“Yeah. I can do that.”
He pulled her close and kissed her hard. “I knew fear once, when I was first made. The first time the villagers came for me, the first time they burned me, I was afraid. But never since. Not until now. I’m afraid for you.” He said this as if he didn’t understand the feelings.
She cupped his cheek. “I’m afraid for you, too.”
“And still we press on.” He nodded. There was no recrimination in his words, no accusation. Only fact.
“We do, because it’s the right thing to do.” She allowed herself to lean against him for a long moment before she approached the door. “You ready?”
“Hit it.”
She pressed her finger against the scanner and the door whooshed open. It was like pulling back a curtain in a slaughterhouse. Blood and meat was splashed on the walls like modern art and there was a pack of them feeding on another. They’d already started on their own.
One lifted his head from the meal, backed away from the throng of feeding and turned his attention on her.
No, it wasn’t a him. It was a her. Margie, from the cafeteria. Margie, who brought her lunch when she forgot to feed herself. Margie, with her pretty hair, a handsome poet husband, and a young son on the mainland. Tony. His birthday party was Saturday… Margie, who was working for Bureau 7 so that she could go to medical school.
She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see how the infection had changed her. How it had done things there was no going back from. The skin hanging like dried leaves from her face, that once pretty hair all white, thin, with patched missing. Her hands curled into red-stained claws.
“Margie,” she whispered.
All seven of them turned their attention from their still struggling meal to her.
“Goddamn it, back inside. Right now!” Adam commanded.
But there was no going back inside. There was only forward. There was no keycard or fingerprint module to open the door from that side.
Terror knifed her. There were too many of them.
Adam was strong, and he was fast, but he only had two hands. She drew her gun. Elizabeth tried to stay behind Adam, but snapping teeth and claws were everywhere.
And most importantly were the deadly jaws right in front of her on the face of her friend. She knew what was coming at her wasn’t Margie anymore, but she couldn’t shoot her.
Except, didn’t she owe her that?
No, what she fucking owed her was to have thought about these kinds of outcomes when she agreed to move forward with testing on live subjects.
Her heart clenched and tears welled. Fuck, she wasn’t going to cry. There was no time for tears. Only survival. She could cry later.
Margie launched herself and, even though she swore she wasn’t going to cry, tears streamed down her face, hot and acidic. But that didn’t stop her for doing what she had to do.
She took the shot and dropped the creature that had once been her friend in a pool of her own blood.
The other revenants didn’t try to claim the meal. They took off down the halls, running as if the hounds of hell were at their heels.
And maybe they were.
Adam looked like a demon, his face and hands covered in blood, and the rage in his eyes was something only the damned could know.
But it died when he saw her.
It was a physical change in him as all that ferocity left his body. His eyes were hooded pools of shadows, no longer the fires of hell. He seemed smaller somehow. Yet, he’d fought so bravely. He was so strong. She didn’t understand what looked like the weight of defeat on his shoulders.
Until she looked down at her wrist and saw it.
The bite.
She was infected.
Part of her raged at how unfair it was. She wasn’t supposed to be punished for doing the right thing. She still had work to do. She had to fix this.
But she never would fix it, would she? It was all going to be over in a matter of minutes. There was so much she still wanted to experience. She’d only just now found Adam, and she had to leave him.
For a moment, she felt a wash of cold guilt for thinking of herself. Margie hadn’t wanted to leave her life, either. Especially not her son, who was turning four…
A cry was wrenched from her, and even she didn’t know if it was grief, rage or some toxic sludge of both.
Because she knew what she had to do.
“I don’t know how long I have,” she began.
“No.”
She’d already learned to recognize that hard set to his jaw. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“Yes, I do. You’re going to tell me to go to my boat. You’re going to tell me to leave you, and I won’t do it. I’ll never leave you.”
Her heart swelled and cracked, broken for what they could’ve shared. “What are you going to do, Adam? Take me back to your castle and chain me in the dungeon and feed me tourists?”
“A monster just might.”