by Sarra Cannon
She was an outcast, at best.
And seriously, this was the last hope of two worlds and billions of people? A room full of confused teenagers?
They were screwed.
“Did we wake you up?” Crash asked, his eyes on Karmen.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t really sleep with everything that’s going on,” she said, squeezing Parrish’s arm. “What are we going to do next? And please tell me it doesn’t still involve going to New York City? Because we already had that conversation, and I want to make it clear that I have absolutely no intention of walking into the most obvious trap in the history of the world. Especially not now.”
“I have to go,” Parrish said, her voice catching in her throat. She knew as well as anyone else how stupid it seemed. Having hope in a situation like this.
And how was she supposed to explain why she was willing to risk everything to get to her sister? Everyone in this room had lost their families and their closest friends. What was one more sister?
But to Parrish, it felt like the most important thing of her entire life. Or maybe all her lifetimes.
Zoe was too good for this. She didn’t deserve to die alone. If there was even a small chance Parrish could save her, she had to try. Even if she had to do it alone.
Even if she died in the process.
What that meant for the fate of the world, she didn’t know, but right now, saving Zoe was the only thing that made any sense to her.
They all sat in silence for a moment, Parrish’s words hanging between them.
But then, something strange happened.
Crash began to hum.
But it wasn’t just any song you’d hear on the radio. It was one of Zoe’s songs. The one she’d played that night Parrish and Noah lay on the grass outside the window. The night the infected man had passed out in Parrish’s front yard.
“How do you know that song?” she asked.
Crash raised an eyebrow, as if he hadn’t even been aware he was humming. “Oh, uh... hmm.” He seemed to think it over for a minute before he finally said, “I think I must have been dreaming about it. I actually don’t think I’ve heard this song before tonight, but some part of it has gotten stuck in my head.”
Parrish’s arms erupted in goosebumps. With Crash, a dream was never just a dream. It had to mean something.
“What else can you remember?”
He closed his eyes and hummed more of the tune.
Handel. She’d heard Zoe play it so many times, she had it memorized. It was one of the violin solos Zoe played at auditions.
“Someone in a dark room,” Crash said softly, turning his head as if to see it again in his mind’s eye. “A child, I think. Playing as lightly and softly as possible.”
“Zoe,” Parrish gasped, suddenly noticing that the stone in her hand had grown warm. “What else do you remember? Is Lily there? Or the Dark One?”
He shook his head and opened his eyes. “I can’t explain it, but I feel like someone is watching out for her,” he said. “I don’t know how this makes any sense. I’ve never dreamed of anyone besides Tobias, the three of you, and the fifth. Why would I be dreaming of your sister?”
“I don’t know,” she said, holding back tears. “But maybe it’s another sign that she really is alive, like Lily said.”
“Maybe it’s good that none of us could sleep,” Noah said. “We need to decide what we’re going to do, because once we get back to Tank’s, we might not have a chance to talk in private. So, this is our chance. No one has to go to New York if they don’t want to go. You can stay with Tank, where it’s safe, and there will be no hard feelings. But I think we all know that we have a greater responsibility here than just surviving.”
“I never asked for that responsibility,” Karmen said, sitting up taller. “Why can’t we just stay safe and let someone else deal with it all?”
Parrish squeezed her friend’s hand. She was starting to understand that despite Karmen’s words, she didn’t actually intend to sit back and do nothing. She was just afraid.
Parrish was afraid, too, but that didn’t change what they needed to do.
“Maybe you did ask for it,” Parrish said. “In another lifetime. I think at some point, a very long time ago, we chose this for ourselves. I think we gave up everything to do this, and now it’s our job to see it through.”
Karmen swiped at a tear falling down her cheek.
“Well, I want a do-over,” she said, a small laugh simultaneously joining her tears.
“I don’t think we’re going to get that,” Parrish said. “But maybe whatever sacrifice we made all those years ago can still mean something.”
She met Noah’s eyes across the darkness of the room, and his expression and understanding nearly took her breath away. Yes, they had given up everything to be here, and now it was time to make good on whatever promise they’d made when they first came to this world.
“Okay, so where do we start?” Crash asked.
Parrish leaned forward and placed the fatalis stone in the center of their makeshift circle. Four of its five sides were clearly lit from within by some type of magical power.
“We start with this,” she said. “Somehow, this is what started it all, and I have a feeling that in order to end it, we’re going to need to figure out exactly what this stone is all about.”
Noah placed his hand in hers, and she squeezed him back. They were in this together. All of them.
Karmen’s arm was still looped with hers, and she reached out to take Crash’s hand.
Crash, in turn, reached out toward Noah, a gesture of commitment and friendship that ran deeper than anything the four of them had ever known before.
But it was so much more than that, because the moment their hands touched and the circle of connection was made, a bright light burst from the stone in the center.
For a brief moment, a vision flashed through Parrish’s mind.
A boy with dark skin reaching toward them. The moment she saw his face, Parrish knew him.
He couldn’t have been more than ten years old in this lifetime, but she had known him for centuries. He had once been her greatest friend. Her mentor and teacher.
And she had seen him recently in a dream, standing on a sun-drenched beach, urging her toward the center of a small island.
This boy was the fifth, and as the vision expanded, she could see that he had not been reaching for her. He’d been reaching for a young girl with a violin cradled between her chin and shoulder.
He’d been reaching for Zoe, and she was very much still alive.
Two
The Boy
Having his feet on solid ground again felt strange after an evening of flying across rooftops, but the boy was so happy to have the girl with him now as he landed on the roof of his own building. Being alone for so long had been hard.
He led her into his small apartment while the sky was still dark. Luckily, they had made it home before the sun.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” the girl—Zoe—said.
She looked around, her eyes wide as she took in the small, bare apartment. He had a feeling she must have grown up somewhere very different from this, but the boy had never known anything else.
It didn’t matter that they’d come from different worlds. All that mattered now was that they were together. Only, Zoe didn’t look happy to be there. She looked like she was about to cry.
He reached for her hand, and she let her tears fall.
“I kept thinking that maybe when we got here, your parents would be here, too. Or your friends. But it’s just us now, isn’t it?”
He nodded, gripping her hand tighter.
“You must have been alone for a while, too, huh?” she asked.
When he nodded, she took a deep breath and smiled as she wiped the tears from her cheek.
“I’m sorry I’m crying. I don’t mean to seem like I’m not grateful, because I am,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I would have mad
e it there by myself. I think I was going crazy. I kept hoping my sister would come for me, but she never did.”
The boy pointed to the necklace Zoe wore around her neck. An infinity symbol with two different colored stones.
She looked down and touched a hand to the pendant, shaking her head. “What?” she asked. “Oh, my sister? How did you know she gave me this?”
His eyes widened. Her sister. That was why he’d sensed the guardian. This girl was related to her.
He pulled his notebook from his backpack and drew an infinity sign.
Your sister’s symbol, he wrote.
Zoe looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“I don’t understand. Parrish doesn’t have a symbol,” she said. “She just said when she saw this, it made her think of me. See, I was going away on a big trip and Parrish couldn’t come. She gave me this before I left. I talked to her once when all this first started, and she said she’d figure out a way to come for me, but that’s crazy now. There’s no way she could make it all the way here, even if she was still alive.”
The boy shook his head in frustration. She didn’t understand.
How could he explain what he knew when he had no voice to tell her?
What could he write to make her understand?
Parrish has been my friend for many lifetimes. She’s alive.
He carefully wrote the words, and then pushed the notebook toward her, wondering if she would believe him or not.
Her lips parted, and she shook her head.
“A few weeks ago, I would have said you were crazy. There’s no way you could have known my sister in another lifetime, but now?” She looked at him, her eyes wide with wonder. “We just flew over a city filled with zombies. I guess anything is possible.”
She laughed, and the sound was contagious. He laughed with her, so happy for the sound of her voice in this quiet place that he nearly cried from joy.
“Is she really still alive?” she asked.
The boy took her hand and made sure her eyes were locked on his before he nodded. He placed a finger on the infinity sign she wore around her neck and nodded again, hoping that she understood.
Parrish was alive, and soon, she would come for them both.
It took a few hours for his heart to stop racing and for both of them to settle down in the small apartment. He kept checking the windows to make sure they hadn’t been followed, and after a while, once he was sure they were safe, his eyelids began to close on their own.
He’d been awake for such a long time.
The boy pointed to the couch in the living room, put his palms together, and brought them to his face in a gesture that universally meant sleep. Zoe understood right away.
“I’m sure you have to be tired after all that travel,” she said. “I’m going to stay up for a while, if that’s okay. I feel like all I did back in that hotel was sleep all the time. For some reason, I feel wide awake right now.”
The boy pointed to the bedroom and then to the couch. She was his guest, and he wanted to make sure she was comfortable, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to keep his eyes open.
She pointed to the couch and sat down, patting it with her hands.
“This is fine for me, thanks,” she said. “I don’t want to take your bed.”
He smiled. She was a very sweet girl, and he liked her a lot already.
He pulled out his notebook.
Food in the kitchen if you get hungry.
Stay away from the window.
Stay quiet. Many rotters here.
She read over his notes and nodded her head. “I’ll be fine. You get some rest.”
He nodded and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving the door cracked in case she needed to call out to him.
He must have fallen asleep within seconds, because he didn’t even remember laying down. He had no idea how much time had passed before he woke up, but since the sun was still down, it couldn’t have been long.
Still, the sound of music startled him. It was so faint, he almost couldn't tell at first if it was real, but it was so foreign, some part of his brain must have picked up on it and alerted him.
Either way, her playing was dangerous.
He rushed from the bedroom, his hand outstretched as he reached for Zoe’s shoulder. She was turned away from him, her head angled downward.
Time seemed to slow down as his hand reached toward her. It was as if some energy field surrounding her connected him to another place.
His vision blurred, and as his hand made contact with the skin on Zoe’s arm, a different scene came into focus.
The guardians were there, sitting in a circle around him.
The connection was brief, only lasting for a moment, but it was enough to let him know he was not alone in this world, anymore.
As his own living room came back into focus, he noticed Zoe standing in front of him, her arms hugging her violin as if it were a doll. Her mouth was open in surprise, her eyes wide.
“What was that?” she asked, blinking back tears as she looked around the room. “Was that Parrish and her friends? I don’t understand.”
The boy smiled, a sense of peace filling him for the first time since the pandemic began.
The connection had been made. A first step to truly finding each other and putting an end to all of this.
Yes, he said inside his mind, sensing that now, she would be able to hear him.
Zoe’s eyes grew even wider, and she gasped, touching a hand to her forehead.
He gently touched her arm and squeezed.
Those were four of the guardians sent here a long time ago to keep this world safe, he said, lifting his hand to see that a strong blue glow emanated from within. And I am the fifth.
He used the tip of one glowing finger to draw his sign in the air. A spiral that seemed to hover between them for a moment before it faded and disappeared into the darkness.
The boy smiled.
Finally, the real magic had begun.
Three
Crash
When the first light of the sun appeared on the horizon, the group left the safety of their small house and started their journey back to the compound.
They’d spent the early morning hours talking about what had happened with the fatalis stone, the boy they’d all seen in their vision, and what it all had to mean. In the end, the truth was undeniable.
This boy they had seen was the fifth they’d been searching for all this time.
And somehow, he’d gotten to Zoe before the Dark One ever had a chance.
Crash hadn’t even realized he’d been dreaming of Parrish’s little sister playing her violin, but after seeing her there in that flash moment, he knew it had been her all along.
None of them were exactly sure how it had happened. How had they managed to connect to the fifth’s energy strongly enough to actually see him?
They’d spent hours trying to recreate it, but it hadn’t happened again.
Crash was sure it had something to do with the fact that they’d all been touching at the same exact moment. The four of them in the house, and miles away in New York City, the boy touching Zoe.
Zoe was the connection.
She had more of a connection with Parrish than even most sisters, since she’d had a bone marrow transplant a few years ago. After hours of talking through the possibilities, that was the best they could figure.
Somehow, that transplant had given Zoe some of Parrish’s powers. Maybe not enough to allow her to fight zombies with a glowing blue light or make her tears turn to ice, but maybe it was enough to give her a more natural immunity to the virus.
And to allow the fifth to sense her presence.
So, he’d found Zoe first, like some miracle of fate, and in the early morning hours, they’d somehow completed a circle of connection that allowed them all to see and sense each other.
It had also managed to unlock a piece of the magic inside the fatalis stone.
Every sin
gle one of them felt a new power surge through them the moment the fifth appeared, and after the brutal attack and betrayal the day before, it had given them all hope and the energy to move forward.
So, they’d spent the rest of the morning making their plans to go to New York.
Making the journey was unavoidable now.
It had gone from a suicide mission to save a small child to a necessary part of their hope of saving the world.
They had no idea what they would face once they got there, but it was going to take everything they had just to survive it. Rescuing Zoe and meeting up with the fifth would take a miracle.
But then again, crazier things had happened.
Only, despite their hours of talking and planning, there were a few things Crash had decided to keep to himself.
Details about the dreams he’d been having lately. Or more appropriately, nightmares.
He’d hoped at first they were just dreams. Meaningless and random.
He should have known better.
There were tough times ahead.
For all of them.
The walk back to the bridge and, finally, to the Humvee waiting on the other side, was miraculously quiet.
Too quiet.
The lack of rotters wandering around left Crash feeling seriously on edge.
“What’s with the silence?” he asked when they were safely back in the truck.
Noah joined him in the front, while the two girls climbed into the back.
It still felt weird to be one person short, and he wasn’t looking forward to having to lie to Tank about what had happened to Lily.
“I have a theory,” Noah said.
“Let’s hear it,” Crash said, grateful that the Humvee started right up and pulled away from the bridge easily.
“It was unusually quiet all the way to the hospital yesterday, too, right?” Noah asked. “I think Lily must have already commanded all the rotters in the area to go and wait for us there. We already know that Tank and his crew cleared out a ton of Z’s from this area. I think Lily drew what was left in the neighborhood, which means that now there’s no one left. Probably for miles.”
