Page 13 of Chaos Destiny
Sweat had dotted her brown skin, and full, slightly unruly brows outlined her eyes, reminding me of the sky right before a thunderstorm. She wore her hair in slim locs that fell past her shoulders, and in the second it had taken for her to look back when her crew called out, I’d scanned her from head to toe. Sex might have been low on the hierarchy, but that could change on a full stomach and with a roof over my head.
“Looks like it’s gonna storm, T,” I said, glancing up at the sky. “We set out on a good day. After some medicine and rest, Mum will be on the mend. I promise. Remember what I told you?”
Thandie’s dark, delicate eyelashes barely twitched. One day, when she was older, if I was around, I would tell her the story of how she slept her way through an apocalypse.
Hopefully, her father was still alive.
I’d been referring to Julien as “the kid” since the day we met, although he was only six years my junior. We’d served together in a Special Forces ghost unit so clandestine, Bigfoot would be found on Atlantis before our true identities were uncovered. It felt like a lifetime ago, although it had only been a couple of years since our contracts ended, and we made an attempt at returning to civilian life.
I’d served as the unit’s captain. Julien’s primary role had been the unit’s tech whiz. Dez Harding used to be my secondin command, and Michael Huang, resident daredevil, was our aeronautics expert. Giorgio Pozza, we’d referred to as the “weapon” of our team, primarily since we’d all agreed that he was a high-functioning sociopath.
Perhaps psychopath.
Or some combination of both.
After our contracts ended, I went into commercial real estate. Julien created cybersecurity software he sold to the federal government for a price I was sure they’d had to tap into the Treasury to afford. The last time I talked to Dez, he’d gone into private security, his most recent client a federal prosecutor. Mike had gone into aerospace engineering, and the last I checked, Giorgio had, by now, no doubt negated the legal immunity we were granted upon the completion of our contracts.
A group like that was hard to kill.
Regardless of the size of the threat currently facing human civilization, either they were still walking around the planet or taking them out had been a hell of an undertaking.
When the camper came into view, hard raindrops pelleted us from the sky. I ran the rest of the way, shielding Thandie as best I could, and we burst inside just as the downpour began.
“Ari?” I called, unfolding the wrap and shifting Thandie to one arm. “Arihi?”
I entered the camper’s bedroom area to find it empty. There was no sign of a struggle to say that one of the Infected had made its way in, not that Ari would have had the strength to put up much of a fight. But the things were essentially brain-dead. Using tools, opening doors, and climbing stairs, as far as I knew, they couldn’t do.
I searched every inch of the camper, twice, like Ari would manifest out of thin air. By the time I finally accepted she wasn’t there, outside had turned into a blanket of darkness, squeezingout broad sheets of rain. Even if I’d wanted to go out and search for her, there was no way I could do so with a baby in tow until the rain let up.
I sat on the floor, my back pressed against a flimsy wall, and secured Thandie in the crook of my arm. “Think she got some energy and left to find us, baby girl?”
There was no way.
Ari could barely raise her arm.
“Honestly, sweetheart, had it not been for you and your mum, I don’t think I would have held on this long. I don’t like feeling helpless, and yet I’m forced to sit here, waiting, when your mum could be out there somewhere on the verge of death.”
I leaned my head back against the wall and switched Thandie to my shoulder. She wasn’t wailing or showing any visible signs of distress, yet I rocked her and gently patted her back.
“She’s all right, sweetheart.” I kissed the side of her head. “I promise you, she’s all right. Because I don’t know what I’d do with myself if she’s not.”
6
TAYLER
We steppedthrough the camp gates and entered chaos. Carolyn, the camp’s only nurse, ran up to me, breathing hard and wringing her hands.
“Dr. D, Allen’s back, and he’s looking for you.”
I handed my things off to Omar, prepping for a fight, but my energy switched focus with Carolyn’s next sentence.
“They found a woman. She’s in bad shape. She’s in the exam room.”
I ran beside her and burst into the building that had once housed classrooms for the small county’s school of agriculture. Now, it was our “hospital,” which I’d used to treat everything from respiratory illnesses to wounds to breaks and sprains over the last several months. It was also where we quarantined those suspected of having been infected. Then, there was another room where Memphis and Dallas took those whose infections were confirmed.
“Explain bad shape,” I said.
“Crackling in her lungs. Blood and pus in her sputum. High fever. Delirium. Allen and the group were driving by and spotteda camper in the woods. They decided to stop and check it for supplies. They found her inside.”
