Page 15 of Outbreak (Revolution X #1)
CHAPTER 14
Ghost
“ W ho did you kill, Rue?” I ask, staring into her striking blue eyes that are swirling with equal parts rage and fear. What is she so afraid of? And who the fuck did she kill? She’s got to be lying to me. She wants her phone to try to pull a fast one on me. I’m not stupid. If she killed someone, I’d fucking know about it.
She did have pretty impressive blades strapped to her thigh like a sexy-as-fuck assassin.
“Like I’d tell you anything. Just text the group chat on my phone and tell them I’m okay.” She jerks her hands back out of mine, and I let her go. She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them.
“I don’t have your phone,” I lie. I’ve already texted her little group chat and pretended to be her. She’s currently on her way home after the events of the party scared her, and she wanted to be with her family. “I tossed it when we left.”
She doesn’t need to know that I still have it. I’ve shut it off and disabled the location tracking. She can earn it back when I can trust her. And right now, it’s not looking good for her.
“Well, you just fucked us both, buddy,” she sighs, hugging her knees tighter, her hair forming a veil around her face to hide her defeat.
I choose to ignore her little confession for now, because I really don’t believe this little pixie stick could actually hurt someone, let alone kill them. I might call her death, but that doesn’t make her a killer.
I’m a killer. But she doesn’t need to know that. Not yet.
“Time to go,” I say, digging in my pocket for the handcuff key. The relief in her eyes at being unlinked from me shines bright when she lifts her head, but quickly turns back to rage when she sees the collar and leash laying beside me. She can’t behave herself yet, but she will learn. You can always teach a bitch new tricks. I’ll have her kneeling at my feet, eager for any scrap of attention I’ll give her soon.
She doesn’t even protest when we get out of the truck and I attach the collar and clip on the leash. She walks ahead as I grab some napkins and doesn’t speak as she takes them, drops her pants, and relieves herself. I turn around and do the same, anxious to get on the road.
I’m impressed by her compliance, which means I need to watch her even more closely. She flipped her switch way too quickly. I just caught her trying to sneak off when she thought I was sleeping. I’d been awake a while before her, fighting with my dick to get the fuck under control. I wanted to see what she was going to do. And not to my surprise, she thought she could just sneak out like a shameful one-night stand. Not fucking happening.
She still doesn’t utter a single word to me when we get back to the truck. She stands as far away as her leash will allow as I pack up our supplies from the tailgate and secure them in the truck bed. It looks like I didn’t need to muzzle her after all, just piss her off.
Once we are all packed up, I walk her to her door and open it. I go to pick her up and put her inside like I’ve done every other time, but she twists out of my grasp and climbs her short ass up there herself, aggressively buckling herself in. She’s trying to put distance between us, and I just won’t have that.
“Easy there, little killer.” The new nickname sets a new blaze to her icy eyes as she glares at me. Chuckling at her attitude because it’s fucking adorable and somehow sexy, I unhook the leash and tuck it into the door pocket. When I don’t remove the collar, I see the question she refuses to voice.
“The collar stays,” I say, pulling the handcuffs out again.
“No, please. Not the cuffs. They hurt. I won’t try to escape. I promise.” She rubs her sore wrists as she pulls them away from me.
Looking at the red marks the cuffs left on her, I decide to give her a little break. “Fine. But if you break your promise again, you’ll find yourself in much less accommodating restrictions. Are we clear?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she mumbles, taking a deep breath to swallow the pride I know it takes for her to utter the next words—the right ones. “Yes, sir.”
Though it's heavily dripping with sarcasm and disdain, I’ll let it slide. She’ll get there.
“That’s a good girl.”
“Oh, fuck off,” she spits, turning in her seat away from me and grabbing the open bag of gummy worms from the dash. I close her door with a chuckle, because of course she goes straight for the sour candy for breakfast.
We’re on the road for a couple of hours before she speaks again. To be fair, I’ve kept my playlist raging to stay awake. The couple hours of sleep didn’t help much, and the two energy drinks I chugged are just starting to kick in.
“Will you tell me where you’re taking us?”
“No.” My answer won’t change. She hasn’t earned that yet.
This is going to be a long enough drive as it is. She isn’t going to stop asking questions, that’s for fucking sure. I’ll tell her eventually. But I happen to enjoy pissing her off, so I’ll drag it out as long as I can.
“How about why you decided to kidnap me? I know it’s not for my sparkling personality.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Why are you still wearing a mask? I’m guessing that means you don’t plan to kill me. I think I read somewhere that if a kidnapper shows his face, you’re more likely to die, so you can’t identify them,” she rambles between bites of her fucking candy. She’s getting sugar dust everywhere and isn’t even trying to keep it in the damn bag. “So if you’re not going to kill me and clearly you’re not gonna fuck me, what are we doing? This is about the most boring kidnapping I’ve ever seen.”
At this point, I don’t even think she knows what the fuck is coming out of her mouth.
“You want me to fuck you, little killer?” I don’t take my eyes off the road as I reach over, unclipping her seatbelt and snatching her by the back of her hair, pulling her halfway over the console. “Just because I haven’t, doesn’t mean I won’t. So sit back and shut up… before I give you something to stuff that pretty little mouth with.”
“All bark and no bite,” she says, her eyes swirling with excitement and challenge. “You’ve had plenty of chances to take what you so desperately want. Yet you haven’t. Makes me wonder if something is wrong with your dick. Does it work? Do you have a little problem?”
“Why don’t you find out?” I growl, pulling her further to me, her face hovering over my lap and still rock hard cock. “See for yourself just how little my prob?—”
I’m cut off when, out of nowhere, I hit something in the road. “Oh shit, hold on.” I shove her back in her seat as the truck swerves sideways for a second before I correct it, the tires screeching to a halt on the asphalt.
“Are you okay?” I ask, turning all of my attention on her. I don’t know what the fuck I hit, but I should know better than to let her distract me.
“I-I’m fine. What was that?” Her voice is distant and dazed.
“I don’t know, and no, you’re not. You’re bleeding.” Her head must have hit the window when I shoved her and swerved.
She reaches up to touch her hairline, hissing as she pulls her hand away to see blood-smeared fingers. “It-it’s not bad. I’m fine.”
“Let me see,” I demand, turning her face to inspect it myself. She’s right. It’s just a small cut going into her hair, but head wounds bleed like a stuck pig, so it looks worse than it is. Brushing her hair back, I let my hands linger there for a moment too long, searching her face. “You’re okay.”
“What did we hit?” She asks, breaking the connection to survey our surroundings. Then all the color drains from her face. “Ghost– look.”
Dragging my eyes away from her, I turn to look at what she’s seeing. It’s a man lying on the road, his body twisted around on itself. “We hit someone.”
Her hand flies to the door handle to open it, but I snatch it back. “Stay in the truck.”
“I will not. There’s a person out there needing help, and we can help them,” she demands.
“You will not get out of this truck,” I growl, pulling the handcuffs from my pocket and snapping them around her wrist, the other on the dash like before. If this is what I think it is, I can’t have her running around like a clueless, lost puppy getting herself killed.
Before she can protest, I point to the clearly dead man that lays twisted behind us. “Take a closer look, Rue. That man is dead. And he’s not. I don’t know what the fuck this is, but you’re not getting out of the fucking truck until I figure it out. Got it?”
Her eyes narrow as she twists in her seat to get a better look. His body is morphed in a very unnatural position, and he’s still writhing on the ground, trying to drag his body across the asphalt. He keeps snapping his jaws like a rabid dog.
When I look back at her, her face has gone pale again. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Breathe through your nose,” I say, pulling her head to me and kissing her forehead through my mask. “I’ll be right back.”
“What are you going to do?” Her question is rushed and frantic as I open my door and climb out. I don’t respond because, well, I don’t fucking know. But I grab a long piece of pipe from the back of my truck and quickly scan the area.
There are fences on each side of the road, but no houses in sight. I don’t know where he came from, but we might need to find another road if this area has fallen. Satisfied that he’s alone and nothing is going to come popping out at me, I carefully walk towards him. I can hear his low, raspy growl as he snaps his teeth together the closer I get. When he becomes aware of my presence, his body goes stiff before he cocks his head unnaturally and digs his dirty fingers into the asphalt to turn himself towards me.
His skin has started to rot, molted and tinged with death, and his eyes are a milky white. Dried blood and dirt coat his face and the rest of his skin. I don’t know how or when he died, but hitting him with my truck seems to have broken his legs. They are twisted around each other, and his feet are pointing in the wrong directions.
“What the fuck is this?” I mutter to myself, squatting down and leaning in like I can figure this shit out myself.
His growls get more feral as he reaches for me, his mangled arms trying to pull his dead weight closer. When he grabs ahold of my leg, snapping his jaws at my boots, I nearly shit myself, but instinctively I know what to do.
I might kill the living for a living, but my body operates on autopilot as I drive the metal pipe into his skull. His body falls limp as I hear a faint scream come from the truck, and I fall back on my ass, scrambling away from the now dead, undead man in the middle of the road.