Defiance | Book 1 [EXTENDED]

CHAPTER 8

He cleared the kitchen table and made me lie down on it. He lifted the bottom of my cargo pants to reveal the bloody mess underneath. The wound itself was not that big, it was the blood that gave it the illusion. 

He took a cloth from in a cupboard and gave it to me, "Bite this, don't scream, breath"

"Why? What are you doing?"

He walked over to a chest at the far end of the kitchen, opening it and pulling out a bottle of spirits. I quickly put the cloth in my mouth, "It's bleeding too fast. It's too late for the painkillers, we need to disinfect it right now, if you don't want to die of tetanus"

He opened the bottle of the clear alcohol and poured it onto the open wound. The pain surged all the way through my body and made me let out a scream through gritted teeth, making me shake as tears strolled down my cheeks, it was unbearable. He put his right hand on my quivering leg, holding it down and the other, slipped into my hand, caressing it soothingly, "it's okay, breath"

He dabbed it a few times before tightening gauze and a handkerchief around my ankle. 

I sat up bathed, in sweat. I took the cloth out of my mouth, it seemed to have gotten lodged in my mouth for biting it so hard making my jaw stiff. I wiped the tears from my eyes and took a deep uneasy breath. My face was bright red and I was still shaking. The wound was huge and the alcohol stung like crazy. The wound seemed tiny when the blood was out of the way and it was clear.

"Well that was fun," Max says handing me a bottle of water, which I gulped down quickly down my dry throat. I would have preferred to gulp down the spirits but I settled with the water. I hadn't realized I was still crying until he pointed it out, 

"Are you okay?"

I shook my head slowly, "I was scared"

"Of the mutant?"

"Of dying. Even though I wanted to, I was scared. My whole family is gone Max, I wanted to kill myself, but I couldn't. I have failed two suicide attempts. And today when I went out there I thought, finally, but then realized, if I went now,all this running, all this hiding and shooting and two years of surviving would just be wasted,"

"I know how you feel. I had to kill my own mom and step-dad, the once loving and caring people that I had lived with for eighteen years, were shot by their own son, because they tried to kill me after being turned into one of them. I've tried to take my life, but I was too scared to. There was no purpose of living"

I got up on one leg and hugged him. His case was worse. He killed his own family. I felt for him. There we were, two regular teenagers in extreme circumstances, hugging in the middle of a kitchen in a house, in the middle of nowhere, whilst a brainwashed society ruled the greatest apocalypse of the century.

"Now I have a reason for living," he says quietly,

"And what's that?"

"You"