Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (34 page)

Her team looked at one another awkwardly.

Harrison’s muscles tightened again as he sensed that something was off.

“Harrison,” Sidharth replied cautiously. “We have a test subject.”

Harrison’s eyebrows dipped and then slowly his gaze made its way to me.

“No,” he replied flatly.

“The subject is infected,” Sidharth stated, like that would clear up the issue.

“She’s not a subject,” he retorted.

“She’s the only one we have, in fact.”

That was when I noticed it…the kids outside. They were no longer laughing. And an odd smell had begun to permeate the air.

“I’m not letting you put that in her,” Harrison proclaimed, his livid tone splitting my attention between him and what was happening outside. “There’s no way to tell what it’ll do to her.”

“It’s designed to remove the regenerative properties from her blood, to repair the cells to their normal funct-”

“I DON’T CARE WHAT IT’S
DESIGNED
TO DO!” Harrison yelled, shaking everyone in the room but me. I was already quavering, which had been my natural state for weeks. “We don’t know if that’s what it
will
do.”

“Harrison,” Sidharth said in his unnervingly rational way. “She can’t be made worse off than she already is.”

And that was the sole reason Sidharth was so aggressive. He did have pity for me, even if it was warped, and he truly thought he was taking the right path.

But Harrison’s next point was far more valid.

“She could die,” he seethed.

“Or she could be saved.”

“Harrison,” Johan interjected. “We have no other option. No other test cases.”

He was matter-of-fact in his approach, as much as Sidharth. And I wasn’t the only one to pick up on it.

“I’ll get a subject for you,” Harrison replied, squaring his shoulders in the way he did when he was preparing for a fight. He then took a menacing step forward.

On the surface, it seemed like a viable alternative, bringing in others, but when I considered that they were just like me, still aware but imprisoned inside, I only wanted to argue against it.

“I’m in agreement,” Eve said, finally speaking up. “You know the procedure.”

“We can’t test it on rodents, Eve,” Johan said, irritated. “Nor on reptiles, birds, amphibians, or alternative mammals. They’re all immune. Humans are the only possible subjects. Infected humans to be precise. And we have one contained, right here.”

The smell intensified then, commanding my full attention. Harrison didn’t seem to pick up on it, being caught in the throes of defending me instead. I did, though, because the realization of where I had smelled that aroma finally came to me. In the stairwell, immediately after I’d turned. It was almost as concentrated then. This time it was stronger, headier, which told me one thing… If their scent could fill a sealed room now, there were far more of them advancing.

That was when the door slammed open and Caroline stepped in. She was followed by Lou and a few of their lackeys. I’d been preoccupied with what was going on in the room and outside the windows that I hadn’t sensed what had been coming down the hall.

Judging by the knife in Lou’s hand, they felt my time here was up.

Apparently, they weren’t prepared to walk into another fight arguing over the same topic.

They stood in the doorway, listening, to Harrison and the others continue to argue, split evenly on the ideology of using my body as the first test case.

But it was Natasha who solidified my fate.

No one noticed her as she slunk around the room in her typical manner, quietly going about her business. Gradually, she crept closer to me, intentionally staying below the radar.

As the argument grew more heated, she positioned herself directly in front of me, bringing the needle to my skin, to the soft part of my forearm that had been pinned to my chair for months now, as if it had been waiting for her all along.

A pounding of feet through the hallways and garbled screams drew everyone’s attention and the room became deathly quiet as I felt the prick. There was no sting that usually accompanied a needle, only a pressure at the incision point. I felt nothing more. What I registered instead, in my altered state of acute awareness, was split between the chaos building outside our lab door and Harrison. He had made it across the room, in an attempt to head off Sidharth and Johan, and had taken another step toward the hallway when he heard the fluid flow through the cylinder and into my bloodstream. Spinning around, he took in what had been done and raced for me.

“NO!” he bellowed. “NOOOOOOOOOO…”

And just before he reached me and the room went black, I realized what was happening around us…

The survivors at the school had come for me and the large number of Infected who had been tracking Harrison were coming for him.

No one was safe.

CHAPTER 20

W
HEN
I
BECAME AWARE,
I
FELT
nothing but pain, as if every internal organ had been splashed with acid. I cringed against it, contracting my stomach against its intensity, curling my hands around fabric my fingers had somehow found. My face felt contorted, pinched together until even my eyes began to ache, and while I had regained power over my breathing, and felt some victory in knowing it, I couldn’t influence them to move. The pain crippled me in that way.

A strong part of me wondered whether I was dying.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Time was trivial. Nothing existed but the pain. Voices floated over me, stabbing me with each pronunciation. I sensed somehow, vaguely and broken through my awareness, that people were arguing.

Then they were gone and something was pressing against my head, or maybe it had always been there and I was just becoming aware of it. It was moving softly, swiping the side of my skull, carrying with it strands of hair from my eyes. It continued as I forced myself to lift my lids and peer out.

The chair I had been sitting in for weeks was overturned; the ropes that had kept me bound were broken and laying in disorganized coils around its arms and legs.

Fingers slipped in and out of my view as the weight on my head persisted. There was also pressure to the opposite side of my skull. This was when I understood I was being cradled in someone’s arms and that someone’s hand was caressing me.

Harrison…

I tried to look at him but the movement erased everything in the room and I blacked out.

The next time I awoke, my nose was close enough to detect Harrison’s earthy scent and to recognize the warm firmness of his muscles. Instantly, it helped the roaring pain, which was subsiding now. The feeling of torn organic matter inside me was nearly complete, the hurt was patchy, as if I were healing.

I heard breathing, the kind that sends air over someone’s lips as they try to manage pain. It filled my ears. A second passed before I realized that the sound was coming from me.

“Slow it down, sweetheart, slow and easy,” Harrison whispered encouragingly.

He must have heard me too.

Summoning my strength, I asked, “What…” But the pain overwhelmed me.

“Eve and her lab team developed an antidote that reversed the regenerative affects of the virus. Your body is healing its self. Give it time.”

“Antidote?” I muttered.

He blinked and smiled to himself. “Of course you wouldn’t know about that…I didn’t pay much attention to it myself when she drew the blood from me the first time to develop the original drug. But it has to do with how the drug was supposed to have worked. It was designed to regenerate certain cells in the body, the ones killed off by Alzheimer’s. And it did more than that, as you know, far more than that.”

I didn’t comprehend all he’d just said, my head was too fuzzy. But I did understand why he was so adamant about me not being the first test case. What would have happened if this serum hadn’t worked as designed?

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

I tested myself, flexing a few of my muscles. They ached, similar to having just run a marathon. “Like I died and was revived.”

A smile flashed across his face, reminding me of how handsome he was before it fell away. “You know, that pretty much sums it up.” Watching me carefully, he added, “But you already know that, don’t you, Kennedy?”

I nodded but it strained me and I stopped.

“You were in there the whole time, weren’t you?”

Because a nod was taxing to me, I mumbled my response, carrying my answer over the top of a moan. “Mmmhmm.”

My head had slipped down his chest, my neck muscles still ached, but my mind was clearing and everything he said made sense. I had full control over my body again and the hideous smell from seconds ago was gone. In its place was the septic odor of a lab. But the screams outside had grown louder, and there were more of them.

Sidharth’s head was turned toward the window, even though it was blocked. “We need to figure a way to administer the antidote.” There was a quiver in his voice. He knew we were running out of time.

“Sure, you go ahead and line the Infected up and just slip a needle into them one at a time. Good luck with that…,” Beverly retorted before ending her point with a scoff.

“There’s another way,” Johan muttered to himself.

“Only one other way,” Eve acknowledged.

The four of them, these scientists who had concocted the world’s most important antidote, said it together, all at once, as if the answer reached them simultaneously.

“Vaporization…”

Through my muddled state, I was able to grasp that they were having a conversation all to themselves, one I couldn’t follow yet, so I redirected my attention to Harrison. It wanted to be there anyways.

Summoning my strength, I asked, “Where…” But the pain overwhelmed me.

Again knowing what I intended to say without my having to say it, he explained, “Caroline and Lou realized the greater threat was outside the gate. They’re rounding everyone up… taking their designated positions. Don’t worry, Kennedy, they have a good plan in place.”

Funny, I could no longer hear them, or their preparations.

“Where are the…”

“The Infected haven’t reached us yet.” Their distance was on his mind, though. I could hear it in his tone.

“How far?” I asked, knowing his sense of smell hadn’t been altered.

“About a mile.”

A sense of dread came over me.

Let’s go, Kennedy. Forget the pain. Forget the Suck. People need you.

“How many?” I exhaled this question trying to avoid the sharp ache still contracting my muscles and trying to steady myself without the help of his chest.

“How many are heading our way?” he said, finishing my sentence for me because I couldn’t. “A lot.”

“We need…,” I said, pushing myself up. The pain stopped me.

“Kennedy, you have to rest.”

“No time,” I groaned as I made another attempt to stand.

I got to my knees this time. That felt like a significant victory.

The pain had turned into an achy itch, the kind felt when a scab is healing, although I didn’t feel it on my skin. It ran through my insides.

Something told me that I was still healing.

I placed my palms on the cold hard tile, appreciating that I could at least to do that much.

“Kennedy,” Harrison started in on me again but that was all I heard. His voice faded as I used every bit of my strength to slip my feet beneath me. Vaguely, I noted his hands on my elbows, assisting me. They never left me and I wanted to thank him for that but the exertion left me breathless.

This was the first time I noticed Harrison and I weren’t alone. Our team was in the room, still guarding the door. Eve was with us, too. I don’t think she ever left. She now stood to the side, her shoulders rolled forward. She looked guilty.

“I’m not mad,” I said, my voice croaking, and she lifted her eyes to me. They held deep regret.

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t blame her. I understood what she and her team were doing, and that I was the most likely candidate to test the antidote. It was logical. I felt no animosity toward them, besides my energy was being preserved for something far more important.

“I need your help,” I exhaled, clutching my tender sides.

Eve’s eyebrows dipped in confusion as she looked from me to Harrison and back to me. She looked doubtful. Whether it was because I was doubled over in pain or because she was questioning her own viability, I couldn’t be certain. Then her lips pinched closed in determination and she nodded, and for a split second she reminded me of Harrison.

“The antidote. Where is it?”

“There,” she said, pointing to a metal holder, containing multiple vials of red fluid.

I stumbled to it and swept it under my arm.

No one stopped me, to my surprise.

I lurched passed my team positioned at the door and out into the hallway. It was deathly silent now. For weeks, I had listened to the voices, the scrape of chairs, the running of fingers along the walls, the creak of beds as they lay down for the night, the snores, the arguments, the make ups. I heard it all. It seemed peace was making up for lost time now.