He stepped toward me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been here before and been called every name in the book.”
I didn’t want to look him in the eyes but asked, “How long?”
It was easy to tell it pained him to say those next words. “This is unpredictable, but I’d have to think it’s not going to be too long.” He patted my shoulder twice, but my body felt numb. “Anything I can do for you?”
I shook my head and stared at the wall.
“You need anything, please just ask.”
“I will.”
I wanted to tell him I wanted to go back in time and tell Kara not to come on the clearing mission. I’d tell him I wanted to go back and allow Kara to stay at the pawn shop south of the city liked she had asked. I’d do anything to reverse our course and to have us all remain with our friends down south.
There were too many things that I wanted to a do-over for, but life didn’t work that way. There was only one trip around on this little merry-go-round with no second chances. And I was all out of time machines.
“I’ll let you know,” I said, still not meeting his eyes.
Once again, he patted my shoulder and left me alone outside the room for the longest night of my life. One part of me never wanted it to end, and another part just wanted it over.
Kara was a fighter, though. Somewhere around four in the morning, she rallied and actually pushed herself up onto her elbows.
“Joel, are you there?”
“Yeah, babe, I’m here.”
“I’m having trouble seeing. And I have a horrible headache.”
“Your fever’s really high,” I said. I leaned toward her, and said, “Let me feel.”
She turned her head slightly, and I placed my hand on her forehead. With the way she was acting, I was hoping her temperature might have dropped and that the vaccine had actually turned out to be a cure.
That’s what I hoped. The truth was a much crueler bastard.
Her forehead was burning up. It was so hot for a moment that I was sure my skin would burn. She had stopped sweating a couple of hours before and it was dry to the touch.
“Joel?”
“Yes.”
“Joel?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Remember what I asked you to do?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t say anything else for at least a minute. “Kara?” I asked.
Her eyes looked through me and past me as if I weren’t even there. Maybe she saw things on the other side. I hoped they were comforting things.
She fell back against the pillow, and her eyes closed. She slipped away from me an hour later, and a new type of vigil started. The longest night of my life just got longer.
Chapter 12
The End of Things
I wanted to cry, but just couldn’t. It wasn’t over. Far from it.
Richard showed up at the door a half hour after Kara had passed. I hadn’t left the chair and just stared at her. Or what was left of her.
“Can I check in on her again?” Richard asked.
“No need,” I said, but my voice did not sound like my own. It shook and quivered as my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t break down completely. I needed to maintain my shit. I had a promise to keep.
“Oh,” he said as he stood quietly in the doorway. It looked like he didn’t know whether he was stuck between whether to enter or leave.
“Can you do something for me?” I asked.
“Uh, yes,” he said. “What is it?”
“Two things. I don’t want any of the others down here. Don’t say anything to Naveen just yet. And one more thing.”
“Sure. What else?”
“Can you asked Doctor M if he thinks his...his vaccine will stop the...the reanimation process.”
“I’ll go ask him. I’ll go now and be right back.”
He seemed to be in a hurry to leave, but I didn’t think there was a rush. The virus hadn’t worked all that fast in the past.
Still, it felt like he was gone for an eternity as I sat there with Kara in silence. A part of me listened for another breath, knowing one wasn’t to come, but I couldn’t help myself.
They say hope is the last thing to die.
Richard was back in less than two minutes, but he stayed in the doorway. “Doc doesn’t know what will happen. Believe it or not, despite what he said, he hoped the vaccine would work as a cure, too. He thought the thing with the proteins might be a difference maker, but…” he trailed off and we both knew the end of that sentence.
Until then, he hadn’t met my eyes, but now he was looking at me. “Joel, I can’t imagine what you’re going through. You’ve carried the ball far enough. Alex said she would come down and take it into the end zone.”
“A football metaphor, really?”
Didn’t I say that humor was my coping mechanism?
“Sorry. Alex can take care of...of this,” he said.
“I heard she had someone close to her get...get infected. Did she take care of that herself, or did she have someone else do it for her?”
He let out a deep breath. “You knew the answer when you asked it. Yes, she took care of it herself.”
“You have your answer,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be you.”
“Yes, it does.” I was quiet for a few seconds. “Please leave.”
He hovered in the doorway. “Okay.” He still lingered there for a few seconds before he slowly drifted out of the room, leaving me alone again.
There was no change in Kara’s condition. She was still dead. And I wanted her to stay that way, but something in my gut told me that the vaccine wouldn’t let her remain that way. I would not only be forced to watch her die, but I would have to shoot her in the head when she came back.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive this.
It felt as if someone had taken an industrial auger and cored out my inside and replaced it with torment and agony. If I could have willed my heart to stop, I would have done it. But that’s not how life works. The world just keeps on spinning after life crushes us. It’s cruel that way.
The waiting started again. The excruciating seconds ticked by and an hour passed as the memories flowed in.
My first kiss with Kara. (She kissed me, by the way.) I remembered that time on the church roof where she shot a car down the street to set off its alarm to draw a horde of zombies away. There was that time we had fresh corn on the cob back at the Manor. That memory was followed by one where we survived the helicopter attack in the abandoned mobile home park. That wasn’t one of our best times, and it probably set up this terrible expectation that we could and would survive anything. Then reality slapped us in the face like a bitch.
After that, we were taken captive by Marlow and his biker gang. That was the beginning of a darker period for us. Kara took the brunt of that episode. We almost lost her, and the emotional wounds nearly broke her. But she was coming back from that. I knew she was.
Now, there was no going forward. There was only the end.
A dim light appeared on the horizon to the east, a thin ribbon of yellow. It would be half an hour before the sun actually rose, and there was no hope in it. There was no new day that was worth living. All hope was lost.
As I stared out the window, I heard a rustling sound to my right. When I turned that way, I saw Kara’s hand stir under the sheet. That vaccine had failed us. It had failed Kara utterly and totally.
I reached down to my holster and gripped my gun. Small tremors rippled through Kara’s body under the sheet, and I couldn’t believe this was really happening. We had been on a mission from God, and I thought that would protect us, but it was clear that we were on our own this time.
Something hitched in my chest, and the tears were flowing now. Through them, I saw Kara’s eyelids began to flutter open. Her eyes were the dull gray of the dead.
I slowly brought my gun up, and I closed my eyes. I had seen her die
, but I sure as hell didn’t want to see a bullet blast away her face. She was only five feet away from my outstretched arm. The arm that was shaking, but it wasn’t bad enough that I couldn’t finish this. Still, I’m not sure how I could. I’m not sure I just wouldn’t just let her take me down with her.
My heart and soul ached, but I knew I had to go through with it. I had to protect Naveen. Without her depending on me, I’m not sure I could do what I had to do. Plus, I had made a promise. That thought alone galvanized me into action again.
I sent up a prayer to a God that I wasn’t very happy with at the time, and a moment later, a sense of calmness fell over me, and my hand steadied. I could do this. Kara made me promise not to let her come back. I owed it to her to fulfill that promise.
My finger pressed on the trigger, gradually increasing the pressure. It was reaching the point of no return when a voice said, “Don’t.”
It wasn’t a voice I recognized. There was a low tremulous quality to it, but underneath the tone and pitch, there was also something familiar about it.
I blinked away my tears and looked toward the bed. Kara was there, her eyes open fully. They were the dull gray of the dead, but there was a kind of light in them. But maybe I was just deluding myself.
I had a promise to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, as the poet said. I started to put pressure on the trigger, but her voice sounded again, “Joel...please don’t.”
Chapter 13
Something Less
“What?” I said, not believing my eyes or ears. Despite the dead gray eyes, Kara was looking right at me and talking. Her hair had turned silver gray and caught the dim light in the room giving it a shimmery quality
After living through her death and then the possibility of having to put her down, this was beyond unbelievable. It was impossible, but she was there and talking to me, so it had to be possible.
It would be so corny to say my heart swelled, but there was no other way to describe what I was feeling. The vaccine had worked. Kara was still alive!
Christmas had come early.
I let my gun drop to my side and brought up my free hand to wipe the tears from my eyes. “Kara, I thought I had lost you.”
“What happened?” She asked, but her voice wasn’t own. It was so much deeper than her normal voice, and it had a raspy, dry quality to it, making me think of brittle parchment paper. She lifted one of her hands in front of her face. “I don’t feel right.”
Even in the dim light, I could see her skin had darkened. It was the color of light gray slate, and her veins seemed more pronounced, each one of them looking almost black.
“But you’re alive,” I said. “That’s what counts.”
I rose from my seat and started toward her, but she put out both of her hands in a gesture to ward me off. “No, no. Stay where you are. Something’s not right.” Her voice was still not her own, but after what she had gone through, who knew what it would sound like. I was just glad to hear anything she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re still with us. That’s what matters.”
I reached out and grabbed her hand and clasped it in mine. It felt cool to the touch.
She yanked it away and said, “I told you not to touch me.”
I put my hand in the air in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay.”
I watched as she squeezed her hand several times. On the final press, I saw the gray skin turn white from how hard she was pressing down. Kara’s forehead furrowed up as she fixated on her hand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She took her thumbnail and dug it into the back of her hand so hard. It tore a long gouge in her flesh, but the expression on her face didn’t change as she was doing it. Blood trickled from the wound.
“I didn’t feel that,” she said. “I didn’t feel that at all!”
“Wait, don’t panic,” I said.
Her eyes popped open wide and her hands shot to her stomach. “What about the baby?”
In my joy at having her not be dead, I hadn’t thought of the baby yet. Anything that happened to her, would happen to it. That thought sent a shudder through my body.
“I...I don’t know,” I said. But I did know. There was no way the baby could have survived on its own with her dead.
“Joel, how long was I gone?” She asked, and I heard the fear in her voice.
I opened my mouth to talk, but no words came out. My jaw literally moved up and down, but I made no sound at all.
“Joel, tell me!”
“An hour. Maybe two.”
“What?!” She cried out. Her face was a picture of anguish.
“Please, Kara, calm down. After what you’ve been through, you shouldn’t get too...too excited.”
She sat up and stared at me with her gray eyes and said, “I don’t know what’s happened to me. I know that something’s very wrong with me and my baby is probably dead or worse inside me, and you’re telling me not to get excited.”
I stood up and said, “Let me get Doctor M or Richard.”
“No, I don’t want them to see me like this.”
I leaned forward and put my hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. In response, she moved with so much speed and force to slap my hand away that I was knocked off balance. I stumbled sideways and ended up against the wall.
“Kara, please,” I said. “Let me help you.”
Her face was caught between wild fear and something that looked like anger. She brought up her hand and examined the wound again. “I didn’t feel that at all.” She waited for a second, then drew back her hand and slammed it against the wall so hard, she made a dent in it.
She narrowed her gray eyes and fixed them on me. “What have you done to me?”
It was as much of an accusation as a question.
“Kara, it...we…we were desperate. The vaccine was our only chance.”
She put a hand to her chest and held it there for a few seconds. “I don’t feel my heartbeat.” Her hand dropped into her lap, then she looked up to the ceiling. “What have you done to me?” She lowered her gaze from the ceiling and fixed me in a hard stare. “What did you turn me into?”
I knew where she was going. “You’re not one of them. You’re speaking. You can think. Look, you’re alive.”
“How can I be alive without a heartbeat? How come I don’t feel pain?”
“I don’t know how those things are possible, but you are here, and has to count for something.”
“I’m not sure this...this life you’ve given me is one worth living.”
“You don’t know what...no, how…Let me start over. You don’t know what your condition is. Maybe it’s something that is reversible or treatable.”
She lifted her hands once again and looked at them as if they weren’t a part of her body. “I don’t think what I am is treatable.”
“Please let me go get Doctor M, Lori, and Richard. They’ll have something to say. Doctor M created the vaccine. He can make up something new to fix this.”
She looked at me, her eyes pleading with me, but after a few seconds, she let her head drop to her chest, making me think of a sullen child. She stayed like this for half a minute, and I decided to use her inaction as my excuse to go get reinforcements.
I slowly stood and said, “I won’t be gone long. We’ll get this all worked out, and you’ll be alright again. I promise.”
That’s when she looked up at me, and her eyes were throwing off nothing but accusations. If they could speak, they would have called me a liar.
“I’ll be right back,” I said as I backed out of the room.
As soon as I was in the hall, I pivoted and sprinted down the hallway to the lab. When I ran inside, Alex sat in a hospital recliner, half asleep. She jerked awake and pointed her rifle at me.
“It’s me. It’s me,” I said.
Doctor M sat up in the bed he had fallen asleep in.
“What is it?” He asked as he rubbed sleep from his eyes.
�
�She...she’s alive,” I said.
“But Richard said she had passed,” Doctor M said, looking at me as if I were a crazy man.
Richard, who had been resting on a cot in the corner of the room, rolled over and put his feet on the floor. “I didn’t check her vitals, but she didn’t look...you know. I took Joel’s word for it. Maybe she fell into a lower stage of consciousness or a coma.”
“Maybe she did,” I said. “Anyway, she revived herself. Or your vaccine did something. Whatever it was, she was down there talking to me.”
Lori walked into the lab from the room next door and asked, “What are you saying?”
“Kara’s alive. I thought she was dead, but she’s back. I just talked to her.”
“What is her condition?” Doctor M asked as he stood up and tried to rub down the wrinkles on his lab coat.
“She’s awake and talking,” I said and paused for a moment to process everything swirling through my mind. “Her voice is hoarse, I think. She says she doesn’t have feeling in her hands, but maybe she’s just sort of numb. This is uncharted waters.”
Doctor M and Lori exchanged a glance, and whatever passed between them didn’t seem all that positive.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Doctor M said. “I think we need to examine her right away.”
“Yes,” I said, but I put up my right hand, my palm facing him like a stop sign. “But no more of your experiments. At least not right now. She’s been through enough.”
Lori looked to me and asked, “What about Naveen? She’s sleeping in the next room.”
“Let her sleep for now,” I said. “We can come back and get her.”
Alex said, “I’ll stay and guard her.”
“Thanks,” I said
A moment later, Richard, Doctor M, Lori, and I swept out of the room and rushed down the hallway to where Kara was. Only she wasn’t there.
Chapter 14
Among the Monsters
“Kara!” I shouted as loudly as I could as I stepped back into the hallway, nearly knocking Doctor M on his ass.
I glanced back into the room and saw the mirror hanging on the wall was now cracked into pieces. When I moved closer to it, I saw blood dripping down the cracks.
Books of the Dead (Book 8): The Living Dead Girl Page 7
