God Country by S T Branton

Author:S T Branton [Branton, S T]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2018-11-19T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

The water pressure was awesome and damn, did it feel good. I stood under the stream with the hot tap turned up as far as I could stand it until the stall was full of steam. Then, I shut the shower off and stepped out, my feet squeaking on the tile floor. The mirror was fogged, and I wiped out a circle for my face. The sight of my tired eyes and bedraggled rat’s nest of hair made me snort in the same moment that I realized how long it had been since I’d last seen myself.

“Not gonna lie, Vic,” I told my reflection. “You’re looking pretty rough.” The contours of my cheeks and jaw stood out in sharp relief, cloaked in post-shower haze. As I wrapped a towel around myself, I felt the edges of my ribcage protruding, nearly fatless. I didn’t feel bad, but my body was starting to show signs of wear.

Apparently, the nectar didn’t quite mask some things, such as a distinct lack of nutrition. I poked at my own scrawny torso. “Yeah, we’ll have to work on this.”

Maybe Frank and Jules were right about that feast being a good idea after all.

I dried myself and pulled my clothes on without getting up from the edge of the bed. In this brief period of total inaction, I suddenly sensed the exhaustion seated deep inside my bones. It was a strange, conflicting sensation feeling both the nectar’s constant energy pumping through my veins and the overwhelming desire to lay back and close my eyes.

Once I’d pulled my shirt over my head, I decided on the latter course of action, but sleep proved frustratingly fleeting. I sat back up and combed my fingers through my damp hair. I took a few minutes to reflect on how fast things had changed for us. Twelve hours ago, we’d been a human herd sandwiched between two trucks, struggling over mountain tracks in search of a safe place we had only heard about. Now, I was squeaky clean for the first time in probably weeks, in a real bedroom, on a real bed, with real blankets. It was nothing short of an early Christmas miracle.

So, why did it feel so weird?

I dropped my head into my hands, released a little groan, and scratched my head with all my fingers. Everything was as perfect as I could’ve asked for, if not more. After a week in the unforgiving, Forgotten-infested wilderness, Fort Sigel was a castle in the sky. And there were definitely parts of me that acknowledged this as the major victory it was. Still, something didn’t sit right with me.

“Ah, dammit,” I said out loud. “Nothing’s ever easy.” The words suddenly flipped a switch in my brain, which caused some circuit to complete. “Holy shit, is that it? It’s too good to be true.”

I scooted over to the other side of the mattress and fished in the pile of cast-off clothing for Marcus’s medallion. The chain slung easily around my neck as I inched back to sit with my shoulders against a propped-up pillow.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.