Age of Z: A Tale of Survival (24 page)

She couldn't seem to get warm anymore, no matter how much she huddled into her thick jacket that she'd traded for back at New Avalon. Between the weather, the lack of food and rest on top of grueling travel conditions, and the constant strain of keeping an eye and an ear out for zoms, she realized she was steadily getting worse.

It was absolutely confirmed for her when the coughing started, part-way through the miserable week. At first she didn't think much of it, with the occasional cough here or there, but when she was still hacking a few hours later she began realizing she was actually getting sick.

Still, it was just a cough, which was unfortunate but not the end of the world. The cold was just getting to her, that was all. It wasn't anything important, and she'd get over it just fine once the weather started warming up a little.

Casey noticed it, inevitably, but when he asked if she was okay, with his normally grumpy expression drawing into a deeper frown of confusion, Alexa brushed it off and insisted she was fine. Just a cough. Nothing special.

Casey did not appear entirely convinced, but Alexa knew he couldn't exactly argue, either. He'd never been sick after all, and Alexa was well aware that medical information was not one of the things covered in that massive index of information in his head, meaning Casey was out of his depth on this one.

Alexa had never steered him wrong before, so he'd have to assume she was correct on this one, which let Alexa bend the truth just a teensy bit. No point in worrying her companion, after all, not when Casey already had to handle more than his fair share of the work on the road.

Alexa did start to worry to herself, though, when a few more days passed and the coughing still hadn't gone away.

In fact, it had gotten worse, with much deeper, dragging coughs and fits that came more often. Sometimes she felt like she was having a harder time breathing in between, too, like she couldn't get quite enough air.

She kept her concerns to herself, but inwardly she was starting to worry, just a little. Getting sick while traveling through zom territory was bad. It had happened to her a few times before, and even though she'd been lucky enough to be close to major settlements and had been able to retreat for proper rest, those times had still been pretty terrifying.

This was worse, far worse; they were still in no-man's land, barely across the state line into Indiana and still a good three hundred miles from the military base they were aiming for. At their current snail's pace they were still at least three weeks from reaching any sort of safe haven, and probably it would be even longer than that, with the number of zoms they'd seen since hitting central U.S.

If she didn't start getting better soon, she was going to be in serious trouble. But without the proper medications or nutrition or a chance to rest safely for a long enough period of time, that probably wouldn't be happening any time soon.

Not good.

To Alexa's immense frustration, despite trying to treat herself quietly with some aspirin and being careful to drink as regularly as she could to stay hydrated, she found that her cough had still not retreated a few days later, even though the weather had shifted to becoming humid and sunny once again two days ago.

Despite the newly returned heat she also found herself shivering in her jacket frequently. It was getting harder and harder to push herself to keep up with even their usual slow traveling pace; she tired much faster than before, and sometimes by the end of a long march her legs all but collapsed underneath her, when they finally found shelter. She was getting worse, and she knew it.

More frustrating still was that by that point Casey was really starting to catch on, and regarded Alexa's continual insistence that she was 'totally fine' with more and more skepticism.

“You don't sound right,” the clone observed out loud once, with his usual bluntness. “Your breathing sounds... different. You look paler, but your face is flushed.” Great–if he was right then Alexa was developing a fever, too. Not good.

But out loud all she said was, “We've been walking a while, I'm tired, of course I'm breathing different. And it's hot out, so no wonder I'm flushed.”

“It's never happened before.”

“Have I ever told you it's kinda weird that you're this aware of any changes in me? I mean, don't get me wrong, I guess I'm flattered, but keep it up and I'm gonna start getting the wrong idea about you, y'know?”

Casey scowled at her, but didn't pursue the topic further. Alexa thanked her lucky stars she could run her mouth off as easily as she did even when she was perfectly healthy, and the deflection had done the trick–this time, at least.

She hoped it would hold, although she noticed that Casey kept glancing her when he thought Alexa wasn't looking, as if surreptitiously trying to check on Alexa's progress and keep an eye on her without letting on that he was. Alexa grit her teeth and tried hard to ignore it.

Her deflection lasted another day, as she put near super-human effort into keeping herself moving despite being as drained as she was; choking her coughs down, and fighting back unnatural shivers in the late-August heat.

Unfortunately for her, the arrival of yet another pack of zoms in the afternoon, the inevitable precursor to several hours of grueling running, dodging, and evading, finally exposed her secret in full to her traveling companion.

They'd barely been pushing themselves for twenty minutes, it was broad daylight, and they were at a comfortable distance from the zoms trailing them, with reasonable probability that they'd be able to ditch the walking dead safely before nightfall–in other words, superb conditions for this neck of the woods.

So there was really no excuse for Alexa to be breathing as hard as she was, especially when she'd proven she could run for hours with no trouble in the past. And there was no avoiding the way she crashed to the pavement and could not make her shaky, weak limbs push herself back up again.

Casey jogged a good ten paces ahead before he realized Alexa was no longer behind him and shot back to her with a frown on his face, which deepened when he caught sight of Alexa's pretty pathetic attempts to haul herself to her feet. The zoms were far enough back that Casey actually had the gall to pause and cross his arms angrily over his chest, glaring down at Alexa as he stood over her.

“Don't give me that look,” Alexa rasped at him, although speaking was difficult at this point, when breathing was practically impossible. “Just help me up or something, must've twisted my leg, I can manage from there–”

“You're a terrible liar,” Casey growled at her–it was that same warning tone he typically took right before smashing a zom, or when sizing up a potential threat. Alexa had never hid it focused on her before, and her attempts to rise fell still in surprise.

Before she could regain her voice, Casey hauled her up completely, carrying her bridal style, and snapped, “I
knew
something was wrong with you!”

Alexa tried to protest, but Casey's glare was vicious–even scarier than the look Blake gave her when she was about to do something monumentally stupid. So she snapped her mouth shut meekly, and didn't protest when Casey began running again, this time carrying her.

She felt much too tired and weak to fight back anyway, and there was certainly no way she'd win against him. But that didn't stop her from feeling guilty any, as something dark and heavy rolled around in the pit of her stomach at the thought that she'd screwed up yet again.

Casey was paying for her weakness, forced to cover for both himself and Alexa and risking himself in the process. As if she wasn't already enough of a burden as it was–now she was
literally
weighing him down!

The guilt only increased when Alexa realized that, they were moving at a remarkable pace, faster than usual. It only confirmed Casey had always been holding himself back to keep pace with her. Casey outpaced the zoms with a speed so impressive it made Alexa dizzy–or maybe that was just the illness.

Either way her head was spinning when Casey set her down an hour and a half later, in a small town that the clone had clearly judged to be devoid of zoms. She staggered for a moment when her feet touched the ground again. Casey held her steady by the shoulders until she could stand under her own power.

“You're sick,” Casey said flatly.

Alexa was about to argue that she wasn't, but Casey gave her that same
I can break you in half and we both know it so you'd better tell the truth
look, and she sighed. “Okay fine, I'm a little sick.”

“You collapsed.”

“I'm just tired! It's fine. I'll be fine.” Another spectacular coughing fit arrived at the worse possible moment, completely destroying her argument as she bent over and valiantly attempted to hack up both her lungs.

“You haven't been fine for days. You're getting worse,” Casey accused, as he hovered nearby. He looked like he was preparing to catch Alexa again if she collapsed after that fit.

“These just aren't very good conditions for getting better, okay?” Alexa said, fighting to keep the defensiveness out of her voice and substituting it for placating. Casey didn't like the unknown and he didn't like things he couldn't fight, and it tended to make him aggressive when he came up against them.

It would be a bad idea to trigger that aggression, verbal or otherwise, so best to take a more honest route now. “I'll be fine when we get to the settlement. They should have better medicine there and we'll be able to rest. That's all I need.”

Casey did not look particularly appeased by this, but said, “Fine. Let's find something to eat and look for shelter.”

“LS, it's barely mid-afternoon,” Alexa said disbelievingly. “We can still push for another couple of hours before it starts getting dark.”

Casey shook his head, and said firmly, “No. this place is safe. We don't know if there will be safe places ahead, and you can't keep moving like this anyway today, especially if there are more packs of dead heads down the road. A run like that one we had before will definitely make you worse. A siege won't help either.”

Alexa grit her teeth. Casey had a perfectly valid, practical point, and she could use the rest, and the food. It might even help her current condition. But it would also cut out valuable hours of travel time, and she didn't want to hold Casey up like this, not in the middle of no-man's land when they were getting closer to safety.

That dark, twisting ball of guilt in her stomach grew a little more, but Casey was clearly not taking no for a answer and he was more stubborn than a bull when he dug in his heels, so finally Alexa just nodded in agreement. “Okay.”

Alexa figured that giving in to Casey's demands would be enough to placate him for the moment. But apparently it wasn't enough to ease Casey's worries, because when they started scavenging in the town to look for something edible he decided to follow her.

Normally in a location like this, deemed zom-free by Casey, they tended to split up–it was extremely difficult to find anything of use or value, these days, but splitting up usually increased their chances of finding at least enough to eat.

They usually set up a meeting point and returned within a certain amount of time. If for whatever reason they came across unexpected trouble, both were good enough to escape from it, and Casey was still within hearing distance if Alexa got in over her head, so she could always call for help.

This time Casey abandoned the practice entirely, and stayed within viewing distance of Alexa the entire time as they hunted through buildings and the town outskirts for anything edible. That was when Alexa first started to realize that Casey was not just angry at her for attempting to conceal her illness, but worried for her too, and sticking close so he'd be able to help right away if he had to.

Alexa wasn't really sure what to think about that. Part of her was relieved to have somebody there that actually cared about what happened to her, and very happy that she had this particular somebody. The rest of her just felt guilty, awkward, and more than a little insulted at the prospect of needing a babysitter after figuring out how to survive on her own for over three
years now.

Still, by the end of the scavenging session Alexa supposed she couldn't really blame Casey for hovering nearby, because she'd been pretty much useless and spent most of her time coughing and wobbling about on exhausted legs and waiting for the world to stop spinning.

By the time an hour had passed they'd managed to scrounge up enough food for both of them, barely, and Casey carried it while quietly keeping his free hand curled around Alexa's upper arm, half leading and half holding her up as they made their way to a safe building that Casey had spotted.

Alexa's head felt foggy and thick by that point; she was exhausted and still cold and her throat hurt from coughing too much, and she barely even noticed when Casey seized her around the waist long enough to leap them up to a fire escape.

The door had been locked, but that was no real deterrence to Casey, and soon the lock didn't exist anymore. Alexa idly found herself wondering about how breaking and entering had become so easy and whether or not they would have been criminal masterminds if the world hadn't basically ended, and it took her a second to realize that she was laying on the floor. She hadn't even realized Casey had put her down.

“You should eat something,” Casey told her curtly, “And then you should rest.” Alexa blinked when she realized the clone was crouched in front of her, looking a little concerned.