Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 128: Back With Me

Chapter 128: Back With Me

The sound of someone screaming my name woke me up out of a dazed sleep. I couldn’t be sure what I had actually heard, the voices coming all the time lately.

Most of them were screaming something or other.

Especially when I refused to share my food and water.

It was funny. I always prided myself on the fact that I was a doctor and that I always practiced the concept of do no harm.

And yet, after a few months in this place, all that pretentious attitude had flown out the window.

The people here loved treating me like their own punching bag, physically assaulting me if they could and verbally when they couldn’t.

But when I had something they wanted... well, then I was their best friend.

I chuckled low, not bothering to open my eyes.

I heard my name being yelled again and waited for whoever was calling me to start cursing me out for not giving them what they asked for.

Rip had given me the food and water, and if anyone thought they were getting it, they had another thing coming.

"Fuck!" the voice screamed as a cloud of dust rose behind whoever was approaching me. Did someone finally manage to get out of their cage? Several had threatened, but in the fourteen sleeps that I have tried to get without Rip, not a single one managed to escape.

That was good. If Rip was called away on yet another hunt, I might just go with him and kill whoever ran away.

"Little Bird, open your eyes!" crooned a voice beside my cage. It sounded like Rip, but I couldn’t be sure. It might be a figment of my imagination, like the guys at the bunker.

"Come one, Baby, I am right here. Open your beautiful eyes and look at me." The voice shifted back and forth between commanding and sweet, and I couldn’t help but obey.

"That’s it. Such a good Little Bird. I’m back, okay? I am never going to leave you again," purred Rip as he tried to reach between the bars to touch my face.

I hadn’t moved a muscle since he had gone, so pushing my body to get closer to his was like crawling over a pit of Hellfire. But God, was it worth it.

"Rip?" I asked, my voice breaking from a lack of use.

"Right here, Little Bird. I even brought you some new bottles of water and food." Rip looked around him frantically like the food he was talking about would just magically appear.

"Fuck, I left it in the car; I’ll be right back!" he said as he tried to get to his feet. I let out a sound that sounded like a wounded chicken, but I really didn’t want him to leave me so soon.

"Okay, I won’t leave. I’ll just stay here, okay?" soothed Rip as he dropped to the ground, bringing up yet another cloud of dust at his movement.

"Did you get him?" I croaked. I wanted to make sure that whoever the fighter was that put the rest of the camp through this was dead and buried.

"We got him," started Rip as he looked down at me. "And he is back in the compound."

I blinked a few times, trying to understand his words. The guy led them on a merry chase for two weeks, and they just brought him home like an errant child?

As if he could read my mind, Rip shook his head. "Alpha wanted his death drawn out to act as a deterrent to the others, but I wanted to get home. To compromise, we brought him back here and will sell tickets to his torture and death. Alpha thinks that they will go for a lot of money."

Nodding my head, I wondered if it was something I wanted to watch. The me before all this happened would have been trying to find a way to save the faceless stranger, but there was this new part of me that wanted to watch him scream while Rip ripped him apart.

"It’s normal," shrugged Rip as if he could see the conflict on my face. When I sent him a confused look, he continued. "Before the world ended, it was a completely different society. You couldn’t go around killing people or even hint at the idea that killing someone was okay. But he caused you to live in misery for two weeks. He, and he alone, is responsible for killing those that died here. So wanting to watch him bleed for your misery is completely understandable."

Huh, I hadn’t thought of it like that. I had assumed that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have the same care and compassion that I had before everything went to shit.

"To be kind to your enemy is to be cruel to yourself," said Rip softly. I heard him let out a quiet sigh as I gripped the back of his shirt. My hand was screaming as I opened my fingers and then closed them again, my muscles going through atrophy as a result of not moving them for so long.

If I took care of myself and ate properly, I could reverse the pathologic atrophy, but I somehow didn’t see that happening any time soon.

"Can I watch?" I asked, looking at the back of Rip’s head. I might never gain back the strength and mass of my muscles, and that was because of this fucker. If I was never able to walk again, I wanted to watch him bleed for what he did to me.

"I will make sure of it," grunted Rip.

"So, random question," I smirked, wanting to change the topic. Rip was back, and I was alive. Nothing else mattered.

"Shoot," grunted Rip, and I wish I could see his face.

"Is Rip an acronym, or did you take the name from Jack the Ripper?" Even back in Canada, I was obsessed with serial killers; the podcasts and documentaries, my dirty secret that no one knew about.

"Jack the Ripper was nothing but a pussy. Rip started as an acronym and then became a way to identify those that pissed me off," he shrugged as if it wasn’t that big of an issue.

"I’m sorry, what?" I gasped. It was the first time I had ever heard of anyone calling the greatest serial killer of the 1800s a pussy.