“Whoa, Hannah…we don’t know how that would’ve affected him.” Cody says realistically. “Ian and Sarah said it only works on certain people. Who knows what the qualifications are? And, honestly, I don’t think we could have gotten close enough to try; how would we have held him still?”
Looking down at the lifeless man on the floor, I know he’s right. Still, I can’t help but feel sorry we ever stopped here.
“We should leave,” Cody warns, looking around the store, and back toward the parking lot. “We made a racket; someone might’ve heard something.”
Cody doesn’t need to justify his worry. More stricken might be on the way—or more violent, sadistic men. I lead the way as we move through the destroyed room, stepping around broken merchandise and destroyed displays until we reach the door. I give one last look at Braulio over the counter, wishing this weren’t the last memory I’d have of him. Then I push open the exit and check the area for danger, noting how dark it’s become.
We run out in the fresh air toward the bus, leaving the fetid little shop of horrors behind.
“Are you okay, Hannah?”
I nod and study the crowbar in my hands. Since our encounter, I’ve cleaned myself and the weapon. If any monsters—afflicted or not—heard the gunshots or commotion, we’ve seen no evidence. Just to be certain, we wait a while, ready to drive at a moment’s notice. No dangers appear. Clouds part and a starry sky illuminates the pavement around us. A few trees flank the edges of the property, their limbs stretching over the parking lot like long, gnarled hands. Dark powerline poles rise from the cracked asphalt.
“It’s so black out,” I say, nervously looking around.
“It feels strange without the streetlights,” Cody agrees. “But the sky looks brighter, in a weird way.”
The empty lot adds to my feeling of displaced time.
“I’m sorry that had to happen,” Cody tells me, turned sideways in one of the middle bus seats, facing me. “I know they were people you knew.”
I fold and unfold my hands in my lap. “They were nice. I was hoping to find them alive.” Glancing out the window at the brutal world in which we’ve found ourselves, I say, “I can see how foolish that was now.” Neither of us have to say what we’re both thinking: what does this mean for the rest of our relatives and friends?
What does it mean for Mom and Jared?
Leaning forward, I rest my head against the bus seat and study the dark floor.
“What are you thinking?” Cody says quietly, little more than a shadow sitting across the aisle.
“I was just thinking how unfair this all is,” I say, shaking my head. “Pretty much everyone we know must be dead or infected. Almost everyone I remember is probably gone, and I’ll never know what happened to them.”
Cody doesn’t say anything. What can he say?
Looking down at the hands I used to swing the crowbar—the hands I used to slaughter Art—I feel confused. “Why are we alive?”
“I wish I knew,” Cody says sympathetically.
“Why are we here, and someone else isn’t? Why was Art infected, while we were brought back?”
Cody stays silent. Of course, he has no answers.
“I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out what’s going on that I haven’t had time to ask why I’m sitting here, and whether I should be.” I shake my head guiltily. “If Sarah and Ian hadn’t found me behind that school, I’d still be out there, hunting people. Or maybe I would’ve died when this all started.”
“And yet you’re here, and so am I,” Cody says.
I sigh long and hard. “Before all this happened, the only things I thought about were posting the funniest meme on Instagram, or getting an overpriced drink at Starbucks. I didn’t do anything worth saving me for; at least, nothing I can think of.” I look sideways out the window. “Hell, I didn’t even get amazing grades in school. I played field hockey, but I never broke any records. And I certainly didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.”
Cody stays silent a moment before asking, “What were you going to do when you graduated?”
“I told my parents I was going to Central Connecticut,” I tell him. “But it wasn’t a firm plan. My aunt got her degree there. She taught elementary school, and she always found it rewarding. I thought maybe it was something I could do. Or maybe I just wanted summers off.” I smile wistfully. “That’s what my friends teased. I didn’t have a passion for it like my aunt did. Or at least, not that I’d realized yet…”
“You had your life more together than I did.” Cody laughs sadly. “I wasn’t even in school.”
I immediately feel like an idiot. I’m talking about college, while Cody was living in a car. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—"
“It’s cool,” Cody says understandingly.
“What I’m trying to say is that I was ordinary.”
Cody thinks on that for a moment. “Maybe that’s exactly why you’re here. You didn’t have a proper chance. And now you’ve got that.”
I nod, wanting to believe he’s right.
Cody laughs. “Or maybe I’m full of it. What do I know? I was living in a Honda Civic, painting houses for pizza money.”
I smile, once again grateful for his companionship.
“Hey,” he says. “I got you something.” He reaches over the seat in front of him and grabs a flashlight, using it to illuminate something else: a Funko Pop Princess Leia.
I’m pretty speechless; stunned, in fact. I take it and smile, thanking him quickly because if I say any more, I’ll just start bawling. I put one hand on her huge head and close my eyes.
“I got a few comics, too.” He pulls a few issues of Suicide Squad off the seat next to him. “Maybe we can have that debate you promised.”
I smile through my pain. Taking the books out of their bags, we read them for a while, crouched between the seats under the flashlight’s glow. After a few issues, he agrees that the comic book Harley Quinn is just as hilarious as the movie one, and that Wolverine is the most bad-ass superhero.
After reading a while, he says, “We should probably get some rest. Especially after what you’ve been through. Sleep might help. If you want, I’ll take first watch.”
I nod; it’s the best I can do. Cody switches off the flashlight, while I grab a thin blanket and head for the back. I close my eyes, wondering how I’ll sleep.
I wish sleep was the worst thing I had to worry about.
16
Worst Fears
A girl slinks through the junkyard. She’s tall and thin, with long, black hair. She’s in her teens. Her dirty face is streaked with tears, and her lips quiver as she creeps past refrigerators and car parts and bicycles, whimpering. Her clothes—once stylish—are now a catchall for dirt, grime, and blood.
None of the details interest me as much as her wounded leg. A patch of blood seeps through her jeans. The girl’s hands are stained red from where she’s touched it. I salivate, envisioning the soft flesh beneath her clothes. Only layers of fabric separate me from a hard-won meal.
Only that and twenty feet.
I break from behind a wrecked automobile and run, barely aware of the shattered glass crunching under my torn shoes or the screams of fright erupting from the girl as she bolts. All thoughts are replaced by the innate urge to feed, to catch her and bring her to the ground, to rip and tear and claw until she stops struggling.
I’m one of the smaller ones. Normally I must fight off my competition to get a piece of whatever I’m chasing. But not today. I’ve found the girl by myself, and I’ll reap the rewards alone.
I dart over a smashed toaster oven, a cracked flatscreen TV, a pile of newspapers, barely registering the function of those objects, my sights focused on my prey. She screams. Her hair whips back and forth over her face. She limps and cries out as she maneuvers around mounds of trash that were once troves of treasure, her instinct to survive as strong as my urge to kill.
I let out an unintelligible screech. My shirt c
atches on the broken mirror of a Chevy, but I rip it free, cutting my arm in the process. I ignore what should be pain.
The girl is ten feet away. I close the gap.
Whether she’s weak or tired of fighting, I’m not sure, but the result will be the same. I’ll feast on her until my stomach feels bloated and my jaws are tired of chewing.
The girl reaches for something on the ground. I fall to four limbs, climbing over a twisted motorcycle, then leap.
I’m mid-air when the girl spins, brandishing a broken bottle. She’s too late. I collide with her, knock the bottle from her grasp, and hear it smash harmlessly on the ground. The girl shrieks as I topple her and pin her to the ground, tearing her clothes, revealing the prized flesh beneath.
As I lower my head to feed, I catch a glimpse of myself in the girl’s eyes. My hair is long and tangled; my lips are full and red, stained with the remnants of previous kills.
My name is Hannah Evans.
Or it used to be…
Because I’m dead again.
“No!” I thrash off my blanket, waking up with a scream. Jolting upright, I nearly fall off my seat, before catching myself. I touch my mouth, certain that my fingers will come away with blood. “I’m botched! I’m botched!” I scream.
“Hannah, calm down!” a voice says from my right.
I turn to find Cody settling me down, retrieving my blanket. He grips my arm, struggling to keep me quiet and calm. I gasp breaths and glance nervously out the windows, where a few thin beams of morning light glint off the bus windows. A squirrel darts from one end of the parking lot to the other, toting a nut in its teeth. Otherwise, the area is deserted.
“You’re okay…everything’s okay…” Cody reassures me.
Heart slamming, I look down at my clothes, searching for pieces of flesh, a mess worthy of the horror I experienced; the horror I caused.
“It was a nightmare. That’s it,” Cody reassures.
I nod, still caught between the real world and my awful dream. “Cody?” I ask, more to hear my own voice than to get his attention.
“I’m here.”
“If I’d turned back into the stricken, I wouldn’t be able to talk. Right?”
I lock eyes with my only friend, suddenly afraid that I’ll lunge at him, but my desire for violence has faded.
“You’re not botched, Hannah.” Cody smiles reassuringly. “You wouldn’t be having this conversation if you were. I promise.”
“It was a nightmare,” I repeat to convince myself. “But it was so vivid. There was this girl, and I chased her through a junkyard. She screamed—I was a monster! I ran after her, climbing over furniture and televisions and trash. She picked up a bottle, she…tried fending me off. But she couldn’t. I caught her, and I…”
Cody listens patiently.
“I killed her, Cody.”
I stop, unable to describe the sickening details of what came next. My teeth, sinking into her flesh. Her cries of horror. My reflection in her panicked, desperate eyes. Cody watches me ruefully, but he doesn’t seem surprised.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t have the nightmares.”
He says the word “nightmares,” but he means something else. A suspicion I can’t shake forces me to look down at myself again. Recalling the car door on which I’d snagged, I move my hands to my arm, sliding the fabric up, my heart thundering again. I expose the place where I’d felt and ignored the pain, dreading what I might find. Slowly, I turn my head and look down.
A jagged white scar blemishes my upper arm, right where it caught on the broken Chevy mirror in the dream.
No…
My eyes go wide; I lean forward again, nauseous. “It wasn’t a nightmare, Cody. It was a memory. Right?”
Cody doesn’t respond.
“Cody!” I demand, hoping he’ll correct me.
Cody puts his head in his hands. He rocks back and forth. “We’ve done a lot of bad things, Hannah.”
In a terrified denial, I rub the scar on my arm, as if I might smear away the awful realities of a vicious act I couldn’t control. I can’t imagine doing what I’d done in that dream. It’s so repulsive, so vile…so awful. I think of the putrid contents of my stomach in the grass by the bleachers. I can’t deny what it was any longer.
“The girl in my dream…?”
“…Is probably dead, like too many others,” Cody says sadly. “Remember what Sarah and Ian said about amnesia? I don’t remember anything, either, except for in nightmares. Thankfully, they fade. You’ll feel better when you get up and moving. The memories will go away.”
“Until I have another dream.”
Cody slumps in his seat, quiet.
Looking out the window at the encroaching daylight, I realize I must’ve slept through a whole night. Doesn’t matter; I’m exhausted. Drained.
“Do you still have the nightmares?”
“Every night.” Cody smiles sadly, and I notice the bags ringing his eyes. “Or for the past couple nights, at least.”
“How do you sleep?”
“I’ve only gotten a few hours a night,” he admits. “Every time I close my eyes, I’m terrified to lose consciousness because of what I’ll remember. But morning inevitably comes. I forget. And then I go through the same thing all over again.”
I run my fingers through my hair. Already, the details of the nightmare are dissolving, like he promised, but the feelings stick with me. I think of what Ted called us: Tainted. If we were near that brook, I’d run in and scrub my skin until my body was raw. I’d purge my mind of those memories with whatever drug—whatever shot—would erase them.
“It’s best not to think about it,” Cody says. “That’s all we can do.”
He takes his hand off my arm, our discussion clearly stoking his own pain.
“Did you sleep last night?”
“I watched out for the infected so you could rest,” he admits. “You needed your sleep more than me.”
Gratefulness washes over me. Before I can voice it, Cody’s back at his seat, folding his blanket. “We should probably get going. You have your family to get to.”
I glance out the window again. A ray of light hits my face, taking my mind off my terrible awakening. I stand, I breathe; that’s all we can do.
17
A Necessary Detour
Morning dew shines like fresh spit on the grass between the strip malls. Chipmunks scamper across the streets, making suicidal dashes ahead of the bus’s tires. I drift off momentarily, weaving around deserted cars, doors flung open, birds perched on dented hoods and roofs. Were this a regular morning, drivers would occupy the vehicles, lining up at stop lights, beeping at the slowest movers while talking animatedly on their Bluetooth devices. Parents would shepherd their children to school, businesspeople would smooth out the wrinkles in their skirts, ties, and attitudes. There’d be mowers and weedwhackers competing with the sound of car radios, and dutiful employees would unlock shops and stores, preparing for the beginning of long, dreaded shifts. The only sound now is the low hum of our bus engine and the chatter of wildlife. Oh, and the occasional groan of the stricken, moving among the wreckage of our old lives.
Lives we didn’t appreciate enough at the time…I regretfully think now.
It’s so easy to take things for granted when you think they’ll last forever.
But all the regrets and “if onlys” will melt away if I can find Mom and Jared.
I drive down another deserted block while Cody kneels by the driver’s seat, poring over the map, guiding me farther from the Eye Opener parking lot where we woke up this morning, away from the graphic horror story we lived through there. Even now, I’m haunted by the glazed look in Art’s lifeless eyes, the cloying stench of Braulio’s sagging skin, and the twisted collage of comics and spilled blood inside the store, a museum of violent atrocities that will live on, traumatizing anyone unlucky enough to stumble inside. That experience will forever transcend a memory; it’s imprinted on my soul.
“H
ow far do you think we are?” Cody asks me, tracing a line over our route.
“Dad used to make the trip home in forty minutes,” I recall. “Of course, we didn’t have to navigate this obstacle course.”
He flips pages, anticipating our next turn, while I steer around crushed glass and debris, remnants of an old accident. Driving the bus is becoming second nature. Before the world ended, I used to drive Dad’s old car, a Nissan Rogue. We all considered it mine, but Mom never got around to putting my name on it.
“Turn here.” Cody points.
I take his direction, leaving the center of town behind and entering an area thick with trees and homes.
“I think this route will get us there faster,” Cody says optimistically. “The roads should be less crowded.”
Of course, he means cars, and not people. Since leaving the comic shop, we’ve seen no sign of human life—at least, none that isn’t trying to hunt us down and eat us.
“How are we doing on gas?” Cody pulls his nose out of the atlas and studies the gas gauge.
“We’ve got less than a quarter tank.” I furrow my brow. “It seems like just a few miles ago that we were half full.”
“This thing’s a gas guzzler.” Cody shakes his head.
I instinctively look in the rearview, scanning the back of the bus where Sarah and Ian kept the extra gas.
“We have a spare can, at least,” I recall.
“Yeah, but that might be the last of it. The station pumps won’t work anymore,” Cody says. “It’ll be hard to find more.”
A realization becomes a fear. Ian and Sarah probably had a stockpile back at the Outpost. Of course, we don’t have access to their resources; we don’t even know where those resources are.
“Do you think we should start looking for some?” I ask.
“Might not be a bad idea.”
“Where?” That was the operative question.
Alive Again | Book 1 Page 8