“I said move. Are you fucking deaf?” The punch came again.
My head snapped forward. Teeth gnashed, but it was the shadow that held me…the shadow that seemed to ride out of nothing. A hard breath, followed with a snort. One that flicked the hair from my face. One that had me reaching in the dark. Cold kissed the tips of my fingers as I reached. The shadow of a horse reared. Hot breath blew in my face. It was just a vision…just a figment of my imagination. So how could I feel the heat…how could the strands of my hair dance with the gust of its breath?
How could he be here…unless…
I stumbled up the first flight of stairs, darkness bled away for the light, climbing higher and higher, until the second floor opened up.
“Keep going.”
My lips curled at the command. I kept on moving, climbing one stair after another until my thighs burned and my lungs were on fire. The steel railing wobbled under my grip, but it was all I had to hold onto as I passed the third floor, and then, slowly, the fourth. My muscles were warming, relaxing, moving past the initial hurt to the power underneath.
“In there,” he growled and shoved once more.
“You know,” I spun staring him in his weeping, blood-stained eyes, “I’m getting real sick of your shit.”
Those crimson orbs turned cold and cruel as he answered. “It’s better than getting sick, now isn’t it?”
They blamed me, hated me…I shuffled backwards, and then turned and stepped through the door to the fifth floor.
The smell hit me first, hot, fetid, and raw. I slapped my hand across my mouth as acid rose in the back of my mouth.
“You get used to it after a while,” my captor snapped and shoved past.
They were everywhere, piled in corners, two, some of them three, to a bed. The room seemed to rock with the guttural sounds of agony. One woman clutched her belly and retched over the side of a bed, only to lean back a second later, bloody spittle coating her chin.
The words slipped from my lips. “They’re dying…all of them.”
Miles stood to the side, while Kenya walked among the barely living, sliding a surgical mask over her mouth and nose. She speared her fingers into her pocket and yanked latex gloves free.
“That was supposed to save us.” Miles’ steely gaze slipped to the pack in my hand as he answered. “We were supposed to be immune.”
I flinched as his gaze met mine. No other words were needed, not for me…for I’d seen this all before.
And I was back there in the dark, listening to my father plead…please God, don’t take her…don’t take my wife. You can have me…you can have—
The fourth floor blurred, so much pain…so much misery.
First my Mom…and then Sarah…
Harlow, are you coming?
I closed my eyes as the room tilted. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think…three years since the last wave…and there weren’t many of us left.
“So, the question remains,” cold, hard, merciless words filled the space. “What the fuck have you been giving us all this time.”
I opened my eyes. The sun shone in, glinting off the steel in his hand.
Steel that whispered of the end, and was pointed straight at Kenya.
10
“Miles, please…wait just a minute,” Kenya murmured.
Her fingers trembled in the air in a motion of defeat.
“We’re tired of waiting,” the leader of the Lost Boys answered, finger slipping around the trigger. “We’re tired of believing, of being probed, being jabbed. We’re tired of watching those we love suffer. Six days, Kenya. Six fucking days and now we have this…”
I turned toward the room and stared at the ocean of the dying.
“We were fine…until you came,” he growled. “You brought us food, soap. What else did you bring us, Kenya? What fucking else did you bring us?”
Accusations were wielded like swords, ones designed to hack and maim. My feet moved on their own, working my way along the row of cots.
“Harlow, no…” Kenya growled. “You can still get sick.”
“No, I don’t think I can,” I whispered, even though no one would hear.
They reached for me, torn, bloody nails scraping against my jeans as I passed. I left them behind, one after another, to stop in the middle of this living, breathing morgue.
She was so very quiet, just a small, pathetic little thing, curled up. I could trace every knot of her spine, every jutting edge of her hips, every bloody stain from bleeding nail beds. My legs trembled as I knelt. I wanted to touch her, to ease her over onto her back…to stare at her face and see someone familiar—someone I never thought I’d see ever again.
“Sarah?” the tips of my fingers danced over the bare skin on her arm.
Goosebumps raced, standing the fine pale hair on end.
“Sarah?”
Blonde hair skimmed her shoulder as she turned her head. Perfect brown eyes met mine. “I’m not Sarah,” she whispered, a trail of crimson carved along her cheek.
“You’re not?” I murmured, acting surprised. “I was sure your name was Sarah. I had a sister by that name. She looked just like you.”
“My sister is dead,” the little one whispered and then turned her head away.
Bone-crushing, soul-splitting…the room spun with the pain. Her knees curled tighter, head tucked in harder. She was a little ball of skin and bones. I leaned forward, slid one hand under her knees and the other around her back to lift her.
“Harlow!” Kenya screamed. “No!”
Why me?
The question echoed with every boom of my heart.
Why me and not her? Give her the Calling. Take away her sickness…take away her pain.
I pulled her closer, rocking backwards and forwards while the desperation and the hurt rose to the surface, and underneath it…scalding rage.
God led me here, to this place and these people. He gave me a weapon and it wasn’t the gun, or the book…it was to live…to survive, when these people wouldn’t.
The girl shuddered in my arms, took one breath and then stilled. I waited for the exhale…for the tremble in her bones, until I realized there was none.
My legs trembled as I laid her on the bed and then snagged the sheet at the foot and pulled it over her body. “I want my gun.”
There was no answer…no movement, no reaction at all.
“I want my gun back now!” My voice cracked like thunder through the room.
Children cried. Women wept…they all waited.
Miles flinched with the sound and wrenched his head to me as I crossed the room. “The preacher. Kenya told me about him. Where is he?”
There was a flicker of concern…almost fear. His breath caught, words slow and clear. “How do you know about him?”
It didn’t matter, didn’t he see that? None of this mattered. They were fighting a battle they’d never win, for this was nothing more than a by-product. I needed to kill the disease at the root, and not battle the symptoms.
I opened my hand as I stepped closer. There was no room for a warning, no desire to plea. “Then give me my damn gun.”
He took one look at my hand and then spoke. “Brendan…take them downstairs.”