Page 14 of Savagely Yours
No husband and children.
No honeymoon in Johannesburg.
And, quite possibly, no more birthdays.
I heard Dez say, “I have to get back to her, thanks.” By the time I blinked, he was on his knees, cradling both sides of my face, his thumbs wiping away tears I was too numb to feel.
“Hey, hey.” He rotated my head until he managed to get my lazy attention. “Talk to me. You’re freaking me out.”
“Dez, you can’t leave. I hate having to admit this, but I can’t do this on my own.”
I had no one.
I’d kept my relationships surface-level because of how close I was with Wren. My biggest fear before all this was creating a deep connection with someone, or a group of people, only to lose them the way I lost Raven.
Now, even work had abandoned me.
Dez, sighing, pulled me into a hug. “I won’t disagree with you,” he said. “Honestly, I’m trained to survive, and even I can’t wrap my head around this shit. That guy I met, he used to live in my building. He has connections. The government’s not headed for collapse. It’s already gone. They’re saving face to give officials time to escape, but this thing is global.”
I wrapped my arms around him, weakly, needily, and desperately. “What is it?”
“No one knows, but it doesn’t seem to be airborne, like previously thought.”
I slid one arm back.
“Keep the mask on.”
I returned my arm to its original position.
“It’s exactly like we’ve seen,” he continued. “The videos? Chris? They were real. The infection does something to the brain, turns people into monsters. Cannibals. A secret team at the CDC was working on a cure, but the government put in a kill order once they learned the infection couldn’t be contained.”
I buried my face against the side of his neck and inhaled. This wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear, but I did remember Chris. I remembered what I saw, what I heard.
“Tapley, I was thinking about something. You’re a priority asset.”
“Remember that the administration switched hands since this thing began,” I reminded him.
“I know, but you’re still a Fed. So, if someone comes for you, I want you to go with them.”
With the pain from the hard ground setting in, I released him and stood. He rose more slowly, studying me with an expression on his face I couldn’t read.
“Do you mean that?” I asked.
He nodded. “I do. If I’m right about what’s going to happen, we might not make it. I need you to be all right with picking safety if we’re forced to split up.”
“Because I’m a deadweight.”
