No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,68
reached past Annie, slow as I could, an’ picked up the fire iron.
It died from the iron a lot faster than it’d done with the IV pole, an’ what was left drifted up the chimney as smoke. Annie gasped in a deep breath an’ rolled away from the fire with a cry, the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. I knocked the table over, bringing cooler air in, an’ dropped down beside her to haul her into my arms. She was cold an’ clammy and shivering again, but it wasn’t a sick kinda shivering anymore.
After the longest time I picked her up again an’ brought her to the bathroom, filled the tub with warm water an’ got in it with her. There wasn’t hardly enough room for one of us in it, never mind two, but I wasn’t gonna let her go. ‘sides, at least it being small meant I could reach for a cup and fill it from the sink without movin’ much. Annie drank it, still without sayin’ anything, and I got her another, an’ another, until she finally just held it, half full, an’ fell asleep against my chest. Healthy sleep, not the stillness from before. She barely even woke up with me getting us outta the tub and dried off, an’ she was a warm little lump of softness at my side when I crawled into bed with her. We didn’t wake up, either, not til early the next morning, when she whispered, “I’m hungry.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while, doll.” I held on another minute, then kissed her hair. “All right. Bacon an’ eggs or you wanna start small?”
“Porridge? I’ll eat it while you’re frying the bacon. And making the pancakes.”
I grinned real quick. “Anything else I oughta be cooking up?”
“I think that’s enough to start.” She smiled an’ I tried not ta see the blue circles under her eyes, or the weight that had fallen off of her in the past couple days. She looked half burned away, an’ the rash hadn’t faded all the way yet, bright red streaks standing out against awful pale skin.
I pulled her close again and held on a minute, finally whisperin’, “Thanks for staying with me, doll. You had me scared for a while there.”
“Me too. Me too, Gary, but I have to eat before I can talk about it. Before I can even think about it. Okay? Please?”
“Yeah. Yeah, doll.” I kissed her again more fiercely, an’ it turned out hungry an’ weak as she was, there was something she needed more’n food right then. Took a while for me to get out to the kitchen, but I started ferrying food right back into the bedroom. Juice first, trying not to see how fragile she looked holding the cup in both hands and drinking with her eyes closed, an’ then the porridge with lotsa cream and brown sugar while the bacon fried up. Turned out making pancakes wasn’t that hard either, following a recipe from Annie’s cookbook. I only burned a couple. We ate on the bed, balancing plates on our laps an’ knees, just like kids sharing a Sunday morning breakfast with their folks.
I’d never seen Annie pack away so much, or been so glad to see it. Seemed like her color got better with every bite, an’ after about six pancakes, a couple eggs, an’ more bacon pieces than I bothered to count, she sighed an’ put her fork down. “You might have to start doing the cooking, Gary. This is delicious.”
“Hunger makes the best sauce, darlin’.”
She nodded, then closed her eyes a minute, like she was fortifying herself. Then she looked at me, straight an’ clear. “What happened?”
I explained as best as I had it figured out, watching Annie’s face grow more solemn with every word. When I finished, she asked the question she’d done before: “Why me?”
An answer came up from the back of my mind, but I choked it off before it got loose. Because I love you wasn’t any kinda answer that made sense, and hell if I was gonna make either of us start wondering if getting married had been a bad idea. “I don’t know, doll, but if something’s comin’ after you, then we gotta assume it’s gonna come again. I’m thinking maybe we got lucky that this…poison-demon, whatever you wanna call it, that it was slow and had ta be carried inside of somebody else’s body to get close enough to strike. If it had been