Free Web NovelChapter 30: Brave The Whole Time
The last infected was heavier than Kara expected. Everything tonight had been heavier than Kara expected.
She stood beside the Ascender with one hand gripping the infected’s collar while keeping the shotgun raised in her other hand as she pulled the infected out.
The corpse dragged across the driver’s seat, leaving a long dark smear behind it.
Kara kept her eyes fixed on a point somewhere past the thing’s ruined face as breathed through her mouth, and kept pulling until the body finally cleared the passenger door.
And the moment it did, she stepped back and tried to steady her breathing, arms were shaking from the sustained effort of it.
The first infected already lay a few meters away where she had dragged it earlier.
Tikki sat near the Ascender’s front wheel, watching her, and every few seconds he raised his front left paw and licked it once or twice, then held it just barely off the ground before beginning the whole process again.
Kara barely registered the motion.
She raised the shotgun and approached the open passenger door slowly, bracing for something to launch at her from inside, and nothing did.
The back seats had blood on every surface she could see, while beyond the seats, the RV compartment lay in complete disarray, every crate and bin overturned, the supplies Nikki had packed with lay scattered across the floor in a jumble that would take significant time to sort through.
But at least no infected were inside.
Kara’s shoulders finally dropped slightly as she climbed into the driver’s seat, the shotgun resting across her knees, getting used to the cabin that smelled like blood and gun smoke and something underneath both that she could not cleanly name.
"Come on, buddy." She turned toward Tikki, patting the passenger seat beside her.
Tikki stood and walked toward the open door without hesitation, but that walk was too slow.
Kara watched him pause at the door frame, gather himself, and jump.
And her mind instantly clocked that the landing was slightly wrong.
It was a small thing, a fraction of a second of awkward weight distribution before he settled onto the seat and composed himself.
The kind of thing that would disappear entirely if you were not watching for it, or did not know precisely what it indicated.
But Kara had been watching, and she knew precisely what it indicated.
Tikki settled in the passenger seat and raised his front left paw and began licking it again, quick and repetitive.
And your years of veterinary training registered the picture in a single moment.
She had watched hundreds of animals pass through the clinic she interned at.
She knew what a guarded stride looked like, what compensatory weight-shifting looked like, what it meant when an animal returned again and again to the same specific point on the same specific limb.
The landing had been wrong. freewēbnoveℓ.com
The stride before it had been shortened.
The weight had been shifted away from the front left leg consistently.
And he had been working at that paw since before they got into the vehicle at all.
"Hey..." Kara said softly.
Tikki looked up at her.
"What’s wrong?"
Tikki blinked at her slowly before staring ahead.
Kara stroked the top of his head once, slow and careful, before she lifted the paw in both hands.
And he allowed her to take it.
She started at the pads, pressing gently against each one, then moved through the toes, trying to feel that slight variation on what a cat’s front leg should feel like.
She found nothing at the pads and nothing at the toes, and she worked upward through the carpus with almost no pressure, watching his eyes throughout.
She found nothing wrong through the wrist.
She moved her fingers further up along the forearm.
And as her hands reached the shaft of the ulna and she applied the lightest possible pressure, Tikki snatched the paw back instantly and hard.
"Meaa."
The sound carried no warning or irritation... just was pain, small and honest and completely unguarded.
Kara sat completely still.
She had seen that exact reaction dozens of times, and she understood without any uncertainty what it meant.
Cats hid pain with a thoroughness that made their pain nearly invisible under normal circumstances.
[If he pulled back from gentle palpation with a sound like that...]
Then the memory surfaced without being invited.
The infected lifting Tikki by a fistful of fur.
Then slamming him into the floor.
-Bash-!-WEAAO-!
The sound of it came back with perfect clarity.
Tikki had broken a bone saving her.
He had thrown himself at something four times his size two separate times in one night.
Two times, all because she was the one in danger, and now, he had been sitting with that fracture ever since, licking at it and never making a single sound about it, while she checked him for bites, pressed her face into his fur and told him he was brave.
He had been brave the entire time, but at the end of the day, he was still a premature cat.
Kara’s hands found the steering wheel and gripped it.
"Fuck." The word came out barely above a whisper as she gripped harder until her knuckles went white against the wheel.
"Fuck!" Louder this time, through clenched teeth.
-Thud-!
Both palms hit the steering wheel hard enough to ripple sharp stings straight up through her wrists.
-Thud-!-Thud-!-Thud-!-Thud-!...
Kara locked up completely, the sound enormous in the dark outside, enormous in the enclosed cabin.
Then something warm pressed against her arm.
Tikki had crossed the center console and leaned himself against her side, his injured paw held just slightly off the seat.
He looked up at her face blinked slowly one before- "Meaa..."
Kara looked down at him, her mouth opening and closing, not able to utter a single word, until, eventually, she just exhaled, putting her hands to her face as she hyperventilated.
"Nikki," she said into the comms.
But the comms gave her nothing back.
"You’ll be fine... just wait a bit longer..." Kara moved a hand to Tikki’s head, while turning the ignition on with the other.
The engine coughed once and died.
She stared at the dashboard for a full second before trying the key again, and on the second attempt the diesel caught with a grinding roar that vibrated through the entire chassis.
Throwing the transmission into gear before the engine had finished settling, Kara shoved the accelerator down hard, lurching the 11-ton beast forward, while her mind looped just a single thought-
[Get to Nikki... Get to Nikki... Get to Nikki...]
