Red Eye | Season 2 | Episode 3 Read online

  Barrett leaned away from me so that we weren’t awkwardly jammed together.

  “Stop, I’m fine,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “Do you promise? I wouldn’t forgive myself.” I bit my lower lip. “Barrett, I really don’t think I can keep this up. I mean, you can’t keep this up either. At some point I’m going to win, and you’re going to lose. Or if it’s not you, it’ll be someone else. I am going to kill someone, and I won’t be able to stop.”

  “I won’t let that happen.” He sounded so very sure of himself.

  “You and what army’s going to stop me?” I questioned, but then sighed. “This just feels impossible.”

  “It’s worse when you’re emotional, so quit that shit right now,” Barrett observed, holding out a water bottle to me. “We need to figure out your triggers, Sam. You can control this.”

  “Says the guy who has no idea what it feels like to be living inside an infected, yet not dead, monster body.” I crawled back onto the cot and tucked my legs against my chest. I didn’t need to curve my back much or lean my head down far to be able to rest my cheek against my knees. My head shot back up at the sound of something slamming into the building. “What the hell?” I looked around, but the building had no windows, no way to see what was happening. I’d been lulled into a sense of safe ignorance there. The conflict still raged on outside, but the walls were solid enough to muffle the screams. Another slam made me shuffle my body nearer to Barrett.

  “Relax, the sounds come and go. Someone tried to force the door in while you were unconscious.” Barrett sat on the edge of the cot and put an arm around me, but I jerked away from it once I realized what he’d said.

  “Wait, you didn’t let them in?” My gaze went to the piles of crates blocking the door and then back to Barrett’s face. Another loud impact happened seconds later, and again I startled. “Do you think someone else is trying to get in? We need to help them.” I started to scramble to my feet, all bodily function needs fading to the backdrop.

  “You really think it’s safer in here?” Barrett argued with me, his tone sharp and unyielding.

  “Of course it is, Barrett. Out there’s a zillion zombies. In here is obviously the better choice.”

  “And do you think you can keep yourself from attacking them? Say they walk in here covered in blood and wounded.” He traced a finger over the scratches on his arm, demonstrating my lack of control.

  “We should still help who we can,” I muttered, feeling deflated because I knew he was right. I am the danger now.

  The hazard.

  I am the monster that goes bump in the night.

  Another slam, an indecipherable shout. I stood and walked toward the door, moving around the stacked crates to press my ear against the hard wall next to the entrance. “Please let us in. Please help! Is anyone in there? We have a child. Please!” It was two voices, screaming together. I heard crying…a little kid. Another slam, a hand hitting the building, maybe. It made my heart hurt.

  “Barrett, I’m trying to stay human, to stay me. If we don’t attempt to help these people, then we’re worse than the monsters. At least they’re fucking mindless. Just looking for food... We’re choosing to turn our back on people.”

  “We aren’t choosing, because we don’t have a damn choice, Sam. You can’t control what’s happening to you. I refuse to kill you. So how’s this going to go? We let them in here, you have a fucking episode, and…they die anyways.”

  “You kill me instead. If you think I’m going to hurt someone. Kill. Me.” I forced out the words, willing him to understand. Control your emotions, Sam. Keep them in check. He’s right. It is worse when you’re running high. Try not to feel like this. You’ve never let anger overwhelm you before.

  He shrugged, in a very Barrett, devil-may-care way. “I’m not killing you, Sam. I already said that.”

  “Why are you so intent on keeping me alive? You don’t even know me!” I moved away from the wall. I didn’t want to hear the cries for help anymore. I felt my humanity shrinking down into a seed, the tiniest fucking seed. So small I couldn’t feel it anymore.

  “You’re special” was his short, frustrating reply.

  “I’m special,” I repeated, not making it a question. “We’re all special, Barrett. All humans are fucking special. You don’t get to pick me out from the crowd and decide I’m some rare damn specimen…” My voice trailed off, because I realized that I was in a way—a rare specimen. Was there anyone else in the world who’d reacted to this infection the way I had?

  Barrett studied my face. I didn’t say what I was thinking.

  More slams against the building, and the door rattled and protested. “We should help them. It’s the human thing to do, Barrett.”

  “Get some rest, Sam,” he responded, grating my nerves with his casual nonchalance. “You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

  “Like being knocked unconscious wasn’t restful?” I griped, but I hugged myself protectively and walked to the rear of the weapons cache, to that single cot that once held a living body. Before I lowered my body down, I was hit once again by the extreme urgency of my bladder. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I admitted, hating that this bodily need forced me to talk to Barrett.

  “Go in that corner.” He pointed. “I dug a hole earlier. Piss and cover the dampness with some of the dirt.”

  “Thanks,” I said, though I didn’t feel thankful at all. I walked over to the place he indicated and saw the hole. Turning to him, I added, “Don’t look.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he retorted in an exasperated sigh.

  It took me a minute to work up the courage to go to the restroom, though I couldn’t fight it long—my stomach hurt from my bladder being so damn full. I pulled down my pants and squatted, thankful it wasn’t something more than urine. I pinched my nose at the strong smell. I needed to drink more water. When I was done, I did what Barrett instructed, picking up a handful of the dirt he’d displaced and covering the dark wet spot.

  I’d never been able to use the bathroom when someone was in the same room. I mean, public stalls were doable. I could pretend like the barrier was soundproof and my dignity was preserved.

  I just hated feeling exposed.

  Feeling defeat like a too-heavy comforter over me, hot and scratchy, I made my way to the cot again.

  I tried to fall asleep fast, to block out the world, but I jumped each time something slammed into the building. I once again wondered what the hell it was made of—how the military had constructed something so sturdy in so little time. And it was for weapons, whereas the protections for people were flimsy tents and easy to breach.

  “Why are the civilian tents so shitty?” I mumbled the question, my back to Barrett as I stared at the hard wall. I reached out and pressed against it with the back of my hand and then I flexed my fingers and scratched down the firmness. It made a nails-on-chalkboard squeal that hurt my ears, so I stopped. And I let my question hang in the air.

  “What?” Barrett questioned, his voice close, so he must have walked toward the cot when I’d spoken.

  “I asked”—I shifted in the bed, turning to face him, folding my arms beneath my head—“why are the sleeping tents made of cloth and this building’s made of metal? Or whatever the hell it is.” I felt tired now, my eyes closing and opening slowly.

  “Because this is for weapons.” Barrett loomed over me; I caught sight of him each time I lifted my eyelids. He was becoming increasingly blurry as my brain fogged over, welcoming sleep. “Weapons and a few crates of rations. Lucky us. More than likely this building already existed and they repurposed it. Maybe a National Guard setup, supporting the army.” With his long arms, Barrett was able to tap gently on the solid wall near the cot.

  “Weapons aren’t more important than people,” I mumbled, yawning.

  “Of course they are,” he said, pulling a folded blanket from beneath my legs and shaking it loose. He surprised me when he placed it over me
, adjusting it to cover my whole body. Barrett oscillated between two people. He was, a lot of the time, like a machine. He didn’t show emotions like normal people did. He didn’t express if he cared; he didn’t show remorse. Then he was the joker. The full-of-himself, cocky asshole that drove me nuts.

  But as the blanket warmed me and made sleep tease my brain and body more fiercely, I realized that he had just performed an act of compassion: kindness simply for the sake of kindness.

  “You’re not as terrible as you think you are,” I said sleepily. “And people matter.”

  “Humans are weak. Weapons aren’t,” he said casually, as if it should be a universally accepted truth.

  “That’s stupid.” My voice was a dying creature, barely audible as I continued. “Guns are stupid.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s never been shot.” He sat down on the ground next to me, leaning against the cot, his body facing the barricaded door. “Once you’ve had a few bullets gunned into you, you start respecting the weapon more than the person wielding it. If anyone could get in here, it would be fucking chaos out there, Sam.”

  “It’s already chaos out there.” I tucked myself into a ball, my legs beneath the blanket brushing Barrett’s back. He stiffened, then relaxed again.

  “Scared people make dumb decisions, Sam. You don’t want to put weapons in their hands.”

  “I still think it’s wrong.” I closed my eyes and this time they stayed closed—no more peeks at Barrett.

  “Your idealism is going to get you killed.”

  “I’m already dead,” I breathed out, ending on an exhausted, quiet giggle.

  The sounds outside the wall near me filtered into my dreams. I was with my dad. He was sitting in his favorite chair watching a black-and-white television rerun. All of a sudden the window near him burst inward in a fractured rain of sharp glass.

  “Dad!” I screamed, racing forward to pull him from danger.

  I was barefoot and I felt the soft soles of my feet sliced open by shards. I looked down and the window glass was mirrored, reflecting back at me. My eyes…were red. Dark, disturbing, malevolent.

  “Don’t come near me!” my dad yelled, looking at me in horror. “You’re not my daughter!”

  “I am!” I screamed back. “Look at me. I’m Sam, Dad!”

  My feet were bloody and painful, but I kept moving toward him. The faster I ran, the further away he got—a never-ending tunnel that continued to expand outward so that I’d never reach my goal.

  Hands reached in through the broken window. I cried a warning. My dad didn’t listen to me. He was too horrified by the creature I’d become, my own warped monster. Sickly gray fingers gripped his clothing and started pulling him toward the outside. “Dad, fight! I’m coming! I’m coming to help!”

  “You can’t help me,” he wailed. “You can’t help me. You’re already dead.”

  Successive gunfire joined our yells and the hungry moans from the zombies attacking Dad. And I was still so far away. I’d never make it to him in time.

  Fear roiled in my stomach and I felt the lava begin to flow inside my body. The strength of the infection mingled with my emotions to send me over that precipice—the fall from humanity to monster.

  The lengthening corridor began to shorten and my dad grew closer. I could finally reach him now. He was nearly out the window, his feet flailing against the seat of his plaid chair. I grabbed for his legs, my fingers wrapping around his calves.

  I was going to pull him in, bring him to safety.

  But then his pantleg lifted and I saw a bandage; the opaque material showed a deeply brown stain. The blood had dried. And old wound.

  I let go of his other leg to focus all my efforts on the one with the cut. My hands lifted that bone-covered flesh to my mouth.

  I wasn’t going to save him.

  Who was I kidding?

  I was going to eat him.

  Chapter Three.

  “Wake up.” Barrett’s deep voice pulled me out of sleep.

  I pushed through the smoke and fog of disturbing dreamland and I entered a shouting hell of reality.

  “Wake up, dammit!” he roared, so loud that I thought his mouth must be right next to my ear.

  But when I sat up and blinked back the slumber, I saw that he was across the storeroom, pushing more crates into place against the entrance. I rushed to stand, feeling lightheaded. I fought through that feeling of weightless confusion and I ran to Barrett. “What’s happening?”

  “Dead, trying to get in.”

  “Not people?”

  “They’re not fucking people, Sam. And even if they were”—he yelled something unintelligible and heaved another crate in place—“I wouldn’t let them the fuck in! Now get over here!”

  I helped him with two other crates and then we stepped back, poised to protect ourselves if the blockade didn’t hold.

  “What happens if they get in?” I asked, fear lancing through me.

  Barrett flicked me a glance. “We fucking fight.”

  It felt like hours, standing there watching the door rattle and the crates shift. Tension rose and fell around us like waves…tide in…tide out. And the emotions inside followed suit, which made my vision swim crimson and then clear before flooding with red all over again.

  The scratching was the worst—like a million rats in an attic. Everything else was muffled; I could stand the growls and even the door rattling. But the nails scraping down the metal made my stomach churn. “They’ve got to give up soon, right? They’re not just going to try to get in here forever are they?”

  “Fuck if I know. I’m not a goddamn oracle.”

  “You know, you don’t have to be such an asshole all the time.”

  “It’s the end of the fucking world. If it’s not the time to be an asshole—”

  “The apocalypse isn’t a blank check to be a jerk, Barrett,” I snapped, interrupting him.

  The door shoved inward harder than it ever had; the lock was hanging on by a thread and the hinges were beginning to crack. I took a step back, every nerve in my body firing on overdrive, electricity shooting like falling meteors from scalp to toes.

  The scratching.

  God, the scratching.

  “Make it stop!” I screamed, clamping my hands over my ears.

  “Quiet,” Barrett barked, covering my mouth roughly. “We don’t want to give them any more fucking reasons to keep trying to break in, Sam.”

  I shook my head, tears spilling. “Just make the sound stop. Just make it stop.”

  “Quiet. It’s okay.” Barrett pulled me in to his body, in to his dirty, sweaty clothes. And suddenly the sounds didn’t matter. All that mattered was the smells filling my nose. I dropped my hands from my ears and gripped the front of his shirt. “Better?” he breathed out, one arm around my back, the other still holding his weapon.

  “I don’t know,” I growled out lowly, “if I want to eat you or kiss you.” I pressed my face into his shirt, rubbing the material across my skin.

  “Definitely better.” Barrett pushed me away gently and I found myself clawing at him and hissing like a wild animal.

  It took a second for me to realize what I was doing and I staggered back, hands held up in alarm. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You stopped it, Sam.” He looked me up and down, a sideways smile softening his face. “I don’t know”—he appraised me, a hunger different from my own teasing at his expression—“if I’m happy you did or a little disappointed.”

  I almost smiled, because I did stop myself. I wished I hadn’t needed to stop anything to begin with though. I wished I’d never been infected. I still didn’t see a tomorrow in which I didn’t want to kill every living thing I saw…but that wasn’t a problem for the time being.

  Outside had finally gone quiet: the wolves at our door moved on to easier prey.

  “We need to prepare to leave.” Barrett moved over to the crates in front of the entrance and started pushing them back across the ground the few i
nches they’d been forced away by the would-be invaders. I just watched him work, his hulking frame bending and straightening, his dark braid swishing over his shoulder. When he was done, he moved over to a crate separated out from the others. “You hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry,” I joked weakly, though it wasn’t funny at all. I didn’t bother to go back to the cot. I sat right down where I was, relief flooding my body that we had a reprieve from desperate humans and insatiable zombies.

  “Here.” He turned away from the now-opened crate and tossed something cobalt blue through the air.

  I caught it badly, nearly falling forward to save it from hitting the dirt floor. It was a hard, rectangular prism, slick, shiny wrapping, bright white print: Emergency Ration 3600 calorie. 72 hours. I turned it over and started reading the ingredients: Barley flour. Wheat flour. Cornstarch. Sugar. Palm Oil. A crapload of vitamins.

  “Does it taste…” I left my question unfinished as I found a little notch in the top of the packaging and tore open the end of the ration.

  Barrett chuckled. “It tastes about how you’d expect. Nothing but the finest for our military boys.”

  I studied the revealed pale brown food; it had two thick ridges manufactured into the block. It took quite a bit of pressure to break off a long chunk—like leveraging it on my knee and pressing down on both sides. I couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to actually chew the damn thing.

  I looked over and found Barrett sitting on top of the crate he’d raided; he was already munching down. Every few bites, he took a swig of water. “I’m guessing having a drink on hand would be smart?”

  Barrett stopped chewing to stare at me. “What?”

  “Do you have more water?” I pointed at the bottle next to him on the crate.