Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) (17 page)

“No!” Harrison shouted. “Up!”

They didn’t question him, turning and racing to the ladder.

The first Infected appeared in the doorway, but stopped short when I released a bullet directly at his head. He fell, but more came from behind. I kept aiming and firing until someone, Harrison, yanked me by the arm and lifted me off my feet. In an amazing feat of strength and dexterity, he pulled me to his side and hooked his arm around my waist as he climbed.

The Infected reached the ladder seconds later, taking swipes at our feet. Someone’s fingers came perilously close, managing to brush the underside of my boots before Harrison slung me through the access hatch.

He came through next, his face chiseled into determination.

“The ropes,” he instructed.

Suddenly, we were dropping them down the side of the store and then we were belaying downward, clumsily and by pure chance without injury. The ground, which had been spotted with Infected the last time I’d seen it was empty now, nothing more than blacktop broken by years of wear and tear, melted snow, and glass shards.

Harrison did the same with me going down as he had when we’d come up, holding me close and managing the move entirely by himself. He didn’t grunt or sigh or show any indication of physical stress. The only discomfort he exhibited was in his eyes as they focused on the broken window and the Infected amassed inside. He felt threatened, but it wasn’t for his own well-being. It was for the rest of us, for me. I knew this when our feet reached solid ground and he remained idle, urging me on, to follow the others.

I glanced at them as they fled, but they didn’t scatter as I’d expected. Instead, they made a line for a semi parked in the center of the lot. Lou was already opening the back of his trailer for them.

Harrison and I ran for it, and it looked like we would be all right, like we’d make it there.

The rig was parked at a slant with the cab facing away from us, which gave us a clear view of the others huddled in the back. I knew something was wrong when Doc, Mei, and Beverly began moving toward the opening. There would be only one reason for them to do this, an ominous one.

Mei’s face grew stern right before she yelled out my worst fear.

“FIFTY FEET!”

That was code for the distance between us and the Infected.

“THIRTY FEET!”

Doc, Mei, and Beverly were at the trailer’s opening then.

That was when I heard the sound, that sickening thump of bodies against the pavement. And I knew, without question, that the Infected had reached Harrison.

I twisted my head to find two of them writhing over his back, snarling and biting at him.

“NO!” I yelled and spun around, aiming the rifle at their heads.

Lou hit the gas and the semi slugged through the melting snow.

They were leaving us.

Harrison lifted his head at the sound of the engine, his beautiful face almost flattened to the ground by the weight of the Infected over him. “Go, Kennedy, GO!”

How could he think I could do that? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. But I couldn’t aim either, the targets being too quick, thrashing and dodging as Harrison rolled over and fought to restrict them.

I advanced on them.

“GO!” Harrison shouted, terrified when he caught me moving forward.

In the distance, more Infected were filtering out of the store, drawn by our commotion, one gaining my undivided attention.

I didn’t recognize her at first, because I wasn’t expecting her to be there. It didn’t make sense. She should still be at the Nielsen family vacation home or wandering around the fields, but she was there, right in front of us, her partially decapitated head tipped to the side while her listless legs carried her through the snow drifts toward us.

“KENNEDY!” Harrison shouted, but I refused to listen.

I reached him in three steps, and pulled the trigger. As I did this, a blade came into view, landing securely in the head of the other Infected.

When I looked up, Mei, Beverly, Doc, and Christina came around me to haul Harrison to his feet.

We didn’t stop, the Infected not giving us the option, and sprinted for the now steadily-moving semi. It took all of us to get each other into the trailer container with no one in the rear bothering to move from their precious spot to help.

I wanted to send them a snide thanks but the looks on their faces stopped me short. They were terrified, as if one of the Infected had just crawled inside with them. I figured they’d gone through enough and fear had frozen them in place, but I was wrong.

“He’s been bit,” Marge yelled over the wind that filled the container. “Bit,” she impressed on us again, extending a shaky finger in Harrison’s direction.

Christina, who was halfway to the back, froze in place and looked over her shoulder.

The rig was jarring us, moving sloppily over whatever ground Lou was using to outrun the Infected, so it took me a few attempts to find what they had already seen.

Two sets of teeth marks were embedded in Harrison’s skin, one in his bicep and the other in his chest. They were hard to see because of the shredding around each area, but they were there, stained with fresh blood amid pieces of torn fabric. There were likely many more on his backside.

Slowly, my eyes rose to meet Harrison’s, and when they did two things happened simultaneously; he stepped away and my heart tightened.

I didn’t realize it until much later, but Harrison wasn’t only moving away from me. He was positioning himself to give Doc, Mei, and Beverly a clear shot of him.

“He can’t stay,” a man said rising to his feet. I think his name was Cole and he looked like a steelworker, or at least he could have been one given the amount of brawny muscle covering his body.

“Throw him off!”

From the corner of my eye, I noted Doc and Mei’s hands moving to their waists, where they kept their blades. Beverly’s fingers wound tighter around her sword.

Harrison continued to move gradually toward the opening, his hair and clothing slowly becoming alive in the wind with each step.

“Stop, Harrison,” I commanded. “You’re not going anywhere.”

For once, he listened, a curious ghost of a smile rising to his lips. I couldn’t decipher what exactly was funny at the moment. There were more important things at hand though, like the twenty-two people staring at us who wanted to shove him out the door.

“Harrison is not a threat.”

“He is,” a woman in the back left countered me. “He’s been bitten.”

“He’s not-”

“He’s got to get off the truck before he turns!”

“He’s not-” I tried again but was cut off.
Damn it!

“He’s got only a few seconds left. We’ve
got
to get him OFF!”

“HE’S NOT-”

“GET HIM OFF!” a man bellowed. He looked like an accountant and we could have taken him but not with the rest of his group standing. They did this one by one, amassing against us. Only Christina remained torn, looking uncertainly from one side to the other.

Beverly had already made her decision, shifting her feet to a more secure stance. Doc and Mei withdrew their first blade.

We were shifting from one fight to the next.

“HE’S NOT INFECTED! HE’S IMMUNE!” I blurted. How this came to me, I’ll never know, but I ran with it, since this seemed to have earned their attention. “He’s been bitten before and he hasn’t turned. Look at him! Is his head twitching? Is he coming at you? Is he? IS HE?” I seethed, anger swelling in me. “AND IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, HE JUST SAVED YOUR LIVES!”

I was shaking, badly, so much that the hand being placed on my arm went unnoticed until it urged me to turn toward its owner. I found Harrison, whose ghost smile was breaking through, staring at me. Since he approached me, I knew that he understood that he wasn’t a threat any longer. It was me.

Gently, almost coaxingly, he announced, “They’ve backed off, Kennedy.”

In my fury I hadn’t noticed.

He brushed a strand of hair from my eyes and leaned in to whisper, “I’m not sure which one scared them away quicker, you or me, but I have a hunch it was you.”

“Good.”

“Will you stand down now?” he said, his smile tilting to a smirk.

I glanced over my shoulder where the group had settled back into apprehensive positions against the wall.

Releasing the tension in my shoulders, I nodded.

“I was beginning to wonder,” he said, spinning around and nimbly climbing up the side of the open trailer to pull the door closed.

Instantly, the container grew quiet and still and the tension seemed to lessen. Only the shudder of the trailer brought on by bumps jostled the delicate harmony.

Harrison guided me to a spot with enough distance from the group that we’d be in seclusion and we sat down. Doc, Mei, and Beverly did the same, across from us. Christina finally decided on the group she felt most comfortable with and took a seat next to Beverly. I recognized this for the testament it was. She hadn’t chosen her family of neighbors but the ones who had come to save them. She was Harrison’s first devotee.

“How are your wounds?” I asked, slipping to the floor next to him. I refused to call them bites in front of the others.

“They’ll heal,” he replied offhandedly, taking and squeezing my hand to show appreciation for me asking. “I think we’re on the freeway,” he remarked to the others, changing the conversation in an effort to diffuse the tension further.

Doc accepted the invitation, adding, “Seems like we’re going fast enough.”

That brief, banal interaction served its purpose, relaxing us to a state of casual conversation, which was a nice departure from a few seconds earlier. As the minutes passed, exhaustion seemed to float through the air, touching all of us, but it wasn’t enough to stop the others from scrutinizing Harrison. I did my best to ignore them, choosing to inspect the countless scrapes along the walls. Several of them resembled the bodies of the Infected, thin, crooked, and off-kilter. I was in the middle of naming them when Harrison began watching me.

Eventually, I gave him an inquisitive lift of my eyebrows and he explained.

“I’ve never seen anyone as angry as you were back there, especially in defense of me. Thank you.”

I shrugged. “You would have done the same.”

“I would,” he agreed, taking my hand and beginning to rub his thumb along the top of my index finger. It sent a ripple of exhilaration through me.

“Never?” I blurted.

“No, you were fairly angry,” he commented, which felt like an understatement.

“I mean…no one has ever defended you before? Vehemently defended you?”

“No, never,” he replied with a shrug.

“Have you ever gotten into trouble?”

He laughed under his breath. “Plenty of times.”

“With?”

“My dad,” he said, trepidation seeming to sweep through him. “Just my dad.”

“What happened? Why did he get mad?”

“I was born different, Kennedy,” he replied flatly.

It was as simple as that.

I stared at him, the muscles in his neck so powerful, the curve of his jaw so sure. It was hard to imagine him ever needing help, but I got the impression he would have liked it, if only to know someone cared more for him than for themselves. But there had been no one. Harrison had grown up alone.

“I would have defended you,” I said, my voice stronger than I anticipated.

His thumb stopped. “I know you would have,” he whispered.

Despite my declaration of support, he unwrapped his hand from mine and settled it on his thigh.

“You’re thinking we shouldn’t be doing this,” I reasoned.

Agreeing, he admitted, “Any romantic interaction with me puts you at risk.”

“You’re not infected,” I reminded him.

He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, not this time.”

Then his point became clear to me. “Oh, I end up being a threat to them too…,” I presumed, gesturing to those at the rear of the trailer.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

I chuckled. “I think I became a hazard when I screamed at them in your defense while carrying a loaded rifle. Everything else I do is just frosting.”

His chest shook with laughter.

“So that’s why you only touch me when we are alone?” I challenged.

Slowly, he nodded, contemplating his next statement before he articulated it. “I want to touch you more often than that.”

“How often?”

“Every time I see you.”

His answer being in present tense sent a thrill through me.

“We went for so long without knowing each other,” I said, feeling the pinch of time in my chest. “Now that we do, we live in an uncertain world.”

Even then, I wanted to wrap my arms around him and nestle myself into his body.

“It doesn’t seem fair, does it?” he muttered, preoccupied with the truth of that statement.

“No,” I said, “It isn’t.”