Frozen Flesh

by A J Donovan

  “I don’t know,” the man says. “But it means she’s alive. It means that our plan worked, at least in part. The strike team sent for her was stopped. We stopped it.”

  “But the team sent for him wasn’t stopped. They reached their target and their mission was a success. We failed.”

  He watches her for a few moments. His instinct is to comfort her but he knows that isn’t what she needs right now. “What will you do?”

  She looks at the graph and then up at the monitors in front of them.

  “Protect her. Avenge him.”

  “They won’t make it easy for you.”

  She stands. “That never stopped me before.”

  He smiles. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “We start at the lake.”

  ***

  Chapter 33 - Resurrection

  “Is he alive?”

  “How would I know?”

  “He doesn’t look like a walker. Don’t got no head wounds, either. If he was a walker, he’d be moving.”

  Footsteps approach. “I’ll kick him and see if he wakes up.”

  I groan. “Kick me and it’ll be the last thing you do.”

  “He’s alive!”

  “We should tell someone!”

  I start coughing up buckets of water and groan again.

  “Are you okay?” the voice asks me.

  I force my eyes to open and look up at him. He’s young, just a kid.

  “No.” I cough again. My throat is raw and my head is pounding but my thirst is all I can think about. “Do you have any water?”

  The boy looks at his friend. Neither of them can be older than twelve.

  “I don’t,” he says. “Do you?” he asks his friend.

  “No.” He frowns and then grins. “But we can go get some. And we’ll get help too. Just stay here, we’ll be right back!”

  The two boys run towards some buildings in the distance.

  I watch them for a moment but I can’t just lie here and wait for them to come back. I push myself up and force myself into a sitting position. I’m at a lake, on some kind of beach.

  “Where am I?” I ask aloud.

  No one answers. There is no one around that can hear me.

  The water catches my eye and I find myself drawn to it. The waves are lapping gently at the sand and one of them comes close enough to brush against my leg.

  I pull myself towards the waves.

  For some reason, I reach out and cup water in my hands. I can’t drink seawater, I know that, but something inside me reaches out and I watch as the water shifts. Tiny pieces of sediment and other materials are filtered out of the water. I shouldn’t be able to, but I can see the impurities in the water and I watch as they are pushed out.

  I drink the clean water and finally quench my burning thirst. My stomach is uneasy so I force myself not to drink too much.

  Exhaustion rolls over me again and I lie back against the sand. Half of my body is still in the water and the waves lap gently around me.

  Who am I?

  I frown up at the sky. I should be able to remember my name. I should be able to remember something. Anything.

  I try to focus on my memories but there’s nothing there. I can’t remember anything. It’s all just blank.

  I realise I’m sad. I search for a reason but I can’t find it.

  I slowly stand up and run my hands over my face and hair. Those two kids will be back soon and I don’t want to look terrible when I meet their parents.

  My hair is caked with sand and salt from the lake. I must have been in the water before I woke up. I look down at my clothes. They are in surprisingly good condition, which means I wasn’t in the water for long. There are tears in my shirt, though.

  I pull it aside and look down at my chest. There are two small white scars, but they are fully healed. Is that possible? They look like old injuries but the tears in my shirt are right over them. Could I have healed that quickly? I look at lake water. I did something to the water just now. Maybe I did something to the bullet wounds.

  I frown. Bullet wounds? I look back down at the scars. I suppose they could be from a gun. One of them is directly over my heart. There is no way anyone could survive that, is there? I don’t see any surgical scars. It doesn’t look like I had heart surgery.

  I should be dead.

  My rambling thoughts are interrupted when I notice the settlement in the distance. It’s a small cluster of buildings with a watchtower and a high wall surrounding it. There can’t be more than fifteen or twenty people living there.

  You could destroy that with a thought.

  I frown. “What? No.”

  Don’t think about it, just do to them what they did to you. They hurt you. They tried to kill you.

  “I don’t know if they did this to me. It could have been someone else.”

  All people are the same.

  I shake off the voice. “Get out of my head.”

  Silence.

  The voice is gone but I realise that it could be right about those people. The two boys are innocent but I know nothing about the adults in their group. They could be dangerous. They could even be the people who did this to me. I need to stay away from them. I don’t know what happened to me or why and that makes me vulnerable.

  I see some people in the distance. There are half a dozen of them, led by two children. The boys are bringing people back to help me. Or the people are coming to finish what they started.

  I look at lake water again. I know what I have to do.

  I walk into the lake.