“Just call me Kylie.” I really looked at him for the first time, seeing the stubble on his chin, the haunted look in his dark brown eyes. His shoulders were broad, his arms muscular under his shirt, as if he was used to hard labor.
“Miss Kylie.” He shot a glance at the tiny window, at the late-afternoon sun slanting in through the glass. “I’m grateful for your help. But we have to go. Now.”
“Excuse me?”
“We have to leave,” he repeated to my astonishment. “We can’t stay here. I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
I scowled at him. “You’re not going anywhere, Mr. Archer. Your friend is still badly hurt, and you don’t look so good yourself. What you’re going to do is sit down, let me take care of those lacerations on your back, and tell me what the hell happened to your friend.”
He flinched, one hand going to his shoulder, but shook his head. “No,” he whispered, and the guilt on his face was overwhelming. “We can’t stay here,” he protested in a stronger voice. “We have to leave the city.” His gaze flicked to mine, intense. “You should come with us. Everyone should—everyone who can still walk needs to go. It...isn’t safe out there anymore.”
“When was it ever safe?” I murmured. He took a breath to argue again, but my voice grew sharp. “Move him now, and your friend will die,” I stated bluntly. “With that fever and those wounds, he’ll be dead by morning. You leave, you kill him. It’s as simple as that.”
He slumped, the fight going out of him. I gestured to the stool, and he sank down, his posture defeated. “If you would take your shirt off, Mr. Archer,” I urged, trying to remain businesslike as I fished a needle and thread from my coat pockets. He blinked, pulling back a little, and I sighed. “I don’t have the time or patience for modesty, Mr. Archer. And we ran out of hospital gowns the first week we were here. So, please.” I gestured with the needle. “Take off your shirt.”
Wearily, he complied, pulling the garment over his head without so much as a wince. I kept my expression professional, but my gaze roamed over the tanned, powerful shoulders and sculpted chest as he dropped his shirt to the floor. Things were bleak, but I wasn’t blind. Ben Archer was gorgeous; you didn’t need a Ph.D. to see that.
He didn’t move as I walked up behind him, examining the five deep lacerations that ran from his shoulder nearly to the center of his back. They looked like...claw marks. I shivered. Something was very wrong here.
“What happened to you and your friend?” I began, dabbing the wounds gently with an alcohol wipe. He didn’t flinch, though the lacerations were quite deep, and I knew the alcohol stung. “Did you hear me, Mr. Archer?”
“Ben. Just Ben.”
“All right, Ben.” I wiped the last of the blood away and reached for the needle and thread. “You still haven’t answered my question. Those bite wounds on your friend, they aren’t normal. What happened?”
I felt him hesitate. My voice grew a little harder. “Don’t lie to me, Mr. Archer. If I’m going to help him, I need to know exactly what happened. Any information you withhold could end up killing him, or my other patients. Now—last time—tell me what happened.”
“We...” Ben paused, as if fighting himself, struggling to get the words out. “Nathan and I...we were attacked,” he finally admitted.
“Yes, that I gathered,” I said, gently touching his shoulder. His skin was warm, and he finally flinched at my touch. “I’m going to start stitching now, so brace yourself.”
He nodded.
“So, something attacked you,” I continued, sinking the needle into the smooth, tanned skin, talking quickly to keep him distracted. “What was it?”
“I...I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I frowned as I pulled a stitch closed, seeing him grit his teeth. “Something obviously savaged your friend and tore the hell out of your shoulder. What was it?”
“I didn’t see it very clearly,” Ben muttered. “It was dark, and the thing moved so fast.” He shrugged, then grunted in pain as the motion pulled at the stitches. “I thought it was human, but...” He trailed off again, and I frowned over his shoulder.
“Ben, your friend was bitten by something with canines at least an inch long. Humans don’t have teeth like that.”
He raised his head just as I looked up at him, and for a second, our faces were inches apart. Guilt, horror and fear lay open on his face; he had the look of a soldier who had seen far too much and would be eternally haunted by it.
“You should leave,” he whispered once more, his voice like a ragged, open wound. And my stomach flip-flopped at the look in his eyes. “Don’t ask questions, Kylie, just trust me. Get out of here as soon as you can. Go home, leave this place, and don’t look back.”
I took a deep, steadying breath.
“I can’t leave,” I told him firmly. “I won’t leave my patients, so that’s out of the question. Besides, I don’t have a home to go back to.” He looked away, and I wished I could turn his head back, force him to meet my gaze. “You’re not telling me everything,” I said, and his face shut down into a blank mask. My eyes narrowed. “What are you hiding?”
“Miss Kylie?”
Maggie appeared in the door. Seeing Ben, she blushed and looked down at her feet. “Ms. Sawyer was complaining that it hurt to breathe. I gave her a shot of morphine for the pain and a sedative to help her sleep.”
“Good girl,” I said, feeling a lump rise to my throat. The final stages of Red Lung, before the victim began coughing uncontrollably and drowning in their own blood, was difficult, painful breathing.
I felt Ben’s eyes on me, sympathetic and knowing. Suddenly self-conscious, I drew away. I didn’t need his pity or his advice to leave—as if I could just walk out. And it was clear I wouldn’t be getting anything further out of him, at least not now. “I have to get back to my patients,” I told him, beckoning Maggie into the room. “I’m sorry. Maggie, would you mind taking care of Mr. Archer, please?”
“Sure.” Maggie smiled at Ben, and he gave her a tired nod. I left them together and wandered back to the main room, checking the rows of patients along the makeshift walls. For now, everyone seemed okay; comfortable and in no pain, at least. Except for Ms. Sawyer’s raspy breathing and the occasional bloody cough that I couldn’t do anything about, the clinic was quiet. An event that occurred less and less, as Red Lung continued its war on the human body and continued to win.
I pondered what Ben had told me. He and his friend had been attacked, there was no mistaking that. It wasn’t uncommon, sadly. With the breakdown of normal society, human beings reverted to their base instincts and started preying on each other. In the early days of the plague, not a day had gone by that I hadn’t heard gunshots, screams or other sounds of distant chaos. I didn’t doubt they’d been attacked, but the wounds on Nathan’s arm and Ben’s shoulder didn’t look like anything I’d seen before.
What was Ben Archer hiding? What wasn’t he telling me?
“Kylie.” Jenna appeared as I made another circle through the rows of cots. The intern had been training to be a nurse and was older than me by several years, but always took my instructions without fail or complaint. Her gaze was sympathetic as she pulled me aside. “You’re exhausted,” she stated, blue eyes appraising, and I didn’t argue with her. “How long since you slept last?”
I shrugged, and she patted my arm. “Go lie down. Maggie and I can take care of things for a few hours.”
“I don’t know. Ms. Sawyer—”
“You’ve