Broken

Chapter 26

I woke up on a couch. I opened my eyes to see the back of the couch and felt the warmth of a fire to my back. I rolled over and hissed in pain. Someone was immediately by my side. Seth. He helped me roll over and sit up. I gingerly touched my jaw. Seth pulled my hand away from my jaw and inspected it.

"I'll redress it in a minute. How's your stomach?"

I pulled up my shirt to reveal a large black and blue splotch on my stomach. I pushed my shirt back down.

"It hurts."

Seth nodded. "It should. He got you pretty bad. There's no internal damage, though. So it's just a really bad bruise."

He began to fix my jaw. He explained what it looked it.

"You have a long jagged cut down the side of your face now. Basically the entire right side of your face is bruised. I've reduced all the swelling with some water and now I'm cleaning your cut. I think it's gonna scar."

I nodded in response. He began rubbing it with alcohol and I hissed. He looked at me apologetically.

"Sorry."

After a minute, I gathered the courage to ask him a question.

"Where did you go?"

"When?"

"When they attacked me? Where did you go?"

Seth's face fell. "The woman. She grabbed me and tried to choke me. Your little fiasco was too loud so you couldn't hear us. We fought. I tried to take her captive but that took longer than I thought. So I shot her."

He looked into my eyes. "Beth, I'm sorry. I didn't know she was going to do that. She took me by surprise."

I held back tears as the alcohol burned me. "It's fine. I was thinking you had left me."

I saw Seth actually become upset. "You thought I just left you?"

I realized what I had suggested. "Well, no... but I didn't know where you were and thought you had left me to deal with them."

"Beth, I would never leave you," he said with full sincerity.

I nodded. I felt like the little girl I was so long ago. My mother would fix my "boo boos" my father would give me as she whispered, "I'll never leave you, sweet Bethany."

But she's dead. Seth's not. Maybe he won't leave me, like my mother did. Of course I know it wasn't her fault. But, she's not here, neither is Cassie or Andrew. I'm alone. Maybe Seth won't leave?

Seth patted my shoulder. "I'm done. It's really late. You should probably sleep some more."

I nodded again and took a quick look around.

"Where are we?"

"My house."

It looked trashed. Everything but this couch was destroyed. Dust and debris covered everything. This house alone was a war zone. I whispered,

"What happened here?"

"The army happened. They broke in here the day the outbreak got really bad and tried to kill my dad. He worked for the science part of the military. The government issued an order to kill anyone in that department."

Seth gazed at the fire. "He defended us the best he could. He died. My mother told me to take Perry and get out of here. I guess the military was just as dangerous as the insane, because she risked us going outside into the madness than stay there and die at the hands of the army."