Pretty Much Dead Already, page 7
I throw the old dress in the bin marked “CONTAMINATED,” hesitating for a second as if it might be the last artifact of my old life.
It isn’t.
Back in the ward, the other Omega is awake now, watching me with sleep-heavy eyes. She’s younger than I am, maybe sixteen, with hair shorn to the scalp and a face so pale it almost glows. She doesn’t say anything. Just watches.
I climb onto my cot, curl under the blanket, and stare at the ceiling. The sounds of the compound filter in through the window: boots stomping, voices on megaphones, the distant wail of a siren. Once, I hear someone laugh. I close my eyes and try to remember the last time I did that.
The Ibuprofen Dr. Mare gave me is still in my hand, the bottle slick and warm from my grip. I unscrew the cap, swallow two dry, and rest the bottle on my chest like a tiny, plastic shield.
Minutes pass. Maybe hours. I don’t know how to mark time anymore, not when all the clocks have lost their hands.
I think about Dr. Mare, about the tremor in his fingers and the way his eyes went dark when our skin touched. I wonder if he’s thinking about it, too, or if I’m just another patient, another list of symptoms to manage and forget. The idea of anyone caring seems absurd, but it’s a better fantasy than the ones that come with sleep.
I drift, half-dreaming. I wake to the sound of the door lock cycling and Tamsin’s voice barking, “Food, don’t waste it.”
She sets a tray by the door: oatmeal, an apple, a carton of milk, all shrink-wrapped in plastic. I don’t move for a long time, but eventually, hunger outweighs pride. I shuffle over, take the food, and eat it sitting cross-legged on the cot, the blanket a makeshift throne.
The other Omega eats, too, but never looks at me. We exist in parallel, two satellites doomed to orbit the same dead sun.
When the food is gone, I tuck myself back under the covers. The warmth of the blanket is a lie, but it’s a lie I can live with. I curl tighter, knees to chest, and let the exhaustion drag me under.
I don’t hear the lock disengage again. I don’t hear the footsteps in the hall or the creak of the door as it opens, just an inch.
I don’t see the shape that stands there, silhouetted by the light from the corridor, breathing in the air like he can taste it. Like he can taste me.
But I feel it—somehow, on the edge of sleep, I feel the way the world tilts, ever so slightly, toward danger.
And for the first time since my world ended, I think I might actually be ready for it.
Chapter Six: Survival in Triage
Dr. Mare
Survival hangs by a thread.
Nurses float from bay to bay, grim-eyed, efficient. Most of them stopped hoping three waves of refugees ago. Now it’s just triage. Who can we save? Who gets to keep breathing?
I’m on hour twenty-six without sleep. Maybe twenty-seven. I stopped counting after the third blackout. I’m halfway through restocking gloves when one of the guards gestures toward the second bay. “New intake,” he says, voice low.
I adjust my reading glasses—a useless gesture, they’re always slipping—and head to the curtain.
She’s already there.
For a second, I think she might be a hallucination. But no—she’s too solid for that. Wrapped in a blanket, barefoot, dressed in the tattered remains of a white gown. A wedding dress, I realize, as I scan down her legs to the bruises and the raw, red scrapes across her shins.
I sit behind the desk and let the moment settle.
“Ms. Vale,” I say, more reflex than greeting.
“That’s me,” she replies, voice so thin it barely holds together.
I gesture to the chair across from me. “Sit. Please.”
She does. Slowly, carefully, like the metal might bite her. Her skin sticks to the seat with that unpleasant suction noise, but she doesn’t flinch. Just waits, still and quiet.
I take her in—not ogling, not even diagnosing at first. Just... seeing. Her bruises tell a story, but the way she holds herself tells the rest. Shoulders curled inward, like she’s trying to vanish. Hands twitchy from adrenaline crash. Hair still pinned in the ruins of an updo, strands falling over her eyes like she hasn’t had the strength to care.
I offer my name, “Dr. Mare.”
She nods. “Charming place you have here.”
A smile tries to break across my face. Fails. Still, I say, “You should’ve seen it before the apocalypse.”
I pick up the pen, set it back down. “Let’s start with the obvious.”
I snap on gloves. It’s a practiced rhythm—one of the few rituals we have left. I lean forward and inspect the split in her lip. Not deep, but nasty. Looks recent.
“How long have you been like this?”
“Day and a half,” she says after a pause. “Maybe two.”
I grab a flashlight and lift her chin with two fingers, careful not to make it feel like a command. Her jaw’s mottled with bruises. Not a zombie bite—something uglier, more human.
“Was it human or infected?”
She doesn’t blink. “Human. Most of the infected weren’t wearing wedding rings.”
I grunt. It’s not approval, not exactly, but it’s something. She’s sharp, even like this. I work my way down, mentally cataloguing each injury: fractured pride, superficial cuts, several healing abrasions, and trauma buried so deep it’s practically vascular.
“Left wrist,” I murmur, lifting her hand gently.
The cut looks surgical from a distance, but up close, it’s clear she used what she had. Probably a kitchen knife and borrowed nerve.
“Kitchen knife,” she confirms.
I lean in to examine it and catch her scent—not perfume. Not sweat. Just blood, disinfectant, and something deeply human. Her breath brushes my cheek as she adds, “I did the stitching.”
I glance up. “Impressive. Did you have a kit, or…?”
“No kit. Just resourceful.” She's not bragging, but their is a hint of pride in her voice.
That word. Resourceful. It lands like a confession.
I nod slowly, and the respect that rises in my chest is unfiltered. Real. I set down the flashlight and open a packet of gauze. “I’m going to redress this. It might sting.”
“Do your worst,” she says.
I peel off the bandage. It resists, clinging like it wants to stay part of her. When it finally comes away, there’s blood, yes—but also the kind of quiet defiance that comes from choosing pain over surrender. She closes her eyes, just briefly.
I don’t say anything. Just clean the wound, careful but fast. Spray it down with a chill antiseptic to kill the burn. My hands are steady, but everything else in me hums like wire stretched too tight.
“Allergies?”
She exhales. “Just to optimism.”
That nearly earns a laugh from me. Nearly.
I finish wrapping her wrist. Tight, clean. No wasted tape. Then I move to her feet.
The damage is worse here—raw, open blisters, a deep gash on the heel. She’s been running. For days. Maybe longer.
I lift her right foot with both hands. It’s trembling.
“Do you mind?” I ask.
“Not at all,” she grits out, voice tight like wire pulled taut.
I don’t respond. Words feel unnecessary in moments like this, where precision and silence matter more than comfort. My hands stay busy—disinfecting, wrapping, checking reflexes—while behind the curtain, chaos reigns. Someone screams for morphine, to bad there’s a shortage. There’s always a shortage of something. The ward sings its usual broken song of suffering and survival. I don’t flinch. I can’t afford to.
She’s tougher than she looks.
Doesn’t wince.
Doesn’t beg.
Most people do. There’s something jagged in her silence, though—not fear. Something else. Fury? Resilience?
I finish with her feet, peeling off my used gloves, and reach for the small cup of water. Just a routine offering, but when she takes it from me, our fingers brush.
And everything changes.
A sharp jolt snaps up my arm like static hitting wet skin—hot and startling. My breath catches before I can stop it. When I glance up, she’s already looking at me, eyes wide, lips parted. I see the flicker of recognition—the same charge sparking across her expression.
God, she feels it too.
The current between us is unmistakable. Chemical. Instant. My pupils dilate without permission, swallowing blue into black. I wonder if she can hear my pulse from there. I wonder what the hell this is.
“Thank you,” she says, and the sound of her voice—so soft, so unlike how she spoke before—lands somewhere unsteady in my chest.
I let go quickly, maybe too quickly. But the tremor is there. I press my palm against the table beside me, grounding myself. Ridiculous. A woman brushes my hand, and I’m ready to rewrite the laws of physiology.
I clear my throat. “Last part.” It comes out hoarse. Embarrassing. I nod toward the tear near her ribs. “May I?” 'm already pulling on new gloves.
She nods.
The bruises bloom like ink beneath torn fabric, and something ugly stirs in me. Not at her. At whoever did this. My fingers are steady, clinical, but I can feel the heat creeping up my neck as I work. She's not just another chart.
Not anymore.
“Any trouble breathing?” I ask, keeping my voice neutral.
“Only when people ask me personal questions.”
I smile before I can stop myself.
I check her ribs, tracing gently, noting the bruising pattern and sensitivity. When I press a little harder than I meant to, she hisses. Not in pain. It's something else. The way her eyes flash—it's heat, not hurt. It lingers in the air like ozone after lightning.
I pull back, gloves tight on my fingers, and give her a once-over. “You’re stable. No sign of infection, but we’ll need to keep you under observation for forty-eight hours. Just to be sure.”
She nods, lips pressed together like she doesn’t trust them to behave.
I jot it all down, but my hand stills before I sign off. I glance back at her. Really look. She’s watching me, and I know we’re both pretending this is still normal. That we’re both still strangers.
“Is there anything you need?” I ask. The question comes out low, quieter than I meant. Too close to something real.
There’s a pause, long enough for me to hope she’ll say something honest. Something that breaks the moment wide open.
But she just shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
A lie.
I know it. I don’t call her on it.
“You’ll have a bed in the Omega ward. Second floor, east wing,” I say, snapping back to routine. “Ask for Nurse Edwards if you need anything. Ibuprofen, as needed. And try to rest.”
I hand her the bottle. Our hands don’t touch this time.
As I pull back the curtain, I hesitate. There’s something I want to say—something unprofessional and impossible and completely true.
But I don’t.
I walk away, shoulders tense, hands shoved into my pockets like I can hide the storm building in them. The air behind me hums with something unfinished.
I don’t look back.
God help me, I want to.
Chapter Seven: The Worst Idea Yet
Cass
It’s always the same goddamn squeal—the hinges on the Fort Hope gate screeching like a banshee with a migraine. I roll my eyes, tug the pack higher up my shoulder, and shoot a middle finger to the sniper in the nearest deer blind. He gives me a lazy wave, recognizing the gesture as both fuck-you and friendly hello. Around here, they’re basically the same thing.
Two hours outside the wire, and the first thing that hits me—harder than the dust on my tongue or the sour stench of rotting dead— is the Fort’s ever-present perfume: diesel, overcooked beans, and the sweat of a thousand bodies packed into a community college not built for this kind of misery. By the time I make it past the killzone, I’ve already inventoried at least nine new ways the camp could be breached. The guard rotation’s getting sloppy, and I’ll tell the brass as much when I see him, not that he’ll do anything but glare and write it down like he’s going to implement change. Authority never met a rule it didn’t want to tape to a wall and ignore.
A couple of the greenhorns at the front check my ID, pretend they don’t know me, and then act surprised when I toss a thermal scanner onto the table. “Recovered tech,” I say, deadpan. “Bet the R&D kids’ll wet themselves.”
One of them, the short one with a voice like sandpaper, looks over my haul. “Thought you’d come back with more.”
I give him my best shit-eating grin. “Thought you’d be taller by now.”
His jaw works, unimpressed, but I catch a twitch at the edge of his mouth. Fort Hope runs on these little exchanges, trading snark for sanity.
I duck through the next checkpoint, sidestepping a trio of refugee kids playing some demented version of hopscotch, and snake my way past the mess hall. Already, the morning lines are forming, people hungry for protein bars and the illusion of normalcy. I’m nearly to the main supply depot when it hits me—sudden, sharp, threading through the cacophony like a razor: a scent I’ve never encountered.
Fuck me, it’s sweet.
Not in the way of rations gone bad or the chemical tang of antiseptic, but something raw and almost biological. My body reacts before my brain can categorize it. My chest goes tight, jaw clenching on instinct. My mouth waters, hot and mean. The world slows, vision tunneling.
I force my feet to keep moving, trying to shake it off. “Not the time, Cass,” I mutter, mostly for the benefit of the universe. But it’s already lodged in my skull.
The line at the depot is blessedly short. I dump the bag onto the battered counter and start ticking off contents, but the clerk’s not listening. She’s maybe nineteen, all cheekbones and attitude. I like her already.
I wrinkle my nose. “You smell that?”
“I smell a lot of things,” She shoots back, voice edged and distracted. “Half of ‘em make me want to bleach my sinuses.”
“No, like—” I lean forward, eyes narrowing. “Is that…flowers?”
She gives me a look. “You get hit on your head lately?”
I shrug, but let it drop; maybe she doesn’t smell it. We finish the handoff in silence, and I snag a couple of expired energy gels from the donation bin on my way out. The scent is stronger now, and it’s screwing with my equilibrium. I’m off-balance, off-script. I don’t like it.
I start weaving through the camp, following the current. There’s nothing logical about it; the trail zags, skips, doubles back over itself. Every few seconds I catch a whiff, and my pulse spikes. My body moves faster than my mind, and that’s dangerous. Out here, that’s how you die.
I nearly bowl over a medic with an armload of splints. “Move,” I grunt, barely slowing. The guy yelps, “Asshole!” But the word is a limp threat.
Halfway to the science annex, it clicks—the scent’s coming from the rooms that masquerade as a field hospital. I keep my head down, inconspicuous, to draw attention to myself is putting a target on my back.
I pass two guards at the entrance, both with rifles slung lazy. They’re more interested in their card game than the possibility of an inside job, which is exactly why people like me get hired as runners. I could teach a seminar on exploiting complacency, but I prefer on-the-job demonstrations.
Inside, the lighting is shit. Rows of cots line the floor, occupied by every flavor of wounded, infected, and shell-shocked. The air is thick with rubbing alcohol and desperation, but underneath it all is the pulse of that scent, now a solid line instead of a ghost.
I pause, let my eyes adjust. There—a curtain drawn around a cot near the far wall. Two voices: one older, measured, the other faint but…resigned? I can’t make out words, but the older one has the cadence of authority. A nurse, probably.
I angle closer, careful not to draw attention, though my own breathing is louder than I want it to be. At the curtain, the scent is so strong it makes my knees buckle. I grip the metal frame, teeth clenched.
It’s not just sweet; it’s chemical, almost like pheromones pumped through a meat grinder and left out in the sun. It’s wrong, and it’s perfect, and it’s driving me fucking insane.
I lean in, just enough to catch a sliver of movement. All I can see is hair—a long sheet of red so dark it looks black at the roots, spilling over hospital sheets. The omega inside is curled on her side, arms tucked tight. I can’t see her face, but I can see the tremor in her shoulder, the subtle tension that says she’s awake, listening, calculating her odds.
And suddenly, I get it. This isn’t some random new arrival, not a victim of bad luck or the wrong neighborhood at the wrong hour. This is deliberate. She was brought here, and that means somebody up the chain is interested.
I check the hallway behind me—clear. I close my eyes and inhale. The scent crashes over me, obliterating everything else. For one wild second, I want to leap the curtain and bury my face in her neck.
Mark her.
Ruin her.
My hands shake with the effort to hold still.
“What the hell is that,” I breathe, and this time it’s not a rhetorical question.
Something shifts in the air. The older voice stops, and I hear the click of a pen. A clipboard smacks against a thigh. The nurse mutters something low, and the red-haired omega—curls tighter around herself, knuckles white around the blanket.
I should walk away. I should report this to the higher ups, let the brass decide what the hell to do with a scentbomb that could drop the Fort’s entire alpha contingent into rut in ten seconds flat. But instead, I press closer, memorizing the line of her spine through the thin and tattered wedding gown, the pattern of her hair. My mind catalogs every detail like I’ll need to recall it under interrogation.
