“No, I wouldn’t say that,” he corrected. “What happens to someone isn’t a reflection of who they are. Who you are is made up of your personality, willpower, motivations, dreams. And all of those things I didn’t have the first clue about when I picked you up and carried you home. Well, carried you back to Mr. Packard’s home. It took me several more months to figure out the important stuff, the stuff that actually makes you…you.”
“And what have you figured out so far?”
It was a loaded question. I knew that, but I refused to shy away from it. I wanted to hear his honest opinion of me. Did he think I was too gruff, too prissy, just right? Did he think I was too masculine? Did he think I was a wimp for not admitting my secret life to the rest of the world? I wanted to know if he saw me as a girl or a woman. But he didn’t answer me in the way I expected. It wasn’t a separate response to my individual questions but an all encompassing one, and it stirred my heart.
He turned to me with clear and genuine sincerity and confessed, “I figured out that I could fall in love with you.”
My response was to sit in stunned silence, even as excitement swelled inside me. Jolts of stimulation traced their way down each of my limbs. My heart thumped wildly in my chest. He continued talking but he’d changed the subject so I couldn’t say what it was about. All I understood was the sensation those words, his declaration, had given me. It stayed with me the rest of the day and even into the next several days, every time he looked at me or spoke to me or made his presence known around me. It was with me when I curled up on the landing pad each night and felt Harrison’s body press down next to mine. It was with me when I woke up in the morning and found my head on his chest and his arms wrapped protectively around me. It was with me as we talked for hours about our dreams and motivations. And it was with me when the reality of our situation found its way through the unavoidable cracks in my happiness, when every once in a while I reminded myself that we had only a finite amount of time before the Infected broke through the fence, flooded our school, and took away everything…our dreams, our motivations, our personalities…all of what made us who we were…with a single bite. And on the second week of Harrison’s quarantine, that moment arrived.
~ 10 ~
WHEN MY EYES OPENED, THE GYM was still dark, although I could see a sliver of the moon through the windows overhead. It was a clear night, which was becoming rarer. While I hadn’t been marking any calendars lately, intuitively I knew we were close to the end of November, rounding the corner on fall and coming into winter. With a single glimpse out the window you’d find that the orange, gold, and red leaves that – without the street sweepers and landscape maintenance crews on duty began littering the streets and piling up around the vehicles tires in the parking lot and along the fence – held remnants of the first snowfall. The coolness in the air was also a sign. Without the heating system on to regulate the temperature inside, the school had turned cold, in the mornings especially. For this reason, I was thankful when I found Harrison’s arms folded around me.
“You all right?” he asked quietly, his deep voice reverberating through the dark.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said and added for confirmation, “no nightmares. What time is it, do you think?”
“Close to dawn.”
I could feel his breath on my cheek and realized that we were facing each other. We’d never lain that way before which made it a nice surprise.
“Are you cold?” he asked, and I wondered if he’d sensed my reaction.
“A little,” I replied, both because it was true and because it was a good cover story.
He repositioned himself closer to me until our thighs were touching. It was better, but I still wanted more.
“You’re not cold at all, are you?” I asked, smiling lightly at the paradox of it.
“No, that comes with the territory of being me.”
Of course…He felt no pain so naturally, he’d feel no discomfort with changes in temperature.
I drew in a breath and hesitated.
“What’s on your mind, Kennedy?”
Something that’s been hovering there for a while now…
“Kennedy?”
“I’m wondering if it works the same with the opposite effect.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you don’t feel pain, but do you feel pleasure?” His pause told me that he was considering it, but I wasn’t willing to wait that long. For confirmation, I placed my hand on his arm and asked, “Do you like that?”
“It’s pleasurable.”
I brushed my fingertips along the edges of his muscles. “What about that?”
“It’s more pleasurable,” he replied, stiffly.
Encouraged, I slid my hand up his arm to the curve of his neck. It was warm and powerful and made me want to pull him toward me.
“You should stop,” he said, his voice strained.
I can’t tell you why I did it. I only knew that I needed it more than anything in that moment. More than air. More than water. More than hope that tomorrow would be a better day.
Using my hand against his cheek as my guide, I rolled forward and found his lips. For a second, the briefest that had ever passed, I felt him respond. His body leaned forward, his neck lifted to me, his mouth pressed onto mine.
And then he yanked back.
I prepared for him to let me go, to flee for the other side of the landing pad where we lay, ensuring I would be too far out of reach to try that again. But he stayed right there, gripping me tenderly as if holding me steady might prevent his fear from coming true.
I could almost hear his thoughts. Don’t jostle the veins. Maybe the blood flow will whisk the infected saliva through my body without actually taking hold or recognizing it was in a whole new playground.
“You’re not infected, Harrison.”
He didn’t shush me, but again I expected it. He had too much patience. And there he lay, waiting, scrutinizing me as best he could through the darkness.
I assessed myself and found that I felt no change at all, no sudden craving for humans, no explosive temper, no disorientation. I felt nothing, except the cold, now that Harrison had moved himself away from me. I wanted him to come back, to have confidence that he wasn’t a danger to me, but he wouldn’t do that until he was certain I wasn’t turning.
“How many seconds is that?” I asked, trying to prove my point.
When he didn’t answer, I did. “Thirty.” A few seconds later, I said, “Forty-five…Sixty…Ninety.” Finally, I pointed out, “That’s two minutes. I counted. And I’m still cognizant.”
Only then did I hear him start to breathe again.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “How…? It’s not…It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you realize you’re not infected.”
“Maybe I’m immune?” he said and released me in order to sit up. I knew this by the shift of the crackling pad where his body had been laying. “I’d still be carrying the virus, though. I had too many bites to avoid it. And that would have, in turn, infected you.”
“But I’m not infected,” I pointed out again.
“No,” he said and chuckled in disbelief. “You’re not.”
His fingers uncurled from around my forearms and I prepared myself for him to pull away, but I felt him gently touch my cheek and I knew it was a testing of the waters. His fingers lingered there, and after taking another step, he settled the flat of his palm lightly onto my jaw. His hand didn’t move for a very long time, neither did we. I wanted the thrill pumping through me and the swelling in my chest and the tense anticipation between us to linger. It was delicate, so much like walking a thin layer of ice, and any disruption would cause it to crack, bringing a bitterly cold end to something so warm and welcomed.
For Harrison, though, our touch was different. Something told me that he was appreciating the ability to touch me. He’d thought of himself as dangerous for so long, and that kiss, our kiss, had finally g
iven him the proof he needed to venture out across that frozen lake that he’d conjured between himself and me and the rest of the world. I could almost hear the shatter of his inhibitions and the sigh of release that had been pent up below it.
“Kennedy,” he exhaled. “I’ve wanted… for so long…”
“I know,” I whispered.
His hand slipped down to my jaw and his thumb trailed along the edge, making me tremble.
“Oh, you’re cold,” he uttered and slid closer to me until our hips and legs were pressed together again. “Is that better?”
“Much,” I replied, trying to keep the enthusiasm from being too prominent in my voice.
His fingers began once more, tracing the contours of my face, taking my breath away with their gentle exploration. They came to rest below my chin before tilting it up. The first light of the day was beginning to make its way through the windows, but I could only see the profile of him in front of me. There was no distinguishing his handsome features, but I heard his voice and it made me quiver.
“You give me strength, Kennedy.”
That, I thought, was ironic, because he was the strongest man I’d ever known.
“Thank you,” he said, slightly in awe, “otherwise I’d still be thinking this was impossible…”
Then, his lips found mine. They were soft and pliable as he took his time to enjoy what he had wanted for so long and could never have. They were playful, sucking and nibbling on the edges, brushing lightly, and then pressing tenderly. But when my emotions surged and my head leaned forward, and I released the need that I’d kept pent up, he didn’t hold back. Our kiss intensified, becoming almost unbearably impassioned. My fingers clung to his back, pulling him into me. His hands were on my hips, pressing me to him. Our breathing came in short gasps. Our bodies molded to one another, becoming one synchronous movement. And in the rapidly arriving dim morning light, when we pulled apart and rested our foreheads together so that I could refill my lungs with air, I saw the outline of his smile.
“You do amazing things to me, Kennedy, things I didn’t think were possible.”
I began to smile, too, as he went on, telling me thoughts that had been carefully preserved secrets until now.
“Life was meaningless until I saw you lying on that tombstone. It was just a hazy blur of responsibilities and empty, trivial ambitions. But then you were there, curled up, with your face, your beautiful face,” he said touching me there, “turned at the sky. And even though death surrounded us, I started to feel alive, for the first time…since I can remember.”
I held back a gasp as he said this to me. Because, ironically, he’d just described the same experience I’d gone through when he’d come into my life.
“You stirred something in me that I didn’t know was there. And I didn’t give it due credit at the time, thinking that it would go away or I’d wake up one day and feel the same as I had before you. But it didn’t go away. It got stronger. And every time I saw you in the hallways or the cafeteria or the library it grew. I was drawn to you because of it, because of these feelings you give me. And right now, laying here next to you, it’s…”
“Yes?”
“It’s…I understand now what this is…”
More light was filtering into the gym now, slowly illuminating the striking features that had kept me entranced for the last year. He was breathtaking.
“What is it?”
He paused and his eyes that were now clearly visible, settled on me, as he said with resolute sincerity, “Love.”
He didn’t blink or shift his eyes away. He didn’t twitch or draw back. He meant it, and it sent a heated shiver through me.
“You’re in lo-” I said, stunned, and then I was cut off.
“Uh, guys…?”
I sighed and closed my eyes, protesting the disruption. Then I considered ignoring it, hoping it would just go away. But that wasn’t possible. It was Doc and he sounded anxious. And if he was inside the gym, which he was, then his interruption was important.
“Sorry,” Mei called out, acknowledging that they had broken up a personal moment. “This is something you’ll want to know.”
Harrison didn’t seem happy about it either, frowning and then catching my eye to give me a disappointing look. Again, heat spread through me at the sight of him. Then, he sat up, breaking his stare and rolling off the pad to go meet Doc and Mei. I did the same, with an equal lack of enthusiasm.
“We’ve found survivors,” Doc said before we even reached them.
This made both Harrison and I stand a little straighter.
“One of them anyways,” Mei said.
“They were sending a shortwave radio broadcast…I think,” Doc added and began fiddling with something at his waist, raising it for a better grip.
After looking down, I saw that he held the small AM/FM radio that we’d found in the lockers the first few weeks after the epidemic hit, the same one that he held in his hands right where he was standing during my nightmare a few weeks ago.
Immediately, my head tilted to the side in recognition of it, and its significance.
“Beverly thought it was just a recording,” Mei said.
And that’s when the sharp wave of panic swept over me. And as my nightmare began to reveal itself, my muscles froze and my pulse steadily increased its pace.
“A recording?” I asked, exactly as I’d done in my nightmare, although I did this now for clarification.
“She said you guys watched some recording on Mr. Packard’s TV.”
“We did,” Harrison said with a nod, glancing at me because I’d been included in that experience.”It was the President’s last speech,” he added slowly as he grew alarmed at my behavior.
“Well there’s no way this is the President,” Doc stated. “This broadcast was made by a chick.”
Mei tilted her head at him in frustration, her expression disgruntled.
“A girl,” Doc corrected hastily. “A woman. Anyways, Beverly said she thought it was a recording.”
Doc stopped his fiddling as he landed back on the station where he’d heard the survivor.
It was a woman and, in a composed, balanced voice, she was explaining, “Every organ, bone, phalange, muscle, membrane – everything – becomes infected. First the eyes will begin to spasm, flicking back and forth madly.” Reflecting on her choice of words, she paused her speech long enough to sigh before continuing. “The neck follows suit, wrenching the head violently to the side. From then on, the patient is single-mindedly obsessed with a craving for human flesh. These are the behaviors you must be watchful for. If you see them…run. My name is Marion Kremil. I work for the CDC. If anyone is out there, I am at the corner of Corral and Hazelton in a large grey building. I am on the fifteenth floor. Please, please come for me.”
By this time, Harrison had caught on. He understood. My frozen expression, the pinch of my lips, the flare of my nostrils, my widening eyes all revealed to him what was taking place. My nightmare, the one in which the end reveals the Infected making their way inside the school, had begun.
Harrison’s head snapped back to Doc and Mei as he demanded, “Where is she?”
“In some office building downtown.”
“No, Beverly…”
Doc shrugged. “She was mumbling something about needing a facial while rolling the trash bins outside.” As Doc continued to provide the finer details of Beverly’s location, Harrison launched into a sprint around him. “She wouldn’t touch the trash bags,” said Doc, “so she’s carting the whole damn trashcan out-. Hey, where are you going?”
Harrison was through the door and into the foyer by then and I was trailing directly behind him. Just as we’d done in my nightmare, the four of us raced through the hallways, across the cafeteria, and into the kitchen. There, I saw an eerie resemblance to what I’d already experienced. The shallow light of the morning sun dimly illuminating the kitchen was broken by a solid streak coming from the back door.
“Come o
n, piece of sh-”
“Beverly,” Harrison called out, his deep voice vibrating down the hall. He slowed to an easy stride as he came around the corner. “I can take care of that for you.”
As his voice echoed in my head, it served as a disturbing reminder that our words and actions were following my nightmare’s pattern perfectly.
Beverly shot a curt look at him. “What are you doing out of your jail cell?” Then her scowl turned to disdain. “What’s up with the party posse?” she asked, eyeing the rest of us as we approached. “Does everyone want to play Carry-The-Can?”
I opened my mouth to speak, to break this chain of events, to somehow prevent what my nightmare had forewarned, but Harrison didn’t realize it.
“Sure, let us handle it,” he suggested, stopping at the can and curling his fingers around the edge.
She gave him, and then the rest of us, a sincere look of distrust, and at that point my impetus to interject myself into the conversation ended. Her face told me anything that seemed out of the ordinary would only heighten her suspicions.
“Doc hates taking out the garbage. Mei and Kennedy couldn’t care less if they live in filth. And you, Harrison, shouldn’t even be here. What’s going on?” she said, in an exact repeat of what I’d heard before.
“Just go back and…do your nails,” Harrison suggested.
“I don’t have any more polish,” she muttered.
“Then go suntan.”
“It’s November, Harrison.” She narrowed her eyes at him and my heart tightened in my chest as every fiber of my being began screaming, “No!” But I was stuck in a bizarre unfolding of what I’d already seen, unable to pressure her into stepping away from the door, unable to stop this train wreck from happening. I considered knocking her out, but she was too far from me. And any advancement would definitely strike fear in her and she’d flee – in the opposite direction out the door.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why don’t you want me out there?”
When she turned her head to glance outside, I took a step forward, but her face was back again, reflecting animosity without reason.
Haven (Apocalypse Chronicles Part 1) Page 20