Reawakening

by Stein, Charlotte

  “You’ll see.”

  Then he didn’t hesitate. And at the very least, he didn’t throw a bad one. He didn’t actually swing, but cut straight out in a way that suggested he could go in quick and hard, if he wanted to. Which was good, very good—but not quite good enough.

  As his fist moved at a snail’s pace toward her face, she grabbed his wrist whip-quick and brought it to her mouth. Bit down hard. Not hard enough to draw blood, of course. Just hard enough to make him jerk all over and yank his arm away, shocked.

  “The first place they go for are the things you get in their way. You punch out at them, slap at them, try and shove them away—they will grab your arm and bite your fucking hand off.”

  She picked up a piece of one of his old belts.

  “Leather is tough. It stops them.”

  He hugged his wrist to his chest, all fake hurt. That was cute, too.

  “Okay, okay—you don’t have to be so vicious. Jeez, June,” he said, but he was laughing as he did so. Plus he followed it with a look at the longer strips she’d cut.

  “So we’re all going to go out looking like we disco at an S&M club?”

  Now it was her turn to be thrown. Had he just said S&M? Yeah, he’d said S&M. And now that she thought about it, it was kind of weird. All of them going out into the world with collars and bracelets on.

  She wished, for a second, that she’d not lost her bag on the way to the building with Jamie. Her bag had contained spare studded things—stuff her and Kelsey had found in Hot Topic, that last bastion of protective gear for the zombie stressed.

  Though she couldn’t quite say how wearing something studded from Hot Topic was better than going with cut up bits of belt.

  “You okay, June? You’ve kind of gone into your head a little, there.”

  That brought her back. How often did she do just that, and have them wonder if she was sinking into some abyss of herself, never to return? Probably a lot, if she was honest.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…”

  “Hey look—we’ve gone out before. We know what we’re doing, believe me. I mean—you’ve probably had a lot of hand to hand confrontations…” He paused and swallowed a little too thickly. It made her wonder if he was imagining it. Her, being attacked, bodily. No gun, no blade, no nothing. Hell—it had happened. No sense saying it hadn’t. “…with them. But we never intend on getting that close. We’re ready if we have to. But we’re solid enough with snipers, with handguns…we’ve got the heavy artillery.”

  “So did the army. So did the cops.”

  She watched him fold his lips in. It was a tense, considering sort of gesture.

  “They simply weren’t prepared for what happened,” he said, finally.

  “And you were?”

  It just popped out. She couldn’t stop it. She thought again of Jamie being so prepared, and this place, and what someone would do if they’d suspected this clusterfuck was going to come down on the human race.

  This—all of this—was exactly what she would have done. And she knew it.

  His gaze flicked up to her and his eyes looked suddenly pale, in the wintry light of the kitchen. That was what was wrong with Blake’s eyes—sometimes they looked electric blue. Other times they seemed drained of all color. Of everything.

  “No. No. Not…back then.”

  She waited, holding her breath. It felt as though she’d been holding her breath for this ever since she walked in the door. Here it was—how he survived the zombie apocalypse. The harrowing tale of survival and despair. How Mrs. Henderson had attacked and killed his little sister then turned on him.

  Or was that her? She couldn’t quite recall. She didn’t want to recall, ever.

  “I was just lucky then. My car broke down out in the empty flats. I slept in an abandoned gas station. One of them came to the door and just banged and banged and then after too long a time of eating pretzels for breakfast and trying to pee off a roof, Jamie found me.”

  There were so many things that came to mind to say then. Did you have family? Did you wonder what happened to them? Did you ever try to find them? Do you still wake up, sometimes, calling for your sister? Did Kelsey take her place, and now you call for her, too?

  Because that’s what I do.

  But instead, she found herself asking something deathly practical, as always. No time for lost sisters. No time to ask what Jamie was doing at the time of finding him.

  He’d said empty flats. He’d said only one of them ever tried to attack him.

  “What are the empty flats?”

  * * * *

  It occurred to her as they lifted off that she’d only ever been in a helicopter when she couldn’t possibly appreciate it. Though the last time should have been a time of great appreciation and just hadn’t been because her brain had fallen out of her head and she’d spent the whole journey blubbering over Kelsey.

  And this time…well. This time she couldn’t marvel at Jamie flicking switches and handling things like a pro because her teeth had welded themselves together. Her hands had made fists like bricks, and she intended to hurl said bricks at anything that got in Blake or Jamie’s way.

  Plus there was the dread. The dread, like a great wall of water rushing toward the mainland. The mainland was her. The mainland was them. She came within a hair’s breadth of saying to Jamie—let’s just not. Let’s not. Let’s stay here forever. Who cares if we’re cold in the winter? At least we won’t be eaten.

  But in the end she couldn’t. Mainly because she knew what would happen if she did. They’d go in the night, without her. They’d wait until she was asleep and sneak out.

  Hell, she was only surprised they hadn’t done that already. Or you know, maybe tried to drug her so they wouldn’t even have to worry about sneaking. After all, she’d noticed the Secanol in the medicine cabinet. And it had definitely been moved around since the last time she’d checked it.

  As though maybe they’d considered it. Then realized that she truly would swim across the lake. That she would run on water for a thousand miles if it meant she could get to them. Bring them back.

  She pressed against the seat, and felt the reassuring weight of her machete. Nothing would ever get at either of them. Nothing.

  “Relax, June-y,” Jamie said, and she wondered just how stiff her neck looked. Like something made entirely out of bone? Like something made entirely out of titanium? “The place we’re going—it’s safe. Nothing to worry about.”

  His voice sounded weird and hollow over the thrum-thrum of the rotor blades and maybe it was hollow in the other way, too. But then her mind went to the things Blake had said, about it being a strip of road. Partly developed into something, mostly abandoned. A few shops. No big population around it.

  It would have been what her and Kelsey called heaven. And when Jamie told her to look out of the window, the sight of it only reaffirmed that assessment. Dear God—how they would have gloried in this place. How they would have expected a big, bearded robe wearing man to appear at any moment.

  The nearest suburban tract was miles off. The road was narrow and car-less. Everything had been cleared to potentially build something, so there was nothing but scrubland and emptiness, endlessly. No trees for them to hide behind. No abandoned cars. Just endless nothing, then right in the center—

  Useful shops. A gas station. An obviously newly built restaurant that could well have contained massive tins of beans and tomatoes and all those things a person should always find in heaven.

  It almost made her cry with joy, until she remembered that she already had all of these things. Jamie and Blake gave them to her all the time. They didn’t even give. The things just belonged to her.

  Oh how she would run on water for a thousand miles for them. Any day. Any time. They didn’t even know what they’d gifted her with. They didn’t even know.

  “It’s cool, right?” Jamie said, but she couldn’t answer. Instead she just watched the ground swell up toward them, and didn’t f
eel any of the fear she’d experienced five minutes ago.

  And especially not, when she climbed out of the chopper and found everything so quiet, so open wide and nothing at all, that she could have almost believed none of it had ever happened. It was just another Sunday morning. Everyone still in bed. Sometime soon, old man Peterson would drive down the road on his way to the fishing spot.

  Zombies never existed. They remained in films where they belonged.

  She turned her face up to the pale, almost Autumn sun and let that make-believe sink into her bones. Closed her eyes and just let it be. They were her boyfriends and after a kinky night of hot, threesome love, they’d decided to go for breakfast at the newly opened Chili’s down the road.

  Nothing to it.

  “June-bug?”

  Until she opened them again and found Jamie cocking a shotgun before passing it to Blake. Yeah, until that happened.

  Plus, he was looking at her funny. Real intently, as though he was worried she’d gone insane or something. Just cracked like an egg on returning to the ruins of society.

  “I’m here,” she said, though both of them remained on high alert. She needed further explanations. Reassuring words. “It’s just…this place. Wow. Why did you even bother coming into the interior with this here?”

  Unfortunately, those were not as reassuring as she’d hoped. So much so that immediately after saying them, she regretted it. Interior was her and Kelsey’s word, for places swarming with them. Cities overrun. Suburban tracts filled with rabid kids and drooling Soccer Moms.

  But she knew they’d both understood what the word meant.

  “You see any survivors ‘round here?” Jamie said, and there was something about the expression that went with it. Something that made her think of the word harrowing, even though her brain wanted to reject it for being too melodramatic.

  Then Blake said—

  “I’m going to the hardware store.”

  At which point the conversation went one up from harrowing and into groaning despair. He didn’t even want to stick around and talk about it! That’s how bad it was. She’d brought up an untouchable subject. She’d insulted his masculine pride.

  Something like that.

  Though when Jamie glanced back at her, he didn’t look hurt. Just harrowed. And weird, in his current ensemble. He almost resembled a movie assassin, with the gloves on and the mask dangling around his neck and that hint of leather behind. No Hawaiian shirt this time—she’d forbidden him. It set her teeth on edge just thinking of him coming for her and Kelsey with that colorful thing flapping in the breeze like a red flag to a bull.

  Though she reckoned it said a lot about him that he’d done it.

  “I didn’t mean to imply—” she started, but then didn’t know how to finish. What had she implied, exactly? That they weren’t brave enough to go look for survivors? He knew it wasn’t that, right? She’d simply thought in the mode she had when she and Kelsey had been survivors.

  Avoid the bad. Go for the good. They hadn’t been able to live any other way.

  Though it shamed her somewhat to think that Jamie had, and did.

  “Did you see us from the air? Is that what you did—fly around other places, looking for people?”

  That sounded better, coming out. And a little startling to realize. He hadn’t been in the chopper looking for canned goods or gasoline. He’d been up there looking for people he and Blake could take care of.

  She thought of all the spare rooms in the cabin and felt her stomach dip.

  He checked the magazine of his gun, clearly half-avoiding the question. It was hard to tell why the subject seemed to trouble him but it was clear it did. Jamie wasn’t like Blake. He didn’t avoid things. He’d practically said he loved her, for God’s sake.

  But he was fiddling with the gun, all the same. He’d told her the actual brand name of it but she couldn’t recall what it was. In truth, she didn’t know anything beyond the bare necessities. How many bullets it held. How hard it took the tops of their heads off.

  And one thing he hadn’t considered—how quiet she could make it. She’d made him attach a silencer, though he’d seemed reluctant. And he’d seemed even more reluctant when she’d asked him if she could take the crossbow.

  He’d wanted to know why, why, though she didn’t think it was because he didn’t understand, like Blake. He knew they came when they heard noise just as well as she did. He’d put on the guards without a word about it, because he understood about the biting.

  No—he knew. He just didn’t care. And that thought made her want to put a hand on the back of his neck, and shake him. Care, she thought, at him. Care, for me.

  “I saw you,” he said after so long a moment that it made every nerve in her body jump. Her hackles rose as though he’d suddenly become a zombie and lurched at her.

  She just didn’t know what he was going to say, that was the thing. It was obvious something messy was coming but she just couldn’t get a handle on it. Plus—why did this have to happen here, out in the big, bad world? Couldn’t they have had this conversation about him being her hero back at the cabin?

  Then they could have taken their time and cried and afterwards had frantic sex.

  Though she had to say, the first two parts of that sounded much worse than the quick painless band-aid rip this was going to be.

  “I couldn’t get at you at first. Nowhere to land in that parking lot. Plus it was drawing them, you know? Nothing louder than a chopper, that’s the thing.”

  She knew he’d understood about the noise. Knew it.

  “How did you two even get into that parking lot? You looking for food?”

  Oh, how blazing and brilliant that Costco had looked, when they’d first seen it! We’ll clear it out and fucking live in it, Kelsey had said.

  “We were slowly starting to starve to death,” she replied, then regretted it. It was the truth but it seemed to punch him in the gut a little.

  “I wish I could have saved her, too. She was just on the wrong side, you know? That fucking SUV was in the way when I fired, so even when they let up and tried to come for me, she was trapped behind it.”

  At first, she couldn’t fathom what he meant. He’d snatched the gun then fired at the zombies coming toward them. Not at the ones streaming through the car-aisles in Kelsey’s direction. She even remembered screaming at him to cut them down, to give her back the gun and let her go after Kelsey—despite the bitten blood Kelsey had already splattered on her arm

  But then it came to her. It came in a great rush of awfulness. This was as bad as she’d predicted. She’d known—all the time she’d known. But it was still worse. Oh so much worse.

  He hadn’t fired at the ones coming in their direction. They hadn’t even been coming for her and Jamie, anyway. They’d been going for Kelsey, too. So he’d fired to get their attention. She even remembered him shoving her just before he did it, shouting at her to run in the direction of the building that held his chopper.

  No silencer, she thought, shortly before heat prickled through her in a great wave. There was a silencer on her gun, no questions asked. But he hadn’t wanted one on his.

  “Jamie, look at me,” she said. It was important to say. He had to know. “You understand that if you die for me, I won’t be able to go on living? You get that, right? I just won’t go on. I’ve had enough, it’s too much. I can’t be the only one to survive, ever again. It’s my turn next. Do you understand?”

  He wouldn’t look at her. He said sure, but he wouldn’t look.

  “You take care of yourself, Jamie. You take care of yourself like you’re made of something more precious than gold. Because it would put a bullet in my head just as sure as if it had happened to see you go down.”

  It was only after she’d said the words, that she realized they were true.

  “I get it, honey,” he said then. Which was better than nothing. Plus his voice sounded kind of hoarse in a way that almost had her believing—maybe he wouldn
’t put his neck that far out on the line for her. Maybe he wouldn’t fire into the ground so they came for him instead of her.

  Maybe.

  “And it wasn’t your fault with Kelsey. It’s never your fault. No matter how many times you didn’t see anybody, or couldn’t land, or couldn’t get to someone in time—”

  “Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven times,” he said then she had to face the reason for his discomfort, too. The reason Blake had walked away.

  Twenty-seven. Jesus.

  “Blake stopped coming with me after a while. It was just…”

  He didn’t really have to say. The words soul-destroying came to mind anyway. Sometimes she wondered why they never talked about this stuff—the reason he’d been there, the things him and Blake had done before, if they’d planned to bring someone back—but most of the time she knew. It was obvious.

  “I saw two kids, one time—they were living in that quarry, I reckon. Pretty neat set-up, but, of course, I couldn’t land. I tried firing from the chopper ‘cause I could see those fuckers sneaking up on the pair of them…” He shrugged but there was still that crackle at the back of his voice. “But it just made things worse. Probably for the best. What the hell would we have done with a coupla kids? I just didn’t think about kids when I started stocking the place up. No clothes for them, you know? Nothing for them to play with.”

  She thought about saying you have the board games, but that just seemed so inane and small in the face of the stuff he was suddenly pouring out. She remembered that dread like a wall of water back in the chopper and almost laughed over it. Twenty serious words from him and any of that dread fell by the wayside.

  Instead, the urge to cuddle him in the middle of no man’s land welled up, like a sickness. He deserved it, for all the times she’d thought about whether he’d known this was coming and kind of hated him for it.

  How could you hate someone who worried about whether clothes would fit kids he hadn’t been able to save?

  “I worried that I’d be the only one to survive, constantly. So I get it, June-bug. I get not wanting someone else to die instead of you.”