Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (29 page)

At some point, this woman had been bitten on the leg, most likely attempting to crawl or climb to safety. But this wasn’t the wound that made me pause. It was the partial decapitation, an almost clean hack across her neck, which made my head spin.

Why is this important?
I asked myself.
Why is this wound important?

We had seen plenty of other Infected with varying injuries. It wasn’t an anomaly.

Why then?

My gaze swept to her face and that was when the veil was lifted. The memory of her, and that wound, rushed back, lodging itself in my mind until I understood.

I remembered her. She was the first Infected who confirmed what the virus was truly capable of doing, no longer requiring the infected body to pump blood through its veins in order to survive. I knew this after seeing her partially decapitated head, and that was why her wound stood out to me.

But why is this important?
Something in the back of my mind urged.
Why?

And then I knew. It wasn’t the wound that was significant. It was the fact that I’d seen her before…three times now. Once at the Nielsen family vacation home, once outside the WillMart grocery store, and here, outside downtown Detroit.

That was a distance spanning over a hundred miles…

That can’t be
, I thought.
That’s not right. I don’t understand…

But I did.

As my eyes rose to Harrison, who remained standing over Christina and the woman who had followed him here, there was no denying it.

The Infected weren’t just drawn to him. They were tracking him.

CHAPTER 16

W
E GAVE
B
EVERLY TIME TO HERSELF,
as much as we could spare. She sat hunched, her shoulders quivering silently every half minute or so. But when Harrison’s sense picked up the Infected nearby, we collected her, lifting her up by the arms. We were passing Christina when she made us stop and release her. From there, she picked Christina’s body up and carried it alone to the Mei’s truck.

It couldn’t have been easy to do this, physically or mentally, but through sheer will and summoning every ounce of strength, she got Christina into the car.

It was a long drive back to the reformatory, absent of radio chatter. Even when we met up with groups of Infected wandering across the roads, we maintained radio silence and followed Harrison’s vehicle to avoid them. Only Beverly, who insisted on driving Mei’s vehicle, held a straight line, plowing through the Infected without hesitation.

By the time we reached the reformatory’s gate, it was dark. As we drove down the rolling dirt driveway, our headlights dipped and rebounded to send jerking beams of light onto the primary building. Dim candlelight flickered from several of the windows telling me that those inside had finished dinner and were getting ready for bed. None of them knew what had happened, that we were returning one person short, that we had lost a friend today. And I envied their innocence.

We stopped in our typical line in front of the main door, but none of us went in.

Beverly circled Mei’s truck, opened the rear passenger’s side door, and attempted to pick Christina up. She struggled, fell forward, caught herself, and tried again.

We moved to help her but she saw us approaching in her peripheral vision and stopped us.

“No, I’ve got this.”

That was the same warning she had used in telling Harrison earlier that she would be the one to end Christina’s life. It was significant in that she delivered it with the same determination as before.

As much as we were a team now, we knew that there were some closures we needed to handle on our own. So we stepped back, keeping our distance even when Beverly’s muscles gave out and she could no longer carry Christina. From there, she dragged her into the dark.

Mei couldn’t handle it and turned her head away.

Trying to console her any way he could, Doc said, “Come on, we’ll say our goodbyes on our own.”

Soon, Harrison and I were alone and this was good because something needed to be addressed.

I stepped up beside him as he watched the spot where Beverly had disappeared. “I need to speak to you.”

“Not here,” he said, taking my hand.

He led me inside and upstairs to my room where he told me to wait before closing the door behind him. When he returned, he had cleaned himself up from the attack and changed clothes. He entered in a flannel shirt and jeans, looking like the rugged Texan he was, as he walked to the window and stared out, arms crossed against his chest.

He didn’t need light to see, his eyesight being so defined that he could probably distinguish Beverly’s digging out there in the darkness. But my feeble eyes needed the help to see his face when I explained what I’d discovered, so I set my rifle by the bed and lit the candle on the shelf above. It cast waves of soft yellow light up Harrison’s back, making the curves of his body more defined.

“You recognized her, didn’t you?” he said.

I was about to cross the room but paused.

He’d figured out my discovery before I could deliver the news. I should have realized he would. He was astute, more than anyone else I’d ever known.

“Damn it,” he seethed. “I should have known. I should have left. I should have been gone when I saw her outside the grocery store. I should have realized it then.”

I bit my lip, consumed by the pain he must be feeling. Silently, I walked to him and placed my hands on his back. It was solid and strong, seemingly impermeable. But something had made its way inside him and had latched on with claws long enough to cut at his heart.

Regret…powerful enough to make you lose sight of the truth.

A shudder of rage traveled through him and I whispered, “Harrison, you gave Christina a chance to carve out a better life. You freed her and the rest of the survivors in her town, you trained them to defend themselves, you gave them hope.”

“Hope?” he said, spinning around. “I don’t know if you realize it but I’ve been drawing the Infected directly to us. I didn’t give her hope. I gave her certain death.” He exhaled loudly, closing his eyes against the pain of that belief. When they opened again they bore into me with his intense stare that always left me trembling. “I might as well have drawn them a map on where to find her.” His eyebrows dipped as he continued, “on where to find all of you. You, Kennedy. On where to find
you
.”

“I know what you’re thinking… It could have been me. But it wasn’t.” I put my hand on his chin and forced him to look at me. “It wasn’t.”

It didn’t matter what I said. He heard none of it.

The stillness in him should have told me what he was thinking and warned me that he had come to a conclusion on how to prevent his greatest fear from happening.

Then he did something I hadn’t planned on. He kissed me, deeply, powerfully, in a way that felt like he was saying goodbye. That notion never crossed my mind as he stayed in place moving only his lips. They worked softly toward my jaw and over the edge to my neck where I drew in a trembling breath.

I found his hands on the curve of my waist, where he gripped me before sliding them to my hips. He picked up my leg, lifting it to his waist, and I curled it around his body. His lips were on my ear then, his breath coming in short, hot pants. They ceased as his mouth, soft and wet, glided over my ear. They started up again, quicker.

“I always wondered,” he exhaled quietly, “before we ever talked, how you would feel, how you would taste.” His lips pressed against the skin below my ear and pulled away. “You’re so much more than I ever expected. I’ll miss-,” he added and cut himself off. “I’ve missed you. I miss you so much.”

I grabbed at his shirt, bunching it between my fingers to steady myself. His hands moved under the hem of my shirts, lifting all three, his fingers brushing my skin, sending a tingling sensation up my stomach. The cool air hit me but I didn’t care. The heat coming off him kept me warm. I dropped my leg and pressed into him, not wanting to miss any part of his skin against mine. He pulled the shirts over my head and threw them aside, returning both hands to my body. One worked its way along my spine, pulling me back to him, and the other unsnapped my pants. I felt the fabric slide off my hips, twisting around my legs as our kisses grew more desperate.

Both his hands were around me now, one cupping the back of my neck and the other holding me steady at my waist. His shirt, which he still wore, was rough against my skin, making me slip my fingers to the buttons and begin releasing them.

His breathing was faster now, his lips more frantic.

My head was starting to spin. I held on to his shirt for balance.

When my fingers worked the shirt off his shoulders, he picked me up by the waist, never breaking our kiss. He carried me backwards. I didn’t know where to, or particularly care.

My calves met the bed first, hitting the edge of the mattress and shoving my feet to the side. I lifted them up and around Harrison’s waist. Somehow, at some point, he’d shed everything from the hips down, and now was naked. I knew this when my thighs skimmed his legs. They were rough, solid, and sweltering.

I should have been startled by this revelation. But I wasn’t. I wanted him this way, unclothed and on top of me. I clung to him with my limbs not realizing I was being lowered until the mattress pressed against my back. It rolled up and around us like giant arms. We settled into it, our bodies moving deeper until we were in a world all our own.

His body, the entire solid mass of it, covered me. I felt one of his hands on my cheek, his fingers flattened against it. The other was slipping up the side of my body, catching its curves, his fingers spreading to feel the rest. My hands were on his face, his gorgeous face, taking in the strength of his jaw and the softness of his lips.

I opened my legs to him and he paused, searching my face for certainty. I lifted my lips to him so that he would know my conviction. He didn’t hesitate again.

Sometime later, as my head lay across his chest, his breath caressed my cheek. “I love you, Kennedy,” he whispered, his voice cracking when it reached my name.

“I love you, too,” I said, weak with exhaustion, mumbling it through an exhale. Had I any intuition of what was to come, I would have paid far more attention to it.

CHAPTER 17

T
HE NEXT THING
I
KNEW,
I
was being slapped awake. Beverly’s palm made full contact with my cheek, leaving a stinging heat in its wake.

“Wake up, damn it!” she screamed.

My head was fuzzy. I blinked rapidly as I began to comprehend the sounds around me. I overheard gunfire and screaming and growls and the pounding of footsteps, all of which were close by.

“Is she conscious?” Mei asked.

Her voice was rushed and she was out of breath. The footsteps that preceded her had ended, so I figured she just entered the room, or wherever we were.

My blinking continued as I struggled to see but something was clouding my vision. My hands wiped my eyelids but my fingers slipped down them like they were skidding on oil. When I pulled them away something hot and wet was covering my fingertips.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Beverly said, disgusted. I picked up on the fact that her disappointment was directed at me.

“Looks serious,” Mei said.

I felt a hand touch my face. It was delicate so it must have been Mei’s.

“The cranium bleeds more,” Beverly retorted, “Lots of blood vessels up there.”

Something in the recesses of my mind reminded me that Beverly had volunteered at a hospital, had been following in her dad’s calling to become a surgeon. She knew about physiology, which made her more effective with her sword. Her sword…

The outbreak! The T1L2 virus!

My head cleared and I jerked to a sitting position.

Mei let out an “umph” so I must have startled her.

“Finally…,” Beverly muttered.

My wiping grew more aggressive until I could make out shapes and some colors. It didn’t help much that we were in the shadows with only streaks of sunlight streaming in from a broken window for light.

“It’s all right. You were cut,” Mei explained. “Here.”

A movement in front of me caused me to reach for it and my fingers closed around fabric. It was rough and scratched at my skin as I wiped but it worked. There was a gash several inches long across my forehead which was going to require constant wipes until I could get Beverly to stitch me up.

The hallway we were in grew clearer and I could see Beverly crouched at a door at the end. Her hands were fumbling with a door knob, or the lock, I couldn’t be sure. Mei was beside me, a mixture of worry and vigilance in her expression.

“Where’s Harrison? Where’s Doc?”

“Harrison?” Beverly scoffed, surprised enough at my question to peer briefly over her shoulder before returning to her work. “You really did hit your head good.”