23. Tori

23

TORI

Sunlight streamed through the cracks of the wood holding the windows shut, and the groans and moans outside had seemed to have amplified since last night. I rolled over and realized all the guys had gotten up already from our spot in the back corner where we’d slept.

Jay was still asleep where we’d dragged him to, on the other side of the back of the warehouse, and I could see the sweat pouring off of him even from being a good ways away. Pushing up off the hard floor that was not softened by the sleeping bag, I made my way to the front of the warehouse, stretching out my sore muscles. I hadn’t had time to process what happened yesterday, but I was thankful to be alive with my men.

Micah and Nathan had climbed up on the top of the shelves and were looking out the window, whispering to each other, and Calix rummaged through the wagons of supplies.

“I don’t think Jay’s going to make it,” I murmured, barely recognizing my own voice.

The three of them whipped their heads toward me, but Calix was the one to come over and bring me into his warm embrace while the other two kept watch.

“I know, honey. He’s running a fever, and he’s been having seizures throughout the night. All signs of the zombie virus.” He held me tighter. “We tried though.”

“Isn’t he supposed to have twenty-four hours? He’s declined so rapidly. It hasn’t even been twelve hours since the bite.”

“Maybe the amputation sped it up, but I don’t think it’s due to infection from the amputation. I don’t want to waste the medicine on him since he’s going to die anyway,” Calix explained, and I nodded.

“I understand that.”

“So this is the zombie virus?” A rattled cough sounded from behind us, and we jumped to glance over at Jay, who stood in the aisle with a defeated expression. “I shouldn’t have let my guard down. Because I did, Daisy…” He swayed on his feet as he clutched his chest.

“It was your mom,” I murmured. “I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been.”

He shrugged, letting out a weak chuckle before sliding to the floor. “You never liked her much anyway.”

“I never wanted her dead, Jay,” I snapped, and he nodded.

“So what now? Are you going to kill me before I turn?”

“Is that what you want?” Nathan asked, pointing his gun at Jay from his spot up by the window, and a jolt of surprise ran through me. But I did nothing to stop him.

Micah and Calix didn’t look the least bit surprised.

Jay paused for a moment, but before he could answer, the door burst open, and a flood of zombies shoved the furniture out of the way, letting it clatter hard against the floor.

“Calix, Tori!” Micah shouted, and adrenaline slammed into me as Calix and I raced toward the aisle.

Both Calix and I were without our weapons, but we climbed the shelves just before the zombies started grabbing at the supplies on the shelves and throwing them to the ground as they tried and failed to climb after us.

I glanced over to Jay who was leaning against the shelf, and the zombies were just shambling past him.

My heart hammered in my chest, and static filled my ears as I watched the zombies spill into the warehouse, moaning and groaning as they bee-lined toward us.

Nathan shot as many down as he could before he had to reload, and Micah shot arrows through the closest ones.

“Oh, my God. Is this it?” Fear clogged my throat at the wave of zombies as Calix wrapped me in his arms tightly, whispering words of reassurance in my ear.

There had to be at least forty of them in the warehouse.

“Calix, Micah, and Nathan… I don’t know if there’s going to be another time to say this, but—”

“Don’t you dare, killer,” Nathan gritted out, finger on the trigger. “You tell us when we get out of this mess.”

“He’s right, honey.” Calix kissed my forehead.

Just as Micah and Nathan started making a dent in the numbers, gunfire sounded from outside.

Calix glanced out the window. “It’s one woman, and she’s headed this way. She’s killing the zombies.”

Micah and Nathan didn’t stop taking them down, and there were only about fifteen left as a woman with two pistols barged into the warehouse and started shooting. She was dressed in all black as she gracefully dispatched the zombies with quick and deadly shots to the brain.

With the three of them, the horde dwindled to nothing in minutes, and my lungs finally filled with oxygen again.

The woman with shoulder-length straight black hair turned to us, and she wore a mask just like Calix’s. “Glad I ran into you when I did.”

“Not soon enough,” Jay muttered bitterly.

She whirled around, gun pointed at his head before tilting her head and putting her guns back in the holsters. “You’re not undead yet.”

“Thanks for helping us,” Micah said first, and we started climbing down carefully. The once clean warehouse was bloodied and filled with decayed bodies.

“No problem,” she murmured, her gaze locked on one of the corpses. “My name’s Akiko. I’m looking for my family. We got separated in town because of the horde, but I followed it in hopes of it taking me to my family. Janet was part of our group.”

“Janet?” Jay coughed, pushing himself to his feet and holding on to the shelves for help.

“Janet was his mom,” I added softly, and Akiko turned toward him with wide eyes.

“Jay? Your mom has been searching for you since the start. I met her two years ago when she and your dad ran into my group.” Her shoulders slumped.

“Where’s my dad?” Jay asked.

“He died only a couple of months after joining us. He got infected on a supply run.” She shook her head sadly.

“Do you want to come back with us?” Micah offered. “You just helped save our lives. We would like to repay the favor.”

She shook her head, but her eyes were grateful. “I may grab some supplies here, but I need to keep looking for my family. I appreciate the offer though.”

“We wish you the best of luck,” I told her softly, and she nodded.

I helped her get a few bags filled with different supplies, and she took her leave with a quick goodbye to us. I hoped she found her family.

Calix had checked over our wagons of supplies, and they were surprisingly fine after the mini-zombie-massacre. We gathered all of our equipment, and I had found a new golf club that was heavier than the old one. The older one was also starting to get worn out anyway. Even if there were better weapons to choose from, I felt the most comfortable with what I knew how to handle. Even if it wasn’t the most practical weapon.

“We need to get going,” Micah stated, his voice gruff and demanding.

Jay started coughing again, and he fell to the ground before blood sprayed from his mouth. “Fuck. I can’t… It feels like my insides are melting.”

“Jay…” I took a small step toward him, but he shook his head.

“Tor.” He wheezed, coughing again, and it sounded like his lungs were filled with liquid as he spoke. “You were never as affectionate with me like you are with them. Maybe it did make me jealous. Daisy thought so… I’m sorry, but I loved Daisy… Glad you found something too.” He fell face first into his blood and convulsed violently before his eyes shot back open.

Unlike Daisy’s milky look in her eyes, Jay’s were filled with blood. It struck fear into my chest, and I readied my golf club as he pushed off the floor and came at me. I swung the golf club, and his head snapped to the side with a crack before he fell to the ground, but his hands twitched.

I stumbled back into strong arms, and a bullet shot through Jay’s head the next second.

“I got you, darlin’.”

“You did great,” Nathan assured me, tucking his gun away.

“Let’s go home.” Calix grabbed one of the wagons as Nathan grabbed the other, and my mind was jumbled as we left the warehouse and my two ex-somethings behind.

The restof the day was a blur, and we made it to the river before the sun set. The sky was a dark, menacing gray, and the air was still. The river flowed with small ripples, unlike the rushing it had done just a couple of days ago after the rain.

As Micah and Nathan set up the tent and Calix helped the fire roar to life, a gust of cold, bitter wind blew through, and the first snowflakes of winter danced and twirled down from the dark sky. The snowfall was light as we sat down around the fire and filled our stomachs with canned soups, but as we entered the tent for the night, the flakes got heavier and heavier.

I curled up between my men, soaking up their body heat. “Thanks for being here,” I murmured.

Calix’s lips pressed against my temple. “Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, honey.”

Micah’s beard scratched my cheek as he leaned over Nathan and kissed my lips. “Always here for you, darlin’.”

Nathan buried his face in my neck and kissed it gently. “Always.”

“Get some sleep. I’m taking first watch, but we may have to travel in the dark if the snow starts to pile up more,” Micah rasped, but I had already started to drift asleep.

Nathan wokeme up early in the morning before the sun rose. The snow had created a thin blanket over the landscape, and the temperature was well below freezing.

We bundled up with the new coats that Jay had found at the warehouse and Calix had remembered to pack and headed back to the Oasis with the two wagons filled in tow.

Snow crunched underfoot, and the sun had finally started to peek over the horizon.

“Are you okay, honey?” Calix’s voice was soft and concerned, and I lifted my shoulders in a shrug.

“Daisy and Jay used to be the most important people in my life, but then they betrayed my trust and ruined my perception of them.” I blew out audible breaths. “I’d mourned who they were to me after that. Their deaths were nothing I had wanted to happen, but it doesn’t hurt anymore than it did when I lost them in the past.”

“You still put down people you knew in life,” Micah rasped. “Even if you held contempt for them, it’s hard. It’s okay to let yourself process and feel it.”

“But if you have nothing to process about it, that’s okay too. Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they didn’t suck,” Nathan added helpfully, but Micah elbowed him in the arm.

“I’ve fallen so hard for you guys.” My stomach fluttered with a sense of belonging. They all stopped walking and stared at me, and I paused before tugging the cotton hat over my ears. “What?”

“Is that your love confession?” Nathan dropped the wagon handle and moved forward. “Because now it’s not life or death. You can’t take it back if you say it.”

Heat flushed my cheeks as I nodded. “Yeah. I guess it is. I mean, I do love you. All of you. I can’t imagine life without you.”

Nathan swooped forward, smashing his lips to mine before pulling back. “I love you too.”

Micah caught my wrist and tugged me into his chest. “I love you, darlin’. Figured it was obvious by now.”

“I love you too, honey,” Calix murmured sweetly, and his eyes were glossy as he cleared his throat as we started our journey home.

We reached the Oasis when oranges and pinks blazed through the horizon, casting a warm glow over the heavily blanketed snow on the ground. The air was bitingly colder than it was when we started, and large flakes continued to fall from the sky, whipping back and forth from the gusts of wind.

Nathan and Micah pulled the wagons through the couple of inches of snow with little problem, but when the treehouses came into sight and Bane started growling, my heart filled with relief.

Bane snarled and dug his bony paws into the snow, trying his damnedest to infect us, and Micah let out a rough sigh.

“Sometimes I wish I could pet him, but that’s not Bane anymore. It’s just another rotten corpse.”

I reached over and squeezed his hand. “But Bane had you in his life to comfort and love him. That’s not Bane.”

“I know.”

“Tori!” Spencer’s voice was the first to greet us as she rushed through the snow and threw her arms around me, stumbling us back a few steps as she hugged me. “We were so worried about you guys with the snowfall.” She pulled back, and her gaze widened. “Woah! That’s a lot of supplies. That’s good. We definitely need some good news here.”

“Rebuilding seems to have started,” Micah commented, glancing at the now rebuilt shed and still-being-rebuilt treehouse of Ava’s.

“Yeah, but there’s a lot more happening,” Spencer murmured sadly as Benjamin came over.

“You’re back early with supplies.” He clasped his son on his shoulder and regarded us with kind eyes. “I’m glad. Did the other two cause issues?”

“Not quite,” Nathan said with a rattled sigh. “Daisy was killed by a zombie, and Jay was bit but even after an amputation, he succumbed to the virus.”

Benjamin’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he nodded. “I’m sorry. We had the same luck here. Charles hid a bite from that infected mountain lion until it was too late. We realized what had happened just before he passed, and Jack had to put him down. Ava’s a wreck.”

“Damn it.” Micah ran a hand through his hair.

“Ava’s up in the treehouse with Sally,” Benjamin explained with a sweep of his arm. “Jack’s been doing any and everything to keep his mind off it. He’s almost finished with the treehouse.”

“Wow.” My voice cracked.

Life was never guaranteed, but so much death around us made me realize just how true it was.

“We need to shower,” Calix said, and the group agreed.

Spencer knocked her shoulder with mine. “Come up to our treehouse for a bit after? I’d like to catch up.”

“Sure, Spence.” I gave her a soft smile as she bounded up to the treehouse.

“She’s a good sister,” Micah told me, and I nodded.

“She really is.”

“I’ll help Dad get these wagons into the shed then come back with clothes. Go ahead and shower. We’ve had a tough trip.” Nathan cupped my face in his hands and kissed my lips softly.

Calix, Micah, and I made our way to the shower shed and discarded our clothes as we let the water warm up.

Goosebumps pebbled my skin even as we stepped under the stream of warm water, and they grabbed the soap before lathering me up.

Their touches were gentle and caring, and while Micah washed my body, Calix washed my hair. When I was rinsed, I did the same for Micah.

As I washed Calix, Nathan stepped in with a pile of clothes in his arms. “Hey, can you wash me too?”

“Get in here.” I leaned Calix’s head back slightly and rinsed the suds out of it, threading my fingers through his hair until it was soap free.

Nathan stripped out of his clothes and came into the shower as Calix and Micah left it, and I soaped my hands up before washing and rinsing him clean. He backed me up against the shed wall before leaning down and kissing my lips as he turned the water off and pulled away. “Thanks, killer.”

Calix handed me a fluffy towel, and we all dried off before getting dressed again.

They walked me to the bottom of my parents’ treehouse, each kissing me on the head before heading back to ours.

“We’ll be waiting for you!” Nathan called after me as I climbed up the tree onto the deck.

I waved back at them before taking a deep breath and opening the door to the treehouse I realized I hadn’t even been in.

It hadn’t been that long since we came to the Oasis, but even so, I’d been so wrapped up in Calix, Micah, and Nathan that I hadn’t had much time with my family. I knew it was normal, especially with everything we had to do, and at that time, I had been avoiding Daisy and Jay, but I still missed my family.

Spencer’s eyes lit up as she jumped off a beige sofa and came to drag me to sit down. “You need some sister time, Tori. Fess up. I know everything’s been getting to you.”

Sucking in a deep breath, I unloaded everything that had happened since coming to the Oasis up until now. My parents came in mid-way through my explanations, and my family did nothing but offer me reassurance.

I didn’t realize how much I needed their acceptance and love until that moment.

Everything might have been hard now, but I still had my family and my boyfriends. That was a lot more than most people had, and I was eternally grateful.