Moonlit Retribution

Chapter Fourteen

“Wh…” I shake my head slowly. My thoughts will scatter if I do it any faster. “What do you mean ‘infected’?”

 By now my eyes are completely adjusted to the gloom, so I see him perfectly when his eyes snap up and glare into mine. “You know what I mean, Vessa!” he snarls, hands fisting tightly. I tense, poising for the knife again, but he deflates quickly, his head slumping into his trembling hands. “God, I need a smoke…” Sighing, he rights himself.

Fear has ceased my bodily functions. All I can do is watch, listen. Pray that he’s just messing with me. Pray that this is just a joke--a cruel, demented joke that we’ll both have a hearty chuckle over at breakfast tomorrow. But his eyes pin mine, and I can see in his desolate gaze that this is nothing less than the cold, harsh reality of the situation.

“There’s a mistake,” I say hurriedly, like if I can get the words out fast enough it’ll stop the fatal pathogens overrunning his body. “Maybe it’s just the flu, or you’re just hungry. I mean, I’m always hungry! Andy just isn’t feeding us enough, ya know? It’s just…” I quietly trail off when he holds his hand up, signaling for silence.

“I’ve…” He swallows nervously, raking a hand through his tangled brown locks. “I’ve already…come to terms, I guess. I just wanted to, you know,” he waves his hand, gesturing in my general direction.  My room. My half naked state.

Blood pumps to my face faster than the outraged shriek that bursts from my damaged vocal cords, and my hand flies out to slap him before I can tell it to hold off. “You fucking prick! So, what, before you kicked the bucket you thought ‘hey, I’ll try to get a good lay in first’? Is that it, you selfish f--” He claps a sweaty palm over my mouth, shushing me while I strain against his hold, flailing and managing to slap him again and knee him twice in the stomach.

“Loca! Be quiet!” he hisses, fingers squeezing tighter over my mouth. There’s not even enough room for me to get a good bite in. “That is not why I came here, Vess. I swear to you.” He releases me slowly, letting the tips of his fingers graze over my trembling lips and slide to my torn throat. “My God,” he murmurs tonelessly. I hiss in pain as he applies the slightest bit of pressure. He quickly jerks the unwanted appendages away, but his body is still close, so close that I can feel the heat radiating off of him. “I swear to you, I only came to talk. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but…” His eyes lock onto my wound. Shame fills the dark depths, the kind that makes me think he’ll just hang himself to die sooner. I swallow loudly, nervously, grasping at a thoughtless feeling floating unchained in my chest.

“Then why did you come?”

Dark eyes flaring heatedly, Ríjez reaches out and lightly trails his fingertips up my throat, stopping just behind my ear, making me shiver. Then he blinks, shaking his head furiously, and retracts his hand as if I was the one carrying the disease. “I…don’t know,” he says uncertainly. “It’s not like what we’ve seen, Vess. You’re aware of it well before the new moon. It’s controlling me, my thoughts, my actions…I don’t know how long I can keep this up.” The lost expression of utter helplessness calls to something inside me, the part of me that’s always felt the same incompetence, the same inner doubt that gnaws at you until you’re a quaking mess of anxiety and worthlessness.

Hesitantly, I reach a hand out and cup his cheek, smoothing the rough skin beneath my thumb even as the muscles tense like tempered metal. He looks at me as if I’m about to shoot him myself. My previous words to Mella strike me with the force of a dozen bullets. I’d rather die of radiation than become one of those things!

Oh God. For him to hear that in a time like now…

Fighting the thickness in my voice, I ask, “How long have you…?”

I can’t complete it, I just can’t. It would solidify the notion into reality.

He shakes his head forlornly, but a pensive, calculating light glints his eyes. “The symptoms were unnoticeable before; just irritability and slightly more hunger, but nothing overtly unusual, given the circumstances. Then, earlier, with the girl…” His voice cuts off as if he has just swallowed a block of lead. “I wasn’t myself, Vessa. I wouldn’t just…just kill someone like that, even with the eyes and her attacking you and…I mean, I would have at least tried to get her to talk to us, you know? And this,” he gestures wildly around us once more. “I’ve never even thought of this before, I promise you.” His breathing is erratic, labored. Hysterics.

Forcing down the slight hurt I feel at his admission, I clamp my hands onto his shaking shoulders and force his gaze onto mine, like I used to do when Mom came home completely wasted from the bar.

“I won’t let it happen to you.” I half expect my voice to be unreassuringly weak, but a small flame of pride sparks in my chest when it comes out as strong as bedrock. Good. I can do this.

Of course, Ríjez doesn’t think the same. He shakes his head sadly, gently prying my hands away and cupping them in the space between us. “We’ve been at this for three years now, Vess. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

“And we’ve survived out in the open for three years,” I point out. “Every ailment has a cure, Tony. We just have to take a creative approach, ask different questions, maybe--” He tenses immediately and growls in aggravation, fisting his hair roughly,  He's breathing laboriously, like he's just run a three minute mile or trying to stave off one hell of a brain freeze. I tense, sliding away from him, my hand sliding towards the knife before catching myself. Bile burns my throat; I’m actually thinking of hurting my one true companion. Even in defense, it would be mutinous.  I scoot farther away from temptation.

Ríjez stops his frantic movements and pauses to exhale loudly, like he’s trying to forcibly expel his tension. “If your theory is right--and, really, there’s no reasonable cause for doubt--those space freaks purposely infected us with this crap. I highly doubt we’re going to find a cure for that on Earth, if anywhere at all.”

“You can’t think like that, Tony." I cradle his hand in mine, running the pads of my fingers over the rough ridges of his palm. “There’s always a way. You're not going to turn.  I won't let it happen.”

I know that this does not convince him. Not entirely. But he grips my hand in his and pulls me into an embrace that I cannot force myself out of. He’s crooning something in Spanish that completely eludes me, but I like to think he’s saying something appreciative.

Somehow, he ends up staying in my bed for the night. I don’t have the heart or desire to kick him out.

I'm too preoccupied with the visit I'll have to pay Mella.