Free Contagious by Emily Goodwin Page A

Thanks,” I said, unhappy with how high pitched and shaky my voice was. My hands trembled even worse. My fingers didn’t want to cooperate in grasping the chipping metal ID tag that hung from the dog’s neck. “Argos,” I said, finally reading his name. His whole butt shook with excitement at the sound of his name. He licked sweat off my face and trotted off. I pulled myself up, trudging back to Aunt Jenny’s apartment.
    “ Orissa!” Zoe cried, practically falling out of her chair. She was the first to notice the blood. In an explosion of chaos, Padraic was woken. He was concerned over the amount of blood I had lost. Before anyone could drill me with questions, he took me into the bathroom and closed the door. He had to help me remove my shirt. As the shock wore off, the pain settled in. He pressed a clean towel to the wound, told me to hold it and scuttled out to get some medical supplies.
    “ Do you think you could stand to let me stitch it closed?” he asked.
    The blood drained from my face at the thought of a sewing needle repeatedly piercing my skin. “Does it need it?”
    “ I’d say so.”
    “ Ok then. Do it fast.”
    Padraic’s hands were soft and gentle. He didn’t have gloves but didn’t balk at my blood.
    “ Were you strangled?” he asked, apparently seeing the red marks on my neck.
    “ Yeah.”
    “ Why didn’t you say anything?”
    “ It didn’t kill me. And I’ve been strangled before. It’s no big deal.”
    “ Oh, I beg to differ. Want to tell me what happened up there now?”
    I didn’t want to talk about it ever. The needle poked into my flesh. “Logan.”
    “ He got attacked?”
    “ Not quite.”
    “ He did this?” Padraic’s hands stopped moving.
    “ He was infected. I-I had no idea. He was fine and then ten minutes later…” I felt tears attempt to form, whether it was from the pain or the horrible loss, I didn’t know. I blinked them back. “I don’t even know how he got infected. I thought you said we were all immune.”
    “ Resistant,” he corrected, pulling the thread up. It yanked my skin in a sickening manor. “Viruses evolve and change. One strand could do nothing while a slightly different strand could be fatal.”
    “ But how did he get it? We haven’t drunk any water and I’m sure he didn’t get bitten.”
    Padraic clipped the thread, rubbed some sort of salve on the wound and bandaged it up. He sat on the counter, wiping his bloody hands on a wet rag.
    “ He got scraped and cut fighting the zombies, right?”
    “ Didn’t we all?” I asked feebly.
    “ Yes. And that’s what worries me. You said you didn’t think he got bitten, insinuating you think the virus is transmitted through saliva. Maybe that’s not the only way.”
    “ What do you mean?”
    “ Take AIDS, for example. If someone with AIDS bled on that fresh cut…”
    “ I’d get it.”
    “ Exactly.”
    My eyes locked with Padraic’s. He looked almost excited about his discovery but terrified at the same time. This upped the ‘we all get the zombie virus, go crazy, or die’ factor. “How do we tell the others about Logan,” he asked.
    “ I’m sure they already suspect it.” I unfolded my shirt, which I had wadded up and squeezed while I was being sewn shut. I stuck my fingers through the hole in my hoodie. “And he had to freaking ruin my hoodie.”
    “ Is he still out there?”
    “ Nope.”
    “ Did you…?”
    “ Yep.”
    “ After he stabbed you?”
    “ No, I killed him then he stabbed me,” I jeered derisively.
    “ I got that,” he said quickly. “I meant that I’m a little impressed and a lot surprised you were able to put up a fight after going through that.”
    “ Well,” I said, standing and not mentioning the dog; I didn’t know if my canine savior would ever come back. “It’s not the first time I’ve been stabbed.”
    “ You are an interesting girl, Orissa.”
    I’d been called a lot of things in my life, though interesting was never one of them.