Chapter 51 Cue and the Cretin that Saved her

Chapter 51 Cue and the Cretin that Saved her
Cue stirred awake. She was somewhere warm, smelling of herbs and spices. Refusing to open her eyes, she tried to shift on her side, but pain exploded in her chest. Her eyes flew open, and she found herself alone in a room made of wood scraps and road signs. 
Stiffly, she sat up in bed and looked around. The roof was covered with tightly packed drying herbs, the tables around her cluttered with bottles of elixirs and various salves. She had thick, dark-brown fur over her, smelling just as wild as the animal it must have once belonged to. Cue shifted in bed and put her feet on the floor, finding that it was made of a Brooklyn highway road sign. 
She rubbed her bare toes against the giant B in awe. She put her hands on the bed to help her stand up and heard a squeak. Startled, she jumped out of bed with a squeal of her own, only to look back into the confused eyes of Rat, who had been sleeping with her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, boy,” she said, holding one hand to the wound in her chest while she bent and scratched him under the chin. “Where are we? Have you seen Gunner and Trigger?”
Rat cocked his head to the side and squeaked again, his beady little eyes turning toward a makeshift door. Cue held her arm out, and with a yawn and a stretch, Rat climbed up to her shoulders and spread out over them, going back to sleep.
Cue timidly walked toward the door. She couldn't hear anything outside of the room she was in, and that made her even more nervous. She wondered how she got here, if Trigger was alright. She also wondered how Rat ended up back with her when she left him with Gunner only a few hours ago. Did that mean was here somewhere? If he were here, Trigger would be too.
As she gripped the door handle, she wondered how she even got here. She didn't remember escaping the hospital. The last thing she remembered was following Hunter down a hallway.
She pulled the door open and peered out into a room lit with a fire in a brazier at the center. Gunner had his back to her, and Cue could see Trigger’s red curls over his shoulder. They sat stiffly and alert, their focus across the room.
Cue looked past them and saw an old woman bustling around a kitchen-like area, a large cauldron burning beside her. But it wasn't her who had her friends on edge. In the corner, on a pile of pillows that looked as if it could have been a bed if it weren't so huge, lay a man.
She looked at him from his huge bare feet, up his dark-skinned legs, to what looked like something that used to resemble shorts, and a naked chest. 
Her mind screamed Cretin over and over again, but her mouth didn’t move. She finally looked him in the face, the face that had been hounding her for who knows how long, and found his eyes wide open and centered on her.
“She is awake,” a deep voice like raging water over rocks said. He rose from the bed in one fluid motion and crossed his arms. 
Cue stepped forward and right into the pillar of an arm as Gunner held it out and held her back.
“She’s awake, so now talk!” Trigger demanded, slipping out of Gunner’s lap and coming around to draw Cue into a tight hug. Neither of them took their eyes off the Cretin as they quickly kissed.
“He can talk?” Cue whispered, standing on her tiptoes to reach her ear.
“Apparently, they can do a lot more than that.” Trigger nodded to the older woman, who turned and smiled before going back to her work.
“Both of them?” Cue asked.
Trigger nodded, leading her to sit on Gunner’s other leg with his arms around them.
The Cretin’s lip twitched up on one side in a snarl, but otherwise he didn’t move an inch. Only his eyes followed Cue. “Are you comfortable?” he snarled.
“Very,” Trigger hissed, taking Cue’s hand in her own and squeezing it pointedly.
“You used to have a mate,” he said, not even trying to segway in. “I changed him, but he escaped. He made his way back to you before the change happened fully.” He huffed an annoyed breath. “The pig-headed ones are the hardest to hold on to.”
Cue sucked in a sharp breath, and tears pricked her eyes, but she stayed quiet.
“Before I could get to him, he’d killed your parents and slaughtered everyone in your dome.” He watched her swallow hard and almost winced at her display of pain.  “Didn’t you ever wonder why you survived?”
“He didn’t attack me, I got lucky, I—” her voice broke off, and she grabbed her forearm where a long scar was.
“He scratched you.”
“I thought it meant I was immune…” she whispered.
“I’ve been following your family for generations, wondering, watching,” he began to pace. “I started protecting them, for whatever reason, I don’t know. I had a feeling you all were different, but I wasn’t sure. Turns out, not all of you were.”
“Different how?” Cue whispered, shrinking into Gunner’s chest like a small, terrified child.
“Haven't you ever wondered why you get so lucky? Why do you never get attacked? Why do you always get a one-up on the infected?”
“Just,” she swallowed hard. “Really lucky?”
“Hardly,” he chuckled, the sound almost creamy, “What are you thinking in your head when you go out alone?”
“Stay away? Don’t see me? Please, gods, don't let me die today?”
“And you never see a zombie, and if you do, they stay away?”
“Or I kill them,” she said darkly.
The Cretin winced and ran his right hand through his dreads. “It’s not because you’re lucky, it’s because you’re like us. You’re a Cretin.”
“I am not,” she said and laughed, looking at Trigger and Gunner. “I’m not,” she said again.
Trigger frowned and looked at her sadly, but it was Gunner who spoke. 
“I wondered why the zombies never attacked us. I assumed it was because this Creitn,” he gestured to the big dark-skinned man, “was holding them back, but I was wrong. It was always you.”
“The only time we ever saw a horde is when this dick was trying to take you from us,” she flipped the Cretin off.
“I was protecting her from you two,” he snapped. “You kidnapped her after all.”
“If  you were protecting her, you did a shit job!” Trigger snapped. “That Barrrow fucker raped her right before we got there. Did you protect her from that?”