Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗

Parker drifted in a delirious state made of one part sleep and another part pain. The agony in his lower back remained constant even while he slept. It was part of his body now as if it had always been there and always would be. He even began to make some sort of peace with it. He’d stop resisting if only the pain would stop getting worse.

The door opened downstairs and he snapped to alertness. He reflexively tried to sit up, but of course he could not, not with his wrists yoked to his ankles as if he were chained to the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” he heard Kyle say. “I will never get used to that smell.”

Parker no longer even noticed the smell of the corpse downstairs on the couch. That was the least of his concerns now. Only two things mattered to him anymore. He couldn’t move, and his lower back felt like someone had reached in with a pair of pliers and yanked things out.

He heard several sets of feet on the wooden steps. The whole crew was on its way up there. To let him go? Shoot him? Read him the riot act?

The door opened. Kyle appeared with a syringe in his hand with Annie beside him and Hughes and Frank behind. Hughes had the Mossberg, but he pointed it at the floor.

“We have a job for you,” Kyle said.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Parker said.

Kyle’s face remained flat. “You mean you’re sorry you didn’t succeed.”

“No,” Parker said, suddenly desperate all over again to have his ties loosened and to feel even the slightest bit of relief in his back. “I snapped. I wasn’t thinking. It could have happened to any of us with all this shit that’s going on.”

“But it didn’t. You’re the only murderer here. But it doesn’t matter anymore because we have a job for you.”

Parker looked again at the syringe in Kyle’s hand. It was filled with dark liquid.

“We debated whether or not to tell you what’s going on,” Kyle said. “I didn’t want to say anything because I don’t think you deserve it, but the others convinced me.”

“Can you please loosen these ropes? Then we can talk. My back is killing me. I can’t stay hunched over like this anymore.”

“Unfortunately for you,” Kyle said, “your job requires you to remain precisely in that position.”

Parker groaned. He had a bad feeling about where this was heading.

“What’s in the syringe?” He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“Blood,” Kyle said.

A wave of panic hit him and his entire body seized up. Were the sadistic bastards going to infect him?

He pulled against the ropes with everything he had left. “Get me out of here! Let me go and I’ll never bother any of you ever again!”

“Relax,” Kyle said. “This is Annie’s blood.”

Parker settled down, but he could still feel his heart pounding in his chest and the blood rushing in his ears. He was hyperventilating, and it was hard for him to breathe in this position.

“Annie is immune to the virus,” Kyle said.

She was immune? Really? “How do you know?”

“Because I got bit,” Annie said. “Look.” She turned around and lifted her shirt up. Parker saw an obvious human bite mark below her shoulder.

“Jesus,” Parker said. “You got bit and it didn’t affect you? Are you sure you were bitten by one of those things?”

“Oh, it affected me,” she said. “I became one of them.”

Parker didn’t move, but he felt like he fell onto the floor.

“I spent days as one of them before my system defeated the virus. It’s hard to be sure. My memory of that time is vague.”

“Jesus, Annie,” Parker said. “Did you—kill people?”

“I did,” she said and swallowed. “I attacked and killed some of Lane’s crew shortly before he took over the grocery store. He saw the whole thing. That’s why he recognized me. But he couldn’t place me because it never occurred to him that I was infected when he saw my face. He didn’t think anyone could turn back.”

“My God,” Parker said. So that’s why she looked like such hell when Hughes first brought her home. That’s why she was covered in so much blood. She’d bathed in the blood of her victims. “Annie, I’m sorry.”

He shuddered as he tried to imagine her running around as one of those things and hunting people, biting people, eating people. Then he paused. “What does this have to do with me? And why is your blood in that syringe?”

“We’re passing Annie’s immunity onto you,” Kyle said. “At least we’re going to try.”

Parker was truly confused now. He thought they were going to punish him. But this wasn’t punishment. This was a gift. They weren’t going to kill him then. There’s no way they’d draw blood from Annie’s arm and inoculate him only to kill him or exile him later. He breathed easier.

“So you’re going to stick that in my arm?” Parker said.

“I’m going to stick this in your arm,” Kyle said. “It’s best you don’t move when I do it. I’m not a doctor. It hurt something fierce when I stuck this in Annie. I’ll try to make it relatively painless even though you don’t deserve it, but it is going to hurt.”

“We’re pretty sure,” Annie said, “that the antibodies in my system are in my blood and that they can be added to yours. So you’ll be immune just like I am. In theory.”

“Have all of you gotten the injection?” Parker said.

Kyle’s face remained flat. Annie looked like she was going to say something, but she hesitated. Hughes shook his head.

Then Annie spoke up. “You’re the first.”

He was the first? That made no sense. He was the bad guy. So why was he first?

“Why?”

“Because we don’t know if it works yet,” Kyle said.

Nobody said anything else. Nobody even looked at him. They just stood there and waited for him to figure it out for himself.

“You motherfuckers,” he said. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“It’s the only way to be sure,” Kyle said and plunged the syringe into Parker’s arm.