Chapter 26
The Pirate Disease
Cam
Cam had been through a lot during his lifetime—both Before and during the zompocalypse—but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so flat-out terrified as when Allie had run past him to put herself directly in absolutely everyone’s line of fire.
Luckily, the fear had kept him from giving in to self-righteous anger again. Then Rachel had been so very pissy about Allie... saving everyone? So he was able to channel some of that fear into irritation.
Now Allie was looking at him with wary brown eyes as they gathered supplies to take over to the new people, and he didn’t know how to tell her what he was feeling, especially after the blow-up over her seeking ability.
So he tried to act normal, or whatever passed for normal in their high-stress world, but he was also wrung dry emotionally.
He’d often had these kinds of feelings—fear mixed with anger mixed with something like acceptance—when he’d still been living with his father.
When he wasn’t sure if or when he would be able to eat on the weekends—at school, at least, he’d always had food—or when his father would hit him for no apparent reason other than that Cam was within reach.
He’d talked about that with his therapist a lot as a teenager.
He hadn’t been able to change those circumstances, so he’d allowed himself to accept them as normal, but they drained him twenty-four, seven, and it had taken years for him to recover from that constant stress.
Was this going to be what it was like, loving Allie but never knowing what kind of danger she would be in from day to day?
And not just from the Zs but from the goddess she trusted?
She wouldn’t have thrown herself into the middle of that mess of a standoff unless she knew for fucking certain that those people were friendlies.
Logically, that meant she’d been shown something by Morrigan that had spurred her into an impulsive action that could have gotten her killed in the blink of an eye.
Accidents happened when scared people had trembling fingers curled around triggers.
Plus the seeking? Jesus, he would never forget the agony on her face, the blood flowing from her nose, when she’d come out of her trance earlier. He hoped like fuck it wasn’t going to be like that every time.
Because there would be another time. Key had already factored Allie’s ability into their group’s assets—not because she was using Allie, he knew, but because Allie was part of the family now.
Everyone in the group contributed what they could, and every skill from cooking to shooting to magical powers was fair game.
Odette would always back Key on this, too, but that was a good thing. Odette would know to keep an eye on Allie’s general health before and after, and Allie would always have someone watching her back from now on.
He felt better knowing that—but he would prefer to be the one making sure she could use her seeking power safely. Ideally, he would get the chance to prove that to her.
He gathered their bag of vitamins and Odette’s travel case of medical supplies from Odette and Key’s bike trailer then looked over to where Allie was pulling cans and foil MREs from one of Ripper’s saddlebags.
An idea struck, and he went over to Gray’s trailer and began gathering some of the fresh veggies.
No better way to show them we mean no harm and that allying with us is a good idea than to demonstrate we know folks who garden.
“Cam,” Allie said quietly. “Are you okay?”
When he turned toward her, those big brown eyes gazed into his, a level of anxiety there but also a core of inner strength that humbled him. Damn it, did she not realize that he’d never be okay again as long as he loved her and she kept putting herself at risk?
Yeah, like that’s not basically every day in the zompocalypse. Try again.
He took a breath and said the truth on a gusty exhalation. “No.”
She set down her bag of supplies and went to him, then she twined her arms around his neck, stunning him into a silence that felt suddenly full of hope instead of fear.
He wrapped his arms around her and savored her warmth, inhaled the scent of lavender and Allie, and fervently wished they could be alone together.
Preferably naked. His body wanted proof that they were both still alive.
For a moment, they held each other, Cam unable to speak for his disordered, suddenly lustful thoughts, Allie letting him be silent. But she was there with him.
Then he buried his face in her hair. “We’re going to need to have a long talk at some point, huh?”
She tightened her grip on him and sighed. “We are. But not right now.”
“Not right now.”
Eventually, they untangled themselves and headed back to the group with supplies, finding everyone busy.
Gray and Ripper were treating and bandaging a leg that had been badly mauled—by a dog rather than a zombie, as Manny had said—on a red-headed kid who looked to be a teenager.
This must be Ginger, who’d liked Allie’s joke.
They all looked in various stages of roughness.
Odette was completing a checkup on Jen while Rachel joined Key in conducting a body search on Manny. It didn’t appear to be a full-blown strip search, but all areas save the privates were being bared one at a time, including his buttocks.
Meanwhile, Zachary was watching Gray like a hawk. “I’m Ginger’s brother. I can help,” he said a little testily. “Just give me some alcohol so I can clean my hands.”
Through gritted teeth, Ginger said, “Or you could go do something actually useful, Zacheroo, like get checked out by their nurse.”
Gray nodded at Ginger then said kindly to Zachary, “Why don’t you go talk to my friends Cam and Allie over there about some food?”
Zachary ran a hand through his hair and stood. “Fine, but I’m coming back.”
“If there’s a God, they’ll have peaches,” Ginger said then gasped as Ripper tied a tight bandage and muttered an apology. “Bring me some.”
Cam and Allie set up their stuff on a blanket, and Cam grabbed the medical case and took it to Dette.
“Cameron,” his mom said, taking it from him with a nod of thanks, “you brought the vitamins?”
“Yup. What do you need?”
“Vitamin C, to start,” she said then turned back to her patient. “You all have the beginnings of scurvy—that’s why you’re all so weak.”
“The pirate disease?” This was from Manny, whose eyes had gone wide.
Jen closed her eyes and sighed. “Wow. Did not have that one on my end-of-the-world bingo card.”
After everyone in the new group had cleaned up as best they could and had been searched, bandaged if needed, and given vitamin C drops, the food was divvied up among the four of them.
Once they’d all eaten and set up camp for the evening, the new family shared some of their story.
Ginger and Zachary were siblings. Jen was their mother, and they’d met Manny after the zombies had overrun the Midwest. Jen and Manny were in a relationship, which was clear to see from their solicitous behavior toward each other.
Zachary and Manny seemed to be friendly, and Manny definitely had a fatherly vibe toward Ginger.
They’d all traveled from up north and found themselves in areas with a whole lot of nothing in the way of natural vegetation.
“Iowa. A bunch of fields, right? We thought there would be more food,” Manny said.
“Now it’s... nothing. Weeds. Wildflowers.
Scraggly volunteer crops in places. Some native plants, but we didn’t know what we could eat.
We decided to just power through and keep walking. ”
Then when they’d gotten to Missouri, they’d had a hard time scavenging canned fruits and vegetables, although they’d had plenty of meat from hunting the cattle and pigs running wild on the ruined farmlands.
Hence the scurvy, which had improved almost immediately. “Those tablets are magic,” Jen said. “I feel better than I’ve felt in weeks.”
Dette laughed. “Not magic,” she said. “Just giving your body a good dose of what it needs. You didn’t have too bad of a case—believe me. Between the vitamins and the fresh food, you should be back to normal within a few days.”
Manny shook his head. “We should have been taking vitamins. How stupid is that?”
Jen put her hand over his and squeezed. “Hey. We know now.”
Ginger looked up and swallowed a bite of tomato. “This is incredible.”
“It’s not peaches,” Gray said, grinning, “but it’s not bad, right?”
Ginger closed their eyes. “I renounce peaches. They have no power over me now that I have experienced true bliss.”
Everyone laughed, even Ripper.
When Key asked where they were from, the mood quickly turned solemn.
Jen Miller had been a first-grade teacher, while Manny Soto had been a Spanish teacher—his parents were first-generation Mexican immigrants and had lived in Minnesota, where he’d lived until he got a job teaching in a small town in Wisconsin near the Dells.
Manny shook his head. “It’s a miracle my brother and I were able to reconnect before everything went to hell.”
Manny had originally been traveling with his brother, Tony, and the two of them had met Jen, Zachary, and Ginger right after the zombies overwhelmed the cities. They’d stayed in Wisconsin for as long as they could, but they’d finally come down south to avoid another winter in the north.
Manny’s mouth pulled tight when he said, “We heard on one of our radio stations that there were more stabilized communities in Missouri and Illinois. We decided to try for Missouri, since it was closer. No way were we going near Chicago.”
That made sense. Cam suddenly wondered how many other survivors were being called to this part of Missouri, either by radio or by less-ordinary means.
Manny talked a little about their travels, which had mostly gone smoothly until, somewhere in Iowa, they’d been scavenging, and Tony had been bitten.
Then Manny stopped abruptly, his voice failing him and making Cam’s own throat tighten in sympathy.