Barely Alive (12 page)

Heather wouldn’t be able to ask her “parents” anything. Maybe her grandmother would be able to help her. Maybe not. The disease was spreading and in months there wouldn’t be a person alive who didn’t have it.

The weight of the disease spreading around the world pressed upon me. I didn’t want this. I may not like humans, but I wouldn’t want to see someone eaten alive because another had been unwillingly infected. I’d hate to see Heather eaten by anyone. I couldn’t help it. I
liked
her.

She turned toward me, tears streaming down her face. “How could you leave them? My parents. Your brother. Does this virus tear out your heart? Why don’t you care?”

Self-righteous little wench. “What the hell? I just saved you.” I held up my first finger and lifted a new one with each point. “Your parents weren’t coming with us. They aren’t your parents, so they aren’t worth much to Dominic. There were five creatures in there like me who haven’t eaten. Did you want to get eaten, too?” I looked at my open hand, fingers splayed. “The math is elementary, Heather.”

She fumed in silence beside me, tears evaporating with her anger.

I turned onto the highway heading east. The university was our last option. I was the virus and Heather was the vaccination. Odd how one existed immune to the other. She probably didn’t even notice me
that
way. I avoided looking at her. She didn’t need to know that I thought of her all the time, wanted to know what her hair felt like in my fingers, what her lips tasted like. My hands fit a very important part of her body – a fact she didn’t need to be reminded of.

She bit into my imaginings. “You’re not superior, you know? You’re dying faster than the rest of us. You don’t care about anything. Nothing matters to you. If something – or someone – mattered, you wouldn’t let them
all
die,” she waved her hand at me and looked out the window, “or let them turn out like you.”

She’d punched me in the gut. Anger replaced the sentimental thoughts from a moment ago. Through teeth mashed together, I bit out, “If nothing mattered, you’d be sitting in that living room with your parents wondering where your arms and legs were. But you’re human. You can’t see past your little universe. Did you ever stop to think that maybe your grandmother isn’t safe?” She gasped, but I pushed forward. “Maybe your real friends are already changed or dead. You might be the only one immune to the virus. I might be the only one who knows Dominic’s secrets.”

She stared out the window, but that was fine. She’d irritated me past reason and I was tempted to slap her just as soon as kiss her. Stupid girl. That I wanted to touch. Ugh.

Chapter 10

Nothing moved on the Las Vegas Strip. We came from the north and traveled down through the neon lights reflecting off the copper-sides of the Wynn Hotel and Casino, past the pirate ship of Treasure Island, the Greek gods of Caesars, fountains of Bellagio, scaled down version of the Eiffel Tower of Paris, the gold lion of the MGM Grand and the Statue of Liberty of the New York, New York. The roller coaster sat empty.

I turned east onto Tropicana away from the Strip toward the university campus.

For the first time since I’d moved to Vegas with my family, not one airplane flew in or out of McCarran International Airport. The inactivity of one of the busiest cities in the world made my breathing hitch and hands shake.

The situation had to be worse than even the radio reported since a severe drought and the economy hadn’t been able to drag tourists from the Strip.

I turned onto the campus dirt parking lot. Dust spewed behind the “borrowed” car. The lot was nearly empty, easily explained on a Sunday night around nine. The library was open. I think.

“
What are we doing here?” Heather swiveled her head left and right. She gripped the armrest on the door. “I don’t want to be here.”

“
Look, we need to get to a research facility. We have nowhere to stay and no one to help us.” I parked the car on the far side of the lot as close to the break in the chain link fence that I could. I turned the lights off and shut off the engine. A deep breath did nothing to calm me. Large groups of people could be good… could be bad. The staff should be in tomorrow which meant Dr. Duncan might, too.

“
Let’s go. We’ll get into the building and find an office to stay in or something. But we can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

She shook her head, in the dark the profile of her loose bun flopped around her neck. “I just want to go home. Can we go to my grandma’s?”

I breathed in, slow. This wasn’t the time to yell. We were boxed-in bait, sitting there in the car. If something caught Heather’s scent, we’d be done for. I tried, I really did, to keep my voice down and calm, but damn it, she was so frustrating. “I have less than ten weeks left before my body is so horribly damaged, it will never reverse. I may have bought time eating, but how much?” She didn’t move and I didn’t care. “I need to eat again.”

Studying the tall lot lights thirty feet from the car, I wished for my old life back – fighting with my mom and her boyfriend, playing football, complaining about homework, anything but where I was at that exact moment, trying to convince a girl that she needed to go with me to avoid getting eaten by zombies. Her logic was twisted.

“
I know you’re immune, so being bitten by my kind doesn’t scare you as much as it should. But they won’t stop eating you until you’re dead. Before, they would’ve noticed the change in your body chemistry and stopped – they wouldn’t have recognized it for what it was.” I shook my head. “But they would have stopped when you became a zombie. But meat? If you’re fresh and you don’t change? They will eat you until they A) can’t get any more muscle fiber out of you, B) another one comes along to challenge the rights to your body, or C) a bigger kill wanders by, like an innocent bystander, at which point you may or may not be dead, but either way you’re damaged and no one is coming to save you.”

My laugh fell bitterly onto the seat between us. “And being bitten by one of us hurts. Hell, it hurt
me
the other night and I’m a carrier and stronger than the little punk who bit me.” Speaking ill of the dead wasn’t wrong if you used them as an example, was it? Not that I really cared, but my soul had already reserved a spot in hell, I didn’t need concierge service on top of it.

“
But why here? We could be safe just about anywhere.” She looked out the windows, each one in turn, not really hearing me.

The truth pissed me off.
I didn’t care?
She didn’t care. “You’re immune.” I should’ve kept my voice lower, but damn it, she was so obtuse. “Immune. Something about you prevents the infection from spreading to you. I want to know if there is any way you can save me or, if not me, the rest of the world. Because a mother won’t stop from devouring her child, if she’s infected and this hungry. Can you imagine if your mother had turned to you and started chewing on your arm?” I pointed at the buildings across the field. “I’m hoping the man who can help us will be in there.”

The strength in her shoulders sagged. She lowered her head. Without another word, she opened the door and climbed out.

I’d crushed her. I hadn’t meant to. But she was so damn superior about everything. I was the one who had the brains, the strength. She was just a human, a weakling. She was nothing. And yet… she was becoming everything. And more than anything, that pissed me off.

Heather huddled by the hood. She wouldn’t be safe there for long, but some privacy never hurt anyone. She’d had it hard the last two days.

My fingers tingled, driving me nuts. I needed to eat… meat.
Soon
.

Counting to ten would have to be enough time for her. One. Two. Three. I cracked the door open. The dome light clicked on and I couldn’t see outside for a brief second. Four. Five. Six. I climbed out. Seven. Eight. Nine. Shut the door. Ten.

A shuffling sounded nearby, but Heather hadn’t moved.

I snapped my fingers at her. She lifted her head and moved to the front center of the car. Three steps and I joined her. I clamped my hand on her bicep and pulled her ear toward my mouth. “Run to the science building, the one with the microscope on the flag. I’m on your tail.” She jerked from me, her eyes wide in the shadowed light. I made her a promise I hoped to hell I could keep. “I won’t let you get caught.”

Not even a full second passed before she spun around and sprinted toward the opening in the chain link fence three cars down. Her short strides pounded on the packed gravel.

He came out from beside the car next to me, stumbling over the space curb. A generic college prep – shaggy but maintained hair, t-shirts and jeans. His skin hadn’t grayed yet, marking him a young one, but his eyes were glazed. He reminded me of the dead cheerleader at the compound. Long strides past me exposed his eaten back. The kid was a dead one that’d come back.

I rushed him from behind, toppling him to the ground. Nothing would keep him down. He strained his head, gnashing his teeth at me as I straddled his back. He couldn’t make anymore zombies. I had to stop him.

A broken chunk of cement the size of a shoe sat two inches from his face. With fingers in his hair I yanked his head back and smashed his mouth into the cement, once, twice, three times. He didn’t even wince from pain. A pile of teeth littered the ground. He tried gumming me.

I jumped off his back and dodged through the chain link gap. I lengthened my stride on the grass field behind Heather and caught her in twenty, thirty, forty steps. Little thing was fast for her size and being a human.

Alongside her, I matched her pace. I couldn’t carry her. Or rather I wouldn’t. We were almost there and I needed to keep my hands free in case… well, in case another one came at us. The irony hadn’t escaped me that I was one of them and trying to protect fresh meat from
us
.

Fencing framed the parking lot side of the field but cement walkways inside the campus outlined the buildings. Three science buildings lined the northern boundaries. We needed the biology and genetics department.

I’d been in the genetics building on a school field trip last January. We’d bred drosophila flies in the labs while the teacher had droned on about red eyes being a recessive trait. I hadn’t cared. I’d been staring at one of the college chicks in her short shirt and even shorter skirt. Loved college flesh.

Regretfully, nothing fresh walked around but Heather. I glanced at her. A short skirt on her legs would be interesting. The image of her in the shower popped in my mind and I muffled a groan. When would the hunger beat out the lust? It hadn’t happened yet.

At the stair tunnel by the genetics building Heather collapsed, her breathing harsh and ragged. “Did. You. Kill. It?” She pressed a hand to her breasts. Soft… I remembered. My palm itched.

I looked around the corner of the pebbled column. “No. But I knocked its teeth out.”

She pushed herself to a standing position, slightly bent over. Deeper breaths calmed her, slowed her breathing. “What good is that? You’re supposed to kill them!” Her face was red – I’d like to assume from the run, but a sneaking suspicion told me she was pissed.

I opened the door to the stairs, odd it was still unlocked, and pushed her through. Just inside on the wall, a directory indicated Duncan’s office was on the fourth floor.

I closed the door and started up the steps. “We need to go all the way to the top.” We climbed. “His teeth needed to go because if he can break skin on something he’s trying to eat – or someone, then his saliva will spread the disease. Dead or alive.” Up. Up. Up. The sad truth tumbled out. “I don’t have any gasoline. He needs to burn completely before he will be fully dead.”

“
Oh.” She gasped behind me. Her hand squeaked on the metal handrail behind me. “Is that how you die?”

Three flights done. One more.

“
Isn’t dead, um, dead?” Hell, she was right on my tail. I’d tried to keep it “human slow” but apparently I’d gone tortoise-speed and was holding her back.

“
Yes and no.” We stopped at the landing of the top floor. Anything could be behind the door. I remembered the linoleum and the lights surrounded by cement walls giving the level a basement-feel so high up off the ground.

She grabbed my arm.

Awareness of her skin on mine worried me my nerves might be more exposed than previously. More nerve activity meant more muscle damage. Not something I wanted. The gray had returned to my first knuckle.

Heather shook me. “Look at me.”

I faced her, meeting her gaze. “What?”

“
You need to tell me what the hell is going on. ‘
Yes and no?
’ I need more than that, Paul.” She released my arm. I missed the heat of her touch.

“
My brain gets stronger, uses more finite functions, lives forever.” I tilted my head. “But my body falls apart around me. Dies. I haven’t seen more than a few examples, but the worst one I’ve seen was a body almost completely decomposed – organs gone, muscle tissue, all that gone, but the brain was still pulsing behind the dried eyes.” I swallowed. “You could actually see the thing moving. He was still in there. Had to be. But he’d never be free.”