Turtle Doves | Joel Miller

Chapter Sixteen

I see a blink of something through the greenery and my body involuntarily lunges towards it. As if I'm operating on autopilot my body goes into attack mode and I swing towards whatever is in the brush. My blade cuts through small twigs and a hand catches my arm as I wind up for another offensive move.

"Hey what the hell?!" Joel's voice booms out and he steps forward from the thicket, my arm strongly in his grasp. He's got a deep scowl on his face and my mouth falls slack, eyes blinking rapidly.

"I- You weren't- I thought." A coherent sentence can't be formed in my mind right now and Joel drops my arm and walks past me, back to where we spent the night. I turn on my heel and follow him in shamed silence.

"I was gone for five fuckin' minutes." He mumbles with a shake of his head, and my fear quickly burns into anger. The knife finds its way back into its holster.

"I didn't know how long you had been gone, Joel. I woke up and you weren't here, your stuff was gone. And you never woke me up to take watch. So tell me, what was I supposed to think? As far as I could tell you either up and left me or something bad happened." My skin heats up with my anger. Joel adjusts the straps on his bag and he huffs.

"I was tryin' to let you get a good sleep for once, and I went into the woods to look for a stream or somethin'." His voice is tinged with annoyance which only fuels me further, and I want so badly to fight back, but deep down I know I'll regret it later. So instead, I take a second to compose myself a little before I speak.

"Which is fine, but please, before you do something like that again, tell me. I was scared out of my mind, Joel. If someone had taken you they could've come back and taken me just as easily." My voice is strained as I try to keep the fire of annoyance under control. He stares back at me with a blank expression before nodding.

"Sure." His words aren't quite the apology I was hoping for, but at least he acknowledged my fears.

It's probably hard for him to understand this world from a woman's perspective, he doesn't have to worry about facing the same dangers. There's not a lot of people out here that would imagine trying to take advantage of a grown man like they would a girl or woman.

We start off for the day and I hope we can make good time before the sun gets to be unbearably hot. I love the summer, but I cannot stand being out in the heat like this. It's times like this where I really miss air conditioning and ice. For the rest of the morning I try to keep my thoughts positive and look for things that bring me joy, I don't like starting the day off on a sour note.

The wildflowers growing along the ditch lines are brilliantly colored, though some of them are withered from heat exposure. And the birds are singing their beautiful melodies, some reside on old telephone wires next to one another. Cool breezes blow my hair around and it carries the sweet scent of tree blossoms. My eyes flutter shut as I appreciate the scent, but my peace is soon interrupted.

"I uh, I grabbed these back from the farm." My eyes open and look over to Joel, who holds my gun and hunting knife in his hands. I had forgotten all about them. My eyes flicker from the weapons to his face before I grab them and tuck them into their respective spots.

"Thanks, I guess they just slipped my mind." I say, tightening my thigh holster. The pants from the farm are just a touch too loose on me, and the holster helps keep them up on my hips in tandem with my belt.

"Figured you'd need them back before somethin' happens." He says, pushing some loose curls off of his forehead.

"I've only got a few bullets left, let's hope nothing bad happens for a while." I say, remembering the small number left in the magazine.

"We still have some in the boxes from my store stash." He answers, but I know that when we took out the Fireflies that we ended up using a lot of that reserve.

"Yeah, we should probably keep an eye out for more though." I answer, feeling the heat of the day slowly start to creep up. Joel nods as we continue west.

After a few hours of walking, I'm unable to take the heat. The black shirt I'm wearing is drenched in sweat and my head feels light from dehydration. My hands are on my head, keeping my hair off my neck again, but I feel like my knees could give out at any second. I briefly drop my hair and grab the hem of my shirt to tie it up just underneath my bra in an attempt to cool myself down.

Joel looks over to see what I'm doing and I watch his eyes trail over my bare midriff as I pull my hair back up. He probably thinks it's disgusting how much I sweat, and I would have to agree with him. His eyes quickly avert away from my body and he tries to push his sleeves up even more, his arms covered in sweat as well.

"Up there we can take a break." He points to a large tree that shades the road and I nod, my feet dragging on the asphalt as we trudge over to it.

Once we reach the tree I collapse in the tall grass and sprawl out so that my body can air out. Joel keeps his composure better than I do, he rests against the rough tree bark and sips out of his water bottle. My eyes close when a gust of air breezes past us and I wish that it would cool off. There's no way we can keep going like this.

"Here." Joel's voice causes my eyes to open and I see him grabbing my bottle from the side pocket of my bag. I push myself up to rest on my elbows and take it from him, unscrewing the cap and greedily drinking. The water is hot and disgusting, but my body needs it. I see him out of the corner of my eye, his gaze follows a stray drip of water that runs down my mouth and along my throat, but he quickly looks away.

After I'm satisfied and my bottle is put back away, I lay back on the grass. If I could lay here and never get back up I think I'd die happy. The two of us savor the shade for what feels like hours.

"What if we started walking during the night, when it's cool?" I ask, my throat rough and still dry despite just drinking water. Joel shift his weight around,

"We could, we'd just have to be extra careful." My eye peeks open and I watch as he pushes damp hair out of his face. He's covered in sweat too, I can see the dark stains on his chest and back.

"I'd be willing to take the extra precautions." I push myself back up onto my elbows and notice Joel's eyes flick down towards my bare stomach once more before he makes eye contact with me.

"Then rest up, we've got a long night ahead of us." He says and rests back against the tree.

My eyes close again but I stay alert to every sound around us. In this heat it's likely we'd smell the infected before we see or hear them, but people on the other hand can be quite sneaky. I listen for patterns, or any sound that's too out of the ordinary and the task keeps me from falling asleep.

After a while I sit up, feeling reenergized and notice that Joel has fallen asleep. His neck is twisted at a weird angle, and I'll know he'll feel it when he wakes up. So I get up and carefully slide my bag onto the ground before gently laying him down onto it, as a makeshift pillow like I had done last night. Joel is a lot heavier than he looks, and I'm just thankful that he didn't slip out of my hands. I'm sure he'd be pissed more than ever if I woke him up by dropping his head on the ground. I'll let him rest for a while more until the sun starts setting before I wake him up.

While I waste the rest of the day away I braid grass into little ropes, split some of the blades in half, and just do anything to keep myself from complete boredom. Thankfully my skin has dried off for the most part, leaving behind the sticky residue but I'll take that over being drenched any day.

My gaze ends up falling to Joel and I can't help but wonder how he crossed the country with a young girl. If we struggle to agree on a sleeping schedule then I can only imagine how much he sacrificed to make sure she was taken care of.