Waking Up Dead

“Luke?”

He moaned. Fear lanced her almost to the point of immobility. The moan sounded like one of them and only the years of barriers and holding everything back had Jackson gritting her teeth, taking him by the shoulders, and turning him so that she could look into his eyes. Only then would she know. Please let it be him…

They opened just as hers met his and the blue was still the blue, and the sparkle, though dim, was still there, and the fear exploded out of her so that she was speaking before she even really thought the words. Speaking past the lumps, because they paled into insignificance now against this. “Oh God, thank God. It’s me Luke, it’s me. Jackson. I’m here. I love you,” she sobbed on the last word, her body shaking. “I do. Luke, I do.”

He took a raspy breath and she could hear the effort it cost him. “Jack…

“Don’t you die on me!” she shrieked. “Don’t you dare fucking die on me, not now. Not now I know… I should have said earlier. Luke, I’m so sorry, stay with me, okay.”

He shook his head ever so slightly to the side and tried to lift himself up, but it was too much. His head was bleeding and the bite to his shoulder and God knows what else all combined to overwhelm him. He fell back against the floor, moaning again.

“It’s going to be okay,” Jackson said, her voice spitting out the words. “Everything will be fine, Luke. You hear me? This is nothing. We’ll get you fixed up in no time. You’ll be fine. You’ve been bitten before. I remember you told me…” But not like this. Not like this…

Her hands shook as she pulled the material of his shirt away from his body. Trying again to clear the wound of everything. But it was thick material and she knew she’d have to cut it away. She grasped Mandy, lying in the pool of gore around her, and wiped it on her jeans. It removed some, if not all of the blood, and Jackson lifted her ready to cut. But the glinting metal, her savior so many times, outlined the reflection of another one of them, hunger burning in its eyes, coming straight at her and Luke.

Jackson screamed. Not in fear, not in anger, just in pure frustration. When would it ever end?

She swiveled around, her arms aching, her whole body sore and battered, knowing that she had almost nothing left. The wound to her cheek began to sting in a whole new way and she lifted a hand to it, trying to close the skin into place. The adrenaline that had filled her when they arrived was almost depleted now. Jackson knew that because she could feel so much pain, and she wanted nothing more than to sink back down next to her man and find his perfect blue eyes and hold his rough hands and let everything else just bleed away.

Just us. I promise. But it never had been, and as the male zombie emitted its death groan and stretched out its clawed fingers to grab her, she knew the truth of that. She’d never let it be.

Because she was changed.

The zombies may have woken back up but they weren’t the only ones who’d done so through those first awful months. Jackson had awoken too, only different. Luke was, and only ever had been, her chance of getting some part of the old her back, but she’d never really let him.

Her Luke who was now dying beneath her…

Heavy with lethargy and screaming in agony, Jackson lifted Mandy, her constant companion, and blinked away the moisture coating her eyes. The first tears in more than two long years, all for Luke. But rather than swing through the neck, because she doubted her arms even had it in them, she simply stepped forward and buried her machete in its stomach. The zombie roared, the blade halting its forward momentum, and like she had with Luke Jackson’s eyes matched with its eyes.

Green to brown, human to hunger.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then she pulled Mandy out, waited until the creature fell to its knees and kneed it as hard as she possibly could in the face.

Pain radiated from her kneecap making Jackson shriek. More tears, only these ones full of pain, filled her eyes. She blinked them away and screamed out the hurt, letting it wash over her because she wasn’t done yet— she was never fucking done—it wasn’t dead and she knew that her arms held no more in them—not even enough to try and cut through the head. So she hobbled over to the prone zombie, and she lifted her good leg and she slammed her steel-toe-clad boot down on its head. Once, twice, three times, over and over, until the thin, papery skin that covered it mushed under the force. And then the eyes and the muscle and the fatty tissue, on and on she went until she found the skull bone and cracked through it.

A roaring filled her ears so that all peripheral sounds were lost. Her vision closed in so that all she could see was the area around her boot and the zombie’s brain revealing itself little by little under her force. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I’m sorry.” And she didn’t know who the hell she was telling, him or her or Luke or even the goddamn world.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Luke awoke in an instant. Awareness filled him, the sound of a repetitive crunch assaulting him. He sucked in a deep breath and the pain was almost enough to knock him back out again, but he gritted his teeth and pushed the blackness back. It wasn’t easy and sweat broke across his head from the effort— or maybe that was just the gore.

Thoughts came then, in perfect order. Zombies. The horde. Jackson. Where is she? He lifted himself up, almost buckling from the pain. Dizziness buzzed in his head and it took a moment for him to take it all in. He blinked not once, but several times at the image his blurred eyes could see. The zombies were all but finished, all but the redheaded one strapped to the table, but she was quiet now, she too looking at the corpses littering the lab, lying in piles, and puddles of gore. Flames were still flickering outside and zombies screamed their dying screams.

The band of survivors were formed in a tight semicircle directly in front of him, and Luke saw that Pete and Sebastian and Jay were all okay—though looking like shit, but even as his gaze found them and rejoiced it went straight to the person in between them. She stood there and he knew then what the repetitive crunch was. Soaked through with blood she was like something from a horror movie herself. Her leg came up, and down, up, and down. And each time it crashed into the zombie’s now-smashed skull she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Up and down, crunch, crunch. Up and down, sorry and sorry.

Luke’s gaze found Sebastian’s exhausted one. The doctor shifted, his eyes full of the same questions as Luke’s.

“Jackson?” Luke called to her.

Up and down, crunch, crunch. Up and down, sorry and sorry.

“Jackson?” he said. Louder this time, though the effort made the nausea well up. But it was worth it, her movements ceased. She turned to him then, confusion writ across her face.

“Luke?”

“Come here, baby.” His words were soft, encouraging, even around the dizziness, and she must have got that immediately because she took a step toward him. Moments later she winced and fell toward the floor. Pete rushed forward to break that fall and hooked an arm under her.

“It’s okay,” he said and pulled her forward until she could collapse next to him.

In all their time together Luke had never seen Jackson look anything like this, and not just because his vision was blurred. Blood covered nearly all her skin. A ragged gash bisected her cheek, dripping more blood, and her eyes were full of something… not pain, no he couldn’t call it that…

“It’s okay,” he said again.

“Luke,” she whispered. “I didn’t… I lost it a bit… I’m…”

“It’s okay.” He wanted to lift a hand and run it across her face, maybe remove some of the blood, but his