The Price of Humanity

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"How you feeling Mia?" I ask walking up to her. We've cleared the shelves to the walls on both sides of the counter and made ourselves at home in the temporary residence.

Despite Gale's mumbling and Zane's wary attitude, we've stuck with Mia and Adam for the last week to make sure they heal – well that's Zane's excuse. Mia is starting to grow on everyone.

And Adam's starting to grow on me.

"I'm good." She says, pulling up her jogging bottoms to let me see the cut. It's definitely healing well, the swelling has gone down a lot since I first found her. I unwrap the bandage on her leg and smile when I see that it's healed even more from yesterday.

The redness around the cut is almost undetectable now and the makeshift stitches are practically ready to come out, although it will leave one hell of a scar. I hand her a dose of antibiotics and wrap a clean bandage around her leg, just as a precaution.

She was actually very brave through the stitches. Adam was there of course, making her look into his eyes rather than at what Zane was doing with her leg.

I held her hand on the other side but was actually watching Adam the whole time. The way he is with Mia makes my heart warm and creates a weird feeling in my stomach.

I guess somewhere on subconscious level seeing a man with a baby or child when he's looking after them and making them happy is a good sign. Meaning any future children will be looked after and cared for. But that's only on a subconscious level.

Having children in this 'new' world would just be cruel; this world shouldn't be the only thing that a child knows.

They should remember going to school, having friends, trusting others and feeling safe. Not constantly running for their life and thinking every human they come across wants to steal and kill.

Having a relationship isn't much better. Family, you have no choice, they stick by you and you can't get rid of them.

But willingly choosing to let someone in and love them knowing that at any moment they could be killed by corpses or humans, even worse bitten, then you'll have to kill them yourselves. Why would you put yourself, or someone else, through that?

I pick myself up off the ground and Mia rolls her jogging bottoms back down to cover up her leg. Next on my nurse duty is the bullet wound victim. Gale's bullet wound victim. I still haven't fully forgiven him for that.

He's perched up on the counter, leaning against the wall and legs up, which seems to be his favourite position. Sure, he's moved around but he always rests up there, watching of Mia from halfway across the room.

"How's patient number two?" I ask coming over. He chuckles and give me a smile, a smile that recently seems to make my knees go weak. Which is a bad situation to be in.

"Just fine Nurse Alicia." I give him a small smile and look down, putting the new bandage on the counter. He senses my slight change in mood and frowns at me slightly.

"Come on then, strip." I say smirking, trying to lighten the now tense atmosphere. He smirks back and starts to pull his top over his head. He manages one shoulder, his healthy one, but then struggles with the other.

He ends up flopping his good arm around with one hand trying to reach at the shirt, which is covering his face. Not exactly the strip tease I was expecting.

"Stop laughing and help me." He groans, I keep trying to stifle my giggles but help him too. I pull the t-shirt over his head and run it down and off his arm while he sits there looking up at me. "Thanks." He mumbles, a weird undertone to his voice.

I sit atop of the counter with my legs crossed and he moves his legs to either side so I can get getter access to his shoulder.

I sit between his legs and lean over to unwrap his bandage, trying not to move his shoulder too much.

I also try to keep myself focused and not look at his muscles that are calling out to me all sorts of dangerous things. Dangerous things that would make facing a horde look as safe as Fort Knox.

His wound is more complicated, sure he didn't actually hit anything important, the bullet was about a centimetre away from just grazing him, but it will still take some time to heal.

I steal glances at his biceps while I'm wrapping the clean bandage around his shoulder. This however causes me to frequently mess up and I have to keep redoing the bandage. Adam notices this quickly and a small, smug, smirk makes its way onto his face.

"Shut up." I say suddenly, not even thinking about what I'm saying, my mouth just immediately tried to defend me without permission from my brain. He chuckles deeply causing my to clench my stomach with the strange feelings he's causing.

"I didn't say anything." He replies cockily, knowing how he's affecting me with our proximity.

"Your smirk said everything." I state, finishing up the bandage and hopping off the counter quickly, trying to get a suitable distance between us. Although I think Mars would still be too close.

I head over to the window at the front of the building and look through into the street. The skull is, obviously, still there and serves as a constant reminder that there are bad people out in the city and we need to get away as soon as possible.

Just as soon as Mia's leg is healed as I don't think Adam will be able to carry her when they leave. And they will, leave. They have to, even if Gale didn't have some severely bad trust issues, Zane wouldn't want to keep them around.

More people is more responsibility for him to take. Me? I'd scoop up Mia in a second and train her to defend and survive on her own, just like my brothers have done with me.

Adam's 'training' is non-existent from what I've seen and I highly doubt she could survive on her own if something were to happen to Adam of they got separated.

I scan over the buildings, not looking for anything in particular but just taking a quick glance. That quick glance however turns out to be quite important since when I look up into the windows of one of the buildings I see a man sitting there with a rifle in his hands.