Free After The Virus by Meghan Ciana Doidge Page A

awake.
    She was going to have to improvise their way out.
    With nothing near for Snickers to brace the shotgun on, she’d get a single shot that probably wouldn’t hit and would land her on her ass. Rhiannon could try to grab the gun from Snickers, but was pretty sure Buddy, and probably Asshole, would have guns trained if not fired before she could manage that move.
    She mentally inventoried her injuries. Can I run? Maybe. Can I pick up Snickers and run? No way. Were they way faster? Fuck, yes. So they weren’t going to get to walk away clean. Someone was going to get hurt, probably Snickers. She’d just be collateral damage to them.
    Buddy’s eyes darted toward his gun, which he’d left beside his bed. Asshole’s hand twitched to reach for his own gun strapped to his leg. She was going to have to make a decision, otherwise they would, but she wasn’t accustomed to having to factor the safety of other people into her choices.
    Asshole moved first, just like she fucking knew he would. He reached for his gun; she stabbed the stake through his hand into the ground. He howled, but also managed to grab her neck in a chokehold with his other hand. She smashed her chain-wrapped forearm up under his chin.  
    Buddy dove for his gun.
    She whirled around and flipped Snickers over her shoulder.  
    B.B. pounced and clamped down on Buddy’s gun arm as he raised his hand to shoot.
    She ran.
    B.B. snarled and tore flesh.
    Buddy screamed.
    A gun went off.
    Silence fell.
    This lack of sound severed her heart, but she kept running. Snickers clung to her, soundlessly as always. She realized she was muttering the mantra, “No B.B., no B.B., please no, B.B.,” and stopped.
    ∞
    It was so dark. Where the fuck was the moon? So she had to stick to the road once she found it. Necessity and distance beat stealth.
    Then the adrenaline infusing her brain eased, and she recognized that the river was thundering on the left. She was running the wrong way. She paused, pressed up against the cliff face, and looked back.
    “Did you leave Will any clues to where you were heading?” she asked Snickers. Snickers, her face pressed against the crook of her neck, shook her head.
    Fuck .
    Snickers knew which direction to head because of B.B.’s nose.
    She tried to not think of B.B. bleeding out, dying back there, just because she was stupid enough to get caught running away like a brat.
    Rhiannon lowered Snickers, disengaged her arms from her neck, and tucked the girl behind her against the cliff, her eyes still locked on the road.
    One of her ribs pressed harshly against her lung, and she willed herself to believe it was only bruised, not broken and about to puncture. Feeling through the darkness, she wiped her hands across Snickers’ wet cheeks, kissed her forehead, and pulled a bobby pin from her hair. It was difficult with the dark, the angle, and without being able to see the lock, but she eventually got the neck shackle off. She wove the bent bobby pin back into Snickers’ hair, retrieved the knife tied to the girl’s leg, and pressed it into her hand.
    Then she commandeered the shotgun and filled her pockets with shells from Snickers’ backpack. She also kept the chain coiled around her arm.
    Snickers painfully squeezed her shoulder, and Rhiannon looked to see a dark figure looming behind, or maybe sitting on, a boulder a dozen or so feet eastward. She didn’t know how long this person had been there, but as the sun started to rise, the sky behind the figure had lightened and revealed it.
    She raised the shotgun, but, as the figure leaped forward, she recognized it. B.B. Snickers flung herself at the dog and B.B. whimpered.
    Rhiannon pulled them into the recessed cliff spot, and as the sun further lightened the sky, she saw that B.B. had a bullet groove across her chest.
    She started to pull off her jacket to stanch the wound, but then Snickers pressed packages of gauze, bandages, and antiseptic into her hands. She had packed with