Thicker than Blood by Madeline Sheehan

on
my lips.
    “No,” she said, flashing me a wicked smile.
“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Not for that.”
    Flabbergasted, I searched her face, confused
by her smile, trying to discern the reason for it.
    “Why the hell not?” was all I could say.
    “Because,” she said pointedly. “It’s so
fucking good to finally see you stand up for yourself again.”
    • • •
    The first three stores we ventured inside had been
picked clean of anything useful quite some time ago. All that
remained were fragments of what these buildings had once held, an
abundance of cobwebs and dust, and a few scattered human bones.
    For the most part I stayed on lookout,
remaining at the entrance. My sole job was to alert Alex and Evelyn
of any threats, be they infected, animal, or another human, while
the two of them searched for provisions.
    By our fourth stop, at what looked to have
once been a bank, I was more sure of myself than I had been in
quite some time. The gun felt good in my grip, solid and heavy, and
despite not having yet fired it, I was oddly reassured to have it
there.
    That wasn’t to say I was no longer scared,
because I was. Actually, I was downright terrified. The sun was
setting on the horizon, giving the entire town an overall gray and
spooky appearance. Without electricity, the interiors of the
buildings were already too dim to see clearly, even with the aid of
Alex’s flashlight. Added to it was the unnatural silence and
stillness in a place that I knew had once been full of footsteps,
voices, even the buzz of the streetlamps. It was the perfect
setting for a horror movie. And as the sun sank deeper on the
horizon, my recently won smidgen of courage began to form into a
hard lump of fear in my gut.
    “We should get going,” I called out over my
shoulder, my voice quivering with my growing anxiety.
    “One minute!” Evelyn replied. “There’s
something under this…goddamn it, this is heavy!”
    “Leisel.”
    Alex was suddenly beside me, so close I could
feel the heat of his breath against my cheek. Squeaking in
surprise, I jumped backward, out of the doorway and onto the
sidewalk.
    “You scared me,” I breathed out. Placing my
hand over my pounding heart, I took in a much-needed gulp of fresh
air.
    “Sorry,” he said, not looking the least bit
sorry. Much like Evelyn had earlier in response to Alex, I found
myself wanting to roll my eyes. He was a strange man. Handsome and
unreadable, and if the events of the last two days were anything to
go on, entirely unpredictable.
    “Why did you help me?” I blurted out,
suddenly needing to know. “And don’t tell me you wanted out of
there. Life was good for you and Jami in Fredericksville. Why would
anyone trade that for…” I trailed off and gestured toward the
empty, ruined street. “This,” I finished. What I really wanted to
ask was, why would anyone trade a comfy and predictable life for
what could end up being a very short life, one filled with
unfathomable dangers.
    As I already presumed, he didn’t answer me
readily but instead just stared down at me, his dark eyes appearing
black in the waning light.
    “You think you’re weak,” he finally said, his
voice unusually ragged and thick. “But you’re not. Weak people
don’t live through the kind of shit you lived through. Weak people
don’t drive a knife into someone’s heart, and weak people don’t
just willingly accept the fact that they’ve been sentenced to
death.”
    Alex took a rather menacing step toward me,
and I again found myself fighting to remain where I stood. I didn’t
want to be the woman who was afraid of all men just because one man
had hurt her. I didn’t want to be weak anymore. So I stood my
ground and lifted my chin, though my knees began to tremble.
    “I was weak,” he continued, twisting his lips
into a snarl filled with self-hatred. “I stood outside your home,
day after day, year after year, listening to what he did to you,
and I never lifted a hand to