Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (35 page)

But there was nothing peaceful going on outside.

While I could no longer hear what was approaching or smell them or sense their footsteps vibrations through the ground, I knew they were here.

Using every bit of strength, splitting it equally, I focused on keeping the vials lifted so they would not fall and shatter as I dragged my body outside.

The sun was blinding when I opened the door. My retinas had taken a beating after being indoors for so long. I had to stop myself from blocking the light with my palm, needing my free hand instead to grasp the handrail and lower myself to the dirt driveway.

Harrison followed behind me, knowing enough not to assist.

He had always been good at understanding people, despite or maybe because of what they had done to him. He recognized that I needed to show the others that I was walking on my own, that I was again one of them. And because he did not help me, I was sure he knew what I was about to do.

As I walked toward the gate several realities collided in my awareness at once. First, I was acutely aware of the weapons trained on me. Maybe this was more my dad’s workings, having conditioned me to be alert, but I knew of every barrel focused at my head. Second, the only sound in the air came from the Infected now crowding the gate, and very likely the rest of the wall surrounding our perimeter. The noise was so loud that the thoughts in my head were drowned out, the shouts between those on the wall and the roof of the reformatory were muted. And lastly, something ironically comforting, were the patches of grass and flowering weeds gradually overcoming the dirt drive leading to the gate. The yellow in their petals was breathtakingly vibrant and the grass so lush. What they had done, I respected. They had survived a harsh winter, had been beaten down until there was nothing left but the seed within, and had come back stronger and more alive.

And so would we.

As I stopped at the gate, the Infected pressing on the opposite side, through the defenses Beverly and Christina had set, growing more excited. A few weeks ago, I would have reasoned it was because I was near. But I knew differently now. It wasn’t my proximity that made them hungrier.

Harrison stopped beside me, observing me cautiously.

They all were.

When I spoke, my voice began as a whisper, almost inaudible. I paused to clear the soreness from my throat and begin again. And somehow I found the depths needed from my lungs to carry the words outward to those on the walls and my message rose above the Infected to the ones who could understand them.

“You all know me. You know what has happened to me. And you know why I haven’t been in sight, eating with you at the tables, roaming the halls with you, mocking Beverly behind her back…”

A boy on the wall in front of me broke into a smile, which was encouraging.

“And yet I’m standing here, speaking to you now. How am I doing that? Have you ever seen an Infected, the Sick, a Skin Eater, a Screamer, anyone with the T1L2 virus speak again after being bitten? Have they ever stood before you and not made an attempt at an attack? I was bitten, as you know. So how am I here talking to you now? How is this happening? How am I no longer infected?”

As I spoke, I realized something was taking place. The ones on the roof were pulling back their positions and the ones on the distant walls were shifting their muzzles away from me and at the Infected around our perimeter. They couldn’t hear me, not over the noise, but they could see the hand signals of the people closest to them.

Like the pass of a baton, my message was being relayed.

Those close enough to hear me were communicating to others using the very hand signals Harrison and I had designed to save our lives and the lives of our unit. Now those signals were being used to convey my meaning and would hopefully save the lives of those who we had created the signals to protect ourselves against. And the survivors scattered across the grounds, on the rooftops, on the walls, in the windows were all listening.

They were listening.

I realized I was shaking then but didn’t try to control it. Harrison noticed and slipped his hand into mine. My fingers unconsciously curled through his and gripped him back.

“The truth is…these people are alive. They are still inside fighting to get out. And if I’m no longer one of them,” I shouted, pointing at the gates, “there’s a chance they can recover too! Your mother, your father, your sister, your spouse, your neighbor, your friends can all be healed!”

“What if you’re a fluke?” someone called out from the north wall.

“What if it only worked on you?” another yelled.

They were questioning me, and I didn’t blame them. It was easy to theorize that everyone I was talking to had lost someone to the virus. Months of broken possibilities and lost hope was working against me.

“There’s no time for this!” shouted someone from an indistinguishable location behind me.

And he was correct. The Infected were piling up at the gate.

Harrison released my hand and stepped forward, preparing to support me, when Eve placed a hand on his chest and stepped into the position he had been ready to take.

“The antidote works!” Eve urged. “It heals through regeneration, the same regenerative properties Harrison has in his blood. I’ve used those same properties to revive Kennedy, and it will revive the others too!”

“How do you know?” Caroline’s voice came up behind us.

We turned to find her approaching, having finished overseeing the direction of the survivors into their specified positions. She was taking broad paces to reach us. A tool that Beverly and Christina had manufactured lay between her hands, ready for use.

“More of them are coming!” a boy from the wall yelled out.

“The antidote will cure these people!” Eve shouted, spittle flying from her mouth.

“But you can’t prove it,” argued Caroline.

“I can,” Eve attested.

“You can’t-” Caroline began to counter but Eve cut her off.

“I can! Because…,” she staggered, appearing to question whether she should continue. When she did, I was staggered by her bravery. “Because I’m the one who developed the virus in the first place.”

Caroline’s head jerked back in shock before an almost palpable silence fell over the crowd.

All eyes fell on Eve, the person who had been the cause of everything they had experienced in the last months, who had stolen their loved ones lives, who had endangered their own, who had brought an end to their dreams and replaced them with their worst nightmare. As the message was relayed to those with guns more than a few muzzles swung in Eve’s direction.

She stood as Harrison did, defiant, confident, ready for whatever might come. I’m not sure if she noticed the muzzles or of me and Harrison stepping in between she and them. But she did brace herself as Caroline continued her march, directly for Eve.

“You can’t prove it,” Caroline repeated stoically, a stillness having come over her as she moved. Her eyes were pinned on something behind Eve, serious and accepting, as if she were staring at her own death. “You can’t prove it because there is no time left to do so.”

It was her manner more than her statement that caught me off-guard. She wasn’t fighting Eve, and had no intention of it. Her fight was at the gate, which had just caved in from the weight of the Infected. They poured through the narrow opening like lava, although this kind didn’t burn you to death. It snapped its jaws, sank its teeth into your flesh, and transmitted a virus that would make you death itself. And it was coming for all of us.

CHAPTER 21

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CREAMS ERUPTED, MIXING WITH THE GROWLS
of the Infected, as they invaded our sanctuary. A few of them were stopped by bullets but the ones shooting at them hadn’t practiced, and even if they had been naturally good shots, the ammunition wouldn’t last long. Harrison knew this and once again stepped between me and the coming wave.

They bore down on us with a ferocity that nearly made me forget there were people inside them. But I didn’t forget entirely and held the vials of antidote closer to my ribs.

Caroline was the first to fall. She hadn’t slowed her pace as she approached the gate, which gave me the instinct that she meant to sacrifice herself if it meant giving anyone of the rest of us time to get to safety. She was simply that way. Tough-minded, unwavering, altruistic. But one person can’t form a barrier when hundreds were forming the wrecking ball, and they plowed into and through her with crazed zeal.

The first Infected hit Harrison with the affect of a bowling ball, sweeping his legs out from under him. Harrison held on and climbed up the man’s chest as his feet dug in to stop them, leaving two deep trenches in the mud as they moved. His hands met the Infected’s face, preparing to break the neck below it.

As insane as it was, I found myself screaming “NO!” in his defense.

Harrison heard me and, in a demonstration that he agreed with me, flung the man against a tree, shattering the bones in the man’s legs.

Harrison swept his head around to check on me, and also to chastise me. His lips were slack and jutted outward brutishly but his eyes were alert and critical. I understood instantly. None of us will survive if we limit ourselves to simply impairing the Infected.

Yet, the next one who came at him again found herself with fractures to both legs.

They streamed toward Harrison, fiendish and desperate, an army targeting a lone man. I tucked the vials closer and came around Harrison only to find his arm pressing me back.

Even in the midst of eminent death, he was trying to protect me.

When the next Infected hit him, the force threw Harrison off balance. I had no rifle but, despite knowing a living person existed inside, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have used it if it had been in my hands. Because my hands held only the vials, I sent a roundhouse kick into the man’s head, knocking him off Harrison’s hip and into the mud. By the time Harrison was back on his feet, my senses were heightened and frantic, a surge of adrenaline rushed through me, and I wasn’t seeing clearly still as my body continued to recover from the virus. So when Beverly appeared to my right I almost sent a side kick into her thigh.

She glared at me before refocusing on the assault.

The next wave that hit us rolled in with five Infected out front. They were military. I knew this from the fatigues they wore and the grenades still adhered to their chest. For two of them, the deteriorated muscles in their necks were unable to contend with the sharpness of Beverly’s metal sword and a single strike by her took them both out at once. To the one beside them, I sent a kick upward, connecting my toes with the man’s jaw as he screamed bloody spittle at us. Not only did my foot snap his mouth shut and stop him in his tracks, it propelled him backwards into a collision with the ones behind him. I then found Doc and Mei were suddenly beside Harrison, just in time to help us with the remaining two Infected on Harrison.

But the flood moved fast, blindingly fast, and we formed a circle with our backs to each other, as they surrounded around us.

Without the use of my arms, I fought with my legs, sending my feet up and around in varying kicks. It was clumsy and ineffective and would have been the breach in our secure little circle if it hadn’t been for Harrison filling in for my lack of arms. When it was clear I was a burden I considered sending the vials to the ground behind us, enclosed in the circle for protection, but I never got the chance. Within seconds of the Infected attacking I found myself squeezed into the center of the circle, exactly where Harrison wanted me to be.

Through the chaos, I caught sight of the reformatory grounds and found it had become a battlefield. People were running, tripping, falling, attacking, being attacked. Bullets whizzed by us, sharp zings trailing through the air until they ended abruptly in flesh or the ground. The screaming gained volume but localized to those uninfected who were still on the ground. Some had climbed the walls. Others were helping the uninfected up, until their human ladder fell to an assault by the Infected.

Then I heard a scream above the snarls and recognized it to be Mei’s. My eyes found her in the pandemonium, at my left shoulder, bowed forward, one hand stationary, the other slashing at the weighty man whose mouth was around her palm. Even if his upper lip hadn’t been rotted away, I would have known instantly he had bitten her simply by her reaction. She was doing everything she could to push him away but her slight frame was no match.

Sickness swelled inside me but only for a fraction of a second. For the rest of that second, instinct took over.

I leaned to the side, with my arms remaining wrapped around the vials, and thrust my foot around her and into the man’s gut. He stumbled but held on. It was Doc’s swift slice to the man’s throat, directly across the prison tattoo inked there, that ended the man’s attack. His ferocious gnawing stopped instantly but he never let go of Mei’s hand and as the burden of his body tipped back she was dragged with him, her arm remaining outstretched as if she were reaching for him instead of trying to pull away.

Doc went with them, using his strength to pry them apart. He was successful, the three of them separating in slow motion just before the mob of Infected consumed them.

Harrison shifted, closing the gap that was left, and my feet went back to work.