Sugar Scars by Travis Norwood

Author:Travis Norwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, action and adventure, female protagonist, virus, post-apocalyptic
Publisher: Dragon Moon Press
Published: 2016-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

-27-

We hardly spoke that night. He saw me preparing to leave and did nothing to stop me. He had a sick cat to tend to and spent the evening watching over it. He did say the antibiotics he had left seemed to be less effective as they passed expiration and that the cat might not make it.

I couldn’t work up any emotion over one less cat in the world. Far more cats than people now lived on the Earth. And soon there would be one less person.

I barely slept that night. I kept going over and over ways that I could change his mind. I found the Bible that he read from occasionally and looked for something that would convince him. But most of the Bible was filled with things that made no sense. They killed animals constantly, but I didn’t think that would convince him. I wasn’t asking him to make a sacrifice to his God.

I tried to think of a logical argument, but the numbers kept defying me. He valued the lives of animals. How could I convince him that I was worth the hundreds and thousands that it would take to keep me alive?

I’m not proud to say this, but at one point in the night I got up with the intention of seducing him. I put on nothing but a bathrobe and stood just outside the door to where he slept. But I had just spent two weeks effectively training him to think of my body as a clinical case. Why would he feel any desire for the scarred body he had now seen so many times?

I felt like a fool and rushed back to bed when I heard him stir.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I packed my things to leave first thing in the morning. I didn’t feel betrayed by John. He had made no promises. I had been the one to try to work my way into his life. I recognized that in some ways I had manipulated him. He had no obligation to me at all. I wasn’t angry with him. He owed me nothing.

But I was deeply disappointed.

I had rested my hopes in him. The tasks ahead seemed insurmountable. Even someone with his skills was intimidated, and I didn’t know a tenth of what he knew.

I tried to wake in the morning before him, to avoid an awkward good-bye, but he was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast. For the first time in two weeks, I gave myself my insulin injection. Something so familiar seemed strange. He had taken it over as part of my care, and I had let him, happily. It had felt so good to be cared for.

John walked over and took my hand. My heart leapt. He had changed his mind.

And then he looked at the wound on my arm and said, “Everything looks good. You should be fine to travel.”

He had taken the stitches out a few days before. I would have a scar on my right arm,

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