DEAD: Reborn (35 page)

By the time they turned and began the journey back up the street, he was beginning to feel a bit queasy. He kept feeling hot flashes ripple through him
, and he was sweating profusely.

A thought hit him like a punch in the gut. His eyes drifted up the street. He could make out the
occasional tail of a cat swishing amidst the freshly killed zombies that littered the street where they’d done battle. An image flickered in his brain of what he’d seen in that room.

He knew that dogs turned…but it seemed that cats were not affected. Yet, there were plenty of cases where a species might not actually show signs of a disease…but they could carry it.

The reality of it caused Kevin to stagger. His legs betrayed him and he lost control of his bicycle. With a crash, he careened off of a car and ended up sprawled on the road. Rolling over onto his back, Kevin looked skyward. It was an unremarkable day. There were a few clouds scudding across a pale blue sky.

It’s not fair
, Kevin thought. After everything he’d been through…to go out like this. It just seemed so wrong.

“A cat…a fucking cat,” Kevin muttered.

A shadow drifted across his face. He looked up to see a circle of children staring down at him. Their expressions were a mixture and varied from concern to amusement.  A couple of the boys were actually chuckling.

“Need help, old man?” one of the boys said with a smirk. “That bike kick your ass?”

“Stay back,” Kevin managed as he slowly sat up and looked around. He felt a spot on his head that really hurt and came away with a hand slicked with blood.

“Holy crap!” the smirking boy exclaimed, jumping back with all signs of hilarity wiped away.

Kevin closed his eyes. He didn’t want the children any more frightened than they already were, and judging by the gasps from the group as well as the one young man’s reaction, his eyes had obviously already made the change and were probably shot with the black tracers that mark infection.

“We need to get you to the rally point,” one of the children suggested.

“I don’t want the others to see me like this,” Kevin said. For some reason, he was embarrassed about turning.

At last, he was seeing the truth of his words. If this had been a movie, he had to at least be a semi-heroic figure. And here he was, about to die and become a freaking zombie because of a stupid cat. He’d always hated cats. They never came to you u
nless they wanted something…sort of like the pretty girls in school. He was invisible until they started failing classes; then, all of a sudden, he was their friend. At least with a dog you felt like it mattered if you came home or not at the end of the day.

His mind drifted back to the days when he would come home from school and that family lab, Bailey, would be waiting on the porch. It was like she knew what time it was and knew that her pet human needed to see that doggy smile and wagging tail after a rough day of being hit with spit balls and digging out the daily wedgie.

“But you’re bleeding,” a girl’s voice cut through his plea
sant memory. “You said that we should get any open wounds cleaned up right away so we don’t get infected.”

“Not much point in cleaning me up now, is there?” Kevin snapped a little
harsher than he intended.

“Why not…didn’t you say that an infection could kill us these days?” the girl pressed.

“Yes, but if I am already going to die—” Kevin began, but the children all started to talk at once, cutting him off with a variety of exclamations and questions about why he was dying.

He opened his eyes and looked around at the children gat
hered close. A few were on their knees right in front of him, including a little girl with skin the color of caramel and eyes that were a dazzling green. Her hair was “corn row” braided, she had a stud in her left nostril, and a poorly done tattoo on her neck; “13” was etched in thick, dark script.

“Why would
you die? You just fell and bumped your head. Head wounds always bleed the worst. They look bad, but usually they ain’t nothing but a scratch…prob’ly don’t even need stitches or nothing.” This was the same girl that had been talking to him when his eyes were closed.

Kevin gave her a glare, but she just stared back at him with almost no expression. He pointed to his eyes, widening them for effect.

“You get something in your eye?” she asked.

“Can’t you see?” Kevin asked, not bothering to hide the e
xasperation. How would these children survive if they didn’t even know the giveaway signs of a person about to turn?

The girl glanced over her shoulder at the other children gathered around. She must have made some sort of face that was obviously supposed to be read as a question. The others looked over her and at Kevin, then back to her
, shrugging their shoulders.

“You gonna have to tell us,
‘cause we don’t see nothing.” The girl mimicked the shrugs the others had already given as their answer.

“You don’t see the dark tracers in my eyes?”

All of the kids scrambled back and away; all except for the girl who continued to kneel in front of Kevin, peering at him with what now looked like concern. Only, it did not look like the sort of concern that you would show a person who was about to die and become a zombie; this was the sort of concern when you thought somebody might have hit their head a little too hard.

“Nuh-uh, no tracers. You have pretty eyes, though. They look friendly. Maybe that is why we didn’t kill you back at the graveyard.”

Kevin scowled. Perhaps he’d been wrong. But then why did he feel so sick? Unless…could he possibly be immune? Or maybe the cats can’t actually spread the virus. These were questions that he had no answers to, and considering that there would not be any labs running tests any more, he would never know. The only way to be sure if he was immune would be to suffer a bite from an actual zombie. He was not too keen on that idea. The other way to test his theory would be to have somebody bitten by one of those nasty felines. He didn’t think there would be a long line of volunteers for that assignment either.

As he staggered to his feet, doing his best n
ot to swoon, Kevin saw a truck up on a nearby curb and made his way to it. He yanked the side mirror around and wiped at the grimy surface until he could see his reflection.

“See? No squiggles,” the girl said from right beside him. He hadn’t recalled her following him.

“What’s your name? I don’t think I was ever told.” Kevin turned and leaned against the truck, sliding down to his butt and sitting on the road with his legs splayed out in front of him.

“That’s ‘cause you never asked,” the girl said with a shrug. “It’s Rose.”

“Nice to meet you, Rose.”

Kevin closed his eyes again. If he left them open, he would be sick. It was as if he could feel the Earth’s rotation. Everything was spinning and he was starting to get the chills, but conside
ring how bad he was sweating, he figured that he must have a hell of a fever.

“Your face is turning bright red,” Rose said with as much casualness in her voice as if she were telling him it was Thur
sday.

“I don’t feel so good.”

Kevin felt something twist in his gut. It felt as if there might be something alive inside him and that it was trying to rip its way out. He bit back the pain as long as he could. Eventually it became too much.

Kevin screamed, long and loud. Then…he collapsed.

***

Aleah
was standing at the intersection of ‘S Avenue B’ and ‘E 111
th
St’ when she heard the scream. They had already heard one bit of commotion from the direction of Kevin’s group. She had hurried outside and hoped to hear any indication that things were either fine, or required her and her group to rush over and offer help.

When several minutes went by and not another peep was heard, she had gone back to work. Her group had almost filled every single trailer cart. It had been an amazing haul so far. Even better, there had been very little in the way of zombies. In two of the houses, they’d actually spotted zombies in the windows and simply skipped over them.
No sense in taking an unnecessary risk
, she had reasoned.

When they reached the intersection and were set to turn
around, she had actually made visual contact with Heather who was a block over, and given an enthusiastic wave. They had managed to grab so much stuff that she was almost hesitant to go inside any of the houses on the opposite side of the street.

She had just made up her mind that they would take a pass and just get to the rally point when she heard Kevin scream.

She knew instantly that it was him. Turning to the kids, she told them to head to the rally point and stay there until the others arrived. She did not wait for a reply and sprinted over to the next block.

When she rounded the corner, she had one of those m
oments like in a nightmare or a horror movie. Her vision seemed to zoom in up the street. She could see Kevin perfectly, and then, it snapped back and she felt like she was a million miles away. Taking off at a dead run, she was almost to him when she could see his face was bright red as if he were terribly sunburnt.

What’s with all the cats?
she wondered as she skidded to a halt and dropped down beside him next to a young, golden brown-skinned girl who was holding his head in her lap.

“Did he get bit?” Aleah asked the girl.

“By a cat,” Rose said, nodding to where several of the animals sat in a large semi-circle around them, staring and swishing their tails.

She checked Kevin’s pulse. It was still there, but seemed to be racing like that of a hummingbird. Looking around, she saw one of the bicycle trailers that might suit her needs. She went to it and emptied the content
s onto the street. With the help of a few of the kids, they got Kevin loaded up and headed back to the rally point.

There was a partially collapsed building set way back in the park. They followed ‘S Avenue B’ which, according to the map Kevin had marked up when dividing the neighborhood for sca
venging, ran in almost a horseshoe shape around the open field of this now heavily overgrown park.

They reached the building
, and Aleah sent a few of the kids back to the rally point to inform the others where to meet. With the girl’s help—she had given her name as Rose—Aleah got Kevin bundled in some of the blankets to hopefully ease his shivering. She continued to attend to Kevin as everybody returned. She did not know how everybody else did on their search for supplies, but she was cognizant enough to know that nobody had been lost…so far.

For three days, they stayed while Kevin drifted in and out of semi-consciousness. A
leah had not left his side, constantly peeling back his eyelids to look for the telltale tracers. Twice, she’d had a scare when it seemed like he stopped breathing. Each time, she felt her hand tighten on the hilt of the blade she wore on her left hip.

At last, his fever broke.

Two days later, he opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“I hate cats,” was all Kevin said, and then, drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

The Dead Return
January 30, 2014:

Book
8 of the DEAD series