CHUPACABRA

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Sparrow

"Look, I know you walk like you're geriatric right now," but you gotta see this."

There's two cold hands over Forty's eyes, shutting out all light except for the pink that filters between the fingers. Forty-Five lightly knees Forty in the back, just enough that she's boosted into Thirty-Seven's arms. "Ah! Sorry!" she says, startled.

Forty laughs, pushing the girl's hands off her face. They're no longer clawed and overgrown. When Forty woke up a month after the bloody escape, it took a while for her to be able to eat. Once she could hold food down, she stayed awake long enough to figure out the new venom ports. Shortly after she got the hang of overcoming the nausea of those, she bit Forty-Five. The girl can now eat and talk comfortably, her everyday life no longer impeded by her fangs.

Thirty-Seven drops his nose into Forty's hair, his arms secure around her waist. He was there when Forty woke up, asleep next to her in the bed. She's seen him cry many times, in pain, in rage, in fear– but the sobs of relief he let out when she opened her eyes were new to her. Now that she's more mobile, he's never far from her side. It helps that they move at a similar pace, his leg suffering a permanent limp and stiff scar tissue after the shootout in Naila's bunker.

"What is it you want to show me?" she asks the two, hobbling over to grab her cane. Thirty-Seven keeps a hand on her back, ready in case she fumbles. It's happened a couple times, but thankfully none of the falls have opened her stitches. Any minor abdominal movement tends to set her stomach to twitching, the muscles damaged and sensitive.

"The wildflowers finally bloomed," Naila says from the doorway. She wears her gardening clothes, already smudged with dirt from weeding in the morning.

Forty is still shaky on how the two managed to drag her all the way to Cotolla. She knew some of it was thanks to Cade, whose group had been pushed closer to town as the biological weapon wreaked havoc in the forest. Thirty-Seven picked up their scent not long after escaping the compound, alarming Forty as that meant Cade had stupidly gotten near the building to check it out. Luckily, the only ones who found him were Forty-Five and Thirty-Seven, still injured and lugging a comatose Forty between them.

Missy had been the one to stitch her together the first time. Thirty-Seven had watched her with the reluctant unease he felt around most humans, primed to rip her throat out if she made a wrong move. Cade goaded him and Forty-Five into treating their own wounds, and sacrificed some of his stolen medical supplies to get blood and intravenous fluids into Forty's fading body. It was divine intervention, as one of the siblings would say, but Forty doesn't believe in a god. She was just happy she hadn't been given a reason to see if there was one.

Kimi and Andres tracked Naila down using scents found in the remnants of her vacated home. She had been holed up in the dusty skeleton of a cabin by the water, her scent muffled by murky algae and nutty pecan trees, but a Chupa's senses are keen. The group doesn't visit the cabin much now, but deep in the woods Forty knows they lurk among the trees like carmine shadows.

Forty woke up in Naila's bed. Or rather, it used to be Dr. Zapata's bed. After the grey squad raided her house, she fled to Dr. Zapata's vacation home three towns over, one she claims is off the radar. It sure looks like it, Forty thought when Naila gave her a tour. It's an old cabin, the type without heating or air conditioning, and it's far enough away from the power grid that all technology is useless. In other words, it's safe.

Not for the first time, Forty ponders how close Dr. Zapata and Naila used to be. Humans aren't eager to reveal their houses like this to everyone, right? Especially one so carefully placed in secrecy. Forty doesn't miss the way Naila's hands linger too long on books, the lost look in her eyes as she stares out the window at the brackish water lapping against the dock.