Save Me (8 page)

~Chapter Six~

By the time we left the cabin daylight gave way to late afternoon. Will tried to change his mind about leaving, instead wanting to spend the night. He didn't think I was ready for the trip but I assured him I'd be fine. I don't think he was any more convinced than I was, but he relented and we were on our way. I think he just wanted to get out of that cabin. It wasn't the greatest place to be out in the middle of the woods. It wasn't secure from the living or the dead. Not to mention it was the place five of his friends had died. I couldn't even imagine having to walk away and leave my friends there like that. Wherever I had been since the outbreak usually provided us with the opportunity to bury our dead and at least say goodbye. Will had to just walk away with no closure.

I had no idea how Will expected us to get back to the basement before dark until I saw the motorcycle at the end of the dirt road that led up to the cabin. It was a good thing we had the bike, because my head was not only throbbing, but spinning as well. I had tripped three times on the way to the bike. Will needed to hold on to my arm to keep me on my feet. I was kind of nervous about taking the bike in my current condition but the choice between that and walking all the way back to the basement was a no brainer. I sure hope Will knew what he was doing though, because I had never been on a motorcycle before. He put the helmet on me and fastened it snugly under my chin. Then he climbed on the bike, motioning for me to do the same. I wasn't sure this was the best idea, but down the road we went.

By the time we made it to the basement, it was already dark. We would have made it sooner but we had to pull over three times on the way so I could puke. This concussion really sucked. By the third time we stopped, I was sure I wasn't going to make it all the way back. Will pleaded with me to give it one more try. I held on to him so tightly I wasn't sure he could breathe. My head was spinning and it felt as if my brain was going to bust through my eye sockets. Finally, we made it home. It felt strange to use that word, home. Before the whole outbreak, that's exactly what it was. By the time I left however, home was so far away from what I felt for that place. Now though, maybe it could be home again. It felt different being there with Will.

"You okay?" Will looked over me like he was trying to decide if he needed to carry me down the stairs or not. I probably should have answered honestly. I was definitely not okay. I wasn't about to admit that though. A girl had to have a little bit of pride. And since I already had to have Will help me walk and hold my hair back as I puked on the side of the road, I was already low in that area.

"Yes."

As soon as I answered, I knew things were about to get worse. I could hear Will repeating my name but it sounded like it was coming from a distance. Everything became really fuzzy and I felt my legs give out from under me, back to the wonderful abyss of unconsciousness.

When I woke up, I was in my bed back in my old room in the basement. I had no idea how long I had been asleep but by the faint light peeking through the bedroom door, I figured it was at least morning. Will was sitting on a chair he pulled up to the bed beside me looking like he was on a deathwatch.

"Hey," I whispered, trying to reassure him that I was alright. I didn't think it was possible, but my head was hurting even more than before. I remembered the stash of pain meds we had down here and tried to get up to find some.

"Oh no you don't! You are staying right there." The look on Will's face made it clear he wasn't letting me leave this bed. "Whatever you need I can get for you."

"My head..." My voice trailed off. It was just too painful to even talk.

"I'll get you something. You stay here. I mean it." He turned back before leaving the room to make sure I wasn't trying to follow him. He sure was getting bossy.

I hadn't shown Will the medical supplies, although he didn't seem to have trouble finding them. He returned with two pills and a bottle of water. I glanced down at the pills he handed me. Over-the-counter pain relievers were not what I had in mind. I was thinking more like half a bottle of that stuff my cousin Marie took when she had her wisdom teeth pulled. I tried to protest, but I just didn't have it in me. Will could tell I wasn't happy with his choice of pain meds.

"Andi, you have a concussion. I think you should stick with these at least until you are not passing out anymore." He was not about to budge on the subject and I was sure I couldn't fight him like this. I swallowed the pills begrudgingly. I guess if they helped even a little it would be better than how it was now.

"Are you hungry?" Will's stomach growled from emptiness. I shook my head. There was no way I was going to put anything else in my stomach that I knew would inevitably come back up.

"You should eat though." Just because I couldn't eat didn't mean he should starve.

"I'm not leaving you." His stomach growled again in protest.

"Will, please," I whispered. "I want you to eat." I yawned as the drowsiness crept back. I felt like I could sleep for days. I never wanted to experience a concussion ever again!

Will didn't look happy about leaving me but he finally agreed. He needed to keep his strength up since I was clearly useless right now. He looked tired, like he hadn't slept in days. Which actually, he probably hadn't. I couldn't imagine the same boy who teared up looking at what the cousins had done to me, sleeping soundly while he knew I was with them.

I could hear Will in the kitchen putting together some dinner. He really was helpful to have around. All the time I spent in the basement with Jacob and Zach, they never once helped out with what they called 'women's work'. No cooking, laundry, cleaning up. Nothing. In the short time I had known Will, he cooked nearly every meal we had, cleaned up most of the mess, killed our dinner, saved me from flesh eating zombies and rescued me from two murderous cousins. A girl really couldn't find a better boy to have around. I thought about how hard I tried to get rid of him at first and how mean I had been to him. And when the cousins had taken me, I blamed Will for not stopping them. Of course, it wasn't his fault. He didn't abandon me as I had first thought. He saved me. He really was my hero. Even if he didn't have his pink pony t-shirt anymore. Okay, I needed to get over this concussion because it was screwing with my head. Next thing you know and I'll be thinking about Will's soft red lips and how much I wanted to...

Sleep came whether I wanted it to or not. In my dreams I was running through the woods yelling for my father. I couldn't understand why I couldn't find him. There was an old woman standing near a fire holding on to a tall cane, too tall for her short stature. I stopped to ask her why she was out there all alone and she just laughed wildly at me and pointed to the fire. In the fire was a number of human heads. They were screaming voiceless horror through the flames. The faces looked familiar but I couldn't quite place them. The old woman tried to pull at me, still pointing to the fire and laughing. I managed to break free of her and ran until I came up to a river. I had to decide whether I was going to go back or try to cross the river. It looked deep and the current was moving at a fast pace. I turned to go back but the sound of the old woman cackling in the forest reached my ears changing my mind. I knew my only real choice was to cross the river, but I couldn't bring myself to step into the frigid water.

"Andi?" Will nudged me gently.

I opened my eyes slowly, trying to figure out where I was. Nothing looked familiar at first, only Will. His concerned face peering down at me gave me comfort. My head thumped along with the beat of my heart. Slowly my surroundings came into focus and my brain sorted out the details of where I was and why. I reached for the water bottle to moisten my dry throat but Will leaned over and handed it to me before I could get near it.

"You okay? You were saying something about not going forward or back." Will felt my forehead like a parent does to check for a fever in their child.

"I'm fine." I managed to sit myself up a little easier this time. My head still hurt but it was noticeably better than earlier. I looked at Will sitting there keeping watch at my bedside. I could tell he was exhausted. "Why don't you get some sleep? You look like crap."

For the first time since we met up with the cousins, Will laughed. I hadn't realized before how much I loved that sound. It was contagious.

"Thanks a lot."

I patted the bed next to me, trying to entice him into getting some rest.

"Okay, okay, I'll take a short nap but you have to promise to wake me if you need anything or if you feel any worse." Will eyed me skeptically.

"I promise," I said, giving him a sweet smile and trying to be convincing.

Will looked over at the bed beside me then turned to check out his other options. He got up from his bedside vigil and walked over to the bunk beds across the room and climbed into the bottom bunk. I shot him a confused look. He could have just slept here with me. It was the biggest bed in the room and after he had slept next to me in the cabin I wondered why he wouldn't just climb into my bed and sleep there.

It took Will all of about 30 seconds to fall into a deep sleep. The poor boy must have been exhausted. I sat for awhile watching him sleep. Instead of the peaceful, little boy look he had that first night I saw him sleep, he looked older, concerned, like something within him had changed. His eyelids fluttered and he gripped the pillow tight. It made me sad to see him like this. I know he had been upset, especially after he had seen me in the cabin all bloody and bruised, but it wasn't as bad as it looked, at least on the outside. I'd be fine. I missed the happy, carefree Will. Even in a zombie apocalypse, he was able to laugh and make jokes. That wasn't something you saw often nowadays.

I made my way to the bathroom to clean up and change into some fresh clothes. I was wearing one of Will's t-shirts somehow, but I couldn't remember changing. The last couple days had been a blur. Hanging on a clothesline across the shower, I found Will's black t-shirt with the pink pony and slipped it on with some clean yoga pants. I was no longer feeling nauseated so I decided to get something small to eat and take some more pain medication. I wanted to take something stronger and be done with this headache for awhile but I knew Will wouldn't be happy about that so I stuck with the stuff he had given me earlier.

The photo album Will had found was sitting out on the coffee table in the living room. I hadn't seen it since I was little. So many happy memories forever saved within the pages. I used to take it down from the bookshelf upstairs and hide it in my room so I could look at it with a flashlight at bedtime. Mom always knew what I was doing but she pretended not to know. She was like that though. She could always tell when you were lying or keeping something from her but she never let on. She would go along, pretending she wasn't wise to your secret. I didn't have words to describe how much I missed Mom. After what I'd been through with Bo and Lucas, I just wanted to feel her arms around me, to feel safe.

Although the basement was filled with books and other remnants of my mother, I wanted something more personal that I could keep with me. When we gathered our belongings to bring down to the basement we all knew that whatever we left may not be there when we were finally able to return. Mom didn't bother with her jewelry or other things around the house. She focused on practical items and photographs. I knew she had some jewelry in the safe upstairs which she figured would be safe I guess. I decided to go and have a look.

~Chapter Seven~

I took a quick peek in on Will. He was still asleep, his face buried in the pillow. He must have been so exhausted. He looked like he would sleep the whole day. I quietly closed the bedroom door and made my way upstairs. The house was in pretty good shape considering no one had actually lived up here in almost two years. Many of the houses I had been in since the outbreak were not nearly as lucky. People picked over them and took anything they could use. Hell, even I had taken my share of items from abandoned homes. These days you had to take what you could to survive. Anyone who left their home had to know that it was a good possibility if they actually returned, it wouldn't be how they left it. I could tell some stuff was missing and some furniture was overturned, but nothing that really mattered. I couldn't blame anyone for trying to survive. Personally, I tried to take only what I needed to live. I've met people who take all kinds of stuff they certainly don't need. One guy had a collection of cell phones. I mean, what do you need that for? I guess he was optimistic that the outbreak would be temporary and when everything went back to normal, he would sell them or something. In the early days, we tried to believe that the scientists would figure this all out and eventually we could go back to our old lives. We would huddle around the radio and listen to the news reports. At first, they ran 24 hours a day. After awhile though, they became more and more sporadic. Eventually, the radio stopped all together. I came across an old man not that long ago, Benny, I think his name was, who still listened to his hand-crank emergency radio. He insisted that sooner or later the military would start broadcasting and let us know they had found a cure.

We did get some information from those news reports in the early days. Of course, it didn't take a radio broadcast to get the idea of what was happening. We were living through an actual zombie apocalypse. It still seems funny when I hear myself say that out loud. Zombie apocalypse. It just seems comical. The scientists on the news told us that the 'outbreak' was some sort of virus. They claimed they were working on a vaccine and possibly a cure. They gave us the helpful information about transmission being spread through a bite from an infected individual and how to kill the bastards. All of it, information we all had by then. What they didn't tell us was that you could get infected even by a scratch and that unless you were killed during infection, it took days to turn. If the bite did kill you, it could take anywhere from a couple hours to a day or so for the full transformation to occur. If you lived through it, you were definitely one of the unlucky ones. Those poor bastards had to endure the pain, high fever and gradual death of their body and mind. There were occasional stories of people whose body fought off the infection and survived. In nearly two years, I hadn't seen that happen. Most people believed it was just an urban legend. Others believed that it was true but the military secretly came and took the ones who survived to experiment on. Since I hadn't even seen a single member of the military, I tended to believe it was just a story people told so they could have some hope.