Clutch, could use the park’s showers. Until the water froze, the rest of us had to use the trout stream to conserve the half-full rural water tower that fed the cabins and campgrounds. With over fifty survivors—and new arriving each week—at the park, the trout stream was never without someone bathing or collecting water. We’d all quickly learned to shed our modesty, though some still clung to old values and had strung up shower curtains next to the stream for changing and bathing.
Each person had their quirks. Life had gotten hard fast, and every single one of us had found ways to survive without going crazy. Taking a cold bath was nothing compared to learning how to walk again with only a general practitioner for a neurosurgeon. I leaned back on my heels, turned, and saw Clutch watching the horizon. My gaze fell on his wheelchair, and I thought of the battle he still fought. Seeing his trampled body following the Camp Fox attack was the worst image of every image haunting my dreams every night. It was worse than the school full of zombie kids, worse than sitting on a hot roof surrounded by a hundred zeds, even worse than all the different ways I’d imagined how my parents must have died during the outbreak.
I hadn’t seen how they died, so I tried to tell myself they went peacefully, that they hadn’t suffered. Like anyone else, I hated seeing those I loved hurt. That’s what terrified me about Clutch. He had been hurt so badly—and still hurt—that it nearly broke my heart every time I saw him wince from pain. And he winced far too often.
If he’d dislocated his back before the outbreak, modern medicine would have had him walking by now. Except there was no longer such a thing as modern medicine. His bones were healing, and the swelling on his spine was going down since he was regaining more sensation every week. Still, even though he had feeling in his legs and could sometimes move his toes, he might not ever walk again.
Since the attack, we hadn’t had sex. While I craved a deeper connection, Clutch couldn’t handle intimacy. He was struggling just trying to hold his personal demons at bay. I was afraid a simple kiss could topple his teeter-totter of control. So, I gave him his space, even though I felt so very alone.
The funny thing was that before the outbreak, I wouldn’t have considered dating Clutch. My parents would never have approved of a blue-collar man fifteen years older than me. We were from two different worlds. It would’ve been a shame, too. Instead, it took a virus to destroy the world for me to find someone whose spirit meshed so perfectly with my spirit.
“What’s wrong?” Clutch asked, and I started, looking up.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
After a moment, he gave a small frown and looked back toward the rising sun.