Free Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood by Jason Bovberg Page B

That’s almost the last of the water, but we’ll get more at Safeway.”
    He takes the first bite of the sandwich, feels an almost comical surge of energy come from it, then takes another. He nods his appreciation.
    “Thank you,” he says. He smiles weakly at her, embarrassed. “I passed out?”
    “Kevin caught you before you hit the floor.” She gives him a slight smile.
    He drinks again, swallows. The hospital is silent and dark behind her.
    “Where’s Rachel?”
    “She’s next door, sleeping hard.” Her brow trembles, and her gaze drifts. “Poor girl is hugging an old teddy bear.”
    Michael imagines Rachel in her own hospital bed, curled fetal with her bear, and he feels a new tug of emotion.
    He tries to recall the last thing he did before falling unconscious.
    After the incident with the body upstairs—directly above him—Bonnie took charge of the situation medically, and she determined that the man had suffered hyper-extension in all the major joints. She used several braces to support the healing of the hyperextension. She found cold compresses to help, too. He remembers Bonnie saying, “I’m stunned his back isn’t broken. You saw the way he was bent backward. My spine hurts just thinking about it.”
    After that, the survivors started in on the task of cleaning up the battle zone that the hospital had become. Michael probably took on more than he should have; he has a strong recollection of cleaning major portions of the floor in the lobby.
    He doesn’t remember anything after that.
    “You tried to brace yourself with your mop,” Bonnie says, “but you started slipping right down to the ground. Luckily Kevin was right there next to you.”
    “So how’s it going out there?” Michael asks, motioning toward the hospital’s inner rooms and hallways.
    “The man … the prisoner … he’s still asleep,” she says haltingly. “Everything else is coming along.” She gives in to a weary sigh. “I feel like—like what happened before, that the worst is over and now it’s time to recover. You know what I mean? I guess I need that. To feel like things can get better.”
    “Sure, I get that.”
    “We’re cleaning the place up as best we can … moving bodies to the morgue. For a sense of decorum as much as to isolate them.” She walks farther in, a frown crossing her face. “They’re starting to decompose in this heat. But I—I feel like, at least I can get my head around this. Dead bodies coming back to life and eating trees, not so much. But put me in charge of cleaning up a hospital? That I can do.”
    “Makes sense to me.” He finishes a half-sandwich, resisting a strong instinct to plow right into the second half. “What time is it, anyway?”
    She automatically brings up her wrist, but there’s no watch there. “It’s late, around midnight, I think. I was about to try to get some rest before my shift at the door.”
    “So I’ve been out for how long?”
    “Oh … five hours?”
    “Jesus. Sorry.”
    “Don’t knock unconsciousness, it’s your best medicine right now.”
    “I need to be helping, but I keep falling asleep!”
    “No one holds it against you. They just want you healthy.”
    “I should be—”
    “You helped a lot! All you missed was a bunch of indecisive people trying to plan what to do next.”
    A long beat of silence inflates the distance between them. Bonnie appears about to come closer, perhaps settle into the plastic chair that has been pulled up next to the bed, but then she turns toward the door.
    “I need to find my wife,” Michael whispers, not wanting Bonnie to leave.
    She offers a sad smile, and now she moves to the chair. The chair is new to him, and he realizes that Rachel was probably sitting there at some point, watching him.
    “Michael,” Bonnie says. “If I were you … I would start preparing for the worst.”
    He doesn’t know how to respond to that. He takes a bite of the sandwich’s second half and chews slowly.
    “I just need