Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (15 page)

Gradually, the Infected fell and our team were the only ones who remained standing. When I finished my rotation to clear the room and returned to Lou, he stood, wide-eyed and speechless.

It remained quiet as we finished our scan for additional threats.

Beverly was the first to finish, settling her metal rod on her shoulder, and glaring at Lou, “And you thought we were just a bunch of kids…”

We weren’t. Not anymore. We were no longer high school students fussing over what clothes to wear or what to do on Friday nights. We thought differently now, strategically, unified as a team brought together with a purpose. We were now five people, five ill-equipped, dismally prepared teens setting out to cure the world of an infectious virus, alone, without any help at all. And somehow, we’d managed to become fairly good at it. I could tell by the look on Lou’s face.

“You…,” he said drawing in deep breaths while recovering from exhaustion and adrenaline. “You go right on ahead…and keep those weapons.”

He left the garage then, limping his way back into the store.

Harrison was just finished evaluating me from afar for any wounds when I turned to him.

“I’m not bitten,” he reported, allowing his gaze to linger on me, taking me in.

“Me neither,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, quietly assured.

“Anyone else?” he asked.

“I’m good,” Doc said, making a visual inspection of Mei.

“I’m okay,” Mei confirmed, and Doc went back to reinserting a blade into its sheath at his waist.

Beverly was busy wiping the blood from her rod and didn’t bother to acknowledge us.

Doc, who began to stride across the garage to retrieve his knives from the heads of the Infected, paused. “Beverly?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she retorted, evidently feeling pestered. “I’m good. Geez…”

Harrison finally broke his stare from me to approach Mei and pick up one of the saw blades for inspection. They were resting on a workbench, apparently assembled after the outbreak to build wooden objects. Beds, I assumed. Regardless, whoever set up it up had just inadvertently saved their own life.

“I saw them and…,” Mei said, a pondering expression crossing her face as if she were trying to explain it to herself more than to him. “I don’t know. I just saw them as throwing stars.”

Harrison nodded, setting the saw blade back on its stack.

“Do you know what those are? Throwing stars?” Mei asked.

He nodded. “I’m surprised you do.”

“I’m half Japanese so my uncle insisted I learn them.” She shrugged. “It didn’t hurt that I like to go bowling too.”

Harrison chuckled. “Right, good practice on form.”

“Exactly.”

Doc was straddling a motionless Infected, and had been in the middle of dislodging a knife from its head when I caught him staring up at Mei in admiration. I recognized the reaction as the same one I sometimes saw in Harrison and it made me smile.

Harrison gave Mei a brief nod and turned away, but I knew what he was thinking by his mannerisms: Mei had found her weapon of choice.

I agreed, so I opened the pocket in my pants and pulled out the throwing stars that had been relegated there when I’d found my rifle.

“I think…,” I said, walking to her, “these should be yours.”

Oddly, I got the feeling they had always been meant for her.

She tipped her head to the side and smiled. “Thanks, Kennedy.”

“I just need them back when you’re done.”

Reading between the lines, she understood that I meant…when this mission was over and the world had returned to normal. Neither of us knew if that was a possibility but it settled a blanket of hope over both of us.

Her smile softened. “I will.”

Harrison noted our interaction and quietly stepped over an Infected with a grin of his own. It fell away when growling began to sound again on the other side of the rollup door. The ones in the front of the building had found their way to the back after sounds of our struggle became a shout out to the remaining Infected outside. “We need to secure this area,” Harrison said.

“Will those do?” Mei asked, pointing to a bundle of metal pipes. “We can secure them lengthwise across the door.”

“Good idea,” Harrison decided and moved to collect them.

A clearing of the throat stopped him and we turned to find the store’s survivors gathered at the entrance to the garage.

Lou stepped forward, leading the way. “We’ll take care of it. You just…just stand guard.”

Lou put his team to work as we stood in defense at the pile of Infected. And although I didn’t realize it then, our roles were created in that moment. From that point forward, we weren’t seen as teens or survivors or outsiders looking for a handout. We were something different, in a class all our own, something they hadn’t witnessed before and thus hadn’t yet been given a classification.

When their work was finished, bars crossed the rollup door every few inches, mounted through metal loops they had drilled into the concrete walls on both sides of the door. Throughout the process, Harrison and I exchanged glances from across the garage, making me feel the nostalgia of school and our hesitant acknowledgements of each other. Our discussion on the roof was history and the emotions we had now flowed openly between the two of us. When the door was almost secure, Harrison crossed to stand beside me, sending a bolt of electricity through me when he settled close enough that our elbows touched.

Lou didn’t seem to notice as he approached us. “That should hold,” he declared motioning toward the bars.

“It should,” Harrison said. “But they
will
get in again, Lou.”

Having no response to that transparent, unavoidable fact, Lou frowned reservedly before walking back into the store.

Our team was observed with special interest for the rest of the day. A few in their group even approached us to ask about our background, being suspicious of how a group of teens could be so effective against what seemed to be an indestructible enemy. Christina seemed to take pride in having brought us to the store and having proven that she was right in doing it. They knew, and some voiced it, that if we hadn’t been here, all twenty-two people in the store would have either been eaten or been looking for someone to eat by nightfall. As it was, their dinner ended up being beans and soup heated with Bunsen burners and camping cookware, served in a dining room where tables and chairs had been collected in community fashion in the center of the store. They then drifted off to the furniture and sporting goods department for some sleep, probably not the very good kind.

By dark, Harrison and I were the only two left, staring at each other across the table, an empty Styrofoam bowl in front of me, nothing in front of him but a lit lantern. It glowed just enough to define his face in the dark, highlighting its shape and the inviting curve of his lips. My eyes repeatedly fell to them as we became acutely aware that we were alone.

While the noise inside the store wound down, it seemed like the growls and groans from the Infected outside escalated. I knew this was because no other sound competed with it and those who had been distracting us from it were asleep in their beds.

Eyeing the entrance, I acknowledged, “This is the first night I’ve heard them since school.”

“Walk with me,” he said, changing the subject and standing.

I did, falling into step directly next to him as we began to stroll the store’s perimeter. We started at the front, paying close attention to the windows, our true Achilles’ heel.

Ducking to inspect a streak in the glass and finding it was only a scratch, I mentioned, “They had no one standing guard.”

“Making it easy for Christina to sneak out,” Harrison replied, having figured it out well before me.

“These people…,” I muttered. “They’re so vulnerable.”

“They’re lucky they have someone like Christina,” he said, peering through a stack of crates propped against the doors. When he straightened up, he noted, “She’s taking an interest in our weapons.”

My eyebrows rose.

“She was talking with Beverly about making swords.”

“She’s wants to fight?” I asked.

“It seems that way…”

I blinked back my surprise before realizing Christina wasn’t the kind who gave up easily.

We were heading into the furniture department where others were sleeping so we fell silent and lightened our footsteps. Once we’d passed, Harrison glanced at me.

“Do you remember the first walk we took around the school the morning the virus spread?”

“Yes,” I said, distinctly reliving every detail of it in my mind, the way we hadn’t spoken, the sensation of him next to me, the fear of what we might find hidden in the rooms and the appreciation of having him with me in case we did find something.

“I was aware of you the entire time,” he confessed.

My head snapped up.

He chuckled. “
Completely
aware of you.” A few paces later, he continued trying to hold back a grin. “I could hear your heartbeat. It was strong and steady and…rapid, actually, very rapid.”

I groaned in embarrassment.

Sensing it, he teased, “I mean
incredibly
fast.”

I sent a glare his way and he chuckled again. “I was glad for it,” he admitted, falling serious again. “I didn’t know how you felt about me until then. At first, I thought it was a reaction to the stress of what was happening, and to be honest it partially was, but when I got closer to you…”

He stopped suddenly, which made me do the same. He stepped within an inch of me. “When I got closer to you,” he repeated, “like we are right now, your heartbeat sped up.”

His hand rose and caressed my cheek. “Just like that…”

Our eyes met and my heart skipped a beat. “And that,” he muttered.

“Do you know,” he said, his voice low, sending a spark across my skin, “I could sense whenever you came into the room?”

“No…,” I said and swallowed. My heartbeat increased. I wondered if he could hear it.

“It smelled like springtime,” he said and moved his thumb to the corner of my lips. He concentrated on that area as he spoke. “And after I knew you were there, in the cafeteria, the library, the hallway, I couldn’t
stop
paying attention. I knew every movement you made, every breath you took in.”

“Did-Did you notice me trying not to notice you?” I asked, intimidated about what his answer might be.

A grin flashed across his lips and was gone just as fast. “Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you ever talk to me?” I sounded almost pleading and didn’t like it. “You could have, you know.”

He shook his head. “By the time I saw you paying attention to me, I had already analyzed you. You’re observant, Kennedy, just like you were trained to be. And I thought,” his lips pinched closed in discomfort, “I believed you had figured out my secret.”

“That you were different.”

He nodded.

“And that made me enemy number one,” I said and groaned at the misperception.

“No,” he countered. “It made you intriguing.
That
put you in danger.”

He looked distraught as his hand fell away. Anger seemed to wash over him before he spoke again. “I couldn’t seem to stay away from you.”

I reached for his hand and lifted his fingers back to my lips.

As I kissed each one, his face softened, weakening to me.

He drew in a staggered breath. “You need to stop.”

When I didn’t, he closed his eyes, fighting against whatever it was rising in him. As he released his pent up breath with a growl and opened his eyes, I saw a mixture of lust and fear in him. Unable to contain it, he kissed me hard, demanding, sending me backward against the wall. Bracing the impact with his hands, he quickly moved them to my waist and lifted me until our hips met. He groaned as his lips turned seductive, gripping me with their resolve to taste me, drawing me in. But he second-guessed himself and began to pull away.

“No,” I moaned and he moved no farther but came no closer.

His fingers were the only part of him touching me now, holding us apart with tender firmness as he took control of himself. He released one hand and ran it through his hair.

“You let your guard down,” I said.

He nodded.

“I liked it.”

His head tilted up so that he could see my face and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“Maybe,” I whispered, “you have it wrong. Maybe
I’m
the dangerous one.”

He let that sink in before breaking into a quiet chuckle. His other hand let go so that he could turn back in the direction we were walking. He didn’t respond, but he chuckled again as he pondered my point and we went back to inspecting the store’s defenses.

We said nothing until after we passed the garage, stopping long enough to perform a thorough surveillance of the rollup door’s jerry-rigged barricade.