Resurrect

by Amy Miles

  He is far paler than I have ever seen him and I wonder if he too is replaying the final moments we spent together in the kitchen before I was bitten. I know from his earlier words that he was nearly consumed with grief over losing Zoey and I. The guilt must have been suffocating, but it wasn’t his fault. I made my choice and did what I had to do.

  My infection and subsequent life are not on him.

  He reaches out to take hold of my hand as I struggle to find my voice amidst the snarling in my mind. “I have to believe that on this one thing we can trust them.”

  He slowly nods as a face appears in the door’s window. The brilliance of its all-white gaze is a startling contrast to the darkness of our room. Although it darts its hungry eyes toward Nox, it immediately fixates on me. Craning its neck back, it releases three short barking sounds.

  “What is it doing?” he whispers.

  “It knows I’m here and it’s relaying the message.”

  “And I’m guessing that’s a bad thing.”

  I squeeze his hand as I try to interpret the barking sounds. It is like taking baby steps into a new language and I only catch a partial meaning, but it is enough. “Let’s just say we really want that door to hold.”

  “Will the others come? Can we somehow draw them away from the survivors?”

  Using myself as bait doesn’t feel like a great idea, but I would be willing if there was a way. Looking around the room, I narrow my gaze to peer through the darkness, preferring the moments when the red lights blink out so that I can refocus.

  “There is a small vent overhead. It’s the only access point. I guess I could smear some blood on it and hope that it’s enough to draw them in.”

  “How do you know...never mind. I remember now. You’ve got a built-in night vision. But how are you going to cut yourself? We don’t have anything sharp in here with us.”

  “We have floor tiles.”

  Nox turns to look at me. “They are grouted and sealed, Avery. There’s no way that we can—”

  I bunch my fingers into a fist and slam it into the floor. A spider web crack appears around my hand

  “Holy shit!” Nox scrambles to push himself in front of me in the dark. “It’s breaking in. Stay behind me!”

  His eyes are wide with fear as he reaches blindly for me. I take hold of his hand with my free hand while my other sifts through the tile shards until I find one large enough to do the job.

  “It was just me. Relax.”

  “Relax? Did you just punch a hole through the floor?”

  “It’s not exactly a hole.” I laugh and release him. Running the tile shard across my palm, I cut just deep enough to draw blood and then use his shoulder to push up to my knees. “I’m going to need you to lift me up.”

  His hand fumbles along my arm until he loops under my armpit and together we stand. The Flesh Bag at the door clicks its teeth and weaves in the window, watching my every move.

  I guide him toward the vent. “It’s right here a few feet above my head. Grab my waist and hoist me up there.”

  “I’m starting to have second thoughts about this plan.”

  I’m glad that I’m not the only one, but it is too late for that. Those people need my help and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up now.

  Nox plants his feet and wraps his arms around my waist. He lifts me easily, pressing his face against my stomach as I squeeze my hand to draw out more blood then I coat the vent.

  “That’s it,” I call and tap him on the shoulder. Nox slowly lowers me to the ground but he doesn’t let go.

  My hands press against his chest, feeling the rise and fall as he breathes deeply. I stare up at him as he tries to see me in the dark. With each flicker of the red emergency light, he focuses on me.

  “Nox?”

  “Shh.” He whispers and his fingers flinch against my hips as he holds me close. “I thought I lost you once. I won’t do that a second time.”

  When Nox lifts a hand to cup my face the zombie at the door growls and beats against the door. I feel a sudden blast of anxiety from the Flesh Bag and start to turn away to look at it but Nox holds me still.

  “I wasn’t right after your death,” he says, softly running his thumb across my lips. “Cap told me you went on your own terms, but that didn’t ease my guilt. Even after all you did, I still lost Zoey. The only reprieve I felt was that at least you didn’t know. That you were in a better place, but here you are, back in this hell hole because of me.”

  “No.” I press my hand against his heart. “None of this is your fault.”

  “I could have let you stay in that attic. I should have.”

  Raising my hand to place it on his cheek, I lean up onto my toes. “If there is one thing that I have learned, it’s that being a survivor means picking your battles and admitting defeat when there is no other option. What is happening now, your decision to bring me here, even what happened to Zoey, happened for a reason. None of those were defeats, Nox. They were simply things we could not avoid.”

  I can feel the turmoil seething with him as his jaw clenches. “But they were orchestrated.”

  “Yes, and the desire to see Brian and Iris torn apart by the very monsters they have just unleashed burns deep within me. I will see to it that justice is served for these people. I know how crippling guilt can be. I have lived with it for far too long.”

  Swallowing hard, I close my eyes and lower my head. “Maybe it’s time that we forgive ourselves. Maybe it’s time to start living again.”

  I love Cable still and always will, but he is gone and there is nothing that I can do to bring him back. To linger and mourn long after isn’t living at all.

  Standing in Nox’s arms, I realize that Cable would want me to be happy. He would want me to find hope again, even if that meant finding someone new to share this fucked up life with.

  “Can you sense me the same way that you do with them?” Nox asks after several moments of silence between us.

  I know that each scream pierces him as deeply as it does me because of the way he clings tightly to me. As if together we form two ends of a lifeline and are terrified of letting go.

  “Not in any way that you would like,” I whisper, feeling a shift in my thoughts to something darker and far less hopeful. It is a stark reminder that I am no longer the Avery he once knew.

  “Meaning?”

  With a heavy sigh, I draw my hand back from his face. “I can smell the hormones that naturally leak from your pore and hear your heart beating as clearly as if I had pressed my ear to your chest.

  “I see.” Nox lifts his head and his height advantage conceals his expression from me. “So does that mean that you want to—”

  “No. I do not want to eat you,” I laugh. “I’m just aware of you in new ways.”

  “Are they good ways?”

  When he increases the pressure on my hips, drawing me so close that I begin to press intimately against him, I grow rigid in his arms.

  “Avery?”

  “I’m fine.” The new waiver in my voice tells a different story and I feel Nox’s hesitation. “I just...this feels a bit too familiar.”

  Nox is silent for a moment as I slowly release a breath. I like Nox. He has proven to be a decent guy, but knowing I should move on and actually allowing myself to has proven to be two very different things.

  My physical response to him is undeniable. My palms tingle and my heart races with each touch of his hand but there is also fear welling up within me. Caring means that have to I open myself to more pain. Can I really risk losing someone else?

  And what about the changes I’m going through? Will I always be me or will I slowly lose myself to the strong urges that I feel?

  “I fell in love before I came here. I didn’t mean to. Hell, I fought against it with everything I had, but in the end, I lost the battle. I t
old you that he broke through my defenses but I never told you that he changed me too. He made me need someone for the first time in my life.

  “After he became infected, I watched him slowly slip away. That was before these new mutations, but he didn’t want to go out like that. So he asked me to end it.”

  Tears slip freely from my eyes as Nox raises his hands and draws me into his chest just to hold me.

  “All along, I have blamed myself for caring when I knew that this was the only possible result.” After wiping at my nose, I look up at him. “I’m afraid, Nox. Not of those things out there, but that I’ve allowed you to slam through a door that I was sure could never open again.”

  His arms tighten around me as he rests his chin on top of my head. “You don’t have to do this, Avery. I would never try to change you or pressure you into anything.”

  “I know.” I lean back and smile up at him in the temporary glow of the emergency light. “I think that’s why you scare me in some ways. You let me be me. You let me make mistakes and foolishly run head first into danger because you accept me for who I am. No one has ever done that before. Not even him.”

  “Why not?”

  I feel his tank grow moist with my tears. “Because he always saw the best in people. He was kind and generous and believed the world could fix itself. When he looked at me he saw a woman with buried strength that could overcome her past.”

  “No,” I whisper. “I just learned to accept it.”

  Nox smiles. “Then isn’t that the same thing?”

  “I guess in some way it is.” I lean back to look at him. “You helped me to see that today. Seeing your guilt and the pain that you have felt over losing Zoey and then discovering that I was alive woke me up. You freed me, Nox.”

  He strokes his hand along my back and this time I find the touch to be comforting once more. “I’m glad but we both know that you still love him.”

  Am I in love with Cable still? After three months, the ache in my chest has lessened, but it is still present. I know that I will never forget him, never fully move on, but perhaps that’s the point that he was trying to tell me in the very end. Hearts have the ability to make room for new people.

  “I do. He was a good man who deserved to grow old and play with grandkids, not wither away in a filthy cave. And now I can’t help but wonder if my blood could have saved him.”

  “Avery, don’t.”

  “Why not? Isn’t that what Brian and Iris are hoping for? That by blending my blood with someone I can help them become immune too?”

  The heat radiating off of him feels intense as I cling to him as tears of fear, of pain and regret, of every ounce of anger that I have held on to since I lost Cable.

  “I feel like I failed him, Nox. What if history repeats itself? What if I allow myself to care for you and you disappear too?”

  “Shh.” Nox rocks slowly, brushing his hand gently over my hair. “You haven’t failed anyone and I’m not going anywhere. I’m too stubborn to let some filthy Flesh Bag get me.”

  “Death comes for us all eventually.” I protest. “Before he died he asked two things of me: to save him from becoming a monster and to find his brother. How am I supposed to do that while I’m stuck in a place like this?”

  “Is that why you were coming south? Because you were looking for the brother?”

  I nod and curl my fingers around his shirt. The dull thud of the Flesh Bag pounding against the door fades and I look up to see that the window is empty now. I stretch out my mind to find it, but feel nothing. It’s almost as if a curtain has fallen between us.

  “You were right to try to avoid us,” he says, drawing my focus back. “I only wish that I’d walked away from that attic and left you in peace.”

  “I would have died if you had.”

  “Maybe.” He places his chin on top of my head again and holds me tight. “But I have a feeling you would have found a way. You’re too stubborn to die.”

  “Seems like I took that stubbornness to the extreme now, huh?”

  Nox’s chest rumbles with laughter then he pushes back from the hug and he lifts my chin so that I can look up at him.

  “And for that, I’m glad,” he whispers. I hold my breath as I watch him lean in. A second later, I feel the softest brush of his lips against mine. There is no hesitation in his touch. Instead, I feel a gentle respectfulness as he kisses each of my cheeks and then my forehead in return.

  “I meant what I said earlier. I will never pressure you, Avery. You have my word on that. We can move as fast or as slow as you want.”

  I laugh and gently brush my fingers over my lips. “I bet that’s what you say to all of the girls.”

  Nox snorts and shakes his head. “Actually, it usually goes a bit more like—”

  “Just shut up before you ruin the moment.” I take hold of his face and kiss him, long slow and deeply. His lips move against mine and when his tongue tentatively parts my lips, I allow him access but he soon pulls back.

  “Well,” he grins down at me. “I’ll take that as you’re willing to at least consider that whole jumping into bed on the first date sort of thing.”

  I punch him in the arm and he stumbles backward, laughing against the wall. “Only joking!”

  It feels wrong to laugh during a time like this and yet once I start, I find that I don’t want to stop, because I fear that the moment I do, I will fall apart all over again.

  “At least I made you smile,” he whispers and this time presses his lips to my temple.

  “Being a jackass does have its advantages at times.”

  “Too right!”

  I feel myself reacting to the slow, delicate touch of his hand as he traces it up and down my arm, but something feels different and I crane my head away to listen. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Exactly. There aren’t any Flesh Bag snarls or screams. It’s silent out there.”

  Nox takes hold of my hand and together we walk over to the glass window and peer out. There is a body on the floor below us. I can see that the man’s intestines have been ripped out and pulled down the hall, stretching out of sight. Once the emergency light turns back on Nox will see it too.

  “Can you sense them?”

  “I’ll try.” Focusing inwardly, I try to search for any signs of a nearby Withered but there is no anger, rage or hunger. I feel nothing beyond emptiness.

  “What do you think—” Nox breaks off at the sound of a hiss in front of us and the door lock clicked. “Shit! Barricade the door!”

  “No, I think it’s okay.”

  “Are you serious? There are Flesh Bags out there!”

  Placing a hand on top of Nox’s, I ease his fingers off of the door latch. “Trust me. I’ll know if we get close to one.”

  I don’t blame him for his hesitation or reluctance to just throw open the door and march through Hell’s battleground, but I know what I feel, and right now, I feel nothing. In truth, this could be a terrible plan based off of faulty abilities that I am hardly in control of, but something has happened and I need to know what it is.

  “Trust me,” I whisper and slowly draw the door open.

  Outside of our safe room, the siren blares at eardrum-shattering levels. Nox moves forward every few seconds in time with the pulsating light and we tread lightly around the disemboweled man to find several others strewn across the ward.

  “Don’t look,” he advises as he steps over a body and my throat clenches shut at the sight of the small hand clinging tightly to a teddy bear.

  “They will pay for this.” I sink down and gently tuck the bear under what remains of the girl’s arm. She will never again run or play or laugh and for that Iris and Brian will die.

  Nox stumbles forward, dragging me behind as we return to the wing that I was held in. Here we find that the body count
is much higher and blood is splashed across walls, ceilings, curtains and the floor, making our footing on the slick tiles precarious.

  This is also where we discover our first zombie body. It lies across a man whose lifeless eyes stare accusingly up at us, but I do not focus on him but rather the foam leaking from the Flesh Bag’s mouth. The whites of its eyes are ruptured and spilling with blood. The skin, though still ghostly pale, has hemorrhaged and blood seeps from its pores. Its fingers are blue and ribbons of veins are easily seen along its bare flesh in the overhead emergency light.

  “Avery, don’t!”

  Nox tries to grab hold of me as I drop to my knees but I shake him off. I have to see. “It looks like it’s been poisoned.”

  “Sure has!” Nox and I are instantly on alert when a shadow shifts down the hall from us, heading in our direction. “I’d like to take full credit for it but Poppy and Willow made the connection first. They may be a little off in the head but they are truly brilliant.”

  “Flynn!” I rise up to my feet and hurry to give the teenager a hug but stop the instant I get a whiff of him and pull back. “You stink!”

  “That’s what happens when you take a bath in Rotter muck. It isn’t pleasant but it’s effective. Let me get just a hair closer than I would have sporting my own scent.”

  Nox comes to stand behind me. “Is this the kid Brian was hunting for?”

  Flynn grins and holds out his hand. Despite his aversion to the blood and guts coating his bare skin, Nox accepts his hand. “Old four eyes never stood a chance. I spent my fair share of time back in Charleston learning from the best and most devious minds I know. I can hide when I need to.”

  Tugging on Flynn’s arm, I draw his attention back. “How did you kill them?”

  “Easy.” He doubles over to pull off the extra-large hospital gown over his head and reveals a smaller, slightly less filthy one beneath. “I shot them up with your blood.”

  I’m sure that as I stand there staring at him with my eyes wide and my mouth gaped that I look ridiculous, but that wasn’t exactly the answer I was expecting to hear.

  “So you took out all of them?” Nox asks.