The Seventh Day Box Set

by Tara Brown

  “Mom was dragging me everywhere!” Mason puts his hands on his hips, making me smile.

  “I was, truly.” Mom laughs and for the first time in a while it’s almost like we’re in our own house and she’s tired from work but still happy. Happy to be home with us. “And then the next thing I knew, the helicopter was on fire and it crashed. It was insane.”

  “And Lou?”

  “Pulled from the wreckage same as you, Liam dragged her out. She was burned a bit, her cheek and her hands.”

  “What about the splits in her skin and the blood?” It’s the last image I have of Lou. She was bursting at the seams.

  “No, just some burns.” Mom shakes her head. “Her clothes were singed and covered in blood. Same as you.”

  “We didn't have injuries?” That piques my interest.

  “Just the burns. Why?”

  “Where are my burns now?” I hold up my hands and inspect them. Everything is the same as it was, before the accident and the bots.

  “Oh,” Mom mutters, lifting my hand and inspecting me. “Where are they?”

  “The bots,” I whisper. “If they healed me, they healed her. Where is she?”

  “They’re going to burn the bodies—”

  “Get Mitch!” I shout and sit up. My head spins for a second, but I force myself up from the bed. I wobble and take deep breaths as Mason runs from the room. He’s back in a second with Mitch whose swollen eyes widen when they see me.

  “Tanya?” He’s confused. I see it on his face. I bet he’s wondering if this is a dream.

  “We can catch up after we find Lou. We have to make sure they don't burn her body.” I grab his hand, but he drags me into his arms and buries his head in my hair. He breathes deeply for several minutes, like he’s fighting a heart attack, then pulls me back. He’s crying again.

  “Don't you ever do that to me again.”

  “Promise I won’t.” I slip my hand in his and drag him from the room. “Now take me to Lou!”

  We run through the castle and out the front doors with Buster hot on our heels. When we leave the gates, he sprints ahead as though he knows where we’re going.

  It’s still dark out and the air outside is crisp and dry. Exactly how I like it. The field is filled with torches and people walking slowly amongst weird hay beds. It takes me a second to realize they’re pyres and this is a funeral watch.

  “She’s this way.” He drags me across the field but when we reach the hay beds, there is no one there. “She was.”

  “Maybe she’s awake too.” I glance back at the castle.

  “If she is, she’s with King Liam.” Mitch wrinkles his nose. “That guy’s strange. Jeff doesn’t like him, and we both know Jeff likes everyone.”

  “He’s Canadian,” I joke with a small shrug.

  “Exactly.” Mitch steps closer, placing his forehead against mine. “You killed me. Dead.”

  “Sorry.” I snuggle into his arms. “I honestly thought it was best for everyone. Dr. Jacquard’s plan from the start didn’t include me surviving it.”

  “You didn’t think to tell me that?” He pulls back, cocking an eyebrow.

  “No. You wouldn’t have let me do it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have. It was craziness. I’m all for the greater good, I think we both know that, but your survival is everything.” He kisses my nose.

  “I survived.” I roll my eyes. “Let’s go find Lou!” I slip my hand back in his and make my way to the castle.

  “Some of your other friends are staying in this room,” Mitch says when we’re back on the floor with the bedrooms. He knocks at a door lightly.

  “Come in,” a voice I’d recognize anywhere answers.

  I push the door open and smile at Jamie and Sasha who are sitting in the large canopy bed with swollen eyes and red noses.

  “Holy shit, do you see that too?” Sasha asks softly.

  “Tan?” Jamie gulps.

  “Hi.” I smile wide and brace myself for the attack.

  It takes a second for them to realize this is real and they start screaming. They rush me, hugging and kissing and crying some more. I close my eyes, making tears pop from them.

  “You’re alive!” Sasha shouts, kissing my head and wrapping herself around me completely.

  “I think Lou is too but I can’t find her room,” I mutter into an armpit and a breast.

  “What?” Jamie pulls back, flinging her red hair from her face. “Are you sure?”

  “No, but I think so—” Sasha is already running down the hall before I finish my thought. We turn and follow, watching her barrel into a room. It’s huge and the bed is filled with Joey, Julia, Lissie, and Lou. Gus jumps up, sniffing Buster who is entangling himself in feet.

  We launch onto the bed, grabbing Lou and waking her from her sleep.

  “You made it and you didn’t tell us?” Sasha shouts, shaking her a little.

  “I thought everyone was sleeping,” Lou says groggily, rubbing her eyes as Jamie clings to her and sobs.

  “I didn’t even know you guys were here,” I say to Sasha and Jamie.

  “We got here with Davis, Leah’s husband as shit was going down.” Sasha lies back, pulling Lou with her.

  “You okay?” Lou asks me.

  “Weirdly okay. You?”

  “Same.” She nods. “But the bots are different. They healed me, but they’re not doing anything else.”

  “Base programming,” a voice from the dark corner joins the conversation. It’s King Liam. He is wrapped in a blanket and looks different than the last time I saw him. “They must have reset completely. Something must have caused a full programming reset. They are at their most basic software design, which was always to heal. It was the bots’ initial purpose.”

  “But they also changed so they worked on me? Because bots have never affected me before.” I don’t understand any of this bot craziness.

  “Must have.” He walks to the edge of the bed and stares at Lou. The reverence in his gaze is weird. He looks at her the way I imagined he might look at himself.

  Joey and Lissie stir and roll over but Julia’s eyes open. She stares at us like she is looking through us and mutters, “Shhhhhhh.”

  We all smile.

  Lou grips me and sighs. “I can’t believe we’re both alive.”

  My eyes dart to Liam and I nod. “You’re telling me.”

  The group of us is quiet for a moment before we all laugh.

  There isn’t really anything else to do.

  Chapter 32

  One week later

  Tanya

  We walk into the great hall where the feast will be. I’m nervous because I don’t trust Liam as far as I can throw him, and I can’t even lift his ass.

  Mitch’s fingers lightly brush against the insides of my palms as we find a seat at one of the massive wooden tables. Sasha, Jamie, Miles, and Erin are already seated and saving spots for us. Erin lifts an eyebrow when she catches a glimpse of Jeff as he and Bev make their way in with us.

  I don’t know anything about her, but that wandering eye is bothersome. Especially, considering how hot she is. She might be the sexiest woman I have ever seen. Including any Hollywood babes.

  “What do you think this is?” Mitch asks quietly. “Did Lee say anything?”

  “Princess Leelee said nada,” Erin remarks with an eye roll, shifting in her chair and sitting in a way that flashes her perfect cleavage at Jeff. I should feel sorry for Miles, but I’ve known him way too long to have any pity for him.

  “Did Lou say anything to you guys?” I ask Jamie and Sasha.

  “Just that we have to be here, or else.” Sasha chuckles. “The question I have is where’s Kyle?”

  “He’s been mourning his broken heart with that weird moonshine some of the guys found on a farm they raided in the North.” Miles scoffs. “So if we don’t see him tonight that might be for the best.”

  “So him and Lou were a thing?” Bev asks the question we all want to know more about
but might be too polite to bring up.

  “They were fully together for like seven months. He saved her life.” Jamie’s tone suggests she isn’t impressed by the great betrayal.

  “Then she meets Liam and it’s ‘adios, Kyle.’” Miles shrugs.

  “Well, it wasn’t quite that quick and easy,” Sasha says with a defensive tone. “Lou was on the road away from us for like—ever. And when she met Liam, she told me there was something about him that made her crazy.”

  “She said she hated him and wanted to gut him like a fish.” Erin leans in and growls her words, “And I wanted that too.”

  “You didn’t notice how much she talked about him?” Sasha sighs. “Clearly, you weren’t paying attention. Or that Lee was crazy about Kyle from day one?”

  “Kyle should be so lucky!” Erin is a weird girl. One minute she mocks her sister and the next defends her.

  “Anyway, then she spent like five weeks here or something with Liam, who her bots had already decided was her soul mate. She couldn’t fight it. Lee told me she couldn’t either. And apparently, they were soul mates all along. Liam is different with her, even Leah agrees with that.” Sasha nods her head toward the table with the gorgeous brunette and her beefy husband. They’re sitting with my mom and surrounded by kids. Mason, Joey, Lissie, and Julia have glommed onto them. Mason follows Leah’s adorable son around like he has a crush on him. It’s so sweet.

  “I’m so tired of the whole Lou and Liam craziness,” Jamie moans. “Can we just talk about something else?” Her eyes land on me. “How did you two meet again?”

  “Us?” I ask and glance at Mitch.

  “I switched all my classes to be in hers, hoping and praying she might notice who I was. When she finally did, we were lab partners and I blew all my chances to get her alone. I was nervous.” He smiles and my heart swells. I’ve never heard this story before. “Then I blackmailed Ms. Mara, my earth sciences teacher, who I happened to see on a date with the basketball coach, into letting Tanya come on our field trip.” He loses some of the smile. “And instead of winning her over on the rocky shores of the West Coast, I endangered her life, and everyone in the class died except me and Bev.”

  “We think they died,” Bev adds.

  The information stings but I feel sick for him, not me. I squeeze his hand and offer a small smile. It’s all I have because the memories of the trip from hell are flooding my mind.

  “That’s so cute”—Sasha sighs, batting her lashes—“and you both lived.”

  “Because she saved me on the side of the road. Picked us up on the seventh day.” Mitch laughs bitterly.

  “Tanya drove?” Jamie narrows her gaze, doubtful.

  “I did.” I smirk at her. “And no one died.”

  “Well, she did leave the car in gear when she jumped out of it, almost letting it get away from us.” Jeff winks at me.

  My cheeks flush and I cover my eyes. “Oh my God, I forgot about that.”

  “I’ll never forget it. The sight of Mitch running after you, screaming to get the car, will make me smile for the rest of my life.” Jeff laughs.

  “How did you end up here?” Miles scowls in my direction.

  “Boulder.” I recall the moment I met Liam in the ER with perfect clarity.

  “We were in Boulder too,” Jamie says excitedly. “Like a couple of months ago, not even.”

  “No, we were there in the beginning,” Mitch corrects her. “We went there because some dude on a radio broadcast told us it would be the safe haven. It was weird, like he knew this before the world even ended.”

  “Yeah, they knew.” Miles nods.

  “When we got to Boulder you could tell, it was running way too efficiently for being so early in the war. I knew things were bad when I heard they had some postal service thing going, but really it was the government looking for any bitten who had survived.” Mitch’s eyes flicker to mine. “That’s how we met Liam.”

  “I got Mitch to cut my bite off so they wouldn’t round me up too. At the hospital Liam was there. He scared me, but when it came down to it, he was right. They were going to kill us bitten, though I didn’t have anything special from the bots.” The memory of it all brings a tightness to my back and a tingle in my shoulder where the scar is.

  “So you escaped Boulder with Liam?” Miles asks with a scowl.

  “Yeah. And when he got Dr. Jacquard to look at me, at why the bots didn’t do anything to me, the doctor lied for me. He told Liam I was a freak who had some damage to my electrical system. But Dr. Jacquard started plotting the moment he saw me. He planned on using me to destroy bots. He was trying to come up with a signal to do it when we came here.”

  “You came to the castle, in the beginning?”

  “For a moment,” Mitch answers Erin. “Then Jacquard got us out, hid us at the ranch you found us at. He came the day before you guys arrived, had some new plan. He explained that Lou would kill him, and she would call the bots to her. And she could hold them while Tan killed them.”

  “In private he told me I would die from it. He asked if I was okay with that. After seeing the undead army and the plans the bots had for us, I knew I could do it.” I stare into the crowd of people sitting. “If I could make the world a little safer for Mason, I would.”

  “And now here we are, at the latest in farm-to-table dining.” Jeff laughs.

  “Legit,” Erin agrees, smiling too wide.

  “That is one crazy story,” Miles says, shaking his head. “And what are the odds it would be you and Lou?”

  “I bet it was Lou’s dad all along. Planning for the worst-case scenario.” Mitch grins.

  “Oh my God!” I hit him in the arm. “He would never.” I laugh but I’m alone.

  No one else agrees with me.

  “You guys, Lou’s dad would never do that.” I’m trying to convince them but it’s working the opposite. Their faces make me question everything. “You think?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Miles adds before heads turn toward the front of the room.

  “Showtime,” Jeff jokes.

  Liam walks with poise and grace to the front and stands before us all. If he and Erin had babies, they would be so beautiful they would make the sun jealous of their light.

  “He’s like an elf on Lord of the Rings,” Mitch mutters and I grin.

  “Thank you for coming, and for being,” Liam starts weirdly because, let’s be honest, he’s weird. “I think it’s safe to say we have survived our greatest challenge yet.” He smiles and everyone else does too.

  He doesn’t need the bots to be the pied piper, he’s so hot and convincing, and hot.

  Lou and Lee walk out to the front to stand with him. I see something in her I haven’t noticed before. She’s regal too. In a different way, but regal nonetheless.

  “We have decided that a constitutional democracy is the best way to run this town that is quickly becoming a small city. As more and more people arrive, we will be stretched to our limits. And with human nature back in business”—he pauses and his eyes twinkle with mischief—“we will need to enlist not only societal rules but also ensure the guard is strong and well trained. Fortunately, most of us seem to have retained what we were gifted by the bots as far as information is concerned.” He glimpses at Lou who smirks. “Until we have a proper council, we will continue on as we were. I will remain the king, Queen Lou will stay in her role, and Princess Lee in hers. If any of you have political, philosophical, or historical experience from your previous lives, we are hosting an open house in the round room tomorrow. We welcome all and the council will be made up of diverse and able-bodied people.”

  He pauses again but the mischief is gone from his face.

  “We lost a lot of people in our lives this last year, most of us have no family left except those we have chosen. We understand there is a great need for counselling and grief management and perhaps even some PTSD—” The room erupts in laughter, no doubt everyone agreeing with him. “If you have experience, we
are also looking for any help we might get in that arena. If you are new here, the rules are simple: We are an eye-for-eye society out of need. If you break the rules, you will be dealt with hastily. If you hurt someone, be prepared for that same treatment. There is no violence or weapons in the city. And we are honoring the barter and trade system until we have some sort of monetary decisions made. Everyone here works and is treated equally. There is a registration for skills, abilities, and previous professions at the front gates. If you are passionate about something new, what better time to change careers? But no matter what, sign up for something to earn your keep. This city and our survival depend upon it.”

  He steps forward a little more. “On behalf of the guard, the queen, and the princess, I welcome you to our city. We have survived the greatest tragedy this world has ever seen. We are the strongest of our people. I believe we can only go up from here.”

  The room erupts in reverence and glory.

  “And now we feast!” he shouts and they cheer harder.

  Even I have to give it to him, he is good at this.

  He was made for it.

  And he comes across as a bit insane until his eyes meet Lou’s and he loses all that. She makes him smile in a way I doubt he has ever smiled in his whole life.

  Mitch leans in and whispers, “Weirdly enough, I believe him.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m so sorry for not telling you it was my fault you ended up in Canada.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell me.” I laugh. “That was a smart choice. At the time, when I was driving through the stupid mountains, all by myself, lost and starving, I would have been crazy angry with you instead of desperate to find you.”

  “Maybe you would have run me over instead of rescuing me,” he says as he stares into my eyes.

  “We’ll never know.” I lean in and kiss him, and for the first time in one year, I believe the world has a chance. I thought it was over and there was no way a love like this could survive, and I am so grateful to be wrong. So grateful to be in the arms of the weirdest, funniest guy I have ever met.