Reawakening (29 page)

You couldn’t bank on maybe.

Though she really couldn’t hold it against him for trying. It shocked even her when the woman suddenly lunged at Jamie, snarling. So much so that she wasn’t prepared and that cold bloody hand grabbed a hold of his right thigh no problems at all.

Of course, he struggled but really it was too late. Once they had hold of you, that was that.

Chapter Fifteen

The gun went off loud—louder than the siren—and for a long moment after it, nobody moved. Jamie remained on his elbows in the dirt, gun pulled and ready to fire but not quite there. Blake stayed where he was, crouched on the ground with one hand ready to yank the thing that had once been a woman off his friend.

Said woman remained sprawled back on the ground, a hole in her head and nothing to show for her life but the sensible shoes, the practical trousers, the still soaking wet and almost see-through shirt. Probably nothing that she would have worn in her real life, because she was blonde and pretty and blonde, pretty women so rarely dressed like apocalypse survivors.

Not that she was one of those, now. The minute the woman had laid one zombie hand on his thigh, she’d drawn the gun from its good good place under the waistband of her sweats and blown her fucking brains out. She’d done it faster than Jamie, too, because it was true. Holsters and the trappings of real combat held her back. She went on instinct and it came back to her immediately like an old friend—
aim for the temple, watch where the splatter is going, fire.

Though as it turned out, there was precious little blood to worry about. Blake had been far enough down her body for the backwash to miss him. Jamie shoved at just the right moment, and that now blown out side of her head had faced the ground. And when she looked at the woman in the aftermath, all she could see was a tiny black pinprick at her temple, as though she’d dotted the I on a name she hadn’t written.

The woman had no name. Blake checked her pockets mutely, but there wasn’t anything there. Truth was, you didn’t really need to carry anything at the end of the world. Nobody cared if you’d had money in your pocket or pictures of your kids in your wallet. What did it matter now?

The only thing that mattered was Blake, saying they should bury her. The hopeless look on his face. The worse one on Jamie’s. He’d gone beyond beside himself, but she couldn’t do anything for him. She didn’t even know what was putting him in such a state—that he’d almost been eaten or that he’d failed to save someone else?

Either way, she had to deal with what Blake was saying, first. Bury her? Had he actually suggested burying her? What, so she could infect the soil and force them to dream every night of her rising from the dead…maybe shambling up the stairs…half her head missing and her guts still slipping out of her torn open abdomen?

Because she could see, now, that the woman had done just that. Torn herself open. Dug right into her own flesh, as though she could chase whatever she’d felt happening to her. Maybe something had grabbed at her just as she’d made the water line, and scratched one infected fingernail into her skin. And once that happened, oh once something like that happened…it didn’t matter. Even if it hadn’t infected you, you wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. Not even swimming through freezing cold water would stop you thinking about it and scratching at it until you were the person who made it happen. You made it worse, all by yourself.

“We can’t bury her, hon. We have to burn her,” she said, but that was too much for Jamie. He took off toward the cabin before Blake could even voice a protest.

Then, after she’d called Jamie’s name and tried to think about what the fuck she should do about his distraught state, Blake asked.

“Are you sure we can’t?”

She thought about a headstone. A made up name scratched on it. Would Jamie go to it every day if it was there? Probably. Probably.

“Positive,” she said.

* * * *

The first thing she did was strip out of her clothes, while the girl was still burning. Just so that she could toss them on the fire, and let them go up with her. She’d done it enough in abandoned buildings and the shells of old cars to feel nothing about doing it here, now, and anyway—Blake did the same. He followed suit like it was just the way things had to be, then went with her into the house with barely anything on him.

His arms looked very red against the rest of his semi-tanned skin. She suspected the red would look even brighter against Jamie’s paler body. And it was practically a neon sign on hers.

She didn’t blame him for immediately falling to scrubbing. He didn’t even do it in the sink, either—he covered the table in plastic, filled a bucket up with boiling water and went at it. Industrial strength cleaner. That gel they’d talked about. She watched him scrub and scrub and had to wonder how long they’d took with her when she first got to the cabin.

The blood splatter had been barely there on her by comparison. Just a little splash when Kelsey’s arm lashed back after the first bite. Nothing big, really.

This was big. She watched him scald his arms and hands, and knew it was big.

“You don’t think breathing in ash can turn you, right?” he asked, and she answered with the only thing she could.

“No.”

“She went up like a fucking flare. Wonder if people will have seen?”

She resisted the urge to say
what people
. He was dousing himself in toilet cleaner, for God’s sake. He didn’t need to hear
what people
.

“Blake honey, you’re taking off a layer of skin.”

But he just snapped dead eyes to her, arms up the elbows in the water, as vulnerable suddenly as Jamie had seemed earlier. God, earlier. Had that really been just a few hours ago? It was pitch dark outside now, which only helped it seem like forever.

“You really think I would have shot a person?”

Okay. That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. It jolted her, right in the middle of smoothing disinfectant wipes down her arms. Over her face, gingerly.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you did,” she said, because that was honest. It wasn’t fair, but it was honest. She’d almost shot enough human beings to know—if they didn’t talk, sometimes you couldn’t tell.

“It would matter to me. It matters that you think I’d do that, that I wouldn’t check.”

“Does it help if I tell you I know you’d check more than I would? I almost blew her head off before she went for me. I almost blew a hole in Jamie’s foot right before we left the storeroom, just to stop him from getting killed. I’m not the kind to pass judgment on things like that, Blake.”

She saw a little of that sudden defensive stiffness go out of his shoulders on hearing those words. And she was betting the whole blowing-a-hole-in-someone’s-foot thing played a big part in that. It made him almost choke out a disbelieving laugh, and that was good.

“You would have seriously shot him?”

“I’d have seriously shot you, too.”

He looked at his hands. His now completely clean hands. She suspected they’d still be clean in a thousand years time, after he’d spent said amount of time digging through sewers without so much as a moist towelette to spare.

“Would you shoot us if we turned? If that had been me, instead of her?”

A big part of her wanted to say yes, to that. She couldn’t be sure if that was what he wanted to hear—probably not, in all honesty—but she couldn’t get it out either way. It hadn’t been true for Kelsey, and it wasn’t true for them. She could never do right by them.

“No.”

He didn’t look surprised. But he didn’t look disappointed, either, so that was one thing.

“I couldn’t shoot you either, June. I would want to, but I don’t think I could. I think I’d rather—”

“Lay down and die?”

“Yeah. That.”

“I’ve dreamt about it before today. One or both of you turn, and sometimes my subconscious tries to come up with fake solutions, you know? Like, I cure you with lemon juice. Or I put a bandage on it and it goes away. But my brain is never fooled—you always come after me. And every time, I just lay right down and die. Sometimes it even feels good to. A relief.”

“Don’t say that, June-bug,” he said, and it was weirdly those words that made something sting behind her eyes. “Don’t ever say that.”

She hugged him for it. One arm around his shoulders, face pressed to his back. It was the only spot that didn’t smell like Clorox.

* * * *

For some unaccountable reason, she found herself dreading going to him. And it made it worse when she got to the bathroom, and he was in the shower. Both her and Blake had been gone for well over an hour, doing the little things like burning people and scrubbing the agonizing survivor guilt from their bodies, and he was still in the shower.

This, she figured, did not bode well for his mental state. People did not take two hour long showers unless their survivor guilt—or similar post-traumatic stress issue—had reached epic, epic proportions. Seriously, they could have written ballads about whatever Jamie was going through.

Plus, she had to deal with this other thing. This other thing called—
now I’m on high zombie alert, and think there’s one around every corner again.
Because when she stepped into the steam choked bathroom, all she could feel was her own spine tensing and all she could see was that shower curtain, heavy and dark with water and hiding God only knew what behind it.

She watched it waver slightly, just to make sure she absolutely knew that something was behind it. Something shadowy and hardly moving—you know, like a turned Jamie just waiting to attack.

Lord, how she wished she’d never said that stuff to Blake. She’d always known it was true, but even so. It was hard having to deal with it, right up front like this. To know that if Jamie
had
somehow turned, she was just going to let him tear his way through the curtain and eat her.

She reached out one hand to pull it back—just as she’d aimed for Blake’s shoulder in that always-with-her dream—and was ashamed to find it shaking. Even more so, when Jamie quite suddenly said—

“I ain’t turned, baby. It’s okay.”

The words made her sag. The way he looked—not so much. He looked like Blake, like a peeled lobster, and he was bent right over beneath the spray. Head on one forearm, forearm on the tile. The only thing he was missing was an anesthetizing bottle of Budweiser dangling from one hand. Pity, really, that all Budweisers had gone bad about a year ago.

She watched the water rush down on the back of his head for a little while, thinking idle, distracting thoughts. Like—
our generator’s really going to make us pay for this hot water bill.
And—
his hair’s getting so long. Is it just the water that’s making it look that long?

She touched the slick strands that had amply covered the nape of his neck, just to have something to do. She’d said all the wrong, most depressing things with Blake, and knew it. It didn’t seem like a good thing to start talking now and let Jamie hear them all.

Though words wanted to come, anyway.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” she said then couldn’t think where such an idea had come from. Sorry for what? Sorry for the end of the world? Sorry for the pinprick hole in that girl’s head?

God, all of the above. All of the above.

“Oh Jesus, don’t be sorry. You didn’t do nothing.
I
did nothing. I always do nothing.”

That was hard to hear. She’d known it was coming but it was tough none-the-less. Like swallowing gristle.

“You can’t really believe that. Look at me and tell me you don’t.”

“I don’t know, bug, I don’t—”

“She was already gone, J. You know she was.”

She squeezed the nape of his neck, now practically half in the shower and getting fairly wet. But it had no effect.

“But if I could have just…there’s always just…”

His words were coming out breathless. As though he’d started running up a hill while saying them. And yeah, it could have been the heat in there or the steam clogging everything up, but she didn’t think so. He was bogged down by himself. He didn’t even seem to know what he was saying.

Though it was still a shock when he came out with his next little pearl of wisdom.

“God, if only I’d saved your friend, too. If I’d just saved her, maybe everything would be okay, you know? If I’d just saved her then—”

It jolted her so hard that she had to cut him off. And not with words, either. He needed a shake, for that one—hard enough to rattle his teeth. She even got right under the water in order to give it to him, and gave her bra and panties a free spin cycle courtesy of the hottest shower in the world.

“Are you kidding me? How far are you gonna go back, huh? If only you’d saved those kids in the quarry? If only you’d saved some guy you saw one time? What? Tell me.”

He looked too dazed to tell her. As though she’d slapped him without knowing it—though Lord knows she felt like it.

“You saved Blake. You saved
me.
Isn’t that enough?”