and she could taste her own blood in her mouth. There was no guarantee that she would get out of this alive, even if she did everything right.
“What do you mean, fake?” the woman said, and her voice was edged with anger.
It was the first time Red had heard a sincere emotion from her, the first time the mask fell away completely.
“My whole family did die. My husband, my daughter, my two sons, my sister and her whole family. I have no one now. No one.”
“And what would your family think of you if they could see you now? Do you think they’d be proud of you, trying to take from someone you don’t even know?”
The woman looked stricken, like Red had physically hit her. And because she was shocked and not on her cue her eyes slid right again and so Red had ample time to turn and see the man running toward her.
He was tall and thin and had long greasy-looking black hair that stuck to the side of his face. He held a hunting knife in his right hand, and the fact that he was tall put Red at a massive disadvantage because he had a longer reach. She’d have to get inside his reach, away from the blade, and fast.
She’d taken a basic self-defense class once, one of those offered at the college. Self-defense was not about long drawn-out battles. It was about disabling your attacker long enough for you to run away.
So she didn’t square off like she was going to have a fight with him. She held the axe close to her body, waited for him to get close, then dropped to her right knee and swung the axe into his thigh.
Blood spurted into her face but she couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about the fact that he might be infected and that his blood had gone into her nose and mouth. He screamed and dropped the knife and when he did she swung again, taking out his other leg.
He crumpled to the ground, crying and screaming and cursing her.
Red stood up as fast as she could and turned back toward the blond woman, who she felt sure would be running at her already. But the woman just stood there with her mouth open, like she was watching a movie that was supposed to be predictable and had taken an unexpected turn.
The man was still cursing, still calling Red every name a man calls a woman when he’s angry. But his voice was fading out very quickly, a song coming to its end.
Red had hit an artery. She knew this because the blood was spraying out in time with his fading heartbeats.
“Daaaad!”
A voice from the trees, and Red saw a teenage boy—a gangly, more youthful mirror of the man dying in front of her—run past the stunned blonde and fall to the ground next to the man.
“Daaaad!” he wailed.
For a moment Red was sorry, sorry she’d killed the man who’d clearly intended to kill her. The boy looked about fifteen or sixteen, old enough to harm her if he wanted, but he only threw himself on his father’s chest and wept.
Red felt sick then, sick at what she’d become, but she couldn’t really be sorry. She couldn’t be sorry that she’d killed that man before he killed her.
The adrenaline still pushed through her and made her hands shake but she picked up her pack and slung it on, all the while keeping the axe trained toward the weeping boy.
The blonde moved then, in little slow mouse steps, toward the boy and the man. Her face was the color of ash after a fire has burned out.
Red walked past her, close enough to touch, but the woman drifted by like she couldn’t see Red at all.
CHAPTER 5
Daggers in Men’s Smiles
Before
Before they left town Red insisted on going into the pharmacy to see if there were any antibiotics available. Of course they were useless against the Cough, which was viral and tricky, but as Red had pointed out there were still plenty of bacteria that could kill you if