I’m helpless, and forced to watch as she’s torn to pieces by the pack of zombies. They swarm over her, tearing away at her clothing to get to the warm flesh beneath. Blood spurts through the air, staining the snow of a nearby tree as Naomi screams, finding enough life left in her only to lose it in a heartbeat. A gap in the pack opens up, and I catch one last glimpse of her blood-streaked face. Her lifeless eyes are locked on mine, and I swear I can see the accusation in them.
I close my eyes against the carnage, but I can still hear her screams echoing in my head even though they’ve long since stopped.
Chapter Sixteen
The gate creaks as it closes behind us, protecting us from the zombies that followed us back to the lab. They’re gathered by the fence, reaching their hands through in an attempt to grab us with their nasty, deadly claws, but Ryder pulls me away from the fence and well out of their reach. I just stare at them as they try to get close to us. I should want to scream at them, put them out of their misery, but I don’t feel any anger right now. I don’t feel anything right now. There’s no anger, no sadness, no hatred—just a numb feeling that seeps into my bones and reaches to my very core.
I stare at the fence, unable to look away as I move closer to it until I’m just outside their reach. Several of them have blood smeared over their faces and hands, and I wonder if any of it belongs to Naomi or if those ones are still feasting on her remains. They’ll probably stay in the woods until they’ve stripped her bones clean and there’s nothing left to reanimate. One zombie wouldn’t have been able to finish her before she reanimated, and we might have been able to turn her back with the cure, but with a pack of that size…
She’s gone. There’s no chance to bring her back. She died for nothing, and it’s my fault…
Ryder puts his hand on my shoulder, and I look back at him, narrowing my eyes. “Don’t touch me.”
He hesitates, his eyes wide with worry at the tone in my voice. I don’t blame him. I can hear the coldness in my voice, and I’ve never been that way with him before. But right now, when I look at him, all I see is him abandoning Naomi to die alone in those woods. Instead of helping me try to save her, he decided to value my life above hers, and it doesn’t seem fair to me. She should still be here with us, and she might have been if it weren’t for Ryder’s feelings for me. In a way, I’m the reason that Naomi is dead. It’s because Ryder cared for me more than he cared for her.
I wonder if he feels any guilt about his decision. I’m sure he does, since he’s taken it upon himself to do his best to protect us and lead us in the right direction, but I have no doubt that if given the choice, he’d make the same exact decision a second time around. Ryder’s feelings for me put the rest of our group at a disadvantage—a dangerous one that might cost them their lives. I wonder how the rest of the group will feel about him leaving Naomi behind for my sake.
“Sam, we have to get you inside,” Ryder says gently. “You need to sit down for a little bit.”
I look back at him again, but don’t move away from the fence. I can hear them gnashing their teeth, eager to tear into my flesh, but I can’t be bothered to feel any terror. Just annoyance that these creatures are still a threat to us. That I lost another person I cared about when this miracle cure is so close that I can practically taste it. We’re so close to the finish line that things like this shouldn’t be happening. It should have been happiness and hope from here on out, but now there’s just another black mark on my heart, one that’s my fault.
One that I can’t fix.
I promised her. I promised her that she would be okay. I lied…
“Take it inside,” Ryder orders from behind me. “Hand her over to Dr. Richards so he can do whatever the hell he wants with her. I don’t care, so long as some good comes from this.” His boots crunch over the snow as he comes to stand behind me, but he makes no move to touch me again. “Sam? You can’t stay out here forever. You’ll freeze, and Naomi wouldn’t want that. You know that.”
“I do,” I admit, begrudgingly. I deserve to stand out here in the snow and freeze to death, but Ryder is right. Naomi wouldn’t want that. She’d want us to finish the task we set out to do. But I can’t find the power to move away from the fence and back into the lab. There’s a painful twisting in my gut that makes me feel like I’d be abandoning her if I leave this fence and close myself up in the nice warm lab. I want to be out here for her, not safe and warm when she’ll never be those things again.
But I know Ryder is right. Naomi would want me inside doing whatever I could to help Dr. Richards with his cure. So with one last look at the woods beyond the fence—where Naomi’s remains will rest forever—I turn away and head for the front door. I can feel Ryder’s eyes boring into my back, but I don’t have the patience or the heart to comfort him about my condition right now. If I pretend to be alright for him, I’ll truly fall apart, and there will be no fixing me. So for now, I have to weigh my own sanity above his love and worry for me. I can soothe his worries later.
The door is still open, and I head inside, making my way down to the lab where I’m sure Reese has already handed off our catch to Dr. Richards. Reese is lurking outside the doorway, talking to Aaron, Madison, Todd, and Daisy. Daisy is sobbing into Madison’s chest, clutching on to her for dear life, and I feel even more guilt than before. Daisy and Naomi were becoming very close, especially in the days since Naomi saved her life in that freezing river, and now she’s gone. Daisy just lost another person close to her—another Rose—just gone in an instant, with no chance to even say goodbye.
I have no idea how this is going to affect her, but I’m sure it won’t be good. From what Madison has told me and from what I’ve seen for myself, Daisy has been very fragile in the past, and she doesn’t handle loss very well. We’ll have to keep a close eye on her in the upcoming days to make sure she doesn’t relapse into the shell of the person she was when she lost her sister.
I can’t even look Daisy in the eye as I join them. Before I can apologize for losing Naomi, Madison throws her arms around me, attacking me in a wild hug that threatens to cut off my air. She chokes back a sob, and I can hear the pain in her voice when she says, “I’m s-so sorry. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
I hold onto Madison tightly, afraid that I might fall apart if I let go of her now. I breathe in deeply, taking in her familiar scent, hoping it will force me to feel something, anything! But there’s still this dark numbness inside that scares me. Our humanity is all we have left, and I can’t let it go. I can’t end up like Frank and others like him, people who lost sight of their moral compass—or perhaps never had one to begin with. If I don’t break through this numb feeling, there will be nothing human left of me.
“Sam, what happened out there?” Aaron asks gently. “Reese says he didn’t see it.”
“Naomi and I were walking together through the woods, talking about how she was glad we made the decision to come here, when a zombie came out of nowhere and grabbed her away from me. We couldn’t hear it approaching because of all the noise the girl we had was making, so it was on us before we knew what was happening. I put it down, but there was so much blood, and she was so weak from blood loss. I tried to carry her back to the lab so Dr. Richards could help her, but I was too weak, and a pack of them caught up to us and tried to take her from me. I tried to hang on, but they started eating her right there in front of me.”
Daisy gasps, her eyes wide in shock. “No,” she moans, hiding her face in her hands, shaking her head as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “No, no, no, no!”
“I tried to hang on to her. I couldn’t just let her go, but Ryder knew she wasn’t going to make it, and made me leave her behind. He had to carry me away from her because I didn’t want to let her die alone. We left her there to be eaten alive, and made our way back to the fence with the captive zombie girl.” I stop, looking at all of them. Unsurprisingly, they’re all at a loss for words, but Reese is the first one to recover.
&n
bsp; “Sam, it’s not your fault that she’s gone.”
“I didn’t say it was!” I snap, narrowing my eyes as I turn on him.
He holds his hands up defensively. “I know you, Sam. I know you well enough to know that you blame yourself, even though you shouldn’t. And I just want you to know that nobody here blames you, either. Nobody except yourself. You did everything you could to save her, and I know that Naomi knew that in the very end. She saw how hard you fought for her.”
I nod, but I’m not sure if I totally believe his words. I know his intent is to calm me down, and it works a little, but that guilt is still there, bubbling dangerously close to the surface. They may not blame me, but it doesn’t matter. I blame myself more than enough on their behalf. None of them were there with Naomi in her final moments of life; none of them know the shame of leaving a friend behind to die. I don’t expect them to blame me outright, but I’m sure it’s there, even if they won’t admit it.
“Was Dr. Richards happy with the specimen we picked out for him?” I ask, looking at Reese again.
He hesitates, looking me over real quick before he answers. “He seemed okay with it. He wasn’t too happy that she was missing a couple of fingers, but he said it would make for an interesting test later. We strapped her down to another table beside the man, and he injected her with the serum and started her timer. He’ll let us know if anything changes with either of them, but there’s nothing else we can do for him for now.”
I nod. After everything that’s happened, at least Dr. Richards has his second test subject. Even though I lost Naomi, at least the testing of the cure can continue, and we still have a chance to change the world. Naomi’s brothers might have a chance to live again, even if she won’t be around to see it. They’ll never know that she bravely fought for the cure that will save them, and I make a silent promise to myself to tell them what a hero she was if I ever get the chance to meet them.
“I’m going to lie down for awhile,” I say quietly, staring through the glass barrier into the lab. Dr. Richards gets close to the zombie girl, quickly jotting down note after note in his little notebook, documenting all sorts of things I have zero interest in at the moment. If things had gone differently today, I might have wanted to stick around and see how things go, but right now, I can’t bring myself to care. The testing will continue on without me, and I need to get some rest and take some time to wind down and collect my thoughts.
“Okay,” Madison says gently. “We’ll let you know if anything happens. We’ll tell Ryder where you’ve gone and he can keep you company. You shouldn’t be alone right now, Sam. It’s not healthy at a time like this.”
“I don’t need him to keep me company,” I say slowly. The words sound weird even to my own ears, and as hard as I try, I can’t keep the bite out of them. “I’ll be fine on my own.”
As I leave, I hear Madison say very quietly, “I don’t think she blames herself, Reese. I think she blames Ryder…”
She sounds as bewildered as I feel about my conflicting emotions, and I don’t blame her. I bite my lip and try to hold back the tears that are threatening to come once again. Her awful words ring true in my mind, and I can’t stop thinking them over and over again. Part of me does blame Ryder, but Madison is wrong. I blame myself even more…
I leave them crowded together near the lab, not caring to hear the rest of their conversation. I need some solitude right now. I need my bed, a place to hide away from the world and my problems for a little while. I close the bedroom door behind me, hoping to shut out the rest of the world, and I collapse in bed, burying myself with the covers until everything is blocked out but the pain in my chest. Then, when I’m alone in the darkness, I let myself cry for Naomi until sleep claims me some time later.
Surprisingly, Ryder doesn’t come seek me out after our disastrous collection earlier. I’m incredibly thankful that he’s giving me some time alone to work things through on my own, and even though I’m still hurt that he let Naomi die in order to save me, in a strange way, it makes me love him even more. He knows I’m in pain right now, and even though I know him well enough to know that he wants to be here for me in this trying time, he’s still giving me the space he knows I need.
He does come for me later, some time after dinner. He brings a plate of food with him, and he sets it down on the bedside table next to me without so much as a word. Then he undresses for the night and climbs into bed beside me, lying under the covers and leaving my thoughtful silence intact. I haven’t had an appetite since returning to the lab, but the smell of the food he’s left for me has my mouth watering and my stomach growling. Even though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep it down, I still venture out from under the covers and examine the food.
It looks like some of the canned ham we found during our first kitchen excursion, along with a pile of instant mashed potatoes and gravy. It smells so good, and it’s still steaming. He must have reheated it for me, and it’s such a thoughtful thing that I turn to him and say, “Thank you.” My first words to him since I left him standing alone at the fence earlier, and they have an immediate effect on him. His shoulders relax and I see the tension leave his body. It’s then that I realize he was waiting for me to scream at him or hit him, and I remember the way I acted in the woods earlier, screaming at him and kicking at him.
An intense feeling of shame floods through me, and I peek at him through the darkness. “I’m sorry for the way I acted earlier. I shouldn’t have hit you like that, or treated you the way I did.” He’s silent for a minute, and as he thinks of something to say to me, I dig into the food. Canned ham is a new experience, and it’s one I actually enjoy. I take another bite, feeling the warmth slowly return to my body and rejuvenate me.
“It’s okay,” he says finally, just as I’m beginning to worry that I’ve damaged our relationship beyond repair. “I understand how you were feeling earlier, and in the heat of the moment, I can’t say I wouldn’t have acted the same way. If someone ever tried to make me leave you behind, no matter how lost the cause was…I might kill them. So believe me when I say that I understand why you hate me right now.”
His words startle me, and I stop mid bite. I’ve been so focused on my own pain and suffering these last few hours that I haven’t even really stopped to think how he must feel. Once again, I feel ashamed for my actions and words. Naomi wasn’t just important to me and the others are going to miss her as well. It can’t have been easy for Ryder to leave her behind like that. He made a choice in the heat of the moment. There was no time to think about the consequences of his actions, only time to act. And that’s what he did. He acted, and he saved my life in the process. And I repaid him by hitting him and screaming at him like a spoiled child.
I set the plate in my lap. “Ryder, I don’t hate you,” I say, my voice cracking as my eyes begin to burn again. “How could you even think that? After everything you’ve done for us? You’re the reason I’m still alive—several times over—and I won’t ever be able to repay you for that. I was angry and scared, and I acted out of frustration. I didn’t mean anything I said in those woods.” Truthfully, I don’t even remember the things I screamed at him, and a part of me is grateful for it now.
He looks at me, and I swear he looks older than he did hours ago when I saw him last.
“I know you don’t really hate me,” he says softly. “You and I could never hate each other, not after everything we’ve been through. But I just keep thinking about the look in your eyes back in those woods, the betrayal I saw on your face. And the more I keep thinking about it, the more I feel like I made the wrong choice, like I should have stayed and helped you fight for her. But I was so scared of losing you, and I only had what felt like a split second to react…I panicked, Sam.”
I move closer to him until our shoulders are touching. “Its okay, Ryder. If I had to choose between your life and the life of a friend, your life would be the most important to me. It’s an awful thing to admit, but it’s the truth. If I
had been in your shoes, I think I would have done the same thing you did. I would have left her behind to save your life.” The second the words are out of my mouth and out in the open, I feel my lungs constrict and I start to choke on my tears. I’ve been so angry at him the past few hours even knowing deep down that I would have done the exact same things if our roles had been reversed.
I set my plate of half eaten food aside, knowing I won’t be able to force down another bite without being sick. Already my stomach is in knots and food isn’t going to help. Ryder sits up and pulls me closer, wrapping his arms around me as tightly as he can. I bury my face in his chest and cry—loudly and pitifully—until there’s nothing left inside of me but regret. But knowing that Ryder and I would have both made the same choice eases some of the guilt I’ve been feeling about my earlier behavior.
Knowing that Ryder would have reacted the same way if someone had tried to force him to leave me behind has me feeling better. I still feel awful for the way I treated him, but him admitting that he would have done the same thing convinces me that it was a normal reaction in a situation like that. I lost a friend and lashed out, which any normal, still sane person would do in this world. Even though some of the guilt is gone, the pain still remains.
Naomi would have fought tooth and nail to protect one of her friends. She willingly jumped into frigid water to save Daisy’s life. If our roles had been reversed, she would have stayed until the very end to save me. I still failed her, and nothing Ryder says will change that…
Her loss hits me again, pressing down on my chest like a weight that I can’t move. I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t even feel. The only thing I know right now is pain and grief. I think about her smile, which seemed so rare but made me so happy when I got to see it. I think about the love she still had for her brothers, and the hope she had that she might get to see them again someday. And now that hope is snuffed out, like a candle in the rain.
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