The Loudest Silence: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Novel (Oklahoma Wastelands Book 1)

by Kate L. Mary

  “That’s my point, Regan.” He blew out a long breath like he was trying to stay calm. “You know what could happen if those guys come here looking for her.”

  “I know, okay? Don’t think I’ve forgotten. If that happens, at least I’ll be able to say I didn’t lose sight of who I am.” I turned away from him again. “I’m tired and done arguing about it. I’m going to bed.”

  Kellan didn’t follow me any further or reply. I looked over my shoulder when I reached the stairs and found him standing in the same place, watching me. The intense expression in his brown eyes made it impossible to look at him for long, so I hurried down the stairs, leaving him behind.

  12

  Sleep was impossible. I lay in bed for hours, tossing and turning while it eluded me. My brain was too busy, my thoughts focused on the girl and Kellan, and the group of men who were out there somewhere, searching the country for people who were immune. I was tired, so tired that the thought of getting up was exhausting, but after a few hours of restlessness, I gave in and climbed out of bed.

  We’d been careful over the years to make sure we kept the clocks working—living underground, it was the only way to know if it was the middle of the night or noon—so I knew it was barely five o’clock in the morning and most likely too early for anyone else to be up. Being underground made it difficult to maintain a normal sleep pattern, and it wasn’t unusual for people to be up at all hours of the day and night, but thanks to the late night interruption Harper had given us, everyone else would no doubt be in bed for a few hours still. Everyone except Kellan. He would be up, diligently keeping watch like he thought someone might break down our doors at any moment.

  I thought about him as I got dressed. Had my feelings for him changed because he was the only guy my age I knew, or would it have happened even if things had never changed? If a virus hadn’t killed off most of the population, if my family was still alive and living in Altus, would things be different? There was no way of knowing for sure.

  Once I was dressed, I headed out. The rest of the shelter was silent and dark until I reached the industrial hall where the control room sat. There the lights were on, casting a soft glow on the cement walls and floors, and the occasional beep or click sounded through the otherwise quiet hallway. My bare feet slapped against the cool floor as I walked, echoing back to me. I was still ten feet from the control room when I heard the telltale sound of a chair being rolled across the floor.

  A second later, Kellan stuck his head out the open doorway. “Knew it was you.”

  He disappeared back into the room, the wheels on his chair squeaking as he pushed it back into place, and by the time I’d made it to the room, he was once again staring at the monitors.

  He didn’t look my way when I stopped in the doorway.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Thought you might want a break.”

  “Nope.” Kellan leaned closer to the wall of monitors and tapped one of the screens. “We have company.”

  I stood up straighter, my arms dropping to my sides. “People?”

  His eyes darted my way, sweeping over me briefly and causing every hair on my body to stand on end.

  When he was once again focused on the screen, he said, “Zombies.”

  “Oh.” I relaxed. “Not a surprise. Did it rain?”

  Kellan shook his head. “Nope. Got pretty windy for a while there, but no more than a few drops.”

  My attention was drawn back to Kellan when he clicked a few buttons, maneuvering the outdoor camera so he could get a better view of the area. Like he’d said, there were zombies outside the fence. Not a lot of them, but enough that we’d have to go out and take care of them.

  “More have shown up in the last hour,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen as he panned the camera around.

  I took a step closer, counting as the zombies appeared on the screen. Having a group of the dead show up wasn’t unusual. It happened at least once a week, but it never failed to unnerve me how they would trickle in one after the other. Like they were drawn to the area.

  “You think they’re drawn here by the others, or is it the animals?”

  “No clue.” Kellan turned to face me. “But it looks like you’re going to be able to get some more practice in.”

  “This isn’t even close to the same thing.” I waved to the screen. “There will be a fence separating us. How will that prepare me for being out there?”

  “Do you have to fight me on everything?”

  “Do you have to be such a dick about everything?” I snapped in return.

  Kellan’s mouth twitched. “You’re cute when you get all riled up.”

  I took a step back, too floored by his words to respond. Did he mean it, or was it yet another indication that he saw me as a sister? Like I was cute in a little kid way, not in a way that made him want to kiss me.

  “What?” he said when I didn’t respond.

  “Nothing.” I reached back and ran my fingers through my brown hair, sweeping it into a ponytail and securing it with the hair tie I wore around my wrist.

  Kellan tilted his head to the side, watching me, and his dark hair fell across his forehead. I waited for him to push it back, but he didn’t, and my fingers twitched as the urge to do it for him swept over me.

  I curled my hands into a fist and took a step back. “I’m going to get some breakfast for Harper. She was probably too nervous to get much sleep.”

  “You’d be surprised.” He turned back to face the screens. “She’s been on her own for five days, hiding from men who tried to kill her. I bet she passed out pretty fast.”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged even though he couldn’t see me. “Either way, the sun is coming up, and I’m sure she’d like to get out of there.”

  Kellan twisted the chair so he was half facing me. “Make sure you’re armed at all times, and don’t let her out of your sight.”

  I exhaled because I had the urge to snap at him, but I was tired of bickering. Between Emma, Blake, and Cade, we had to listen to enough fighting.

  “I’m not worried,” I assured him, “but I’ll be sure to keep an eye on her.”

  “Okay, then.” Before he turned back to face the wall of screens, he said, “And don’t tell her anything she can use against you. Got it?”

  I swallowed. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Good.” He nodded once. “It’s important, Regan.”

  “I know. You don’t have to remind me of that.”

  “Good,” he said again before turning back to the screens.

  It was after six by the time I made it back, and when I passed the control room, Kellan glanced my way. It was a quick look, but enough to make every inch of my body tingle. I walked faster, rolling my eyes at my own ridiculousness. More than anything, I wished I could go back to how things had been before I realized I liked Kellan. It would make life a lot less complicated.

  When I reached the holding cell, I typed in the code with my free hand, holding the tray of food in the other. The red light on the keypad turned green, and the lock clicked open. I gave a small knock and paused for a moment before turning the knob, wanting to give Harper some warning. When I pulled the door open, she was sitting up, and at the sight of me she scooted further back on the bed until her back was pressed up against the wall.

  I lifted the tray and gave her a smile. “It’s okay. I just brought you something to eat.”

  Her eyes flitted to the steaming bowl on the tray, but she said nothing, and she didn’t move away from the wall.

  I went in anyway and lowered myself onto the bed, as far away from her as I could sit, before setting the tray between us. Steam rose from the bowl, and the small room was instantly filled with the earthy scent of stew. Harper’s stomach rumbled so loudly that I would have laughed if I hadn’t thought it would scare her.

  “Go ahead.” I nodded to the bowl. “It’s good. I promise.”

  Her eyes still on me, Harper rea
ched for it. She looked away long enough to snatch it up, but the second it was in her hands, she was staring at me again. She looked even jumpier than she had last night, and I couldn’t really blame her. We had locked her in a room, after all.

  “I’m sorry about this.” I gestured to the small room so she’d know what I meant. “We had a bad experience a few years ago when we let someone new in. Now we have to be careful.”

  Harper slipped a spoonful of stew into her mouth, her eyes still on me. She chewed slowly, studying me the whole time, and when she’d swallowed, she said, “What kind of bad experience?”

  “We lost a lot of people.” The words stuck in my throat as the memories of that day came back, and I had to swallow. “We found a woman out in the middle of nowhere. She was alone, or so we thought, and we brought her back here. We didn’t think she would be a threat. She was one lone woman, and she was scared.” I looked away when tears pricked at my eyes. “In the middle of the night while everyone was sleeping, she went from room to room slitting throats. We lost most of our people.”

  I looked up to find Harper frozen, the spoon inches from her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “What happened to her?”

  “Kellan woke up and found her standing over his bed with a knife.”

  This time when my throat tightened, it wasn’t from the memory of the people we’d lost, but the thought of what else could have happened. Kellan could have died that day, and the knowledge never failed to take my breath away.

  I forced the lump of emotion clogging my throat back down and said, “He wrestled her to the ground and got the knife away from her. That was when we found out what she’d done. When we questioned her, we learned she wasn’t alone after all. She and her people had seen us in Altus, at the market, and they’d followed us back here. They came up with a plan to take over the shelter.” I looked away. “We’ve been more careful since then.”

  The click of metal against the bowl was the only sound for a while after that, as if Harper knew I needed the silence to collect myself.

  We didn’t talk about that day much, although we didn’t avoid mentioning it either. Even three years later, it was still too hard. We’d gone from nineteen to seven in one night, and then down to six only two days later. Maggie had held on longer than any of us thought possible, but with medical supplies scarce, she’d eventually succumbed to her injuries.

  “What did you do with her?” Harper said, making me jump, and I lifted my head to find the girl’s big blue eyes trained on me.

  My thoughts were so focused on Maggie that for a moment I wasn’t sure who she was asking about. “Who?”

  “The woman who killed your friends.”

  I looked away. “Kellan and Blake took care of it.”

  They’d killed her. I knew it, but again it was something we didn’t talk about. Things like that weighed on Kellan, but in this world it was a necessity. Kill or be killed.

  “We couldn’t let her go.” I met Harper’s gaze again, wanting to explain. Wanting to defend not only Kellan’s actions, but also the part I’d played in it all. “You understand that, right? If we’d let her go, she would have come back. She would have brought her friends back.”

  Harper’s eyebrows jumped at the mention of the woman’s friends. “Did they come here?”

  “They did.” Once again, I looked down. “We were ready for them.”

  “You killed them, too.”

  “We did what we needed to do to survive.”

  “We all do,” Harper said.

  The clink of her spoon against the side of the bowl resumed, and I relaxed. When I ventured a look up, she was focused on her food. Her expression was thoughtful, but not judgmental. She’d been in this world as long as I had, had survived nine years of the apocalypse, so odds were she’d seen some of the same kinds of things. You didn’t survive outside settlements like Altus or Quartz Mountain without getting your hands dirty, and there were very few people who didn’t have someone else’s blood on their hands. I hadn’t pulled the trigger when Kellan put a bullet in that woman’s head, but I hadn’t tried to stop it either. Her death was as much my responsibility as it was Kellan and Blake’s.

  Harper finished her stew and set the bowl aside, and for a moment we sat in silence. She stared at me with those impossibly large eyes while my heart thumped erratically from the memories and feelings our conversation had conjured up.

  When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I stood. “It’s early, but if you want, I can show you around a little.”

  “You’ll let me out?” Harper hadn’t moved, and she had to tilt her head way back to look me in the eye. Somehow, it made her seem younger and even more vulnerable than before, which only made me want to protect her.

  “Of course.” I took a step toward the door. “You won’t be allowed to have free rein of the shelter until we know we can trust you, but you’re not our prisoner. We need to protect ourselves.”

  She stood, her eyes darting past me as she did. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “Good,” I said then turned and headed out of the holding cell.

  Harper trailed after me like she wasn’t sure what to do, and even when I’d reached the control room, she was a good five feet behind. I stopped in the doorway, waiting for her to catch up, and Kellan spun the chair so it was facing me. He was focused on the hall at my back, though, waiting for Harper.

  She stopped when she reached me, keeping her distance both from me and from the room. Her eyes seemed to have doubled in size, almost like she was seeing the world for the first time. Not that I could blame her; we were living in a shelter few people knew existed. Of course, she hadn’t even seen the half of it yet.

  Harper’s gaze moved to Kellan, who was studying her carefully, and then past him to the wall of monitors.

  Her mouth formed an O and she took a step closer. “That’s how you knew I was out there.”

  “We always have someone on duty,” I said, nodding to where Kellan sat in front of the screens. “And there’s an alarm we can activate if we need to wake everyone in the rest of the shelter.”

  Harper tore her gaze from the screens and focused on me. “How do you have electricity? Running water? I didn’t think anyone had those things anymore.”

  I glanced toward Kellan before answering, not wanting to be accused yet again of doing something foolish.

  He crossed his arms and leaned back, his gaze still on her. “A wind turbine and solar panels.”

  Harper nodded, and then shook her head. She turned her eyes toward the ceiling, her gaze following the pipes and wires moving down the industrial hallway. “What is this place?”

  “A shelter,” I said, causing Kellan to lift his eyebrows. I rolled my eyes and waved at Harper. “Look at her. She didn’t come to run us off. She had no idea what was down here.”

  Harper’s eyes snapped back and forth between Kellan and me. “Is that what you think? That I knew you were here and wanted to run you out?” She waved to the bite on her arm. “I wouldn’t have let myself get bitten for that, and I wouldn’t have let it go so long it got infected.”

  Kellan pressed his lips together before nodding twice. “Okay. I guess that’s a valid argument.”

  Harper waited only a moment before repeating her question. “What is this place?”

  “A shelter.” I waved down the hall. “I’ll show you around.”

  I turned away from the control room, half expecting Kellan to call after me, but he said nothing. When I snuck a peek his way, his gaze was on Harper. Not me. She was too young for him, but that didn’t stop jealousy from curling through me. It was stupid. Kellan was watching her because he wanted to make sure she really was on the up and up. It had nothing to do with the fact that her big blue eyes and delicate features made her utterly adorable. He was just being Kellan—attentive.

  Harper was silent as I led her down the hall, and even when we reached the first room that led into the nicer part of the shelter, she didn’
t utter more than a gasp of surprise. Her eyes were glued to the computers shoved up against the wall, but once we reached the stairs, she was craning her neck in an effort to see past me.

  I couldn’t imagine what this place looked like to her after nine years of living in the apocalypse. As a child, coming here after weeks of hiding, it had seemed like a palace, but back then the miracle of electricity and running water had barely earned a passing thought. If I’d come here now, after years without those luxuries, my reaction would have no doubt been completely different.

  When we stepped into the common room, Harper froze. “What is this?”

  “It’s going to be a lot to take in,” I said slowly, “but this is only the beginning.”

  Her eyes darted my way. “What do you mean?”

  “This shelter is twelve stories deep, and back when it was made, it catered to very rich people. It was a luxury shelter.”

  “But why?” Harper moved past me to the bar. She ran her hand over the smooth wood surface before her focus moved to the little theater beyond the sitting area. “Why would anyone need all this?”

  “People didn’t really know what they needed, I guess.” I shrugged because it was the best explanation I could come up with. “I don’t know. I was a kid when I came here, and by then the group was pretty settled in.”

  Her gaze was still taking everything in when she said, “You were rich?”

  “No. None of us were supposed to be here except Cade. He came from a wealthy family and had a rather eccentric uncle who was positive the end of the world was coming.” I laughed at my own choice of words, and Harper’s gaze snapped my way. “I guess he wasn’t as crazy as everyone thought, was he? Anyway, Cade inherited this place when his uncle died. He was in the process of trying to sell it when the virus hit.”

  “So, he came here,” Harper whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Harper nodded a few times, her gaze moving over everything again before stopping on the stairs. “What’s down here?”