Deadland's Harvest (Deadland Saga, #2)(3)
“Thank God he did,” I said all too quickly and then forced a weak smile. “Doc’s doing the best he can. He seemed to do a good job on your broken wrist and fractured leg. Yesterday, you even said yourself that your ribs weren’t bothering you as much.”
He shook his head. “The only thing Doc did was keep me on my back and drugged up so my body could heal itself with time. Just about any injury will heal in three months.”
Just about, I thought to myself. But not every injury.
His lips turned upward into a smile that wasn’t quite a smile. “The zeds aren’t going to wait around for me to get back into shape. We’ve been too lucky lately, with only groups of two or three coming across the park each day. Our luck is going to run out sometime.”
“That’s why we have scouts spread out across the park to keep watch. With that and my recon flights over the area, we’ll know if any herds are headed this direction.”
“I know. It’s just, when I’m not out there…” He rubbed his eyes with his forearm and clenched his fists. “Hell, I hate being useless.”
“Whoa,” I chuckled. “One thing you’ve never been is useless. You may be as stubborn as a mule but you’re not useless.”
He grunted, his tight features unchanged.
I sobered and knelt by him, placing my hands over his. “I’m serious. Do you think Tyler would have asked you to be his second-in-command if you were useless?”
Clutch didn’t respond.
I wanted to knock some sense into him, if only a simple smack to the head would work. Exasperation came into every conversation with Clutch lately. It wasn’t his fault. He was dealing with things the only way he knew how: by unhealthily shoving his feelings down, making his body a boiling volcano always close to exploding. I forced myself to breathe and not snap at him. “You could be tied down in bed and you’d still be far from useless. Tyler manages the day-to-day stuff around here, but you’re the reason Camp Fox still exists. Even though Tyler would never say it, he knows it, too. Everyone knows it. Thanks to you, everyone’s trained and prepared.” I paused, then frowned. “You know that, right?”
His lips tightened before he finally spoke. “I just hate sitting on my ass all day when there’s so much left to be done. Once winter hits, the same tasks are going to take twice as much work.”
I sighed. “We’ll get by. We always do. But you’ve got to give your body time to heal.”
He gave an almost imperceptible nod, which I returned with a soft smile before turning in the sand. I pulled off my thermal shirt, leaving on my sports bra. I glanced down at the Piper Cub aviation logo tattooed on my forearm, which reminded me of how far we’d each come. A little over six months ago, I’d sat in a cubicle every workday in a big insurance building. I’d fly for fun every weekend and work on my little bungalow at night. Clutch had been a farmer and a truck driver. His skills had proven far more useful than mine, especially considering he was also a military vet. He’d saved my ass ten times over.
“At the rate you’re healing, you’ll be back to your old self in no time,” I said before I dipped my finger into the cold water and shivered.
Clutch grunted. “Old is right. I’ve collected plenty of new aches and creaks in this old body.”
I smirked at his grumbly response and noticed his eyes focused on my none-too-ample chest. I gave him an appraising look from head to toe and back up again. “Not too old, I hope,” I said with a flirty smile.
A hint of lust twinkled in his gaze before his reality dampened his features again.
My heart skipped a beat. Even though it had been a fleeting glimpse, I considered it a success. Any improvement in Clutch’s emotional state, even if for only a second, I took as a sign that there was still hope. In this world, any hope was worth treasuring.
I turned and splashed cold water onto my face. Goosebumps flitted across my skin as rivulets ran down my cheeks. In my wavy reflection, my cropped dark hair went out in every direction. I used the water to try to tamp it down, with little success. As I washed up in the cold stream, I dreaded what winter would be like. Even the outhouses being built by each cabin were already cold. Sitting in one when it was ten degrees outside would be absolute torture.
On this brisk morning, we shared the stream with three other bathers, but they were all a hundred or so feet away at their personal stations. Only those at a higher risk for infection, like Clutch, could use the park’s showers. Until the water froze, the rest of us had to use the trout stream to conserve the half-full rural water tower that fed the cabins and campgrounds. With over fifty survivors—and new arriving each week—at the park, the trout stream was never without someone bathing or collecting water. We’d all quickly learned to shed our modesty, though some still clung to old values and had strung up shower curtains next to the stream for changing and bathing.
Each person had their quirks. Life had gotten hard fast, and every single one of us had found ways to survive without going crazy. Taking a cold bath was nothing compared to learning how to walk again with only a general practitioner for a neurosurgeon. I leaned back on my heels, turned, and saw Clutch watching the horizon. My gaze fell on his wheelchair, and I thought of the battle he still fought. Seeing his trampled body following the Camp Fox attack was the worst image of every image haunting my dreams every night. It was worse than the school full of zombie kids, worse than sitting on a hot roof surrounded by a hundred zeds, even worse than all the different ways I’d imagined how my parents must have died during the outbreak.