by Kate L. Mary
Logan shook his head, but didn’t reply.
“We need to lock her up,” I said.
Both men looked toward me, and even though they said nothing, I could tell by their expressions they agreed. Only I knew without having to be told that they were only thinking about giving her a chance to calm down while I was thinking about making sure she didn’t bite anyone else.
I spotted a door to my right and headed that way. It was open a crack, and I shoved it open the rest of the way to find an office. It was small, with only a desk and two chairs and a couple filing cabinets against the back wall, but it would have to do.
“Here,” I said, stepping back and waving to the doorway. “Put her in here for now.”
I swallowed down the thought that for now might not be long enough. It was ridiculous, though. She wasn’t a zombie. I was overreacting, possibly even losing my mind thanks to the craziness of the last few weeks.
Logan and the other man dragged the woman forward, doing their best to keep a safe distance from her mouth. I watched their progress, my stomach growing heavier with each growl she let out. The sounds she made and the sobs of the woman she had attacked were the only two noises at the moment, and the combination made me feel like I was in a horror movie. It also made me want to scream, but I bit down on my bottom lip to trap it inside, knowing that it would only scare everyone.
The men had to lower the woman’s arms when they reached the office door, bringing them closer to her waiting mouth. She chomped and Logan swore, but her focus was on the other man. He was looking at the door, concentrating on getting her in. He didn’t see it coming. Her teeth sank into his shoulder, chomping down, and he let out a scream that vibrated through my body as blood burst from the bite and slid down his arm.
“Shit!” Logan yelled.
In a moment of panic, both men released the woman’s arms. She was free for only a second, but it was long enough for her to get her hands on the other man, for her to sink her teeth in deeper and get a big chunk of flesh off him.
He screamed again, but somehow managed to twist free. That’s when I reacted. I ran, slamming my body against the woman’s back, and she was shoved forward. She stumbled into the room, still chewing on the meat she had ripped from the man, and in the blink of an eye I had the doorknob in my hand and had yanked the door shut.
The woman who’d been attacked first was sobbing while the man who’d just been bitten was swearing up a storm. People were going crazy, yelling for first aid kits and asking what was wrong with the woman, and I stood heaving in front of the now closed door, watching the knob as I waited to see if the insane lady would try to open it.
A bang echoed through the hall when she slammed against the other side of the door. I reached for the knob but stopped with my fingers inches from it as I waited. It didn’t turn, didn’t even rattle. I held my breath, but nothing happened. She wasn’t going to open it.
Not that I’d thought she would. As far as I knew, zombies couldn’t open doors.
Chapter 6
“ARE YOU OKAY?”
I turned at the question even though I knew it wasn’t directed at me. Logan was next to the other man, the one who had just had a chunk of flesh ripped from his body. The shock at the sheer volume of blood saturating his shirt and covering his arm made me take a step back. He was holding the bite, but his hand was doing a horrible job of stopping the bleeding. Blood seeped between his fingers and followed the already crimson lines down his arm until it fell in tiny droplets onto the floor.
“Shit, that hurts,” the guy said, the words hissing out from between clenched teeth.
“Is there a doctor here?” Logan asked, looking around.
He stood next to the man, his hands extended but not touching him, and his gray eyes were wide. Panicked. We didn’t know one another well, but he didn’t strike me as someone who would be useless in a disaster, but right now he looked like he was on the verge of losing it.
The rest of the people around us shook their heads, a few even going so far as to mumble that they didn’t know. Just like earlier when we ate breakfast, I was struck by the fact that these people seemed to be in shock, and no one more than the woman who had originally been attacked. She was on the floor with people gathered around her, holding the place on her forearm where the crazy woman had bit into her as she stared off into space. She didn’t blink. Didn’t react when people asked her if she was okay. It was like she had gone catatonic.
Footsteps pounded down the hall at our backs, and I turned to find a new group of people hurrying toward us. Tessa and Rick were among them, but leading the way was the woman that had met us at the door last night. Her indifference from yesterday had been replaced by a look of determination, and in her hand she had a red bag with a white cross on the front. Thank God. Maybe she was a nurse or a doctor, or at least had some first aid training.
“What happened?” the woman asked when she was still five feet away.
“This crazy chick attacked some people!” someone replied. “She bit them!”
The woman with the red bag shook her head as she surveyed the scene. She frowned when she looked the catatonic woman over, but moved to the guy first. He was on the floor, still trying to stop the bleeding with his hand, but his cursing had tapered off and his eyes looked suddenly glassy. Dazed even. Was he going into shock too?
I turned away from him when the woman dropped to his side, instead focusing on my sister. “I was worried about you.”
Tessa grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze, but her gaze was on the injured man at my back. “A person did this?”
“Yeah.” I glanced over my shoulder and shuddered at the blood smeared across the floor. “We locked her in the office.”
As if on cue, the crazy woman banged against the other side of the closed door. The sound echoed through the hall and I jumped. Squeezing Tessa’s hand helped relax me a little, but not enough. Not when I had such a bad feeling about all this.
“He’s in shock,” the woman with the first aid kit said, drawing my attention away from the closed door of the office.
She was in the middle of bandaging the gaping wound on the man’s shoulder, but he didn’t react at all. He also didn’t respond when she asked him questions, which was even stranger.
Once the bandage was in place, the woman looked up and scanned the people standing around. “Does anyone know his name?”
“I don’t even know your name,” Logan said.
She looked his way. “Do you know this guy?”
Logan shook his head
“I’m Lori,” she said, and then turned back to the injured guy.
Lori. Like Lori Grimes.
I shivered and took a step back.
“You okay?” Tessa asked, giving my hand another squeeze. This time, it did nothing to calm me.
“Yeah,” I lied.
My sister’s eyebrows shot up, but I didn’t tell her what was going through my head. Even though the bad feeling in my stomach had intensified, I still felt like an idiot. This was nothing like The Walking Dead. It couldn’t be because this was real life.
The group of people who had come running at the screams began to disperse, leaving Lori to deal with the injured people. Logan stayed at her side, assisting when necessary, while Tessa, Rick, and I stood off to the side and watched in silence. I knew I should offer to help, but I couldn’t make myself do or say anything. Despite the logical part of my brain that refused to accept what I had seen, every time the crazy woman banged against the door, I became more and more convinced that she was a zombie. Only I wasn’t going to share my paranoia with anyone right now. Or ever, probably.
When Lori had both the injured people bandaged up, she helped the still shocked woman to her feet while Logan dealt with the man. The guy was big, broad like a football player, and Rick moved to help when he saw that his friend was struggling.
“Let’s get them to the common room,” Lori said, nodding down the hall. “I have a little first ai
d area set up.”
“Are you a doctor?” Logan asked as he and Rick helped support the man.
Lori had her arm around the woman, who moved but still didn’t respond, while Tessa and I trailed behind. My hand was still wrapped around my sister’s and I had no intention of letting her go. Behind me, the crazy woman banged against the closed door again, and I moved faster.
“I’m a paramedic,” Lori said, answering Logan’s question. “It’s been a crazy few weeks.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the things she’d witnessed over the last couple weeks.
The man and woman who’d been attacked didn’t make a sound. Not on the walk back, not when we reached the common room and they were led to the back. Not even when they were urged to sit on the cots. Other survivors watched the whole thing silently, some of them with wide eyes that told me the same crazy thoughts going through my head had occurred to them. It would be impossible not to think about it. Zombie culture had been so popular for the last few years, and there had even been some pretty wild rumors going around the Internet before it ceased to exist.
Lori went to work taking the vitals of the man, and then the woman, and with each passing second her frown deepened.
“What is it?” Logan asked.
She didn’t look up. “I’ve never seen someone this unresponsive.”
Lori pressed her fingers against the woman’s wrist and the corners of her mouth pulled lower, making my heart pound faster.
I took a step back, pulling Tessa with me. “What else could be wrong with them?”
“It’s just shock.” Lori still didn’t look away from the injured woman, and expression on her face wasn’t very reassuring.
Logan knelt at Lori’s side, but I turned away. My heart was thumping wildly in my chest, but I knew it was irrational. I needed space so I could think about something else. Tessa’s drama sounded like the perfect distraction.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said to my sister as I pulled her past Rick, headed for the hall.
Her ex watched us pass, his gaze mostly on Tessa, but he said nothing and made no attempt to follow. My sister, however, didn’t even glance his way. She didn’t look angry though, just thoughtful. Although whether that had to do with Rick or the crazy situation we currently found ourselves in, I couldn’t say for sure.
Out in the hall I was able to breathe a little easier. I was still holding Tessa’s hand the way I had when we were little kids and used to walk down the beach side by side. Since she didn’t try to pull away, I assumed she either didn’t care that I was clinging to her, or she needed the contact as much as I did.
“What did you and Rick talk about?” I asked when we were alone.
Tessa exhaled, and even though it was strained, her lips turned up into a little smile. “He apologized.”
“I would hope so,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes.
“He said he still cares about me, still did when he left me at the altar, but that he suddenly realized he hadn’t taken enough time to get to know me. That we’d rushed into things.” Tessa shrugged. “He’s right, I know that, but you were right too. It all seems kind of silly now. I mean, he hurt me a lot, but after the pain of the last week…” She looked down and sniffed. “I know what real pain feels like now.”
I finally released her hand when a tear fell from her cheek and landed on the tile floor at our feet, but only so I could wrap my arms around my little sister. I thought about the weeks following her failed wedding and how she and I had curled up on the bed with Claire and cried together, about how I’d walked into the kitchen to find my dad holding my mom while she sobbed over her daughter’s broken heart. We’d all felt like we’d been ripped in half back then, but Tessa was right. Now, only four months later, I knew what it felt like to really hurt.
“I’m not sure how we’re supposed to move on from this,” Tessa said between sobs. “After Rick left me, I thought I would never recover, but I would do anything to go back to feeling like that. This feels like it’s going to kill me, Melanie.”
“I know, Tessie,” I said. “I feel it too.”
We cried for a few minutes, holding each other, but it wasn’t long before Tessa had pulled away and was wiping at her tear-stained face.
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I think I’m going to take a nap before lunch.”
I slung my arm over her shoulder and together we headed back to the women’s room. “That sounds like a good idea. I feel like I could sleep for days and still be worn out.”
Chapter 7
WHEN LUNCHTIME ROLLED AROUND, TESSA and I headed back to the common room. With survivors straggling in every so often and people crowded close together, it wasn’t easy to find quiet for very long, meaning our nap had been short lived. Still, I’d woken feeling refreshed and hopeful that things would look brighter. One step into the room destroyed that dream, though.
Maybe two hours had passed since the attack. Not enough to wipe the blood and gore from my mind and not enough for the people who had been hurt to snap out of it completely. The man, whose injury was far worse than the woman’s, was curled up on the cot. The bandage on his arm was soaked through.
On the cot next to him, the woman sat staring off into space. The bandage on her hand was dotted with blood, but the spots were smaller. It was minor, at least as minor as a human bite could be, but seemed like a much bigger deal considering the vacant look on the woman’s face.
Tessa and I got our food and headed to a table on the other side of the room, as far away from the injured man and woman as possible. It was my decision, and one I didn’t discuss with her. Even though my crazy theory refused to go away, the idea of sharing them with anyone made me want to laugh.
“You think they’ll be okay?” Tessa asked.
“They’ll be fine,” I said, ignoring the growing pit in my stomach. “The shock will wear off.”
I sat with my back to them, but my sister was facing their direction and seemed to have a difficult time looking away. It made me squirm, because it was a constant reminder that the people were there and could possibly turn into flesh eating monsters at any moment.
“I was thinking,” Tessa began after a several minutes of silence. She tore her gaze from the man and woman and focused on me, but the expression in her blue eyes was unreadable. “About how quickly everything disappeared. I mean, weeks ago things were normal and now it’s all gone.” She paused and swallowed before saying, “It could happen again, you know?”
“What could?” I asked her.
“What little bit you have left could be gone like that.” Tessa snapped her fingers. “It really makes you think.”
“Exactly what are you thinking about?” I asked, because I had a strange feeling that whatever she was saying had something to do with Rick.
“About how you really need to live life to the fullest while you have the chance.”
As if Tessa had ever had a problem doing that.
“But you also need to be careful,” I pointed out, and then emphasized my point by jerking my thumb over my shoulder and back toward the injured people. “One misplaced step and you could be the one facing the end.”
Tessa frowned and nodded, but it didn’t seem like she agreed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
“Hey,” I said, drawing her gaze my way. “Just promise you’ll be careful. Okay? You’re all I have left.”
Tessa flashed me a smile that wasn’t quite as dazzling as it had been before the outbreak, but it was still all Tessa. Beautiful and charming despite the innocence that had been ripped away from us all.
“I promise, Melanie.”
After lunch, Tessa and I dragged ourselves to the other side of the building where the locker rooms were so we could take showers. They were scheduled out so everyone had a chance to get clean, although finding an open spot wasn’t that hard since there weren’t a lot of refugees in the building.
Getting clean hadn’t really been on my priority list when I’d left our
house for the refugee center, something I attributed to shock, but stepping under the stream of hot water made me whisper a silent prayer of thanks for generators. It had been nearly a week since I’d showered, and it felt as if I could actually feel the layers of dirt rolling off my skin. It was amazing.
After we had both gotten clean and were redressed, we headed back. Tessa was more chipper than she had been, which wasn’t saying much, and even though she wasn’t chattering away like she usually did or smiling, it was nice to see her looking a little more like herself. It gave me hope that we would be able to get through this and one day have a life, and that we actually had a shot at healing.
After we’d stashed our things, Tessa and I headed back to the common room. There wasn’t much to do other than sit around and wait to see if the National Guard or someone in a position of authority would roll in with news about the outside world, and even though I hadn’t given up hope that it would happen, I wasn’t holding my breath. At this point, it seemed like a long shot that anything even resembling the military existed.
Tessa and I stopped just inside the door of the common room, and my gaze immediately moved to the first aid area. I blinked, wondering if I was seeing things, but the image in front of me didn’t change.
Earlier the injured man and woman had been no more responsive than stalks of broccoli, but now they were both sitting up and talking. Lori was between them, the first aid bag at her side and an expression of relief on her face. I felt it too. It was like someone had just taken a huge burden off my shoulders, and not for the first time today I found myself thinking about how insane I had been earlier. Thank God I hadn’t shared any of my worries about zombies with the others.
“Looks like it’s all going to be okay,” Logan said, popping up at my side out of nowhere.
I nodded even though I knew it wasn’t true. This was going to be okay, but there were hundreds of other things in this world that were still very wrong and would most likely not be right for a very long time. For the moment though, this small victory would have to be enough.
