“Here is your sustenance,” he says, tossing them to me. By some miracle I manage to catch the bottle of Worcestershire sauce in my bound hands. The bread beans me in the head.
“You’ll have to eat while you run,” he continues. “I’ll not be wasting time for human breaks today.”
I’m still stuck on the bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Does the horseman actually think I can drink this?
He gives a yank on my bindings, making for the door, and I have to scramble to grab the fallen bread loaf from the ground. While Pestilence ties me to the back of his saddle, I manage to stuff two thick slices of bread into my mouth and shove another few into my pockets. And then we’re off, and I’m forced to drop the rest of the bread so that I can focus my attention on keeping up.
Immediately, I’m aware that today will not be like yesterday. My legs are too sore and my energy too depleted. Each step is agonizing, and no amount of fear can force me to run as fast or as long as I need to.
I make it twenty, maybe twenty-five kilometers before I fall, hitting the road hard.
The horse jerks against my weight, and I let out a scream as my arms are violently jerked nearly out of their sockets. The rope digs into the flesh of my wrists and I shriek again at the blinding pain.
It doesn’t end. The pressure in my shoulders and wrists is nearly unendurable. I gasp out a breath, ready to scream some more, but it’s all so violent and sudden that it takes my breath away.
Pestilence must know I’ve fallen, he must feel the resistance, and I know he’s heard my screams, but he doesn’t so much as glance back at me.
I hated him before now, but there’s something about this cruelty that cuts more sharply than a knife.
He’s here to kill humankind, what else did you expect?
I have to lift my head as my body drags along behind the horse to prevent it from getting injured. Yesterday’s snow has mostly melted away, and the bare asphalt now acts like sandpaper against my back. I can almost feel the layers of my thick coat disintegrating under the force of it. Once it goes … I don’t know how long a human can last like this.
I never get the chance to find out.
Before I feel the bite of the road against my bare skin, Pestilence stops the horse in front of another house.
I lean my head against my arm, utterly exhausted by the pain. Dimly, I’m aware of the horseman untying my restraints from his mount.
His footfalls come to my side, then ominously stop.
“Up.”
I moan in response. Everything hurts so damn much.
A second later, he bends down and scoops me up.
I let out a whimper. Even his touch hurts. I close my eyes and lay a weary cheek against the golden armor of his chest as he carries me to the house’s stoop.
I don’t see Pestilence batter down the door; I simply hear it. Shouts ring out from inside the house.
“Oh my God,” a woman says. “Oh my God—oh my God.”
I force my eyes open. There’s a middle-aged lady staring at us with a look of abject horror.
Why hasn’t she evacuated? What was she thinking?
“We’re staying here,” the horseman says as he brushes past her.
Her head jerks back in surprise as she watches him invade her home.
“Not in my house!” she says shrilly.
“My prisoner will need to eat, sleep, and use your amenities,” he continues, as though she hadn’t spoken.
Behind us, I hear her choke on several words before she says, “You need to leave. Now.”
Her words fall on deaf ears. Pestilence heads up her staircase. Once he gets to the second floor, he begins kicking doors open, and there’s not a damn thing she can do about it. He muscles us into a sparsely furnished bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him.
He sets me on the bed, then backs away, folding his arms over his chest. “You’re slowing me down, human.”
I glare at him from where I lay. “Then let me go.” Or kill me. Honestly, death might be the kinder option at this point.
“Have you forgotten my words so quickly? I don’t intend to let you go, I intend to make you suffer.”
“You’re doing a good job of it,” I say quietly.
His disapproving look only deepens at my words. Strange, you’d think he’d be pleased by that.
He gestures to the bed where I lay. “Sleep,” he commands.
Oh, like it’s that simple.
Even feeling like I’ve been shitkicked to near death, I can’t just up and fall asleep, especially not when the sun is lancing through the window and I can hear the homeowner getting hysterical on the other side of the door.
“I need you to untie my hands first,” I say raising my bound arms to him.
His gaze narrows all distrustful-like, but he comes over to me and undoes the rope.
He leans in close. “No tricks, human.”
Because I’m so sneaky at the moment.
Once my wrists are free, blood flows through my hands, the sensation agonizing. A low groan escapes my throat.
“If you want my pity, expect to be disappointed,” Pestilence says, backing up to the door.
Honestly, this guy is insufferable—even if he is annoyingly handsome. Actually, that might be what’s making it worse. He’s like the most aggressive form of my already most hated male combo: the hot asshole.
My eyes move over Pestilence as he folds his arms, content to just watch me, a look of mild repulsion on his face.
Feeling’s mutual.
“I’m not going to fall asleep with you just staring at me,” I say.
“Too bad.”
So that’s how it’s going to be.
I sit up and stiffly peel off my outer clothes, which are mostly rags at this point anyway. Tossing them aside, I slide under the sheets and try not to shudder at the fact that I’m lying in the guest bedroom of a woman Pestilence’s plague will soon kill.
This is all so epically twisted.
Beneath the covers, I rub my wrists, and I have to bite down on my lower lip when I realize it’s too excruciating to touch. Even the soft flannel sheets are agony against the raw skin.
Pestilence sits on the ground, leaning his back against the door, and his unspoken message is clear: I’m not going anywhere.
I flip over so that I might for five seconds pretend that he doesn’t exist and today doesn’t exist and that none of this exists.
I lay there for some time. Long enough to wonder if any of my teammates survived the Fever. Long enough to once again fret about my parents. I force myself to imagine them holed up in my grandfather’s rickety hunting lodge, playing poker by the fire like we used to when I was young.
They think I’m dead.
I remember my dad’s tears earlier this week. How shocking they were. He’d been so proud when I joined the fire department. He never wanted me to go to college; it didn’t matter that I’d been obsessed with English literature since I was little, that I went so far as dressing as Edgar Allan Poe for Halloween one year (yeah, I was what wet dreams were made of), or that I spent long weekends writing poems. Once the horseman arrived, college was a beautiful reverie and nothing more.
Too impractical, my Dad had told me. What are you going to use a degree for anyway?
I wonder what he’d say to that now …
“Horseman,” I call out.