Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗
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Roland stood watch at the gate, but Lane still couldn’t sleep when it was his turn. Not after that girl woke up screaming again. The other woman, Carol, eventually calmed her down, but Annie’s screams must have been heard from ten blocks away in every direction.
The boarded-up door wasn’t really a gate, but Lane thought of it as one anyway. It functioned as a gate—a gate to his castle and everyone else’s prison.
A breach from either direction would mean death and destruction.
When he saw the faint light of dawn breaking, when just the tiniest hint of blue washed over the store and onto the beverage rack in the back, he knew he was in trouble. He could not be effective without any sleep. One more night like this and he would be finished. He needed Bobby, but Bobby was gone.
Something different needed to happen, and it needed to happen today. He had to flip Hughes and kill Parker. And if that didn’t work, he would have to kill everybody but Roland and Kyle.
Roland was loyal. Kyle knew how to sail. And Kyle will do what he’s told.
Nobody said a word about Annie’s nightmares in the morning. Thank goodness for small mercies, she thought, because she did not want to talk about it, not even with Kyle.
She was eating a breakfast of blueberry granola bars and Rice Krispies sans milk when she saw Lane stride over to the walk-in cooler where he had locked up the men. He pounded on the door and then opened it.
Parker was the first to emerge. “Everybody sleep all right?” he said sarcastically when he came out.
Nobody replied.
She cleaned up her breakfast area and slipped past the men and into the women’s room. A shower would be nice. She’d crawl over a pile of corpses for fresh clothes from a warm dryer, but a cold scrub-down in front of the sink would have to do.
She opened the tap. Hardly any water came out. The system had finally broken.
Everything was broken. Apparently including her mind.
Her hands shook as she looked around for something to stop up the sink with, but there was nothing. Only a thin trickle of water came out of the faucet.
She took off her shirt and rubbed meager amounts of cold water under her arms. This could be it, she thought. The last time she’d get to bathe with water out of a pipe. Bottled water had to be conserved for drinking. At least there were plenty of deodorant sticks in the hygiene aisle.
More cold water went onto her stomach, her breasts, her forearms, her neck, and her shoulders. With her fingertips she felt that scab again on her back. She’d noticed it yesterday but hadn’t paid it much mind. She’d been far more interested in scrubbing the blood and gore out of her hair. But now that she was more or less clean and intact, the scab was more noticeable. And more irritating.
She turned halfway around and craned her neck as far as it would go so she could see her back in the mirror.
She screamed in shock and alarm when she saw that the wound was a perfectly shaped human-sized bite mark.
Those dreams she had weren’t nightmares.
They were memories.
Kyle slapped the bathroom door. “Annie!” he said, his heart racing. “What’s going on in there?”
She was crying hysterically from down near the floor.
“Hell’s her problem?” Roland said from his post in the front.
“She’s had a rough couple of weeks,” Kyle said and slapped the door again. He tried the knob, but it wouldn’t turn.
“The rest of us have been on vacation?” Roland said.
Kyle ignored him. “Annie!” Parker and Hughes joined him at the door.
“We need to calm her down,” Parker said. “Dangerous making this kind of racket in here.”
“Would you please,” Kyle said, “worry about someone other than yourself for a change? Annie!”
“I’m worried about everyone here, Kyle. If enough of those things outside hear us, everybody could die, including your girlfriend.”
Annie quieted down.
“Annie,” Kyle said. “Can you open the door? Let me help you.”
After a moment’s pause she said, “I’m okay.” She did not sound okay. “I’m sorry, just give me a minute.”
“I’ll be right out here,” Kyle said.
Jesus, what was wrong with that girl? He had feelings for her, he could not deny that, but if he’d met her a few months earlier, before it all went sideways, he’d be spooked off her. He’d dismiss her as damaged and high-maintenance. But he couldn’t dismiss her like that. Not now.
Everybody was cracking. Lane and Roland were damn near psychotic, though they might have been fine even recently. Parker was borderline. Carol was a human-shaped basket case. Frank wasn’t bright enough to freak out in any way that was interesting. Hughes seemed to keep it together okay, but Kyle was sure that was just a facade.
And what about Kyle himself? How was he doing, really?
The bathroom door opened. Annie emerged with her cheeks puffy and her eyes bloodshot and wild. Kyle wanted to hug her.
“My memories came back,” she said.
She remembered it all, including what happened right after she had coffee with her sister in downtown Olympia. She had gotten back in her car, turned on the radio, and driven toward Seattle. NPR said a bizarre outbreak of some rabies-like virus at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport was wrecking havoc in Russia and spreading at an alarming rate in Europe and Asia. There was even a possible outbreak in Seattle, but that could not yet be confirmed.
That was why her memory had ended with meeting her sister. It was the last normal thing she did before the world changed.
She remembered hunkering down in her apartment until fear and dread and chaos and death swept her neighborhood. She remembered running in terror down the streets and all but crashing into her friend Blake from college. Blake who she suspected had a thing for her. Blake who owned a motorcycle. Blake who gave her a ride.
They rode the interstate toward Olympia. They both wanted out of Seattle, and Annie had to get to her sister. She and Blake could stay with Jenny if it was safer. But Olympia wasn’t safer. It swarmed with the infected, so they rode onward toward Oregon. Portland would almost certainly be just as dangerous, but they planned to turn first and head inland, east, toward Mount Rainier National Park, where nobody but park rangers lived.
She and Blake didn’t make it. The interstate was so jam-packed with cars from the mass exodus that they couldn’t even ride on the shoulder. They had to ride on the grass next to the interstate, and even that was crowded with cars in some places. People were milling about everywhere on the sides of the freeway, some walking north, some walking south, and some heading down side roads and even into the trees.
They took a side road to a back road to a dirt road to a track to an empty cabin in a dark forest that looked and felt prehistoric. She and Blake went inside and found a pantry full of food. Out back they found gas cans for a generator and some prechopped wood for the fireplace.
They went inside, drew the curtains, locked the doors, made no sound.
A hushed stillness settled over the world.
Annie and Blake lived there for weeks, subsisting on dry goods in the pantry but not daring to start a fire or use the generator.
Nobody ever came up the road.
The food ran out, as they knew it would, but they waited before looking for more. Waited four days until hunger compelled them to get back on Blake’s motorcycle and ride
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