Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (21 page)

From the corner of my eye, Beverly’s shoulders dropped noticeably.

Caroline’s attention flicked to her and back to Harrison. “I’ll inform the others. Thank you.”

When she was out of earshot, Beverly stepped in front of Harrison, who was busy adjusting the straps on his pack, even though they didn’t need to be. I got the impression he was waiting for her.

“Why do you think I spent the morning-”

“We,” Christina insisted.

“Sorry…
we
spent the morning making weapons for them? So they could defend themselves and
we
wouldn’t have to.”

Without looking up, he replied, “You won’t have to stick your neck out for them.”

Shifting her pack up her shoulder in agitation, she stared guardedly at him. “Thank you.”

“Stay in the center of the group, where it’s safe. We’ll make sure you aren’t needed.”

Beverly blinked. “Well, I didn’t mean-”

“They can fight for you,” Harrison said, which made Beverly’s jaw drop in insult.

Picking up on his intentions, Doc replied, “It’s all right. We can get by without you.”

Her mouth fell open. “You know I wasn’t-”

“We got it,” Mei added, cavalierly slapping Beverly on her shoulder.

A strike like that would usually receive a glare at least. Instead, she didn’t notice it, whispering back, “But I…”

The rest of us left her standing there. Only Christina remained loyally at her side.

“We can’t guarantee their safety,” she snapped. “You know that.”

We continued walking.

“Then you’d better get back to showing them how to use your weapons,” I called over my shoulder.

I assembled the group, giving the firearms to those who claimed to know how to use them, and positioned them with those holding their newly fashioned swords in a circle at the outskirts of the group. As if on cue, as we left the warehouse, Beverly and Christina could be seen moving along the outside of the formation, drilling those with metal rods, never once entering the center of the group. We tested the vehicles lined up there and found them all on empty, which meant we were walking again.

As we began down the I-94, Beverly made one more attempt to end our insanity, falling into step beside Harrison a few miles up the road.

“You do realize what we’re doing,” she insinuated snidely.

“Yes,” he replied plainly.

“This is no longer a search and retrieve mission. It’s a rescue mission.”

“Yes,” he said in the same drone voice.

“Humanity is at stake, Harrison.”

Quietly and with a great amount of patience, he replied, “The truest evidence of humanity, Beverly, is in how we treat others who cannot fend for themselves.”

She stared ahead in contemplation, her face gradually twisting into disgruntled complacency.

“Should I repeat that for you?” he asked.

She scoffed and drifted back into the group. I couldn’t contain myself and let a giggle slip out, which Harrison met with a shrewd smile.

As we walked, we found that Ian had brought us all the way to the edge of a town called Battle Creek. This was actually a stroke of luck considering we were heading for Detroit, the next comparably sized city in the area after Chicago, and he’d unwittingly taken us in its direction. I wanted to send a thank you to him but, while I appreciated his unplanned assistance, other choice words rose up instead.

The snow had melted but the bite in the air remained, which was a welcoming chill to our lungs and foreheads as we exerted ourselves on a mostly empty stomach and very little sleep. You don’t know weariness until your legs take on the consistency of cooked spaghetti and find that anything that stiffens the muscles is a bonus. The sky overhead was blue with the sun casting enough light to attract my attention repeatedly toward movement in the shadows. Always, it was a leaf floating to the ground or a squirrel recovering something it had buried in the fall or a bird springing from a branch.

After a few attempts at catching any Infected coming for us, Harrison leaned toward me. “You can relax,” he said. “I’ll let you know when we run into one.”

The fact he said “when” wasn’t comforting but the sly, restrained smile he gave me helped. That enticing lift of his lips, or maybe the fact that his arm brushed along my elbow as he addressed me, stoked a memory that seemed unfinished.

I kicked a pebble while debating whether to bring it up.

As I did, he interrupted my thoughts. “What are you thinking, Kennedy?”

Surprised, I looked up. “How did you know I…?”

“I’ve spent every day with you for the last several months. If I don’t know when you have something on your mind, it means I’m not paying close enough attention.”

‘You pay
that
close attention?”

“To you,” he said softly. “I pay close attention to you, Kennedy. Now what’s on your mind?”

“Well,” I said, feeling emboldened after his declaration, “you’ve told us how the Infected hear, see, and smell us, but you didn’t bring up touch or taste.”

“No, that seemed inconsequential. By the time one is either tasting or touching you, spotting or deterring one…well, that’s less of a concern. But,” he said, drawing in a deep breath as if he were preparing for something important. “I’m guessing that’s not really what you want to know. What you’re interested in is what I experience…” He looked directly at me as he finished. “When I touch and taste you.”

I swallowed.

My first instinct was to look around to make sure no one was overhearing us, but his exceptional senses had already done that for us.

“It’s safe,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”

“I do.”

“You feel like freedom to me, Kennedy.”

“Freedom?” I blurted. That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

“Soft, subtle freedom,” he insisted. “I grew up thinking I wasn’t good enough, believing that I was damaged. But when I touch you, something inside me opens and the feelings I normally keep out come in and I’m filled with them, engulfed in them. It helps me breathe again. I can see clearly. I have energy.” He stopped to impress on me the importance of what he was about to claim. “
You
do that to me, Kennedy. No one else. Just you.”

“So I…?” I began, trying to sum up what he was telling me. He caught me struggling to do this and handled it for me.

“You make me feel alive, Kennedy.”

My breath caught in my throat and the shadows where the Infected could be lurking, and were always part of my code of awareness, fell away entirely.

What he was explaining was not lost to me. For someone who believed he was a true and imminent danger to others, who carried death in him every minute of every day, who could unwittingly unleash demise on those he carried about, to have someone remove that feeling for just a second, to lift him from that constant oppressive misery, that must have been liberating for him. It left me amazed, speechless that the person who did this for him was me.

Evaluating me, he pointed out, “You seem stunned.”

“I am.”

“Then it might not be a good idea to define my experience in tasting you.”

I wasn’t sure whether he was teasing, but I wasn’t one to back down from something that might be uncomfortable. “You’re on a roll. Let’s hear it.”

He gestured in a way that confirmed he wasn’t entirely convinced I could handle what he was about to say but would give it a try.

When he hesitated, I insisted, “Taste.”

“All right,” he replied, remaining uncertain. “Taste…It….” He cleared his throat uncomfortably and then seemed to resign himself to answering, which was wise if he wanted to avoid my constant badgering. “While touching you is as exhilarating as driving a hundred miles an hour on hairpin turns, tasting you is like going warp speed while carving my own road through the wilderness. I abandon all ideas of caution. I forget to be guarded, to be reserved. I don’t pay attention to obstacles or deterrents. I can’t, because I think of nothing else but the sensation of you in my mouth.”

My heart stopped.

The sensation of you in my mouth…

His words ignited a tickle in my belly that gradually stirred its way through the rest of my body. I was enticed beyond anything I had ever experienced before. He truly was alert to everything about me.

The next words I heard from him were, “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

Of course you should have, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. I was left speechless, wanting him to taste that sensation right now, wishing we were alone so that he could.

A subtle smile was forming on my lips when Caroline appeared at our side.

“I just learned there’s a boy’s reform school up ahead,” she acknowledged. “It was set to open a week after the epidemic broke so it might be well-stocked. There’s a stream behind it. I’m told it’s protected by a wall, it’s a little off the road, and it’s large enough to fit us all comfortably.”

Those within earshot began to murmur in favor of it. Hope was clear in their voices as I overheard simple phrases like “a solid meal”, “a shower”, and “access to a bed”. I didn’t blame them. A boy’s reform school sounded enticing after months shacked up in a grocery store or a warehouse.

It sounded like the place had its merits, but one important detail remained unanswered. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Harrison’s nose lifting, and that motion told me what I wanted to know before he ever confirmed it.

“The school,” he said below his breath, “isn’t entirely vacant.”

CHAPTER 12

W
E HAD JUST REACHED THE BEGINNING
of the school—the corner of a brick wall that stood nine feet high and formed the perimeter. The brick stretched several hundred yards without any visible sign of damage, producing a formidable barrier. A sign was embedded in the blocks announcing what we’d find inside, a school called ‘The Promise Academy’. My guess was that it was once a place that “promised” to reform the boys. Now? The most it could “promise” was a roof over our heads, food in our stomach…Or the chance to end up in someone else’s stomach.

A few yards down the road stood a guard booth, which is where Harrison stopped. The metal gate it overlooked was open; its leg plowed into the mud from the force of whatever had pushed it inward.

A look beyond it told us that four buildings stood in a cluster on the property, three much smaller and ancillary to the larger brick structure in the center. Windows were intact and the doors were shut, seeming to contradict Harrison’s warning that someone was home. There was no sign of life on the property at all, in fact. Spotting the dying lawn surrounding them were leafless trees, two barren soccer posts, and a baseball diamond, where leaves had piled against the backstop as if no one had been there since before the outbreak.

None of this concerned me, though. What did, were the sets of footprints indented in the dirt, outlining a path from the gate to the main building.

Harrison saw them too, taking a second to assess them before turning to address the group.

“Stay here, behind the wall. You’re downwind, so they’ll be less likely to pick up your scent. Keep the noise down. They
can
hear you from this distance if you speak louder than I am now. I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”

He stepped forward, beginning the lonely, strained walk in the direction of the Infected. His intention was to go it alone, to clear the buildings by himself, without anyone to watch his back. And he actually expected us to allow him to do it. I knew this as I fell in beside him and caught him frowning in my direction. He must have not sensed too many of them inside because the argument I expected from him didn’t come. Or maybe he simply knew it would be in vain. As Doc, Mei, Beverly, and Christina found their way through the group to meet us, Harrison did begin to openly object to Christina’s presence, and he would have been justified in doing it. She had far less training than us and was therefore a liability. Beverly caught his attention and placed her pinky against her chest before swinging her index finger in the air, a hand signal we’d practiced which communicated, “I’ve got this.” Doc and Mei didn’t seem to notice, each focusing more on the other than anyone else. So we formed a line and advanced on the school’s first outbuilding.

Our hands were on our weapons as we came up on the door. It was sprayed in block letters “Janitorial” and was made of metal. Harrison tried the knob and found it was locked, which prompted Christina to silently shove her way toward it. Once there, she knelt, took out two small tools, and immediately began to work them into the lock.

Harrison stood back, impressed. Doc and Mei had the same expression, and I figured we had all come to the same conclusion simultaneously… We now knew who could open secured doors without having to break through them. Evidently, we also now knew who had picked the lock at the army surplus store. She had a gift, one that we would undoubtedly be using. Beverly, however, gave her protégé no credence, expecting nothing less from Christina.