Page 39 of Hunted By Fae

I trace the question to the man in front, the one I guess is leading the charge, the one with a scarf pulled up around his chin.

I might not be able to see their faces behind the masks, but I can see the worry, the panic… danger, the desperation. It’s all in the eyes.

Louise takes a step forward, her hands lifting. “We don’t have anything—”

The man adjusts the aim of the gun—at her.

Louise stills.

My voice is soft, quiet, “Louise, don’t…”

The outrage of her glare swerves to me.

I keep my cheek to her.

If she looks at me long enough, she might see the thrumming of my pulse in my throat, the sudden stiffness in my shoulders, the pallor of my complexion—she might see that my hands are fists at my sides.

Because this…

This isn’t good.

These people are too fraught, too panicked. There’s no negotiating with them. And it takes one fright for a trigger to be pulled in their state.

So I speak slowly, “She’s right—we don’t have much left. But everything we do have is over there.”

The man traces my pointed finger to the metal cupboard. He jerks his chin, and two of the group splinter off from the doors.

I don’t watch as they pile all of our medical supplies into duffel bags. Instead, I turn my panicked attention on the swing doors down the court as they creak and clatter—the exit that leads out to the car lot of bodies, and the kitchen.

Nurse Smith comes through the doors, pushing a trolley stacked with bowls of soup and cutlery.

“Stop where you are!”

I cringe against the shout.

The screech of the trolley wheels is sudden.

Nurse Smith’s wide eyes are lifted, and she freezes under the shift of the guns aiming at her.

A masked woman steps forward, her gloves a soft reddish hue, and a slender frame that moves in front of the man with the scarf. The woman considers Smith, the stethoscope around her neck, the foamy shoes on her feet, the fresh scrubs she must have just changed into, which explains why she took so long out there, she was washing.

“You’re a doctor?” the woman asks.

Smith shakes her head.

Slowly, she peels her hands off the trolley and lifts them in surrender. “Nurse. Registered.”

“Where’s the doctor?”

“We don’t have one.”

The woman’s eyebrow lifts. “You don’t have a doctor in quarantine?”

“She was one of the first to get sick,” she says, and her voice doesn’t break, it holds firm, steady.

That doesn’t soothe me.

My heart is hammering in my chest, pounding and pounding, like a fist trying to break free. The breath that shudders me is quiet, jagged, and, slowly, I turn my gaze down to the underside of a bed. Layers of plastic drapes hide it from view. But the curtains are caught on a stack of empty, clean bedpans. It creates a wedge, agap, large enough to squeeze myself through.