Page 46 of Hunted By Fae

With a curse ushered under her breath, Bee shoves from the edge of my bed, and stalks down the line to the fourth bed.

Ramona stays, leaning on the crutch.

Her jaw is clenched, like her teeth are about to shatter in her mouth, and she will embrace the pain. Then she whispers horrible words to me, “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?”

I have no answer for her, no comfort to give.

Lying never sits well in me, the urge to be honest is too strong, which isn’t a good thing, not when it comes to friendships—or someone asking if they look fat in a dress.

I learned a long time ago that it’s just best to stay quiet, to bite down on the quick surging response, but sometimes they do still slip out.

It’s instinct.

Never grew out of it.

But I’m silent now.

I turn my cheek to her and the rustle of plastic curtains. I turn away from the silence that comes with Bee checking a dead pulse. I don’t look as the flutter of a blanket comes, and she covers Ruby.

I stare at the beds pushed against our exit doors, each one threaded at the legs with rope, rope that—if we need to make a quick exit—we can pull, and all the beds will angle away from the doors.

Bee’s idea.

Her strategy.

She told me that she didn’t do much while I was taken by the fever. That, for most of the time I was unconscious, she neglected everything and everyone but me.

I can hardly imagine it.

She’s the backbone now.

Bee worked mostly alone after Louise was killed and the nurses abandoned us.

Neither of them came back.

I didn’t see Smith get kidnapped, or Miller run off and leave us behind. I did, however, watch Bee push Louise’s corpse into a wheelbarrow, then haul her out the back doors.

Since I woke up, she’s been checking on me, my energy levels, because we all know one truth—

We just can’t stay here.

It isn’t safe.

That group Bee told me about might come back, or worse, a meaner group finds us.

The hospital is too far out, in the next town over, and this quarantine might be the first stop to those needing any medical supplies.

That leaves us in a bad spot. We all know it.

Yet only Bee is strong enough to go out there.

Even then, when we do leave the false safety of these walls, how do we survive out there? Obviously it’s not so easy to just go about our survival, to loot food to keep ourselves alive or just find shelter.

‘People can’t be trusted anymore.’

That’s what Bee said.

I disagree. People never could be trusted.