Break Free The Night (Book 2): Loss of Light (17 page)

              She had wondered before if they have awareness. Did her mother or any one of her other neighbors and friends know what they were doing? Could they just not help themselves and were they disgusted afterwards? Or were they truly dead already, was everything that once made them human, including their awareness, gone? It was a question that she would most likely never get answered. And she wasn't sure it mattered anyway, except that if they did have awareness it made it all the more terrible.

              But if Emma truly had turned, and Quinton was the one who had finally ended it for her, just as Jack had for her mother weeks ago, she couldn't find it in her to dredge up any anger.

              Just because Kaylee couldn't shoot her mother, didn't mean she should have ever punished Jack for doing it. Just as she wouldn't punish Quinton for ending her sister. Jack hadn't even known who it was, just another nameless, faceless infected. But even if he did, he probably would have shot her anyway. If he hadn't, Kaylee wouldn't have been here. She would have been dead, or infected, wandering her old city until her body decayed from lack of sustenance. He had saved her and she shunned him.

              She knew she was wrong. Because even pulling up the image of Quinton shooting Emma didn't spark any outrage towards Quinton.

              Because it wasn't his fault.

              It was none of theirs. It was this infection and the world it left behind. And taking it out on one another wasn't fair, it was the least fair thing to do.

              "I'm so sorry," she whispered into the steam of the shower. Sorry for Emma, sorry to Jack for every time she turned away, and sorry for her father and Andrew who would be heartbroken.

             
Andrew
.

              He would break. It was bad enough that he believe he teased her into leaving, if she was-

              Kaylee froze, her hands still in the process of rinsing soap from her hair. The water beat with an almost uncomfortable heat into her scalp and shoulders. But she was locked, a statue in the shower as she remembered.

              It was just yesterday.

              Emma had stormed passed them, throwing a towel on her bed. Jack, Kaylee, and Andrew had been the only ones there, the rest were finishing lunch.

              "What's the matter with you?" Andrew had asked, eyeing her.

              She had grit her teeth, didn't answer right away. Kaylee had watched as Emma moved to her backpack, opening a flap and tucking her toothbrush inside.

              "Em, you okay?" She remembered asking. Her sister had rolled her eyes and then looked around the room. There was no one else there and she turned to face them, but didn't meet their eyes.

              "I'm fine," she huffed. "Danny walked in on me."

              Kaylee had winced sympathetically, knowing her sister was coming from the shower.

              "Walked in on you where?" Jack had asked, looking her over.

              Emma flushed. "Shower," she mumbled.

              "Ah," Jack murmured, he averted his eyes, his grin kept to a minimum.

              Andrew had chortled. Emma's eyes narrowed as she finally looked up. He had laughed out loud and she had grit her teeth.

              "I thought you had no problem with people seeing you naked!" he accused, a grin on his face. She glared. "What? Now it's a problem?"

              "It is when it's Danny!" she shot back, shuddering theatrically. Andrew guffawed.

              "So, it wouldn't bother you if Marsden walked in?"

              Kaylee had rolled her eyes and turned back to Jack, letting Andrew have his fun. Emma had been teasing him for so long Kaylee had been amazed it had taken Andrew this long to retaliate.

              "Don't be an ass," Emma said hotly.

              "So it's not just Danny then," he pressed, smirking at her as she squirmed on the spot. "How about Paul? Mario?"

              Emma stared at him, her ears turning red as a blush stained her cheeks. Andrew couldn't stop chortling. She moved towards them, edging past Jack and Kaylee as she made for the door.

              "I'm going to see if Rose needs any help cleaning up."

              "What about Jack? My Dad?" Andrew continued, following her to the door.

              "Eugh! Andrew, shut up!" she yelled, stomping away. Andrew had just laughed, following her through the door and down the stairs.

              Jack had smirked over at Kaylee. "I have to say, I think she deserved that one."

              At the time, Kaylee had laughed, nodding. Now though...

              Her eyes slid from the tiles to the door, her head swiveling on her neck. If someone had walked in on her now, they would get a good healthy look at her back, her bottom, her legs.

              And that was what had been niggling at the back of her mind, freezing her muscles. Emma's legs. Where a nice, double crescent moon shaped scar marked her calf. It was so obviously a bite mark. And in this world, that meant only one thing.

              She dressed quickly, not even bothering to dry off. She was still pulling on her boots, her laces still untied, when she skittered around the corner to the kitchen and burst out into the yard. It was empty. She had no way of knowing if the fence was on. There was a small garden shovel stuck in a feed bag by the door. She had seen Maggie using it to scatter food to the chickens. Kaylee grabbed it and headed to the fence. She gripped the plastic handle and nudged at the fence with the point. Nothing happened. She rubbed the blade along the chain link. No sparks, no pop or hiss of electricity. She was so attune to it now, after not having access for so long, that she was confident the fence was off. Confident enough to reach out and grab the links. 

              When nothing happened except that Kaylee released a shaky breath, she took off on a run. Marsden had said that Emma cut the fence, that Danny had spent most of the morning patching it up. She kept her fingers to the chain link, looking for the spot, fresh wire, something to indicate that what Marsden had said was true. She ran the interior twice, checking and even kicking the fence in places.

              No one had cut through this fence.

              And if Emma hadn't cut through, then she was taken through.

              Kaylee felt her eyes drift to the dam, past the long, flat top and straight to the buildings at the other side, the buildings that Marsden and Cynthia holed up in through the day.

              Did they kill her quickly? Drag her across the dam and end her? Not because she was turned, but because Danny saw the bite mark. Or was she still alive? Held captive until Marsden or Cynthia or Danny could decide what to do with the girl with the bitten leg.

              The gate was padlocked. But above that, between the razor wire and the top of the gate, there was a small space, no wider than a foot. She had noticed it the night before, when she and Jack had been looking to get out to signal Quinton, but she hadn't mentioned it then. Jack would never have fit through. But she could.

              The chain link pinched her fingers as she pulled herself up, the toe of her boot just able to wedge into the small openings. It shook and rattled as she ascended, but no one came to the yard. Her hand curled around the bar at the top and she eased herself up. Slowly, her muscles trembling at the effort, she slid her shoulder through the small space. The razor wire missed her, though only by about an inch. When she brought her hips through, it snagged at her jeans, shredding one of her belt loops. She hung upside down for a moment, staring at the dirt at the base of the dam, as she navigated her legs through, her fingers clenching the metal chain link. As soon as her last boot was free, she let her body swing, landing on her feet and stumbling towards the dam.

              Her boots slapped against the concrete. She kept her gaze forward. The sun was hovering on the horizon. It would be night soon. The rest would be back. What would they think of her leaving? They knew she was not infected. There would be no excuses for her absence as there had been for Emma's. Kaylee had to hurry then. She had to see what was in those sheds, hopefully find her sister, and make it back as the others were coming. She'd need them, their strength and weapons, to keep Emma safe.

              Now that there was a possibility of Emma being alive, she clung to it with everything thing she had.

              The gate at the other end of the dam was unlocked. Kaylee pushed it open, cringing at the squeak of rusty hinges. There were three buildings. She approached the first, the closest, and peered through a grimy window.

              A generator. It hummed softly, encased in the shed. A small pile of gasoline cans stacked next to it.

              She frowned, wondering at the need for a generator when the plant was right behind them. But it wasn't important, not really. She needed to find Emma. The next shed was small, the size of an outhouse, and when Kaylee yanked the door open a jumble of yard tools spilled out. She was beginning to feel foolish, childishly optimistic.

              But she made for the last shed regardless. It was the biggest, more the size of a garage. There were windows, but they were covered. The long grass was matted down in a path around the building, dying now after the end of the summer. Kaylee could pick out the boot prints that crushed the old growth. And next to the worn path a long black wire was snaking towards the building.

             
From the generator,
Kaylee realized.

              She skirted around the building, no longer able to see the dam, looking for the door. It was there, hanging slightly open, opposite the fence that surrounded the three buildings. She crept forward, aware that Cynthia or even Marsden could be waiting for her.

              She heard them before she got there.

              Her body seized and her hands convulsed. She should have kept the shovel. Small as it was, at least it was something. There were infected people inside the fence.

              Their moans were low, and she couldn't hear them moving, no shuffling gait that she was so used to. There was something else though, something almost melodic, like wind chimes.

              Kaylee pressed her back to the outer wall of the shed, her muscles taunt and ready to run. She edged closer to the door, peeking around the corner.

              "Emma!"

              Her sister was there, standing up against the wall opposite Kaylee, still in the jeans and tee shirt from the day before. There was tubing coming from her arm, a sick, purple bruise spreading from where she was stuck, a bag by her ankle filling slowly with blood.

              "What happened?" Kaylee cried, relief spiking through her with such intensity that she almost didn't see the three other people chained to the wall. Two men and a woman, all four limbs chained and bolted to the reinforced wall behind them, and Emma at the end, on display, as though she were one of them. One of the infected men was missing a hand, his arm ending in a stump. A bar had been driven through, used to keep that arm in place when a handcuff obviously wouldn't. Kaylee's eyes dart to her sister's wrists, she could see the reddened skin from underneath an archaic manacle. Emma's head was lolling to the side, but her eyes focused when her sister moved into the room. Kaylee dart forward, skirting around a desk loaded with glass vials and microscopes. Her fingers reached for the tubing that was draining the life from her sister.

              "Don't!" Emma rasped as Kaylee tugged. She pulled the tube free and a slow trickle of blood leaked from Emma's arm.

              "Shut up," Kaylee said, ripping her long sleeved shirt over her head and bunching it to Emma's wound. Her sister murmured about infection but Kaylee shushed her, bending her elbow up to keep the shirt in place. "What happened to you?"