Reawakening (2 page)

That’s what Kelsey had said. Don’t get trapped anywhere with strange men, because strange men were just as dangerous as the ravenous cannibals, the extreme vampires, the whatever-we’re-calling-them-now. Strange men will be hungry for you in a different way altogether and when you make it clear you don’t want to satisfy their insane lusts, they’ll bash your head in with a brick.

Oh how she missed Kelsey in that moment. It made a little fist low down in her gut and squeezed, hard. Kelsey always spoke very graphically and specifically about things like this—with talk of bricks, and such—but she always had very graphic and specific ways of getting out of things, too.

Slide downward
, she would have said.
Slide downward until you’re out from between them, like you’re squeezing the last bit of toothpaste from the tube
.

However, before she got to any squeezing she had to first maneuver past a rather troubling obstacle. The big, blond one had not only plastered himself right up against her side, he’d also slung his arm across her chest—like a burglar alarm, just waiting to alert him when she moved.

But oh she was slyer than he clearly gave her credit for. Did he really think she’d avoided the zombies by being slow and obvious? She’d stuck herself in the tiniest corners and gotten out of the tightest spots, and she could do it again, here.

If she could just inch her fingers under his arm, without pulling on too many of the hairs. That was the trick. And once that was done, all she had to do was lift his arm a little way above her, and creep downward.

No sense moving his arm any more than she had to—better that she moved, and kept him still and hovering above her. She squirmed and slid and held, squirmed and slid and held, and almost started to feel proud of herself until her arms began quaking.

He was a heavy fucker. Not like Jamie, who’d seemed slight and wiry like something wound too tight. The glimpse she’d caught of this other one suggested muscle and height, and here those very things were, in action.

His arm became a great sack of cement in no time at all. Though in truth, she knew she was taking far too long. Muscles didn’t jiggle under the strain when a person took two seconds to lift and move something. They only jiggled when a person took so long that sweat started standing out above their upper lip.

She could taste it when she licked that very place—but that wasn’t the worst thing. No, the worst thing was the burning in her lungs. Somewhere around the
his-arm-over-her-forehead
point she’d held her breath, which had definitely been a mistake.

Like when she’d been trapped in the wardrobe in the old lady’s house, without a weapon. She’d put her hand over her mouth to keep all of her noisy, awful breathing inside, so that the drooling, snarling thing in the bedroom beyond wouldn’t hear her. It had x-ray ears, after all, and oh she was sure the blond guy did, too.

Every move she made seemed gargantuan, just as it had then. Every tremble turned itself into a mad dance. Every twitch and tremor became a wild hand gesture. Even when she managed to safely lower his arm to the bed above her head, she couldn’t bring herself to relax or breathe deeply or any of the things she’d had such a large amount of time to do, before the world went to shit.

How awful, that she’d taken relaxed breathing for granted. Why hadn’t anyone told her that relaxed breathing was a privilege, not a right? In this world, even when you thought you were safe, something else came along to rip you right out of it. All he did was snore, and her heart tried to jump out of her chest while her body attempted to turn itself into a statue.

And the two things warred, until she thought she might burst from the pressure. Statues were fighting with hearts, Jamie had started talking to himself in his sleep, the room was dark and unfamiliar and terrible and God, she just couldn’t deal with it anymore. It was just too much—everything was too much.

Even the slightest thing had to be such a production—like going to sleep. She couldn’t just lie down, and close her eyes, now. Oh no. She had to wash, and check herself, and make sure she had a look-out. She had to wear all of her clothes in case she had to run, and occasionally she’d find herself lying with a crowbar digging into her stomach because at no point could she take off her weapons. Taking off weapons and clothes was suicide!

She wondered if they’d understood that when removing most of her clothes and all of her weapons.

Because that was what they’d done. She finally, finally managed to ooze off the bed, only to discover she was in her underwear, without a crowbar in sight. The bedroom looked largely empty apart from the bed and some kind of small bedside cabinet, and none of those things held her crowbar. Or her machete. Or her pants.

They’d taken her pants and
put
them somewhere.

She crossed the carpet quickly, aiming for the door. There was bound to be something she could put on somewhere in the cabin. It had guestrooms, didn’t it? She’d seen the four doors upstairs from the living room. One was a bedroom, two were guestrooms, one was a bathroom—she was sure of it.

That was the way things were back in normality. They’d still be like that, here, and the guestrooms would have closets with clothes in them even if this room weirdly didn’t. Then she could creep back down the stairs, find something to wield in the kitchen, and maybe…swim her way back to the nice, welcoming, totally vicious world she’d come from.

Yeah. Yeah. That sounded
great
. If she could only get the bedroom door open, she’d achieve that lofty and wonderful goal.

Only she couldn’t, because they’d fucking
locked
it.

She let the handle go and stepped back, squinting through the dimness. There wasn’t a keyhole but that didn’t mean anything. It was probable that only they knew the combination or something like that. The door had three bars across it and each had what looked like a deadbolt that needed sliding back—but how did she know for sure?

Until she actually tried them and found they eased out of their little slots with barely a whisper. They were well oiled and well cared for, and the door opened before she’d had a chance to glance back at them, to see if they were still sleeping.

Then it was just a matter of slipping out, into the morning-bright hallway.

She narrowed her eyes against the light and went for the room on the left. It was a risky move—of course it was—but then again so was battling zombies in your underwear. She couldn’t do one so had to do the other, though the room was a disappointment when she cracked her way into it.

Sudden door opening—that was the way to do it. Get ready to back out in case there were things inside. Prepare to run at all times and use the door itself as a weapon if you have to.

But there was nothing inside. Not even a shape or two that disguised itself as one of them, in the darkness. No bedside cabinets, no desks, no bed. Almost as though someone knew what going into a room was like, now, and appreciated how terrifying a simple hump in the darkness could be.

Plus there were other things about the room. The window, for example—it had bars on it. Something red buzzed on the outskirts of her vision and she glanced up through instinct, to see what looked like a motion detector.

Sure enough, the red light blinked on when she moved her arm in front of it.  

What the fuck was this place?

It was the same downstairs too. Everything looked twee and homey—open fireplace, cozy throw over the couch, bearskin rug, TV in a mahogany cubby—but her carefully honed eye caught the flow of the place. Lots of space between things, so people could easily run—maybe from the front door to the back.

And there was an exit in the kitchen, too. She opened the door to the pantry and there it was, nestled amidst rows and rows of canned food and sacks of flour and potatoes and oh Lord, things she hadn’t eaten in months. For a moment, her eyes lingered on the safety barred door—easy to get out of but impossible to get
into
—only then she couldn’t stop looking at the food.

They had peaches. Tinned peaches. The last time she’d had anything like that, she and Kelsey had been standing in a trashed supermarket, wolfing down the slippery chunks while something smashed around in the back.

Now here it was, just sat there right in front of her. Patiently waiting for her to eat. The label looked almost golden in the warm glow from the overhead light, and…

She stopped as a certain strange giddiness wound its way up her spine. The light was on. Even after two years, her instinct had been to go for the switch, and she’d fumbled it out, and flicked it, and the light had come on.

They had electricity.

Well, of course, they did! How else would the motion detectors have worked? The apocalypse appeared to have turned her mind slow or else put it on the wrong tracks altogether. She was trapped on a rail that only went one way, down dark corridors forever until the day she died.

She closed her eyes on that thought. All the creeping, and the arm thing she’d just done, and the sweating and the urge to swim a lake and just everything, everything, and Jamie had been telling the truth. This
was
a safe haven. It had peaches, for God’s sake.

And she couldn’t stop staring at them while something pricked behind her closed eyes.

“Hey—you want some coffee?”

She didn’t jump when he spoke, somewhere behind her. Usually she would have done, because sound meant that something dangerous was near. Even if it wasn’t a zombie, there were all kinds of things danger could turn out to be, now. One time, she and Kelsey had seen a lion—an actual real live lion—crossing a highway, as fat and satisfied looking as a tomcat.

Anything could get you in this brave new world. You had to be on your guard, at all times.

Except for now, when she could only bring herself to turn her head slowly, slowly. It was the blond guy—the big one. He’d come downstairs just as casual as you please, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing more. She could see every bit of his chest and his shoulders, all hard and bumpy in a way she’d never actually seen up close and in real life, before.

He looked bizarrely like an underwear model, though she supposed that was normal now. Even she’d started developing muscles in her thighs and upper arms, from all the running and hacking and fighting. It wasn’t something she should be staring at and appreciating, in any way whatsoever.

That was just weird and against the flow of the rail that led down dark corridors. Plus he was still talking and she really felt as though she should be listening. After all, his words might hold a clue to his brick-bashing intentions.

“You want a robe, or something? We’ve got robes. Had to take your clothes off, obviously—because of the blood.”

Or you know. Stuff about robes.

“We cleaned you off, too, with a mixture of soap and industrial strength disinfectant. Then Jamie got nervous, so we did it again with Bactine and half a tub of that gel they used to use in hospitals.”

She glanced down at her arm and sure enough—no blood. Her skin smelled like flowers and old people’s homes, but that was okay. That was good. These two guys cleaning her and taking care of her and her trying to run out on them like they were maniacs…that didn’t seem as good, somehow.

Its lack of goodness was so strong, it made her want to say something. Words seemed vital suddenly but she couldn’t remember the ones she was supposed to use. They were small, these words, and they hadn’t taken any effort in the time before.

But they did here. They did here.

“You didn’t wake up the whole time. Guess it must have really wiped you—I know being among those fuckers wipes me. All the constantly being on edge takes it out of you, huh?”

He shook his head, and set the coffeemaker going. What in God’s name was the thing she had to say?

“But hey—don’t worry about it. You’re safe here. Did Jamie tell you? It’s safe as fuck, here.”

Oh. Oh yeah that was it. That’s what she had to say.

“Thank you.”

Chapter Two

There were still problems, even after a week of being in their company. Of course there were. She’d said thank you and could accept that maybe they weren’t maniacs, but she could also see quite clearly that something had been switched in her brain and it wasn’t easily going back.

Inside, it wasn’t so bad. That same safe feeling remained—the one she’d experienced when trying to escape. It had locks. Things were secure. They let her keep her crowbar on her if she wanted it and they didn’t say anything about that.

But outside was a different matter. Outside had trees that could be anything—especially in the darkness. And when she stood on the front porch and looked out through the always-mist, at each pine-y monolith, part of her couldn’t stop thinking about how much it didn’t look like an island.

It looked like they were just in the middle of any old wood, with no moat between them and awful skulking things. In fact, when she stood on the porch and looked out, she could well imagine that only a flimsy fence surrounded their little compound.

A flimsy fence that they would soon poke holes in.