by Sarra Cannon
She sniffed and smiled, her eyes almost purple in this dim light. “It should, but you’re right. It doesn’t,” she said. “I’ve always felt drawn to you, too. I never have told anyone this, but sometimes, it was like I knew when you were close to me. I’d be sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch and even though I couldn’t see you, I would know you’d just walked into the room.”
Chills ran down Noah’s spine. “The same thing happened to me a lot, too,” he said. “And it only got stronger over this past summer before school started. I’d sometimes go outside to play basketball just because I knew you were outside. I didn’t even have to look out my window to be sure. I just knew.”
Her eyes met his. “So that’s why you were outside shooting hoops all summer,” she said with a smile.
He shrugged, the blush of embarrassment hot on his cheeks. He couldn’t believe he’d really just admitted that, but it was the truth. Any time she was near, he wanted to be closer to her. Always. Even before this all started.
“Why do you think we’re so connected?” she asked softly. “It’s more than just liking someone, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “I think it is. I think I’ve always known there was something more between us, but I couldn’t explain it,” he said. “I still can’t. Not really. But I think it’s somehow related to the rest of this. To the virus and the rotters. Crash says it’s the five of us who were always meant to come together, and that we have some kind of purpose as a group, but there’s something different between the two of us, Parrish. I—”
He stopped himself before he said what he’d been thinking.
I love you.
The words had been on the tip of his tongue, and in his heart, he knew they were true. Even after years of growing up across the street from each other, he’d barely spoken to her before this mess broke out. He barely knew her.
Still, he did love her. He had always loved her. It just took the end of the world to make him realize it.
“I’m so sorry about Zoe,” he said, instead. He was afraid to tell her what he’d been feeling. She’d been through so much today. He didn’t need to complicate it with his own feelings right now.
“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Parrish said, her voice catching. “I was so sure she’d answer that phone, you know? We just talked to her a few days ago and she was fine. I can’t even think about what must have happened to her. I promised her I’d come for her.”
They were sitting across from each other on the roof, their legs folded beneath them criss-cross style like they were kids. He reached over and took her hand in his.
“You did everything you possibly could,” he said. “You saw those videos Crash showed us. Even if we hadn’t gotten attacked by those super zombies in the city the other night, we never would have made it through the streets of New York alive. There are just too many of those things now.”
She lowered her head and swiped at her eyes again. “My brain says you’re right, but damn it, my heart says I should have tried harder,” she said. “She’s just a little girl, and she died all alone and scared.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. He wished he could find the words to comfort her, but how could any words make up for such a loss?
“I was mean to her,” Parrish said, surprising him.
“No you weren’t,” he said. “You were willing to go all the way up there and risk everything to get to her.”
“I don’t mean now,” she said. “I mean before all this. I resented her because she was the talented one.”
Parrish looked at the buildings surrounding them, and Noah followed her gaze. The moon was bright tonight and without the lights of the city to block them out, the sky was full of stars. Below them on the streets, they could hear the hungry rotters moaning and moving around. Noah sat in silence, sensing that Parrish wanted to say more and giving her the time she needed to say it.
“It was hard trying to live up to my parents’ expectations for me when I was little,” she said. “More than anything else, they wanted to have a child who was as talented as they were, and I just couldn’t do it. But Zoe?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll never forget one day my mom was playing piano in the living room and little Zoe went to sit beside her like she often did. She was probably about three years old at the time. Mom finished the song and Zoe put her tiny little hands on the keys and picked out the melody, just like that. She’d never had a music lesson in her life and she didn’t miss a note. It was like some kind of light turned on in my parents that day. They’d finally gotten the music prodigy of their dreams, and I was nothing but a disappointment. They put her in suzuki classes immediately so she could learn to play the violin. After that, I was invisible. I was only nine years old, but I felt the shift of their focus like the earth slipping on its plates. They lived for her, and I hated her for it.”
“Parrish, don’t do this to yourself,” he said.
She pulled her hand away from his and looked up. “I need to talk about it,” she said. “I have to find a way to forgive myself for never letting her know just how much I loved her.”
“She knew,” he said. “You were the only person who treated her like she was a normal kid. Everyone else put the weight of the world on her shoulders, Parrish, but you were the only one who played with her and teased her and treated her like any little sister would be treated. Maybe you couldn’t see it, but I could tell how much she looked up to you. She knew how much you cared about her.”
“Did you know she was sick when she was younger?” she asked.
Noah nodded. “I remember something about it a few years back, but I never knew the details. What happened?”
“She was six when she passed out for the first time. It was during a violin rehearsal and they’d been going for hours,” she said. “They treated those little kids like soldiers in boot camp or something, pushing them to the limit for every concert, and when it happened, everyone just wrote it off as fatigue at first. She was tired, that was all. But over the next few weeks, it got worse. By the time my parents took her to the doctor, the leukemia had gotten so bad she almost died.”
Noah raised his hand to his mouth. “I had no idea,” he said. “No one told me.”
“My parents wanted to keep it to themselves,” she said. “They were afraid to talk about it to anyone, like discussing it would make it real. It was the scariest time of my whole life, Noah. Seeing her there in that hospital bed with all those tubes connected to her. Most days she could barely keep her eyes open.”
“How long was she sick?”
“I don’t remember. Months, I guess. Maybe a year. She got so pale and thin,” she said. “The doctors told my parents her best hope was to get a bone marrow transplant and after testing, we found out I was the best donor.”
He didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard anyone talk about Zoe having cancer as a child. He remembered that she was sick and hadn’t been around for a while, but he hadn’t known how bad it was. And he’d had no idea Parrish had done so much to save her sister already.
“I remember being so scared,” she said. “Not just for Zoe, but for me, too. It was so painful, and I resented that even though I was going through something difficult too, all my parents could talk about was whether Zoe would ever be well enough to play the violin again. I know that sounds harsh. I know they loved us both, but they were obsessed with this dream of having a child prodigy.”
“The transplant worked?”
She nodded. “She got better after that,” she said. “It wasn’t long after that she came home from the hospital and life started to go back to normal again. Violin lessons started back up as soon as she was strong enough to play, and the rest is history. I guess I always felt like it was my responsibility to keep her safe after that. When this all started and we figured out that we were both immune to this virus, I thought maybe since I’d helped save her once, I could save her again. I can’t believe she’s really gone.”
>
Parrish collapsed into tears, and he threw his arms around her. He kissed her forehead and when she pulled away, their lips were so close he could smell the cherry scent of her lipgloss. He leaned forward, but before his lips touched hers, an explosion rocked the night.
The boy crawled from his hiding place in the closet and felt across the floor for his flashlight. He had several stashed in different places in the apartment, but kept a small one near the closet door. He had chosen this one for its very dim light.
With the blinds and curtains closed, he didn’t think it would be visible from the streets below, and he wanted to make sure he didn’t draw any extra attention to himself.
He’d been dreaming of the old man again. Tobias. They had become friends in his dreams, talking about the past as if they had known each other for lifetimes. And maybe they had.
The boy liked it when the man spoke to him. The best part was that the boy could speak back. He’d struggled his entire life with a speech delay and his mother hadn’t had enough money to send him to the kind of specialists his teachers had suggested. Instead, she’d taught him other ways to communicate through gestures and writing things down on a piece of paper.
He still wasn’t great with spelling, but he knew most of the words he’d needed in order to tell adults what he wanted them to understand.
Still, he liked that he could talk in his dreams. He liked to hear the sound of his own voice and be free to say everything that was on his mind.
If it were up to him, he’d have lived in those dreams. But something had interrupted his conversation with the old man, and when he’d woken, the symbol had been burned into his mind like a brand.
The boy opened the door and kept the dim light on the floor, careful not to shine it toward the windows or the door where it might be seen by someone outside.
He needed to get to his notebook.
He crawled from the bedroom closet all the way to the living room on his hands and knees, moving so slowly he barely made a sound. Now that he knew something evil was looking for him, he had been very careful not to be noticed.
The notebook was just a small one that he used to carry around in his back pocket for when he wanted to write a message to his mom or his teacher. Last year when he’d started second grade, his mom had surprised him with an entire box of them.
Ever since the virus had taken his mother, he’d used the notebooks to draw the things he saw in his dreams. Anything that might be important later was put onto the page. Memories, conversations. He wasn’t great at drawing, but he’d gotten better with practice. And he had a lot of time on his hands these days.
When he found it on top of the kitchen table, he pulled it down with him to the floor and lay on his belly under the table. He propped the little light up against the leg of a chair and flipped through the first few pages. He’d started a new notebook just a few days earlier since the first one was already full, so there were only five pages filled in so far. Each page had a single symbol drawn on it. One for each of the five he knew he was supposed to be with now that the Dark One had awakened.
His own symbol was first. A spiral. He’d started drawing this symbol about three weeks before the first reports of the virus. His mother had scolded him for wasting the paper, but he’d kept on drawing that spiral circle, knowing that there had to be some meaning behind it.
He understood now that they were an early sign of what was to come. The power that had awakened inside him was special and important somehow. A spiral, like the wind. Speed. Swiftness of thought.
He flipped the page.
He’d drawn a lightning bolt next. This was the symbol of the one who held the power to control machines and electricity. His ability was fire-based and powerful.
On the next page, he’d drawn a cross for the healer. His power was ice-based and ancient. The boy felt a calm fall over him whenever he looked at the cross. The soul behind the symbol was kind and strong. A protector who cared deeply about those he watched over.
Fourth, he had drawn a flower. A rose with a thorny stem, it’s petals engulfed in flame. She had the ability to see inside people’s minds and control them.
But it was the fifth symbol that had interrupted his dream that night. He flipped to the next page and ran his pencil over the infinity symbol, tracing it back and forth across its looped ends.
He closed his eyes, but his pencil continued to move along the lines of the symbol.
This one was special. Their leader. She held a power none of them could ever match. She was a rare witch, even amongst those in the world they’d originally come from. He could sense that she hadn’t even uncovered the second half of her power yet, but it would come soon.
In his dream, he’d seen her symbol covered in blood and had felt her presence close by. Was she here in the city with him? His body trembled as he thought of her.
Just yesterday, he’d felt that she was far away, but now, he sensed her close. And she was injured.
He opened his eyes and stared at the symbol, his heart racing with fear.
She was his leader and she needed help. She was bleeding and scared, and she was alone.
Tomorrow, when the sun had risen and the rotters had gone back to their hiding places in the cool shade of the buildings, he would have to go and find a map of the city. He’d need supplies to take with him on his journey.
It was a risk, but he had no choice.
When the sun came up, he would start making his plan of how to reach her.
It was a pity that in order to earn the trust of these four humans, she was going to have to try to kill them.
But after watching them for the past few days, she realized the best way to gain the trust of people like this was to save their lives. Once they had put their lives in her hands, she would be able to control them. They would listen to her and include her in their decision-making. They would trust her lies without thinking twice.
As much as the young witch hated rodents, they were all she had been able to sneak in through the barriers Crash had set up throughout the building.
She’d crept out of the apartment in the early morning when the others were still sleeping to look for some kind of weakness in the building’s defenses.
She knew there were more than a hundred rotters above them in the smaller apartments on the higher floors, but Crash had been clever in choosing his home. There was no direct access from those upper apartments to this one down below except for a small service elevator and a single narrow stairway. He had cut all power from the elevator, of course. And the entrances to the stairway had been completely sealed off on most of the floors, the doors welded shut. To break it down, she would have had to use too much of her energy. Plus, there would have been no explaining how all the rotters had gotten through the doors all at the same time without some kind of foul play.
She considered opening the door to the garage, but it would be too easy for them to tell that it had been tampered with.
No, she needed this to look like an accident. Or an attack from the outside. Above all things, the others could never suspect that she was behind any of the attacks or unrest amongst the group. Once they suspected her, she was useless to the Dark One.
Instead, she’d summoned the rats.
Hundreds of them. They ran through the sewers beneath the streets in packs, their nimble bodies able to squeeze through even the smallest of openings.
The witch created just such an opening at the far corner of the garage behind a row of abandoned cars. It was dark and out of the way. No one would ever see the rats gathering there.
Many animals were immune to the Dark One’s magic and the virus had not taken hold in them. Dogs, cats, horses, most domestic animals. But there were others who had been infected easily. Monkeys. Bats.
Rats.
The witch leaned down and reached her hand toward the large rat with the red eyes. It skittered up her arm and up onto her shoulder, rubbing its furry body against her cheek tenderly.
Pride seeped into her bones. The Dark One approved of her choice.
“Soon,” she told the rat. “As soon as the sun sets.”
She crouched and let the rodent run back to the others who were gathering in the garage.
Tonight, things were going to get interesting.
She was cold. She opened her eyes and sat up. What was that sound? Something had woken her, but it was distant and booming. She struggled to orient herself, but it was so dark in here. Were the others still asleep?
She listened, but heard no breathing or movement in the room with her. Where had they gone?
She shivered.
She didn’t like this feeling of being alone in the dark. She missed light and the subtle humming sound of electricity.
Crash must have still been out of it. How long would he be sleeping? And what would they do if he never woke up?
She heard the door to the apartment open, followed by the low rumble of voices down the hall. Parrish and Noah must have been on the roof for most of the night. She needed to go see what had happened, but she couldn’t maneuver in the darkness. She had a flashlight in her backpack. She just had to find it.
She climbed out of her sleeping bag and crawled across the floor to where she thought she remembered leaving it last night before she went to bed.
She moved slowly, putting her hand down carefully as she crawled. She was convinced she would put her hand down and feel someone’s dead leg or something.
Finally, though, her hand landed on something.
Not a leg. Thank God.
Her tennis shoes. Or someone’s anyway.
She felt around the shoes and found a backpack. She unzipped it, moving by feel alone, getting her first real dose of what it would be like to be blind. She’d never been in such pure darkness in her life.
She’d pulled almost everything out of the bag before she realized it wasn’t even her bag she was rummaging through. Crap.
What even was this?
A blanket? A dress? She felt her way around some long piece of fabric. It was strange and heavy, unlike any material she’d ever touched. Silky in some ways, but not quite as soft and smooth as silk. It was more like a silky chain, but that made absolutely no sense.
