CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Irouse sleepily, unable to pinpoint what woke me up. It’s darker now that my sight is compromised by the night, and I can’t see a damn thing in this corner of the building.
Shuffling and the sound of glass being displaced cause the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end, and even though I’m essentially blind, I scan the room.
I’m not alone, and since I can’t see a fucking thing, I try closing my eyes in an effort to open my other senses. The shuffling continues to my left, slow and clumsy. I don’t sense any coordination to the footfalls, which leads me to think that my new roommate is a zombie.
Lucky me, I’m battling an undead in pitch black. Was I a horrible person in another life? Because it feels like the shit just keeps rolling downhill.
The shuffling continues, moving debris around on the floor and making the fallen glass tinkle. Eventually, my nose confirms what my brain is screaming: zombie. This one reeks like any other, and my eyes water at the stench. A year has passed since that fateful day, and these creatures continue to decompose even as they refuse to die.
I know if I slam my tire iron over its head, it will pop like a rotten egg and ooze just the same. The smell, though, ugh. Slapping my hand over my mouth to stop the gagging sounds from alerting the Turned to my presence, I swallow back the bile pressing at my throat.
I don’t know if it can smell me, but I sure as shit don’t want it to hear me.
We keep each other company for quite some time while it wanders the room, seemingly in circles, and I sit in my corner tensed and ready to react if need be.
When the damn thing continues to bumble around, I uncurl my fingers from around the tire iron and stretch them out.
I don’t think it knows I’m here, and as long as I stay still, I should be fine. I’m in a back room, and apart from the broken windows and sunshine lighting the floors out front, I wouldn’t have seen it when I entered back here, but maybe it heard me, and I aroused its interest. Perhaps it took this long for it to find me in the rabbit warren of broken-down walls and trash.
With a silent sigh, I lean against the wall and close my eyes. Sleeping is out of the question, but my body needs the rest.
After a while though, I lose my patience and bring my weapon to the fore as I move to my feet and wait. The shuffling accelerates, garbage flying around under the Turned’s feet, still sounding farther away in the room. Cautiously, I track my way in the opposite direction with my hand on the wall, hopefully heading back the way I came last night.
My feet encounter the same obstacles as the zombie, which seems to excite it more. I can hear it shuffling toward me as I ring the proverbial dinner bell, and I don’t want to fight it out in the dark, but I guess I will do what I have to.
At last, my hand reaches an opening, and I fall through into another room, equally dark as the first, gasping when I hit the ground with a thud. Immediately my side begins to ache, and I grasp for purchase on the floor to pull myself up.
The Turned is still behind me and doesn’t appear to be hindered by the dark. It’s possible they don’t track by sight anyway. Who knows?
With a little more momentum, I pull myself forward and upward, pushing my hands out in front of me as I make my way through the next pitch-black room, wincing as things crunch and crackle under my feet.
My heartbeat pounds a tune in my chest, and I can feel my pulse in my forehead. Maybe I should just give up. What do I have waiting for me? The people that I was closest to have died. I’ve been betrayed by new friends. I’ve been almost killed multiple times by sadistic assholes. My body hurts, my brain hurts, my heart hurts. It would be so easy just to stop. Stop fighting, stop living.
But I sigh in the dark because I know I cannot stop, and I refuse to let anybody, especially a stinky-ass dead human, end me. I am not built to give up. Whether that’s a good thing or bad, I no longer know.
My thoughts track back to a conversation I had with Manny months ago where he described the loss of his mother, sister, and abuela with tears shining in his eyes, and his words gave me the strength that I desperately need now.
“Those of us that are left are either the strong ones or the lucky ones, lucky enough to have strong people to help us. But I still believe, and maybe this means for you too, that we are here for a reason, and I will continue to do what I can to make that reason count. For it to mean something for as long as I get to stay.”
I think about my mother and her insistence right until the end that I was a mistake, but I’m not a mistake, and my shitty-ass childhood and all the experiences I have lived through can’t change that. I need to take Manny’s words and give them meaning. I’m here—why I don’t know—but I should be helping those “lucky” people as long as I am. I should be making a difference.
It’s what Cole would want from me as well. It’s what he lived for and what he died for in the end. There’s nothing more I can do to show him my love than to spend the rest of my life, short or long, making what I do have meaning. And a big fuck you to Shepherd for not realizing that if God is involved in this at all, this is the meaning behind His (Her?) will as well.
I push through to the other side of the room and run my arms along the wall, a little extra pep in my step. I need to get out of this room so I can see my adversary, and as I think it, I stumble into another opening and spot a sliver of light across the way. Thank fuck.
Cutting across, I lose the safety of the walls and regret it when I trip, yet again, over something on the floor, landing in something soft that grunts under my hands. I run my fingers over the object, soft but firm, and clutch instinctively, feeling what I suspect are clothes.
“Shit,” I grunt before rolling away.
“You got that right,” someone grunts back from the dark, and I shriek and roll up onto my feet, poised to fight.
“Whoa, slow down there, turbo,” the faceless voice says, and with the light from the other room, I can just make out the features of a man.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I return, backing away but shuffling from the other room brings my head around, and I mumble, “Stinky-ass undead, incoming.”
A bright light flashes in my eyes, and I cringe away, pain rebounding through my skull. I’m instantly blinded and I suck in a breath. I can’t see the zombie, and I can’t see the human, but both are risks at this point. My ass hits the floor again when I lurch away but step over something else. The man grunts and rises to his feet, and I hear scuffling, then a few more grunts before a body hits the floor.