Eat the Ones You Love (The Thirteen Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  “That’s what Abel used to say,” said Jenny, lighting the cigarette from a pack of matches and inhaling deeply.

  “Why are we here?” said Faron. “We need to find your sister.”

  “Declan told me to come here,” said Jenny.

  “In your dream?”

  “No, just now,” she said. “There must be a reason.”

  “Because you’re crazy,” he said. He shrugged when she glared at him. “We all are. It’s not an insult.”

  Jenny pocketed the last smoke, still in the pack, and walked around the sizable office. She caught a glimpse of movement outside the window and walked over to it.

  “Oh,” she said, taking a drag of her cigarette and blowing it out of her nose. “I see.”

  “What?”

  “You know those rotters that were following me?” She nodded outside.

  Faron looked out the window and his eyes widened. “I mean, I knew they were following you, but I didn't realize...”

  “How many are there?” she said.

  “Hundreds. Thousands.”

  Rotters filled the South Parking Lot, and stretched into the distance as far as the eye could see, clogging 395, stretching back into the Pentagon Center. Surrounding the Pentagon, they waited patiently for instructions.

  “Maybe I'm their hero,” she said.

  “We’re nobody's heroes,” said Faron.

  “No,” she said. “But we’re going to win.”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly true,” he said.

  “We need to let them in,” said Jenny. “Someone let the rotters in before, when we were downstairs. Was that you?”

  “Yeah, but they were already inside,” he said. “They were here in a containment unit. A bunch of them, just locked in a room.”

  “How are we going to let all those rotters in?” said Jenny. “The doors are all chained, boarded up.”

  “The only way out is through the roof,” said Faron. “The helicopter.”

  “Well, there goes that plan,” said Jenny.

  “If we can't bring the rotters in, we could always send the Living out,” suggested Faron.

  “I like it, ” said Jenny, stubbing out her cigarette in a puddle of blood under a guard. Her friends reappeared and she started following them.

  “You can’t save us all,” said Zeke, before disappearing in front of another set of doors.

  “Save them all,” said Trix.

  “Kill them all,” said Declan.

  “Are you ready?” said Faron. “This is it.”

  “How many guards?”

  “Only a few here.”

  “Let’s go,” said Jenny.

  They burst through the doors together. Jenny shot the first guard and Faron shot the second. They waited but there weren't any others. They stood there, scanning the room. A memorial still stood on display. A line of marble letters reading America’s Heroes shone on one wall. On the ledge below it was someone’s rotting head.

  “Jenny?” came a high, sad voice.

  “Sarah? Where are you?”

  “You have to stop, Jenny. Please.”

  “What? Sarah, where are you?” Jenny walked toward the voice. Across the floor with Faron at her side, guns raised.

  “Jenny, he has him. You have to stop or he'll kill him.”

  Jenny froze.

  “Who? Mercer?”

  “He has Rafael, Jenny.”

  Jenny looked at Faron. She motioned for him to stay.

  “Okay, Sarah, I’m putting my weapon down.” Jenny set the gun down on the floor so it made a clatter, nodding at Faron. He understood and picked it up.

  Jenny walked toward Sarah’s voice. Behind a door in the back of the room a light blazed. Jenny walked slowly, her heart pounding. She cursed inwardly. It had taken her days, weeks to become Undead before. This time she’d made the transition in less than an hour. She’d been hoping for more time to recover. She stopped at the doorway and peered in, but could only see a small portion of the room.

  “Jenny, please,” said Sarah. She had to be just inside the room, just around the corner. Jenny took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  “Finally,” said a man spilling out of his chair, his thighs barely contained. The girth of him was shocking. She gaped at him. In a time when food was scarce and people were starving, it seemed obscene to be this large.

  “You eat living people,” said Mercer, “and yet you stand there judging me. Perhaps the Prophet was wrong about you.”

  Jenny looked beside him to see Sarah, looking stricken, Dr. Warnken behind her with one arm around her neck, the other pressing a pistol against her head. Warnken had a bandage on her neck where Jenny had attacked her.

  Jenny frowned. “Where’s Rafi?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I had to,” she said. “It was the only way.”

  “The only way what?” Behind a white sheet in the corner, drawn like a hospital room curtain, someone groaned. Jenny heard an engine starting and the room vibrated. The engine revved louder and Jenny looked behind her through the doorway.

  “Fuck!” she said, her heart beating so fast she thought it would explode. “What the fuck is happening? What the hell is going on?”

  Faron was gone. He had left her gun on the floor. He’d drawn a smiley face in the grime on the floor beside it. Above her was the distinctive sound of a helicopter taking off.

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?” she screamed at the old fat man. She moved toward him, but Warnken tightened her forearm around Sarah’s neck, pushing the gun further into her head, and Jenny stopped. She locked eyes with Sarah. “What did you do, Sarah?”

  “She went with her instincts,” said the fat man. He stood with a groan, using the armrests to help push himself to his feet. He lumbered slowly across the room to the white sheet. He smiled back at her. “You’re not a mother, Jenny. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Jenny looked at Sarah for an explanation.

  “It was Rafi’s only chance,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You know you can't kill her with that gun,” Jenny snapped at Warnken.

  “Do you really want to take that risk?” said Warnken. “Sarah was a beta version.”

  “So? What the fuck do you want?” Jenny said. The fat man was drawing back the curtain, revealing a hospital bed, also draped in white. Jenny moved closer, her breath catching.

  “Kill them all,” said a voice in her ear.

  Jenny shook her head as though shaking off a cobweb.

  “Is someone speaking to you right now?” said the fat man. “Good God. It’s true then. Everything he said was true.”

  “You’re Mercer,” said Jenny.

  “Yes,” he said, standing by the bed. Jenny couldn’t see from where she was. “Come,” he said, motioning her over. Jenny glanced at Warnken, but she still had a tight grip on Sarah, who was looking at the ground, ashamed. Jenny walked toward Mercer, narrowing her eyes. She knew who would be in the bed. Though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to see.

  “I’ve been trying to save him,” said Mercer, and Jenny was sure there was panic in his voice. “He knows what I should do. He knows how to do it. But the spirits only let him say a few words at a time.”

  Jenny noted IV and blood bags hanging over the bed, a machine silently measuring vital signs and displaying them on a screen. She stopped.

  “I don’t want to look,” she said.

  “No, this is how it has to be,” said Mercer. “You have to look. I want you to look. Look at him. Behold the face of God.”

  Jenny walked warily to the side of the bed. She purposefully didn’t look down, just kept staring at Mercer. His dark skin was a jaundiced yellow, as were his eyes.

  “You’re dying,” she said.

  “On the contrary. I’m going to live forever,” said Mercer. “The Prophet says so, and he is never wrong. He said you’d come. He said if I let the blond boy out, if I gave him what remained of the vials, that everything else would work itself out. Even your
nephew, who was on that helicopter.” He raised his greasy lips in a benevolent smile. “Everyone wins.”

  “You let Faron go free?” said Jenny.

  “He’s gone now, don’t bother to chase him. That was the deal. He brings you here, and I let him take the children back home. All the children.”

  “Wait. Faron traded me so he could return those kids to their parents?”

  Mercer was growing impatient, the fervor fading in his eyes. “I assume so. And the medicine. I had more hidden away. Even he didn't find it. I traded everything for you.”

  “Those kids are going to eat their parents.”

  “Like you ate yours?” said Mercer.

  “I didn’t eat them,” said Jenny.

  “Then there is hope for the children.”

  “Faron really was the hero,” said Jenny.

  “No, no,” said Mercer impatiently. “That’s where you’re wrong. I am the hero of this story. And we’re only just at the beginning.”

  “He’s even crazier than you are,” said Trix.

  “Shut up, Trix,” muttered Jenny.

  “Who was that?” Mercer said quickly. Jenny looked at him, his jowls shaking with excitement.

  “My fairy godmother,” said Jenny. Mercer’s face scrunched into a scowl.

  “Look at him! Now!” he said, pointing a bloated finger at the bed. Jenny did look this time, unable to avoid it any longer.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Jenny. “What did you do to him?”

  Zeke's skin was gray, like a dying fish. Most of his hair had fallen out. As Jenny lowered the sheet, she saw a glow beneath him, the lighted display of a timer counting down to zero. Mercer smiled. Four minutes and sixteen seconds remained on the timer. And under the bomb strapped to her friend, was a ribcage. A spine. Organs. With no skin.

  “We tried to make him like you,” said Mercer. “But he was too old. We’re all too old, aren’t we? Too old and frail. But now we’ll be born anew. Born into fresh bodies. I’m going to live forever.”

  Zeke’s eyes were opening. He focused on Jenny.

  “No,” he groaned. “Run.” His eyes rolled up and he lost consciousness.

  “I’m going to live forever,” said Mercer, grinning. “Forever. All because of you. He said you’d come. Zeke said to send you away with the children, but you were the first. You and Sarah. Our little prototypes. We’ll all be born again together.”

  “Fucking run, you stupid bitch,” Jenny screamed at Warnken. “Run, Sarah. Go find your son. Just fucking run!”

  “Oh, rapture is coming…” said Mercer, but then he couldn’t say anything else because Jenny lurched across the room and grabbed the pistol in Warnken’s hand. The doctor held it loosely, as if she wanted Jenny to take it. Jenny turned and squeezed the trigger over and over and over until Mercer stopped moving and Warnken and Sarah were covered in bits of him.

  “Shut the fuck up, you crazy old man,” Jenny yelled.

  “Jenny, time to go!” Sarah said, already at the door. Warnken was running, running in the direction of a set of stairs. Toward the helicopter landing.

  Jenny looked at her. She looked at Zeke. She’d just left Sarah all those years ago. Just left her to rot.

  “Go find Rafi,” said Jenny. “Tell Faron I understand. I forgive him.”

  “No, come on!”

  Jenny looked down at Zeke. The only human friend she had left. The only friend who never had an agenda. He just wanted to be good. He just wanted to help.

  “I’m going to stay with my friend,” said Jenny. “Run. Go find Rafi. Faron has him, he’s safe. This thing’s about to go off. Follow Warnken, she knows the way. I love you, Sarah.”

  “Jenny…”

  “FUCKING GO!”

  Sarah ran. Jenny reached down to touch the vest that wrapped around Zeke’s insides and his eyes fluttered open. He slowly reached a hand to cover hers.

  “Don’t take it off,” he said. “It’s holding me together.”

  “Zeke,” Jenny said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I left you,” Jenny said. “I should have come right away. I should have come here first. I just didn’t think…”

  “You didn’t know,” said Zeke, and his hand fell away. “You didn’t know any of it.”

  Jenny shook her head, trying not to cry and failing.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with you,” Zeke said, his voice so soft and weak that Jenny had to strain to hear. “Me, Declan, Trix. People just die and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. But you saved her, Jen. You saved Sarah and the angel.”

  “Rafael,” Jenny said.

  “Yes.”

  Jenny suddenly felt weak. She swayed and tried to will the weakness away, but it stayed.

  “I’m so tired.”

  “I know.”

  Jenny crawled into the bed with Zeke, hugging her friend.

  “I just want to sleep,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Will I ever die, Zeke?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “But not today.”

  “When?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know. I can’t see it. You’re going to be needed, though. All of you: You and Rafi and Sarah. Faron. I told you the two of you were chained. You’ll need each other. You’re the same.”

  “He kept saying that to me.”

  “It’s true. You’ll know in the end. But this isn’t the end.”

  “But I’ll sleep.”

  “You’ll sleep.”

  “I’ll miss you, Zeke.”

  Jenny lit the last cigarette. She put it to Zeke's lips and he inhaled, blowing out a cloud of smoke that hovered over them. Jenny put it to her own lips.

  “I’ll stay with you,” he said. “We’ll all stay with you.”

  “How will I know what’s real?”

  Zeke started to answer, but she couldn't hear him over the sound of a helicopter above them. A helicopter coming back.

  The timer chimed.

  And the world exploded.

  FORTY-TWO

  Jenny floated, but this time, nothing dragged her down. They were all floating, bobbing in the blue, blue sea.

  “It’s not red,” Jenny said.

  “It will be,” said Casey.

  “But it’s not right now,” said Declan.

  Jenny floated. She thought of her mother and father, gone now. Everyone was gone. Everyone but Sarah. Sarah and Rafi. And Zeke had told her that they were important. They would be needed. Jenny closed her eyes.

  “I love you, Sarah,” she said.

  Somewhere, someone answered. Someone who sounded like her sister.

  “I love you, too,” said the voice, and Jenny swore she heard sobbing.

  Jenny opened her eyes, looking back to the sea again.

  “Is this Heaven?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” said Declan. “But you’re here.”

  “Am I here forever?”

  “Maybe,” said Trix.

  “No,” said Zeke.

  “No, probably not,” said Declan.

  “I want to stay.”

  “You’re never alone,” said Declan.

  “Sleep,” said Trix.

  “Sleep,” said Casey.

  There would be pain. She knew that she was being put back together, piece by piece. She knew that she would heal on the outside. There would be a hard road ahead. But for now, all she wanted to do was sleep.

  She slept.

  She didn’t dream.

  She let herself sink back into the cool, blissful darkness. Some day she would stay. Some day she would keep sinking until nothing was left. Some day she would finally die and she would sleep forever.

  Someday.

  But not today.

 

 

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