Break Free The Night (Book 2): Loss of Light (16 page)

              "How about the girls start that?" Jack asked, looking back at Kaylee. Anna was wiping her mouth clean, nodding. Kaylee could see that the prospect of digging was more appealing than the alternative. Danny shrugged. Paul gathered the shovels and traded for the weapons Danny had thrust at Kaylee and Anna with a sympathetic smile.

~

              The digging wasn't easy. Sweat dampened Kaylee's forehead, and trickled between her breasts. She was distracted and anxious, her eyes darting to the woods every few moments. So far, there had been no sign of Quinton. And no sign of her sister. But they had stayed in one location, the men peeling body parts from the lines and tossing them towards the ever widening ditch that she and Anna were chipping away at.

              The work was good in that it was steady, mindless, but exerting. Kaylee felt her panic pitch and rise and she would throw the shovel harder into the soil, scrape out rocks and toss the dirt aside. She wanted to run the length of the fence, her eyes traced it all throughout the day. But something small, something nagging, like a snag in her chest, told her even if she could, she wouldn't find Emma with Quinton.

              Nothing had happened; nothing had changed. There was no urgent need to find Quinton and even if Emma had decided to go and do it anyway, there was no real reason to sneak out in the middle of the night. Jack was contacting him every twenty-four hours; he was fine for now.

              But still, Emma left.

              Andrew thought it was his fault. Kaylee reviewed the possibility, even as she pressed her weight into the shovel, breaking through the earth's crust with a scraping sound that mingled with moans. Something in that made sense, something about the way Andrew watched her, about the way Emma reacted to it. Kaylee had sensed it for a while. But could that really have caused enough discomfort for her to just leave? Just forget her family, everyone she knew, and take off without even a note?

              No. Kaylee didn't think so.

              And if she wasn't running to Quinton, and it wasn't discomfort over Andrew, then there was only one alternative left.

              She was infected.

              And this led to an even more frightening reality. Because if she was infected, the thought came upon Kaylee suddenly and with such certainty, then she was dead. Emma wouldn't choose to live with it. Kaylee knew that.

              A sob caught in her throat out of nowhere and tears blurred her vision.

             
Dead
.

              "Kaylee?" Anna asked, her voice tinny and distant, as though Kaylee were hearing her through a tunnel and not right across from her. "Are you okay?"

              My sister is dead.

              She hadn't connected it before. Her sister was gone. She knew she was infected. But dead? No, her mind had been sheltering her from that. The tears were hot, cutting paths through the sweat and dirt that layered her face. Her breathing became erratic and she couldn't slow it down. Fear and desperation clashed and pitched together, clenching a tight fist in her chest and knocking a hole right through it. Anna was speaking again but the words were wrong, something about the bodies they were burying, but it wasn't that.

              Andrew thought she took off, irritated with him. Nick believed it was her impulsivity, her immaturity that led to her wandering off. The rest were content in pretending she was somehow headed towards Quinton.

              But they were wrong, all of them.

              "Dead," Kaylee said, panic leaking into her tone. Her eyes were fixed on the pit in front of her, the still bodies no longer able to twitch and moan. "She's dead."

              She wasn't yelling, but she wasn't quiet either. The shovel slipped from her grasp and landed with a dull thunk on the bodies.

              "Okay, honey," Anna was murmuring, putting her own shovel down and crossing to Kaylee with her hands out, almost as though she was in defense. Kaylee felt her brow furrow as she watched her friend, the words continued to slip past her lips. "Dead. She's dead."

              "They're all dead, sweetheart, we can't help them."

              Kaylee frowned.
Not them. No. Emma.
She felt dizzy suddenly, wobbly. Emma was just like them. Dead and still somewhere. She sat back on the edge of the pit they were digging, the dirt fresh and damp under her. The smell of the soil, rich with decay; and the smell of the bodies, charred flesh and cooked meat, mingled together and it was hard to take deep breaths, hard to fill herself up with the stench. Her head swam and her stomach roiled.

              "I'm going to take you back," Anna said, her arms now coming around Kaylee and hauling her to her feet. "Danny!"

              Would they find her? How did she do it? A gunshot probably. Sometime, early dawn maybe before any of the infected were up and wandering. Or maybe she wouldn't have been able to wait even that long, maybe she would have had to do it as soon as she made it to the woods, maybe she was turning that fast.

              And she didn't say goodbye. It wasn't until that moment that Kaylee realized just how seriously she had taken that promise her sister had made, back when they were cleaning out an old closet in the firehouse. She promised she'd say goodbye.

              Stupid!

              She was stupid. The rage and anger swelled up inside her and her body tensed. Anna must have noticed, she was yelling now and people were coming.

              Always banking on one more day, on time. There was no time. Not now, not ever really in life. Kaylee thought she had that, a moment for her to say goodbye to her sister, she thought
that
at least would be guaranteed. But of course now she realized how very naive it was to think like that, think that her sister would even be able to keep such a promise, as though it would somehow be in her control.

              And now it wouldn't matter anyway because she was gone. Dead.

              The sobbing started again and no one was even asking why. The stench of the bodies clogged her nose, made it difficult to breath. It was as though by breathing in their scent, she was breathing in little
bits
of them. Bits of dead, charred flesh inhaled with every breath. Her chest seized, her breaths turned sharp and shallow, almost as though her lungs were rejecting the air.

              There was an argument, something about who would take her back. Kaylee didn't care and she couldn't process what was being said. Her sister's face kept flashing through her mind.

              She was steered towards the van, placed on the floor. The door clanged shut and then they were moving. Someone was behind her, bracing her back. She wasn't sure who. It was quiet in the van, the wind flowing through a cracked window in a rushed hiss that drowned out all other sound.

              Kaylee's thoughts scattered, leaving her mind an empty husk.

              "I'm taking you back," Anna whispered in her ear. "You need to rest."

             
Rest.
It seemed silly. But then her body sagged and her breathing evened out. Exhaustion swept her though it was not even lunchtime. Kaylee found herself nodding and Anna squeezed her shoulders in approval.

              Anna couldn't stay with her. Marsden grunted when the girls appeared at all, muttering that the lines could not possibly be cleared yet. But then Kaylee locked eyes with him and he shut up. Something in her gaze stopped him. Which she found strange, because she could feel nothing in her gaze at all. Cold, emotionless, exhausted.

              Anna had taken her to their rooms and helped Kaylee strip herself of clothing and put on a cleaner set.

              "Are you okay?" she whispered, directing Kaylee towards the bed. Kaylee sought out her eyes, her own dry.

              "She's dead, Anna," Kaylee whispered. In the widening of Anna's eyes, Kaylee saw that she understood.

              "You don't know that," she said. She was trying to comfort, Kaylee knew. But Anna was intelligent. She had to know, as Kaylee did, how false the hope was that Emma just took off. Kaylee smiled, a weak upturn of her lips that said they both knew what was true. Anna hugged her tightly before whispering that she needed to get some rest. Her eyes slid closed and she was asleep before the door shut.

~

              She awoke with a start. It must have been hours later. She was alone, the rows of ten beds empty except for hers. Her eyes crossed the space to what had been her siste
r’
s bed.

              Had been.

              She was already thinking in the past tense. She rose slowly, her hands rubbing up and down her arms, though she wasn't cold, more numb. Her hands were filthy though and when she glanced down she noticed. Scooping up an armful of clean clothes, she left the room and headed towards the stairs.

              The great room was quiet, that same eerie quiet that used to exist in office buildings and computer labs. Something, low and usually undefinable pulsed in the air, whined softly, hissed at awareness. The computers and arcade games blinked with LED and old fashioned light bulbs, screens flashed pictures of dead people and scenery that Kaylee...

              And Emma.

              ...would never get to see. Kaylee made her way to the bathroom, stripped off her clothes and escaped into the spray of steaming water.

              Her father would never believe that Emma had killed herself. He just wouldn't. He'd spend every last minute of his life searching for her. And he'd want to bring the rest of them with him. Quinton would never go.

              But maybe Emma had made it that far. Maybe she had gotten far enough to check in with Quinton. It could have even been him that sent that last bullet into her head.

              Kaylee paused, under that spray of hot water, unwanted flashes of Emma's possible last moments invading the shower with her. Quinton pulling on a trigger and her sister's head snapping back. Maybe it was the surreality of Emma's disappearance, the uncertainty over whether or not they would ever see her again, but, as Kaylee pictured Quinton ending her sister's life, she felt a spark of relief. And then immediate guilt. But if Quinton were there with Emma, they would know. Know for sure that they shouldn't look, that she was gone. And she wouldn't have been alone. Someone would have shared her final moments and that felt important somehow. Kaylee couldn't dredge up any anger at that.

              She blinked, her mind jolted out of the shower and flying back to a night only weeks ago that still left her spinning. Red hummed on the edge of her vision and then dissipated entirely, leaving only the hazy, beige tile of the shower.

              Why did it have to take this, the loss of her sister, something so terrible and permanent, to cause this shift in Kaylee? Why couldn't she have seen it before? All those weeks of avoiding Jack, of being seared by the red and dreams of bullet wounds felt like such a waste now. She had been so blind, so stubborn. Losing her sister sobered her in a way she didn't think possible. She had fallen apart, shook lose, and then was jarred back to reality.

              Back in the city, when he had shot her mother, Jack had no other option. None. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right and it wasn't easy. But it was a reality of their world. People died. And often it was their friends who had to kill them. Because, whether it was the bite that killed, the infection that made her no longer human, or the bullet that Jack directed into her brain, it didn't really matter. She wasn't Mom any longer. Kaylee's mother didn't want to eat people. She didn't want to hurt anyone. And the infection took that basic choice from her, the choice to be good. It stripped her of her humanity and left her with horrible urges and animalistic desires. And was it fair to leave anyone like that, stuck with those desires? Kaylee wasn't like her father had been, she didn't believe there was a cure. So wasn't it kinder to put these creatures down, not force them to live out these uncontrollable urges without their mindful consent? These weren't decisions being made; this was forced on them.