“Nope. I’m saving the other bottle for Macon,” I said dutifully.
“Good, let’s take a look at this arm.” He grabbed a stack of textbooks and set them next to me, then gently laid my arm on top of them. I watched passively as he unknotted the sling and then carefully cut away at the strips of t-shirt he’d tied around the piece of metal flashing to act as a splint. The throbbing had never completely gone away and it came back now with a vengeance.
“Ahhh,” I said.
“Hurts?” Kitten asked.
“Yeah.”
“The swelling has gone down a little. That’s good.” His nimble fingers traced over my bruised arm as he prodded in different places, asking me where there was pain. I was tender wherever he touched, but some places were worse off than others. Finally satisfied with the exam, he said, “I’m going to see if I can set it now. This is going to hurt, maybe a lot. I could give you pain meds…”
“No, just do it.” I turned my head, silently going through all of my weapons inventory, thinking I’d need to find a new hunting knife since mine was presently embedded in the eye socket of a Rabid. I’d had that knife with me for a long time. I really hated losing my weapons.
My gaze shifted to a framed family portrait of Kitten, his brother, and their parents. Kitten looked about five or sixyears old in the photo, missing a front tooth and smiling wide. Santiago, a little older and more guarded, stared at the camera with a tight-lipped grimace. I didn’t know the man, didn’t trust him either, but whatever my feelings about Santiago, he was still Kitten’s brother. If I was somehow miraculously reunited with my sister, there’d be no way in hell I’d let her go.
A sharp, stabbing pain shot through my arm as Kitten began to work the bone into place. I ground my teeth so as not to distract him with any unseemly yelps of pain. Sweat broke out on my forehead and I reminded myself to breathe through it. The pressure on the bone was intensely uncomfortable as he guided it into position. There was a shift and the pain eased up, though the throbbing remained. Hopefully that would go away soon enough, and the bone would mend quickly. I needed both my arms for battle.
“There, I think I’ve got it,” Kitten said. “Keep your arm still while I go get some ice from Gizmo and Wylie. We should try and reduce the swelling a little more before I cast it, okay?”
“You got it, doc.”
“You did a good job,” he said and dabbed at my sweaty forehead with a cloth.
“Thanks, babe. You as well.”
He smiled sweetly, then took off down the hall, his footsteps echoing down the stairwell in a cadence I recognized. A few moments later I heard another set, heavier and slower in their approach.
“Hey.” Santiago stood in my doorway, looking older and more jaded than when I’d last seen him on the Emory campus. There he’d been fed and cared for like a house pet, and despite the isolation of the lab, he’d had a healthy glow about him. Now, his shaggy beard didn’t hide the gauntness of his face, and his eyes had a sunken look about them. Haunted. I suspected their trek from Atlanta to here had not been an easy one.
“Mind if I come in?” he said.
“Go ahead.” I nodded to the chair Kitten had just occupied.
Santiago planted himself down, leaning back to survey our room, taking in all of his brother’s memorabilia, largely untouched, as well as the hutch I’d repurposed to store my cache of weapons.
“How was the trip here?” I asked him.
“Not good. We lost one of our own–Dimitri–to Rabids.”
“Sorry to hear it,” I said and I was.
“Yeah, it was bad. They ambushed us in the daytime while we were packing up camp. We couldn’t save him, and we didn’t want to leave him behind.” His gaze met mine and I understood exactly why he looked so tormented.
“You did the right thing,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“We were attacked in the daytime too, yesterday at the CVS. They walked right inside and tried to fuck us both to hell. They’re evolving.”
“Seems that way,” he agreed.
We lapsed into silence. Neither of us were up for small talk.
“So, you and my brother are still a thing?” he said at last, arms crossed with a suspicious look on his face.
“Yeah.”
“I kinda always figured he was gay. We had a friend named Lucas. I think Joshua had a crush on him.”
