I awoke to the feel of Cooper's rough tongue against my face, one of his paws planted on my left thigh. Grunting quietly, I pushed away his snout, wiping the moisture away from my cheeks. I felt a little disoriented before I remembered where I was.
He tilted his head as if to tell me something, his blue eyes piercing.
"...anymore mouths to feed, Sage! We need to worry about ourselves!" The sound of an unfamiliar deep voice startled me, the anger in the voice palpable.
I peered out the window to see that the car had stopped, but Sage was no longer in it. We appeared to have stopped at a farm, large fields stretching each way I looked. I couldn't tell what was growing; it just looked like a sea of brown and green to me. Off in the distance, a heavy cover of trees swayed in the wind.
"Shut the hell up, you'll bring every corpse within a 10 mile radius here with your belly aching," I recognized Sage's annoyed voice and twisted around to look through the back window.
The food was all gone, but the back was still open. Sage stood leaning against the back of the car, her back to me next to a man. He looked to be only a little older than her with pale reddish gold hair cut short and coffee brown skin, but his eyes were a mean brown. He wasn't fully muscled but he wasn't over weight either, more lean than anything. He seemed dirtier than her as well, his grey wife beater stained and his tattered jeans hanging low on his hips.
He looked pissed. "Don't tell me to-"
"Shut up," She interrupted, turning to glare at him icily. "We have plenty of food between what I've collected and the crops that we're growing. She's just a kid, can't be more than 16 or 17. I wasn't about to leave her there to die. If you've got a problem with that, then I don't give a fuck and you aren't a Kinsley."
I couldn't help but cheer silently, watching as he narrowed his eyes at her.
"Fine. But you're responsible for her." He stormed off and Cooper growled, startling me. I had forgotten he was there.
Without even turning around, she said, "Come on, after you have a shower I'll give you something to eat and we can discuss your stay."
My feet protested as I stepped out into the hard ground, Cooper following suit. His soft fur brushed against my leg as he trotted towards the door, tail swishing.
"Who was the guy you were arguing with?" I prodded as I hobbled to the door, trying to keep my weight on my toes. She placed a firm hand on my shoulder, steadying me.
"Just an ass that's staying here as well. Ignore him, I do." I nodded, quieting for a moment to survey the pain radiating from my feet to my legs.
Keeping her hand in place, she lead me through the house. Everywhere I looked, there were all sorts of weapons; hunting knives ranging from all small to gruesome, all sorts of guns that I couldn't even begin to identify, arrows, everything.
"How did you get all this stuff in such a short time?"
She didn't answer, stopping us in front of a closed wooden door.
"Bathroom is in there. After you're done I'll come back and re-bandage you. Shower, or whatever." Handing me a bundle of clothing and a bar of soap, she moved back down the hall.
I nodded, entering the room before pushing the door shut behind me. I leaned against it, breathing as quiet as I could, the weight of everything that had happened like lead within my body. Before I knew it, tears streamed down my face and I cried in silent agony.
What had happened to my parents? What would happen to me, now that I was with these strangers? Sage seemed nice enough, but her brother certainly didn't want me here. What would I do if she kicked me out?
At least ten minutes had to have passed before I was finally able to clean myself up, stripping down before entering the shower. I turned the water on the hottest setting that I could stand, gripping the soap in my hand. I allowed the searing water to work out the knots underneath my skin before rubbing the soap along my body. It wasn't scented. Turning my back to the shower head, I leaned back gingerly and let my hair be drowned in water as well.
The clothing that Sage had given me were about two sizes too big. There was a pair of camouflage pants that luckily sat on my hips when I pulled them on, a white long-sleeve shirt of which the sleeves just barely reached past my fingertips, undergarments, and a pair of black boots similar to what she had been wearing. I waited to put those on, remembering that she'd said she would have to re-bandage my feet.
Pulling in a shuddering breath, I ran a hand through my dripping, dark chocolate hair before exiting the bathroom. I slowly returned the way that Sage had shown me, returning to the sort of living room where she sat in a simple wooden chair placed next to a dirt brown couch. There were piles of food scattered around, mostly what we had collected from the gas station.
She seemed to be packing them into boxes. She had taken off the jacket she'd been wearing when I'd first met her. She wore a grey tank top that exposed her arms, which had a layer of muscle on them, but not enough to be masculine and her toffee nut skin was bronzed from probably working out in the sun a lot. Her hair was a golden copper color that lightened at the ends, the right side shaved low to a point just behind her ear, the rest less than shoulder length. With her closer and the hood gone, I could now see her eyes better; they weren't just blue as I'd previously thought, but a mixture of the palest blue imaginable and faded grey.
"Sit," She gestured to the couch, lifting a first aid kit that had previously been hidden behind the leg of the chair. I did as I was told, having to pass her before lowering myself onto the couch. Gently, she lifted my left leg onto her lap, a roll of gauze in her hand.
As she wrapped my foot, I twiddled my thumbs nervously. Cooper was out of sight, but I could hear his claws clicking around on the wooden floor somewhere nearby.
Sighing, she rolled her eyes. "Just go ahead and ask already."
"What's going on? How do you already have all of this stuff? What's going to happen to me? Who are you?" I blurted out the questions. She waited until I was done to answer, switching to the other foot.
"My name is Sage, as I told you previously, and I won't hurt you. That's all you need to know about me. What's going on, there has been an outbreak of a virus, and it's spread rather quickly." She paused, untangling the gauze so that she could wind it all the way up to my toes. "It started about four weeks ago, where it originated still undetermined. Some believe that it spread so quickly through tainted red meat, but," She shrugged. "I have my doubts. The virus causes the brain to swell and become damaged until it ultimately shuts down, but the body doesn't."
I refused to believe it. "What is the government doing?"
"Multiple cities have been shut down, although the federal government is still trying to reign in the chaos, last I heard. They're dispatching the military in hopes that it'll help, but again, I have my doubts." Shaking her head, she lowered my foot to the ground, packing the gauze back into the first aid kit. The cool wood helped numb them. "It won't work. People are panicking, which is never good. Cities are like lunch boxes as people try to crowd out all at once, clogging up the highways. They'll become easy meals for the undead. A lot of the things you see, I accumulated before the outbreak. I'm just building up supplies; there's no telling when this will end. What you saw at that gas station is only the beginning." Her voice grew grim.
I wanted to believe that she was insane, that none of this was actually happening. But I couldn't deny what I'd seen with my own eyes. Oblivious to my turmoil, she continued.
"I'd be remiss if I kicked you out without asking if you'd like to stay, seeing as you're only a kid. You can stay here if you wish to, but you'll have to pull your weight."
I hesitated, too afraid to meet her intense gaze. "What does that consist of exactly?"
Deep down, I knew, and I think she knew as well that it didn't really matter. There was no place I could go that I would be better off.
"Well, as a start, you'll have to learn to defend yourself, both with hand to hand combat and guns. When I think you're ready, you'll have the choice of going out on runs with me, or you'll stay here and tend to the crops with Jason. Until further notice, we ration everything, including water. This farm has it's own source of electricity and running water, but showers are limited to one every three days just in case."
"I'd like to stay, thank you," I spoke softly, and she nodded, leaning forward to continue her previous task.
"Are you hungry?"
I shook my head. "No. I'd just like to go to bed, if that's alright."
Nodding, she rose to her feet, brushing off her pants. "Alright. Follow me."
Feeling fatigued beyond belief, I treaded lightly on my sore feet as I followed her down a different hall than the one the bathroom was in, stopping in the middle of it but not near any of the doors. Just as I opened my mouth to question her, she reached to the ceiling and grasped a string that I hadn't even noticed, yanking down a hatch that extended into a ladder.
Gesturing up into the pitch black hole, she stood aside. "There's a string right as you get to the top that you pull to turn on the light. The left side of the room is sectioned off; don't go in there. Otherwise, there are spare blankets in the right corner of room and a small cot already made up for you."
"Thank you," I mumbled genuinely, looking up at her though she wasn't that much taller than me. "For everything."
Looking away, she nodded blankly. "Yeah, sure."
My eyebrows furrowed faintly before I clambered up the ladder, immediately getting hit in the face with another string bottomed with a black bead. I yanked it, a burst of light illuminating the corners of the room.
Pushing my hands out of the sleeves, I blinked, looking around. It was a decently sized attic, the floors blanketed in soft dark blue carpet instead of hardwood. There was a window on the wall directly opposite to me that looked out over the driveway; outside, the sun was beginning to set. The ceiling was shaped like the top of the house, slopping down the sides to form the triangular top. True to Sage's word, the left side of the room didn't end in a sharp corner like the right side did; instead, there was a crudely cut board of wood blocking off that entire corner, the entrance, a small doorway, covered by a white sheet.
Curiosity immediately spawned within me, but as I was painfully conscious of Sage's presence still at the bottom of the ladder, I made my way over to the small twin bed resting in the corner next to the blankets. It had a clean white sheet on it, and I wondered why it was up here.
Had she done it while I was in the shower, or had it already been here?
Shrugging, I lowered myself onto the mattress, a sigh escaping my lips as my weight was taken off of my sore feet. It seemed the moment I finally had a chance to stop and think, everything that had happened so far weighed down on me like an anvil. My limbs felt like lead, and tears pricked at my eyes painfully but I was too exhausted to even cry.
I didn't bother with the blankets, as I was already overheating, nor did I bother to look for a pillow. Laying my head on my arms, I shut my eyes and was out like a light.