“Why did you come alone?” Harrison asked, sensing something wasn’t quite right.

  “They couldn’t…,” she sighed in frustration. “I snuck out.” She looked guilty, although I didn’t find out until later it was for a different reason.

  Christina settled and maintained a dazed stare on the lantern. “This is my home, I know everyone, everyone who became Skin Eaters, everyone who’s at WillMart.”

  I considered this, realizing that her entire world had been this provincial town and her perception of it had just gotten even smaller, with the remainder of her neighbors holed up in a place that was designed to be nothing more than a transient stop to buy supplies. Something like that could make you feel insignificant, but she hadn’t let it. Her personality was too strong. This was clear when she spoke again, describing the survivors in detail. By the time she was done, it was obvious why she had risked her life to save them. She loved them. That came through in the way she talked about her neighbors, dramatically and with ever-changing facial expressions. She knew their quirks and grievances with each other, their weaknesses and strengths, and everything she mentioned helped prepare us for what we could expect when we arrived in the morning. So we thought.

  Harrison was the only one with the foresight to not entirely trust Christina’s behavior. After the others fell asleep, he took the opportunity to ask me something he knew I would decline. But he had to try.

  Shifting to face me, he kept his voice low. “Tomorrow, there’s no need for you to go.”

  My head jerked back. “Go?”

  “To meet the person to talk about the cure.”

  “You don’t want me there?” I was stunned.

  “You’ll be safe here with Doc, Mei, and Beverly. I’ll go with Christina and come back for you. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Before he could answer, I made my decision. “No.”

  “I’m not joking, Kennedy.”

  We fell into a heated stare.

  “Why do you want me to stay?”

  “I don’t see…,” he said, his eyes drifting to Christina. “I don’t see the reason to risk your safety-”

  “We are a team, Harrison. You said it yourself, no one person is greater than the other. We go in together, we leave together.”

  “Did your dad teach you that?”

  “Yes,” I replied flatly.

  I could see in his face that he agreed with me. He knew my logic was sound, but he wouldn’t let it rest.

  Piercing me with those striking eyes, making me forget my thoughts and concentrate solely on my feelings, he uttered something I wasn’t entirely prepared to hear from him at the moment, going right to the heart of why I wouldn’t allow him to leave me behind.

  “I love you too, Kennedy.” He delivered this promise in a deep, guttural whisper. It was equally seductive and disarming, and he knew it.

  His hand rose to my face, where his fingers slid tenderly along my cheek. The touch made me tremble, but he showed no reaction to it, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

  “You refuse to see it,” he said, more to himself than to me.

  “See what?”

  His handsome face squeezed together in pain, which made my heart catch. “You refuse, Kennedy, and every time it puts you at risk.”

  “Refuse what? What risk?”

  He bit down hard, but released his jaw to answer. “Me, Kennedy, me. What would happen if I turned, if by some evolution of the virus I became infected? You’d stop in place, consider how to revive me, and by the time you moved you’d be dead. Bitten. Torn to pieces.” His face twisted, sickened by the thought. “By me, Kennedy, by me.”

  His head dropped, shaking back and forth. He was breathing heavily now, which seemed strange because he was never breathless when he fought. It was his emotion, centered on me, that left him winded.

  I took his hands and leaned in. “That won’t happen. We’ll make sure it won’t happen.”

  Ignoring me, he went on. “Think about it, Kennedy. I’m strong, I don’t feel pain or fatigue. My body is a mass that would be challenging, even for you, to take down-”

  “It won’t happen. We will protect you.”

  His head snapped up, his expression filled with raw intensity. “Kennedy, you aren’t protecting me from the danger. I am the danger.”

  This brought our conversation to a crashing halt. Our bodies tensed, our muscles froze. We remained still, letting the force of the moment pass. This took longer than expected because our eyes had locked on each other, and our gazes wavered between fear for each other and determination in our own beliefs.

  When my breathing had returned to a steady rhythm, I ended the conversation, in a way that he didn’t appreciate.

  “I’m going, Harrison.”

  With that declaration hanging over our heads, I slid into the sleeping bag and laid my head on the pillow. Harrison stood and moved to the door, preparing to guard us for the night, but he could do nothing more than stare at the box covering the window. He would need to use his other senses, the same ones that made him so lethal. Before sleep took over, I observed him from the other side of the store, the massive body he’d been warning me about standing so strong and sure, and a single thought ran through my mind: No matter how much you fear yourself, Harrison, tonight you’re alive and well, and those lethal senses are pointing elsewhere.

  CHAPTER 7

  I DIDN’T SLEEP WELL, REPEATEDLY OPENING my eyes to find Harrison at his post, arms locked across his chest, head turned toward the boarded window, a look of determination permanently engraved in his handsome features. As the store gradually filled with light, streams of it broke through the blockade we’d set up the day before and woke the rest of our group. I gave in and unzipped the sleeping bag.

  It was then I noticed how starkly different our lives had become. Before the outbreak, my mornings were centered around Pop Tarts, cherry flavored, and soda, preferably caffeinated, before leaving in a crazed, delayed rush for my first class. Now, my mornings were a slow, diligent exercise in preparation for whatever we might encounter that day. I stuffed the sleeping bag and small pillow into my backpack, compliments of the army surplus store owner, while mentally preparing myself.

  It’s zero dark thirty, Kennedy, keep it high and tight today. Don’t worry about the bunch of baggers outside. Embrace The Suck. You got your Team 6 with you. Hooyah.

  For some reason, the military terminology helped. I switched it up every once in a while to keep it interesting but the message was always the same. Fight, Kennedy, and keep on fighting.

  I followed this morning’s ritual as we ate Egg Scramble, rehydrated in a pouch, and packed up. Sometime during this process, I caught Christina sneaking glances at Harrison.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  I startled her with my question, enough to make her hesitate in answering it. When she did, she kept her voice low, having no idea that Harrison’s acute hearing would pick up on her words anyways. “Did he… Did he stay awake all night long?”

  I found my gaze moving to Harrison where he remained at his post. “Yes, he did.”

  “Is it insomnia?”

  I held back a grin. “Something like that.”

  She again seemed flustered but didn’t immediately offer an explanation. I got the impression she didn’t want to offend us, but I persisted. “Have you ever known someone with insomnia?”

  “Well, yeah, but…,” she replied, darting another look at Harrison, who showed no sign of having overheard. “He didn’t sleep last night. He didn’t eat anything last night or this morning. Will he… will he be alert today?”

  “Alert for what?”

  She shrugged as if that were an odd question. “Anything.”

  “He’ll be fine, Christina. He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known.” On this last part, the edges of Harrison’s lips lifted in a subtle grin.

  He was listening…

  When I realized this, I couldn’t stop myself. “He’s strong, virile, handsome. Harrison’s a fox, isn’t he?”

  Simultaneously, Christina’s eyebrows came together in suspicion as Harrison abruptly turned from the window, taking a sideways glance at me. I’m fairly certain he caught my grin.

  “Yeah, he is,” Christina whispered, “but…aren’t you two together?”

  She never received an answer.

  In an effort to either end our conversation or out of legitimate need to get moving, Harrison strode across the room for his backpack, where he announced, “The sedan is snowed in. We’ll need to hoof it out.”

  Beverly’s mouth turned up in disgust at Harrison’s news, but for once she managed not to mumble a complaint. I observed her as she picked up her backpack and makeshift metal sword to ready herself and I wondered if she had any idea how much her fighting personality now reflected in her appearance, and if knowing it might erase her frown. I doubted it.

  The rest of us slung the backpacks over our shoulders and headed for the door. I kept my rifle at the ready while Harrison disassembled the crates and leaned on the handle to listen outside. As he tilted an ear up, Christina gave him another curious look but it dissipated as he stepped out.

  Her scrutiny of him didn’t diminish on our walk through town, I noticed, which meant she was already starting to decipher his quirks. This unnerved me, so I stepped up next to him and walked at his hip for the last half of Main Street, hoping my interaction with him would make Harrison more relatable. We weren’t able to talk, given the Infected’s hearing capabilities, but he showed himself through his actions, helping me through a barbed wire fence when we cut across a field to save time.

  Christina led us to a hill overlooking the store, slowing her pace so that the snow flattening beneath her feet quieted. We followed in her footsteps, literally, until we reached the peak and carefully spread out across the top to assess the situation below.

  When we did, all eyes turned on Christina, each of us attempting to contain the anger surging through us.

  Before anyone slipped up and scolded her, Harrison motioned us to retreat down the hill. The entire way, a notion repeatedly pestered me, cycling in my head: He’d been correct. There was a threat here.

  Once out of earshot, Harrison looked pointedly at Christina. “You didn’t mention the Skin Eaters, Christina.”

  Even from our distance, they were just barely audible to us, their growls and hisses rising up like a siren.

  Beverly had already swung her metal sword around to a ready position as she watched the hill’s crest suspiciously.

  Shame, or possibly fear, was already visible in her expression. “I need your help,” she blurted. “We need your help. Food is running out, water has been gone for days. If it wasn’t for the snow-”

  “This is why you asked if we were a commando unit,” Mei stated crossly.

  And why she was worried about Harrison being alert this morning…

  “Yes,” she admitted, freely and then cowered slightly, readying for a tirade. When it didn’t come, she relaxed and unclenched her shoulders from her ears.

  “Is there even someone with a medical or scientific background in there?” Beverly asked, doubtfully.

  “Does it matter?” Christina retorted.

  And there it was. Christina put it all on the line, so elegantly delivering it to us on a pretty silver platter. In fact, she was really shoveling it into our mouths with a big silver spoon, her subliminal message so plainly obvious to us…Did we have the humanity left in us to risk our own lives for others?

  Until this point, we had fought to save ourselves, but here were people who needed our help, who couldn’t fend for themselves, and we were the only ones with the power and ability to change it. Would we willingly give our life for them?

  As our team fell into silence, my mind called on a few ideologies from living with my dad, who had faced war more times than he had wished. One of them was that at some point during our life we determine who we are. Not what we show to others, not what others think of us, but who we truly have grown to become inherent in our own soul. At some point, we must face our own compassion, and determine to what level we will grant it service to others in the sacrifice of ourselves.

  This was our moment. Could we die for complete strangers?

  As my gaze moved to Harrison, I realized we had already made our decision.

  “Isn’t this what we are doing here?” I mumbled. When my head snapped up, I repeated it, yet I received only vacant stares. Elucidate, Kennedy, I told myself. Lives are on the line. “Isn’t this why we trained ourselves in defense? Isn’t this why we are walking across the state, possibly the rest of the country, to find someone to develop a cure? So that no one else has to squat in the snow outside a store debating whether they should save the lives of strangers from a pod of people infected with a cannibalistic virus?”

  The corner of Harrison’s lips turned up but no one spoke.

  “We’re trying to save the human race, and yet we’re going to pass these people by?”

  There was a flicker of understanding behind their glazed stares.

  I have them, I thought. Then Beverly replied…

  “Okay…,” she said slowly. “How does saving these people, cure the world?”

  A valid question. Our mission was solely to deliver the antibodies so a cure could be developed. She was making the argument to do just that and let others commit to search and rescue efforts.

  “Don’t say it’s so we don’t lose our sense of humanity,” Beverly added, rolling her eyes.

  “It’s not,” I replied calmly. It was all so clear to me now. “It’s far simpler than that. It’s to save humankind before it becomes extinct.”

  My logic was sound. Why make the effort to deliver a cure when there would be no one left to inject it with? These could possibly be the last people left alive on earth. The probability of it was chilling to me. It was something I didn’t want to contemplate. But we no longer had the luxury of turning a blind eye to notions that worried us. We had to act, now, before it was too late.

  Harrison, who hadn’t said a word, was staring at me, a look full of deep admiration. He approved of what I was doing.

  Christina, who also had watched us with intense silence, spoke now, asking for help with a solitary plea. “Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

  We took a few seconds to assess our team’s expressions, determining each other’s decisions. Doc and Mei took the other’s hand in support. Harrison gave an easy nod. Finally, it was left to Beverly, who after a good amount of concentration, snapped, “Oh, all right!”

  With everyone on board, we turned to strategy.

  Recalling the Infected had collected around the front of the store, I asked, “Christina, are they around the back too?”

  “And the sides,” Christina said with a nod.

  “So how did you get out?”

  Christina stared blankly at her. “I opened the back door and ran.”

  There was a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and I couldn’t determine which side this little girl stood on.

  “All right, that’s not going to work for us,” I stated.

  Shifting the rifle in my hands, I suggested, “We have a weapon. Let’s use it.”

  Everyone agreed, except Harrison. I didn’t pay attention to it at the time, but he was concentrating on something else in the distance.

  I crept to the peak and determined the distance. It was two hundred yards, making my target—their heads—that much smaller. Lying in prone, I planted my elbows in the snow and rested the barrel on top. Peering through the scope was like looking at a kaleidoscope of colors and movement. Despite the magnification, their movement left me nothing but challenging shots.

  I breathed in and exhaled, focused, aimed, and selected my target. My muzzle followed him, slowly, patiently. I breathed in, exhaled, counted to three, and squeezed the trigger.

  The Infected’s head exploded into red mist.

  Someone behind me gasped.

  I aimed at another and squeezed.

  Beverly began chuckling to my right.

  I aimed at another, breathed in, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

  Another Infected fell.

  A curse word came next, which was delivered with enough fear to make me pull my head away and look up.

  A flood of Infected had started to appear, wandering in their bent, disheveled amble from behind the store.

  “Are they coming from the back?” I asked.

  “No,” Christina groaned. “The wash.”

  She pointed to a long, narrow ditch beyond the store, deep enough to hide the Infected now coming forward. As she did this, the wave of Infected grew, all of them drifting toward the sound of my gunfire. One swung around, focusing in on us. I aimed, squeezed, and took him down.

  This drew the others’ noses into the air, sniffing for a direction to take.

  “Oh no…,” Christina exhaled in terror.

  “We don’t have enough ammo for them all,” I announced, pulling my rifle back.

  “Okay, any other ideas?” Christina asked, her voice rising as she saw the Infected moving in our direction.

  We slipped down the hill and out of sight to buy us time, dragging Christina with us. Once in position, squatting to remain out of sight, Harrison’s face tightened.

  “They’re heading our way.”

  “You know that?” Christina uttered, her eyes widening. “How do you know that?”

  “Any other ideas?” I asked, trying to get us back on track.

  “Yes,” Harrison replied firmly, and I knew by his tone that he’d been planning our entry while we’d been executing our own strategy. “We create a distraction and draw the Infected away from the store.”

  “That’s sound,” Mei said, contemplating. “What distraction?”

  Harrison heaved a sigh and gave me a fleeting look, one that said I wasn’t going to like what he was about to propose.

  I braced myself.

  “Me,” he said. “I’m the distraction. I’ll pull them away from the door and when they’re gone, you can enter.”

 

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