Chapter 31
Stella
Ten days after Dougal had gotten in the stretcher, he still wasn’t well enough to walk long distances. In fact, he’d only gotten worse. He slept most hours of the day and night, and he still had bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, despite the fact that he hardly ate anything.
Fergus was almost always one of the two people carrying the stretcher, only stopping when Boden or Edie insisted he rest. His hands were blistered and calloused from the wooden poles, but he was undaunted.
During breaks, he practically spoon-fed Dougal broth. He wiped his brother’s forehead when it glistened with sweat, and he added another blanket when he shivered.
The days were long and hot, especially since we tried to stick to open areas when possible for easier maneuvering of Dougal. That meant avoiding the cool shade of the trees. As an added insult, even the clouds have been absent.
It was so hot that Dougal had actually discarded his blankets. He’d even abandoned a few of his extra layers, and it was alarming to see how skeletal he appeared without all the padding hiding it away.
We’d been moving slow enough that I could let Fae walk, which was a relief because she gave off so much heat for such a tiny thing. She wore only a light sundress, and her auburn curls were pulled up in a pair of pig tails.
“Is that a pond over there?” Leandro asked as the morning tilted toward an exceptionally hot afternoon. He was the second one on stretcher duty, with Fergus at the head. Boden was leading the way, while Edie and I meandered with Fae at the back.
I stood on my tiptoes and squinted, and a dark blue pool appeared on the horizon, but I half-feared it might be a mirage. My tank top was drenched with sweat, and my cheeks were red from sunburn and overheating.
“Yeah, it seems to be,” Boden said.
“Well, I think we’ve earned ourselves a beach day!” Leandro shouted gleefully.
With barely contained excitement, we all hurried across the sunbaked grass toward the shimmering lake, the promise of relief quickening our steps.
Dougal, too weak to join any activities, was placed in the shade of a maple tree north of the sandy beach, and Boden sat down beside him.
On the other side of the tree was a large boulder, and rather strangely, it had been spray-painted with that symbol we had seen before.
The one with the grinning leaf on the Cedar Hollow Campgrounds sign.
I didn’t have time to think on it because Fae was sprinting toward the water, and I had to keep up with her.
“I can stay with Dougal,” Fergus was telling Boden as I left them behind. “It’s no trouble with me if you’re keen to get in.”
“No, I’ve never been much for the water,” Boden assured him. “Go cool off. Have fun.”
On the soft, sandy beach, Edie and I stripped down to tank tops and underwear, and I let Fae strip down entirely. Already, she was toddling in the shallows, laughing and splashing about.
Edie crouched down next to her, where the water splashed her legs and backside, and she let out her own enthusiastic cry, “Oh, this is magnificent!”
I didn’t disagree with her. When the cool water covered my battered, swollen feet, it felt practically euphoric.
Leandro had waded way out into the pond by the time Fergus finally relented to Boden and joined us at the shore. I glanced back over at him as he pulled off his tee shirt and kicked off his jeans.
Though he was the stockier of the two O’Hara boys, he was still rather lean, especially after all these days on the road.
His shoulders were fairly broad, and his arms were toned and strong.
A light trail of dark hair ran from his naval to below his boxer shorts, and for some reason, I found it … intriguing.
A strange warmth fluttered in my stomach, and my cheeks flushed with heat. I quickly looked away and hoped that nobody had noticed me staring.
He slipped into the water with an exuberant whooping, and I focused on Fae’s laughter as she danced and the water lapped at her belly.
“I swear this is the best I’ve felt in a damn month!” Leandro shouted as he swam backwards.
“Too true, boyo,” Fergus agreed, swimming out after him into the depths of the pond.
“You can go out with them and have a real swim,” Edie told me. “I’ve never been that strong of a swimmer, so I don’t mind staying here in the shallows with Fae.”
“I’m okay,” I demurred, but I glanced back over at Fergus and Leandro laughing.
“Go on,” Edie pressed with a smile. “We’ll be right here.”
I paddled into deeper water, sunlight glancing off the ripples.
Fergus arched a brow at me, his grin sly and unmistakably mischievous. “About time you joined us, lass.”
“I couldn’t leave Fae,” I reminded him, and he immediately turned apologetic.
“Of course not. Only meant it’s nice to have you along on such a fine day as this.”
It was a fine day. Before, when Max and I were young at the Lakehouse, we would’ve spent the day in Tremblay Lake or reading in the shade. That had only been before Fae was born, but it felt like a lifetime ago. How many lifetimes had I lived before I even reached adulthood?
Distant death groans echoed through the trees, shattering the illusion of a peaceful afternoon. The zombies sounded far enough away that they weren’t an immediate threat, but I wanted it to stay that way.
While treading water in the middle of the pond, I closed my eyes, and I focused on commanding the zombies to stay away. The air around me filled with the scent of musky earth, too faint for Fergus or Leandro to smell, even as close as they were.
“Are you at it now?” Fergus asked, and I opened my eyes again to see him watching me with a curious kind of awe. “Were you talking to them? The zombies?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t call it talking,” I said, sheepishly explaining something that felt so innate to me. “Not like a conversation. But I was signaling for them to stay away.”
“And that works?” Leandro asked, watching toward the trees as if he half-expected a horde to come stumbling out.
“You saw it work back at the Revvers,” Fergus reminded him. “Or have you forgotten already how Stella saved us?”
“No, I haven’t,” Leandro said with an embarrassed grin. “It’s just that it’s still hard for me to wrap my head around.”
“It’s like anything else in life,” I said. “You get used to it with enough time.”
“Do you feel it?” Fergus asked. “When the zombies are close by?”
“Indirectly,” I said. “Their scents make me feel a certain way. I think that’s how it is for them, too, but they don’t have rational thought anymore. I can still deliberate and make choices for myself, so I don’t feel compelled to react to the pheromones the way they do.”
Suddenly, Edie screamed, and I looked back to see her frantically scooping Fae out of the water.
“What’s wrong?” I shouted, but already, I was swimming back toward the shore as quickly as I could.
“There was a leech!” Edie yelled, and by then, Fae had started crying, and Boden was rushing down to join them. “Fae had a leech on her leg!”
When the lake was shallow enough that I could touch the bottom, I started running. It wasn’t until the water was about knee-deep that I finally slowed some, catching my breath, while Edie and Boden doted on Fae on the shore.
“Is she okay?” I asked as I approached.
“She seems to be,” Edie said, and then she looked back at me. Her eyes widened with horror, and she gasped. “Stella, you’re covered in leeches!”
I glanced down at myself, and immediately noticed a dozen slimy wriggling worm-like creatures had attached themselves to me. Most of them were around an inch long, but the one latched onto my calf had to be half a foot in length, all of them swelling as they sucked my blood.
I screamed because I couldn’t help myself and started yanking them off of me. Boden yelled for us to get out of the water, but I was already racing to the shore as quickly as I could.
“We’re away from zombies, and still there’s some fecker trying to sink his teeth in us,” Fergus muttered, as he joined us on the shore and pulled a swollen leech off his chest.