Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (36 page)

“Ah, fuc-” Beverly uttered furiously, and I thought she’d seen what had happened but something else held her attention.

Two teenagers were latched on to her leg, having crawled unnoticed through the throng until reaching the fleshy part of her thigh.

But even in her final moments, she exhibited the defiance that permeated every part of her being, raising her metal sword high overhead and plunging it through the air into the head of one attacker. Then she dropped from my sight, sinking into the thriving mass, never again resurfacing.

It was Harrison and me now, and we both knew we weren’t going to last long. And it was Harrison, always Harrison, who acted on it. I felt arms, solid and steadfast, come around me and suddenly I was spun around, my feet sweeping off the ground with the urgency of that motion. My arms loosened with the force of it and the vials of antidote flew from my grasp, into the people they were meant to cure.

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, looking up at Harrison’s handsome face, an indistinguishable mass of movement and colors swirling overhead.

The snarls and growls were quieter here, in this cocoon Harrison created. He lay over me, the length of him covering every inch of my body from the head down. Terror was still pumping through me but its sharp claws were dulled with Harrison so close. I could see him, breathe him in, feel the weight of him.

His eyes were wide and his nostrils were flared, and his lips had stiffened, pinching together into a small line. Still, he was gorgeous as he looked for a way out, an escape in this crazed madness that had consumed us and would now literally eat us alive.

I had already accepted that this was our end. It would all be over soon, and I didn’t want to spend it frantic, desperate, or powerless. I wanted to look at Harrison, to take in every crease, every dip, every curve of his face, the deep color of his eyes, the rich color of his skin. I wanted to think back at how I had caught glimpses of that face from down the hall and across the cafeteria back when the world was simpler, safer. I wanted to remember how he carried himself, that confident stride taking his broad, muscled body wherever he chose to go. I wanted him to be my last view and my final memory as death took me.

Harrison shouted then, roaring over the Infecteds in fury.

“Hold on!” he said.

He wasn’t giving up yet.

The turmoil above us grew. The Infected around us managed to get to our level and started thrashing at Harrison’s back and legs, thrusting him side to side, his body skidding over mine as they pulled him one way and back the other. I fought the instinct to wrap my arms around him, protect him, give him comfort, because I saw the look in his eyes. It was filled with conviction and directed at something beyond my head, out of sight.

I discovered his arm reaching for it; his chest rumbled with an exerting groan.

His eyebrows furrowed as he made a final, fervent lunge and drew back to me with an exhale of relief.

His fist landed next to my cheek, fingers curled around something small, unidentifiable. Only one piece of it protruded out, a round metal loop. My breath caught in my throat as I recognized it, having seen similar miniature metal rings throughout my life, in my dad’s artillery safe, as mock weapons in the our field exercises.

Harrison had found a grenade.

And just as I saw Eve’s face appear above us, her eyes no longer her own, Harrison said something to me that triggered a single distinctive memory.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve got you.”

Those were the first words he ever uttered to me. They drifted through my mind as they had so long ago when he scooped me up from the base of my father’s gravestone and rolled me into his arms.

Don’t worry. I’ve got you.

The moment came back to me with the force of a gust of wind, filling me with enough intensity I found myself reliving it.

Harrison’s arms curled around me back then, two warm bars protecting me from the world as he carried me across the uneven ground to the cemetery’s exit. The sky was dark but he stepped with steady assurance, taking care not to jostle me. He didn’t know how much more my overwrought senses could take. My body lay limp against his chest, my mind numb to all that was around me. Then his lips came to my ear and he whispered something that sent shivers across my skin. “This may be hard to accept right now, you might not believe me when I say it, but you’re going to be your own hero some day, Kennedy.”

You’re going to be your own hero some day.

That was where the memory, that brief daydream, ended. I snapped back to reality, my lungs expanding to drawn in a guttural breath. It was almost as if I had fallen asleep and been revived just in time to do what was needed. And I understood exactly what that was now.

Harrison continued to writhe over me, attempting to cover me as best he could while his hands met and his fingers searched for the small metal ring.

My arms were freed by this motion, allowing me to raise them overhead and take hold of the grenade. As I did, Harrison’s face dropped to mine and confusion creased his forehead.

He had been ready to take on the burden of hurting these people around us, and I had only minutes earlier been trying to convince others to save these people I was now about to injure.

But there was another way. Only one other way…

I pulled the ring and flung the grenade into the crowd in the direction where the vials of antidote disappeared, hoping they were still there, hoping the heat would reach them.

Then the world exploded around us sending a violent blast compression over us and the Infected.

CHAPTER 22

W
HAT FOLLOWED WAS ABSOLUTE STILLNESS.

I had never heard such a stark silence. No wind in the trees, no birds in the air disturbed it. The roar in my ears had ended, being replaced with serenity. The frantic movement around us was now at rest. It was as if we were in a vacuum, a world unto ourselves. It was both lonely and relieving.

My face was in Harrison’s chest. His forearms were laid against my ears. His back was arched around me. He had made himself into a human shield, barring the shrapnel from touching any part of me.

He lifted himself upward and stared down at me.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Are you?”

“I’m alive.”

“Thank God,” I exhaled, the quiver of a smile lifting my lips.

“How did you know that would work?”

I attempted to shake my head but his forearms kept me in place. “I didn’t.”

His lips turned into a sideways smile and he dipped his head to kiss me. It was long and patient, and while our skin touched there the urgency and stress that clung to us for months began to seep away. We didn’t move for a very long time.

Without having to look up and around, which neither of us was ready to do yet, we knew the affects of what I’d done.

The blast had vaporized the antidote and the breeze had done the rest, carrying it across the reformatory grounds and delivering it to its intended recipients.

When Harrison’s lips left mine I almost pulled him back, but he was swift, stepping up and carrying me with him. He held on to me though, his hand remaining in mine, refusing to separate from me.

On our feet, we surveyed the reformatory grounds. Only two others were left standing, a teenage girl with her hair pulled back in a disheveled ponytail and a man who looked to be fifty, although after what he’d been through that impression could have been deceiving. Both had wide, questioning stares as they stood with legs astride, hands raised, and muscles flexed. They had been trained this way, and this was the way they remained until someone told them not to be.

Those who had been on the roofs and walls were no longer visible and I could only assume they either fell or climbed down. They were now amongst the bodies crisscrossing the grounds.

Groans and sighs ascended from them. Several were moving, curling into fetal positions, and while I felt sorry for them, having already gone through the pain they were now enduring, a surge of excitement went through me also.

They were healing…

Harrison was the first to move. He shifted so that he could stand upright.

The heads of the two survivors snapped in his direction, terrified but ready to handle whatever might come at them.

“It’s all right,” Harrison called out. “It’s over.”

Only then did they relax their posture.

Harrison took a step in their direction and I gasped.

“What?” he asked, instantly alert again.

“Nothing,” I blurted.

But it was something.

His entire backside was ripped to shreds, skin fell in pieces through his clothing and blood seeped in streams down his legs.

His mouth closed into a smile. “Kennedy,” he said, calling my attention.

The tenderness in his voice made me look up at him.

“I’ll heal.”

With a reassuring squeeze of his hand, he returned to making his way to the other two survivors. By then, some of the cured were beginning to sit up, drawing their arms around their knees like children or kneeling with their hands bracing themselves on their thighs. When their heads lifted, each had the very same expression: bewilderment.

“Are you two all right?” Harrison asked the girl and man.

They nodded but were unable to muster a verbal response.

“Good, there are a few people we need to find but we’ll be back.”

They nodded again.

Harrison and I went about searching for Eve, Beverly, Doc and Mei.

As we did this, we realized without admitting it that not everyone had been restored. Those with injuries too great were healed just enough for their bodies to allow them to pass on. They were the ones who didn’t stir again. For me, there was a certain solace in knowing they had finally been freed.

But others, like our friends and Harrison’s aunt, had a chance and they bore through the pain of recovery. We knew this as we came across Doc and Mei, both huddled with their knees to their chests, their faces twisted against their suffering.

They somehow found each other in the attack and ended up together facing one another, their arms extended so they could hold the other’s hand. We waited until they were sitting up before continuing our search.

Eve wasn’t far from them. She was already propping herself up with one arm braced along her side when we found her. She was visibly shaking as she worked to stand up. Harrison and I helped her before she collapsed back into him. If you were to ask me whether she was only feeling the effects of the antidote or she was distressed over having finally felt what so many others had and were going through because of the “cure” she had originally developed, I’d tell you it was a bit of both. Her eyes were too filled with guilt for it to simply have been recover that sapped her of willed strength.

I left Harrison with his aunt, because there was one more person we needed to find.

“Beverly,” I called out, looking for camouflage in the mix of clothes. “Beverly!”

I stepped cautiously around a woman who was picking at her torn pants as if it were the first time she’d seen them.

“Beverly!”

“WHAAAT?” That snarky, cynical voice shouted and I spun to my right.

She sat on the ground, her legs slightly bent toward her, demonstrating an air of casual acceptance. She could have been sitting on the sand watching the ocean roll in.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She glared up at me and scoffed. “Do I look it?”

“Well,” I mumbled, assessing her. “Yeah…”

The faintest start of a smile lit her face, the first one I’d seen from her in months. It was wiped away a second later with her retort. “I am…Now go help someone else.”

I nodded. “We’ll be over-”

“I know where to find you.”

I walked back to Harrison then, a smile curving my lips because for the first time in months I felt like everything just might be okay.

What happened next was surreal. People didn’t stand up and shout profanity-laced questions about what had happened and where they had ended up, although I wouldn’t blame them if they had. Instead, quietly, cautiously, in a true sign they were coming back to life, they rose to their feet and when Harrison directed them inside to the cafeteria they followed.

I would have to say that recovery, our entire world’s, began at that point. We didn’t need to explain what had transpired. They’d witnessed it from inside their own bodies. Because of it, they were willing and now able to do everything needed to develop more of the antidote.

We started that night, gradually developing a round-the-clock system working in shifts and expanding the lab to additional classrooms. And when what was left of our national forces came into sight, rolling down the street in tanks and armored vehicles, we were ready for them.

It turned out, they had heard about us too.

A few weeks later, we caught a ride with the brigade on their way to Chicago, back home, where all of this had started.