Page 13 of All Your Days (Mayhem Manuscripts Season One: 1nf3ction #4)

Chapter six

Eli

Jacob’s acting different. I think it’s the heat. Or maybe, it’s just how he is outside of The Facility. But it’s not the Jacob I’m used to. My usual Jacob is quiet. Reserved. Silent .

This Jacob talks . This Jacob shares stories. This Jacob gets flustered .

It’s fascinating. Is he always like this and I’ve just never seen it? Well, the joke’s on him, because the hard shell he’s kept himself in for the last decade has cracked and I want to bust it entirely open.

Well, not all the way open. I want to bust open an Eli-sized hole, so I can worm my way inside of this prickly man and discover every piece of him.

The game between us has changed. I think it started with the way he helped me in the courtyard before we left. Or maybe, it was even earlier. He was downright chatty—for him anyway—in the Labs the day before that.

So maybe it isn’t the supply run. Maybe they really are doing strange tests on us at The Facility like the visiting armymen like to taunt, and that’s why he’s doing it—medical experiments.

I don’t care what the reason is. I just want more of it—and every tiny bit I get makes me want to push him even more.

I snort a laugh at my own ridiculous thoughts and wave the flies from my face. They’ve settled on the cotton scarf I’ve got wrapped over my nose and mouth like a mask to protect me from the sun. So many fucking flies, the bastard things.

Beside me, Jacob casts me a suspicious side eye, but doesn’t say anything.

He hasn’t said much since we set out after lunch when he accidentally suggested we fuck. Well, not really, but his stumbling words were easy to turn about. His eyes had gone so wide I thought they were gonna fall out, and his cheeks grew darker with his blush. It was a sight to behold.

In the moment I thought I won that round of whatever game it is we’re playing now, but my prize ended up being a long walk in the sun with an erection hard enough to bore for water.

It hasn’t been fun.

He definitely won this morning, even if it was by accident. Coming out of the tent to go for a piss and finding him half naked in the sunrise?

I had to burn every millimetre of the image into my brain so I can draw it again and again until my fingers know his body by memory.

“Lizard.” I call out, pointing to the dragon sitting on a rock beside the path. Its little head follows us, watching us pass with all the contempt only a reptile can truly master.

To my annoyance, he just grunts. I’m getting a little bored with the silence. And of the endless flatness around us. What I wouldn’t give for Moby’s humming, or more of the big rocky ranges out in the distance.

And I’m really done with the sun. And the flies. Seriously, I’m done with the flies. I think Adeeko agrees with me. He keeps trying to flick them away from his face, but there’s no use.

“So how long were you with Sarah?” I ask when I can’t stand it any longer. “Eagle.” I tack onto the end, pointing up to the large bird swooping through the sky.

Jacob huffs, and looks up, too, taking the moment to wipe the sweat off his brow.

“A year? Just over? Definitely no more than two.” Jacob says after just long enough to make me think he wasn’t going to reply.

“Makes sense. I didn’t think I’d seen you before that first day.”

Jacob kicks a rock from the path with a resigned sort of sigh. “Yeah, that was my first trip to The Facility.”

“Oh. Wow, that really sucks. I’m sorry.”

Jacob finally takes his eyes off the barely cleared track, smiling at me. Or, not really smiling, it’s more straightening his mouth at me.

“Yeah, it wasn’t the best intro—”

“Whoa! What the fuck is that?”

Jacob’s interrupted by the shouts of the guards ‘scouting’ ahead. Though it’s quite possible they’ve done their job this time. Even if it’s by accident.

“Ah shit.” Whatever Jacob was about to say before is lost and his grip tightens on the rope in his hand.

Raising the other to his mouth, he whistles so loud it makes my ears ring.

“Oi! Get back here!” He calls, making a round up motion with his whistling hand and clicking his teeth to get the camels to halt.

Ryan, Cale, Malcolm, and Lou all coax their camels back to the train, kicking up a bunch of dust when they come to a stop.

“Right, from here on you stay on the track or you stay on that side.” Jacob explains, pointing to our right, the opposite side of the road to the sign.

His voice is hard and deadly serious. “We’re ‘bout to pass Blue Creek Station. Under abso-fucking-lutely no circumstances are you to go on that side of the road. The fence’ll start soon, but even after it ends, you do not fuckin’ cross the road until I tell you it’s clear. Got it?”

“Why not?” Cale asks, already looking over to that side as though Jacob is daring him to go over there and piss on the sign.

“‘Cause if you are lucky, they’ll shoot you on sight. If you aren’t, you’ll wish they had—and the Union won’t give two shits. If you are dumb enough to go in there, you’re on your own. No exceptions. Got it?”

Lou nods, casting a leery eye in the direction of the sign. Cale, Ryan, and Malcolm all mumble a begrudging sort of agreement to behave and then all four are off, the guards riding ahead, pointing and guffawing at the sign, while Lou resumes his place at the rear.

Jacobs' warning didn’t quite prepare me for the sign itself.

It’s not a sign. It’s a warning. The weathered sheet of metal stands two men tall, and at least four wide, with the words ‘Blue Creek Station’ and ‘enter at own risk’ painted haphazardly across it.

The size is easy to estimate, because there, to warn anyone who can’t read the words, are three corpses hanging from the sign—all in different stages of rot.

“Oh my God.” I gasp when we pass the first hanging man, his foot hanging oddly from his body.

Unable to help myself, I attach myself to Jacob’s arm, clinging to him in horror at the gory sight.

The second man, I notice, before I can wrench my eyes away, is missing a large chunk of his stomach, like it's been eaten away.

The third man is missing more than just his stomach.

His face is long gone, and so is an arm, and most of half his leg.

A tendon, or something like it, trails from his cut off thigh like a ribbon.

My lunch churns in my stomach, my mouth foaming with the need to vomit.

“I was with another group before Sarah.” Jacob nearly shouts after my first heaving gag.

Still clinging to him, I look up, just as he looks down, his eyes meeting mine.

“I was with them a bit longer. A few years. I was never quite sure of time until I got older. It all kinda blurs together. The leader of that group, Mitch, picked me up from a settlement. But then he got sick, and couldn’t travel anymore.

He knew Sarah. All the merchies know each other, by reputation at least, and he knew I’d do well with her. Said she’d look out for me.”

I know exactly what he’s doing; he’s trying to distract me from the awful sight of the bodies on the sign.

And it’s working. I only wish it wasn’t too fucking hot to cling to his arm, because I could get used to the feel of his biceps and their ropes of muscles under my hands.

I peel myself off him, earning myself another side eyed glance.

Is it too much to ask that it’s because he didn’t want me to let him go?

“Well, I, for one, am extremely grateful that you joined up with Sarah. She was always nice, and if you hadn’t I’d have died for sure that day with the snake.”

Jacob huffs a laugh through his nose, giving Sheba a pat when she sticks her head between us, grunting and waving her spittle covered maw about.

“Well, I’m pretty glad about that, too. Get outta here.” The second part is to Sheba. Or I hope it is, because she’s the one he’s pushing away.

“Where’d you travel with Mitch and his crew?”

“All the way southeast. Used to be a different state. Then up to the other side of the Outback. They travelled up and down, where Sarah’s crew travelled sideways ‘cross the country.”

“Bet you’ve seen some incredible things.” I’m only a little jealous. I know there’s a big, wide country out there, and a tiny part of me would love to see it all. The more realistic part of me has had gratitude for the safety of The Facility drilled into me since before I was born it seems.

“Yeah,” there is a far off look in Jacob’s eyes as he remembers everything he’s seen.

“You wouldn’t believe how different it is.

Even just about a week that way—” He points to the east. “There is an amazing inland lake. Incredible. Completely out of nowhere . Boom. Waterways. And it’s so flat here.

There’s nothing, but go east or south, and there is life everywhere. All kinda life.”

“And the virus, too, though? Right?”

“Yeah, the virus is out there. And the infected, the zombified.” He sounds sadder now. The memories turned sour. And I feel like an asshole.

“I’ve never seen nothin’. Not really. I was born in the mud huts. My parents were grunts. When they died, I moved into the main building with the other kids, and that was it. The furthest I’ve ever been is foragin’. It must’ve been amazing, seein’ all those things.”

“I saw snow once.”

“WHAT?! No way?!” My shout is loud enough for Ryan to look back at us in concern.

Jacob chuckles, bumping his elbow into me, and if I’m not mistaken, his chest even puffs up a little.

“Yeah, it was just after I joined with Mitch. They had to go further east and then up. Fuck, it was so cold. Beautiful, though. And dangerous. We almost lost a trailer off this fuckin’ mountain we were riding up.

I was ready to quit and run back to the settlement.

” We laugh together, walking along a seemingly endless stretch of road in what feels like the middle of nowhere.

It feels unreal—if I guessed what I thought would happen on this trip, never in a hundred guesses would I think Jacob would be sharing secrets about his past with me.