Smells Like Winter

27: Third-degree Stigmas

They all huddled up inside the Ford, closing all doors and moving closer to one another. Maddy didn't know how or when, but somehow, at sometime, as she got squeezed and pushed by the others, Carter's head was all of a sudden in her lap.

Her very bare lap.

She ignored her flustered blush and allowed herself a glance down at his exhausted face. His eyes were shut, his lips half-open, his expression calm and peaceful, like he had no care in the world, like he was a little child. He looked so vulnerable and innocent when he was sleeping.

Vulnerable? Innocent? It's Carter. The black-headed idiot, she reminded herself, forcing her eyes to rover up on the others.

"How is he?" she asked Sia.

"He'll be fine," replied the girl. "He's Carter, after all. He just needs some rest."

"Hey, Logs?" asked Mia, looking at the silver dashboard. Her perfect eyebrows were drawn into a frown. "Does the radio work, by any chance?"

"Of course it does, it's brand new."

Mia turned it on. The station was full of disconnections, but a male voice could be heard clearly enough. "The infected seem to be ruling the streets of London..."

Maddy didn't want to listen. She had heard enough, gone through enough. And there were more to come. But, right now, she didn't need the burden of the world falling apart weighing on her shoulders as well. She didn't want to listen to the same stuff again on the radio, things being repeated over and over again. She'd grown tired of it.

"Have you ever run into an infected?" asked Mia, her voice shaking a bit.

"You mean third-stage infected?" clarified Logan. "No."

"Me neither." Sia bit her thumb.

"I... didn't really go out." Maddy went to stare down, but looked back up when she was met with Carter's sleeping face.

Mia was engrossed in her thoughts, it was clear in the taut lines of her face. "You?" asked her Maddy.

Mia nodded once, and Maddy's eyes widened.

"It was a few months ago. Three, I think. I was out to get my mum her medication, some pills she needed for her migraine." Mia drew in a sharp breath, as if re-living the scene in her head. "He lunged at me from the corner. He was old, really old. He grabbed me by the hair and... he tried to bite my neck." Her eyes met those of Logan, as if seeking reassurance there, the courage to go on. "I stamped down on his foot with my heels and... and then I kicked him hard in the gut, and... I ran. When I got back home, I found a piece of peeled flesh on my hair, and there was blood on my neck, but it wasn't my blood." She was shaking now, although the heater had warmed the car up enough already. "I washed up again and again, but the feeling just wouldn't go away. It still hasn't." Then she laughed. Maddy cowered back at the sound; it was bitter and mad and dark, and more like a bark. "You know what my mum said when I told her about it? She said, 'Where are the pills, Amelia?'"

Amelia was Mia's full name, then.

Maddy felt her heart shrink. How could Mia's mother be so cruel? She remembered that time when that boy had spat blood all over her shoes in school. She had been feeling sick for days. But that boy had only stained her shoes. That man Mia was talking about had done something completely different. He had stained Mia's skin, stigmatised her.

"The third stage hosts' hideout remain a mystery, although it is very common for them to lurk in the woods and the mountains. For the streets, however, the reveal of their hideouts seems to be a rather more complicated task..." The man on the radio filled the silence in the car.

Maddy initially paid no attention to what he said, but then something she had just heard replayed in her head.

She froze. She could suddenly hear the blood rushing in her ears.

"Did he just say 'the woods'?" she asked. Her voice was reedy, unrecognisable.

They were literally in the heart of a dense forest, in the middle of nowhere.

Stupid, stupid, stupid move.

[A/N]

Sorry it's so short T-T