Page 40 of Hunted By Fae
But that will only hide me from view.
And if I make any sudden movements, I don’t trust that bullets won’t start flying through the quarantine.
The woman steps forward, gun aimed at Smith. Her gaze cuts to the trolley, the bowls of tomato soup, then back up again. “You’ve got food?”
The nurse doesn’t respond for a beat. Her mouth turns inwards, thinning, before she relents, “Back there, in the kitchen. It’s no more than some tinned soups and spam.”
The woman makes a clicking sound with her tongue. That alone propels the final man, with a cap pulled over his red hair, into a run—and he barrels for the swing doors.
The metal cupboard rings with a sudden clatter.
The noise strikes me, and I whip my glare to the side. A pain in my neck is quick to spring, but it feels distant, dull, and I just stare at the rattling doors as the bags are zipped up and the two intruders pull away.
Ransacked.
The metal shelves are wiped out.
Only some plastic packaging is left, like tumbleweed. The duffel bags rattle with stolen contents as boots smack on the glossy floors.
I watch the two of them jog back to the others, the man with the scarf, who keeps his rifle aimed at me and Louise, and the woman with the gloves, who holds her aim on Nurse Smith.
“Take what you need,” Smith says, careful, “and leave. We are no threat to you. We are only here for the sick.”
The man with the scarf turns the rifle away from us, and aims it at her. “Not anymore.”
The gloved woman steps forward. Her eyes are oceans, gleaming against the candlelight. “You’re coming with us.”
“My daughter is injured,” the man adds. “She can’t be moved.”
Smith hesitates for a moment, the same uneasy feeling we all have. It’s in the frequent glance I aim down at the gap in the plastic drape; the way Louise inches closer to Emily who—with a curt look her way—is scowling through the remains of her fever at the man. But she is failing. All the strength she had has been burnt through like scraps of fuel, and now she’s idling on fumes.
Slowly, Emily’s sagging onto the mattress.
Louise meets my gaze for a beat.
I read her too easily, that pleading look burning into me. The‘are you with me?’
‘No.’ That is the word I mouth back at her. Firm. Unrelenting. And pissed the fuck off that she would even ask that.
So many years of friendship.
I know her through and through.
So to see that firm set of her jaw, the rage that she inhales through flaring nostrils, the tension running down her strong arms—it is to see a problem.
That niggle in her that forever yearns to fight against injustice. I like that niggle, especially in the before world, but not now, in this darkness, in this savagery, when it puts us all at risk.
Louise doesn’t care, doesn’t consider.
She turns her flushed cheek to me—
And my heart sinks.
She takes a determined step closer. “She isn’t going anywhere with you. If you—”
The blast thunders through the court.
I jerk with the fright of it.
