Page 137 of Afflicted

SILAS

Juliet stays curledup under my arm for the duration of the drive. She stops shaking after an hour or so, and once the adrenaline wears off she even goes to sleep for a little while. But she doesn’t let me go, her hand straying underneath my t-shirt to rest against my stomach.

I can taste her fear, and it’s not sweet or alluring. It makes my stomach turn. It doesn’t matter what I say to her, every reassurance I’ve given her since we left the compound. She doesn’t believe me. She thinks they’ll tear her away from me, and that she’ll never see me again.

And the fact is, that it might come to that.

What happened this morning proved that I can’t keep her safe. I can fight off a few starved marauders, sure. But not a whole horde of Afflicted. Not an organized rogue militia. And certainly not the fucking National Guard should they ever find us.

I press a kiss to the top of Juliet’s head, trying to get a handle on my rage. This isn’t fair. This isn’t fuckingfair. I blink my eyes hard, gritting my teeth against the sorrow that threatens to swallow me up. I’m letting her fear infect me. I have no reason to doubt the colony, the vamps in Savannah said there were vampires living there.

It might still be OK.

I drive on, the decaying towns passing us by. About an hour from Roanoke, I bring the truck to a stop, and Juliet rouses from sleep. She blinks, running the back of her hand across her face, then just gazes up at me, those eyes like a storm.

“We're nearly there, aren’t we?”

I nod, stroking a strand of hair out of her face. “Nearly, yeah.” I drop a soft kiss on her lips. “It’ll be alright, yeah?”

She screams as something slams into the side of the car and I whip the gun up towards the window. I almost pull the trigger, but stop when I see what it is.

An Afflicted vamp claws weakly at the window. Its cheeks are completely sunken, its eyes blank. Straggly dark hair ropes from its ruddy scalp, and the sounds coming from it are pathetic, animalistic. The bloody stumps of its fingers leave dark tracks of blood on the glass.

“Oh jesus, Silas!” Juliet’s head whips to look over her shoulder, before she burrows against me. “Go! Drive!”

“It’s alright.” I lower the gun, narrowing my eyes as the creature groans and claws at the truck.

“Silas, it’s going to smash the window.” Juliet’s voice is wavering with fear.

“No, it’s… weak. I think it’s starving.”

“Then it’s hungry.” Juliet is breathing hard against my chest, lifting her head to jerk a glance over her shoulder. “Can we get out of here, please?”

“They’re dying.”

The Afflicted mewls, cracked and bleeding lips torn open as it collapses, disappearing out of view.

“Silas, please, can we get out of here?” Juliet’s urgent tone brings me back to attention, and I gun the engine. The tire crunches over something, and Juliet clutches a hand to her mouth.

“We ran over it,” she says, breathing in deeply through her nose. “Jesus Christ, we fucking ran over it.”

“That thing was in bad shape.” I shake my head. “It was starved.”

“How long can they go without blood?”

“I don’t know, they wanted to make vampires as hardy as possible.” I chew the inside of my cheek, mulling over the million thoughts in my head. “But maybe now, it’s become too much. The thirst, it wore them out and now they’re all dying.”

“Is that likely?”

I can’t answer, because I don’t know. But what if the Afflicted have hit their expiry date? What if the virus that turned those vamps into zombies has ravaged their systems, leaving them to slowly die out, until there’s none left? The thought is almost too wonderful to even consider. But that Afflicted was very obviously dying, slowly and horribly.

I reach over to put a hand on Juliet’s knee. She clasps on to me, shaking violently.

“That scared the shit out of me.” Her wide eyes turn to me, and she attempts a smile. “I thought I’d gotten a little more brave this morning, I guess not.”

“Hey no, come on, those things are terrifying.” I lift one of her hands to my mouth, kissing her palm. “You’re so fucking brave, angel. Facing all of this out here? You did great.”

She huffs out a little breath between trembling lips and nods. “Yeah.” It’s all she says before she huddles back in under my arm, wrapping herself around me as Roanoke draws closer and closer.

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