Haven (7 page)

There were no pictures of Harrison, not even of when he was young, and no family snapshots. The only items hanging on the refrigerator were pieces of paper that looked to be lab notes. I recognized lots of the symbols from Chemistry class, but these were far more complex than I could comprehend. They seemed to be reminders intended to catch the owner’s attention as she went out the door. Basically, this was not a home, and it was clear to me that his aunt had forgotten the humanity behind science.

I had become so focused on my surroundings, so lost in thought, that the question that had been hovering just beneath my consciousness finally burst forth. “Why will getting to know you change my opinion of you?” I paused, realizing what I’d just said, as surprised by them as Harrison.

“Huh?” he asked, tilting his head down and around to peer at me over his shoulder.

I had the feeling I might not like the answer but having already come this far I gave in and pressed, “You said back at Mei’s house that I would change my opinion of you once I got to know you. Why?”

He turned to face me, crossing his arms in front of his chest. It made his muscles push forward, which I tried my best to ignore.

“Why do you think I never asked you out?”

It was a bold question, peeling back the tense innuendos and subliminal messages we’d been sending to each other over the last year to expose the true, unrestrained interest we had for each other simmering beneath the surface.

It left me momentarily speechless.

Stumbling through an answer, I said, “You wanted to ask…?” But I paused, realizing that something else was far more important. “I don’t know why.”

When he didn’t immediately answer, I wondered if it was because he was taking his time formulating one.

“Why?” I persisted.

His stunningly handsome face appeared strained from the complex mixture of emotions that had become visible in his expression. He seemed frustrated and passionate, yet angry and disappointed at the same time. I had an urge to go to him, but having grown up around men like him, self-sufficient and disciplined men, I knew this was the last thing he’d want.

“I’m different, Kennedy.” Those words seemed to sting as they left his beautiful lips.

“We’re all different, Harrison. I have steel throwing stars in my pocket, and I know how to use them. Do you know any other eighteen-year-olds who do that? You asked that same question this morning, remember? Not one. Not a single one.” I paused to meet his stare directly, ensuring my last point was heard. “I don’t think you’re any more different than the rest of us.”

He laughed under his breath. “You don’t now, but you will eventually.”

In a way that made me think he was trying to prove his point, he opened the refrigerator door wide, so that I could clearly see inside. It was stocked, but not with fruit, vegetables, and Yoo-Hoo drinks. Bags of raw meat were crammed into every shelf and drawer available. That was it, just bags of raw meat. He began shoving as many of them as he could fit into his duffel bag, stuffing it so tightly it couldn’t zip closed. When he straightened up and turned, he discovered that I hadn’t moved.

“You underestimate me,” I said.

He seemed surprised that I wasn’t bowled over by his brazen display of how odd he was. “Why are you so determined to like me?” he countered.

“Why are you so determined to push me away?”

“Like you do with others?” he retorted, striking at the one thing he knew I couldn’t deny.

My only response was to press my lips together as the uncomfortable silence stretched between us.

Obviously, he’d seen me sitting alone in the library during lunch and he knew that I was short on friends. I was also pretty sure he’d heard my story through one of the many strings of gossip that seemed to surround me. He laughed under his breath again, this time with thick sarcasm. “We are similar, Kennedy. We keep to ourselves, preserving that preciously safe space around us, denying others entry. We make it painful for others so they won’t think about invading it. We make ourselves invisible or unreceptive so they won’t consider trying. I’ve watched you do it for a year. But we do this for different reasons. You do it so that others can’t hurt you. I do it so that I can’t hurt others.” He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder effortlessly despite the weight it held.

“So that’s it?” I said, causing him to halt. He kept his back to me as I asked, “That’s why you never asked me out, why you’re being…reticent now? You think you can hurt me.”

His shoulders lifted as he drew in a deep breath. “Kennedy,” he exhaled wearily, “it’s the
only
reason that could keep me from you.”

He deliberately walked by me, slowly and cautiously, with his head up and his eyes focused on the door behind me. I was pretty certain he was making a conscious effort to ensure our arms didn’t come in contact this time around. That was more upsetting than I cared to admit.

I still hadn’t moved by the time he opened the door and took a step into the hall without even glancing back. Now that I think about it, I realize he was just as disturbed by our conversation as I was or he would have paid closer attention, listening for signs of anyone who might be on the other side. Because he was deep in thought about me, about us, he ended up not realizing that someone actually
was
there.

The woman’s movement was quick; making me think she had been waiting for us while listening through the door. When it opened, she didn’t vacillate, lunging at Harrison full force. Harrison is big, stocky, but he’d met his match. When the 300-pound woman barreled into him, he was forced backwards, back inside of his aunt’s apartment, knocking him into the door. With one arm weighed down by the duffel bag, he swung his free arm up and pinned her to the wall, letting out a loud grunt. His arm landed perfectly, firmly pressed across her immense chest. The only parts of her capable of reaching him now were her bloody, glistening hair and the spittle of red drops that flew from her nose as she snorted in frustration. Harrison had her. She wasn’t going anywhere. There was no possible way she could move. His strength had once again saved him.

I swung the gun up, steadied my alignment, settled her into my sight picture, and pressed the trigger with a controlled squeeze. It was a perfect shot, landing right where I intended. And if her head had still been there, it would have stopped her. But she had moved just in time, thrusting her head forward with her teeth extended, embedding them perfectly in Harrison’s forearm.

~ 3 ~

H
ARRISON RELEASED A GROWL AND SLAMMED
her back against the wall as she gnawed her way through his muscles.

“Back up!” I shouted.

“No!”

“BACK UP!”

“No!” he shouted, gritting his teeth and straining as he tried to pry her head back, the duffel bag slapping into them both in his attempt. “She’ll release me and go after you.”

“Damn it, Harrison! Back the f-”

He suddenly leaned backward keeping his arm in place, so that she’d be immobilized. “Do it,” he commanded, turning his head toward me, not away as most would. He was serious, gravely serious.

So I realigned my shot and pulled the trigger. The blast vibrated the hallway as the bullet sent the back part of her head splattering along the wall in a trail toward the door. Her knees caved in and she went down, dragging Harrison with her, because her teeth were still lodged in his flesh. Using his other hand, he pried himself loose with a push to her forehead. I was already at his side by the time he was standing upright again. Blood was seeping from the large gash the woman had left.

“We need to wrap that,” I said, thinking he’d agree since he had some first aid background.

“We need to get out of here,” he replied, ignoring the searing pain that must have been running the length of his forearm. I remember believing at the time that it was adrenaline keeping him going. “They’ll have heard that.”

“Who?” I blurted, even though I already knew the answer.

One of them showed up in the doorway, a man hunched, arms spread, fingers bent into claws, snarling like a rabid dog. He looked to be eighty, still dressed in his nightgown and slippers. He was missing an ear, but the blood had hardened against his neck. His face was clean, which surprised me.

He hasn’t bitten anyone yet, I thought, but he looks damn ready for it.

As he took a lunging step at Harrison, I drew the gun up and pulled the trigger. The man fell back into the hallway outside the apartment door and slumped to the ground.

The only thing to break the silence that followed was my distressed heavy breathing. “They always…always seem to go for you.”

“I’m meatier,” he said, grabbing my arm and hauling me out the door.

We sprinted back to the stairs, opening the door as another three of them appeared down the long hallway past his aunt’s apartment. They immediately leaned forward, reminding me of runners at the starting line waiting for the gun to go off. Although, unlike the races I’d been in, they didn’t wait for an official to pull a trigger.

“Three more back there,” I muttered, my voice oscillating as we ran down the stairs. “Think they can open doors?”

As it turned out, they didn’t need to. The doors had already been opened by everyone who was panicking. A scream, an unmistakably human one, echoed through the stairwell. Both of us angled our heads to locate its source. That is when I caught sight of movement two floors up, where I briefly saw the face of a woman who was about fifty years old, stricken with terror, before she fell back and out of sight. She had made it into the stairwell, but someone caught her.

Instantly, Harrison and I turned.

“Stay here, Kennedy,” he demanded, while rushing back up the flight we’d come down.

I wasn’t sure if it was my footsteps that gave me away, but I figured he realized I hadn’t listened when his mouth twisted down in a frown.

By the time we reached that floor where we’d seen the woman, two of them were bent over, eating through her stomach. She was no longer struggling. Again, the term ‘chowing down’ slipped into my mind, which I erased by raising my gun at them. Neither of them looked up from their meal, even when I planted a bullet in the head of the one closest to us. The one still moving only realized we where there when his partner slumped into his angle of eating.

That was when I noticed it. My ears were ringing. In the narrow corridor, the shot blast tore through my eardrums, telling me with agonizing clarity that those sensitive membranes had been injured. Yet neither the man chowing down on the woman nor Harrison showed any sign of it. They didn’t clap their hands to their ears, move back, or even make a gratuitous shake of their head. In fact, they appeared immune to the throbbing pain I was feeling. In the frenzy of the moment, I didn’t have time to consider it further. Instead, I focused on stopping the man from coming at us. When he went down, Harrison again showed no reaction to the blast, even though my ears were still suffering from the piercing sounds.

Harrison took the two remaining steps to the landing and knelt down in front of the woman, placing his index finger against her neck to check for a pulse. With his back to me, the shake of his head confirmed he felt no sign of life. She was the first one we had come across outside our school showing any evidence of still being human, and her death caused both of us to pause.

It wasn’t as if we knew the woman. We had witnessed her life at the very end – one terrifying, miserable end that lasted less than a minute. But it didn’t keep the remorse from hitting us. To be honest, that reaction was twofold. First, it was hard to see someone lose their life, even a stranger, like a void had opened in the world leaving a sad emptiness behind. Second, there was in me, and I’d guess in Harrison too, a withering hope that we’d find anyone else alive…and not trying to eat others.

Like me, Harrison seemed to be lost in thought, his shoulders hunched and his head down, when suddenly he leaned away from her. “Whoa,” he mumbled, jumping to his feet.

That’s when I heard the grumble, a wet, nonsensical sound that came from where Harrison stood. In complete shock, he stepped back, his body straightening and his muscles stiffening.

“Kennedy?” he quietly called back to me, in a confused daze.

“Yeah?” I replied, unable to keep my eyes from the woman, whose hands were now braced below her shoulders, pushing her torso up.

“Run.”

I raised the gun only to notice what Harrison already had seen. The slide was back. I was out of bullets.

“Run, Kennedy!” he yelled, just as the noise reached my ears. The distant thundering steadily grew louder until the floor shook beneath my feet.

It dawned on me that he wasn’t concerned about the woman; not nearly as much as those who were coming down the hall behind her.

The woman was on her knees now, shoving herself unevenly to her feet.

“Kennedy!” Harrison barked, but my instinct was to pull out the throwing stars from the back of my pocket and send them into the woman’s head.

And that’s what I did.

Her head wobbled and she stumbled back, her eyes flipping upward until they were white, as if she were attempting to see what was protruding from her head. As she fell, despite the roar of feet rapidly coming at us, Harrison stopped long enough to take hold of the stars, place a foot on her hip, and pull the two apart. His force shoved her out of the way of the automatically closing door.