Anna looks and smirks a little, "You having an issue?"
I fight a grin, "Yeah. Whatever they did to me is like my monthly situation combined with no bladder control."
She shakes her head, "We gotta get home."
"Okay, next part we act casual like this is our patrol," I nod up ahead.
We walk along the side of the building and I see it. It's across the wide road.
UMINA
There is no one. I take a breath and try to control my heartbeat. I feel like running in the other direction, when I take the first step to cross the street. The pavement here looks like before. The windows aren't stained with blood and dirty hands of the infected like everywhere else is. It looks like the infected have never been here before, like the farms. I cross the road, trying not to look wide-eyed and psychotic. We walk past the building as casually as we can.
My skin prickles with fear and excitement.
I can feel him, he's close.
We walk around the back of the building, like we are doing our job. When we get to the backside, I see something that makes me sickly uncomfortable.
"Oh God," she says.
I swallow and glance at her. I shake my head, "It's okay."
She turns pale, looking at the bins—huge bins, like at the breeder farm.
I shudder and we walk up behind them. I can smell rot and trash as I climb the stairs. I don’t look around. I just try to act like this is the way we're supposed to go.
I open the door with the keycard in my hand and hold it open for her. Inside is a hallway, not a room like the farms. It isn’t like the breeder farms at all. It's more like an office building. I don’t know where to go or what to do.
I close the door and take a deep breath and glance back at her. She has the same lost look, I imagine is on my face.
We walk through the hallway until we come to a room with an open door. There is a sink in the room. I leap at it and turn it on as Anna comes inside and closes the door. Cold water comes splashing out.
"Oh my God! The water runs and there's soap," she whispers.
I gasp and shove my hands under it. I scrub until I am raw and my knives are clean. Then I plunge my clean face in the water. I let it pour into my mouth, swallowing as fast as I can. I want to drink more, but I don’t. I know how water sickness feels and I'm more than likely leaving here with guns firing at me. I back off and let her get at it. She scrubs herself completely and then gulps the way I did. I pull her back, "You have to stop. Too much after so little, makes us sick."
She burps and closes her eyes "I miss the farms sometimes."
I let a small laugh escape, "I know. I miss the food. Remember Sarah got Cook to put that sauce on everything?"
Anna smiles brightly. Her blue eyes sparkle in the dim light of the room. We're so close, I can feel it.
The feeling like I'm going to die hasn’t left me, since I was strapped to the metal table. I still feel like it's going to be any second, but when I look at her, I know I have to get her to safety. I have an obligation to protect her. She came for me. She called me family.
I wash my face, hands and knives. I want to take the clothes off, but until I get some replacements, I can't. At least my hands and knives are clean. Anna does the same. The soap smells exactly like the stuff in all the washrooms at the farm.
I turn and open the door to the hallway. It's long and looks like the breeder farms. I see stairs and hurry to the exit. Anna is behind me the whole way, moving like I do.
We don’t look in the doors, we just walk. I open the door that has a sign and says it's to the stairs and run down them. I want to curl into a ball and hide but he needs us. He wouldn’t hide like that, if it were us missing. He took the dart for me.
I open the thick, heavy door at the bottom of the stairs. It's filled with plants and mist. I'm confused.
"What the hell?" she whispers.
I shake my head, "I don’t know."
The heavy air feels like it has just rained in the forest. I walk through, looking for other people. Plants grow, like in the greenhouse Granny had, on counters and the floor. Water sprays from pipes above. I slip through, terrified.
"Where is everyone else?" she whispers.
Again, I shake my head, "I don’t know. It feels like a trap."
Our hands tighten simultaneously on the guns we're holding.
I walk to the door on the far side, gripping my gun and looking all around me. It's too easy, something isn't right.
I open the door with the card and crack it open a tiny bit. I listen, I almost close my eyes and try to listen like I used to do. I don't hear anything, but my ears don't work as well here. I don’t like it here. I just want to go home.
God damned, Marshall. I clench my jaw and open the door wider. I freeze as a woman in a white coat walks past the door away from me. I hear Anna suck air against my back.
The lady doesn’t notice us or turn around. Her long, dark hair is shiny and pulled back in a ponytail. She walks away into another door and closes it. I take a deep breath and open the door, enough to peek my head in and look about the hallway. The light is on full power here. It's weird that it's so clean and there are no infected here. There aren’t a lot of them left, but there are enough that they should at least come near here. We didn’t see anything after we left the city. Why haven’t the military firebombed the cities to kill the infected? It doesn’t even make sense, except the creepy thing Vincent said about experiments.
I just want to get back to the borderlands. I want the feel of a bow in my hands and the wind on my face.
We slip out into the empty hall. Every step feels like I'm wading through mud. My body is exhausted and weak, but my need for him drives me forward. I'm running on sheer hatred and stubbornness. I got it from Lenny. I don’t care what Vincent said, Lenny was my dad. I don’t care what any of them say.
I grip the gun tighter and try to control my breathing and heartbeat. I round a corner to find a door with a glass window. I look through to see cages and desks. A man mills in front of one of the cages and writes something down. He looks only a little older than I am. They're more than likely expecting us. I know they are. I open the door and point my gun at his face.
He glances up with a smile that drops as quickly as the thing he's writing on.
"What are you doing in here?" he asks nervously.
I walk through the door. Anna closes it but maintains her gun on him.
"Don't move," I say quietly. I'm actually listening to the rest of the room behind him that I can't see.
He shakes his head, "The food and medicine are on the other floor. There's loads of it."
As amazing as that sounds, I shake my head, "We just want the place where the animals are held."
He swallows hard, "What animals?" His eyes dart nervously.
I growl, "I will not hesitate to kill you."
He looks defiantly at me and shakes his head, "The gunshot will bring down a whole lot of military people."
I sling it over my shoulder and pull my sparkly clean knife out, "I know."
He flinches and steps back, "Please, don’t kill me."
Anna moves forward, "She said not to move."
I don’t need to look back to see the hardened look on her face. I know that look well enough. His eyes show the loss of strength and courage. He slumps and shakes his head, "Which animal?"
I pause and look at Anna. She shrugs and says, "All of them."
He raises his head and his eyebrows, "What? All?"
I nod and realize what she's doing, "Yes, all."
"Behind me, around a corner and through a steel door. The cages are back there." His voice is soft and defeated, but I see something in his eyes.
"Do you have any rope or anything?" I ask.
He shakes his head.
I see clear plastic tape on the counter and nod my head at it, "Pass me the tape."
He frowns, pauses and does it. He passes it to me but still doesn’t make eye contact. Something is wrong. He's planning.
I grab his arms and tie them behind his back. He doesn’t fight me. I walk him around the corner to the steel door. I open it but his feet stop the door. He is backpedaling and fighting me.
"N-n-not this d-d-door."
I glance back at Anna. Her eyes narrow. She shoves the gun in his back, "What's in this room?"
He looks back, his face is flushed from scrambling, but I have his arms up his back. "The wild cats. They caught them eating the infected. They're immune. Most animals are."
I see movement behind the door and drag him out. I close the door, just as an angry mountain lion stalks up.
Her eyes are savage and vicious.
He nods his head, "The dogs, wolves and bears are that way."
Anna shoves the gun in his back again, "You were going to let us go in there?"
I drag him the way he nodded us, towards the door with a glass window and the animals are in small cages.
I rip open the door and open the first cage I see. A large golden dog wags his tail. I can see a shaved side where sores mark his skin. I feel hatred burning inside of me. I shove him inside of the cage. I close it and shake my head, "How could you? He's a sweet dog."
He closes his eyes, "We need to understand how they're immunity works with the mutations."
I kick the cage making him jump, "Then you shouldn’t have made the disease. Assholes."
Anna is opening cages. I turn and see his eyes instantly. He's in a cage so small that when she opens it he has to drag his body through, like he's crawling out of a hole. He shakes his fur and leaps at Anna. She drops the gun and wraps her skinny arms around his thick neck. I skid on my knees crossing the floor.
When I bury my face in his fur, it doesn’t smell right. He makes noises like I've never heard before. He's mad at me. He nips my arms and claws at me with his paws.
"Leo," I sob into his fur.
Anna is bawling too. I pull back, he closes his yellow eyes and pants. He looks content. I wipe my face and hug him again. He continues his noises but then the purring sound he makes hits, and I know he's happy.