The Last Legacy (Season 1): Episodes 1-10 (6 page)

“I said she’s mine.” Jim let go of me but put his hands on my shoulders, moving me behind him. I glared at the man in front of Jim, the similarity between the two jarring. While one was trying to take me, the other protected me. My head throbbed as my vision spotted. I had to get out of here.
 

“I don’t care. You’ve hardly been interested in the women we take, now all of a sudden, you want this one? What’s the catch?” The man frowned at Jim, his bushy eyebrows pinching together, his lips wrinkled in a smirk.
 

“She’s hot. The other ones were used. You can have her after I’m done, okay, John?” My entire body stiffened. Was this all a joke? Was Jim playing me, too? It was his brother he spoke to.
 

I pulled away from Jim easily, since he left me somewhat free behind him, and ran for the door. I had to get the fuck out of here. I wasn’t a fighter, but I certainly wasn’t going to be used until I was empty inside. I knew what would happen, and I freed myself from my past. I wasn’t living it again. I had to focus. I sprinted to the door, not daring to glance over my shoulder.
 

Jim caught me around the waist before I even made it past the stairs in the foyer. “Let me go!” I screamed, kicking and clawing at him. He pinned my arms to my sides and spun me around so I faced him. “You’re going to rape me.” I wriggled, but his hold was too strong.

“You’re so stupid, Lana. I said to trust me and first thing I say you fly off the handle. I’ve got it covered. I’m trying to fucking save you here. Play the fuck along or I can’t help you.” His eyes met mine with such conviction that I had no choice but to believe him. I nodded and he placed me back on the floor. My emotions gave me whiplash. I didn’t know what to believe. But at least I tried to run.
 

“I just—”

“I don’t care,” he ground out, cutting me off. “You run again, they’ll kill you. Or me, for not controlling you. You play along and I’ll get us out of here. Understood?”

“Understood.”
 

He zip-tied my hands together with a strip he pulled out of his pocket. I didn’t like it, but I knew I had no choice. My wrists were already red and peeling. Either way, I’d be raped and killed so I might as well trust the one person who’d shown me some glimmer of hope.
 

“Come on,” Jim gruffly said to me as he tugged my hands behind my back, yanking me forward. It hurt and I yelped, unable to contain myself. Jim let up, but the men behind me laughed, as if my discomfort pleased them.
 

“You sure you can handle the feisty little brunette?” My eyes caught with Jim’s brothers. His were light, both in color and the way they narrowed. He winked at me as Jim pulled me through the living room and into a hallway.
 

I turned to see behind me. The three men in the living room had walked towards the woman on the couch. The leader, Jim’s brother, slapped her in the face, making her cry. He bent down and kissed her cheek, the exact spot he had hit just seconds before.
 

Jim shoved me into a room, then shut the door behind us. He fumbled with the lock as I stood with my hands behind my back, feeling like an idiot on display. He tucked the key in his pocket and then came towards me with a knife.
 

“You could’ve been nicer,” I growled when Jim cut the ties off my wrists. I rubbed the little red lines like bracelets around each. They were sore, my fingers tingly.
 

“Shut up,” he whispered, shaking his head. His hand covered my mouth, the other one behind my head. He looked at me with hatred in his gaze.

“Sorry,” I said as soon as he removed his hands. “Now, what do we do?”

“They won’t bother us tonight since they think I’m going to fuck you. But tomorrow, I don’t know what will go down. We’ll have six or seven hours to kill before we can escape. I’ll have to gather a bag with weapons and food without it being suspicious.”

I sat on the king-sized bed in the center of the room, against the wall between a window and door. I stared at the wall in front of me. A lantern hung off the corner of a dresser, lighting a little square patch of the floor. There were pictures of people thumbtacked to a cork board, x’s over some of their faces. I wanted to ask him what it meant, but the stern look he shot me made me refrain.
 

“Am I making you leave this place? It seems safe…for men, at least. You don’t know me. Why not just let them take me, rape me, whatever they do?” While I was more than grateful that he saved me from those men, I didn’t understand it. Surely he had to have some motives. I knew men—and they didn’t just save a woman without expecting something in return.
 

“You think that’s what I did?
Let them
take women?” He laughed as he sat in a desk chair across the room from me, pretty much as far away as he could get. He lit an array of candles on his desk, casting the otherwise dark room in a yellow glow. It shadowed his face, making him appear mysterious yet creepy.

“Don’t fool yourself, girl. I’ve killed, I’ve taken.” He paused and sighed to himself. He ran his hand over his buzzed hair. “I was leaving anyway. You just pushed it up in time.”

“Why aren’t you like them?” I asked.

“I am,” he snapped, his voice harsh. I flinched, my heart beating fast.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, I fucking am!” He slammed his fist on the desk, making a candle topple over. He muttered to himself as he lifted it back up. He put his hand over the flame to put it out, crumpling a paper and tossing it on the floor. I softened my eyes as I stared at him, trying to dissect his actions.
 

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked as I got up from the bed and walked towards him. He looked at me with those emotion-filled eyes again. He didn’t scare me. If anything, he did the exact opposite. And I wasn’t sure why.

“I’m not doing anything with you, Lana. I’ll get you where you have to go, but then I’m leaving. I don’t want to drag anyone else down with my problems.” He rested his elbows on his knees, his hands steepled, and placed his head on top. He sighed and looked at the ground.
 

“You can’t leave me,” I whispered as I stood before him. “I have nowhere to go. You all stole me from my home. I have nobody to go to. I live alone.” I grabbed onto his wrists and bent down so we were in-line. I pulled his arms forward so I could see his face.

“What about your family?”

“I was in foster homes for sixteen years. The closest thing I have to family is a neighbor’s cat that uses me for my half and half.” I chuckled because that was the God’s honest truth. I lived in ignorance at my house, pretending that any day the world was going to bounce back to normal. But now that I had faced it, my perspective changed.

I’d pretended that I’d go back to Mr. Heimenstein, deal with his drama at work, then take the bus home. I’d yell at Yippy the dog for keeping me up the night before and complain to the neighbors who stayed out all night listening to shitty music. But now that I had seen the state the world was in, the lack of order, the pure savages that people had turned to, I knew I couldn’t hide anymore.

“Well, where do you want to go if we get out of here?” Jim stared at me, through me. I sat down on the floor in front of him, still holding his wrists. His body was rigid, but warm. He gave off this wounded animal vibe, like he was broken inside and needed fixing.
 

I only knew his name, and yet he was my last hope of survival. I’d never be able to go back to my house. I had nothing there to go back to anyway. He was strong enough to protect me—he’d shown that he was willing to stand up to his brother. He’d killed one of the infected things, so maybe he was my best bet at finding a safe place.

If I could turn the tables and get him to trust me, I’d be far better off. He’d protect me until we got south. I could try to find Jean, or go off alone to another safe place. The bottom line was that if I could stick with Jim just long enough to be safe but know the perfect time to leave, I’d stay alive.

Either way, I was left without options.
 

Because the fact of the matter was, I had no one but Jim.

“I’ll go wherever you can take me.”
 

Jim was quiet. I couldn’t get a gauge on what was wrong with him, but it was clear that something had changed. The air filled with nervous energy, flicking from Jim to me and back again.
 

“Can I use the bathroom?”

He nodded. I waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. My face heated, feeling ridiculous that I’d had to ask. He sat at the desk, facing the empty white wall. His body was rigid, perfectly straight posture.
 

I grabbed the lantern from the dresser and let the dimmed light lead me to the bathroom attached to Jim’s bedroom. It reminded me of a coat closet. A small shower took up most of the room. How the toilet and pedestal sink fit, I wasn’t sure. I could barely turn around without colliding with a tiled wall.

After using the toilet, I turned on the sink, but nothing came out of the faucet. I shut it off and tried the cold handle, and only a trickle of brownish water fell into the drain. I found a towel on the side of the sink and used that to clean my hands instead. Before leaving, I flushed the toilet, but of course, nothing went down. So much for modesty.
 

“Your water’s out.” I pointed behind me into the bathroom before shutting the door. I placed the lantern on the side table then jumped onto the king-sized bed. The entire room fell silent, and I lie back. My head sunk into the fluffy pillow, my body enveloped by the bluish down comforter. I sunk in, my muscles relaxing.
 

I knew it had to be around ten or eleven at night based on the events from today. I supposed time didn’t matter anymore—just day and night, light and dark. The only difference was the monsters were stronger at night. Everything else didn’t matter. The flicking of shadows against the walls from the many candles around the room made it eerily somber. The darkness grew.

“It’s hard to have working water when there’s no one working.”

“Where do you think everyone went?” I put my hands behind my head and placed my fingers in my hair. It was already a bit greasy with sweat. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine Hartford. My office wasn’t in the center, but it was in a bustling commercial area. There were at least twelve of us from my neighborhood who commuted the short twenty-minute bus ride. I wondered if people still used transportation and such—gas was probably hard to come by by now.

“Probably some hid like you did, oblivious to anything going on. They said about fifty percent of the population was immediately infected, the rest of us either immune or not showing symptoms of the strain. We weren’t really able to hear too much before news and such cut off.”

“Are the changed people alive?” I shut my eyes, envisioning the man that Jim had killed, the monsters I saw in the road. Their reddish eyes and white skin, their strange groans and aggressive hands. My body shivered.

“They’re certainly not human.” Jim turned in the swivel chair. The bottom of the chair groaned grinding, and my eyes fluttered open to see him. I sat up on my elbows and stared across the room at him. He didn’t look at me, though. He leaned back, the chair squeaking as it strained. “If anything, I’d say they’re like zombies. We’ve been calling them eaters or infected.”

“Eaters.” I tested it out on my tongue as I stared up at the white speckled ceiling. “Can they be saved? Like, can we make a new virus to turn them back?”

“There’s no saving the world. If they haven’t been able to counter it by now, I doubt they will. With something that affects as many as this bio-toxin, I’d say most are dead. Now, it’s just about survival. You should get the happy thoughts out of your head. I doubt we’re rebuilding anytime soon.”
 

“It’s not over.” I fully sat up and glared at him. “How can you say that? There has to be something we can do to fix this. I had no idea how bad it was. I just assumed it was a regular war with infantry and bombs and stuff. But it’s a virus. There’s a chance we can fix it. We can’t just run away now.”

“We’re not running. We’re surviving, and for now, this is the only way.”

“I don’t believe that.” I shook my head, my elbows digging into my knees.

Jim jumped up from the chair. It clashed to the ground, the wheels spinning. He stomped towards me. Grabbing my arms, he pulled me up off the bed, shaking me roughly. “You can’t save this place!” He raised one of his hands with a closed fist. I flinched backwards, squeezing my eyes shut.

“The faster you learn that the longer you’ll live.” He threw me back down on the bed. He stepped towards the door, shaking his head. He turned, shielding his face from me as he muttered under his breath.

I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to believe that no matter what Jim wouldn’t hit a woman, but maybe he wasn’t the hero I made him out to be. God. He was my last hope. His actions were contradicting the way I saw him, and I hated it. I needed him to be the good guy. I dug my nails into my palms to calm my nerves.