Chapter 12: Sunder

 

Dark here. Gloomy, but nothing at all like the gloom of the Hive. The atrium, even shrouded in gray, offered a sense of safety. Here, not so much. Jarod wonders if they’ll ever be safe again.

It’s an abandoned pharmacy they’re in, or maybe it’s the pharmaceutical section of an abandoned grocery store. Jarod clutches at his temples and smiles sardonically. Abandoned? He grunts. Everything here is abandoned, but most especially them, the last survivors. The final six.

“He fired the flare,” Jarod says, keeping his voice down. He doesn’t care that they’ve decided to hide far from the front door, behind stacks of ransacked medication. The dead hear everything. “He said he wanted to help.”

Magpie picks at her nails, her blade resting across her lap. “If he wanted to help, why didn’t he come to us directly?”

“Because he was afraid.” Jarod scratches the side of his nose, very, very mindful not to look at Gabriel as he speaks. Not that he blames him. Or does he? “He was worried something exactly like this would happen.”

“He was trying to take Jarod back to the facility,” Gabriel says. “Right, Jarod?”

He nods, eyes still on the floor.

“Probably had something planned,” Tyler says. He leans out past the aisle, checking every so often for signs of danger, for anything lingering by the door or outside the storefront windows. “Maybe he wanted to turn you. Send you against us.”

“Then why take me all the way to the facility? He said he wanted to help, but that he needed my help, too.”

Tyler sniffs. “It’s a trick. That’s all it was. And he got caught, so he – he did whatever he did to call them. All of them.”

From somewhere down the aisle, Daniel whimpers. Jarod winces.

“Don’t blame yourself, Norwood,” Esther says, her voice thick, and heavy. “There’s nothing we could have done.”

“We could have killed the boy from the start,” Tyler says.

“He wasn’t going to harm us,” Jarod says, surprised at his own words. “It’s when he started getting hurt that the horde responded. They’re tied to him somehow.”

“You saw how.” Tyler leans forward, kneeling, one hand on the floor, the other stabbing at the air. “You saw exactly how. He could control them. He called every last fucker in a ten-mile radius and killed everyone.”

Another whimper. Tyler rears back, placing an arm around Daniel’s shoulder, shushing and whispering.

“That’s not what happened,” Jarod says softly, uncertain all of a sudden. “That’s not what happened at all.”

“Stop defending him.” Even in a whisper, Tyler’s words erupt in a snarl. “Stop defending that monster. He wasn’t your friend anymore and you know it. He did this.” Tyler gestures around him, fingers clenching into a frustrated fist as he draws his hand to his chest. “All of this.”

“We don’t know that,” Gabriel says. “We don’t know how what happened at the facility after – after Jarod and I left.”

Tyler only just restrains a sneer. Jarod clenches his fist. Sure, he gets it. Some part of Tyler must still hold the two of them responsible for this, even after all this time. And he isn’t wrong, not by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn’t help right now.

“We already know they can heal,” Jarod says. “He said his hunger went away after all this time. Robbie says it’s gone.”

“That thing has a name?”

“That thing,” Jarod says, “was human once. He was a friend, once.” It’s in that same breath that Jarod understands, once and for all, that Robbie still means something to him, even as just a memory. “I know it seems that he’s the cause of all this, but Vertex is the reason that this happened, Pleasance, the Hive, all of it. Paragon was all Vertex’s fault.”

Magpie clears her throat. “I thought it was your friend who engineered the formula.”

That stings more than it should. Jarod straightens his back, composing himself. “It was. But she only thought she was helping. Hargrove changed the formula. He did something to it to make the dead the way they are. How hungry they are, how aggressive. That wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan. That’s not how Paragon was meant to work.”

Tyler leans in, brow furrowed with interest, but eyes hard, challenging. “Then who is Hargrove? How do you know all this?”

“He’s Vertex’s CEO. He came to the rooftop, the night Hortega attacked. I saw him there.”

“How come I didn’t know?” Tyler sniffs. “How did he even get up there?”

“I told everyone. Magpie, Esther, everyone knows. You just never listen.” Jarod scratches the back of his neck. Tyler’s being a pain in the ass, and this time it feels too deliberate. He’s building up to something, Jarod just knows it. “He’s – not human. He’s something else, but I couldn’t tell you what.”

Tyler folds his arms, his muscles taut, his face even tauter. “And you just happened to know he was going to be up there.”

“Why are we talking about this now?” Jarod barks.

Esther’s shushing hisses through the store. “Keep it down. You two trying to get us killed? Samuels is right. No point talking about this now. What we need to do is make our way out of here.”

“And where would we go?” Magpie says. “Not the facility, surely?”

Sniffing, Tyler curls his fingers, like he’s groping for an invisible weapon. “We’ve never reached it, not in any of our hunts. We didn’t want to then. Too dangerous. It’s where all this shit came from to begin with. Why should we try now?”

Esther looks between them all, studying each of their faces, then sighs. “Because there’s nowhere else to go. It’s not like we can find someplace new to hide. We’re exposed. No food, no shelter, no water. It’s not like we can start – ” Esther’s voice breaks. Jarod looks away. “It’s not like we can start the Hive all over again.”

“I should have known better.” Tyler shakes his head and cracks his knuckles. “If I had just called a retreat sooner.”

“Maybe if we had pulled back,” Magpie says. “I had the gate built for a reason. If we herded everyone upstairs in time, we could have – ”

Daniel stifles a choke as he struggles to speak. “Enough. What happened happened. There’s nothing we can do to change that.” He draws his knees up to his chest, his hands clutching at his ankles. “It’s over.”

Silence. Everyone lost something today, a home, friends, the only family they had left, but Daniel was closest to the children. Something broke in him today.

Tyler reaches for him, but slowly, Daniel retreats further into his corner, shrugging him off. Tyler’s hand recoils, like he was burned. Magpie leans against her aisle, her face thrust into her hands, her blade still balanced across her lap, waiting for its next kill. Esther picks at the ground, the stony grimness of her face deepened by the darkness of the store, her glasses hiding her eyes.

“We’ll gather what supplies we can find here,” she says, breaking the silence. “Then we keep moving, before the zombies find that there’s nothing where they were headed.”

Magpie’s head perks up. “How do you know that?”

“It’s not important.” Esther pats the bag at her feet, then rises unsteadily, veering off into the aisles in search of supplies to salvage. “Take five minutes to rest, then we start moving.”

Magpie nods and follows, turning to check on Daniel, then thinking better of it.

Jarod leans back, sighing. Gabriel sidles up to him, pressing into him for warmth.

“What do you think we’ll find at the facility?”

Jarod shakes his head. “I can’t guess. But he said she was alive.”

“Nessa?” Gabriel’s eyes are wide. “How?” Just as suddenly the light in his eyes dims. “You’re saying that she recovered completely. The way Robbie did.” His voice is duller. Something’s coming.

“Yes,” Jarod says. “She came back, he says. Or maybe that’s just what he wants us to believe. I don’t know.” Gabriel’s looking at him strangely, his gaze going distant, like it’s seeing through him. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re saying that with time, the Paragon zombies can heal, then regain their humanity.”

The shuffling from the aisles next to them where Magpie and Esther are working, Daniel’s sniffling, Tyler’s quiet comforting, that all stops.

Jarod chooses his words, then lets them out cautiously. “We don’t know that for sure, Gabriel.”

“Right,” Gabriel says, an edge in his tone. “We don’t know either way.”

He’s not serious, is he? He can’t be blaming Jarod for what happened to his adoptive father. Jarod had to kill Hortega to save Gabriel. It was either that or watch Gabriel be torn apart, or turned into one of the undead. Jarod doesn’t know which is worse. He refuses to decide.

“Do you blame me for Hortega?”

If the others weren’t listening before, they’re listening now. The room is deathly silent.

“I,” Gabriel starts to say. The hesitation is a dead giveaway. Jarod frowns. “I don’t.” Too late.

“You know I did that to save you.” He looks around, thoroughly aware that everyone is avoiding his gaze even as they listen in on their conversation. “We don’t know how long it would have taken for him to recover. How would we have restrained him? Don’t you remember how the other zombies followed him, how they fought harder every time he roared?”

“I’m not saying that we could have done anything.” Gabriel’s voice is tiny, distant. “I’m not trying to blame you for this.”

“More people would have died that night if we didn’t do what needed to be done.” Jarod wipes at his upper lip, shocked that there’s sweat beaded there, that he’s worked up enough. “But I guess it makes no difference now.”

“I’m sorry.” Gabriel’s lower lip curls up into his mouth, and it quivers. And now Jarod feels like crap.

“No, I’m sorry for snapping.”

“You can blame me for this,” Gabriel says, wiping at one eye. “If you want.”

That’s what he said that same night that Robbie resurrected, right in the car when they tried to escape Pleasance before everything totally went to hell. They’re past all that. Aren’t they? Jarod didn’t blame him then, and he doesn’t blame Gabriel now. He has to believe that.

“That didn’t even cross my mind.” Jarod rubs the back of Gabriel’s hand, threading their fingers together. “Don’t ever think that.”

Gabriel nods.

“I’m sorry. About Hortega.”

This time Gabriel just looks away. Jarod knows he shouldn’t take that as a sign of anything, but he says nothing in response. But that’s what they have to do now, the same way they handled things the night they escaped. Just set their emotions aside for the moment, because letting it all rush in would break them. And what do he and Gabriel have now, if not each other?

“Just you and me,” Gabriel says finally. “That’s all we have left.” It’s a strange, distant echo of what he said in the car, one night, some six months ago. It feels like a lifetime away.

“Just you and me.” Jarod squeezes Gabriel’s hand, then pulls himself up, dusting off the seat of his pants. “I’m gonna go help out with the supplies. You sit tight.”

He creeps up past the aisle, staying well out of view of the storefront windows. Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered. Something thuds, loud and wet, against the glass.

“Fuck.”

Jarod drops to his knees, huddling by a pile of toilet paper. The rest of them press against the floor as well, voices and breaths held so silent that it’s almost possible to imagine that there’s nothing alive in here. Whatever’s at the window, that’s certainly not alive, either.

He turns his head, checking for Gabriel, finding him flat against the ground, his chin pressed down, returning his gaze. Huge, brown eyes swell with concern, and fear, and Jarod would give anything to be by his side to comfort him, but this is where they are right now. A few seconds, a few minutes of silence, and whatever’s out there is going to move on when it realizes there’s nothing, no one in here.

But then the door creaks open. Then footsteps.

They aren’t lurching, not shambling like the dead. Some part of Jarod holds out hope that it could even be another survivor, someone who, against all odds, made it safely out of the Hive. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t something come to kill them.

The footsteps come closer, enough that the feet making the noises will only need to turn the corner to find Jarod pressed down to the floor. But this isn’t about cowardice. It’s about survival. Jarod clutches his golf club tight. Who’s he kidding? He’s afraid. Terrified. More footsteps, more pattering. Here it comes.

Tyler springs to his feet, his shoes scuffing against the floor as he extends his spine fully and swings his machete in an upward arc. The grunt he utters to put power behind his blow is almost gentle, an afterthought. The thing staggers, feet shuffling.

Blood spatters in droplets against the dusty floor. A few fall on the back of Jarod’ hand. The blood is warm. It’s dark here, but he can see clearly enough in the little light streaming through the windows that the blood is red. Fresh. His teeth clench. Tyler killed a survivor. Either that, or –

“You shouldn’t have done that,” the familiar voice burbles, like it’s learning to speak for the first time. “You shouldn’t have hurt me.”

Jarod looks up, the breath caught in his throat. Fresh blood bubbles out of a line sliced diagonally across Robbie’s face, splitting his lip, his nose, leaving a bright red gash in his forehead. He bends over, retching, blood and something thicker, blacker pouring out of his mouth. The ichor, the venom, it’s still there, lingering in his body. Jarod scrambles away.

Robbie wails, this monster with two halves of a face, until Paragon takes over to make him whole again. The blood running down his face thickens, then recedes into his body. The wounds begin to close and stitch over. Where once his features were twisted with injury, they’re now twisted with rage.

But the injuries don’t close completely. Robbie gurgles again. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

When Robbie’s fist slams into Tyler’s chest it drives with a terrible, alien strength, sending him hurtling across the store. Tyler crashes into a display, sending cans and containers spilling across the floor. Daniel gasps, then runs after him. The commotion is going to attract the rest of the horde. With a chill, Jarod realizes that they no longer need noise to alert them. Robbie’s been hurt.

“I didn’t mean to,” Robbie says, stumbling away, rubbing one hand gingerly over his knuckles. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have hurt me like that.” His eyes shut for the briefest moment, then his lashes flutter. His face wrenches with fear. “You need to go. All of you. Now.”

“Why did you even come here?” Gabriel screams, gripping the bat in his hand impotently, knowing he can’t do a thing about his anger. “Why did you want to find us?”

“I want to help,” Robbie moans, tearing at his hair, eyes filling with tears. “And I need your help. But please, you need to go.”

So close to the ground, Jarod feels it in the earth, the pounding of so many feet as they head for the store. His blood goes cold. “We have to go, now.”

“Kill him and this ends,” Magpie shouts.

“That ends nothing,” Jarod says, reaching for Gabriel’s hand, for their possessions. “We have to go. Now.”

“They’re coming.”

The last of Paragon’s power takes hold, mending the splintered bone in Robbie’s forehead, sending tissue creeping across his skull, sealing the skin. His nose comes back into one piece. His lips are still torn in two, the sound of his voice terrible, wrong.

The ground seems to shake with the fury of so many zombies headed for the store, this stampede of things long dead and starved for flesh. Robbie screams a single word. The pain, the warning seems to emanate from two mouths.

“Run.”