Empty Bodies (Book 2): Adaptation by Zach Bohannon Read Free Book Online

nothing. She sort of… twitched for a moment, before she was still again.”
    Lawrence nodded, and wrote down another note concerning what Jessica had just told him.
    “Do you think she will come out of this soon?” Jessica asked.
    “I’m just a paramedic, not a doctor. I don’t even try to predict these types of things. She could come out of it tomorrow, or she could come out of it next year. We really don’t know.”
    Jessica looked down to the ground. “Yeah, that’s what the nurse said.”
    “I’m sorry.”   He scratched his chin, then put the clipboard back on the table. “How do you know her, anyways? You don’t really look alike, so I’m assuming you aren’t related.”
    Lawrence listened as Jessica told him about the hotel, the gas station, and finally, her parents’ house. It took almost ten minutes for her to tell the whole story, but when she was done, Lawrence stood silent for a few moments.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said.
    “Yeah,” Jessica replied simply.
    “Well, we are going to do everything we can for her, okay?”
    “Okay,” Jessica mumbled, and from her stoic face, Lawrence couldn’t tell if she actually believed him.
    Lawrence looked down at his watch. “They should be getting breakfast ready about now. You should go.”
    “Yeah, maybe I will.”
    “Good. I’ll come back and check on y’all in a bit, alright?”
    Jessica nodded and sat up straight on the couch as Lawrence turned and left the room.
    ***
    David
    With every repetition, the sweat dripped off David Ellis’ forehead and onto the ground. He was beginning to feel normal again and was quickly adjusting to life inside the secure hospital. He had been anxious to get back to his morning exercise regimen, and with each push-up, his biceps ached as they worked to readjust to the strain of the movement.
    After seventy-five push-ups, he flipped onto his back and began to do some bicycle crunches. Inside his body, he still held several pints of anger over what had happened inside his building in Nashville, and he was especially pissed off by how Marcus had betrayed him. He’d seen the man as both a good friend and one of his company’s best employees, and couldn’t believe that Marcus hadn’t understood his vision of keeping everyone alive. He could even still feel the pain in his neck from where he’d been struck with the baseball bat. Almost as fast as the world had changed, David’s little dream community had fallen, and he was now alone with a bunch of strangers who knew nothing of his history or of what he planned to do.
    The door opened as he panted, his heart rate soaring and his obliques burning.
    Lawrence appeared in the doorway, shutting the door behind him as he entered the room. Though David had noticed the man enter out of the corner of his eye, he didn’t look his way to acknowledge he was there. Instead, he continued his exercise.
    “I see you’re getting back to normal,” Lawrence said.
    Counting to himself, David finally stopped the bicycle crunches, and lay flat on his back, placing his hands over his quickly rising and falling stomach.
    “That’s good to see. We could use some more muscle around here.”
    Having finished his exercises and recovered enough to stand, David looked over to Lawrence and jumped to his feet. He grabbed a towel and wiped himself down, starting with his bare chest and his stomach, then under his arms, and then finally his face with the opposite side of the towel.
    When he pulled the towel from in front of his eyes, he saw Lawrence staring down at his stomach. David looked down and remembered the scars on his body, and quickly grabbed a t-shirt off of the bed and pulled it over his head, hoping to avoid the man asking him about his markings.
    “Strength coming back?” Lawrence asked.
    “Getting there.”
    “Good. I’d like to take you on a run with me.”
    David grabbed the towel again and ran it through his hair. He’d been stuck in this hospital room too long, and