Thicker than Blood by Madeline Sheehan Page B

beside it. Not that it mattered much. The
infection would soon take root inside me and the fever would spread
quickly, giving me a day, maybe two before I succumbed and then
awoke as one of them.
    As my bottom hit the cold concrete floor,
the rest of my fleeting energy leaving me entirely, my screams
turned to whimpers, my cries to a quiet choking that resulted in
bile erupting from my throat and down my chin. I sat there,
coughing through my emotion, fear snaking through my body so wildly
that I could hardly think straight, and then my bladder unwittingly
released, warm and wet, coating my jeans.
    And that was how Alex found me. Covered in my
own vomit, in a pool of my own urine, with my foot still lodged in
the skull of an infected.
    So consumed with my own circumstances, I
hadn’t even heard the door open, didn’t see Alex until he was
standing in front of me. I stared up, feeling momentary disbelief
until I noticed the arm in his hand. Connected to the arm was the
entire body of a man I didn’t recognize. A man who, considering he
had what looked like a human bone jutting from his eye socket, was
obviously dead.
    Alex took one look at me, at my expression,
then dropped the body and rushed to my side. Belatedly, I noticed
the large key ring in his hand, courtesy of the dead man, I
supposed.
    “Ev-Ev-Evelyn,” I managed to sputter out
between sobs.
    Yanking on my chains, Alex shook his head.
“Haven’t found her yet. Only found you because you were
screaming.”
    “Bi-bitten.” I sobbed, trying to move my
right arm to show him.
    There was a momentary pause as Alex’s eyes
grew wide with alarm, and then he ripped off the remaining shreds
of my sleeve and frantically inspected my skin.
    Dropping to his knees, not caring what he was
kneeling in, he rocked back on his heels and smiled at me. “Not
bitten,” he whispered.
    Not bitten. Those two words were like fuel to my
dwindling fire. My waning energy erupted, my worries for myself
instantly gone, replaced with nothing but concern for
Evelyn.
    After dislodging my foot from the skull of
the infected and helping me to my feet, Alex kept one arm looped
around my waist, holding me up as he unchained me from the altar.
It took several attempts, but he finally found the right key and
removed my shackles. I winced at the sight of my bloodied and
mangled wrists, but then quickly forgot about them.
    “Evelyn,” I whispered frantically. “We need
to find her.”
    Alex, his back to me now, was bent down next
to the body he’d dragged into the room. Roughly rifling through the
man’s clothing, he was pocketing whatever he could find.
    Getting to his feet, he thrust a small blade
at me and I readily took it, grateful for it. The smooth handle was
hot in my cold hand, steady and sure against my shaky resolve. I
could do this if I had to. It wasn’t as if I was any stranger to
using a knife on someone, even if that person had been sleeping. My
apprehension stemmed from the fear of retaliation. I wasn’t a
fighter, with very little physical strength. If a full-grown man
came at me…
    Gritting my teeth, I shut down that line
of thinking. I would do what I had to do. I would be strong and
fight, if need be. I’d be like Evelyn.
    “Stay behind me,” Alex said, his voice a
hushed whisper. “If anything happens to me, you run. Understand?
Just run.”
    I managed to bob my head up and down, my
relief at finding out I hadn’t been bitten short lived. We still
had to get out of here…wherever we were. The last thing I
remembered was being torn away from Evelyn, and then I’d woken up
here, shackled and alone, only to have an infected shoved into the
room with me.
    “What is this place?” I asked as we crept
quietly toward the door. “Where are we?”
    With one hand on the knob, the other
clutching a handgun, Alex turned his head just enough to look at
me. In the bouncing light that gave his already shadowed features a
menacing glower, he swallowed audibly.
    “Hell,” he