The Lair

CHAPTER TEN

Lily

Lily woke up slowly, lingering in that odd, half sleep where she didn’t know where she was. Her mind befuddled by fuzz and too-real dreams, which she drifted in and out of.

Then, suddenly, she was awake. Her eyes flew open and she tried to sit up, but pain lashed through her, seeming to hit from everywhere at once. She groaned without meaning to.

Her head ached, but even worse was the agony throbbing through her shoulder. Every heartbeat seemed to pump more pain throughout her body.

Where was she?

And why the hell did she feel like someone had beaten the crap out of her?

Wherever she was, it was nearly pitch-black. She tried to rise again, blowing out a slow breath to manage the pain, but before she could sit up, a hand touched her right shoulder, pressing her back.

“Lie back,” a female voice murmured.

“Who,” Lily croaked, her throat so parched, even just that one word barely made it out.

“I’m Dawn Armadale. This is our house.”

“Wh . . .” She tried again to ask where she was.

“Water? Would you like some water?”

Before Lily could answer, the woman disappeared only to return a moment later with a plastic cup that had a straw sticking out.

“Can you turn your head?” she asked.

Lily nodded and the action sent a new burst of pain radiating through her shoulder. Rather than try to talk, she focused on turning her head enough for Dawn to slip the straw between her lips. It was cool, but had the funny aftertaste of the chlorine they’d used to sterilize it. She’d gotten used to the taste now, but she still wrinkled her nose against the smell of bleach.

Her head pounded, like her brain was suddenly too big for her skull. Despite that, her eyes were starting to adjust to the dark as she looked around. The room was roughly semicircular, with the walls sloping up toward the ceiling. There were two sets of bunk beds crowding the space, and when she looked straight up, she realized she must be lying on the bottom bunk of another set. The woman beside her was sitting on a stool. She wore a simple T-shirt and jeans with her hair pulled up into a ponytail on the back of her head. Without more light, it was impossible to guess her age, but there was something familiar about her face. Something about the set of her wide eyes.

“Where . . .” Again she couldn’t get out another word and Dawn raised the bottle to her lips.

“We brought you down to the bunker. We haven’t seen Ticks around here for a couple of months, but after you got shot, we all thought it was best to get out of the open. No point in luring them here, right?” She reached down and pulled out a flashlight. “I cleaned your arm and stitched you up while you were still out. Now that you’re awake, I need to check your pupils and ask a few questions, okay? If it seems like you don’t have a concussion, then I can give you a shot for the pain.”

That was all the warning she gave Lily before flicking the flashlight on. Lily automatically cringed away from the light, but Dawn held open her eyelids, then moved the light from one eye to the other and back again.

The light made her head throb even more, but it gave her something to think about besides her damn shoulder. As she breathed slowly and didn’t move, she could disconnect from the pain. Manage it. Sort of.

“Do you remember what happened?” Dawn asked. “Do you have any confusion?”

Lily frowned. She didn’t remember exactly what happened. Which was odd. Bits of the food raid came back to her, but nothing solid. The question marks in her mind made her twitchy. She swallowed and found that she could talk now that her tongue had rehydrated. “I don’t know where the hell I am or what’s going on. That confused enough for you?”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Your pupils are responding. I think you’ll have a nasty bump on your head, but no concussion.”

With that, Dawn stood. She set the light on the edge of the bed, but didn’t turn it off. She moved around the tiny room as she started talking. “You’re in our bunker. My father shot you. Since you were looting our stuff, you can’t blame him.”

Suddenly the events of the morning came rushing back to her. Holy crap.

She tried to sit up again, this time ignoring the burst of pain in her arm. The sudden movement made her head spin and her gut churn, but she shoved aside the sensation and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She wasn’t wearing her own clothes. At least not her jacket anyway. She had on a green hoodie, which was zipped up only partially so her wounded arm hung out. She kept her left arm tucked close to her side and her head ducked because of the upper bunk. “What happened after I went down?” She clutched at Dawn’s arm. “What happened to the others? Is Jacks okay? What about Stu?” For an instant, she thought her heart might actually have stopped beating. “Carter? Is he all right?”

Dawn gave her a reassuring smile. “Slow down. And calm down. Panic isn’t going to help you heal.”

She forced herself to speak slowly. Not because she gave a damn about whether or not her gunshot wound healed, but to appease Dawn. “Are they okay?”

Was he okay?

Carter wasn’t in here being treated, which either meant he didn’t need medical attention or was past the point of needing it.

“I don’t know everyone’s names, but the two guys you were with are both embarrassed that a man in his fifties was able to take them out without a sound. They’ll get over it. As for the guy who came to rescue you . . .”

“Carter.”

She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “After you fell on the stairs, he kind of lost it. It took three of my brothers to pull him off my father. And he didn’t calm down until I showed up to check you over and promised him you were okay.”

“Oh.” Lily breathed out a sigh of relief, but her heart was still racing. She didn’t think a straight-up hit of oxygen would calm her down.

“And he’s okay now?” she asked again.

“Yeah.” Dawn nodded and she set the flashlight down on a small chest beside the beds. She pointed the light up toward the ceiling so it cast enough of a glow for Lily to see more of the room. “Things calmed down once I showed up. The two guys you showed up with headed back up the mountain as soon as they came to. But your guy—Carter?—was going to wait for you to get stitched up. My brother Darren offered to drive you back up the mountain but Carter said he’d wait. That’s Darren for you. He’s been itching to get out of town for months now. To see what else is out there, but Dad won’t let him.”

“I know this probably shouldn’t matter, but what happened to my clothes?”

Dawn cringed. “I had to cut your shirt off of you. Saved the jacket, though. You should be able to patch the . . . um . . .” She gestured toward the spot on her own bicep where Lily had been shot.

Lily nodded. Well, at least there was that. She really liked that jacket.

“Your backpack is by the door. I hope you don’t mind, but I kept my stuff that you were stealing.”

Dawn’s voice was sarcastic, but not hard-edged.

Yeah, she should probably be glad Dawn wasn’t being more of a bitch about the whole stealing thing, but really all Lily could do was shake her head at the irony. After all this, she hadn’t even been able to bring home the one thing she’d come for. She’d come here hoping to solve one small problem and instead she’d created a huge one.

“Sorry,” she said to Dawn. “About everything.”

Dawn shrugged. “Hey, no hard feelings. Just don’t be surprised if my dad isn’t as forgiving.”

While Dawn continued to fiddle with the medical supplies, Lily’s mind flooded with questions. Before she could stop herself, they poured out. “So your whole family made it? How many are there of you?”

“We’ve been lucky.” Dawn moved as she talked. She had a storage box, sort of like a tackle box that a fisherman might use. Instead of lures and hooks, Dawn’s was full of medical supplies. Like a first-aid kit on steroids. She opened one compartment after another, looking for things and pulling out what she found. “I was back from school when the first outbreak hit. Darren, too. Of course, Dad’s been preparing for this kind of thing for years. As soon as the virus hit Utah, we moved into the shelter. You met Danielle, who should know better than to play in the house by herself. Then there’s Darren, Derek, and Dex. Donald, my eldest brother, was on mission in Colombia when it hit.” She shrugged, and Lily didn’t press her for more information. “But there are a couple more of us now. Micah and Noah moved in early on. They’re twins who played soccer with Dex and lived up in Logan. Logan got hit pretty hard.”

“Yeah, I know.” Logan was just north of here. It was closer to Base Camp so they’d done a lot of food raids there. In fact, they’d about picked the town clean. Almost all the supplies they had had come from Logan and they hadn’t seen any sign that people had survived at all.

“Are there more families here in town?”

Dawn slanted Lily an odd look as she ripped open an alcohol pad and swiped at a spot on Lily’s arm. “Yeah. Of course. It helps that we’re up in the mountains. Ticks don’t seem to like it up here.”

“How many people live here?”

“Oh, close to two thousand.”

“Wow,” Lily murmured, hardly knowing what to say. Then she winced when Dawn jabbed a needle into her arm. “What the—”

“Antibiotic. Intravenous would be better, but I don’t have the setup for it. Still, this should go a long way. I’ve got an oral you can take home with you, too. As well as some painkillers.”

“You have antibiotics?” Lily asked, baffled. Of course, they’d looked for them on food raids. They just hadn’t found any.

Justin, one of the Greens who’d been at camp the longest, had nominated himself camp medic. He was busy reading every book he could find on medicine. “We have a guy, Justin, who is kind of a medic. He’s always hassling people to look for antibiotics, but we’ve never found any.”

Dawn gave a shrug that looked a little self-conscious. “Yeah, my dad used to take trips down to Mexico to stock up on stuff like that. Even in the Before we had random medicine on hand all the time.” She ripped open a second alcohol wipe and prepped Lily’s other arm for another shot. “This one is morphine for the pain; it’ll make you a little woozy, but—”

Lily pulled her arm away. “No. I’m good.”

Dawn frowned. “Your arm has to be killing you.”

“I don’t want to be woozy.” In this world, woozy got you killed. Maybe not if you were down in an underground bunker, like she was right now, but eventually, it got you killed. And she didn’t plan on staying down here for long.

“If you won’t take the morphine, at least let me get you an oral painkiller.” Dawn must have seen the hesitation in Lily’s eyes because she added, “You can bring it with you and take it when you get back to your camp.”

Lily held out her palm and Dawn handed over a bottle of the antibiotics. She put the painkillers in a tiny Ziploc bag.

For the first time, it occurred to Lily that although she had a ton of questions for Dawn, Dawn didn’t seem at all interested in hearing about Base Camp. Did that mean she just wasn’t interested? Or did she already know about the camp?

Lily hoped she’d have the chance to ask her later. But for now, she wanted to see Carter.

“Are we done here? Where are the others?”

“Up at the house. I can take you there.” She placed a gentle hand on Lily’s other arm. “Easy now. Let’s get a sling on your arm. It’ll help with the pain.”

“Okay. Why are you cringing?”

“For you to wear the sling, we have to get your arm through the sleeve of the sweatshirt. It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

And she was right. It did end up being cringe worthy. If Lily hadn’t been trying so hard to be tough in front of Dawn, she probably would have cried.

By the time Dawn had the sling adjusted, Lily’s arm throbbed so badly it made her head spin.

“How is that?” Dawn asked as she adjusted the last strap.

With the sling in place, Lily relaxed and let the fabric accept the weight of her arm. “Better,” she admitted. “Much better.”

“Well, it’s no morphine shot, but it should help.”

A moment later, she swung open the door to the sleeping area and led Lily into another room shaped just like the first. This room had a kitchenette off to one side, with a table and chair and a small sitting area on the other side. Straight ahead was an open door, which led to a flight of stairs. Her uncle Rodney had an underground bunker like this, but his was smaller. More of a hidey-hole, as opposed to this, which seemed to be a full home buried underground.

By the time they made it up the stairs and through the final door, Lily was nearly shaking from exhaustion. Sweat poured down the back of her neck. Dawn opened the hatch door, flooding the passageway with light.

Blinking, she walked out into the sunlight. At least it was still day.