Lich -- A Novel

.Three.

.three.

It had started to snow again, the white flakes thick against the tree branches. We were already wading through snow piled past out knees. It made traveling hard and as soon as we were passed the ice surrounding the island where Tom's shack was disappearing into the background, Tom swung me up into his arms and I rested my head against his shoulder.

I could feel the wounds in my shoulder pulling and stretching. A dampness was settling into my shoulder, the wound probably bleeding again. At this rate, I would never heal. Not if we kept moving like we were. We needed to find shelter and I wasn't sure where Tom was planning on heading. Maybe to the lake association building where he'd gotten the antibiotics. I doubted it. We weren't heading south. We were going north. I didn't know what was north.

Tom kept his eyes open for any signs of danger. I kept thinking we would run across something out here, because that was my luck. Probably the only reason something had come to the shack in the first place was because Tom had shot me in the shoulder. Gunshots had a tendency to attract unwelcomed things.

"Stay with me," Tom said unexpectedly.

My eyes fluttered open and I hadn't been aware I had closed them, or had been drifting off. Tom didn't look at me, just kept his eyes forward, but I knew the request had been made towards me. One of my arms was wrapped around Tom's shoulders, the wounded one lying limply across my stomach.

"I'm here," I told Tom, the lack of strength in my voice making his face pucker with worry. I thought he was cute when he was worried. His skin was defined with aging wrinkles. He wasn't old enough to have a lot of them, but he was old enough to not have the clean, baby-skinned face of the guys my age. I'd never gone for older men before. They usually hadn't been my type. Guess I made an exception for Tom.

Glancing down at me, Tom licked his lips and after a few more steps, he bent down, crouching with his legs to set me in the snow, leaned up against a tree. Tom's breathing was heavy and as soon as I was propped to where I wouldn't be falling over, he wiped his hands over his face, glancing around in all directions.

"Where are we going?" I asked, my head falling forward to rest on his shoulder. He stayed crouched by me, resting his arms for a bit before we continued.

"I knew a guy who has a cabin a few miles from here," he said. "He'll have beds."

I smirked, tipping my head back to look at Tom. "You want to make use of them?" I asked.

Tom returned my smirk, but accompanied it with a shake of his head. "You'll be making use of it. Resting."

"You're no fun," I told him and shivered immediately afterwards. I coughed to the side and Tom's hand settled on the back of my neck, holding me steady. The coughing fit took the rest of my strength from me and Tom seemed to have gathered his, scooping me back up into his arms.

We still hadn't come across anything out there and I wondered if we'd jumped the gun running from Tom's shack. It may have been small and in the middle of nowhere, but it had been warm. There wasn't a guarantee that the shotgun blast would have brought anything else, but it was a risk. The first shotgun blast had probably brought one. Two might bring more.

"Irene," Tom said and it took me a moment to get my eyes to open again. My whole body was tingling with the cold and the blood loss and I tried to focus on Tom's face, but it was getting harder and harder. "How's Pete doing?"

I bristled at the question. It wasn't Tom's fault. He'd been gone for a good long time. A lot of things had happened after he'd run off. "He's dead," I answered quietly.

Tom stiffened his arms around me and a pained look crossed his face. I felt sorry for having to be the one to break the news to him, but he would have found out sooner or later. "What happened?" Tom asked.

"He got sick," I said simply.

Tom nodded, knowing what it meant. "Cappy?"

"She's with Sergio," I answered, wincing when Tom's foot slipped on an iced branch, jarring my shoulder. He glanced down at my face.

"Really?" he asked. "By choice?"

I scoffed. "When does Sergio give anyone a choice?"

Tom's face twisted into something disgusted and I wondered if he was feeling bad for leaving. I still didn't fully understand why he had. But I didn't understand a lot of things lately. I didn't understand a lot of things in this world.

I must have slipped out of it against after that, because when I woke next, Tom was laying me down in the snow again, propped up against a tree. His attention was turned to something in front of us and when I managed to get my vision focused, I could see a luxurious looking log cabin up a slope a few hundred yards in front of us.

It looked like one of those cabins people build when they come into money. When I thought of cabins, I thought of little log cabins with no insulation that people used to stay when they went deer hunting. I didn't think of these big, extravagant cabins nestled deep within the woods. It looked big enough for a family of twenty.

"Is that the cabin?" I asked, my tongue thick and my words muffled.

Tom nodded to me, pushing some of my hair from my eyes. "I'm going to go check it out," he said and there was worry evident in his eyes again. I hated that it was aimed towards me. "I'll be right back."

I could only nod and watch as Tom stood, forgoing his gun and relying only on his machete as he held it out in front of him. He probably didn't want to risk another gunshot drawing attention our way. He was smart. One of the smartest guys I'd ever known.

Tom was some sort of professor before the world went to hell. And not one of those professors who taught introductory classes. He was one who taught the good stuff. The stuff students took right before they got their doctorates and became experts themselves. He was some science guy, or something. I could never remember when he told me. Metaphysics maybe. Something ridiculous.

From a distance, I could keep an eye on Tom. He had some trouble getting up the snow covered slope, but once he reached the top, he was the deck of the cabin. Holding his machete out in front of him, he stepped in front of two bay windows, shielding his eyes as he tried to peer inside the cabin. I watched him as long as I could, but once he slid the door to the cabin open and stepped inside, I lost sight of him.

I wondered what the others would think of Tom and my trip to a cabin in the woods. When Tom had run, he'd run far. It was at least a few days trek, at full strength, back to the others. I couldn't blame him for trying to get as far away as he could when he ran. If I were going to run away from the group, I think I would have gone further than this little shack in the middle of the woods. I would have gone across the coast. Where no one could find me. They wouldn't send people out that far.

"Come on," Tom said and suddenly he was in front of me. I blinked several times before his face came into focus. "Irene, stay with me, honey." He must really have been worried because he never called me honey. I wondered if he would feel guilty if I died.

I didn't remember Tom coming back out to get me, but the next thing I knew, he was lifting me up and carrying me towards the cabin. We entered through a back door on the deck. Once inside, the air was stale, like it had been holed up for a while. Tom carried me through a room with a pool table and a little bar set up. We went upstairs where the furniture was a little nicer, but looked like it was hardly ever used.

A bedroom on the right was our destination. Tom laid me down onto the bed. The world tipped and tilted around me, but Tom started to pull my wet clothes off, from being out in the snow for so long. My parka and boots were easy to get off. When Tom's fingers started to undo the buttons of my jeans, I reached a hand down to grab his wrist.

"It's okay," he said, before I could say a word. "I'm just trying to get you warm."

I nodded my head. "Lay with me," I said, my voice a small whisper in this huge cabin.

Tom's face remained passive as he pushed my hands away and his thumbs hooked into the band of my jeans, pulling them down my legs and folding them up on the ground. He helped me get under the covers and if my shoulder wasn't throbbing so much, I would have pushed the laying with me request more. But as it was, I started to drift off as soon as my head was on the soft pillow.

"How did you know this guy?" I asked, my words slurring together.

"What guy?" Tom asked as he turned around and sat down on the bed next to me. It was comforting knowing he was there and he would watch out for me while I recovered. It was just comforting knowing he cared for me like that.

I tried to wave my hand in the air around me, but it ended up just flopping around lifelessly. "This guy. Who owns this house."

Tom snorted, like I'd made a joke. He leaned forward, resting his head in his hands and whenever he did that, I knew it was something serious on his mind. "He was my divorce lawyer," he said.

I frowned as I watched him. I hadn't known he was divorced. I wondered if it was a previous marriage or the marriage he'd hinted at whenever we talked about our previous lives. "You were divorced?" I asked.

Turning to look at me, Tom smirked. "Almost," he said. "It wasn't finalized before..." he trailed off. I knew what came next, so I just nodded. "I didn't want it to be one of those ugly divorces. I wanted us to maintain some sort of civility. For Violet."

"Guess it doesn't matter now," I said before I could stop myself and I saw Tom's face fall, his eyes going to his hands, rough and calloused as he turned them over, looking at how different they were now than they'd been then.

"Guess not," Tom said and I knew I'd said something wrong by the tone of his voice. I'd blame it on the blood loss and the infection still coursing through my veins. Tom stood up then and turned to smile down at me. "We rest here until you're strong enough to move on your own," he said. "Then we'll head back. Together."

I licked my lips, the question on the tip of my tongue, but I was afraid to ask it. I was afraid to ask Tom if he wanted to just stay here. If he wanted to just, run. Leave and not come back. If he wanted to just forget the others and make our own way in this world, together. I didn't ask it. I was afraid of the answer.

Tom was right. I wasn't his wife, divorced or not. The time for dedicating one's life to someone else had passed. It had died with the rest of the world. I had no right to ask Tom to rekindle something he'd already put to rest. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to love him. I wasn’t supposed to care. I wasn’t sure what I felt for him, whether it was love or not. But it got stronger with each passing day. Maybe I was just happy to have someone with me at the end of the world.

Which is why it hurt so much when he ran away. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone at the end of the world. No one did.

A few hours went by before I woke again and when I did, the room was empty. Dim light filtered in through the blinds on the windows and the bedroom door was cracked open slightly. I wasn’t sure where Tom was, but I figured he was in the house somewhere. Probably keeping watch or making us something to eat, if the grumbling of my stomach was any indicator of how long it had been before I’d eaten anything.

The cabin had a musty, almost rancid smell to it. It didn’t bother me, because I was used to the stench of rot and decay. It filled the world these days. But it was strong inside the cabin and I could picture a refrigerator with no electricity housing a plethora of rotting foods. I could imagine the mold lining the walls and there were probably more rotting foods in the cupboards. Maybe this cabin had a pantry or a freezer out in the garage to store the meat left over from the hunting season. Look what good preparing ahead had done any of us.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow block out the light of the window for a split second. My head rolled quickly to look at the window, but I saw nothing there. Licking my lips, I looked around for my gun. Tom had left it sitting on the end table next to the bed. I reached over to grab it, wincing as I pulled the wounds on my shoulder and side. Sometime while I was asleep, Tom had redressed the wounds with fresh gauze. I was glad he’d done it while I wasn’t conscious. It would have hurt like a bitch.

I sat up, keeping my eyes on the window, but nothing else moved pass it. It could have been a bird, but somehow I doubted it. I doubted that my luck would put a bird outside the window. With my luck, death was waiting just outside.

Pushing myself to my feet, I was a little unsteady as I stood. My knees knocked together and I had to grab onto the bedpost to keep from falling. I left out a slow breath, trying to gather my strength. I couldn’t hear anything outside and I couldn’t hear anything coming from inside the house either. I wondered where Tom was.

Pulling myself across the room, I kept one hand on the wall to keep myself steady. Out in the hall, the doors to several other bedrooms were shut tightly. I didn’t know what lay behind them. I could see the front door from where I stood and I licked my lips nervously at the sight of the front door wide open.

Snow had been tracked in through the open door, but I couldn’t make out a boot shape. I crouched, trying to see into the living room or the kitchen, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything else in the cabin. I thought about calling out, but it wouldn’t have been the smartest thing I’d ever done.

Deciding the best thing to do would be to try and find Tom, I took the hallway slowly as I made my way down it. I kept a firm grip against the wall and once I reached the end of the hall, I held my gun out in front of me, ready to shoot anything that came into view.

Ignoring the open front door, I made my way around the corner and paused when I heard the creaking of the floor coming from the dining room, just on the other side of the living room I stood in. I couldn’t see into the dining room and the window was completely closed up with blinds, not letting in any light. No shadows played off the walls to allow me to gauge what was in there. They weren’t making a lot of noise and I wondered if it was Tom.

Something told me it wasn’t.

I tried to be as quiet as possible as I made my way across the living room. But the fever still burning at my veins made me slow and clumsy and I hit the edge of the table with my knee. I could hear a slight gasp from the dining room and then the loud bang of someone shoving their way out the dining room door in the back.

I growled, because if it was a gasp, that meant they were breathing. And if they were breathing, that meant scavengers. I instantly thought about Tom and wondered where he was or if they’d slit his throat open in his sleep. It was known to happen and I felt an unbridled wave of rage roar through me if that was the case. Tom didn’t survive this long just to be killed by scavengers.

Turning around, I hobbled my way clumsily back through the living room, intent on cutting them off as they ran back through the house, towards the front door. I held my gun up and was ready to pull the trigger as someone came barreling around the corner.

It was only instinct that kept me from pulling the trigger. Human nature. A society, a species that did everything they could to protect their young. This was the only thing that kept me from squeezing the trigger and watching as a bullet ripped through the head of a child running through the room.

He couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. His blonde hair was scruffy and ragged, sticking up every which way. His face was smudged with dirt and he had on a light jacket, not something I would normally recommend wearing in the snowy, freezing temperatures outside.

“Hey,” I snapped, watching as the kid ran through my line of sight and headed straight for the open front door. “Hey, kid, wait!” I yelled.

It didn’t stop the kid. I didn’t think the kid would stop until someone stepped into the doorway. The kid wrapped his arms around the waist of a man standing there with a gun held in his own hand. My eyes widened as the man spotted me and raised his gun to aim it at me. I was clumsy and slow in my movements, unable to get the gun pointed at the man in time.

Luckily, no triggers were pulled. A booming voice echoed through the house as Tom appeared from the basement, his shotgun tucked against his shoulder. “Don’t!” Tom yelled. “No one shoot.” He made his voice calm and emotionless. It was Tom trying to stay calm. “A shot will attract them.”

“Put your guns down,” the man in the doorway said. I narrowed my eyes at him because he could be from anywhere. He could be a scavenger or just a guy trying to survive. If he was a scavenger, he’d kill us both and take what he could from this house.

Tom took a few steps away from the basement, closing the door with his foot, but he didn’t put his shotgun away. He just looked at the man calmly. “You put yours away first. Then we can talk like adults.”

The man snorted, his eyes flickering between Tom and myself. He seemed to be gauging the scenario and after a moment, he growled and pulled his gun down, holding it down at his side. Tom hesitated a moment before he let his shotgun rest lazily in his arms, instead of pointed at the man.

I’d let my gun fall down to my side ages ago. I leaned against the wall, eyeing this new man and the little boy tucked at his side.

“We were just looking for some shelter from the snow,” the man said.

Tom tilted his head as he considered the words. “Let me see your arms.”

The man frowned a little in confusion, but then rolled up his sleeves, showing Tom his bare arms. An old tattoo was faded into his forearm, but nothing else was out of the ordinary. Tom nodded his head, motioning for them to come in.

“You can rest here,” Tom said. He made his way over to me, pulling one of my arms across his shoulders. He kept his eyes on the other man the entire time. “But if you endanger us…”

The man snorted, letting one of his beefy hands rest on the small boy’s head. “It goes both ways,” he said.