novelraw Chapter 68: A Place to Breathe
Chapter 68: A Place to Breathe
Zubair adjusted the strap on his rifle as he stepped off the porch. "I’ll do a perimeter sweep," he said without looking back. "Alexei, with me."
"Couldn’t wait to get rid of me, could you?" Alexei muttered, but he was already pulling on gloves. His eyes swept the tree line like a predator checking for competition. "You know this place is too damn quiet."
"Quiet means hidden," Zubair replied. "That’s the point."
They moved together, slipping into the trees with silent coordination, unaware of just how deep the forest went or that the territory had already been marked by something older, darker, and very much awake.
Inside the cabin, Sera exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours. Her hoodie was heavy with dried blood, and her toque clung to her scalp like a second skin. She wanted to rip both off and burn them.
Instead, she turned to Lachlan.
"I need a shower," she said quietly.
He nodded, jaw tight. "Bathroom’s through that door." He paused. "I’ll stay close."
"I know," she replied dryly. "This is my home, remember? I know exactly where the shower is."
Lachlan, at least, looked embarrassed for a second before he gave her a slight smirk. "So I don’t need to tell you were the towels are?"
Sera rolled her eyes before heading to the bathroom and closing the door behind her.
Noah had already claimed the couch, flopping down and kicking his boots off with a groan. "Dibs on this one. My back’s killing me."
Elias stepped in last, his dark eyes scanning every corner of the cabin. He didn’t say much, but when his gaze landed on the stone fireplace, all the entrances and exits, and on the cabinets near the kitchen, he hummed under his breath.
"She’s got good instincts," he finally muttered. "This place has everything you need."
"Dude," Noah grinned as he threw a pillow at him. "First rule of staying in someone else’s cabin? Don’t open anything without permission. Second rule? Don’t question what’s in the fridge. Third? If you hear something in the attic—ignore it and hope that it doesn’t come down."
Elias caught the pillow one-handed, expression unreadable. "You’re hilarious."
"I know. That’s why everyone wants to be around me."
Lachlan didn’t respond. He stayed rooted in place until the bathroom door clicked shut behind Sera. Then he exhaled slowly, walking to the sink and starting a pot of coffee with practiced hands.
He hated that she was hurt. He hated even more that he hadn’t been there when it happened.
He could still see the dried blood on the back of her hoodie. She’d hidden it well, pulled her toque low, kept her head down, but he’d been looking. He knew what to look for. And it wasn’t the red blood that covered her.
The bathroom door locked with a sharp snick, and the sound finally unclenched something in him. He poured the water into the kettle and set it on the stove, watching the flame come to life.
------
Sera turned on the water as hot as it could go and waited for the heat to come. It wasn’t like she needed the hot water, it wasn’t like it really affected her either way, but it was the idea of it.
The normalcy of having water so hot it would cook a lobster.
She had expected the blood to bother her, knowing whose it was and where it came from, but neither her, nor the creature inside of her, seemed to have cared about the people she had killed back at the dorm.
She knew that she wasn’t normal, and while she had fully come to enjoy having the creature inside of her, she wasn’t going to risk going back into a cage because humans couldn’t deal with what one of the created.
When she had decided she was clean enough, she turn off the water and got to work putting foundation on all over her body. Her face, her neck, her chest, arms, hand, legs, and even her feet were covered in the stuff by the time she was done.
But this was what it meant to have people living in her house. This was what it meant to play human.
By the time she emerged, wrapped in a towel because she forgot her clothes in her room, she looked like a university student. Tired, but ordinary.
Lachlan looked up from the stove. The air smelled like burnt coffee and canned ham.
"You okay?" he asked.
She nodded, brushing a hand through her now-damp hair. "Better. I’m going to go get dressed. Back in a moment."
He tilted his head, studying her up and down like he had every right to. "Don’t forget your contacts," he reminded her.
She offered a faint smile. "Right. But I never take them off. I can’t see anything without them." She turned around and went back to her room even as Noah called out from the couch in the living room.
"If you were trying to seduce us with the towel, it’s too late. Pretty sure Elias already thinks you’re a serial killer," he laughed, just as the bedroom door slammed shut.
"I’m not that easily spooked," Elias replied as he stepped out from the short hallway, a map of the area spread between his fingers. "She’s just... efficient."
"She also owns a cabin at the end of the world," Noah added, grinning. "Which either means she’s brilliant or batshit is still up for debate."
------
It took Sera less than five minutes to pull on a pair of fuzzy pajama bottoms, a black long sleeve shirt. When she was done, she left the room and went back to where everyone was. She sat on the arm of the chair near the fireplace, letting the heat soak into her spine.
Lachlan didn’t sit. He hovered by the stove, stirring something in a pan, his posture still tense.
"How big’s the property?" Elias asked casually.
Sera looked up. "Thirty acres. Give or take."
"Jesus," Noah muttered. "That’s a lot of trees."
"I bought the place for the cabin and the water, but the privacy of the forest behind me is useful," she replied.
Elias nodded slowly. "Yeah. It is."
The rest of the night was spent quietly, watching the news on TV, since Zubair insisted on knowing what was going on. There was no information coming out of Country N, and that seemed to have worried him.
But not Sera.
She knew exactly what was going on in Country M at the moment. She just wondered if there had always been zombies in Country N.
Shaking her head, she got up from the chair and walked to her room. "I’m heading off to bed," she called out, not really looking at anyone. "Make yourself at home."