Chapter 11: First Night

"No," I said into the phone. "I won't come."

"Devon, he's burning up..."

"Then the doctors will help him."

I hung up and turned the phone off.

My hands shook for a long time afterward, and it wasn't pity.

It was the memory of a tailgate.

Conroy didn't ask what the call was.

He watched me carry blankets down to the cellar for the next three days and said nothing, and he took the night watch every night so I could sleep.

I didn't sleep.

On the last night, the night before the day I had counted down to for thirty days, I climbed the ladder to the barn platform at midnight.

The valley lay dark and silver below.

No cars on the road.

No light from town.

The nurse had said the highway was already jammed with people leaving Columbus.

I knew what was coming up that road.

Boots sounded on the rungs behind me.

"You're supposed to be asleep," Conroy said.

"So are you."

"I'm on watch."

"You're standing next to me."

He climbed the last rung and leaned on the rail beside me.

We stood there for a long time.

"I'm afraid," I said.

I had not said it to anyone.

"I know."

"I'm not afraid of dying. I did that. I'm afraid of doing it again, and being wrong about everything I planned."

"You're not wrong."

"You can't know that."

"I can," he said. "Look at what you built. Look at the people sleeping under your barn."

I turned.

He was very close, and his eyes in the moonlight were nearly silver.

"Nobody touches me unless I ask," I said.

"I know your terms."

"Then ask me what I want."

His breath caught.

"Devon."

"Ask."

"What do you want?"

"You," I said. "Tonight. Before everything changes."

For a moment he didn't move.

Then he said, hoarsely, "You wrote a rule about this."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Back From The Dead: My Apocalypse Level-up System from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.