by Sarra Cannon
To Noah’s surprise, when she lifted her head, her eyes were filled with tears. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said. “I just want things to go back to normal.”
“That’s what we all want,” he said softly. “Do you think any of us wanted to lose our families and watch the world go to hell?”
Karmen raised a trembling hand to her face and shook her head.
“None of us asked for this, but we’re changing. For whatever reason, we’ve been given these…gifts. If we’re going to have any chance at understanding why, we need to be able to talk about it.”
He was shocked when Parrish stood and crossed over to Karmen. She sat down next to her and put her arms around Karmen’s shoulders.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “It’s scary as hell, but we’re going to get through this. We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”
Karmen sniffed and nodded.
“See? Whatever it is you’ve done or you’ve noticed, you can tell us. Whether you like it or not, we’re in this together.” She looked around at the group. “All of us.”
Karmen swiped at her cheeks and sniffed again. “I guess Crash is right,” she said. “I don’t know how it works but if I really concentrate, I can send commands to people. Like with your dad.” She looked up at Noah. “When he came after me, in my mind I just told him to stop. I told him to leave me alone. I didn’t even say it out loud, but he did it. Well, at first he did it. Until I got scared and screamed.”
“Is that it?” Noah asked, not wanting to imagine what his father might have done to her if he hadn’t killed him. “Have you noticed anything else?”
So far, all of them had discovered at least two or three new abilities.
She shook her head. “No, nothing else,” she said. “Just the mind thing.”
Noah nodded and looked around the room. He realized they’d reached the last person in the group. The new girl stood near the kitchen, her shoulder leaning against the wall and her arms crossed in front of her. She’d been so quiet, he’d almost forgotten she was there.
“What about you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Nothing that I can remember.”
Chills broke out along Noah’s arm. He got the distinct feeling she was lying. But why? What was she hiding?
“Are you sure there’s nothing?” he asked. “Not even one tiny thing out of the ordinary?”
The girl stared at him, her dark eyes locked on his. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m still shaken up from earlier. I can’t remember.”
“What does all this mean?” Parrish asked before he could press the girl further. “Let’s say we did have these powers inside us all along, like Crash said. Why? And why are they just surfacing now?”
“I don’t know,” Crash said. “I had hoped that once the five of us were together it would all make sense, but it feels like something is still missing. Like we don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle.”
“So where do we go from here?” Noah asked. “What can we do?”
But when he looked around at the others, he only saw his own fear and questions reflected in their eyes.
“Any news on my sister?” she asked Crash. It had been three days since they’d arrived at his apartment, and this was the first time she’d had a chance to ask him about it. “I’m sorry to keep bugging you about it, but I have to know if she’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, Parrish,” he said, shaking his head. “I tried.”
Her stomach twisted, and a knot formed in her throat. “What are you saying?”
He spun toward his computer and brought up a new command prompt. He typed furiously for a moment and a bunch of new windows opened. “I’ve been trying to call her cell phone, but there just aren’t any signals getting through to New York. Everything’s completely jammed up there,” he said.
“Did you try calling her room?” Parrish said. She moved to stand behind Crash, her fingers digging into the back of his leather chair. “I mean, maybe that part of New York wasn’t hit as bad as some of the others.”
Crash’s sad eyes met hers for a moment before he turned back to his monitors. “It’s bad everywhere, Par.”
Tears rushed to her eyes, and she took a deep breath. Everything was going to be okay. She’d told Zoe to gather food and water and barricade herself in the room, and according to Crash, her cell was still there in the hotel. She was still alive, safe in her suite at the Four Seasons.
“What can you tell me about New York City, specifically?” she asked, her mouth suddenly dry again. Her heart pounded against her chest as she stared at map of the United States Crash still had up on the top left monitor. New York was a brilliant mass of red.
“The biggest cities had it worst,” he said. “The more dense the population of an area, the faster the disease itself spread, and the faster the hospitals filled up. Also, with a city like New York, there was no place to burn the bodies. It wasn’t like they could stack them up in the middle of Times Square and light a bonfire.”
“So it’s overrun?” she asked. She heard what he was saying, but she didn’t want to think about what it all meant. She wanted him to just tell her the truth.
He didn’t answer at first. Instead, his fingers moved fast over the keyboard. A window popped up on the large center screen. Several windows with videos popped up and he moved them around so that there were four open boxes organized in two rows on the screen.
“This is New York City,” he said.
Parrish’s eyes opened wide as she stared at the videos. The streets were growing darker, so some of the images were difficult to see now that it was almost night again, but she could see masses of bodies moving through the destroyed streets.
She turned her attention to the video on the top right of the screen. A fire had broken out nearby, illuminating the area around the camera. Hundreds of rotters made their way down the street, climbing over and around a huge pile up of abandoned and wrecked cars.
The walking dead wore clothes as if they were just normal people. Lab coats. Suits. Dresses. Pajamas. Uniforms. Jeans and t-shirts. But almost nothing else about them looked normal. They barely even looked human anymore.
Their bodies were decaying rapidly, their skin bruised and cut open. Many of them had blood dripping from their mouths and Parrish turned away, disgusted and afraid.
This can’t be happening. Is this what the whole world looks like now?
She forced her eyes back to the scene. She wouldn’t be able to help Zoe by being weak and scared right now. If her sister had any hope of surviving, Parrish was going to have to be strong. Strong enough to kill every single one of those rotters if she had to.
She clenched her jaw and took several deep breaths, forcing her stomach to calm down.
“What exactly are we looking at here?” she asked. “What part of the city?”
Crash studied her. “Why?”
“I want to know how close this is to my sister,” she said. “Can you bring up any of the security cameras in or near the Four Seasons?”
Crash turned to the computer and typed in some directions, working fast. He opened a new window and clicked to make it full screen.
“This is the lobby of the Four Seasons,” he said. “It’s getting dark in New York, so I doubt we’re going to be able to see very much.”
The screen was almost completely black. Crash was right. At this time of night, it was already too dark inside the building to get a good look.
“Dammit,” she said, pounding her fist on the back of his chair. “I just want to know if she’s okay. What if she’s up there all by herself? She’s waiting for me.”
“Hold on,” Crash said.
Parrish waited for him to start tapping on his keyboard again, but he didn’t touch it. Instead, he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. His hands sat peacefully in his lap, and his chest moved up and down as he took in several deep breaths.
She was watching him so inte
nsely, she hadn’t noticed what happened on the screen until he opened his eyes and his jaw dropped.
“Holy shit,” he said. “I had no idea I could do that.”
Parrish followed his gaze and froze. He’d actually managed to turn on the lights in the lobby. The bright light illuminated everything they hadn’t been able to see in the darkness.
She fell into the metal chair at Crash’s side, her hand rising to her mouth and tears spilling down her cheeks.
The lobby of the hotel was a complete disaster. Bodies littered the floor, many of them bloodied and half-eaten.
In the corner, a zombie had its head buried inside some poor guy’s stomach.
“That’s her hotel?” Parrish asked in a whisper. “Are you absolutely sure?”
Crash nodded. “This is what the security camera near the door is showing right now,” he said. “The power is definitely out in the city, but somehow I was able to turn on the lights here in the lobby. I don’t even know how, to be honest.”
Parrish scanned the lobby, looking for any sign of hope that people in their rooms had survived. Were the elevators and stairwells barricaded? She couldn’t tell.
“Parrish—” Noah had joined them now and was standing behind her, obviously staring at the carnage in the hotel.
“I know,” she said through gritted teeth. “It looks bad, but this doesn’t prove anything. The whole city is a mess, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still people alive in their homes or their hotel rooms, right? When I talked to her, I told her to try to lock and barricade the doors and to get as much food and water as she could gather up. I told her not to answer the door for anyone. She could still be alive.”
Crash ran a trembling hand across his forehead. “Theoretically, you’re right,” he said. “There is a slim chance your sister is still alive in her hotel room if she’s been quiet and she was able to push something against the doors. How old is she? You said her name was Zoe, right?”
“She’s ten,” Parrish said, trying not to imagine what her baby sister had been going through.
“Was she alone in the room?”
She shook her head. “Our dad was there with her,” she said, knowing what he was thinking. “When I talked to her last, she said he was sick. She said he’d locked himself in one of the bedrooms.”
Crash made a face, and Parrish looked away. She didn’t need anyone to tell her how bad this looked. She was crazy for even hoping her sister was alive, but what else could she do? She couldn’t give up on her.
“I can’t even imagine what she’s going through,” Parrish said, her voice trembling. “Even barricaded in the room by herself, there’s only so much a person can stand before they go totally insane. Your own father slamming and clawing against the door to come eat you for days on end? Yeah, that would seriously mess a person up after a while, right? And Zoe’s just a little girl. Oh, God, maybe she’s better off dead.”
Tears streamed down her face and her hands shook violently.
“Don’t say that,” Noah said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s say she’s still alive and has enough food to last for a couple weeks or so,” Crash said. “What could we possibly do about it? You saw the video feed of the streets in the city. The whole place is crawling with rotters. Too many to kill. How would we get to her even if she is alive? We’d probably all die trying.”
Parrish lowered her eyes. “I can’t just abandon her,” she said. “I told her I’d come for her. That might be all that’s keeping her alive right now.”
“Is there any way to find out for sure?” Noah asked. “Are there cameras inside the hotel rooms? If there was some way to know for sure Zoe was still alive, that might help. I mean, it’s crazy, but if she’s alive and Parrish wants to go after her, I’m going with her.”
Parrish reached up to squeeze his hand. The fact that he was still with her after seeing the state of the city shocked her.
Crash raised his eyebrows and looked up at Noah. “You’d risk your life to go into that city?”
“I’m with Parrish,” Noah said, squeezing her hand back. “No matter what. If she wants to go, I’ll go. I just think it would be nice to at least know we’re going in there with a strong hope of finding her alive.”
Crash nodded. “I can understand that,” he said.
Parrish’s heart raced. “Try her cell phone again,” she pleaded. “If you can tap into the lights in the freaking lobby even when the power is out in the entire city, maybe you can reach her even when service is down. Please, I need you to at least try.”
Crash closed a few of the video windows he’d opened earlier and pulled up a new one. “What floor is she on?”
She gave him all the information she could remember, hardly able to catch her breath.
“This is the only camera on that hallway,” he said when a new image popped up on the screen. “I only turned on one of the emergency lights on the hall. I don’t want extra light to draw the rotters to her floor and make them think someone’s home for dinner, but it looks like you can still see a little bit in the hallway here.”
“This is close to her room?” Parrish asked, leaning forward, trying to make out exactly what she was seeing in the semi-darkness.
“Should be,” Crash said. “I can’t see very clearly, but it doesn’t look like there’s much activity up in this part of the hotel. Any chance she’s on a secured floor? You know, like one of the ones that you have to have a special access code to get up to?”
“It’s possible,” Parrish said. “She’s in a suite.”
Crash whistled. “At the Four Seasons? That must have cost a pretty penny,” he said. “What were they doing in New York?”
“My sister is a prodigy,” Parrish said. “She plays the violin. Zoe was scheduled to play a concert with the New York Philharmonic. They put her and my dad up in the suite when they got there and my mom was supposed to join them a few days later.”
She didn’t explain what had happened to her mom, and he didn’t ask.
Noah moved around to her other side, and Crash scooted his chair over so they could all get a better view of that middle screen.
“Can you zoom in on her room?” Noah asked. “Or get any kind of better view to see if her door is closed?”
Crash shook his head. “There are no cameras inside the guest rooms,” he said. “And this is the only security camera on this floor that I can tell. There’s some movement. There.”
He pointed to a flicker of movement at the edge of the screen. A single rotter stumbled into view, and Parrish brought her hand to her mouth.
“That’s not bad, though,” he said. “I only see the one. That’s much better than what we saw down in the lobby.”
He paused, and Parrish held her breath. “What?”
“Wait,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Where’s your cell phone?”
Parrish pulled her cell out of her pocket. She’d been stupid and hadn’t set it to charge at Noah’s before the power went out. None of them had been expecting it to go out so soon. They’d thought they would have weeks of power, if not months.
She should have charged it when she got here, but she’d already tried calling Zoe so many times, and all it did was give her some automated emergency message over and over again.
She handed the phone to Crash.
“It’s dead,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d have much use for it anymore.”
The second Crash put his hand on the phone, it came to life. Parrish gasped and leaned forward. She tapped her toes against the legs of her chair.
If this worked, she would be the most grateful person in the world.
Just to hear Zoe’s voice and know she was okay would give her hope. Purpose.
“Do you think this will help you reach her somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Crash said. “None of these machines and electronics should be working right now. It defies all logic, but for some reason, whatever’s awakened inside
me has given me access to networks that shouldn’t be running anymore. I had trouble reaching Zoe from my own computer and cell earlier, but I just had the thought that maybe a phone that’s already been connected to hers in the past might make it easier somehow.”
Parrish held her breath.
Please, please, let this work.
The screen on her cell phone ran through her list of contacts even without Crash touching it. How was he doing that? She looked up and saw that he was studying the phone with intense focus.
The seconds seemed to tick by like hours as she waited. She held tight to Noah’s hand.
The speaker on her phone clicked on and an outgoing ring came through the speaker.
Parrish cried out, and brought a trembling hand to her mouth.
Please, please, please.
Karmen and the other girl had come to join them, and the entire group now huddled around Crash, listening to the ring as it echoed through the small room.
She counted as it rang. Four. Five. Six. What if she didn’t pick up?
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Noah squeezed her hand, and when their eyes met, the fear and sadness she saw there made her heart tighten inside her chest. Tears stung her eyes with each new ring of Zoe’s phone.
She wasn’t answering.
Why the hell wasn’t she picking up the phone?
Parrish pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down hard. She wanted to scream at her sister. Tell her to pick up the stupid phone, already. But every second that passed, every ring of that phone, was like the toll of a death knell.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
Too many. If Zoe was alive in that hotel room, she would have picked up the phone by now.
Her hand slid from Noah’s and her body went numb. She could hardly breathe.
Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
Crash let out a breath and slumped over in his chair, the phone falling from his hand and onto the concrete floor. Parrish screamed as the screen shattered and pieces scattered beneath the computer desk. She fell to her knees, scrambling to pick them all up, but it was no use. The phone was ruined.
