Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (8 page)

He laughed and pulled me into his arms. They were heavy, reminding me of a woven blanket.

“Mmmmmmm,” I moaned and nestled into him. “How…How…did you stay…s-s-so warm…when you…went in?”

“I didn’t feel warm,” he mused. “I didn’t feel anything at all.”

“Must be n-nice.”

“Sometimes. Other times I think it might be better to feel pain. It warns you of danger, it tells you that you’re still alive, it reminds you tha…” He swallowed and forced himself to finish his thought. “It reminds you that you’re human.”

A tremor ran through his arms and chest, drawn out by the honesty of his statement.

“You s-still think y-you’re inhuman…,” I whispered against his skin.

How could anyone so beautiful, so good, be anything but?

“I know I am,” he whispered, sending a chill up my spine.

The sound of Doc, Mei and Beverly heading up the slope toward us cut our conversation short, but Harrison squeezed in an answer, one meant to divert me from my notion.

“I’m talking about the water, Kennedy.”

We both knew he wasn’t.

“W-What about the w-water?” Doc asked, stopping next to us and hunching against the cold.

I got a look at his lips and wondered if mine were the same pretty shade of blue. I’d seen eye shadow that color before but never anywhere else on a person’s face. Harrison caught it too, parlaying Doc’s question into a sense of urgency.

“It’s cold enough to be dangerous to body temperature,” Harrison said. “Let’s start walking. Maybe we’ll find a place with clothes and food for everyone.”

Our answer to his suggestion came silently as we collectively began walking again. It was just too hard to talk at that point.

Harrison kept an eye on us as we headed back to the freeway and continued east, making sure we weren’t stumbling or walking into cars. As we thawed in the sun and diverted collisions with vehicles, Harrison continued to sporadically check for working engines, slipping into five vehicles before he found a silver sedan with a quarter tank of gas. As the rest of us sat down, we simultaneously exhaled in relief. After days without a solid meal, a freezing upper torso, cramping muscles, and exhausted limbs, the walking was tough on us. Doc, Mei, and Beverly fell asleep instantly. I dozed, catching glimpses of the passing landscape. Mostly trees and grass swept by, but then there was a mailbox and a dirt road, and finally a house, set on a flat dirt parcel in the middle of the trees.

The car came to a stop but Harrison kept the engine running as he opened the door. I was sitting up by then.

“You’re planning on going in alone?” I asked, happy to have my fluid voice back.

“How much ammo do you have left?”

I dropped the magazine, pressed on the spring and discovered what he probably already knew.

“One.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “And you want to waste it protecting me?”

Knowing I wasn’t going to win that argument with him, given our opposing views on the subject of preserving his life, I opened my door and stepped out. By the time I was on my feet, the remaining doors in the car swung open. Doc stood up and scrutinized the house. Beverly came into view, settling the metal rod on her shoulder, preparing to go to bat.

“We protect you, remember?” Mei said, emerging to send an accusatory look at Harrison.

His shoulders fell slightly in opposition but he realized there was no convincing us to stay behind and save ourselves. The very thought of it sounded cowardly to me.

In concession, he gestured to the car. “Keep the doors open. We might need to run back if we find anyone in there.”

He stopped us again halfway to the house and whispered a single set of instructions. “Hand signals.” From then on, we split our focus between Harrison’s motions and the two-story farm house.

It was quiet as we approached, only the crunch of dirt below our feet and a chilly breeze murmuring through the leafless tree branches broke the silence. Even the crow that squawked at us seemed alone.

We circled the house, peering through the windows for any sign of movement. Once reassured, we entered through the back door of the kitchen.

It was uncluttered, decorated in a style you would see in a magazine for country living. Only two elements felt out of place. The musty smell and the particles of dust our entrance kicked up, which drifted in and out of the broken rungs of light filtering through the wooden blinds. It felt as if no one had been inside in a very long time.

We moved single-file through the kitchen, checking the small bathroom off the hallway and the cozy family room before stopping at the stairs. There, Harrison’s shoulders rose with a deep inhale before he turned around.

“It’s safe,” he declared.

“No one’s upstairs?” Doc pressed.

Harrison smirked and pointed to his nose.

That seemed good enough for him. “If the nose knows…,” Doc grumbled and started for the kitchen. “Wonder what kind of food they have in here…”

“Hopefully canned food,” Mei muttered, following him.

Beverly eyed the stairs, pondering out loud, “Wonder what kind of clothes they have in here…”

I was sure she’d go searching for an answer but hunger won this time and she headed for the kitchen.

Harrison and I were left alone, but I didn’t move.

“The blinds are open,” I pointed out, inferring someone might be returning soon despite the dust and stuffiness.

“An oversight as they left the house for the city,” Harrison said, pointing to the mantel over the fireplace. On it, sat a row of mismatched framed photographs, one with a picture of the house in the background and a frame chiseled with ‘There’s no bad day when you’re on vacation…The Nielsen Family Abode’.

When I looked up, Harrison was observing me. “Your dad really did train you for every scenario, didn’t he?”

I grinned back at him.

“He would be impressed with you, Kennedy.”

“You think?”

He grinned and started back in the direction of the others, but he took the time to answer me over his shoulder. “
I
am…”

At those two simple words, a tickle of excitement ran through me. To impress someone who greatly outperformed me on every level was flattering, and encouraging. The tickle came rushing back when I entered the kitchen and found Harrison leaning against the countertop, smiling at me. I smiled back and felt his eyes on me as I moved toward the pine dining table. Canned food was already placed in a cluster on its edge. Next to it was a manual can opener.

Doc sat beside them, spooning heaps of chili into his mouth, while Mei was hunched over canned chicken next to him. Beverly stood near the sink, harboring the luckiest find of all…a tin of chicken soup.

“Mmm…mmm…mmm,” Doc mumbled excitedly from his seat on the table. He slid off, gesturing maniacally to me before nearly shoving me to the pantry. He opened the door and stepped aside for me and Harrison, who had followed out of curiosity.

Peering in, my first instinct was to mindlessly grab Harrison’s arm. Then I gasped.

It was stocked. Soups, fruit preserves, beans, vegetables, chicken. Stacked four, some five, deep. It was a treasure trove.

His mouth full of food, Doc tipped his head back to contain it, and gurgled, “Thought you’d like that…”

I immediately started to salivate, and then I realized what was missing.

Raw meat.

“Harrison…,” I exhaled and my hand dropped to my side. From his expression, he’d realized it too. “Damn it, Harrison, I’m so sorry…”

Doc swallowed quickly, waited for it to slide entirely down, and chuckled, “Damn nothing. Got something for you too, Harrison.”

He pushed aside the blinds, making Beverly jump and glare in the process, before jabbing a finger at the window.

“Through the trees,” he advised.

We narrowed our focus to just beyond a cluster of red birch to find something slow and large lumbering into view.

“A cow,” I muttered and then realized what I’d said. “A cow!”

“No…cows-uh,” Doc corrected. “More than one.

We missed them the first time, having been so conscientious of the house instead.

“That’s right, buddy,” Doc said slapping Harrison’s shoulder. “Fresh, raw meat.”

Amazed, Harrison hadn’t shifted his eyes from the view since they landed there. Unadulterated relief swept his face and seemed to have planted itself in place. “They must be downwind,” he muttered, as a smile crept up. “Downwind…”

“You know what I think?” Doc asked.

“I think you better rest up because training starts tomorrow.” He laughed to himself, stood to his full height and walked to the kitchen door.

“Starts?” Beverly said through a scowl. “Uh, in case you forgot, it already did and I whooped some booty this afternoon with my rod.”

Harrison opened the door and walked down the steps while answering her over his shoulder. “The first lesson wasn’t about weapons.”

“What was it about then?” she called out before the door could close.

“Teamwork,” he shouted back.

The door shut but that didn’t stop Beverly.

“Where are you going?” she demanded. “Where’s he going?”

“He’s going for dinner,” I said.

Disgusted by the thought of it, she turned away, frowned, and forgot all about his comment on teamwork. But I hadn’t. I felt my lips turn up in a smile as I watched Harrison stride confidently across the yard and into the trees. It wasn’t until then that I understood what he had been attempting to accomplish, standing in the woods, badgering us to attack him with metal rods. That lesson had essentially ended in the cone but we had learned it regardless. That was when we came together to defend ourselves against the Infected. We had leaned on each other’s strengths to survive, and we had started to form a team.

True to his word, over the next several days, Harrison trained them. Hard. He worked them on cardio, surveillance, hand signals, and tested them to think strategically on how to get out of situations they might end up in. Each night, he’d stand guard over the house while we slept.

I followed along even though my cardio was at its optimum level, surveillance had been branded into my subconscious by my dad, and thinking strategically came as second-nature to me. The hand signals were the only fresh material I hadn’t covered and this was because we created our own. We practiced until we could hold nearly an entire conversation in silence. By the end of the week, we could enter, clear, and leave the house without making a sound.

The beauty behind Harrison’s approach was that it provided a foundation for them on how to
avoid
a dangerous situation before teaching them what to do once
in
it. He amazed me every step of the way, having planned each lesson down to the finest detail.

I caught myself staring at him, wondering why we couldn’t have met sooner, why we hadn’t fought through our shyness to casually walk up to the other and say “hello” before any of this started. If we had, we might have some memories that didn’t revolve around survival, nice ones filled with bowling, movies, quiet strolls…and less worries about being bitten and consumed. He felt the same way. I saw it in his face when I climbed through my bedroom window to sit with him on the roof each night. Even though there was hesitancy in him that never seemed to leave, confirming he still didn’t believe he was any good for me, there was also something else. A widening of his eyes, a lift at the corner of his lips, the way he hurried to make room for me next to him, the holding of his breath as I took a seat. I waited for him to kiss me, but he never did and, as much as I didn’t want to, I understood why. I was already a distraction sitting on the roof; a kiss would leave our team far more vulnerable if his senses were entirely focused on me. No, he took his job far too seriously to let his guard down. He considered it though, several times when his eyes fell to my lips and his breath caught in his throat. These were the times I waited, hoping, but inevitably he would raise his head to the sky, close his eyes in pain, and exhale. It mattered to me, but it didn’t lessen the time we spent on that roof. That time was beautiful.

After several days of living at the Nielsens, he was ready to teach combat techniques and our temptations on the roof were taken to an entirely new level.

“Kennedy?” he called out from the front yard.

I was sitting with the others on the front steps, trying to ignore the way his muscles moved in the sunlight.

“How about a little sparring?” he offered.

I thought he was joking. “Really?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.”

I was immediately insulted, and it was exactly what he’d wanted. “No need to go easy on me, unless you want me to nod off during your demonstration…”

Teasing howls came from the group but Harrison stood firm, fighting back a grin as I marched to him. His eyes bore into me for a few seconds, stirring me, and then he turned to the group.

“What we’re about to show you is called hand-to-hand combat. It is effective in evading your attacker in close quarters. You will rehearse these moves daily. When, not if, but when the time comes to use them, your muscles will remember these techniques, making your response time more rapid, potentially saving your life.”