On the floor, the thing
that used to be his father shuddered and shook, then went still as it
died for the second, and last, time.
No one spoke for a long
time.
Parrish did her best to
try and calm Karmen down. It took ten minutes just to get her up and
out of the kitchen so she could get her cleaned up. Parrish guided
her to the bathroom and used one of the hand towels to wipe the blood
splatter from her legs and arms and face. The blood was dark and
thick and sticky.
Without power, she had
to use cold water, but Karmen didn’t complain. Karmen didn’t
say a word. She just sat on the end of the toilet seat, staring
forward, her body still shaking with fear.
Noah stayed in the
kitchen until the sun came up.
Parrish thought that
maybe she should try to get rid of the body, but she wasn’t
really sure what Noah would want her to do. If he needed time to sort
through his feelings, she wanted to give him some space. Killing your
own zombie father had to really mess a with a person’s head.
Once the sun was up and
some light had filtered into the house again, Noah finally appeared
in the doorway of the living room where Parrish and Karmen had spent
the night. His eyes looked tired and red from crying.
“I’m really
sorry,” he said. His hand gripped the edge of the wood. “I
put you both in danger by keeping him here. I never really thought of
what might happen if we lost power and he got out.”
Karmen was sitting on
the couch with a blanket wrapped around her body. She pulled it
tighter. “That thing was your father?” she asked. “That’s
what you were hiding in the basement this whole time?”
Noah walked into the
room and sat down in the recliner across from the girls. His
shoulders hunched over and his lips turned down in the corners. “I
should have told you about it,” he said. “I knew it was
crazy to keep him down there like that, but I just couldn’t let
him go. I guess there was some part of me that was hoping for a
miracle. Like maybe one of his buddies from the CDC would show up
saying they had a cure or something. I mean, I realize how stupid
that sounds, but—”
“It’s not
stupid,” Parrish said. She was sitting on the floor, her legs
stretched out across the carpet. She wanted to move to him. To put
her hand on his and tell him it was going to be okay. But she wasn’t
used to comforting people. She didn’t really know how to put
herself out there like that.
“It is,” he
said, an edge of anger in his tone. “There’s never going
to be a cure for something like this. These people are dead. Whatever
it is that’s made them come back to life, it isn’t
natural. It isn’t something that can be undone and we all know
it.”
Parrish ached for him.
Pain soaked in to every word he spoke and there was nothing she could
do to take it away. They’d all lost people who were important
to them, but losing someone you loved was very different from killing
someone you loved. How could she possibly comfort him after something
like that?
“What are we
going to do?” Parrish asked.
“What do you
mean?” Karmen asked, shaking her head. “What can we do?
We follow the plan. Evacuate to whatever safe zone they have set up
for us. It’s the only way we’re going to survive this.”
“I didn’t
say anything earlier, because I didn’t want to argue about it,
but I think we’ve got to talk about this.”
“About what?”
Noah asked her.
“About what we’re
really thinking, deep down. No matter how crazy it might seem. I
think my sister might still be alive. I don’t have my cell
phone, so I haven’t been able to try and call her, but I talked
to her a few days ago. She was fine. What about her? Am I just
supposed to abandon her?” Parrish asked. She turned to Karmen.
“What about your parents. Your brother? Don’t you want to
try to find them? If we go to the safe zone, we might be cut off from
everyone we love for the rest of our lives. We’ll be giving up
all our freedom.”
Karmen rolled her eyes
and Parrish wanted to slap her across the face for it.
“You need to face
reality,” Karmen said. Her tone was biting. “Your mother
is dead. Your father is dead. And your sister is dead. That’s
if you’re lucky. If not, she’s become one of those things
just like Noah’s dad. Just like my brother. Just like probably
half the world by this point.”
“Shut up,”
Parrish said. She stood up, wanting to be as far away from Karmen
right now as she could. Otherwise, she was seriously going to hurt
that girl. “You don’t know anything about reality. You’ve
been living in this perfect little dream world most of your life, too
blinded by your own ego to see what’s really going on around
you.”
“Perfect?”
Karmen sat up straighter, pulling her arms out from under the blanket
and flailing them as she shouted. “You don’t know the
first thing about my life if you think it was perfect.”
Parrish crossed her
arms in front of her chest. “What made it so hard? Being the
most popular girl in school? No, wait, it had to have been the fact
that teachers gave you perfect grades just because you were a
cheerleader.”
“Oh, that’s
right. Poor Parrish is the one who has had such a tough life, right?
What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you before your
mom died? Someone forcing you to wear an actual color instead of
black or white?”
“Stop it,”
Noah shouted. “Karmen, you don’t know for sure your
family is dead. Your brother could still be alive. Doesn’t he
live in Bethesda? That’s not that far from here. Maybe we
could—”
“I saw him,”
Karmen said, her voice flat. “My older brother Todd. He was in
my house the other day when I went back to get my things. He looked
at me like he had no idea who I was. He just wanted to kill me.”
“What?”
Noah moved to the edge of his seat. “Todd was in your house?
Why didn’t you tell me? How did he even get there?”
Parrish’s eyes
grew wide. She’d seen her brother and then not even told them
about it? Why was everyone still keeping so many secrets from each
other? It was as if they didn’t want to talk about what they
were really feeling because if they talked about it, that would mean
it was real. They would have to make the choices they didn’t
want to make.
Karmen pressed herself
deeper into the couch and pulled the blanket up to her chin. “I
don’t know,” she said. “It didn’t seem real,
but none of this does, does it? We’re all living in a nightmare
and the sooner we admit to ourselves that they’re all gone, the
better off we’re going to be.”
Parrish sat down on the
edge of the fireplace. No matter what life was like before the virus,
everyone left on earth was getting a crash-course in pain and
suffering. Even the people whose lives seemed perfect before.
Still, Karmen shouldn’t
have said that about her sister. Just because Todd was dead didn’t
mean Zoe was.
“Look, you guys
do whatever you want,” she said. “Go to the evacuation
point and let them take you to the survivor camps. I’m sure
they’ll keep you safe and have food and everything you need to
stay alive, just like they said. But I’m not coming with you.
If there’s any chance my sister is still alive, I’m going
to find her. I promised her I’d come for her.”
She stood up and walked
toward the stairs. Noah called her name, but she didn’t turn
around. She already felt the hot sting of tears in the corners of her
eyes and she was so tired of other people seeing her cry. She wasn’t
weak. She didn’t want anyone to think she was weak.
She stomped up the
stairs, made her way to the guest room that would be hers for one
more night, and collapsed onto the bed. She refused to let the tears
come. She just took in a deep breath and held it until her lungs
burned, then pushed it out in one long exhale.
Someone knocked on the
door and she sat up, determined to keep her cool. She didn’t
want to talk about it anymore. End of story.
“Can I have some
privacy please?” she said.
Noah opened the door
anyway, stepping inside. “No.”
She drew her eyebrows
together, her face tight. “No?”
“No,” he
said. He moved to the bed and sat down beside her. So close their
knees were almost touching.
Parrish squirmed. How
could he just barge in here and tell her that she couldn’t have
any privacy?
“Look, I
completely understand that you want to go get your sister,” he
said. “I know what it’s like to hold on to that last drop
of hope, but Karmen’s right. It’s time we started being
honest with ourselves about what’s really going on.”
“She’s
still alive,” Parrish said. “I know it.”
“Even if she is,
they are probably making her evacuate, too,” Noah said. “She’s
in the most densely-populated city in the world. There’s no way
we could get to her in time, even if we tried.”
There had to be
millions of deaths within the city alone, and if even ten percent of
those who died had awakened? Parrish shuddered at the thought. For
all she knew, the military may have bombed the city and not even
bothered evacuating any survivors.
The thought made her
feel ill.
“Zoe’s all
I have left. I promised her I’d come for her, and I can’t
just leave her there without trying.”
Noah leaned forward and
brushed her hair from her cheek. The feel of his skin brushing
against hers was electric. “She’s not all you have left,”
he said. “And if you’re going after her, then I’m
coming with you.”
Parrish looked up. “I
couldn’t never ask you to do that,” she said. “It’s
too dangerous.”
“You don’t
have to ask,” Noah said. His eyes met hers and her lips parted,
breathless. “If we’re finally being honest with each
other, then I’m not going to hold this in any longer. I’d
rather risk dying to be with you than be alive without you.”
“Noah—”
His name was a whisper on her lips as he leaned closer, an electric
current flowing in the air between them. She’d never wanted
someone to kiss her as much as she wanted him right now.
But kissing him would
mean opening herself up to something she wasn’t sure she was
ready for.
What if she lost him,
too? None of them were even sure if they would live until tomorrow.
She couldn’t let herself fall for him. It would hurt too damn
much when he was gone.
Still, the pull of him
was like being caught in the undertow of a mighty ocean. No matter
how hard she fought it, it kept pulling her back under.
Parrish closed her
eyes, surrendering to him.
Just before his lips
touched hers, though, Karmen cleared her throat behind them.
Noah stood abruptly and
Parrish scrambled back toward the headboard, pulling a pillow into
her lap.
“Don’t let
me interrupt,” Karmen snapped. “I didn’t realize
you two were an item.”
Parrish gritted her
teeth. That girl seriously had it coming to her. “We aren’t,”
she said.
“Riiight,”
Karmen said, her eyes narrow and her lip curled up on one side in a
sneer. “Makes me wonder what other secrets we’re all
keeping from each other.”
Noah looked down and
cleared his throat. Parrish studied him. Was there something else he
was hiding from her?
“Did you need
something?” he asked, looking at Karmen.
She shrugged. “I
was just going to ask if we had a plan for going back to our separate
houses to gather our things,” she said. “I never got a
chance to get my bags packed, but there are some things I want to get
before we leave.”
Parrish pulled the
pillow closer to her chest and lay her head against it. There were
some things she’d like to get from her own house, too, but they
would have to leave in the morning if they were going to get to the
evac point in time. “If we’re going to do it, we need to
get started soon,” Parrish said. “It could take most of
the day to get packed up and ready. We’re burning daylight.”
“So you’re
coming to the evacuation with us?” Karmen asked.
Parrish set the pillow
aside and stood. “No,” she said, glancing at Noah, unsure
exactly where they stood. Unsure where she wanted them to be. “I’ll
go with you as far as the hospital, then I’m going my own way.”
Noah grabbed the gun
from the floor beside the door and handed it to Parrish.
“Are you sure you
want to come?” He looked at Parrish. She looked so small and
vulnerable with that shotgun in her hand, but her grip was strong and
from the looks of it, this wasn’t the first time she’d
ever held a gun. And if anything happened to her, he wasn’t
sure he could handle it right now. He wanted her here inside, safe.
“I’m sure,”
she said, her fingers tightening around the butt of the gun. “If
I have to sit in this house with Karmen much longer without some
fresh air, I’m going to go insane.”
He tried not to smile,
but he couldn’t help himself. Those girls had really been at
each other’s throats lately. Hadn’t they once been best
friends? He remembered them always hanging out at each other’s
houses when he first moved here. He had no idea what had torn them
apart, but they obviously couldn’t stand each other now.
Movement at the top of
the stairs caught his eye and he looked up just in time to see Karmen
disappear into his dad’s old room. She’d probably heard
what Parrish said, but could she really be that surprised?
“Karmen?”
He called up to her before she had a chance to shut herself inside.
She poked her head out
of the door and stared down at him. “Yes?”
“We’ll be
back in a few hours,” he said. “We’ll go out the
back door. If we’re not back by nightfall, you have to board it
back up, okay?”
Some of the hardness in
her face softened and she stepped into the hallway, her arms hugging
her chest. “You’ll be back, though, right?”