Blu Blood

Chapter 5

Chapter 5
163 days after infection

My finger tap nervously in my thigh. I glance at Jason in the corner of my eye. He sits in the back of the Jeep behind Bear, who is driving at this moment. The awkward tension between the three of us is strangling. I've been in this vehicle for about an hour, and it's killing me.

"What do we need to get?" I ask Bear, ignoring the other man in the vehicle.

"We need to scour for a better place to camp, where it's not in the open. With the storm coming, sleeping in tents will not be enough. So we need warmer clothes, more food, and anything to keep us warm."

My eyes are wide. "There's a storm coming?"

"Didn't you hear him?" Jason snaps from the back seats. I flinch away out of habit, ignoring the steam building in Bear's eyes.

"My guess is that it's happening in two days from now." He motions with his chin towards the mountains. "Those clouds are dark and moving slow. We should have enough time to gather supplies and move to a new camp."

From here, the mountains look nothing more than just a faraway hill. The clouds beyond it are anything but miniscule. Bear's words seem to register. We won't survive the winter if we don't have shelter that has heating.

"What's the plan?" I turn back to Bear, my eyes glued to his dark ones that move to gaze back at me to the road.

"I am going to drop you off at the local store. If Marcus was here, I would have him go with you, but I know that you wanted Garret at the camp, safe. So I wanted Marcus to stay there."

My heart warms a little at his words, but then I remember that I'm going to the center of town without backup. But I would rather Garret be safe, then me.

"How do we know that she isn't going to run?" Jason demands, glaring icily at me. "If she's alone, then what stops her from running?"

Bear's grip of the steering wheel tightens to the point I think he might crush it like some superhuman. "Well, the fact that there's a storm in a few days. And Garret is at the camp. And she doesn't have shelter. Nor supplies. And the fact that it is getting dark. And I don't trust you still from this morning." His eyes meet Jason's in the mirror. "Need I go on?"

I turn my head to face the window as a smile slips onto my lips. In my head, I am cheering for Bear to continue berating Jason like a two year old.

"I don't trust her," Jasen mumbles in a voice that's so low, I can barely hear what he says.

"So I'm going to drop you off at the store for you to gather all that you need for Garret, you and get some blankets, clothes, food, weapons, ammo, anything. When I come back to get you in about forty minutes, we're gonna come in and get some wood or pellets for a fireplace while you load everything in the car. We're gonna try and scout a house and the neighboring houses for shelter. Then were gonna spend the night here, then head back in the morning to get the boys and head back. I've instructed Marcus to hunt for as much game and to get as much things to eat that's edible as he can before the storm. Hopefully, he'll have enough to outlast this storm before we can go and hunt for more."

I nod my head, my mind spinning with all this information. It's hard to collect a lot of food for winter (we would have done that if we could) because of the meat perishing and the fact that food supplies is diminishing with each day. Surviving has always been a struggle, but now it takes willpower to keep going.

"Be on the look out for those things, yeah? You've got enough protection on you?" Bear glances down at all my weapons, his eyes trained on my crossbow and arrows.

"I've got enough for now, but I can get some if there's some more arrows in the store."

He nods. "There should be some. The store is like a small version of Bass Pro, but with more food like a Walmart."

I see it in the distance. It's the size of a small town school, one story. I'm sure I'll be able to find something in there. When the sickness came, there was no time for people to save all the things they could because by the first night half of the world's population was already sick or dead. By the second day, a forth of the infected population that wasn't dead came back to life as a new species, completely changed, alive, and inhuman and killed off a quarter of those who weren't even sick to begun with. The lucky ones that somehow had immunity, slaughtered.

I remember when I used to read book about zombies or the end of the world. Apocalyptic-type books. They filled my imagination with what it could be like. No matter how the words described how awful it would be, how much I would hate it, I yearned to experience what was going on in the books. Too bad they all had the way the end of the world happens wrong. And now I wish I could go back and tell myself that this isn't worth it. The curiosity to experience this horrendous event should not have been going through my brain.

"You ready?" Bear pulls up to the entrance if the store. He turns to me, dark eyes intense as they burn through me.

All I can do it nod. Words have escaped me. I'm sure if I tried to form a sentence, it would come out jumbled and incoherent.

"Stay low and stay by these doors. You stay on guard. I will be back in forty minutes so keep a look out. We need to be in shelter before the night fully descends on us."

I nod once more, my hand ready on the for handle. Bear stops me with a hand on my arm. "Be careful. I..." He sighs. "I love you."

My eyes are wide. My month is agape. I'm in shock. Bear loves me?

"Now get out of here and get what we need."