When The Light Goes Out (46 page)

His eyes were filled with tears.

"Who the hell is this 'Criss' that everyone keeps talking about?" George demanded, sounding far older than he was, glaring at the group of offending adults in the room. He obviously wanted answers just as much as I did, and I was happy that he was able to ask. I found I could barely open my mouth, and my tongue wasn't cooperating. Talking wasn't going to happen anytime soon, so I had to rely on George to ask my question. "Who the
hell
was he?"

It was more the sound of the slap than the sight that made me recoil. "Don't you ever speak about him like that!"

"Don't you
ever
touch him like that again!" I was shocked by the conviction in Dustin's voice. "He's a kid, and he's wounded. Don't you dare lay a rotten hand on him, you spoiled brat!"

"Spoiled brat?!" Serena demanded, laughing viciously at the man. "Guess you miss using that on your own kid, eh?" "Don't you bring Duke into this."

"And what kind of name is 'Duke,' anyway?" Serena asked. Her voice was growing progressively cold, and it was really beginning to freak me out. "I swear to God, you're about to get your face pounded, little girl."

"Oh, I feel
so
threatened."

"You
should
feel threatened you little skank." "Skank, now? What the fuck makes me a skank?" "Maybe the fact that you are one!"

"You stay out of this!" "Make me!"

"Don't you talk to Serena that way!" "I'll talk to Serena however I"

"Will you all shut the
hell
up?!" Malachi demanded suddenly, glaring death at every person involved in the argument. Dustin was furious, it was plastered on his face, but one couldn't blame him. The girl was insulting his child. His baby boy. The baby boy he probably wasn't ever going to see again. "It is not the time to be arguing, okay?"

Every single person in the room was at someone's throat, or had someone at theirs. With the exception of Lila, who was slowly bleeding to death, and me who just couldn't move in general. I couldn't have been at anyone's throat even with assistance. I wanted, desperately, to give Serena the ultimate tongue lashing, but Malachi did it for me.

I didn't immediately realize that the man was scolding her, but grinned when I finally did. Grinning, openly as I did, was just one more bad move to add to my growing collection. There was a sudden hush seconds after my lips curled, then suddenly everyone was screaming. There was a rustling of clothing, and pounding of feet, and a searing pain just blossoming through my arm.

It was one more pain, I didn't even acknowledge it further than a sharp intake of breath. One more ache meant nothing because I was already pained to the point of paralysis. I opted to ignore it entirely until I identified a warm rush down the quickly numbing arm. I was bleeding, and distantly noted that my ears were ringing from what could have been a gunshot.

No.

It
had
been a gunshot.

Bang.

The sound had been distinct. The bitch shot me.

Malachi was on me in a second, putting pressure on the broken, screaming flesh. I wasn't sure someone could bleed out from a shot in the arm, but he looked extremely worried. He was saying something that the ringing in my ears covered up, and before I could figure anything out, he was speaking to someone across the room.

The first thing I heard as the ringing faded was, "Answer the question!" There were angry murmurs going through the room. But Serena, and I knew It was her without looking, made a dismissive noise. I could almost envision the conceited look on her face.

"I loved him," Serena started. I could barely lift my head, but saw her violent glare all the same. "Criss, I loved him. So much. I knew him all my life." "We all did," Jared interjected. "We all knew him forever. He brought our group together."

"But
I
loved him," Serena insisted. "We were going to get married when we got out of school, but then all of
this
happened. The zombies. It started on a small scale. One or two animals were infected. Criss realized what was going on, so we caught the animals to find a way to fix it."

"We admit it was a terrible move"

"No it wasn't!" Serena shrieked, turning on Jared suddenly. "Criss just wanted to save everyone. What's so wrong with that?" When no answer was forthcoming, she continued. "He did some tests on the animals. He'd just about isolated the virus when a specimen broke from it's cage. All we heard was screaming"

"Criss was the first infected human." "We couldn't kill him."

"You didn't
let
"

"He was
so
fast! He just got away. We didn't think he'd do much damage. We continued his research, and after a good lot of trials, we found a cure." "You loved him?" I asked, voice low from strain.

"I
love
him. As in
not
past tense." "Then how can you love Malachi?"

There was another bout of silence in the room, however thoughtful this time. I didn't know why I was dwelling on the fact the girl was so obviously in love with Malachi, other than the fact that she seemed to be using everything she could against us, so I wanted at least
some
form of an upper hand. She glared at me, I could barely see it from where my head was positioned, but I clearly saw Malachi glare back
for
me.

I closed my eyes then, realizing that they felt rather heavy. There was noise, like white noise, in the distance. The voices around me faded away ever slightly. It felt like I was listening to the people in the room talk, argue, shout, through a door. Ear not quite pressed up against it, for fear that someone on the other side would open it and catch me. It felt similar to the fabled "out of body experiences."

Suddenly Malachi jerked from where he was pressing my arm, and I was dragged several feet across the floor by my foot; back scraping, wounds ripping open, arm screaming. Something was jammed against my throat, when a knee in my chest stopped my progression across the floor. I didn't breathe for a moment, trying to figure out what was there. All I knew was that it hurt, terribly, and felt oddly warm.

Warm.

Warm metal.

Why would metal be warm?

My heart stopped beating for a moment, eyes shooting open to stare in shock at the face hovering above me. Serena. Fucking Serena.
Why
was it always fucking Serena? Noting the fact that Jared was restraining Malachi, who was struggling desperately to get to me. I knew why. I definitely knew why. I felt, I
knew
, I was in mortal danger then.

Serena was holding a gun to my throat.

"You don't even fucking know who you're talking to, you bitch," Serena hissed at me. There was fire in her eyes. "You don't even fucking realize."

It was probably stupid for me to say, "And I don't really care." But I did, and choked when the gun was pushed harder against me. I was really beginning to wish that the woman would just kill me already, like she kept threatening, attempting. "And I'm not very afraid." My throat was hurting terribly, inside and out. It felt bone dry, and I had to really force my words out, but out they came. "You're too scared to pull that trigger. You don't want my death blood on your hands."

"You're right."

My stomach fell from my body right then. There was an expression of cold calculation staring me down. The girl had a plan, maybe she'd had a plan from the beginning. Something deep within me told me that I just set it into motion, however. The fact that she moved the gun from my neck hardly put me at ease, because something was obviously going on in her head. That something, I figured, would be unpleasant, and suddenly my foot was grabbed, and I was dragged once more.

"Ye leave Excel alone!" Blaz shouted from where he was, shooting to his feet to presumably move to my aid. "Ye've no right to drag
anyone
about like that, put"

The mans words cut off at a sickening noise that simply cannot be assigned a word. To describe it, it sounded mildly like the sound that a body, catapulted from a speeding car, makes on contact with pavement. There was a short gurgling noise, and a thump, but I couldn't turn my head far enough to see exactly what was going on. An outraged, terrified noise struck a cord in my heart, and I just knew that something terrible had to have happened. To Blaz. Mean old bastard that he was, beating me up the way he did. He just fucking tried to protect me, and I swore to myself then that if he was dead, I was going to kill the bitch pulling me to the wall.
Why
was she pulling me to the wall anyway?

The image of an old fashion firing squad entered my mind, and I tried to figure exactly how many guns were in the room. I decided on six, at the most. Three at the very least. Was I about to be pumped full of lead? I hoped not, I really hoped not. I preferred the zombies, at least then it meant that the only living people we knew to be in America didn't turn on me.

Distantly, I thought that I may have brought it upon myself. I had the option to keep my mouth shut, but I didn't. I never did. Getting my jaw wired shut suddenly seemed like a novel idea. An absolutely perfect solution to all my troubles. My mouth got me attacked, shot, beating with canes. I really had a problem learning from past mistakes.

At one point or another, shouting had begun once more in the room around me. The furious voices of Dustin, and Malachi. They were shouting about Blaz angrily, there was rapid movement, and what I presumed to be the noises of violence. I couldn't see around Serena's leg to be honest, but turning my head showed a bloody faced Blaz shifting around. He was trying to get up, and I was silently urging him towards success, praying with all that was in me that he'd get up, and show exactly what it was he could do with that sword.

A swift kick to the temple ruined that idea.

I didn't know if the man passed out, or died, but he stopped moving. "You do it."

"Excuse me?"

"I didn't mumble." "Do
it
?"

"Yes, do
it.
Obviously, I don't have the
guts
to. So you do it." "Me?"

"Yes,
you
."

I had a sinking feeling that the argument was about someone shooting me. It was in no way reassuring, and I wasn't sure who Serena was trying to force the job onto, either. Probably Dustin or Malachi, just for the sting of it. They were my friends, why
not
make them kill me, right? Dustin, I thought, would sooner shoot himself. Malachi I wasn't so sure of.

It felt like a betrayal, the way I was thinking of Malachi. It felt like I was underestimating him, his integrity. And I suppose I was. I was entirely unsure about whether he'd be willing to kill me or not. If anything, the only deterrent I could imagine was that fact that he was being
ordered
to. I couldn't see such a thing sitting well with the young man, and knew that if anything, that would be the reason why he disagreed.

"No."

Thank fucking God.

"No," Malachi spoke once more, and I was sure it was his voice. "No, I won't. Why should I?" "Because I'm
telling you to
."

"Just one more reason not to."

"You, all of you, really don't seem to understand the way this stuff works. I'll explain it to you all, once and for all," Serena's voice was loud and clear in the room, drowning out various groans, and whimpers of pain. "We've got the trump card. We have all of the weapons right now, and the antidote to the virus. You all have nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing to use against us."

"But that still doesn't give me any reason to shoot"

Bang
.

I wasn't sure exactly what happened, except the room went noticeably silent
again
, until seconds later there was a thump. The thump of a body hitting the floor. For a horror filled second I thought that Serena may have gone wonky, and shot Malachi, but that fear was quickly dispelled. A loud, long, and high pitched shriek hinted me away from the thought, leading me straight into one more terror filled trap.

"
Dustin
!" Pixie squealed, the pitter-patter of frantic footfalls coming soon after, then sobbing. Another small voice, most likely George, started crying next, and before I knew it the room was loud once more. Still, I didn't know what was going on. "Why would you do that?!" Pixie demanded, voice choked but high. I could hear the trembling in her tone, and wanted to do nothing less than hug her. "Why?!"