Chapter 14 #2
He’s gritting his teeth, eyes angry as hell as he glares at Veronica, then Delilah, then Veronica again.
What the…
“Chase?” I murmur.
He gives his head a quick shake. “I’m fine, baby. Don’t worry about me.”
Well, I wasn’t. Up until two seconds ago, I was solely focused on what was going to happen to Maverick, but now that I see that Chase is on the edge of losing it again… yup. I’m worried about him, too.
I find his hand. Take it. Having that connection with me usually does the trick, and my shoulders relax a little after I notice that his do, too.
We both look at Delilah.
Even behind her sunglasses, I can tell she’s apologetic even before she says, “Not yet. I have to think about it some more. Refer to my notes.”
Veronica nudges Delilah in the knee with hers. “Aren’t you glad I made you sneak your notebooks out every night those fuckers gave you leave? You quit so abruptly, you never would’ve been able to sneak them out of your office if they were still there.”
“I quit because I had to.”
No. She quit because she threw away her position as a biochemist at the NRI in order to help Chase, Maverick, and I escape.
And that’s why, when Chase opens his mouth to argue, I squeeze his thigh. A quick shake of my head and, though I know he’d prefer to push the subject, he goes quiet.
We all do.
They don’t find him.
The teams that Veronica sent after Maverick stay out until the sky begins to lighten, hoping that Maverick couldn’t get far, thanks to the state he was in when he took off.
I wanted to stay up until the others returned—with good news or not—but it was Veronica who told Chase and I to go to bed.
I’m sure she stayed up, most likely with Delilah.
As for Chase and me… we went back to the cabin, though neither of us really slept.
He did grab a towel from the bathroom. After getting it wet and soaping it up, he scrubbed every last bit of blood from my skin.
He grabbed one of my spare tanks, tugging it on over my head after he helped ease Rory’s jacket off of me.
I realized that I was letting Chase treat me like a child again, and though part of me wanted to tell him to stop, another part… well, it liked the attention.
I loved the way Chase doted on me as though I was worthy of his care and affection.
Because I know it made him feel better, I did climb into bed with Chase and let him hold me. I might have passed out for a few minutes at a time here or there; overall, I spent the whole night waiting for word that Maverick was okay.
It never came.
The next day, I’m surprised to find that Veronica isn’t willing to call off the search.
After it hits twenty-four hours, I’m sure she’ll change her mind.
At that point, there’s no possible way that Maverick can survive unless he found an antidote, and despite his track record, I don’t think he’s that lucky.
Then again, fingers crossed.
A new grouping of hunters replaced the first set.
Chase volunteers to go despite getting even less sleep than I did.
I know why, too. He offers to search because I want to go, and Veronica still thinks it’s better if I stay behind.
So Chase joins Raul and—to my surprise—Nicky, while two other trios head out with them.
For the next ten hours, there’s nothing.
Oh, the crews returns through the day, grabbing food and swapping out hunters who have gotten some rest, but Chase isn’t one of them.
I know him. He’ll run himself into the ground if he thinks he’s doing it for me, and in the end, it isn’t even Chase who finds Maverick.
It’s Simon.
Simon is a portly Asian man around my age.
Before the Turning, he was a doomsday prepper who spent his days on the computer, talking to those like him.
It’s how he got into contact with Veronica.
When Delilah called her twin, sharing with her all of the concerns Delilah had after she already took the first Injection, Veronica immediately figured this could be trouble.
People used to make fun of anyone prepping for the apocalypse, but if Veronica—and those she spoke to on messageboards—hadn’t sounded the alarm before January 1st last year, Camp Sunnyside wouldn’t exist.
In case anything bad happened… whether it was nuclear warfare or a pandemic or the government turned on its people…
everyone was supposed to gather at the abandoned campsite in the Ramapo Hills.
It was only open for six weeks every summer, run by Caroline and her family for the neighborhood kids, and Veronica decided it would be a good homebase.
She had no idea how right she would be.
Simon is as loyal to Veronica as David—who, I discovered, was also part of the same messageboard—is. He might not look the part of a post-apocalyptic hero, like David, Nicky, Chase, or Aaron, but Simon is kind and smart and determined.
And he was able to follow Maverick’s tracks and find the former cop fast asleep in the daylight.
Lurkers can’t exist in the sunlight. They burn up as though fire touched them if they step out of their dark shadows.
That they couldn’t tolerate any light at all was our first clue as survivors that fire might be our savior.
During the day, the sun handles killing the lurkers for us. At night, flames do.
That Maverick was able to sleep beneath the sun…
Simon followed the same orders that Veronica gave David.
He whistled, drawing the attention of Kathy and Parminder, the two hunters closest to his location.
Since Mav was clearly injured but not dead or Turned, the three of them alternated between hefting him up, hooking his arms over their shoulders and carrying the unconscious man back.
I was sitting in the pavilion, gnawing nervously on my thumb when Kathy and Simon finished the last leg, calling for Veronica.
Turns out, while we only had Audrey as a nurse back at the Grave, Annie used to be a pediatrician before she took over the trading post. A doctor was a doctor and, combined with Delilah’s scientific brain, they brought Maverick inside of an empty cabin near the back row and went to work on him.
I only know Simon as well as I do because he’s one of the mainstays at the laundry station. After he passed Maverick off to our makeshift medical team, I asked him if he thought Mav would be okay.
I’ll never forget the strange look that flashes across his round face before he admitted, “I don’t know. We lifted his eyelid to check, but his eyes weren’t black. Not entirely, at least. And the sun didn’t touch him. But it was the weirdest thing.”
“What? What is?”
“His shoulder. I know Eileen bit him. That’s what Vee said. And while he’s missing half of his shirt on that side… it’s his shoulder. You think it would look like a pack of ground beef or something.”
“And it doesn’t.”
“No. In fact, it doesn’t look like he was bit at all.”
What?