Thicker than Blood by Madeline Sheehan Page B

my cheeks, dark bruises ringed my eyes,
my nose had a thin cut running across the bridge of it. My bottom
lip was swollen, split in two places, and my neck…
    I swallowed hard, glancing away from the
mirror, vividly recalling what Lawrence’s hand had felt like
wrapped around my throat, his fingertips biting into my skin while
I fought for my breath, while he took what he hadn’t been
given.
    And then the blood. The memory of the blood
covering me, covering the entire room, washed over me in one
suffocating wave, so very real that I could taste the sharp
metallic flavor all over again.
    “Evelyn,” I managed to croak out. Alex bent
down, resting his forearms on top of the open window.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    Not trusting my voice, I simply nodded. He
watched me for one long uncomfortable moment before pointing.
Following his finger, I turned in my seat and took in our
surroundings.
    We appeared to be parked on the side of a
deserted two-lane road, surrounded by mostly open land. I quickly
spotted Evelyn, some several dozen yards away, as she emerged from
behind a large oak tree. She was moving slowly, much slower than
usual, looking disheveled and a bit dazed. I stared at her,
squinting to see her better as she continued down the small incline
of pasture. Her body language, her movements, her facial
expression, it was all wrong and I hardly recognized her. This
appeared to be Evelyn at her lowest, internalizing her pain,
letting it press her down until something as simple as walking
became strenuous.
    I’d only ever seen this Evelyn once before.
The day she’d lost Shawn.
    “Eve!” Alex shouted, bellowing from behind
me, causing my entire body to flinch. “Three o’clock!”
    My eyes darted right and found nothing,
then left, Evelyn’s three o’clock , and my breath caught in my throat. I’d seen the infected
before, God knows I had, too many to count. But even so, they
struck the sort of fear inside of me that no fist, no weapon, no
living person ever could.
    In the beginning, when Thomas and I were
holed up in Evelyn and Shawn’s home, the four of us had waited for
weeks for someone to come and save us—the army, the national guard,
the Red Cross, anyone to take us somewhere safe. During that time,
the infected had been everywhere. Milling down the streets, in
every nook and cranny, pounding on the house, trying to beat their
way inside. Those who had once been our neighbors, friends, and
family had all succumbed to the infection and become monsters.
    I’d even had to endure the horror of watching
my own husband turn, watch as the fever overtook him, as the bloody
pustules formed all over his skin. I watched him cry tears mixed
with blood, and gasp my name with his last few breaths. Then I’d
watched as he awoke, his eyes clouded over, as a garbled cacophony
of hoarse groans and animalistic gurgles erupted from his throat.
And just as he’d lunged for me, his jaw snapping, his teeth bared,
I’d watched as Shawn had speared my beloved husband through the
skull with a butcher knife. The very same butcher knife he’d used
to carve the turkey every Thanksgiving.
    I’d seen the infected in Fredericksville too,
the stragglers who had somehow managed to find themselves at our
walls. But it was always from afar. Even during the one and only
wall breach during the first year, the invasion had been short
lived, resulting in very few fatalities.
    But now here we were, in the great wide
open, just the three of us, the birds, and the three infected
shambling their way toward Evelyn. My only source of relief to draw
from stemmed from the noticeable difference between these infected
and the ones from the beginning. These were slower than I’d
remembered them to be, less steady on their feet, and unable to
move quickly.
    Alex was already jogging around to the
front of the truck, a rifle in his hands. He paused in front of the
hood, drawing himself to his full height. Lifting the weapon to eye
level, he squinted,