Reawakening (3 page)

It made her want to ask them how long they’d been here, but the weird silence that had crept into her body and stolen her soul put a stop to that. The weird silence said—don’t talk to them. Not ever.

They might
eat
you.

And as irrational as it was, it nearly always won out. By the third day with them, she was starting to worry they’d think she’d gone mute, but there was nothing to be done for it. And luckily, they gave her a lot of nice, calming answers without ever really talking to her directly—as though they suspected how she felt about being too close or talking too much and just wanted to reassure her in some bizarre, loud, round-about sort of way.

Like when Jamie decided to shout to Blake that he couldn’t believe they’d been here in
complete safety
for over a year. Then he said it again, just to make absolutely sure.
Complete safety
.

But she still didn’t like going outside and they seemed to know it.

They didn’t push, however. They never pushed about anything. They didn’t even push her to go to sleep on the second or the third or the fourth night even though she’d sat on the couch bolt upright for every one of them, probably staring at them in a really weird way.

Jamie cracked wise on the seventh night—something about him not being about to spontaneously turn into a zombie—but her body and her face and everything inside her had struggled to laugh. The switch had been flicked. It wasn’t going back easy.

And she knew it, because after they cooked an actual real live pizza, and she’d tried to eat some of it without seeming like a starving person or a resource hog-er, Jamie had said—
you coming to bed, June? You look awful tired.

And she’d told him no even though she wanted to say yes.
God yes I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted just from sitting like this all night every night, like I’ve got a stick up my butt and I really am just waiting for you to turn into zombies.

Though instead she’d just explained to them that she wasn’t really tired yet—at which Blake flashed Jamie a look—and, anyway, she wanted to stay up and savor everything here. Have a glass of water—because they only had it on goddamned tap!—and maybe read a book—because they had loads—or perhaps eat a tin of peaches—if that was okay.

They had replied that all of that was okay. Anything she wanted was okay.

Except for being alone. That wasn’t okay. She could tell they didn’t like leaving her down there because the next night Jamie said, quite suddenly,
who’s up for an all night game of Scrabble?
Just as she was finishing off the chicken curry he’d made not half an hour earlier.

God knew where they’d gotten the chicken from. She was almost afraid to eat it in case the chicken had been secretly infected with dormant zombie virus, but then Jamie had mentioned getting something else out of the freezer from the storeroom and other, calmer questions had taken the place of zombie ones.

They had a storeroom. Somewhere outside, by the sounds of things. And it had a freezer, with…with maybe some ice cream in it. Was ice cream an apocalypse staple? Something you stockpiled in case of a national emergency? She didn’t think so but oh, how she wanted to ask even so.

She could almost see herself forming the words—
do you have ice cream? How come you have a freezer? What is this place?
And worst of all,
did you know this was going to happen?

Because it definitely seemed like the kind of place someone would build if they had only known the fate awaiting the human race. And Jamie could fly a helicopter, too, which really only suggested one thing. He was probably military, really weird high up military, and he’d found out about the zombie bomb Croatia was about to drop on them and built this place to prepare.

And as for Blake…well. Maybe Blake was—

“June-bug, it’s your turn.”

She glanced down at the coffee table, at the little puddle of letter tiles and the multi-hued board spread out before her. They’d already put their words on, crookedly, and now they were waiting for her.

It seemed amazing that she could remember how to play.

“Um…hang on. I’m behind,” she said then realized with a little jolt that those were the first words she’d spoken all day. The muteness had receded somewhere around day four, but apparently it hadn’t gone away altogether.

“Don’t worry. Take your time—we’ll wait.”

That was Blake. Sometimes he seemed quiet, too—the way she was. And the more time went on, the quieter he got, too. It made her wonder if she’d said something to offend him in some way. Though really, he seemed anything but. He didn’t say
we’ll wait
in an impatient, sarcastic way. He said it calmly, softly.

So softly that the room was starting to feel very…charged. She could feel their eyes on her as she muddled around with the Scrabble tiles and tried to remember actual real words instead of the completely fake one Jamie had gone with.

She hadn’t seen him do it but knew it was him. Blake wouldn’t have put down Muggle. He just wouldn’t have. She could tell by the way they dressed and acted and spoke—Jamie always in bright Hawaiian shirts, always laughing, always moving. Blake seemed almost sedate, by comparison, and he stuck like glue to muted tones and careful talk.

She thought of a pen edging a dark line around her body, when she thought of Blake. She thought of that edging when she considered both of them, in all honesty. They were watching her as she finally, finally managed to put down her word, but when she tried to catch them looking they glanced away quickly.

As though there was some area designated June’s discomfort and they didn’t want to cross into it.

“There,” she said and Jamie leaned forward just a little bit. Sounded out her word for her.

“Relief.”

It had seemed appropriate. Or at least, more appropriate than the word Jamie next put down. She was pretty sure Puxatawny was actually the name of the made up town in
Groundhog Day
, though in truth, memories of movies and books and cultural things had long since started to deteriorate.

Other things took its place. Things like survival and designated areas and exhaustion. By the time they got to round seven, her head was floating. Her eyes had taken on that crushed glass feeling she remembered from days on the road. Days when she couldn’t sleep because if she did, something would happen.

But that wasn’t the case here, was it? No. They were watching her even when they pretended not to be. And it wasn’t even in a creepy way, either—it was a good way. She felt as though she could have reached out her hands and touched that black pen line around her body, like a force field around her, keeping the zombies out.

It didn’t seem to take much effort to lean back against the couch when her good letters ran out. Blake gave her one cursory
can’t you make any more, June,
then glanced at Jamie. But they didn’t make any other pointed sort of comments, and just kept on playing kind of quietly, and that was good.

It made her shoulders droop. Her spine seemed to be melting. Her eyelids had gained some weight without telling her—probably the chicken curry. Her eyelids just weren’t used to ingesting proper food of real heft, and they thought the best idea was to just clo-o-o-se. Like before when she’d first got here, only better than that because nothing ran away from her. Unconsciousness didn’t force itself on her.

She just went to it, willingly. She just went willingly.

* * * *

There was something disturbing about pretending to be asleep when she really wasn’t, in order to hear what they were saying. But even more disturbing than that was the sudden jolting realization that she didn’t believe they were going to say anything
bad.

Though it still felt kind of low and weird to wake up and not let on that she had. They were speaking in hushed tones, so it was obvious they didn’t want her to hear. And they didn’t even want her not to hear for terrible reasons! She was just an untrustworthy heel, eavesdropping on them. They deserved better than that.

And they didn’t even contradict that last thought, either. Not like the usual order of things, which was her hoping for something or expecting something and just having it smash her in the face, instead.

No. Here, Jamie said, “Come on, let’s just take her upstairs.”

Then there was a pause, and some Scrabble-tile-ticking silence, and finally Blake answered, “She doesn’t like it.”

Just like that. As though the idea was nothing, really—or at least it was an idea that could be spoken out loud without everyone bursting into flames. And he continued, too.

“She was trying to escape that first day, you know. She wasn’t just going down for coffee. She was trying to get away.”

Jamie made a little noise. It was not a comfortable sounding thing.

“All right. All right, maybe. But she’s…she’s okay now.”

“She hasn’t slept properly for a week. She’s not okay.”

“Well…”

“She looked terrified when I came into the kitchen. Like she wanted to bash my head in with that crowbar.”

It almost made her laugh. Was that what he had been thinking all this time? All through every moment where she’d wondered if they were going to bash
her
head in? Jesus, what a joke.

“She didn’t want to bash your head in. And even if she did, she doesn’t now.”

Blake made a noncommittal sound.

“Maybe.”

“If she was still afraid of us she wouldn’t be asleep right now, would she?”

He didn’t sound sure and somehow that was the worst part of this whole conversation. Her stomach had started roiling in this really unpleasant way—probably the chicken curry.

Probably.

“Could be she’d just rather be down here on the couch.” He clucked, clearly irritated. She could almost see the expression to match—he had a narrow, vulpine face and it arrowed down neatly into annoyance. “We should have taken those mattresses from the camping place.”

Jamie took a moment to speak, then. And when he did his voice was flatter. It had a grave quality that she hadn’t heard before, and lost a lot of its Texan yaw along the way.

“It’s better if we all sleep in the same room, Blake.” Then even firmer, “It’s better.”

She could almost hear Blake nodding in reply and knew with a great surge of something why he did so. Why Jamie was saying things like that, in the first place. She’d slept back to back with Kelsey often enough to understand, but oh it swelled inside her to know she’d guessed right.

If you slept alone they could get you. They could get you, and you’d end up getting the rest of your team. It was the new circle of life in Zombie Land and it didn’t care about sexual mores or being freaked out. It expected one thing and one thing only of its citizens, and that happened to be all they expected of her, too.

Just safety. Just safety in numbers.

When Blake said
I’ll get her
then suddenly put his hands on her body, she didn’t flinch. And she would have applauded herself for that if she hadn’t become an expert at never flinching, over the last two years. However, she
did
applaud herself for reining in the trembling. Something about what they’d said had made her tremble all over, minutely, and she pulled it in tight.

Then hoped to God he couldn’t feel it as he slid an arm under her legs and an arm around her back and lifted—honest to goodness
lifted
her—right off the couch.

She tried to think of any time when anyone had ever lifted her, and couldn’t even recall her Mother or Father doing it. Sure, they’d held her hand. Helped her ride a bike. But lifting?

Lord no. She was and always had been too heavy for lifting—all the way into adulthood. Had the end of the world really stripped her down so much? Or was he just that strong? She didn’t know. Couldn’t say. Her throat felt suddenly too tight to say. Something had made it close nearly all the way up—maybe she had an almond allergy she hadn’t previously identified? There had definitely been almonds in the curry.

But there had also been a lot of talking about how safe and comfortable they wanted her to feel, too. Yeah, there’d also been that. As it turned out, they made plans and plots and all sorts of things, just as she’d suspected.

Only the plans and plots were all about
being nice
. Being kind. They were so kind it was almost unbearable, and she found herself floundering in the middle of it, suddenly.

She flicked through all the people who hadn’t been nice, in her mind. That guy at the gas station who’d tried to blow her head off even though she’d formed complete sentences and proved she was still human. Those men who’d been…who’d been doing stuff to Kelsey, when she’d found her. The little girl that fat guy and his girlfriend had been using as bait—just chained her and put her out there so the zombies would get her instead of them…

Lord, kindness almost seemed like an illness here. Or at least it had seemed like an illness out there, in the empty world.

In their cabin it was different. In their cabin, Blake laid her down on the bed. He didn’t take her clothes off—because of course without the blood, he didn’t have to—and when she faked some stirring in order to hide her suddenly wet face in the pillow, he said, “You okay, June-bug?”