red hill - jamie mcguire

He nodded and his mouth pulled to the side, and then he looked up quickly and sniffed. “Yeah. She
was attacked after the party. She got really sick.”
“Is that why she was in the hospital gown”
“She had an appointment for some kind of exam. It came back bad. She’d lost like twenty pounds
in a couple of days, so I knew . . . I knew that she . . . they took her straight to surgery. I was going to
wait for her as long as it took, you know. I would have,” he said, nodding, “but she was gone for less
than an hour. They’d just opened her up and then closed. Her insides were dead. There was nothing
they could do.” I watched as the memory replayed in his mind, and then his face compressed, his pain
filled the room, barely leaving room to breathe. “Not long after she woke up the hospital went crazy.
Those things were running around attacking people, and after the phone call with my mom, I knew
what was happening. I didn’t know what else to do. I just scooped Dana up and ran. The goddamn
truck ran out of gas just outside of Fairview, and so I held her. She was in and out a lot, but when she
finally came to . . . she was in a lot of pain. They’d stapled her up. It was a pretty shoddy job. They
figured in a few hours she wouldn’t care. I’d watched a lot of people come back as those things while
I held Dana in the truck, so when she went . . . when she went, I knew I’d have to put her down. My
Glock was under the seat.”
He pressed the barrel of his gun to his temple, clearly trying to push the thought from his mind.
“That’s horrible.”
His eyes jumped up from the floor, instantly pulling away from the horrible nightmare in his head.
“I’ve been on two tours. I’ve seen limbs blown off, bones protruding . . . smashed, I’ve seen the
incomplete bodies of children brought in and out of my helo. I’ve seen intestines on the outside of a
man’s body more than once. I’ve seen eyeballs hanging from their sockets. I’ve seen grown men
bawling and begging for their moms to save them from the death they knew was just minutes away.
I’ve seen horrible. The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with died in my arms, and then
again when I put a bullet in her brain. That was fucking gruesome.”
I stared at Joey, speechless. Every word he’d just uttered and every visual that came with them
sizzled as they were branded to my brain. I wanted to cry, or throw up, or run away. But instead I
threw my entire body at the stranger across from me and pulled him against my chest. My fingers
gripped at his T-shirt, hoping the tighter I held him, the less pain he would feel. His chin dug into the
tender part between my collarbone and the muscle of my shoulder, but the pain meant nothing next to
his. After his initial shock, he held me, too, and then his entire body shook as he mourned the loss of
so many things. When his grip became too tight, I just kept hanging on, letting him do what was
needed to finally grieve.
When he let go, he simply nodded in thanks and stood, walking over to the window to resume his
post.
The space between us was suddenly thick and full of energy, but not the good kind. That moment,
however innocent, was far more intimate than it should have been, and neither one of us realized it
until the moment had passed. Being in his presence was suddenly unbearably awkward. “I’m, uh . . .
going to head to bed,” I said, whispering so low I doubted Joey could hear. That statement suddenly
sounded inappropriate, too, and I cringed, hoping he didn’t think it was an invitation.