It’s a horrible twist of fate that I have to depend on the very person who put me in this position.
Pestilence’s arms slide under my body and he lifts me up. I yelp at the sharp stab of pain that lances through me at the movement. To my eternal humiliation, I wrap my arms around the horseman’s neck to ease some of the pressure on my back.
The position puts me uncomfortably close to the horseman’s mouth, and I have the misfortune of noticing how his upper lip is fuller than his bottom one.
He carries me to the bathroom wordlessly, depositing me on the toilet, even though my pants are still on. I finger the denim covering my lower half. I’m wearing mom jeans, a.k.a., the minivans of the pants world. I most definitely didn’t dress myself in these.
Which means …
Ugh.
Horseman saw my lady goods again.
Said horseman looms over me. “Try to escape again—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pestilence scowls then steps outside of the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He must know I’m in no state to go anywhere, or else I doubt he’d leave me alone in here.
That, or he knows he can just shoot you down again if you try to hobble away again.
I go to the bathroom, flushing the toilet behind me.
“Pestilence!” I call out when I’m done, leaning heavily against the counter where I managed to rinse my hands.
When he comes in, I all but collapse in his arms.
This time, when I wrap my arms around his neck, I feel too pitiful to even be humiliated.
He nudges open the door to my room and puts me back in the bed.
“I thought you forbid me to sleep,” I say, as he slides his hands out from beneath me.
This close to him, I can see the crystalline blue of his eyes. They’re the color of the sky on a clear day. Above them, his crown sits, the sight of it a grim reminder of who he is.
Those eyes of his narrow, and his already pouty mouth turns down. “Don’t make me regret my kindnesses.”
I really think he needs to reevaluate what that word means.
Before I have a chance to respond, he slips out of the room, and I’m alone once more.
It’s another two days before I’m strong enough to leave the bed on my own.
Until then, Pestilence has taken to feeding me (and judging by his food choices, he has no idea what people actually eat) and taking me to and from the bathroom.
In other words, it’s been a spanking good time.
Not.
When the horseman wasn’t tending to me, I spent my time sleeping. Sleeping and dreaming strange dreams where my parents hovered nearby, just out of reach, and they murmured to me, and sometimes they shouted, and in the end, they just coughed weakly before fading from sight.
Now I step into the hallway on shaky legs, thrilling at the feel of finally being mobile. Not that I’m back to normal or anything. Everything still hurts, even my lungs, and I shouldn’t be out of bed, but I need to pee, and I’m tired of having to flag down Pestilence.
It’s only after I’ve used the toilet and dipped my head to the bathroom’s sink to drink my weight in water that I decide to explore the home I’ve been crashing in.
When I leave the bathroom, I take a moment to listen. If the horseman is nearby, he doesn’t make his presence known. But I seriously doubt he is. Now that the two of us have established some sort of routine, one where I shout and shout his name and he only sometimes comes, I’m beginning to think that the only time he’s actually loitering about in this house is when he brings me food and water or helps me to the bathroom.
Not going to think about the fact that he’s been tending to me. I’m going to remember that he shot me in the back—twice—then dragged me through the snow until the pain was so great I passed out from it. I’m going to remember that he’s still moving from town to town, bringing plague with him and towing me along for the ride.
We’re enemies, plain and simple. He hasn’t forgotten that since I shot him. I should make sure I don’t forget that either, no matter how helpful he’s been since.
A buzzing noise draws my attention to the ceiling. Overhead, a light glows softly. That’s the first I notice that this house has electricity, a luxury for a home these days. Lucky ducks. The apartment I lived in never did. It was oil lamps and lanterns all the way for me.
I walk down the hallway, moving towards what looks to be the living room and the kitchen beyond. Now that my most urgent needs are taken care of, I can feel the twisting throb of my empty stomach beneath the other, sharper pains.
Anything at this point will be better than the strange food combos Pestilence thinks to bring me, like mustard and uncooked pasta. I’m just spit-balling here, but if I had to guess, I’d say the horseman ain’t too familiar with human cuisine.
The air in this place has a stale taste to it, like it’s been shuttered up for too long in the heat, leaving perishable goods to spoil.
The images hanging alongside the walls on either side of me catch my attention. Family photos. My gut clenches. It’s easy to get swept away by the most obvious horrors of the apocalypse and forget that the people who’ve been affected have families just like me.
My eyes move from photo to photo, the images arranged in sequential order. First it’s embarrassing baby pictures—the kind where your parents pose you naked and think you’re absolutely adorable until you’re older and then they’re just the shit your friends make fun of when they stumble upon them.
These pictures are followed by sweet toddler photos, then toothless grins of elementary school kids. Inevitably, these morph into family photos which somehow look outdated, between the large lacy collar the wife wears, the giant bifocals that make her husband’s eyes all the more beady, and the mullet-like haircuts of their two boys.
I touch the frame, smiling a little at the sight. How old are these two boys now? In their thirties? Forties? Do they have families of their own?
The photos come to an abrupt halt with the end of the hallway, and I step into the living room.
I swallow down a yelp.
There’s a man lying on a navy sectional, clad in only a pair of boxers, and something’s very wrong with him. Everywhere that his clothes don’t cover, hundreds of small lumps press up from beneath the skin. To my horror some of those lumps have split open, revealing blood and pus and other slick things that have me tasting bile at the back of my throat.
I’ve seen a lot of disturbing things during my few years as a firefighter, but nothing like this.
There’s a cloying smell in the air, one I hadn’t noticed earlier. It’s the scent of infection—rot.
He's caught the Fever.
A shameful part of me wants to get as far away from this man as I can. He’s undoubtedly contagious.
You’re a first responder, Burns. This is what it means in the end. Sacrifice, and if need be, death.
My eyes move back to the man’s face. His hair is a dull brown that’s losing its battle to gray, and his face has that worn, stretched appearance that skin starts to get in a person’s forties. And his bloodshot eyes, they stare at me listlessly as his chest rises and falls just the barest amount.
Dear God, he’s still alive.
Chapter 10
Pestilence wanted me to see this. I know it as surely as I know my own name. Physically hurting me was only part of my punishment for trying to end him. This is the other part—to watch death at its most abhorrent.
No, not to just watch it. And not just to be powerless to stop it, but to accompany Pestilence like a co-conspirator, to make me play some role in spreading the disease.
I stare at the man, rooted to the spot, trying to remember all the stories I heard about this plague.
The news had mentioned the lumps. How they could swell and cover every inch of the body. And how, towards the final stages of the disease, they’d burst open like overripe fruit as the person’s body decayed from the inside out.