“What just happened?” Micah asks.
I’m too shocked to speak. I’ve just watched Jake get bitten.
“He’ll be fine, Jess. I don’t think it actually broke skin. That zom was missing most of its teeth.”
I trip over my backpack, then numbly pick it up and head for the end of the hall. This time Micah doesn’t try to stop me. He figures I won’t leave, but I’m this close to actually doing it. I don’t give a rat’s ass if there are zombies waiting just outside.
But when I get to the end of the hallway I turn around and pace back.
“It bit him. I saw. I saw blood right before…before…”
“We got disconnected.”
“We didn’t get disconnected,” I snap. “It fell into the elevator shaft, between the floor and the car.”
His face pinches. He knows I’m right. And he knows what it means. Ashley’s screwed.
But that’s not the bigger problem right now. Jake is. I know what I saw. I know he was bitten. I watched that IU’s teeth sink into the muscle between his neck and shoulder. I saw the blood on his shirt when he yanked away. I saw the tooth still embedded in his skin.
Right before everything went black.
Before we lost the stream.
Right after everything seemed to finally be coming together.
“Just sit down, Jessie.”
“Don’t tell me to sit down, Micah! I can’t. I want to leave. I can’t. I want to go home. I can’t do that either. I mean, I can.” I wave my hands hysterically around my head and keep pacing. Micah moves out of the way. He doesn’t want to get hit. “I want us to all go home and just when it seems like we finally can… It’s all fucked.”
I sputter, kicking at nothing. I almost punch the wall before stopping myself. My shoulder sends me a painful reminder that it was recently dislocated. I’m almost too far gone to heed it.
“That stupid son of a bitch had to try and be the hero!”
Micah doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at the opposite wall with the same look on his face as when he had his breakdown in LaGuardia. I step over to him and grab his shoulder and shake him. “Don’t you dare wig out on me!”
He snaps out of it, then launches himself off the floor. Without saying a word, he whirls around and heads for the front of the house.
“Where are you going?”
“Knives. There must be some in the kitchen.” He stops and turns. “Gather whatever we can find to defend ourselves. We’re leaving.”
“It’s still dark.”
“I don’t give a crap.”
“Whoa. What just happened? Just a minute ago, you were—”
“I just realized you’re right, Jessie. You’ve been right all along. You were right about the failsafe. You were right that we shouldn’t have split up. We need to go to Jayne’s Hill.”
I shake my head. Now he’s the one thinking irrationally and I’m the one trying to keep him from committing suicide by going out there. But then my own need to be with Kelly overrides everything. “I’ll search upstairs,” I say.
He turns and disappears into the kitchen. I stare at the empty hallway for another moment or two, listening to him opening and closing drawers. At least he’s got the presence of mind to keep the noise down and to use his Link for light. I turn and make my way up the stairs again.
The first room I stop in is the parents’. I’m not looking forward to seeing the little girl’s bedroom.
I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me I’ve become obsessed with her. Or to tell me why. I know why. It’s because I feel connected to her. We share something: we’ve both been abandoned by our parents.
My father was killed when I was two, murdered by the monster that Professor Halliwell turned into after his attempt to create a cure for Reanimation went wrong. He, along with that fellow Nobel Laureat from Germany named Geena Bloch, and my father, had all been friends. Eric told stories about us having barbecues with the Halliwells. Of the families camping together. Apparently my mother and Mrs. Halliwell were pretty tight, too. I wonder whatever became of her.
But then Bloch disappeared under suspicious circumstances and Dad went to work for the president. He and Halliwell became terrible enemies. Halliwell accused my father of scientific abuse. “He was a nutcase,” Grandpa always said, whenever Halliwell’s name was mentioned. “A crazy, arrogant, old man who betrayed your father. He betrayed us all.”
Grandpa was the general in charge of the Omegaman Project at the time, the group that created the first Undead Marine forces using Bloch’s neural implant device that Arc eventually adapted. The predecessor of our own L.I.N.C. devices.
“How did he betray me?” I’d asked. The look Grandpa had given me had been withering and, for a moment, I thought I might be in serious trouble. Grandpa is one of those rare people who can give you a heart attack just by looking at you. He rarely shows emotion on his face, even if you know he’s just waiting to explode inside.
“By taking away your father, Jessica. He tried pulling some crazy, half-baked stunt, and all he got for it was ironic justice: he died and reanimated. But then the bastard—”
“Ulysses!” my mother exclaimed.
“He came and murdered your father.”
Nobody could ever explain how the monster had managed to escape his lab and make his way from the university to our house in Virginia from so far away.
Zombies don’t commit premeditated murder.
But, apparently, that’s what happened.
My mother became a basket case after that. She worked her way through men and booze like they were both going out of style, and all she ended up doing was losing herself. Talk about a crazy experiment in selfishness.
Eric was thirteen at the time. Thirteen and suddenly forced to become the man of the household. The parent. He never had a chance to be a kid, not after that.
And I never had a chance at having a real mother or a father.
I blink and the room in the house in Gameland comes back to me. I already know there’s nothing useful in here, nothing worth keeping, but I go through the dresser drawers anyway. I find an old pocketknife. I check between the mattresses and under the bed and in the closet. All the clothes seem to still be there, which makes me wonder what exactly happened the day the island was evacuated. How did they get separated from their daughter?
Did they even survive, or were they caught up in the outbreak, too?
The last thing I do before leaving the room is to take one of the pictures of the girl out of my pocket—Cassie, according to the writing on the back—and I set it on their bed. I wish I could do more to bring them together, but it’s much too late for that now.
I find myself crying while searching her room, a veil of tears streaming down my face unbidden and unhindered. I let them fall. They continue as I check the remaining two rooms, a study and a some kind of recreation room, but there’s nothing in either of these, either.
By the time I rejoin Micah downstairs, my tears have dried up.
He holds out a shovel and my pack and asks, “Ready?” The eagerness in his voice is unmistakable.
I nod. I may not be able to fix what broke here thirteen years ago, but maybe I can fix what’s waiting for us in Jayne’s Hill tonight.
Assuming, that is, there’s something left to fix.