Death's Awakening (Eternal Sorrows, #1)

by Sarra Cannon

  Karmen turned around and movement to her left caught her eye. She knew the living room was just down the hall. Maybe Parrish was inside there. What if she was hurt? Karmen took one step inside, then heard Parrish’s scream echo through the house.

  She wanted to get the hell out of there, but what if Parrish was in serious trouble? What if whatever had been attacking that woman in the mall had followed her home and was here too?

  Going against every instinct, Karmen ran forward, looking for her old friend.

  Parrish was cornered in the living room behind the piano. Two strangers limped toward her from different directions. Maybe they were just neighbors, pissed off like she was at the loud music. Served her right. But the look on Parrish’s face scared her. It was the same look from the woman at the mall, her eyes wide and panic-stricken. Her hands were up in front of her like a shield.

  Karmen had no idea what to do. She couldn’t just leave Parrish there. But she didn’t want to die or get eaten or whatever the hell had happened to the people in the mall.

  She stepped forward and glass crunched under her shoe. Everyone in the room turned to look at her, their eyes drawn to the noise.

  “Karmen, get out of here,” Parrish yelled. “These people are sick or something.”

  But it was too late. The old woman had already turned toward Karmen. Ugly black sores marred her face. Her eyes were glazed over. She staggered toward Karmen, her lips curled up to show her teeth. They looked bloody and Karmen thought of the woman screaming by the makeup counter.

  Karmen took a few steps backward, her back slamming against the living room’s archway. She stumbled, then turned to run, but the second she hit the hardwood floors, her foot slipped on a piece of broken glass and she fell to the ground, glass digging in to her palms and her knees.

  A voice in her head told her to get out of there! Run! But some part of her was frozen to the spot. Like in a dream when you want to run, but your legs suddenly seem to be made of rubber. She couldn’t force herself to stand up. All she could do was stare down at the blood that trickled from the fresh wounds on her hands.

  The cold hand that gripped her ankle broke her from her fear. She twisted around to her back and kicked at the woman in the dirty nightgown. The woman lunged forward, mouth wide as if she wanted to bite Karmen’s leg. Hysterical, Karmen screamed and turned away. She didn’t want to see those teeth hit her flesh.

  A crash sounded and the woman released her grip.

  Karmen opened her eyes and turned to look, shocked that she wasn’t half-eaten by now. The woman’s lifeless body lay in a crumpled heap near Karmen’s feet. Parrish stepped over the woman, a bloodied sword in one hand. She reached out her hand and Karmen took it, her legs weak as she stood.

  “What’s going on? Where did you get a sword?

  Parrish looked down at the woman. “I’m not sure what’s happening. I think they’re infected with the virus. Maybe it’s mutated or something. I think—”

  A groan sounded behind them and Parrish turned around, swinging the sword. Karmen couldn’t believe the strength and accuracy she had with that thing. The edge of the blade sliced into the soldier’s side, sending him to the floor.

  “Run!” Parrish shouted.

  Parrish took off through the front door, but Karmen felt like she was running in mud. Her legs weren’t cooperating with her, and she stumbled over the blue rug in the entryway. As she hit the floor, she felt the side of her right leg burst into flames. The hot sting of pain traveled up her bare leg and she felt tears spring to her eyes.

  Frantically, she clawed at the wall, trying to find something to hold on to so she could pull herself up. When she looked down at her leg, all she could see was a steady stream of blood pouring from a wound. A large piece of glass stuck out from the side of her leg and she reached for it, wanting it out of her.

  Her fingers slid against the slippery surface of the glass and she cried out in pain.

  The woman in the nightgown lifted her head, her milky eyes staring at the blood with the lusty look of hunger. She scraped her nails against the carpet, pulling herself forward an inch. Behind the woman, the soldier stood up, his broken ankle cracking as he took a step forward.

  Karmen began to crawl toward the front door. Oh God, she was going to die here. Why did she ever leave the safety of her own house? She wanted nothing more than to be watching reruns, sitting on the couch and zoning out with a jar of peanut butter in her hands.

  She felt a whoosh of air across her face and saw a streak of color pass by. Amazed, she watched as Parrish practically flew down the hallway, then planted her boot in the soldier’s face. When the guy didn’t fall to the ground, Parrish twirled around and delivered a roundhouse kick to his face. From the sound of it, she broke his nose in the process.

  The soldier’s face erupted in a gush of thick blood. Only his blood wasn’t red and bright like Karmen’s. It was almost black, and it was thick like a milkshake. It was just too much to handle, and Karmen blinked her eyes, the world spinning before her.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Parrish said, grabbing her arm and jerking her upward.

  Karmen clawed against Parrish’s grip, but the girl wasn’t letting go.

  Parrish dragged her from the house and into the cool night air. And as if the two infected people in Parrish’s house weren’t scary enough, they found six more just like them on the front lawn.

  Noah

  Someone was pounding on the door upstairs.

  A fierce nausea gripped Noah’s stomach. Had someone finally come for his father? Did they know what was happening?

  Taking his hands from the lab’s computer keyboard, Noah glanced over at his dad. The emails from headquarters had been coming in pretty close together lately, wanting to know how his research was going and whether he had any hope of finding answers. What was Noah supposed to tell them? That his dad was sick? That there were no answers?

  He just let his dad’s emails pile up, unanswered.

  And now they had come for him.

  With heavy feet, Noah trudged up the stairs. He had no idea what they would do to his dad now, but Noah knew that nothing could be worse than what had already happened.

  The pounding grew louder, more frantic. Then he heard a girl scream, and his body went suddenly cold with fear. That wasn’t some government official coming to take his father into quarantine.

  Noah sprinted down the corridor and flung open the front door. Parrish must have been leaning against the door with all her weight, because she tumbled inside, pulling Karmen with her.

  “Shut the door!” Parrish grabbed the edge of the door and pushed it closed.

  “What’s going on? Are you hurt?” Noah scanned her body, looking for any injuries. There was blood on her hands. “Are you okay?”

  “No, we’re not okay, boy genius,” Karmen muttered. He turned to look at her and saw that her legs and hands were covered with blood. “There are infected people out there trying to eat us.”

  Noah’s heart stopped cold. “What?”

  Two days ago, he might have laughed at her. Told her she was insane. The infected trying to eat people? Wasn’t that only something you saw in movies? But after what he’d seen, he knew she was telling the truth. He just hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. Not here. With trembling hands, he pushed the curtains aside and looked out into his front yard.

  He counted eight infected. And they looked hungry.

  He needed to act fast. Contain the situation before it was too late. “Were you bitten?”

  Karmen looked at him like he was crazy. “Excuse me?”

  “Your wounds,” he said, motioning toward her bleeding leg. “Were. You. Bitten?”

  The impact of what he was asking finally seemed to sink into her blonde head and she slumped against the wall. She kept shaking her head back and forth, not exactly answering him. He turned his attention to Parrish instead.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she sa
id, pressing her back tight against the door. Then to his surprise, she laughed. “Actually, I’m not fine. I don’t know why I said that. Conditioned response, I guess. To be honest, I’m very much not fine. I’m completely freaked out.”

  “Do you know if either of you were bitten?” He asked again. If they were bitten, he didn’t have much time. Plus a couple of the infected had made it to the front door. He could hear them stumbling around out there on the stairs. Pretty soon they would get frustrated. Violent. He’d watched enough footage in his dad’s confidential files to know that they needed to barricade the doors and windows as fast as possible.

  “No,” she said. “We’re okay. Karmen fell on some glass and cut her legs, but neither one of us were bitten. Are you saying you think those people are contagious? Do they have the flu?”

  “There’s no time,” he said. Outside, the undead began pounding on the door. “We need to get the doors and windows barricaded. Then we can talk. Follow me.”

  “Wait,” Karmen said. She had her hand pressed to the side of her leg and her face was twisted in a grimace. “I need someone to pull this glass out of my leg. It’s bleeding pretty bad and it hurts.”

  When she moved her hand to the side, Noah stared at the size of the piece of glass embedded in her thigh. It was huge. How had she even walked over here with that stuck in her leg?

  When he pulled the glass out, her leg was going to bleed worse. Noah tugged off his belt and placed it around her leg just above the wound. He bound it as tight as he could around her thigh. He stood and pulled off his shirt, pressing it to the wound. He needed to clean off some of the blood so he could see what he was dealing with.

  “Parrish, can you grab some peroxide from under the bathroom sink?” He glanced up at her and caught her staring at his bare chest. She looked away, raising an eyebrow before darting toward the hall bathroom. In any other situation, he might have smiled, but he needed to stay focused on Karmen’s leg. “Hold still.”

  Karmen closed her eyes and gripped the banister at the bottom of the stairs. “Just do it,” she said.

  He wrapped a clean part of his shirt around the glass and slowly slid it from her leg. She bit down on her lips and moaned in pain, but at least she didn’t scream. Screaming might bring more of the infected. They seemed to be attracted to loud noises.

  Parrish came back with the peroxide and he opened the bottle and poured it over the top of the wound. With quick jerks, he tore his t-shirt into long strips of fabric. He created a bandage for her, then pressed it gently against the open wound.

  His hand felt suddenly ice cold and tingly. Then, he felt as if he could somehow pull some of the pain from Karmen’s leg. It was a strange feeling.

  “How do you feel? Can you walk?”

  Karmen’s shoulders relaxed a little bit. She nodded. “It actually feels a little better now, thanks,” she said. “I can walk. Help me up.”

  Parrish reached for Karmen’s hand and helped her up.

  The girls followed him to the back of the house where he had piled a bunch of spare wood he’d gathered from the shed out back. He’d brought it in on a whim after he’d talked to Mr. Mills next door, not really expecting it to come to this. Now he was glad he had.

  “Grab as much of this wood as you can and bring it to the front of the house.”

  In the hall closet, he found a hammer and a bag of nails, then hurried to meet the girls.

  He tossed the hammer to Parrish and told her to start boarding up the windows. Karmen sat down on the floor at Parrish’s feet, handing wood and nails up to her as she worked.

  He grabbed a second hammer from the garage and got to work on the doors. Some of the infected had already reached the front door and were pounding on it, but they didn’t have enough strength to break through.

  Between the two of them, they had the entire bottom floor of the house boarded up within half an hour. He was surprised at how strong he felt. It usually took him at least three or four pounds to hammer a nail into a piece of wood, but for some reason, tonight he was pounding them in with a single hit. Maybe his adrenaline was just pumping hard enough to give him that extra burst of energy.

  When they were finished, he grabbed three bottles of water from the fridge and brought them into the living room where Parrish and Karmen had settled on the couch. He handed them the water, then sat down on the coffee table facing them. He’d been working so hard, sweat trickled down the center of his back and he realized he hadn’t even taken the time to put on a fresh shirt.

  Karmen took the water but didn’t open it. She just laid her head against the back of the couch and curled her bandaged leg under her body. From the looks of it, the bleeding had stopped. They’d need to keep a close eye on it to make sure it didn’t get infected, though.

  Parrish downed the water, then crushed the bottle in her fist. When she met his eyes, he didn’t look away. He just held her gaze while something flipped in his stomach.

  “So what now?” Parrish asked. “What do you think happened to those people?”

  Noah cleared his throat. He knew a lot more than most people right now because of his dad’s security clearance, but just how much did he want to share with them? He couldn’t take them down to the basement where his dad was. He didn’t want them to see how sick his dad had become.

  Besides, the actual truth about what happened to the infected outside sounded like something out of a horror film. He wasn’t even sure they’d believe him if he told them.

  “You know my dad’s a doctor right?” he asked.

  Parrish nodded. For security reasons, most people who knew his dad thought he was just a normal doctor. They had no idea he worked for the CDC or that he studied and tested vaccines.

  “He works for the CDC,” he said.

  Karmen lifted her head from the couch and studied him. “You’re kidding me? So you knew about this virus the whole time? How dangerous it was?”

  He looked at Parrish, guilt tearing him apart inside. He really should have come to see her after that night with her mom.

  “I knew something was going on that night the guy collapsed in front of Parrish’s house,” he said. “My dad works downtown a lot and wasn’t really able to tell me what was going on, but I knew it was bad. I just didn’t realize how bad.”

  “Is that where he is now?” Parrish asked. “At work?”

  Noah swallowed, then looked down at the bottle of water in his hands. He moved it from one hand to the other, nodding. “Yeah, he hasn’t been home in days,” he lied. “I haven’t been able to reach him.”

  “Do you know what’s going on with those people outside, then?” Karmen asked.

  “I have a theory,” Noah said, looking up. “But it’s crazy.”

  “I think the bar just got raised on crazy,” Parrish said. She untied her boots and pulled them off her feet. She was wearing socks that came up to her thighs and a short black skirt. She tucked her feet underneath her on the couch and Noah realized he’d never actually hung out with her like this.

  He also realized she wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  He really wished this had happened under different circumstances.

  “I think this virus, whatever it is, killed those people,” he said, deciding to just blurt it out, no matter how crazy it sounded. It was the truth. “And then it brought them back.”

  Karmen snorted. “That’s beyond crazy. That’s just impossible.”

  Parrish’s expression didn’t change. “Brought them back how?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “All I know is that their hearts stopped and they were dead for a little while, and then suddenly, they weren’t.”

  “You’re talking about zombies, then?” Karmen asked. “Just say it. We’ve all seen the movies. But that’s fiction. Something like that couldn’t happen in real life. There has to be something else going on with them. Maybe the infection just scrambled their brains. Like mad cow disease or something.”

  “No one with mad cow
disease ever tried to eat anyone,” Noah said.

  “How do you know for sure their hearts stopped?” Parrish asked.

  He avoided her eyes. “I just know.”

  “And if they bite you, you can get infected? Is that why you asked us about the bites?” she asked.

  “Yes, I was able to access some of my dad’s research on his computer and most of the reports are saying that even if you were immune to the initial virus, a bite from one of these infected zombies appears to put the virus directly into your bloodstream where your immune system can no longer protect you against it.”

  “Jesus,” Parrish said. She put her head in her hands.

  Noah wanted to move to the couch to sit by her. If Karmen wasn’t there, he might have. But instead, he just stood and paced the room in front of the fireplace.

  “I still don’t buy it,” Karmen said.

  “Then how do you explain it?” Noah asked. She could really be such a know-it-all sometimes. Of course she didn’t believe what he had to say. Still, he doubted she had a credible theory of her own other than saying he was wrong.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. This is just some weird mutation of the disease.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. They were both right, really. Even with the information that he’d read so far, no one had been able to pinpoint exactly what the original virus was capable of. And it didn’t seem like every single person who died had come back to life as one of these mindless flesh-eaters. Only some of them.

  He wanted answers, but he wasn’t the scientist. His dad was. And his dad couldn’t help him now.

  One of the windows toward the front of the house shattered and an infected scratched at the exposed wood. All three of them jumped up, ready to fight, then relaxed when they realized the boards had held and the infected were still safely outside the house.

  “Look, we’re all on edge and we’re all exhausted,” Noah said. “None of us are going anywhere tonight, so why don’t you both go upstairs and get some sleep. We can try to come up with a plan and talk through this in the morning.”

  “What are you going to do?” Parrish asked.