Chapter 27 #2
I don’t stop punching until my body is spent and the guy below me is no longer fighting back.
He’s just a bloody mess on the concrete, with gore splattered around him and my hands stained red.
The sight of the blood and the dead guy below is enough for my anger to turn into disgust, panic, and despair.
My hands tremble and bile burns my throat as I scramble away from the body. I’m just like him. The monster who raised me, who blamed me for my mum’s death.
I tried so hard not to be like him, but not even I can escape from my genetics. I guess that’s the true horror of this apocalypse; any man can turn into a monster.
Movement out of the corner of my eye catches my attention.
I glance up to see Ollie kneeling next to the dead body of Ethan.
She’s also covered in blood, her body shaking as she stares down at the corpse with the bloodied arrow still clutched in her hands.
She looks shell-shocked, her eyes open but unseeing.
Harlow whines and presses her body against her, but Ollie doesn’t react. She’s still stuck in her nightmare, one that’s similar to mine.
Fuck.
I shake my head and clamber to my feet to make my way over to Ollie. My hands still tremble and my stomach roils with nausea, but I ignore it. Ollie needs me more, so I’ll shelve my own freak out until I’ve calmed her down and we’re somewhere safer.
I crouch when I reach her. “Ollie?”
She doesn’t react, still staring at the body with a glazed expression while barely breathing.
“Ollie, sweetheart, I need you to look at me,” I say, firmer than before.
There’s a flicker of recognition in her gaze, but it’s fleeting and all too quickly she falls back into her panic-induced nightmare.
Shit. I want to touch her, maybe shake her, but I don’t want to get any more blood on her and I’m not sure how she’ll react to touch right now. I imagine being sexually assaulted and then murdering the asshole is traumatic enough that she probably won’t welcome my hands on her.
“Ollie, look at me right now,” I snap, channelling my inner Rhys, hoping it’ll kick start her brain.
It does. Her eyes snap to my face, but there’s fear and horror in them and she’s still not breathing.
“Sweetheart, I need you to take a deep breath for me.” I breathe in an exaggerated deep breath, relieved to see that she follows my lead. “And out,” I say as I let out my breath slowly. She does as I tell her, so I repeat it several times until she’s breathing by herself.
“Alex?” Her voice is so small and timid, nothing like the fierce woman she is. There’s a look of abject hopelessness in her red-rimmed eyes that makes my heart crack in two.
“Yeah, sweetheart?” I want to wrap my arms around her, pull her into my chest and chase away the demons hiding in her eyes. But I resist. We’re both covered in blood, and I don’t want to trigger her again.
“Am I a monster?”
I blink, shocked at her question. “A monster? Why would you think that?”
Her eyes flick to the corpse by her feet.
“Because of that and...” She bites her lip and hesitates.
“I stabbed another man last night in the back while he was attacking Rhys. I’ve killed two people and I don’t feel bad about either of their deaths.
” She says that last part so quietly that I almost don’t hear her.
This explains why she was so quiet yesterday.
She’s feeling guilt, not over the lives she’s taken, but because she doesn’t regret them.
I glance over at the bloody mess I’ve left behind us; the three bodies, two of which are almost untouched, aside from the bullet holes, while the third is a mangled corpse.
“No, sweetheart, you aren’t a monster,” I tell her firmly. I am. “You did what you had to in order to survive.” Unlike me, who beat a man to death when I could have ended his life by snapping his neck. Instead, I made him suffer and I don’t feel an ounce of regret.
Fuck. I really am like him.
“Alex.” A small hand grabs mine and I look back to see Ollie staring at me with those brilliant green eyes.
Gone is the timid woman from before. She’s been replaced by the fierce Ollie I’ve come to know and fall for.
“If I’m not a monster, then neither are you,” she says with such conviction, I almost believe her.
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Well, I am,” she snaps back while squeezing my hand. “Do you want to kill another person? Beat them bloody like you did that guy?”
I flinch as nausea rolls through me at the mention of what I just did. I swallow hard and shake my head. “No, not right now.”
“Then you’re not a monster. Just a man who has some darkness inside him.”
“And you?” I need her to understand that if what she’s saying about me is true, then it’s true for her as well.
She presses her lips together and gives a firm nod. “I’m not a monster.” Her eyes flick down to the corpse of Ethan. “But he was.”
Now that’s something we can both agree on.
“Come on,” I say as I stand. “We should get moving. I’m sure those gunshots didn’t go unnoticed by either the living or the dead.”
Ollie nods and staggers to her feet. I grab her arm before her knees give way beneath her and hold her until she’s steady on her feet. Once I’m sure she won’t crash down into a pool of blood, I release her and set about grabbing the discarded weapons.
The extra two guns are nice to have, even if they’re older and not well cared for. I make sure that the safety is on for both of them before shoving them into the pockets of my combat trousers. I then grab my own gun and shove it back into its holster before grabbing Ollie’s bow and knife.
“Here,” I say, handing them back to her.
She gives me a grateful smile before sliding the knife back into its sheath. With both of us reunited with our weapons, we make our way out of the bloodbath the side street has become different from when we entered only ten minutes before.