Survival of the Unfit

Chapter 12

Levi

I rushed over to her side as she fell onto all fours and helped her sit against a nearby tree, using my hand to staunch her bleeding neck once she was situated. It was a deeper, worse cut than expected and her face was a little pale. Although I didn't think her face would go so pale over one cut, and then I noticed the bloody tear in her black jeans, right on top of her thigh.

"You got a band-aid?" I asked, taking my jacket off and pulling my shirt over my head.

"Yeah, inside...inside pocket..." she said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. "Fuck, it's hot."

I wrapped my black shirt around the cut on her thigh first, hearing her gasp in pain and cringing a bit myself. Then I helped her get her jacket off, fishing in the pocket for a band-aid. Eventually I found one, putting it on and smoothing it out on her neck. I noticed April's Neighbourhood shirt again. "Hey, I like that band too."

Her brow furrowed in puzzlement, and she took a few deep breaths before opening an eye and asking me, "What?"

"The Neighbourhood," I said, pointing to her shirt again, finding a couple individual wipes in her medicine pocket. I dug one out and unwrapped it, cleaning up the blood on her first. "I said I like their music."

"Oh." She picked her head away from the tree and took another deep breath. "That's cool." Her mint eyes traveled across me, stare blank as she looked me in the eye. "You don't have a shirt on."

"It's on your leg," I said, finishing up wiping the blood on her and getting a new wipe out to scrub off my own. "Makeshift bandage. You're cut pretty bad there."

"Aw, dammit," she muttered, staring at her leg. "I just bought these pants."

I laughed a little, scrubbing in between my fingers before stuffing the used wipes in my jeans pocket. "Sorry."

"Nah, it's not your fault. I just feel bad, you have a random girl's blood all over your t-shirt now."

"I know who you are," I said, getting up and gathering the weapons. I separated out mine from hers and put them into two piles, sorting them as I stood in front of her. "You're April Swanson, Brandy's friend at that funeral that gave me the stink eye." Machete, her pile. Throwing knives, mine.

She didn't say anything and I feared she may have passed out from blood loss, but she was just staring my torso, specifically, abdomen. I cleared my throat. Her head whipped up, mint eyes meeting my own. I raised an eyebrow. "Huh?" she asked, dazed.

I sighed and turned around, smirking to myself. "Don't objectify me, Swanson. My body, my rules."

I heard her scoff. "You're such an asshole." Awesome, she was a fun one to mess with.

Pulling up one of the guy's hoodies to check for weapons to confiscate, I saw he had near the same black shirt on I had before. I started to yank the hoodie off, dragging his unconscious body another five feet before it finally went over his head. "An asshole that saved your life."

"Excuse me?" she said with that syrupy sassiness in her voice I had heard once before. "I think I saved your ass just five minutes ago."

Getting his t-shirt off was much easier, and thankfully it was the size I needed. I slipped it on, taking a whiff. It smelled like fresh linens, so the guy's mom must have just washed it. Nice.

"Might I mention you would've been five on one if I hadn't have intervened." I heard her shuffle around and start to get up, sucking in her breath sharply. "Ow."

I walked over to her, leaning against the tree trunk with her leg straight, not sure whether to stand up fully or sit back down. Dropping the confiscated weapons in a pile, I put an arm around her waist. "Sit or stand."