Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (12 page)

“You’ve never-?” she asked before letting her jaw fall open. “I mean, you’ve never…”

“No,” Beverly muttered sarcastically. “She’s never.”

Christina paused to narrow her eyes at Beverly before answering me.

“It’s a store that has everything, and I mean everything. Food, clothes, furniture, everything.”

“Does it have a cure?” Beverly asked, not bothering to look up from her bowl, and received another frown from Christina for it.

“No, do you have a mouth filter?”

Beverly kept her head down but from her profile I could see her smile, which gave me the impression that she was enjoying having met her match in sarcasm.

“It was owned by the Williams who were trying to compete with WalMart. My mom and I were going to get my birthday present. We were in the parking lot when…”

As her voice trailed away, we silently filled in the blanks for her…when the outbreak hit her small town and she fled inside. Given that she was here and her mother wasn’t, we could also presume that her mother hadn’t made it.

Christina pinched her lips closed, making me think she had warned herself not to talk about it. To help her through it, Harrison asked, “So, Christina, why did you leave WillMart? If you had everything you needed there, why risk your life to come into town?”

It was a legitimate question, one that successfully retrained her thoughts on something other than her mother’s demise.

“We need weapons, something to fend off the Skin Eaters.”

Her response should have triggered an awareness in us that something wasn’t right about WillMart, but hers was such a broad answer we collectively overlooked it. I mean, who wouldn’t need weapons to defend themselves? It just didn’t occur to me that they needed them immediately.

“So that’s why the lock was broken?” Mei asked.

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Harrison added.

“Yes.”

“You broke the lock?”

“Lou did. I just carried stuff, but we didn’t have time to get everything so I came back.”

“For what?” Harrison pressed.

“The knives,” she said tipping her head at Doc, looking to where he’d reinserted the blades around his waist. “I came back for the knives.”

Simultaneously, we fell silent, understanding that scarce resources created conflicts before we even knew they were conflicts.

“Why did you come alone?” Harrison asked, sensing something wasn’t quite right.

“They couldn’t…,” she sighed in frustration. “I snuck out.” She looked guilty, although I didn’t find out until later it was for a different reason.

Christina settled and maintained a dazed stare on the lantern. “This is my home, I know everyone, everyone who became Skin Eaters, everyone who’s at WillMart.”

I considered this, realizing that her entire world had been this provincial town and her perception of it had just gotten even smaller, with the remainder of her neighbors holed up in a place that was designed to be nothing more than a transient stop to buy supplies. Something like that could make you feel insignificant, but she hadn’t let it. Her personality was too strong. This was clear when she spoke again, describing the survivors in detail. By the time she was done, it was obvious why she had risked her life to save them. She loved them. That came through in the way she talked about her neighbors, dramatically and with ever-changing facial expressions. She knew their quirks and grievances with each other, their weaknesses and strengths, and everything she mentioned helped prepare us for what we could expect when we arrived in the morning. So we thought.

Harrison was the only one with the foresight to not entirely trust Christina’s behavior. After the others fell asleep, he took the opportunity to ask me something he knew I would decline. But he had to try.

Shifting to face me, he kept his voice low. “Tomorrow, there’s no need for you to go.”

My head jerked back. “Go?”

“To meet the person to talk about the cure.”

“You don’t want me there?” I was stunned.

“You’ll be safe here with Doc, Mei, and Beverly. I’ll go with Christina and come back for you. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

“You’re joking, right?” Before he could answer, I made my decision. “No.”

“I’m not joking, Kennedy.”

We fell into a heated stare.

“Why do you want me to stay?”

“I don’t see…,” he said, his eyes drifting to Christina. “I don’t see the reason to risk your safety-”

“We are a team, Harrison. You said it yourself, no one person is greater than the other. We go in together, we leave together.”

“Did your dad teach you that?”

“Yes,” I replied flatly.

I could see in his face that he agreed with me. He knew my logic was sound, but he wouldn’t let it rest.

Piercing me with those striking eyes, making me forget my thoughts and concentrate solely on my feelings, he uttered something I wasn’t entirely prepared to hear from him at the moment, going right to the heart of why I wouldn’t allow him to leave me behind.

“I love you too, Kennedy.” He delivered this promise in a deep, guttural whisper. It was equally seductive and disarming, and he knew it.

His hand rose to my face, where his fingers slid tenderly along my cheek. The touch made me tremble, but he showed no reaction to it, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

“You refuse to see it,” he said, more to himself than to me.

“See what?”

His handsome face squeezed together in pain, which made my heart catch. “You refuse, Kennedy, and every time it puts you at risk.”

“Refuse what? What risk?”

He bit down hard, but released his jaw to answer. “Me, Kennedy,
me
. What would happen if I turned, if by some evolution of the virus I became infected? You’d stop in place, consider how to revive me, and by the time you moved you’d be dead. Bitten. Torn to pieces.” His face twisted, sickened by the thought. “By me, Kennedy,
by me
.”

His head dropped, shaking back and forth. He was breathing heavily now, which seemed strange because he was never breathless when he fought. It was his emotion, centered on me, that left him winded.

I took his hands and leaned in. “That won’t happen. We’ll make sure it won’t happen.”

Ignoring me, he went on. “Think about it, Kennedy. I’m strong, I don’t feel pain or fatigue. My body is a mass that would be challenging, even for you, to take down-”

“It won’t happen. We will protect you.”

His head snapped up, his expression filled with raw intensity. “Kennedy, you aren’t protecting me from the danger. I
am
the danger.”

This brought our conversation to a crashing halt. Our bodies tensed, our muscles froze. We remained still, letting the force of the moment pass. This took longer than expected because our eyes had locked on each other, and our gazes wavered between fear for each other and determination in our own beliefs.

When my breathing had returned to a steady rhythm, I ended the conversation, in a way that he didn’t appreciate.

“I’m going, Harrison.”

With that declaration hanging over our heads, I slid into the sleeping bag and laid my head on the pillow. Harrison stood and moved to the door, preparing to guard us for the night, but he could do nothing more than stare at the box covering the window. He would need to use his other senses, the same ones that made him so lethal. Before sleep took over, I observed him from the other side of the store, the massive body he’d been warning me about standing so strong and sure, and a single thought ran through my mind:
No matter how much you fear yourself, Harrison, tonight you’re alive and well, and those lethal senses are pointing elsewhere.

CHAPTER 7

I
DIDN’T SLEEP WELL, REPEATEDLY OPENING
my eyes to find Harrison at his post, arms locked across his chest, head turned toward the boarded window, a look of determination permanently engraved in his handsome features. As the store gradually filled with light, streams of it broke through the blockade we’d set up the day before and woke the rest of our group. I gave in and unzipped the sleeping bag.

It was then I noticed how starkly different our lives had become. Before the outbreak, my mornings were centered around Pop Tarts, cherry flavored, and soda, preferably caffeinated, before leaving in a crazed, delayed rush for my first class. Now, my mornings were a slow, diligent exercise in preparation for whatever we might encounter that day. I stuffed the sleeping bag and small pillow into my backpack, compliments of the army surplus store owner, while mentally preparing myself.

It’s zero dark thirty, Kennedy, keep it high and tight today. Don’t worry about the bunch of baggers outside. Embrace The Suck. You got your Team 6 with you. Hooyah.

For some reason, the military terminology helped. I switched it up every once in a while to keep it interesting but the message was always the same.
Fight, Kennedy, and keep on fighting
.

I followed this morning’s ritual as we ate Egg Scramble, rehydrated in a pouch, and packed up. Sometime during this process, I caught Christina sneaking glances at Harrison.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

I startled her with my question, enough to make her hesitate in answering it. When she did, she kept her voice low, having no idea that Harrison’s acute hearing would pick up on her words anyways. “Did he… Did he stay awake all night long?”

I found my gaze moving to Harrison where he remained at his post. “Yes, he did.”

“Is it insomnia?”

I held back a grin. “Something like that.”

She again seemed flustered but didn’t immediately offer an explanation. I got the impression she didn’t want to offend us, but I persisted. “Have you ever known someone with insomnia?”

“Well, yeah, but…,” she replied, darting another look at Harrison, who showed no sign of having overheard. “He didn’t sleep last night. He didn’t eat anything last night or this morning. Will he… will he be alert today?”

“Alert for what?”

She shrugged as if that were an odd question. “Anything.”

“He’ll be fine, Christina. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known.” On this last part, the edges of Harrison’s lips lifted in a subtle grin.

He
was
listening…

When I realized this, I couldn’t stop myself. “He’s strong, virile, handsome. Harrison’s a fox, isn’t he?”

Simultaneously, Christina’s eyebrows came together in suspicion as Harrison abruptly turned from the window, taking a sideways glance at me. I’m fairly certain he caught my grin.

“Yeah, he is,” Christina whispered, “but…aren’t you two together?”

She never received an answer.

In an effort to either end our conversation or out of legitimate need to get moving, Harrison strode across the room for his backpack, where he announced, “The sedan is snowed in. We’ll need to hoof it out.”

Beverly’s mouth turned up in disgust at Harrison’s news, but for once she managed not to mumble a complaint. I observed her as she picked up her backpack and makeshift metal sword to ready herself and I wondered if she had any idea how much her fighting personality now reflected in her appearance, and if knowing it might erase her frown. I doubted it.

The rest of us slung the backpacks over our shoulders and headed for the door. I kept my rifle at the ready while Harrison disassembled the crates and leaned on the handle to listen outside. As he tilted an ear up, Christina gave him another curious look but it dissipated as he stepped out.

Her scrutiny of him didn’t diminish on our walk through town, I noticed, which meant she was already starting to decipher his quirks. This unnerved me, so I stepped up next to him and walked at his hip for the last half of Main Street, hoping my interaction with him would make Harrison more relatable. We weren’t able to talk, given the Infected’s hearing capabilities, but he showed himself through his actions, helping me through a barbed wire fence when we cut across a field to save time.

Christina led us to a hill overlooking the store, slowing her pace so that the snow flattening beneath her feet quieted. We followed in her footsteps, literally, until we reached the peak and carefully spread out across the top to assess the situation below.

When we did, all eyes turned on Christina, each of us attempting to contain the anger surging through us.

Before anyone slipped up and scolded her, Harrison motioned us to retreat down the hill. The entire way, a notion repeatedly pestered me, cycling in my head: He’d been correct. There was a threat here.

Once out of earshot, Harrison looked pointedly at Christina. “You didn’t mention the Skin Eaters, Christina.”

Even from our distance, they were just barely audible to us, their growls and hisses rising up like a siren.

Beverly had already swung her metal sword around to a ready position as she watched the hill’s crest suspiciously.