The Infected: An H1-2M1 Chronicle

Chapter 5

NOW

I opened my eyes to find myself no longer in the one windowed beige room. This room had a large bow window on one side and a picture window on the adjacent wall. Thick black curtains hung over the windows, but they were pulled tightly back allowing the sun to flood the room with light. The walls were a soft grey. The carpet had been ripped up exposing old, natural hard wood floors in desperate need of re-staining. There was a small fireplace with the last dying embers of last night's fire still smoldering across from the bed.

I lay in the large soft bed and enjoyed the noiseless breathing coming from my chest. My wheezing was gone. "Good, you're awake," Ben said turning away from a dresser. He threw a cloth into a water basin, it made a soft splash as it hit the water's surface. He had washed his hair since the last I time I saw him. I sat up quickly. I felt the strain on my side. I wouldn't be doing the twist anytime soon, but at least I didn't feel like I was getting the wind knocked out of me every time I moved. I grabbed the quilt from the bed and pulled it over my chest. I hadn't realized I was naked when I sat up.

"Why am I naked?!" I spat at him.

"Relax; having sex with someone who's unconscious isn't my thing."

I could feel my chest rising and falling heavily as my lungs struggled to turn the air I was breathing into workable oxygen. I felt like I was suffocating. I closed my eyes and pushed the anxiety down.

"I told them you'd prefer to soak in crazy blood." His voice was laced with sarcasm. I blinked slowly. I still couldn't decide if I liked his sarcasm. It was very dry and hard to detect. "Your clothes were disgusting." He sounded annoyed now. The shift was barely noticeable. "I had them washed twice. The second time I made them boil it for two hours before we burned them"

I glared at Ben. "Those were mine." I watched Ben as he moved about the room wearing nothing but a pair of loose fitting jeans. I tried not to stare, but I couldn't help but notice how wrong I had been about his physique. I could just see the outline of his hips beneath his jeans. His stomach wasn't hollow, like I had initially thought. It was flat with the smallest outline of muscle. His spine was visible but it didn't stick out of his back like a fin. The way it did when your body was in starvation. The way mine did.

On his back was a picture of a large bird. It's wings spread across his upper back and shoulders. The body of the bird, and the tail covered his spine. The tail was engulfed in flames that nearly licked its wings. Parts of the bird's wings, the parts near the flames, were etched into the back of Ben's arms. The sketching of the art was done with such precision the color black wouldn't do it justice. Black was the only color used, but the tattoo resembled more of an old picture I had seen once of my father's grandparents, black and white against a tan background.

He placed a bundle of cloth on the nightstand beside me. "Those should fit." I pulled my eyes away from the intricate feathers and flames on the underside of his arm. Ben's eyes stared into mine. The corner of his lip curled slightly upward. I could feel the color rising in my cheeks, knowing I had been caught staring.

"Why am I in your room?" I asked softly. I didn't like the thought of being naked, in his bed, and having no memory of how I got there. I didn't like any of it.

"You've been sleeping more or less for two weeks. You woke up some, but you weren't very lucid. I learned some interesting things," he said pulling a drawer open. "You really were a vegetarian." That sly grin he and his brother shared was plastered on his face. I wanted to smack it off of him. "I moved you in here the second Doc told me you weren't contagious anymore."