Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (26 page)

Harrison ignored her snide tone and said, “Let’s give this a few seconds.”

Sure enough, the first Infected appeared from around a corner. Then another. And another. As the truck’s motor called out with its constant deep rumble across the quiet expanse, it seemed the whole town had been converted. They rushed the streets like their team had won the Super Bowl.

“So Beverly, what do you say we find another stop?” Doc suggested.

She sniffed and casually rotated her head to look out the window, with unadorned disinterest in answering.

This was how it went for us over the next few hours. We’d stop at the edge of the city’s limits, wait, and as if a giant spout had been turned on the Infected flooded into view.

At one point, Mei muttered to herself, “Where are they all coming from?”

That was an excellent question, one we all wished we knew the answer to.

“Every one of these towns can’t be overflowing, can they?” Christina asked.

There was a feasible argument either way, but the sheer number of Infected emerging in each made it harder to believe there wasn’t something suspicious happening.

Around noon, we were in discussions about heading back when a movement on top of one of the buildings we idled in front of caught my attention. I leaned forward, squinting. Harrison and Mei were in the middle of discussing the virtues of pushing on for another town versus returning to the reformatory empty-handed.

“I think,” I muttered, “I have a solution for both of you.”

Harrison, whose head had been turned almost entirely around during his debate with Mei, had missed what I meant. Despite that, he quickly picked up on it and his eyes, which had been so sad after landing on me, began darting back and forth.

“There,” I said, pointing a finger out the windshield.

We were parked a few hundred yards out and, for better or worse, we’d become comfortable with the Infected streaming toward us. The first ones were still about the length of a football field out, which should have been unnerving to us. Instead, we were more disturbed by the fact we’d actually found someone
alive
.

He was jumping up and down on the flat roof of a store toward the middle of town, and he wasn’t alone. Several others were funneling out a maintenance door and onto the roof. Seven in all.

“Think one of them is a scientist?” Beverly asked, in her ever-consistent manner, thinking only of herself.

“Maybe,” I said, instigating the group toward the option of rescue.

There was still the choice to flee and they might select that plan, especially when we took in the hundred or so Infected coming at us.

“Maybe the only one left…”

Harrison shifted the truck into reverse and screeched into action, lurching our bodies forward in the process, our heads snapping with the force of it.

“Sorry,” he acknowledged but kept up the speed. “Brace yourself,” he advised just before spinning the wheel and flipping us around to face the opposite direction.

“Finally,” Beverly mumbled, “Reasoning prevails.”

She thought we were running, but she’d guessed wrong, which she quickly realized when Harrison took the truck down a wash and screeched to a stop.

“We don’t have much time,” he said, opening his door and stepping out. “So don’t argue.” He said this to me, which made me brace myself. “Doc, get in the driver’s seat. In a few minutes, you’ll find the Infected running down the road we’ve just come from. When all is clear, drive in and pick up those people.”

“Where are you going?” Doc asked, stepping out, preparing to take the wheel.

“To round them up.”

With that, he took off running, the gravel kicking up in a spray behind him.

“Harrison!” I screamed, opening the truck door.

It took Christina, Beverly, and Mei to keep me inside. Suddenly, there was a tangle of limbs in my face, pressing on my chest, pinning my legs.

“No,” I roared, “NO!”

Then I was being tossed around, knocking into the cushions, being thrown to the floor. We were moving, making sharp turns, and it only made me fight harder because I knew it was in the opposite direction Harrison had gone. Pain should have screamed through me by the time they lifted off me but I felt nothing but fury.

My head snapped around, searching for any sign of Harrison, seeking out his broad shoulders, his powerful movements, anything to tell me that he was safe and not sprinting out in front of a city of Infected.

There was nothing in sight but dark, empty storefronts.

Growling, I shoved open the door and stepped out.

I didn’t even notice the pre-teen looking boy slip into my seat until I saw the middle-aged woman following him. There were even more people climbing into the truck bed, their faces tight with fear.

Beverly came into my view, shoving me up the wheel well and into the bed. “Stay!” she commanded and swung a leg up into the bed herself.

I examined the faces of everyone huddled together. None of them were Harrison’s. Standing, I prepared to scan the streets when a hand came around my forearm and yanked me down.

“Stay!” Beverly barked again.

I stood back up but the truck lurched into gear and I fell forward, toward the bumper. I didn’t bother to catch myself though because I caught sight of something far more important.

Harrison was running down the center of the street, the Infected at his heels. There was no telling how many had kept up behind him. All I could see was the first row, which stretched across the entirety of the street.

I knew instantly what he’d done. He
had
rounded them up, just like he said he would, and then he’d funneled them into a tighter and tighter area so that less of them could endanger him.

“Stop the truck!” I shouted. “Stop the ummph!”

I landed on the hard part of someone’s shoulder, my eye suddenly overwhelmed with searing pain.

“Owww!” a woman squealed.

“Sorry” was the first word I’d intended to say, but “Stop the truck” was what came out.

Soon, others were calling out to Doc and while he didn’t stop, he did tap the brake.

Some screamed as the distance between us and the Infected shortened but I ignored them. Harrison was almost to the bumper. If we could get him inside…we had to get him inside!

Still sprawled across the back, I leaned my upper half over the truck’s edge and reached for Harrison.

I never stretched so long, so hard, so deeply in my life. Every fiber of my being extended for him. I wanted to call out to him, encourage him to run harder, faster while simultaneously wanting to scream at Doc to slow down, but neither command would come out. Instead, a groan, long and grating and strained, emitted from me as I did everything in my power to make contact with Harrison.

Please, PLEASE…

And then our fingers touched, a brief sweeping motion that sent a spark through me. They slipped apart but Harrison’s legs lunged again and that made every bit of difference. The space was closed, our fingers curled together, we didn’t let go.

Hands and arms extended into my frame of view then, helping us, dragging Harrison over and into the truck bed.

My arms went around Harrison and formed an unbreakable lock. I wasn’t letting him go again. Never again. We caved against the truck, his hands in my hair and pressing my face to the curve of his neck where hints of the sweet, earthiness of his body’s scent were carried up and away into the wind now whipping around us.

We didn’t move for the duration of the drive back. His arms kept their steady grip around me and mine around him. You couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between us.

I had the vivid feeling that our argument on the roof was over. We’d come to a tentative truce. For a moment I could breathe easier. For a moment.

When we pulled to a stop outside the reformatory’s primary building, Christina took the role of advisor and guided the new survivors inside, leading them like a tour group.

Harrison pulled me aside, stopping in front of me and squaring his shoulders.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“For what?”

“For my haranguing.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, a large part of me didn’t think he was. He knew jumping out of the truck and dangling himself like a carrot in front of the Infected wasn’t just irresponsible, it was insane. And I knew he wanted me to scream and rant at him because in some odd way this would cleanse him, absolve him in some way.

I scrutinized him, taking in his features, rendering them firmly in my mind. I did this because I knew, regardless of whether I chastised him or not, he would do it again. Both of us were battle worn. We thought the same way. We envisioned the same strategies. And we both knew that he had just found one that worked. If he needed to evacuate survivors again, he now had his tactic to do it. He deserved a tirade, that was clear. It just wouldn’t have made one damn bit of difference.

Silently, I lifted myself onto my toes and kissed him on the mouth.

And because it might be the last time I got the chance to say it, I whispered softly, “I love you, Harrison.”

His eyes turned sad, almost hollow, as I moved away and entered the reformatory, my heart fracturing at the reality that he was so bent on endangering himself that he’d probably ultimately be successful at it.

Christina’s voice drifted down the hall as the rest of us, weary from our trip, filtered in and around behind her. The elevated sounds of voices from the dining area meant dinner was being served and our team had already headed in that direction.

Without the feeling of actual hunger and moving only by sheer instinct, I absentmindedly took a bowl of…something…and a seat next to Mei. Christina’s entourage filled a table in front of us, where they ate ferociously. There must not have been much food left in their little store out in the middle of nowhere. My guess was that they barely heard a word Christina was saying to them. But I did. Especially the part about a hope for a cure and the preservation of blood to manufacture one. At this acknowledgement, I saw Mei stiffen beside me and noticed how the conversation between Doc and Beverly faded away as they instead chose to wait for my reaction.

I stood and they exchanged tenuous glances.

Soon my feet were carrying me into the hallway, where I came to an abrupt stop.

Only one door to the classrooms lining the first floor was closed. Just one. I marched to it and pushed it open.

It had been converted, as best could be done, into a lab. Sure enough, on a counter against the wall, sat a small platform of glass vials filled with red fluid, the kind that looked strangely like blood.

“Mei thought it was a good idea to preserve some of me as I am.” Harrison’s voice came up behind me, hesitant, hoping that information would appease me and alleviate my fears while deep down knowing it wouldn’t.

What he didn’t say, I said for him. “In case the rest of you doesn’t make it…”

I spun around to wait for his response. It came when his face sank into culpability, and I knew I’d hit on their true intent.

Half of me wanted to shove the vials to the floor, shatter the glass and blood and leave them there in a contaminated mess. My arm muscles actually flexed in preparation for the motion as I realized that without those blood samples, Harrison would be less likely to risk his life again. But logic worked its way in as a subtle whisper behind the rage. These vials could be the only means to resurrecting a healthy human race. Destroying them was essentially destroying our future. My eyes ran the length of them again realizing one simple fact…Harrison was preparing, no…he was
prepared
, for his death. Apparently, everyone else thought we should be too. I was the sole dissenter.

I left the room then, sickened at how they could be so cavalier about his death, how they could so easily accept it. I understood that we were on the brink of extinction, or in reality had fallen off and were rapidly gaining speed into the abyss of annihilation. I also understood that Harrison was the only one who could bring us back. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to address any of them again for the next several days, not on rescue missions or supply runs, not at meals or in the halls, not until the point came when Harrison found death staring back at him.

CHAPTER 15

O
UR RUNS OUTSIDE THE REFORMATORY BECAME
a daily ritual. Wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, slide into our designated vehicles, and follow Harrison out the gate. Return each night, eat dinner, sleep. Repeat. It became clockwork, rote, mechanical in nature so that we began to feel more and more comfortable outside the reformatory’s walls. It helped that we hadn’t lost anyone, or even suffered an injury greater than a minor cut. We were beginning to know what to expect when we ventured out. This may have been our downfall…the complacency we felt.

On our runs, every well-maintained, functioning mode of transportation was used—trucks, hearses, dune buggies, even a few VW Beetles—which we’d picked up as our scouting radius grew. I was now driving a Humvee, which I felt right at home in considering my past, and Harrison used a souped up off-roader made from custom fabrication, basically a gutted truck with impressive differential and air suspension and built as utilitarian as they come. The Duo of Death took the Porsche Cayenne, threatening all others against laying claim to it when we found it on the interstate. Doc and Mei each drove long bed trucks, excellent transport options.