“What do you think?” Alec asked me.
“Of what?”
“Staying here?” His answer sounded cynical.
I shrugged with my eyes still looking at Gina and Cole in the distance, “Sounds a hell of a lot easier then moving on. I doubt we will find another place like this.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. We should just keep moving.”
“Why?”
He didn’t say anything just stared at Gina and Cole making their way into the house. Cole’s arm was still wrapped around Gina’s shoulders.
“Oh.” I said, “I didn’t realize that you had grown to like her in that way.”
He gnarled, “I just lost my wife and daughter, don’t you dare fucking think that I have feelings for any other woman!” He turned his back to me and walked over to a tree that was across the road, but not far behind us.
I watched him sit down and sighed. It wasn’t jealousy that made my brother want to leave, instead treachery. He had some feelings for Gina that I hadn’t seen before and he thought it would dishonor his love for his wife and daughter. Gina would be a temptation and he didn’t want to put himself in that position.
I walked over to him and sat down, “I’ll do whatever you decide, Alec.”
He pressed his lips together, then shook his head. “I miss them so much, Elly.” Tears began to swell in his eyes. “Lesley, Lauren, Olivia, Mom, and Dad, all of them. They are gone forever. We’ll never see them again, and I can’t help but feel like I am a traitor to them for staying alive. As if I sacrificed them for my own selfishness. Why the hell didn’t I die too? Why couldn’t I have been taken?”
I placed my arm around him and rubbed his shoulder, “I wish I had an answer, Alec. I really do. I’ve been asking myself those same questions since this all started.”
“Lauren was the love of my life, before all this I couldn’t imagine myself without her. Now, I thank God that she isn’t here. She would never be strong enough to survive this and I wish that I wasn’t either.” His voice broke as he spoke and the tears began to fall down his cheeks. I knew that he finally felt safe enough here to let his emotions take over. He could finally release all the pressure and pain that he had kept locked away for so many months.
“Everyone was affected by this. We are all hurting inside, but for some reason we have survived. You and me, we managed. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow and I wish that I could tell you that everything will be alright. The truth is, I really don’t know.” I sniffled trying to hold back my tears and be the big sister.
He didn’t say anything just continued to cry and lay his head on my shoulder.
“Remember how we use to talk about mother nature finally getting rid of her pests. That eventually we would push her too hard and she would fight back. Maybe the time of humans has past. Maybe she wanted to send us back a few hundred years and stop us.”
“Maybe we did die and this is hell.” He said.
“Maybe.” I nodded my head. “I want an answer of how and why just as much as you do. I know that knowing the why would make me feel so much better, but I doubt we will ever know. This just is. We can accept to live by these new rules or we can die. Those are our options.”
I rubbed his upper arm as I watched them finish placing the frame of the barn up. Alec just cried and I let him soak my shoulder without a complaint. It was time for him to let it all go and I knew that I was the only one he could do this with. I wish there was someone that I could release on, normally it would have been my mother. Alec wouldn’t be able to handle his own pain along with my own, so I held strong.
He needed me to be his big sister in those moments. The big sister who chased off his bully when he was a kid. The big sister who force fed him his medicine when she babysat. The big sister who had all of life’s answers and was so sure of everything. I couldn’t be a scared human being, but instead the all mighty protector.
As he cried I thought about all that we had been through and knew that it was far from over now. We still had to make this community work and decide what we would do with ourselves now. I doubted that these people needed a police officer and army sergeant. We would have to find other jobs to make ourselves useful here.
“We should have done everything to save her.” Alec mumbled.
“Who?”
“We risked our lives for Gina and Mabel, but not our own sister. We were too worried about injuring ourselves and we abandoned her.”
I shook my head, “We didn’t abandon her. We had to prepare ourselves first, not just jump blindly into his lair. Olivia wouldn’t have wanted us to get ourselves killed.”
“We could have tried harder.”
“We did the best that we could. We had no idea that the zombie was going to… do what he did. It wasn’t our fault.” I lied, as I had felt like it was since the moment I had seen her lifeless body. I couldn’t let Alec suffer that thought and had to put it at ease.
He sighed, “I’m glad you think that.”
“So, is it Gina that makes you want to leave?”
“She reminds me of Lauren.”
I nodded, “Yeah, I get that vibe from her as well. Strong but soft at the same time.”
“I hate her for it. I know that I shouldn’t, but it pisses me off whenever she makes me think of Lauren.” He grabbed my wrist and sat up to look at me. “There are times that I just want to reach out and choke her to death. There are other times that I was really glad to have her there to remind me of what Lauren might say or do. It’s confusing.”
“Grief often is.”
“Dinner is ready!” Mabel came running up to us.
“Thank you, Mabel.”
“Uncle Cole said you were pretty.” She giggled.
I chuckled as Alec and I stood up, “Alright.”
“Do you think Uncle Cole is pretty too?”
I laughed and took the hand she offered out to me. With a quick swipe to her butt I sent her on ahead of us. “Play matchmaker with someone else.” I turned my eyes back to Alec, who was trying to hide any signs that he had been crying. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
After dinner was over, I volunteered to help with the dishes. It seemed that most people ate and slept outside unless the weather did not permit. They all brought their dishes back in while twelve individuals began washing them. The two bathroom sinks and both sides of the kitchen sink were in use.
I found myself stationed next to Cole with several others behind us. They were drying the dishes with some towels. I noticed that Cole would briefly look over at me but quickly divert his eyes back to his sink full of soapy water. I wanted to ask what his problem was, but thought it was better not to cause trouble in front of the others.
“We can finish up in here. Have a goodnight.” Cole told the others.
They gave their goodnights and headed out the door. Mabel’s mother, Melinda, informed us that we would be sleeping in the house. Two others had given up their beds so Alec and I could have a room. We insisted that it wasn’t necessary, but they were avid about us not sleeping outside.
“What happened to your neck?” Cole asked when everyone was out of the room.
“Zombie bit me.”
He rose an eyebrow, “Zombie?”
“Ah, yeah, one of the infected people.”
He chuckled for a moment, “Zombie, I like that.”
I nodded and looked out the window in front of me. I could see several people who were recently in the kitchen heading towards a bonfire in the distance. The kitchen had been exactly what I had expected. The outside of the farmhouse was red and white, and the kitchen was decorated with yellows with several pig and cow ornaments. It was just like any farmhouse that one would see in the movies.
Turning around I laid the dish down on a towel and returned to my sink. Cole remained silent beside me as he scrubbed a dish, but I caught him looking again.
“I could take a look at that for you.” He offered.
“Gina already took care of it. Besides it’s been a while since it happened.” I swallowed and continued to scrub. He was making me uneasy.
“Has she looked at it since? Have you changed the bandage? I have medication…”
“I’m fine.” I growled, then immediately remembered myself. “Thank you for your concern, but I am alright.”
Cole nodded, “I was asking because Gina’s wound was infected. With your injury so close to your neck…” He shook his head, “You said you were fine. I’ll take your word for it.”
We both fell silent again. I decided that Cole’s stares were from worry of my wound and hoped they would stop. That was until he did it again and this time it was for a moment longer then he normally held his glance.
“Why the hell do you keep staring at me?” I snapped my eyes over at him.
His cheeks reddened and words seemed to fail him. “I’m… I’m sorry.” He placed a glass cup on the towel on the table. When his hands were back in the dishwater, he cleared his throat.
“Well?”
His dark brown eyes looked up to me while he cleared his throat, “Ever meet someone so attractive in your eyes that you keep trying to steal a glimpse of them?”
My cheeks reddened at that point, “Oh.” I turned my attention back to the dishes.
“I normally am quite the charmer. Those aren’t my words but Gina’s and some other people that I know.” He scrubbed one of the pots, “Normally, I would just give you a greeting and try to find out about you. After a little talk, I would ask you out on a date.” He chuckled, “Where would we go? Out to pet the cows?”
I giggled in return. Not a humorous giggle either, but one that I hadn’t used since I first met Drew. It was definitely one to cause flirtations. I recoiled my laughter when I realized and returned to my chore.
As Cole and I scrubbed the last of our dishes, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He had an Italian look to him. His eyes were a dark brown, his hair black, and his skin was olive tone. Though his features were smooth they were definitely masculine, but his height was no more then one or two inches more then my own.
The glimpses that I had gotten of his hands looked to be of a doctor. They were soft, but it was obvious that recent hard work had begun to roughen them. My own hand was growing a callous and I was quite certain that Alec faired no better.
“What kind of doctor were you before all this happened?” I asked.
Cole pressed his lips together and seemed to cringe as if the thought hurt him. “I mostly did research work. What were you?”
“Police officer.” I responded quickly.
“I would have thought you were a college girl. You just have that look about you.”
I nodded, “Some cops have degrees.”
“I didn’t mean to imply…” He sighed.
“I quit college after I got my associates in psychology. My true calling was police work. I guess I always knew that, but my mother hoped that at least one of her kids wouldn’t end up doing dangerous work.”
“What was your brother?”
“He was in the military and my younger sister was a skydiving instructor… among other dangerous sports. She was basically an adrenaline junkie.”
Cole snickered, “Not my family. My mother would have died had any of my brothers and sisters picked those professions. Two doctors, a lawyer, an electrical engineer, and a business owner.” He raised his hands with two fingers sticking up on each and made the quoting gesture.
“What type of business?”
“Oh, the import/export business, at least that’s what he told us. I think he sold drugs or joined the mafia. We never asked and I don’t think my mother wanted to know. She liked the fur coats for Christmas that he gave her and she didn’t question where he got the money for it.” Cole smiled.
I returned the smile and our conversation died down for a moment, “What were you researching?”
“Before the outbreak? I worked on…” He paused in his speech as if trying to decide upon the correct words, “various projects. Afterwards? The virus.”
I was about the ask him what he had learned about the virus, but the kitchen door opened at that moment. Vion’s slender form entered and he grinned.
“Hey.” I smiled, “Where have you been?”
“Looking around.” He walked around the table to stand behind me and began to massage the small of my back. I normally would have jumped away, but he hit a spot that had been aching for weeks now.
“Find anything of interest?” I asked and noticed Cole staring at Vion’s hand touching me.
Vion laid his chin on my shoulder and shook his head. He had never been extremely touchy with me before and it was beginning to creep me out. I didn’t want to over react in front of Cole, so I allowed him to continue. Perhaps, it was the new relaxed atmosphere that brought out Vion’s true self. It had done so for Alec and myself to some degree, so this may have been the true Vion. That was the logic I decided upon to make myself comfortable.
“Well, I’m done. I just have to finishing drying these off.” Cole announced.
“I’ll do that.” Vion told him with his head still on my shoulder.
He nodded, “ Thank you. I’ll be down in the basement all night if you need anything. Either of you.” Cole seemed to rush out of the room.
Vion continued to rub my back and lifted his head away from my body.
“You are acting strangely.” I told him.
“It must be knowing that we won’t be ambushed at any moment. It allows one to relax.”
His fingers on the small of my back left a tingling sensation as he worked his way upward. His touch was unfamiliar to me and for the most part uncomfortable, yet it felt very relaxing. After a few moments, I was almost completely comfortable with the idea of his ministrations.
“Looks like he left his reading glasses.” Vion pointed to the glasses in the window sill.
“I don’t recall him wearing glasses before.” I turned my face towards him and found him just inches away from me.
“He had them on his head when we first met him.”
“Your memory is better then mine.”
Reaching out, he plucked them off the window sill and handed them to me. “Why don’t you take them down to him? I’ll finish up in here.”
I knocked gently on the basement door and when no reply came, I cracked the door open slightly. Calling out his name softly, I waited for him to respond but there was none. For a moment I stood staring down at the wooden stairs and wondered if it would be alright to head down there. I decided that Cole didn’t seem the type to hide anything so I stepped onto the first stair. When I was in far enough, I was able to shut the door behind me and continue down to the basement.
My nose was filled with the scent of bleach and other cleaning chemicals which only became stronger the further I went into the dark depths. At the end of the stairs, I found a dark room and another door. There were some shelves to the side which contained the cleaning agents that I had been smelling previously.
I knocked on the door in front of me and waited for Cole’s response, but received none. Trying to gain his attention, I knocked three or four more times, before I called out his name. With a sigh, I opened the door and was immediately blinded by the bright florescent light.
The basement looked like it had been transformed into a laboratory. Against the wall to my left and the back wall were tables filled with beakers and other science equipment. The generator ran next to the door with a few small gas containers sitting beside it. A small fridge ran beside that. The generator was rather loud and the basement only echoed it’s sounds. I was surprised that I couldn’t hear it upstairs.
There was no sign of Cole in the room, so I tried to call out his name again. When no answer came, I walked over to the tables and glanced over some of the paperwork. Cole’s handwriting was terrible and the words I could read were meaningless to me. I never did do very well in science class.
“Hey.” I heard a voice say behind me.
With a start I spun around.
Cole stood with a lab coat on next to a door that I hadn’t noticed before. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was in the bathroom.”
“I knocked and called out to you.” I don’t know why but I had his glasses behind my back.
“Yeah, I couldn’t hear you in there.” He pointed to the door with his thumb.
We stood in silence for a moment before Cole began to move things on his table. He looked like he was searching for something. I walked over to him and placed the glasses in front of him.
“They were upstairs on the window sill.”
He grinned, “Thanks. I was just looking for them.” Placing the thin frames over his eyes, he chuckled. “Really completes the aging doctor look, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe if you wore them further down on your nose.” I teased.
Cole set them further down his nose and began to lick his lips. We both chuckled before my eyes began to look over some of his equipment. “What is all this?”
“Gina and I are still trying to figure this virus out. If we could find a cure then we could help some of the infected… or we can kill them.” He sighed. “I’ve been working on it since she’s been gone and haven’t really come up with anything.”
He grabbed a chair and placed it next to another. When he sat down he motioned for me to sit with him. “I’ve been testing blood samples of people in the group with us. The virus dies immediately upon contact with their white blood cells. Yet, white blood cells tested by those that became infected didn’t respond to the virus. They acted like they were a natural part of the human body.”
“Why not give the infected patients white blood cells from those immune?”
“We did. However, it only prolonged their deaths or mental deterioration. We have to find out why some people’s white blood cells react to the threat and others don’t. When we have that answer then we will be closer to a cure.”
I nodded, “I see. Anything that I can do to help?”
Cole shook his head, “I wish there was.” He sighed and looked over at some notes that he had been writing. “Actually, Gina and I could use a lab assistant. It would help if someone was able to do the small tasks for us while we worked.”
“What kind of tasks?”
“Fetching chemicals from the shelves, putting items in the machines, just minor duties that most students can do. I can teach you how to run most of the machines. It would be better then working outside in the heat all day.”
I grinned, “I think I am capable of that.”
“Working in the heat or being our assistant?” He joked.
“Being an assistant.” I gave a half grin as I was uncertain if he really wanted an answer from me.
Cole rubbed my upper arm but then seemed to remember himself. “I didn’t realize that you and Vion were together. I feel terrible about what I said earlier. I wasn’t trying to hit on you. Just trying to explain truthfully why I kept glancing over at you.”
“Vion and I are not together.”
“The way that he was touching you speaks otherwise.”
“I agree, and it was as much as a surprise to me as it was to you. I don’t know what came over him.”
Cole watched me for a moment. I think he was trying to decide if he wanted to believe me or not, “Well in that case, I was hitting on you.” He stood from his chair.
“You’re pretty straightforward about your feelings. It’s rather shocking at times.”
He walked over to the other table and began to move things around, “I’ve never been one to waste time on formalities. If I find a woman attractive, I tell her so. If she tells me to go fuck myself then I move onto the next.”
“So, you like to date a lot then?”
Cole chuckled and he began to mix two chemicals. I had no idea what either of them were. “I have had my fair share of dates in my lifetime. All in the search for Miss Right, but I never found her. When I was seventeen, I thought I did. We dated for four years before she dumped me for my best friend, who went on to become a plastic surgeon. They went on to married and she got free surgery.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What about you?”
I shrugged, but since his back was to me he couldn’t see it. “I dated my boyfriend, Drew, since high school. We were on and off during college, and just friends for a while after that. We had been dating for a couple years by the time the virus came around.”
Cole looked over his shoulder, “He wasn’t immune, was he?”
“No. No one in my family was but me, Alec, and our sister.”
“Your sister was immune?”
I nodded, “Yes, but she didn’t make it. Zombie got her.”
He frowned deeply and shook his head, “To be immune to the virus only to die by the hands of those infected. How terrible. We’ve lost some of our own to the… the zombies, as you call them. One of the girls with us saw her father in that state. We tried to pull her away but she broke through us and ran to him. Since we were being attacked by others at the time, we had to deal with them. By the time we were able to track her down, her own father was raping her. Didn’t even realize that it was his daughter anymore.” He swallowed.
My eyes dropped to the ground, “The virus makes them into someone they are not. Did she survive?”
“We killed him and rescued her. She killed herself a few days later.” He put a plug into the tube of chemicals that he was mixing and set it aside. “I had to mix that up before morning.”
I watched him sit back down beside me. His eyes held an intense seriousness as he looked me over. “Gina won’t tell me, but I need to know. Did those ’zombies’ rape her?”
“Why?”
“I have reason to believe that the zombies are trying to procreate. No females have gotten the mental deterioration that I am aware of. They are either immune to the virus or they die from it. I think that they are attempting to impregnate women, but do not know their own strength. It’s vital that I know, because if she is pregnant…” He swallowed.
“You fear what may be born?”
Cole nodded, “I fear that she may give birth to one of them and refuse to let the child die.”
I dropped my eyes, “Have you asked her directly?”
“Yes, and she dodged the question. This is important, Elliot, I have to know.”
I looked back up into his eyes, “When we found her, she was being raped. She may have mentioned that they had been using her for a while since her capture.”
As I watched him stare at me, I could almost feel his heart drop. “Thank you.”
“Don’t tell her that I said anything. Obviously, she didn’t want you to know.”
He nodded, “I won’t.” Standing up, he held out his hand to me. “I’ll show you to your room. You should get some sleep now.”
“Are you going to bed?”
“I have other things to do down here.”
I looked over the vials and paperwork, “Can I help?”
Cole smirked, “Sure.”
Next Chapter: http://rkphunt.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=66
“Of what?”
“Staying here?” His answer sounded cynical.
I shrugged with my eyes still looking at Gina and Cole in the distance, “Sounds a hell of a lot easier then moving on. I doubt we will find another place like this.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. We should just keep moving.”
“Why?”
He didn’t say anything just stared at Gina and Cole making their way into the house. Cole’s arm was still wrapped around Gina’s shoulders.
“Oh.” I said, “I didn’t realize that you had grown to like her in that way.”
He gnarled, “I just lost my wife and daughter, don’t you dare fucking think that I have feelings for any other woman!” He turned his back to me and walked over to a tree that was across the road, but not far behind us.
I watched him sit down and sighed. It wasn’t jealousy that made my brother want to leave, instead treachery. He had some feelings for Gina that I hadn’t seen before and he thought it would dishonor his love for his wife and daughter. Gina would be a temptation and he didn’t want to put himself in that position.
I walked over to him and sat down, “I’ll do whatever you decide, Alec.”
He pressed his lips together, then shook his head. “I miss them so much, Elly.” Tears began to swell in his eyes. “Lesley, Lauren, Olivia, Mom, and Dad, all of them. They are gone forever. We’ll never see them again, and I can’t help but feel like I am a traitor to them for staying alive. As if I sacrificed them for my own selfishness. Why the hell didn’t I die too? Why couldn’t I have been taken?”
I placed my arm around him and rubbed his shoulder, “I wish I had an answer, Alec. I really do. I’ve been asking myself those same questions since this all started.”
“Lauren was the love of my life, before all this I couldn’t imagine myself without her. Now, I thank God that she isn’t here. She would never be strong enough to survive this and I wish that I wasn’t either.” His voice broke as he spoke and the tears began to fall down his cheeks. I knew that he finally felt safe enough here to let his emotions take over. He could finally release all the pressure and pain that he had kept locked away for so many months.
“Everyone was affected by this. We are all hurting inside, but for some reason we have survived. You and me, we managed. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow and I wish that I could tell you that everything will be alright. The truth is, I really don’t know.” I sniffled trying to hold back my tears and be the big sister.
He didn’t say anything just continued to cry and lay his head on my shoulder.
“Remember how we use to talk about mother nature finally getting rid of her pests. That eventually we would push her too hard and she would fight back. Maybe the time of humans has past. Maybe she wanted to send us back a few hundred years and stop us.”
“Maybe we did die and this is hell.” He said.
“Maybe.” I nodded my head. “I want an answer of how and why just as much as you do. I know that knowing the why would make me feel so much better, but I doubt we will ever know. This just is. We can accept to live by these new rules or we can die. Those are our options.”
I rubbed his upper arm as I watched them finish placing the frame of the barn up. Alec just cried and I let him soak my shoulder without a complaint. It was time for him to let it all go and I knew that I was the only one he could do this with. I wish there was someone that I could release on, normally it would have been my mother. Alec wouldn’t be able to handle his own pain along with my own, so I held strong.
He needed me to be his big sister in those moments. The big sister who chased off his bully when he was a kid. The big sister who force fed him his medicine when she babysat. The big sister who had all of life’s answers and was so sure of everything. I couldn’t be a scared human being, but instead the all mighty protector.
As he cried I thought about all that we had been through and knew that it was far from over now. We still had to make this community work and decide what we would do with ourselves now. I doubted that these people needed a police officer and army sergeant. We would have to find other jobs to make ourselves useful here.
“We should have done everything to save her.” Alec mumbled.
“Who?”
“We risked our lives for Gina and Mabel, but not our own sister. We were too worried about injuring ourselves and we abandoned her.”
I shook my head, “We didn’t abandon her. We had to prepare ourselves first, not just jump blindly into his lair. Olivia wouldn’t have wanted us to get ourselves killed.”
“We could have tried harder.”
“We did the best that we could. We had no idea that the zombie was going to… do what he did. It wasn’t our fault.” I lied, as I had felt like it was since the moment I had seen her lifeless body. I couldn’t let Alec suffer that thought and had to put it at ease.
He sighed, “I’m glad you think that.”
“So, is it Gina that makes you want to leave?”
“She reminds me of Lauren.”
I nodded, “Yeah, I get that vibe from her as well. Strong but soft at the same time.”
“I hate her for it. I know that I shouldn’t, but it pisses me off whenever she makes me think of Lauren.” He grabbed my wrist and sat up to look at me. “There are times that I just want to reach out and choke her to death. There are other times that I was really glad to have her there to remind me of what Lauren might say or do. It’s confusing.”
“Grief often is.”
“Dinner is ready!” Mabel came running up to us.
“Thank you, Mabel.”
“Uncle Cole said you were pretty.” She giggled.
I chuckled as Alec and I stood up, “Alright.”
“Do you think Uncle Cole is pretty too?”
I laughed and took the hand she offered out to me. With a quick swipe to her butt I sent her on ahead of us. “Play matchmaker with someone else.” I turned my eyes back to Alec, who was trying to hide any signs that he had been crying. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
---***---
After dinner was over, I volunteered to help with the dishes. It seemed that most people ate and slept outside unless the weather did not permit. They all brought their dishes back in while twelve individuals began washing them. The two bathroom sinks and both sides of the kitchen sink were in use.
I found myself stationed next to Cole with several others behind us. They were drying the dishes with some towels. I noticed that Cole would briefly look over at me but quickly divert his eyes back to his sink full of soapy water. I wanted to ask what his problem was, but thought it was better not to cause trouble in front of the others.
“We can finish up in here. Have a goodnight.” Cole told the others.
They gave their goodnights and headed out the door. Mabel’s mother, Melinda, informed us that we would be sleeping in the house. Two others had given up their beds so Alec and I could have a room. We insisted that it wasn’t necessary, but they were avid about us not sleeping outside.
“What happened to your neck?” Cole asked when everyone was out of the room.
“Zombie bit me.”
He rose an eyebrow, “Zombie?”
“Ah, yeah, one of the infected people.”
He chuckled for a moment, “Zombie, I like that.”
I nodded and looked out the window in front of me. I could see several people who were recently in the kitchen heading towards a bonfire in the distance. The kitchen had been exactly what I had expected. The outside of the farmhouse was red and white, and the kitchen was decorated with yellows with several pig and cow ornaments. It was just like any farmhouse that one would see in the movies.
Turning around I laid the dish down on a towel and returned to my sink. Cole remained silent beside me as he scrubbed a dish, but I caught him looking again.
“I could take a look at that for you.” He offered.
“Gina already took care of it. Besides it’s been a while since it happened.” I swallowed and continued to scrub. He was making me uneasy.
“Has she looked at it since? Have you changed the bandage? I have medication…”
“I’m fine.” I growled, then immediately remembered myself. “Thank you for your concern, but I am alright.”
Cole nodded, “I was asking because Gina’s wound was infected. With your injury so close to your neck…” He shook his head, “You said you were fine. I’ll take your word for it.”
We both fell silent again. I decided that Cole’s stares were from worry of my wound and hoped they would stop. That was until he did it again and this time it was for a moment longer then he normally held his glance.
“Why the hell do you keep staring at me?” I snapped my eyes over at him.
His cheeks reddened and words seemed to fail him. “I’m… I’m sorry.” He placed a glass cup on the towel on the table. When his hands were back in the dishwater, he cleared his throat.
“Well?”
His dark brown eyes looked up to me while he cleared his throat, “Ever meet someone so attractive in your eyes that you keep trying to steal a glimpse of them?”
My cheeks reddened at that point, “Oh.” I turned my attention back to the dishes.
“I normally am quite the charmer. Those aren’t my words but Gina’s and some other people that I know.” He scrubbed one of the pots, “Normally, I would just give you a greeting and try to find out about you. After a little talk, I would ask you out on a date.” He chuckled, “Where would we go? Out to pet the cows?”
I giggled in return. Not a humorous giggle either, but one that I hadn’t used since I first met Drew. It was definitely one to cause flirtations. I recoiled my laughter when I realized and returned to my chore.
As Cole and I scrubbed the last of our dishes, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He had an Italian look to him. His eyes were a dark brown, his hair black, and his skin was olive tone. Though his features were smooth they were definitely masculine, but his height was no more then one or two inches more then my own.
The glimpses that I had gotten of his hands looked to be of a doctor. They were soft, but it was obvious that recent hard work had begun to roughen them. My own hand was growing a callous and I was quite certain that Alec faired no better.
“What kind of doctor were you before all this happened?” I asked.
Cole pressed his lips together and seemed to cringe as if the thought hurt him. “I mostly did research work. What were you?”
“Police officer.” I responded quickly.
“I would have thought you were a college girl. You just have that look about you.”
I nodded, “Some cops have degrees.”
“I didn’t mean to imply…” He sighed.
“I quit college after I got my associates in psychology. My true calling was police work. I guess I always knew that, but my mother hoped that at least one of her kids wouldn’t end up doing dangerous work.”
“What was your brother?”
“He was in the military and my younger sister was a skydiving instructor… among other dangerous sports. She was basically an adrenaline junkie.”
Cole snickered, “Not my family. My mother would have died had any of my brothers and sisters picked those professions. Two doctors, a lawyer, an electrical engineer, and a business owner.” He raised his hands with two fingers sticking up on each and made the quoting gesture.
“What type of business?”
“Oh, the import/export business, at least that’s what he told us. I think he sold drugs or joined the mafia. We never asked and I don’t think my mother wanted to know. She liked the fur coats for Christmas that he gave her and she didn’t question where he got the money for it.” Cole smiled.
I returned the smile and our conversation died down for a moment, “What were you researching?”
“Before the outbreak? I worked on…” He paused in his speech as if trying to decide upon the correct words, “various projects. Afterwards? The virus.”
I was about the ask him what he had learned about the virus, but the kitchen door opened at that moment. Vion’s slender form entered and he grinned.
“Hey.” I smiled, “Where have you been?”
“Looking around.” He walked around the table to stand behind me and began to massage the small of my back. I normally would have jumped away, but he hit a spot that had been aching for weeks now.
“Find anything of interest?” I asked and noticed Cole staring at Vion’s hand touching me.
Vion laid his chin on my shoulder and shook his head. He had never been extremely touchy with me before and it was beginning to creep me out. I didn’t want to over react in front of Cole, so I allowed him to continue. Perhaps, it was the new relaxed atmosphere that brought out Vion’s true self. It had done so for Alec and myself to some degree, so this may have been the true Vion. That was the logic I decided upon to make myself comfortable.
“Well, I’m done. I just have to finishing drying these off.” Cole announced.
“I’ll do that.” Vion told him with his head still on my shoulder.
He nodded, “ Thank you. I’ll be down in the basement all night if you need anything. Either of you.” Cole seemed to rush out of the room.
Vion continued to rub my back and lifted his head away from my body.
“You are acting strangely.” I told him.
“It must be knowing that we won’t be ambushed at any moment. It allows one to relax.”
His fingers on the small of my back left a tingling sensation as he worked his way upward. His touch was unfamiliar to me and for the most part uncomfortable, yet it felt very relaxing. After a few moments, I was almost completely comfortable with the idea of his ministrations.
“Looks like he left his reading glasses.” Vion pointed to the glasses in the window sill.
“I don’t recall him wearing glasses before.” I turned my face towards him and found him just inches away from me.
“He had them on his head when we first met him.”
“Your memory is better then mine.”
Reaching out, he plucked them off the window sill and handed them to me. “Why don’t you take them down to him? I’ll finish up in here.”
---***---
I knocked gently on the basement door and when no reply came, I cracked the door open slightly. Calling out his name softly, I waited for him to respond but there was none. For a moment I stood staring down at the wooden stairs and wondered if it would be alright to head down there. I decided that Cole didn’t seem the type to hide anything so I stepped onto the first stair. When I was in far enough, I was able to shut the door behind me and continue down to the basement.
My nose was filled with the scent of bleach and other cleaning chemicals which only became stronger the further I went into the dark depths. At the end of the stairs, I found a dark room and another door. There were some shelves to the side which contained the cleaning agents that I had been smelling previously.
I knocked on the door in front of me and waited for Cole’s response, but received none. Trying to gain his attention, I knocked three or four more times, before I called out his name. With a sigh, I opened the door and was immediately blinded by the bright florescent light.
The basement looked like it had been transformed into a laboratory. Against the wall to my left and the back wall were tables filled with beakers and other science equipment. The generator ran next to the door with a few small gas containers sitting beside it. A small fridge ran beside that. The generator was rather loud and the basement only echoed it’s sounds. I was surprised that I couldn’t hear it upstairs.
There was no sign of Cole in the room, so I tried to call out his name again. When no answer came, I walked over to the tables and glanced over some of the paperwork. Cole’s handwriting was terrible and the words I could read were meaningless to me. I never did do very well in science class.
“Hey.” I heard a voice say behind me.
With a start I spun around.
Cole stood with a lab coat on next to a door that I hadn’t noticed before. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was in the bathroom.”
“I knocked and called out to you.” I don’t know why but I had his glasses behind my back.
“Yeah, I couldn’t hear you in there.” He pointed to the door with his thumb.
We stood in silence for a moment before Cole began to move things on his table. He looked like he was searching for something. I walked over to him and placed the glasses in front of him.
“They were upstairs on the window sill.”
He grinned, “Thanks. I was just looking for them.” Placing the thin frames over his eyes, he chuckled. “Really completes the aging doctor look, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe if you wore them further down on your nose.” I teased.
Cole set them further down his nose and began to lick his lips. We both chuckled before my eyes began to look over some of his equipment. “What is all this?”
“Gina and I are still trying to figure this virus out. If we could find a cure then we could help some of the infected… or we can kill them.” He sighed. “I’ve been working on it since she’s been gone and haven’t really come up with anything.”
He grabbed a chair and placed it next to another. When he sat down he motioned for me to sit with him. “I’ve been testing blood samples of people in the group with us. The virus dies immediately upon contact with their white blood cells. Yet, white blood cells tested by those that became infected didn’t respond to the virus. They acted like they were a natural part of the human body.”
“Why not give the infected patients white blood cells from those immune?”
“We did. However, it only prolonged their deaths or mental deterioration. We have to find out why some people’s white blood cells react to the threat and others don’t. When we have that answer then we will be closer to a cure.”
I nodded, “I see. Anything that I can do to help?”
Cole shook his head, “I wish there was.” He sighed and looked over at some notes that he had been writing. “Actually, Gina and I could use a lab assistant. It would help if someone was able to do the small tasks for us while we worked.”
“What kind of tasks?”
“Fetching chemicals from the shelves, putting items in the machines, just minor duties that most students can do. I can teach you how to run most of the machines. It would be better then working outside in the heat all day.”
I grinned, “I think I am capable of that.”
“Working in the heat or being our assistant?” He joked.
“Being an assistant.” I gave a half grin as I was uncertain if he really wanted an answer from me.
Cole rubbed my upper arm but then seemed to remember himself. “I didn’t realize that you and Vion were together. I feel terrible about what I said earlier. I wasn’t trying to hit on you. Just trying to explain truthfully why I kept glancing over at you.”
“Vion and I are not together.”
“The way that he was touching you speaks otherwise.”
“I agree, and it was as much as a surprise to me as it was to you. I don’t know what came over him.”
Cole watched me for a moment. I think he was trying to decide if he wanted to believe me or not, “Well in that case, I was hitting on you.” He stood from his chair.
“You’re pretty straightforward about your feelings. It’s rather shocking at times.”
He walked over to the other table and began to move things around, “I’ve never been one to waste time on formalities. If I find a woman attractive, I tell her so. If she tells me to go fuck myself then I move onto the next.”
“So, you like to date a lot then?”
Cole chuckled and he began to mix two chemicals. I had no idea what either of them were. “I have had my fair share of dates in my lifetime. All in the search for Miss Right, but I never found her. When I was seventeen, I thought I did. We dated for four years before she dumped me for my best friend, who went on to become a plastic surgeon. They went on to married and she got free surgery.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“What about you?”
I shrugged, but since his back was to me he couldn’t see it. “I dated my boyfriend, Drew, since high school. We were on and off during college, and just friends for a while after that. We had been dating for a couple years by the time the virus came around.”
Cole looked over his shoulder, “He wasn’t immune, was he?”
“No. No one in my family was but me, Alec, and our sister.”
“Your sister was immune?”
I nodded, “Yes, but she didn’t make it. Zombie got her.”
He frowned deeply and shook his head, “To be immune to the virus only to die by the hands of those infected. How terrible. We’ve lost some of our own to the… the zombies, as you call them. One of the girls with us saw her father in that state. We tried to pull her away but she broke through us and ran to him. Since we were being attacked by others at the time, we had to deal with them. By the time we were able to track her down, her own father was raping her. Didn’t even realize that it was his daughter anymore.” He swallowed.
My eyes dropped to the ground, “The virus makes them into someone they are not. Did she survive?”
“We killed him and rescued her. She killed herself a few days later.” He put a plug into the tube of chemicals that he was mixing and set it aside. “I had to mix that up before morning.”
I watched him sit back down beside me. His eyes held an intense seriousness as he looked me over. “Gina won’t tell me, but I need to know. Did those ’zombies’ rape her?”
“Why?”
“I have reason to believe that the zombies are trying to procreate. No females have gotten the mental deterioration that I am aware of. They are either immune to the virus or they die from it. I think that they are attempting to impregnate women, but do not know their own strength. It’s vital that I know, because if she is pregnant…” He swallowed.
“You fear what may be born?”
Cole nodded, “I fear that she may give birth to one of them and refuse to let the child die.”
I dropped my eyes, “Have you asked her directly?”
“Yes, and she dodged the question. This is important, Elliot, I have to know.”
I looked back up into his eyes, “When we found her, she was being raped. She may have mentioned that they had been using her for a while since her capture.”
As I watched him stare at me, I could almost feel his heart drop. “Thank you.”
“Don’t tell her that I said anything. Obviously, she didn’t want you to know.”
He nodded, “I won’t.” Standing up, he held out his hand to me. “I’ll show you to your room. You should get some sleep now.”
“Are you going to bed?”
“I have other things to do down here.”
I looked over the vials and paperwork, “Can I help?”
Cole smirked, “Sure.”
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