Free Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 by Adrienne Lecter Page A

the living shit out of me, and that without me hitting anything in the first place. The house was empty, looking deserted even before the shit had hit the fan. A summer cabin, likely, with the owners finding their end someplace else. There wasn’t much loot to be found for that very same reason, but we didn’t need much. The sack of rice and canned beans that we happened upon in the pantry were more than sufficient for our dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. There were even some spices in a small cupboard, a rare treat on the road.
    While Nate dragged the mattress off the bed in the other room to get it into the front one—better exit possibilities, and we could keep an eye on the car—I busied myself cooking dinner over our small camping stove. I still managed to burn the rice but Nate didn’t protest, spooning up his portion with gusto. I waited until mine had cooled a little before I dug in—and stopped once I forced the first, bland mouthful down. When I kept glaring at the still steaming bowl, Nate nudged my knee with his. “What’s wrong?”
    “I think I finally get why that tuna was so god-awful,” I replied. “That fucking virus fried my sense of taste.”
    Nate kept on chewing, even if somewhat pensively. “That shit is spicy hot. If you can’t define exactly what it tastes like, that might be the culprit.”
    I looked from my bowl to him. “It tastes like bland dough. Like nothing. I feel the texture of the rice and beans, but that’s about it. Nothing hot, spicy, or anything. Could be soggy cardboard, too.”  
    He continued to frown, not that it kept him from eating. “Maybe we should hunt something so you can try some raw, bloody meat?”
    I wasn’t sure whether he was joking, but it didn’t matter. “Ha, ha, very funny. It’s not that I’d rather eat anything else. And I can still smell how this should taste. It’s actually not bad. But the moment it hits my tongue—nada. Don’t ask me how that works.” Actually, I had an idea, if a very vague one.  
    “You still have to eat something, even if it tastes like nothing,” he insisted. “Aren’t you hungry? I feel like there’s a hole left where my stomach used to be.”
    I tried to listen to what my body was demanding, but I was neither hungry nor thirsty. “Not really.”
    He paused, then put down his bowl in favor of checking our water bottles, coming up with a succinct, “Shit.” Next, he plunked down one of them in front of me. “Here, drink that. As in, empty it.”
    “Right now? I’m really not—“
    His exasperated sigh made me halt and sip a few mouthfuls, but not particularly enthusiastically.  
    “Bree, it’s a million degrees out there during the day. You’re sweating, and you’re also leaking fluid from your eyes that you need to replenish as well.” Reaching over, he checked my forehead, his hand somewhat cooler than my skin. “No fever, but you’re not cool. I think you’re already starting to get seriously dehydrated. Drink. Eat. If I have to, I’ll start keeping lists.”
    It was mostly the concern in his tone that made me chug down some more water before I went back to poking around the rice bowl, forcing myself to ingest it, one agonizingly bland bite at a time. By the time I was done, Nate had polished off two more bowls, leaving nothing in the makeshift pot, not even the burnt rice that had been sticking to the bottom. I knew that I should have felt at least moderately satiated now, but nothing seemed different from when I’d been practically famished.
    “Well, this sucks,” I summed up my glum thoughts. “So far this surviving death thing is highly overrated.”
    Nate looked less than happy but gave a playful snort at that. “Oh, come on. Could be worse.”
    “Yeah, I could have woken up with your sense of humor,” I replied. “I think I’ll take tasteless food over that.”
    “Let’s just hope that it didn’t kill your sex drive, because your company is hard to suffer at best with you