Love in the Time of the Dead (19 page)

“All right, Mel has told me a little about what is going on with you, but let’s start from the beginning. How long have you known of your immunity to Dead bites?”

“Don’t you want to see the bites first?” she asked him.

“I’ll get to that. Mel is a pretty straight shooter and I believe what she has told me. How long?” he repeated.

“Two years.”

“And what were your side effects?”

“Heightened sense of smell.”

He pulled a small pen light out of his medical coat pocket and flicked them to her eyes. “Any vision loss or change in eye color?”

“None that I could tell.”

“Any dietary changes, or wants?”

“None. I was always a meat eater, but I still prefer it cooked, and animal in nature.”

On and on it went. Dr. Mackey seemed as if he would never run out of questions for her, and he jotted every answer down on a brown clipboard. When he was finished grilling her, he finally asked to see the bite scar on her leg and then the newer one on her side. Her wounds were all in different stages of healing, and Dr. Mackey cleaned them and bandaged the ones that needed it. Her new bite and the gash on her hand were the worst, so she sported sanitary looking white bandages on both.

“Come with me,” the doctor told her, and he led her to a room in the back of the building.

Inside, Dr. Mackey had set up an impressive lab equipped with microscopes, stacks of charts, and medical machines with functions she couldn’t even guess at.

“I think the source of your immunity comes from both your blood and your living tissue. I will need samples of both.”

Well, that sounded painful. She squared her shoulders and tried to wipe any emotion from her face.

“We’ll try to take only small samples of tissue but you will have to give blood regularly until I can get us closer to figuring you out. I have a small team who will be assisting us. You will meet them later. They have a day off today unless we have an emergency. We’ll take some tissue samples and draw your blood before you leave here if you’re feeling up to it.”

He said the last sentence as if he were asking her a question, so she nodded. Not even a little part of her wanted to do any of that, but she had promised Jarren she’d try. And she’d be damned if she was going to invite him back to haunt her for not following through with her promises.

“Let’s get this done, Doc. I have a riveting day ahead of me at the gardens.”

He chuckled and prepared a short row of medical instruments and a roll of gauze. “I take it you don’t appreciate your new job assignment.”

“Let’s put it this way. If I had a choice between picking weeds or petting a porcupine, I’d pick the latter.”

“Well, you are in luck then, because as per doctor’s orders, on the days you have to give blood I insist you lie down in my office for observation for at least an hour before you go to work there.”

“Whoa, doc. You sure know how to charm a lady.”

“I’m afraid my wife would thoroughly disagree,” he said with a laugh. “All right, Laney. Where would you like your scars?” He held a terrifying instrument that was shaped like a metal tube with a rectangular blade on the end.

She looked away. Best if she didn’t watch. “Let’s keep the party centralized.” She lifted her shirt and pointed to the area directly beside the bite. It would look mangled even after it had healed so what would a few more scars hurt? It wasn’t like boys were lining up to ogle her bare body anyway.

“Okay. You’re going to feel a pinch, but it will be over before you know it.”

“Pinch, my ass.” Laney lifted her shirt enough to glare at four small red slivers that had been covered with butterfly bandages on her hip bone. Those little suckers had burned like a hot iron when Doc not-so-gently took them. They were large enough that they would scar, but small enough that over time they would be unassuming. The first of many. Dr. Mackey had been true to his word and insisted that she rest for an hour after he drew her blood, but the time had come to head to the gardens to start work. Goody.

She scuffled along slowly. She didn’t mean to meander, but the scenery was breathtaking. It was baffling how small groups of happily chatting residents who passed her on the trail could ignore such a view. Would she ever get used to it as they obviously had? Hopefully not.

The doctor had given her spotty directions to the entrance of the gardens, and after half an hour of bumbling around the wrong trails, she finally stumbled upon a hand painted sign that read
This way to Gardens
with an arrow. Another pointed to a trail that would lead to the antique sawmill Nick had told her about. Sean was working there. She shook her head like the obnoxious thoughts would leave by way of ear and headed toward the gardens.

Two armed men guarded an exit to the colony. She pulled up short and looked back in the direction of the sign she had followed. She could have sworn it pointed to the path she was on.

“You looking for the gardens?” one of the guards asked.

“Yeah, did I get turned around?”

“Nope,” he answered. “You’re in the right spot.” He pulled out a clipboard and scanned a list of names. “Laney?” he guessed.

“That’s me.”

“Come on through.” He and the other guard opened a tall wooden gate and let her pass. “You’re pretty late for your first day on the job.”

She smiled. “I like to make a good first impression.”

“I can tell. Good luck with that.”

She waved and found herself on a narrow path edged in thick barbed wire fence.

“I wouldn’t touch the fences,” the guard called out. “They’ll lay you out.”

“Eeeeuh,” she muttered, pulling her arms in closer to her sides.

The path led her about a quarter of a mile outside of the colony gates. She scented the air often and scanned the trees for any signs of Deads. The Dead Run River gates had provided a safety she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was amazing the difference when she was all alone, exposed between the electrified barbs. Pausing, she tilted her head back and looked skyward to the top of the wooden fence looming in front of her. Unlike the partial pine fence that was in progress around the colony, this one had been completed. The fence line followed a jagged path, connecting still living trees with rows of felled pines between them. She pushed gently on the gate, but it didn’t give. She pushed again, throwing her weight behind it, and still nothing happened. She stepped back and looked up again. The sun shone over the top of the mountainous gate, a blinding orb that threw rays of light onto the pine needle carpet below.

“Knocky, knocky,” she called out.

A latch clicked and the wooden door swung open slowly to reveal two more armed guards. One of them pulled a walkie talkie to his lips. “Yeah, she’s here.”

“Copy that,” came the static laced voice on the other end.

“You’re late,” the guard said.

“Got a doctor’s note.”

The guard snorted and shook his head in amusement. “You’re supposed to report to Vanessa.” He waited and stared at her as if she should recognize that name and then shake in her boots.

“Awesome, thanks,” she said, skirting around the guard and into the garden gates.

She squinted at movement in the distance and headed up a main walking path that cut right through the center of the farming area. When she reached a woman working feverishly with a hoe over rows of small plants, she asked directions to the apparently very scary Vanessa. The woman stood straight up and wiped her sweating forehead with the back of her long sleeved shirt. She took in Laney’s appearance with an expression completely unreadable, and finally jerked her head in the direction of a small cluster of storage buildings.

“Thanks,” she murmured before she strode down a thin walking path that led to the buildings.

A woman was bent over three burlap sacks overflowing with some sort of leafy greens. Laney cleared her throat, but the woman ignored her and hoisted a sack up onto a small trailer pulled by a four-wheeler instead.

“Excuse me,” she said in a tone that dared to be ignored.

The woman turned around and glared at her.

“Shit,” Laney muttered as she looked into the ferocious glare of Vanessa. The girl who witnessed the most embarrassing moment of her life to date. The girl who had slammed the door on her friendly wave that morning. The girl who had attached herself to Mitchell’s side like a barnacle almost immediately after their arrival.

“Vanessa, I presume. Lovely to meet you,” she said cheerily. Or as cheerily as one can manage through gritted teeth.

“You’re late.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? Look, I might as well let you know it won’t be the last time.”

“And why is that?”

“Ahh, you’ll have to take that up with Dr. Mackey.”

“Oh. Got an STD?”

Laney glared. “Or Mel. You could take it up with Mel.”

“I saved a special job for you,” Vanessa said. “There is a great big pile of fertilizer over by that building. Make yourself useful and shovel it into the wheelbarrow next to it. Then distribute it evenly over that section over there.” Vanessa jabbed a finger at a plot of land to their left. “The big one.”

Unamused, Laney asked, “You want me to shovel poop?”

“I do, and since I’m running the gardens, you get to answer to me. If I feel you aren’t doing your job adequately, and make no mistake, Ms. Landry, I’m not an easy girl to please, then I will, as you recommended, take it up with Mel.” Vanessa smiled as if she were thoroughly enjoying herself. “If you hurry you could be done by Friday.”

Chapter Thirteen

L
ANEY
G
ENTLY
F
LEXED
H
ER
B
LISTERED
H
ANDS
. The shovel wasn’t a kind tool to those who had never used one before. The only area spared on her hands was the heavily bandaged part that protected her cut.

The day hadn’t been her best one, but it definitely didn’t go down in the history books as one of her worst ones either. Her side was uncomfortable and itchy as she sweated freely from physical exertion into the tiny wounds Dr. Mackey had made. Her other injuries were screaming with the hard labor she had forced onto her body. Lunch had been called only for her to find out that she was supposed to pick up a sack lunch from the kitchen before her work day. She also was made aware that she was supposed to bring her canteen to work with her own water. Thankfully, a teenaged boy named Nelson had offered her a drink out of his canteen just as she thought she would die of thirst. He was young, awkward, and a little wonky-eyed, but he was nice enough, so she didn’t mind that he spent a substantial amount of his time looking at her chest. He had shared his water and he certainly wasn’t the first pervy glancer she had met. She could throw him a bone, so to speak.

Shoveling manure had been monotonous and laborious work, but she had done it without complaint. Even the fact that she smelled like a cow tail couldn’t keep away the little shiver of excitement at the thought of seeing Sean at dinner. The downside would be that Vanessa would no doubt be attached at the femur to Mitchell and sitting at her table, but she had learned to take the good with the bad.

She couldn’t even put a finger on why the girl bothered her so much. Mitchell was a grown man, free to bone whatever ditzy skank he wanted to. Far be it from her to judge his bad taste. She had spent three years searching for Adam Not-Worth-The-Effort Leary. Stones and glass houses.

“Hey, wait up!” a girl’s voice sounded from behind her.

She turned on the small path that connected the colony to the gardens. It was the young woman who had given her a towel at the showers. “Hey,” Laney said, smiling and genuinely happy to see Eloise again. After Vanessa’s maiming glares all day, a friendly face was as unexpected as it was comforting.

Eloise was attractive, with sandy brown hair and a light smattering of freckles across her nose, making her look much younger than she probably really was. “How was your first day?”

“It was glorious. I have a newfound respect for fertilizer.”

Eloise laughed. “You’re funny.”