***
She wanted that to be the end.
But time didn't stand still, and her heart didn't conveniently stop in that one perfect moment before she realized that something was wrong.
His arms, holding her, weren't just cold. They fell along her back at a different angle than when Henry held her. And where Henry had always bent his head to press his cheek against hers, now he rested his chin lightly on top of her head. Those and dozens of other tiny differences told her she wasn't just embracing a corpse, she was holding a complete stranger.
She didn't let go, though. After all, who could need a hug more than someone who had just woken up inside a stranger's dead body?
"There, there," she found herself murmuring. "It'll be all right. I don't know how, dear, but it'll be all right."
The cold arms around her tightened painfully, then fell away.
She looked up into his face, trying to smile even as the tears streamed down her face and made it hard to see, and he looked back at her, the stranger using her husband's eyes. Then he reached out a hand and pushed her, with a gentle but firm nudge, in the direction of the parish hall.
She raised one hand in a half-hearted wave, and walked away.
She didn't look back, not even when fearsome moans and groans rang out from behind her. She wasn't sure she could have seen anything through the tears anyway.
The door opened as she reached it, and Silvia stood there, a blanket held ready to wrap her in and a look of such hope on her face that it chilled Verity to the bone.
"No," she told the younger woman, shaking her head. "It isn't them. Not my Henry, not your family." A sob shook her, at the loss of her own brief hope. "I don't know who," she said, her voice choked with tears, "but that wasn't my Henry at all."
~~*~~
Refuge: Tales from a Zombie Apocalypse Page 2
