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“What happened to him?” Mason asked.
Sparrow grew sad thinking about her brother, but she had no more tears left to shed. Those dried up long ago. “I killed him.” The air seemed to still, and something flickered behind Mason’s eyes. Keeping his stare, she said, “I couldn’t let him suffer like that, even if the news said the infected couldn’t feel pain and were no longer the people we knew and loved.”
All of that had been a load of shit. The government, the scientists, everyone who had been involved had wanted to smooth things out. They had caused this, but the people had fueled the fire. But Sparrow was sick of casting blame anymore. What good did it really do? The world was hell, literally, and all she could do was take it one day at a time.
“I had never hurt anyone before, and it took me four times before I could get the blade in.” Her stomach twisted, and she wrapped her arms around herself. She should stop, but she couldn’t. It was like something opened up inside her. “He made this gurgling noise when the butcher knife finally went into his neck, and although he still came after me, I knew he felt something.” She cleared her throat as she replayed that day in her mind. “It wasn’t until I ended up putting the knife through one of his eyes as he tackled me to the floor that he finally died.”
For a moment, she couldn’t say anything after that, but there was no room in this new life for what she was feeling. It only caused weakness, and that caused death. “Once I killed my brother, something shut off inside me. I worked on instinct, grabbed what I could—food, clothes, water, anything I thought I would need to survive—and took off in my mom’s car. We had no other family, and I had no place else to go, so I just drove until I ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere.”
She lived with her mom and dad while working her way through school, had no place of her own, and what friends she did have were more of a passing thought. She hadn’t been close to anyone but her parents and brother, and now they were gone. Even now, she could see the fires blazing from the houses she drove by and the thick riots in front of the stores. Murder, violence, and mayhem were aplenty now. “I ran out of gas and trekked my way down backroads until I saw a small group of healthy humans. I stayed with them up until they either got attacked by the sick or killed each other off. And you know the rest after that.”
“What are you, twenty-five, -six?”
She answered Mason’s question. “Twenty-three.”
“Shit, you’re young.”
She looked at Asher at his scoff and then at Mason. They looked older, maybe in their late thirties, early forties, but certainly not old enough that they should have thought her age was an issue. She felt the need to make them see she could handle herself and be an asset to their group.
“I can fend for myself and kill if I need to.” They stared at her, but neither responded to her statement, so she decided a change of subject was best. “You can’t be much older than me.”
Mason slowly crossed his arms over his chest, and the muscles bunched under the dark thermal he wore. She slid her eyes over to Asher and saw him staring right at her. In all honesty, she couldn’t trust anyone but herself anymore, but there was a point in someone’s life when solitude wasn’t a friend but an enemy. She wanted to trust them desperately. But the what-if slammed in her head. Maybe they meant to do a hell of a lot more than degrade her? Who was she kidding? She had been with them for three days, and the only thing they had done was keep her safe and share their food with her.
“I’m thirty-eight.” Asher was the first to speak, but she didn’t think Mason would’ve answered her anyway. “Mace is forty-one.” He flicked his eyes over to Mason, and she didn’t miss the scowl that went across his face.
Another moment of silence stretched, but Sparrow wanted to know about them, the same way they asked about her. “What about you guys?” She looked between the two of them. “What was your life like before all this happened?” She heard what Asher had done previously when she eavesdropped, but of course she wasn’t about to admit that. When neither answered right away, her embarrassment grew, but Asher cleared his throat and offered her another smile.
“I used to be a trainer. Used to get guys ready to fight in underground cages.” He shrugged. “The money was really good, and since I hurt my knee and can’t fight myself, that was the next best thing.” When she didn’t respond, Asher continued. “Hey, we all have to make a living, right?” He gave her a lopsided grin, and it was hard not to return the expression.
