Death's Awakening (23 page)

Parrish leaned against
the wall, suddenly so exhausted she could hardly stand.

“Here.”
Noah squatted down and opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. He
pulled out a blanket and a couple of sweatshirts and set them out on
the bed. “I think I have a few more in the closet.”

Parrish moved aside as
he brushed past her so he could get to the closet. His hand touched
hers as he passed and her skin tingled. She stepped away, toward his
dresser, and picked up the first thing she could put her hands on. It
wasn’t until after she picked it up that she really saw it.

A picture of Noah when
he was a little kid. He was sitting on the lap of a beautiful woman
with long blonde hair. She had her arms wrapped around him and was
looking at him with a huge grin. “Is this your mom?”

He stopped and turned,
a handful of shirts in his hand. A sadness crossed his features, but
then he smiled and nodded.

“I love this
picture,” she said. “There’s so much love in her
eyes. I can’t think of a single picture where my mother ever
looked at me like this.”

She set the picture
down, her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t meant to say that last
part out loud, but it had just come pouring out of her. She sounded
like a martyr. Her eyes searched for anything else in the room she
could talk about. Anything to change the subject.

A baseball pennant was
tacked up on the wall above his desk. Atlanta Braves. She pointed to
it. “Are you a big Braves fan?”

Noah set the last of
the blankets on the bed and walked closer to her. “You never
really talk about her,” he said, obviously ignoring her attempt
at diversion.

The room suddenly felt
smaller. Hotter.

Parrish grabbed a
strand of hair and pulled it in front of her face, wanting to hide
behind it. “What’s there to talk about?” she said.
“She died. End of story.”

Noah shook his head and
took another step closer. “You don’t mean that,” he
said. “Just because she’s gone doesn’t mean you
don’t still think about her or wish she was here. It doesn’t
mean you don’t need to talk about it sometimes.”

She didn’t say
anything to him. She just backed up a step, wishing he would give her
more space. He was standing between her and the door and if she
backed up too much farther, she’d be squished between his bed
and the wall. She felt like she couldn’t breathe in this room.

“When my mom
died, I didn’t really know how to talk about it,” he
said. “My dad was really closed off about it. I think he felt
like it was his fault. He spent a lot of time working back then, and
I spent most of my nights alone. I really wished I would have had
someone to talk to, you know?”

Parrish swallowed and
looked down at her shoes. “What happened to your mom?”

Noah picked up the
picture she’d just put down. He ran a fingertip across his
mom’s face. “Dad had this trip to Africa for work. It was
part of some kind of study of a bacteria that had gotten into one of
the water supplies. It was kind of a charity mission, too, in a way,
and my mom was really into that kind of stuff. They left me with my
mom’s sister for a month and went over there together,”
he said. “She got Meningitis and didn’t take it seriously
at first. She thought she was just tired from all the traveling and
the work. By the time they realized just how bad it was, it was too
late. My dad never really forgave himself for that.”

He set the picture back
down, then looked at her. “Did your mom die that night? After I
helped you get her to the car?”

Parrish nodded. Tears
welled up in her eyes and she tried to fight them back. Why cry over
something she couldn’t change? Hadn’t she cried enough?

But the tears came
anyway.

“I had no idea
what was going on,” she said. “I thought I’d get
her to the hospital and they would give her some kind of shot or hook
her up to an IV and everything would be okay.”

She leaned against the
edge of the dresser, pulling her arms in tight against her body,
wanting to somehow hold it in. To keep herself from unraveling.

“I had to wait in
line forever,” she said, the memory still so fresh in her mind.
It seemed like yesterday. And it seemed like forever ago. “All
those people. It just didn’t make any sense to me how so many
people could get sick so fast. It still doesn’t make sense.”

She wiped the tears
away with the back of her hand and Noah reached out, putting both
hands on her arms.

“She died in the
car before we even got to the front of the line,” she said.
“She died right there, inches from me, and I didn’t even
know she was gone.”

She couldn’t hold
it in any longer. She let out a sob, then quickly covered her mouth,
not wanting to cry in front of Noah, but simply not able to stop
herself. He wrapped his strong arms around her and pulled her tight
against his chest.

Noah held her like that
for a long time. She could feel his steady heartbeat against her
cheek, and she wished he could hold her there forever. Anything not
to have to face the reality of the world outside his bedroom door.

In her dream, the
microwave was beeping at her. When she opened the door, the decaying
head of her father stared up at her, his mouth open wide.

Karmen woke up in a
sweat, bolting straight up on the couch in Noah’s living room.
It was only a dream. She breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her
blanket tighter around her body.

Then the beeping was
back. Only it wasn’t coming from her dream this time. She was
almost certain she was awake now. So what the hell was beeping in the
middle of the night? She glanced around in the darkness, waiting for
her eyes to adjust. Someone must have shut off all the lights down
here before they went to bed. She reached over to turn on the lamp
closest to her, but when she turned to knob, nothing happened.

Crap. Was the bulb
burned out?

She had no idea where
to find replacements and Noah was probably sleeping. Which is exactly
what she wanted to be doing right now. But there it was again. The
beeping sound.

Annoyed, Karmen pushed
her blanket aside and felt her way along the wall toward the kitchen.
She opened the microwave and checked the display, but it was dark.
Okay, so it wasn’t the microwave. Was the power out?

She groaned. Please,
please, no. Don’t let the power be out.

She walked to the edge
of the room and flipped the switch up. Nothing happened.

You’ve got to
be friggin’ kidding me.

She let her head fall
back and made a crying sound. Why did this have to be happening?
Without power, there would be no air conditioning. No hair dryers.
Half their food would go bad. This sucked. At least it was only a day
until they evacuated.

The beep sounded again
and Karmen turned around, trying to figure out where in the world it
was coming from. If the power was out, what could possibly be still
beeping? She waited for it to come again so she could guess just
which direction it was coming from.

The basement?

Oh, God. Seriously?

Of all the places in
the house, it just had to be the basement. The one place she had no
idea how to find her way around in. But she needed to either find the
source of the beeping or she was going to have to wake Noah up and
get him down here to do it for her.

She felt her way along
the edge of the island, her arms stretched out in front of her. Then,
she moved her hand to the wall where she’d seen Noah fiddling
with a keypad about a thousand times in the past week. As she got
closer, she was positive that was where the sound was coming from.

When she found the
door, she ran her hand along the edge until she found the knob. She
tried it and was surprised it turned easily in her hand. With the
power out, the locks must have been disabled, too.

It was just too bad
she’d be completely blind down there and wouldn’t be able
to see whatever it was that had Noah so preoccupied these days.

She hesitated at the
top of the stairs.

A gust of cool air
floated past her as she opened the door. Noah must have been keeping
the basement cooler than the rest of the house, because it was
freaking cold down there. Karmen shivered, but she wasn’t
entirely sure it was just the cold air that was making her tremble.

Something didn’t
feel right.

Something didn’t
quite smell right, either.

A rotten stench blew
past her and her heart jumped into her throat. Scuffling sounds at
the bottom of the stairs kicked her pulse into overdrive. No, maybe
scuffling wasn’t the right word. It was more of a dragging.

A tiny squeak escaped
from her and she froze. More dragging sounds. This time closer.
Coming up the stairs. She almost peed her pants. For the first time,
she let herself think the unthinkable. What if one of the rotters had
gotten inside?

Another dragging sound,
like someone pulling a heavy sack of potatoes up the stairs.

Karmen felt hot tears
of terror burn a path down her cheeks. She was too scared to move.
Her legs just wouldn’t work. She could barely force a breath
into her lungs.

This is not how I am
supposed to die.

She tried to scream,
but it came out as more of a wheeze.

Below her, something
groaned. It sounded hungry. And it was closer than before. Karmen
stumbled backward, knocking over one of the stools that sat in front
of the island in the middle of the kitchen. She nearly fell over, but
was able to scramble back to her feet and around to the other side of
the kitchen. She tucked herself into the corner and slid down the
wall, holding her legs tight against her chest, whimpering.

The zombie was moving
again. His lame leg dragged across the tile floor. Her nostrils were
filled now with the rotting stink of him.

I don’t want
to die.

She didn’t want
to die, and she definitely didn’t want to become one of those
things. A tingle of energy traveled up her arms and she shivered.

Please, don’t
hurt me. Please stop.

The thoughts poured out
of her silently, and she imagined that she was communicating with the
zombie. She wanted it to hear her. To listen to her. The electric
feeling in her arms surged through her chest and all the way down to
her toes. Maybe she was going insane, but she had this sudden feeling
that it really could hear her. That it was listening to her thoughts.

You are not going to
hurt me. Stop right there. Don’t come any closer.

The dragging halted.

Karmen waited, unable
to breathe or move. The rotting thing had stopped somewhere in the
middle of the kitchen, close enough she could just make out its tall
form in the darkness.

For a minute, she
thought maybe she wasn’t crazy. Maybe it really had heard her
thoughts and was doing what she asked. But then it turned back toward
her, its moaning louder as it reached out for her.

Karmen sucked in a
terrified breath and screamed.

Noah jolted awake.

He had heard someone
scream. Karmen?

He raised up on the
bed. Beside him, Parrish stirred.

“What was that?”
she whispered.

His first thought was
that their barricades had failed. He pictured a window somewhere in
the house with rotters pouring through it, nothing to stop them. His
gut churned and he felt ill down to his core.

“Oh, God,
Karmen,” he said.

Noah jumped up from the
bed and bolted down the hallway. He took the stairs so fast, he
practically glided down them. The house was veiled in pitch-black
darkness and by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he
knew.

He reached for the
light switch in the hall as a test, praying for light. But no light
came. The sickness in his stomach doubled.

The power was out.

The door on his
father’s containment unit was powered by electricity. If the
power went out, it opened as a safety precaution unless someone was
there to override it.

He wanted to throw up.
What if Karmen was hurt? Or dead? He would never be able to forgive
himself. He’d brought them in to this house and whatever
happened now was his fault.

Karmen screamed again
and Noah took off toward the kitchen.

There was no room for
hesitation and indecision.

On his way in to the
kitchen, he grabbed his baseball bat from the corner. He swallowed
back tears. He knew what needed to be done.

He smacked the bat hard
against the wall, wanting to get its attention away from Karmen. If
she was even still alive. Behind him, Parrish came running up, a
flashlight in her hands. She swung the light wildly around the room
until it landed on the figure against the far wall.

His father.

Karmen was curled into
a tight ball on the floor and his father lunged at her, his hands
scraping against her skin. Noah ran forward and slammed the bat
against the top of the island. His father turned then, his face a
grotesque mess of bruises and sores and decomposing flesh.

A moan escaped from
Noah’s throat. God, he didn’t want to do this. But the
thing standing in front of him wasn’t his father anymore. It
wasn’t.

A single tear fell
across his flushed cheek. The zombie staggered toward him, its
blood-caked hands reaching forward. Noah hesitated, his hands
gripping the bat so hard it hurt. His hands went cold and a light
frost coated the bat. He reared back and with a terrible cry, he
swung as hard as he could.

The thick part of the
wooden bat made contact with the thing’s head and blood
splattered in an arch across the back wall. The zombie’s head
separated from its body and fell to the floor at Karmen’s feet.
She wouldn’t stop screaming, but Noah could barely hear her.
His heart thumped against his temple and he staggered backward. He
dropped the bat and brought his hands up to his head, crying out as
he bent over in agony.