What Came After

by Nord, K. C.

  pulling me into the elevator with him.

  As the doors closed, I caught one last glimpse of Nick standing there with my grandfather, and I couldn't shake the terrible feeling that this just might be the last time that I would ever see him. But at least he would still be alive. When we stepped out of the elevator onto the ground floor, I heard the sound of a gunshot coming from the floor above. I froze for a second, and my eyes widened in disbelief as Ethan grinned.

  "You didn't really think that the Dr. would let him go, did you, Princess?" He said with a mocking smile.

  And that was when I totally lost it; I turned around and lashed out with one foot catching Ethan in the groin. As he groaned and went down, I reached for his gun, but things didn't go quite as I had anticipated. Ethan blocked me as I reached for the gun, and then he casually backhanded me. I fell back into the elevator against the wall and banged my head with a jarring thud. I started to sit up when the back of his hand made contact with my face right before everything went black.

  I woke up maybe seconds later with a massive headache to find him dragging me out of the elevator. He dropped me on the floor, and I lay there trying to get my senses back as the headache threatened to pull me back under. Gradually I became aware that Ethan was ranting as he paced up and down in front of where I lay.

  "Good, you're awake," he stated before squatting down in front of me, so close that I could feel his hot breath on my face. "I want to get something straight with you once and for all. You and your friends have caused a lot of trouble for me lately, but things are about to change."

  "What is your problem?"

  "Oh, you have no idea, little girl," he rasped.

  "Go to hell, you psycho bastard!" I said weakly and tried to push him away from my face.

  "The word that you're looking for is sociopath," he remarked in a conversational tone right before he raised his arm and, using all of his strength, jammed my hunting knife right into my upper thigh.

  The pain was so sudden and intense, like nothing I'd ever felt before, that I screamed in pain as it radiated through my whole leg. All the while he was talking, but the pain was so intense that I couldn't seem to understand what he was saying. But after a bit, my leg started to numb from the natural endorphins, and some of his words started to seep through.

  "Gordon might be in charge right now, but I'm his second-in-command, which means that you don't want to piss me off. Otherwise, accidents can happen."

  "What do you want from me?" I gasped.

  "It's such a pity that we couldn't have been friends," he said in a conversational tone and roughly grabbed my chin, forcing me to his eyes. "Unfortunately, you're just too much like your bitch of a mother," he continued talking, never noticing the elevator doors opening behind him until he felt the cold barrel of the gun against his head.

  "Get the hell away from my daughter," A voice that I hadn't heard in almost a year rang out.

  I looked up and felt my heart skip a beat; standing there with her gun against his head was my mom, and right behind her was Nick, who swiftly crossed the room to kneel at my side.

  "Everything's going to be ok, Kaley; we just need to get the bleeding stopped," he said calmly.

  But I could see his jaw tighten in anger as he ripped off his shirt to press the cloth against my wound and try to staunch the bleeding.

  "When I heard the gunshot, I thought that they had killed you," I whispered.

  "That was the cavalry coming to my rescue," he said with a reassuring smile before turning to my mom. "The bastard stabbed her; we need to get her to infirmity and get this bleeding stopped before she bleeds out."

  My mom paled and rounded on Ethan, "where's the nearest infirmary?"

  "The closest one is on the next floor up, but with all the zombies loose up there, I wouldn't advise it," Ethan replied.

  "Show us the way," she ordered coldly and clipped Ethan up the side of the head with her gun to show that she meant business. " And if anything happens to my daughter, well, let's just say that I wouldn't want to be in your shoes!"

  "Sorry, Kaley, but I'm going to have to move you," Nick said, picking me up as gently as he could.

  "That's ok," I said with a slight gasp as the movement jarred my leg, causing a jolt of pain to shoot through it.

  "Let's go," my mom said, ordering Ethan into the elevator.

  We followed them inside, with Nick glaring at Ethan the whole time.

  "How did you find me so quickly?" I asked, trying to take my mind off the pain.

  "As sloppy as they were, it wasn't all that hard to follow them. I'm just sorry we didn't get here sooner," Mom said with a hard glance at Ethan.

  "But, at least you caught Gordon, right?"

  Mom grimaced, "he got away."

  "You know that he's never going to give up," Ethan said with a slight smirk that was designed to piss her off.

  Nick's eyes narrowed in anger, "what exactly does he want?"

  Ethan shrugged, "he just wants what any other parent or grandparent wants and deserves."

  Mom's fingers tightened on her gun, " he has no rights after what he's done. As to what he deserves, a bullet in the brain would be too good for him!"

  I watched the interaction between them with some interest; it was pretty evident that there was some kind of a past between Ethan and my mom. The level of anger that he displayed against her was too strong. I sighed tiredly and laid my head down on Nick's shoulder. There was just too much going on to process right now, and I was just so tired and sleepy.

  Nick looked down at me in concern, "hang on, Kaley, I want you to stay awake for just a few more minutes. Can you do that for me?"

  "Ok," I whispered.

  "Good girl," he replied and kissed me on the forehead.

  My first real kiss and it was on the forehead! Oh well, I'm still going to count it. I thought with a secret smile.

  Once inside the infirmary, Nick sat me down on an exam table, "we need to keep pressure on her leg." He said, looking over at Mom.

  She quickly took the hint by knocking Ethan out with the butt of her gun and left him lying on the floor out of the way in the corner of the room. "He's too much of a liability just to let run around," she explained, taking over the pressure on my wound so that Nick could collect the needed supplies.

  "I'm going to give you a pain reliever, and just as soon as it starts working, we can treat your stab wound," Nick said as he started an IV for me.

  I nodded and looked back over at Mom as he injected the pain reliever," I think that we have a lot of stuff to talk about."

  "I'm sorry, Kaley," she said, brushing my hair back from my sweaty brow. "I thought that we could protect you and Lucas from all of this. But, I'm afraid that all of the secrets just made it that much worse."

  I nodded, relaxing a little as I felt the pain reliever flow through my veins. "I know that you did what you thought was best at the time, but I'm also an adult now."

  "I know," she replied. "But now's not the time to get into it."

  Now that the pain was beginning to abate, I could take more of an interest in what was going on around me. Looking down, I could see that they were cutting off my jeans and exposing the wound on my upper thigh. Over the last year, I've developed a reasonably strong stomach, but I have to admit the sight of my leg made me feel queasy. The wound looked deep and gaping, and there was blood all over the table and dripping over the side onto the floor. It was all over Nick's clothes, and my mom's hands were covered in my blood.

  "The bleeding has stopped," Nick commented with a relieved look. "But she's going to need a transfusion as soon as possible."

  "I can finish packing the wound if you want to get started on that," my mom replied.

  I watched in silence for a few minutes as they worked, they both looked worried, and mom was a little quiet like she always got during stressful times. Nick's jaw was tight, but I could see a nerve twitch from time to time in his cheek.

  "You should be back to normal
in no time at all," Nick said with a reassuring smile when he noticed me watching him.

  "I'm certainly going to have some awesome battle scars after this is all over with," I said, bringing a smile to his face. By now, the anesthesia had kicked in, and I was feeling pretty good.

  "I think that she's starting to get loopy," Mom said with a laugh.

  "We should compare battle scars sometime," I commented, looking over at Nick with a smile and surprising a laugh out of him.

  "I think that I might be a little ahead of you," he replied with a wink.

  "I'm pretty sure I have the two of you beat considering how long I've been at this," mom remarked as she finished bandaging up my leg.

  "You're probably right," I replied with a yawn; my eyes were so tired that I couldn't keep them open any longer. I could still hear Mom and Nick talking in the background, but their voices were quiet, and they just gradually faded away as I went to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I slept for the next few hours or maybe even longer? It was hard to tell, but each time I woke, a different person was sitting with me. I was so out of it from the injury and probably the anesthesia that it was hard to keep track; once it was my grandma, another time it was my dad, and then my mom and Lucas. But one thing that puzzled and worried me just a little was that I never saw Norah.

  The next time I woke, it was late at night, and Nick was sitting at my bedside. He was reading a book and didn't notice that I was awake, which gave me time to study him without his knowledge. He looked a little tired with dark shadows under his eyes but still a lot more relaxed than I'd seen him for some time now. I glanced past him and noticed, like all the other times, that there was a guard stationed just outside my door. My brow furrowed a little, there was something about the guard that looked so familiar, but I just couldn't place where I'd seen him before?

  "With Gordon on the loose, we thought that a guard might be a good idea," Nick, observing that I was awake, commented.

  I frowned, " do you think that he might come after me?"

  "I can't even begin to understand how his mind works. But, yeah, I wouldn't put it past him." Nick replied.

  "Nick, where's Norah?" I asked, almost afraid to hear his answer.

  He didn't answer at first, which led me to believe something terrible had happened, "Oh no! she's not -" I gasped and sat up in bed with my heart pounding.

  "Calm down. It's nothing like that," he said and gently pushed me back against the pillows. "You don't want to start your wound to bleeding again."

  "Well, where is she?"

  "I don't know," he admitted. "Sometime during the rescue, she just disappeared. We've been searching for several days now, and I can say with certainty that she's not inside this building."

  "Wait, do you think that Gordon has her?" I breathed.

  "It's a definite possibility," he admitted.

  "We have to find her!" I said and sat up again.

  Nick sighed, "we're doing everything that we can, but in the meantime, you have to take it easy until your wound heals."

  "I'm missing out on everything," I said and sat back with a huff as Nick stared at me with a look of disbelief.

  "Don't be so immature Kaley, you already almost bled to death as it is. Do you really want to put everyone through that again?"

  I stared at him in shock, "It's not my fault that I got stabbed!"

  Nick sat back in his hair and wearily brushed back a lock of dark hair that kept flopping over his forehead, " You seem so together most of the time that I keep forgetting that you're only 17."

  Hurt by his comment, I took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in my throat. It was probably my immaturity, I thought sourly, but right now, I wanted nothing more than to punch him right in the middle of that perfect face! Luckily for him, Grandma walked in before I could act on that thought.

  "Why don't you go get some rest," she said with a kind smile at Nick. "I'll sit with Kaley for a while.

  "Oh, you don't have to do that, Grandma!" I protested, uncomfortable with the thought of putting anyone else out. "I'm fine with the guard outside my door."

  "It's no problem, Sweetie," she said and took Nick's recently vacated chair. "We almost lost you the other day, so just let me do this!"

  She reached forward and patted me on the hand as Nick left the room. "Don't feel bad about what he just said. He was pretty scared for you, and men tend to say stupid things to avoid expressing their true feelings."

  This surprised a laugh out of me, " I wanted to punch him."

  Grandma smiled, "I saw your clenched fist, so it's probably a thing that I came in when I did."

  "Why are men so stupid?" I sighed.

  Grandma shook her head, "it's not that at all, Kaley." she paused with a laugh, "well, maybe a little bit."

  "What do you mean?" I asked, intrigued despite myself.

  "Nick is a protector; it's what he does, and I don't think that he can handle the thought that we might have lost you. Especially since it happened while it was on his watch."

  "Ok, I get that. But why does he always overreact like that?"

  Grandma shrugged, "he's young and trying to avoid his feelings out of a misplaced sense of honor. You're his assignment right now, and he's trying to keep everything business-like."

  "Norah called him a boy scout," I replied.

  "That's a pretty good description," Grandma said with a reflective and slightly sad smile that made me think that she was thinking of my grandpa. "A man like that doesn't come along every day. So if you do find one, it's best not to let him go."

  "Well, I don't exactly have him," I replied wryly.

  "It's early days, Kaley." She said with a knowing look. "Just give it time, and he'll come around; you'll see."

  "It's not like I care anyway!" I grumbled, causing her to laugh out loud.

  "Sometimes the young can be so blind," she said with a smile.

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED excruciatingly slowly, I was dying to get out of this bed, but after I had almost bled to death, there was no way that Nick was going to allow that any time soon. Also, even though search parties went out every day, there was still no sign of Norah or Gordon, and Ethan was still refusing to talk.

  The last time that I'd seen Nick, I'd noticed that his knuckles were scraped, almost like he'd been in a fight. Later, Grandma told me that while he was questioning Ethan, Nick had lost it and punched him in the face. She didn't know what was said between the two men, only that my name had come up, which made me more than a little curious.

  I wondered about all of the zombies that had been roaming around the facility, but grandma said that they had been put down, and the only ones left at this point were a few that were still locked inside one of the labs. So far, nobody had been able to figure out the code to get the doors open.

  For the last few days, all that I'd been doing was lying around in the bed, visiting with people, or reading a book. Angela had even come by to see me. She was seeing the Deputy Sheriff and decided to move into town to be closer to him. I was happy for her as they seemed to be happy. It might have seemed a little fast for them to get to that point so quickly, but in our world, you had to grab happiness quickly because tomorrow wasn't promised.

  I looked over at the bedside clock, it was 2:00 am, and here I was, wide awake. All of the sleeping that I'd been doing since I'd been wounded, not to mention the general inactivity, had messed with my internal clock. I sighed and picked up a book to do some more reading when I noticed the guard outside my door was changing again. It was that same man from before, the one who seemed so familiar. I was frowning at him and trying to remember just where I knew him from when Nick walked in and sat down by my bed.

  "I don't think that you need to keep babysitting me," I protested.

  "About that," Nick said and paused for a second. "Ethan managed to escape last night, so I'm afraid that you're going to have to put up with the guard for a while longer."

  "Well, that's just great,"
I muttered under my breath.

  Nick and I hadn't spoken except for a word or two ever since our last argument, and I felt a little self-conscious, but Nick, who didn't seem to have any such feelings, leaned over and flipped back the covers to check out my wound.

  "It looks to be healing nicely," he said with a slight frown after removing the bandages.

  "But that's a good thing, isn't it?" I asked, noticing his hesitation.

  "Yeah," he replied. "It's just healing at a faster rate than I've ever noticed before. A wound like this should take about ten days at the very least to heal, and that's only if there's no additional damage to the muscle or tendons and ligaments. It looks to me like you're healing at twice the normal rate."

  My breath caught, "I've never been like this before. What does this mean?"

  Nick looked troubled and wouldn't meet my eyes.

  "Oh my god!" I gasped, feeling sick to my stomach. "Do you think that he experimented on me?"

  "It's possible," Nick said slowly. "We already know that he's not exactly troubled by ethics."

  I glanced down at the rapidly healing wound and felt like throwing up. Who knows what Gordon had done to me or what I would become!

  "Hey, it's going to be ok," Nick said and took my hand. "We're in this together, and we'll get it figured out."

  I looked at him helplessly, "Will we? Every time I think that we're going to be ok something happens."

  "Advanced healing isn't necessarily a bad thing."

  "You're right; it's just that for the first time in so long, my whole family is back together, and now -" I broke off when I noticed some movement out in the hallway. The guard had turned to look at something further down the hall that was out of my line of vision. And that's when I realized where I'd seen him before.

  "What's wrong?" Nick asked, noticing my distracted air.

  "I remember him!" I hissed, gripping his hand tightly, "he was at the church during the zombie massacre that first day that we met."

  Nick tensed, "are you sure?"

  I nodded slowly, " Yes, absolutely. He's changed his hair, it's shorter now, and he's wearing a uniform. But-." I broke off, trying not to look suspicious, when the guard glanced back at us, meeting my eyes for a second.